There are limits to inciteful speech by Wayne Madsen

There are limits to inciteful speech by Wayne Madsen

As unlikely a pair as Pope Francis I and Charlie Hebdo founder have weighed in on the flagrant incitement of believers of a major religion with the intent of causing violence. On his way to the Philippines, the Pope said, "You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others." He also said that if someone insulted his mother, he "could expect a punch" in return.

The founder and former editor of Charlie Hebdo, Henri Roussel, voiced his misgivings about one of his successors as editor, Stephane Charbonnier, among the satirical newspaper's staff gunned down by two Islamist radicals seeking revenge for the paper's cartoon portrayals of the Prophet Mohammed. Roussel blamed Charbonnier for needlessly dragging his staff to their deaths, pointing out that the late editor, known as "Charb" played a dangerous "game of one-upmanship" in provoking radical Muslims to act. Roussel said that after the paper's offices were firebombed in 2011 after it published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed considered by Muslims to be blasphemous.

Roussel criticized the most recent management of Charlie Hebdo. He accused Charbonnier's predecessor as editor, Philippe Val, of turning the paper into a "Zionist and Islamophobic organ," especially after Val fired longtime cartoonist Maurice Sine for publishing a cartoon of the marriage of former President Nicolas Sarkozy' son to a Jewish electronic chain heiress. Val considered that cartoon to be anti-Semitic, but, as Roussel pointed out, the paper's management had no problem repeatedly mocking and insulting Islam. Roussel pointed out that after "Charb" published an offensive Mohammed cartoon in 2011 and the paper's offices were firebombed, he proceeded to do the same thing again in 2012. Roussel said Charbonnier "shouldn’t have done it."

The peak inside the inner workings of Charlie Hebdo is reminiscent of the activities of the neo-conservative-influenced and financed protest groups FEMEN, Pussy Riot, and Voina, which have received international publicity over their inciteful and lewd protests at Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian cathedrals, as well as Islamic mosques. There is no record of these protesters committing any actions against Jewish synagogues in any of the countries where they have protested against Christianity and Islam. 

These facts certainly point to the actions of Charlie Hebdo, FEMEN, Pussy Riot, and Voina being directed by well-organized and money-flush Zionist interests. The corporate news media have been full of stories on the sale of over five million copies of the "survivors' edition" of Charlie Hebdo and how French police have been rounding up those who have been charged with inciting "anti-Semitic" speech. At the same time, the Pope, Muslim clerics, and informed observers like Roussel have been slammed hard by the corporate, and largely Zionist-owned media, for their views on what can only be termed as "anti-Gentilic" speech. It certainly appears that the Pope and France's four top imams had Charlie Hebdo's actions in mind when they issued a joint statement condemning the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher Jewish market but urging the media to restrain itself from publishing content disrespectful of religious faiths.

The Charlie Hebdo "survivors' edition" can be downloaded by clicking here. Apparently, the surviving staff saw fit to disregard the wishes of their former editor and founder, the Pope, and France's four chief imams. After examining this much-heralded issue, it is clear that Charlie Hebdo's modus operandi is to provide a single stock caricature of a bearded Jewish man in a one cartoon while devoting the remainder of its pages to bashing Islam and Christianity. A single caricature does not constitute a license to incite. 

Anti-Christian and Islam "comedian" Bill Maher recently said the following in comparing Christianity and Islam, "one is herpes and one is cancer." Not everyone in Hollywood thinks Maher is funny and actor Ben Affleck called Maher on his Islamophobia. The Zionists, using their Talmud as their inspirational guide, want to convince the world that it is perfectly okay to mock, ridicule, blaspheme, and incite Muslims and Christians but to utter one word of condemnation of Jewish practices, including the ritual genital mutilation of infant boys, is "anti-Semitic." Monsieur Roussel, Pope Francis, the French imams, and others, including this website, see the hypocrisy being carried out. President Obama was right to miss out on the navel-gazing "march," that is, the photo-op, of world leaders in Paris. The only march the world needs is one to expose the hypocrisy of the world's elites because once again, they have perpetrated a cruel hoax on the civilized people and nations of the world.

