Imam Feisal and the Ground Zero Mosque

It's amusing that Charles Johnson, who was once perhaps the country's lead anti-jihad blogger, has done a 180 degree turn, and is now an apologist for radical Islam. Here's his post today (at a Google-safe link): "An Interview with the Lead Developer of Park51." C.J. smears Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (and their supporters) as members of the "Bigot Brigade." And his "evidence" is an interview with Sharif el-Gamal, who is the CEO developer of the "interfaith" center at Ground Zero: "Q&A with Sharif el-Gamal about Park 51, NYC." Sharif waxes profoundly about what a uniter is Imam Feisal, chief sponsor of the Cordoba Initiative.

Don't believe it for a second.

I've previously laid out my position on the topic ("To Build or Not to Build? Mosque Protests Go Nationwide"). I'm not one to back suppression of Islam in America, although my commenters have been extremely critical of Islam, at a 2-1 ratio. I do have problems with the Ground Zero project. It's especially chilling how the left has used this to demonize those still recovering loved once from Ground Zero. In any case, we have more in the news, for example Frank Gaffney's new video, "Center says ‘No’ to ‘Shariah Beachhead’ at Ground Zero":

Plus, see Andrew Bostom at yesterday's NY Post, "Behind the mosque :Extremism at Ground Zero?":

Imam Feisal Rauf, the central figure in the coterie planning a huge mosque just off Ground Zero, is a full-throated champion of the very same Muslim theologians and jurists identified in a landmark NYPD report as central to promoting the Islamic religious bigotry that fuels modern jihad terrorism.

This fact alone should compel Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg to withdraw their support for the proposed mosque.

In August 2007, the NYPD released "Radicalization in the West -- The Homegrown Threat." This landmark 90-page report looked at the threat that had become apparent since 9/11, analyzing the roots of recent terror plots in the United States, from Lackawanna, NY, to Portland, Ore., to Fort Dix, NJ.

The report noted that Saudi "Wahhabi" scholars feed the jihadist ideology, legitimizing an "extreme intolerance" toward non-Muslims, especially Jews, Christians and Hindus. In particular, the analysts noted that the "journey" of radicalization that produces homegrown jihadis often begins in a Wahhabi mosque.

The term "Wahhabi" refers to the 18th century founder of this austere Islamic tradition, Muhammad bin Abdul al-Wahhab, who claimed inspiration from 14th century jurist Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah.

At least two of Imam Rauf's books, a 2000 treatise on Islamic law and his 2004 "What's Right with Islam," laud the implementation of sharia -- including within America -- and the "rejuvenating" Islamic religious spirit of Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Wahhab.

RTWT.

Also, previously at NY Post, "Imam Unmosqued: Ground Zero Booster Tied to Sea Clash":

The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos at sea this week.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization, according to its Website.

Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel's blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.

Nine passengers aboard the largest ship died in clashes with Israeli commandos, and a new confrontation loomed today, when another Free Gaza Movement ship was due to reach Gaza waters in defiance of Israel.

RELATED: At Discover the Networks, "FEISAL ABDUL RAUF."

Weekly Republican Address, July 24 2010

From the House GOP Conference:

Mark Ruffalo Signs as 'Incredible Hulk' in Upcoming 'Avengers' Film

I'd be interested to know the decision-making processes here. Mark Ruffalo, who is very talented, is a "sensitive guy" actor (IMHO), most famously in films like "13 Going on 30." He's also starring in "The Kids Are All Right," currently in theaters:

Anyways, check it out: "Mark Ruffalo Signs On to Play Hulk in THE AVENGERS."

And apparently Deadline's got my wavelength: "... imagine the Hollywood actor whom you'd least expect to play The Incredible Hulk in The Avengers, and maybe, just maybe, you'd come up with the Ruffalo's name."

RELATED: "Comic-Con 2010: 'Harry Potter,' Mark Ruffalo (maybe) and more on day three."

Robert Stacy McCain From 'Right Online' Las Vegas

Click here and enlarge for the full close-up image.

My good blogging buddy Robert Stacy McCain is in Las Vegas for the Right Online Conference. That's Ed Morrissey sitting with Stacy.

And for some news out of Vegas, well, Fox's Carl Cameron is reporting the news and a subject of the news. See, "Left & Right Blogospheres Collide in Sin City," and "Did Carl Cameron Sell Out Fox News to DailyKos? Not According to Cameron."

Drew Barrymore ELLE Cover Shoot — August 2010

Drew Barrymore looks fabulous in the latest ELLE Magazine:

More pics here and here.

Rule 5 Saturday: Paulina Porizkova

Well, looks like Rule 5 weekend has gotten off to a great start!

My good friend Opus #6 has posted her link-fest entry, "Paulina Porzikova: A Top Notch Supermodel."

And that's a reminder for me: I first started Ruling 5-ing with Paulina Porizkova at Sports Illustrated. She's a darling.

Who else is joining the fun? At The Point of a Gun?

Great stuff, although not too much babe-blogging over there. Which is why folks head over to Theo Spark's for their totties! Never a disappointment at Bob Belvedere's or Washington Rebel, for that matter. And Gator Doug gets it going a bit as well. (And not to mention WyBlog!)

More weekend Rule 5 a bit later today!

Update on Blogging Anonymity and Blogging Ethics

I've been thinking a lot about anonymous blogging since E.D. Kain launched his campaign of workplace intimidation last year. For one thing, I no longer think anonymous blogging is automatically cowardly. Oh sure, mostly I'd prefer to have someone put their name behind their words. And of course at this point I still probably wouldn't have started blogging anonymously even today, given the knowledge that I have about the depths of evil on the web. No, it's more that I'm not going to be critical of those who do continue to blog anonymously.

Dan Riehl periodically goes off on Allahpundit for hiding behind a pseudonym, recently, for example, "Is Pseudonymous Blogging Pure High School?" Dan links to another essay that makes the case that blogging anonymously is juvenile