'Dude, you have no Koran'

THE ROVING EYE

'Dude, you have no Koran'

By Pepe Escobar

As Islamophobia in the United States reaches bonfire of the vanities proportions - involving a composite of talk show hosts, Republican politicians, Tea Party agitators and wacko preachers (see Nobody expects the American Inquisition Asia Times Online, Sept 11, 2010) - concerned citizens across the world should note that the anti-mosque hate festival this past Saturday in front of the proposed site of Cordoba House, the Islamic community center a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero in New York, totally fizzled out; according to ground witnesses, there were way more reporters present than rabid Islamophobes.

But as a graphic illustration of Islamophobia defeated, nothing beats what happened in Amarillo, Texas, the same day. David Grisham, the wacko director of one Repent Amarillo organization, who had planned his own Koran-burning session in support of Gainesville, Florida, pastor and instant global celebrity Terry Jones, was about to commit the act in front of around 200 people when, out of nowhere comes ...

... the unlikeliest of heroes; Jacob Isom, a 23-year-old, bespectacled local skateboarder. Isom himself described what happened to the Amarillo-Globe News: "I snuck up behind him and took his Koran, he said something about burning the Koran, I said 'Dude you have no Koran,' and ran off." The righteous skateboarder even had time to add to a startled Grisham, "You’re just trying to start holy wars," then handed the unburned Koran to a local Muslim leader.

Repent Amarillo is one of those typical wacko militia American groups, referring to itself as the "Army of God" and with a promotional material modeled on army recruiting pamphlets. Everyone is a target: gays, Muslims, liberal Christians, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, "spring break events" and pornography shops. Repent Amarillo even led a boycott against the city of Houston after it elected Mayor Annise Parker - a lesbian. Their motto is, "We are the special forces of spiritual warfare, we're looking for a few good warriors."

A lot of people at the would-be Koran-burning site in Amarillo put their hands over a barbecue grill to prevent Grisham from lighting the fire. So this is not only a story about a righteous dude acting like a model citizen. It’s in the same spirit of another citizen observing the Hate Festival near Ground Zero, holding a piece of carton with the words "Real Americans don't burn Korans". At the center of this response is the respect for the constitution of the United States - which ensures the inalienable right of anyone to freely practice the religion of one’s choice.

Cairo, Kabul, Kashmir, Peshawar should read into this that the vast majority of Americans won't be cowed by fear and hate no more, and won't succumb to a new, politically engineered, religious crusade. (Radical) maneuvers by free thinkers and righteous skateboard dudes are showing the way; no paramilitary Christian fascist resists being reduced to ridicule. Now if only Americans could redirect their outrage against the Pentagon drone war against Afghan civilians.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Khalid Amayreh – Open Letter to Obama's Envoy to the OIC

Dear brother Hussein, many Muslims around the globe, I am glad that President Obama has appointed you as his Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Needless to say, the repair of American-Muslim relations require, first and foremost, honesty, integrity, and good will — characters I am sure you exemplify as an Islamic scholar and Hafez of the Book of God (Qur'an).Hence, I think that you are probably one of the best people qualified for this difficult job, because, for several decades, the relations between the United States and the world of 1.6 billion Muslims have been marred by tension, lack of trust, and a lot of bitterness.

Hence, I urge you to go about carrying out your mission with utmost care, wisdom, and sagacity. I also want to remind you that several American envoys to the Muslim world have effectively failed to achieve what they were supposed to achieve, namely fostering healthy relations between Muslims and America that would be based on mutual trust, respect, and friendship.

It is my firm belief though that these people, whose efforts should never be underestimated, failed in their missions, not because of the lack of trying nor the absence of good will and rectitude.

My impression, which I believe is shared by many Muslims, is that these honorable men and women did not correctly diagnose the serious ailments plaguing America's relations with the Muslim world. In truth, past American envoys to the Muslim world acted very much as Public Relations emissaries, whose central concern was that Muslims misunderstood America.

In short, they thought that America was only having an "image problem" in the Muslim world, and that if only the United States worked a little bit harder in terms of presenting itself and its policies more skillfully, that tarnished image would be rehabilitated and Muslims would fall in love with Uncle Sam.

History of Wrong Deeds

My Brother in Islam and humanity: From our vantage point, the real problem besetting America's relations with Muslims goes far beyond the image problem. We truly feel that the US government is "tormenting" Muslims in many parts of the world, such as Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq , Pakistan, Lebanon to mention some examples.

In occupied Palestine, America has been enabling and empowering Israel — a state that has much in common with Nazi Germany — to kill us, destroy our homes, steal our land, and banish us from our ancestral land. Moreover, whenever we sought to redress that bad situation at the UN Security Council, America would just veto any resolution that would have given us a modicum of justice.

This brazen alliance with the oppressors on America's part frustrated many Muslims and Arabs, prompting them occasionally to embark on doing things they probably should not have done. You know, people to whom evil is done, often do evil in return.

Even today, the United States, which was as silent as a graveyard during Israel's manifestly criminal onslaught against the helpless people of the Gaza Strip last year, is trying now to kill the Goldstone report, which exposed Israeli criminality and called for the possible prosecution of suspected Israeli war criminals.

The United States has had more than fifty years to make peace in Palestine. However, instead of forcing Israel to give up the spoils of war and grant Palestinians the right to freedom from the shackles of occupation and racism, America has always made sure to further strengthen Israeli militarily and bolster its arrogance of power.

Eventually, this unrestricted embrace of Zionism enabled Israel to irreversibly kill the two-state solution, leaving us with the ominous, but realistic alternative of open-ended conflict.

One Palestinian intellectual, Walid Khalidi, once referred to the United States as "the tormentor of the Palestinian people." Khalidi's words are not an overstatement. In fact, the opposite may well be true.

In Lebanon, a few years ago, Israel blanket-bombed Lebanon, annihilating and maiming thousands of innocent people whose only "guilt" was their weakness and military inferiority vis-à-vis Israel.

In fact, the Israeli air force dropped more than 2 million cluster-bomblets on Lebanon, enough to kill two million children, including people yet to be born. Instead of hearing the United States saying: "Stop it", we heard American officials from the president downward singing the songs of praise for Israel as if these innocent victims were children of lesser humanity.

Iraq and Afghanistan

Moreover, In Iraq, one is really frustrated as to where to begin and where to end when talking about America's crimes and days of infamy in Iraq. America invaded, occupied and destroyed that Arab country based on the mendacious claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). True, Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, but are America's Arab puppets paragons of virtue and democracy?

A few years before the American occupation of Iraq, former secretary of state Madeline Albright made some telling remarks about the death of nearly a million Iraqi children as a result of US-led sanctions against the Arab country. She said, "If it is good for America, it is worth it."

I am sure you understand that only a human devil can reach this level of depravity and evil.

Regarding Afghanistan, American and other NATO forces are raining death on Afghan people in the Helmand province, killing many civilians. US military officials would claim it happened by mistake. Well, but mistakes are done a few times, and when made nearly on a daily basis and thousands of people are killed, it means "mistakes" are actually "the real policy".

In any case, when the number of civilian victims is so high as in Afghanistan and Palestine, even intent becomes irrelevant.

I am sure that had these unwept, helpless civilians been Jews or Christians, the NATO pilots would have been much more careful.

Dear Brother: Muslims want a relationship with America based on honesty and fairness, and above all on justice. I am saying so because the US policy toward Muslims has been almost completely devoid of honesty and fairness.

Nearly every new American administration declares from the outset that fostering democracy and human rights in the Arab world would be at the top of its agenda. However, the truth is that the policy pursued then represents the exact antithesis of America's declarations.

In the past few years, the United States actually encouraged certain Arab states to torture their own citizens by transferring "terror suspects" to these police states, where they underwent all sorts of physical and psychological torture. The so-called "renditions" were a stigma of shame at the forehead of both America and the Arab regimes.

In fact, the United States has effectively transformed several Arab regimes into agents helped by the American intelligence to serve America's illegitimate global interests.

Conflicting Interests?

These regimes do not represent the free will of the Arab-Muslim people. They are more answerable to Washington than they are to their own masses. In addition, they value the "legitimacy" that comes from America's acceptance more than that which comes from their own people's acceptance.

For example, the American-envisaged steel wall being built along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is rejected by up to 99 percent of the Egyptian people. Yet it is being imposed, thanks to America's approval of the evil structure.

Does not the United States realize that this wall amounts to passing a death penalty on more than 1.5 million innocent human beings, whose only "crime" was that they elected a political party that Israel and America did not like?

To be sure, America has the right to protect its interests. However, America has no right, moral or legal, to murder and starve people because they exercised their democratic right and elected a political party called "Hamas".

Besides, why is it that Israel has the right to elect clear-cut thugs and certified war criminals, such as Avigdor Lieberman, Ehud Barak, and Benyamin Netanyahu, just to name a few, while the Palestinian people are not supposed to elect a party like Hamas?

Do terror, criminality, and racism become kosher when assuming a Jewish face? Is Israel above the laws of God and man?

Muslims all over the world, including in Palestine, have no inherent hostility toward the people of the United States.

We have no problem with the American First Amendment and civil liberties. We are not against the United States because we hate the American life style. Our problem with the United States stems from hostile American policies that are killing us and murdering our children.

In short, America must reconcile what it preaches with what it does, because otherwise, America cannot just keep lying to Muslims (and non-Muslims) as if our people were blind, deaf, and dumb.

Finally, I hope and pray that you will have the courage to communicate our grievances to the White House, as I am sure you will communicate its concerns to us.

Furthermore, I would advise you to be always mindful of the Qur'an's eighth Aya (verse) of Surat Al-Ma’idah:

"O ye who believe! stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety: and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do." [Al-Ma’idah, 8]

I have chosen this verse because justice is not only a Muslim value; it is actually a universal value, without which life on earth is corrupted.
Once again, I call on the Almighty to help you carry out your mission in the best way.

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1265890427629&pagename=Zone-English-Muslim_Affairs%2FMAELayout##ixzz0oUtCY5W6

Group linked to Israeli lobby, neocons releases another Islamophobic film

ISLAMOPHOBIA COMES TO THE BIG SCREEN

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
Group linked to Israeli lobby, neocons releases another Islamophobic film
By Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON (IPS) – A new documentary from a shadowy non-profit, the Clarion Fund, has ties to groups widely accused of Islamophobia.

The Third Jihad purports to educate US citizens about the threat of a “cultural Jihad” by the country’s own Muslim-American population. The film goes to great lengths to define itself as an expose of radical Muslim elements, not the faith at large.

But a group called the International Free Press Society (IFPS), which attended the Washington premiere of the film and documented the screening on behalf of the production company on a social media website, has some dubious affiliations.

Two months ago, IFPS heavily promoted Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, a widely-known Islamophobe who has been tied to far-right European political parties.

An IPS investigation linked both Wilders and some of his US and international supporters, including members of IFPS, with the Vlaams Belang (VB), or Flemish Interest. Vlaams Belang is a nationalist Flemish party that has demanded amnesty for Nazi collaborators in Belgium.

Wilders is known for campaigning to ban the Quran, Islamic attire and Islamic schools from the Netherlands, and for proclaiming that “moderate Islam does not exist.” His views have even drawn fire from the strongly pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League, which described Wilders’s rhetoric as “inflammatory, divisive and antithetical to American democratic ideals.”

Wilders has been brought up on charges in the Netherlands and banned from Britain on the grounds that he incites hate.

That view doesn’t jibe with the slickly produced Third Jihad film.

The movie starts with a disclaimer that it is not an assault on all Muslims: “This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are radicals. This film is about them.”

The narrative of the movie is strung together with commentary from a “moderate” Muslim, Zuhdi Jasser, a physician from Arizona who heads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD).

AIFD, according to its website, is a non-profit which seeks to “intellectually stand against the religious fanatics who exploit the religion of Islam for a nihilistic, anti-American anti-Western war.”

Unlike most commentators who regularly use the term “Islamofascist,” Jasser is a practicing and devoted Muslim. But he thinks the faith has no role in politics or government. He derides political Islam as part of the subversive, quiet Jihad being waged within the boundaries of the West, a central tenet of the movie.

Radical Muslims, by having children, spreading their faith, and ensuring their ability to practice Islam as they see fit, are working a “demographic jihad” in which they see themselves emerging as a majority and making Islam the dominant religion of the US — eventually to take over the nation altogether — contend Jasser and the films creators.

But that prospect seems unlikely in the US, where Muslim Americans are generally regarded as well-assimilated and not radicalized.

The film itself also contains inconsistencies in terms of differentiating between Islam and radical Islam.

For example, the graphic that the film used to demonstrate the spread of an Islamic state across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe used a tiled picture of a green crescent with a star between its points. The crescent and star are the symbol of Islam in general.

The documentary was produced by the Clarion Fund, a US-based non-profit that was embroiled in controversy last year when it distributed its last movie, Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, to nearly 30 million homes in the “swing states” that normally decide US presidential elections.

Its 501(c)(3) status as non-profit means the group is legally exempt from paying taxes and is prohibited from involvement in electoral politics.

IPS investigations also tied the production and distribution of Obsession to right-wing Israeli groups and US-based neoconservatives.

In addition to an endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain posted on Clarion’s website, questions were raised about Clarion’s ties to foreign groups, such as Aish Hatorah, an Israeli-based organization dedicated to educating young Jews about their heritage.

The Clarion Fund and Aish Hatorah are headed by Israeli-Canadian twin brothers Raphael and Ephraim Shore, respectively. The two groups appear to be connected as Clarion is incorporated in Delaware to the New York offices of Aish Hatorah.

Federal law prohibits campaigns and political candidates from taking money from foreign organizations.

Last September, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asking that Clarion be investigated for allegedly violating their tax-exempt apolitical status and using foreign funds in an electoral push.

Last week, the FEC ruled that there was “no reason to believe Respondents [Clarion Fund] violated the Act, because the DVD failed to identify a federal candidate, lacked express advocacy, and there was no evidence the DVD was distributed in connection with a federal election.”

Still, the group strikes back at CAIR in the new film, accusing it of being part of a grand Muslim conspiracy to take over the West and the United States.

“The Third Jihad” is largely based on a document the producers say the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered in 2003. The film’s creators purport the document is a “Grand Jihad Manifesto” authored by the Muslim Brotherhood in North America, according to the promotional materials.

“The 15-page document outlines goals and strategies for the infiltration and domination of America from within,” says the release. “Among the strategies discussed is the establishment of ‘moderate’ groups, mosques and Islamic centers across North America in an effort to strategically position Islam so that it might weaken western culture and promote the implementation of Sharia Law.”

Sharia, or Islamic law, has come into the spotlight as one of the principal goals of radical Islamists.

“Sharia is no different than Jewish law or Christian law,” said CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “When he prays, Jasser is following Sharia; when he doesn’t drink alcohol, he’s following Sharia.”

In the film, Clarion says that the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP) was one of several Muslim organizations listed in the document as potential allies. The film claims that IAP helped form CAIR.

Despite its alleged nefarious ties, CAIR was invited to screenings of the film, insisted Clarion executive director Peter Connors. “Our invitations were declined,” he said.

In protest of a screening of The Third Jihad in Los Angeles’s Simon Wiesenthal Center on Saturday night, CAIR sent a letter to the center’s dean and founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier.

“The film disingenuously claims it is only targeting ‘radical Islam,’ yet a Twitter account of the Washington, DC, screening on Wednesday night stated: “‘The 1,400-hundred year war’ has been going on since the beginning of Islam,” CAIR wrote.

Indeed, a member of IFPS was authoring the Twitter feed, which allows someone to post short updates to the web in real time.

“Thanks to the Clarion Fund for the opportunity to twitter tonight. Be sure to visit the International Free Press Society online!” said the last post charting the press conference and screening.

“Clarion thanks the International Free Press Society … for their Twitter mastery at last night’s event,” said the next post, from the following morning, which included a shortcut link to IFPS’s website.

Both tweets, as the short messages are called, came from “No2RadicalIslam,” which is Clarion’s name on Twitter.

Some of Clarion’s supporters, including Jewish groups that have promoted its films as well as “moderate” Muslims like Jasser, appear unaware of IFPS’s association with the nationalist Flemish party Vlaams Belang, which has been deemed neo-Nazi and neo-fascist by critics.

In December 2008, senior VB leader Roeland Raes was convicted on charges of Holocaust denial.

But Jasser, who didn’t know about VB, said he wasn’t concerned about potential connections with Wilders, debating the characterization of Wilders as an Islamophobe.

“I do think the test of the West, and the test of us Muslims in the West, is whether we will defend Mr. Wilders and his right to say whatever he wants to say,” he told IPS. “At AIFP we endorse their free speech, and the aspect of free speech is important to the war of ideas. But we disagree with their view of Islam.”

“I think as a Muslim, the test of our character is how we respond to people that may not hold opinions of our faith that we agree with,” he said. “And I truly think that the cartoons … demonstrated many Muslims didn’t give groups the right to criticize our faith.”

Jasser was referring to an incendiary cartoon published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that portrayed the Muslim prophet Mohammed’s head-covering as a bomb inscribed with the Islamic declaration of faith, which set off worldwide protests in 2005.

The IFPS website sells “exclusive cop[ies] of the famous Mohammed cartoon” for 250 dollars a piece.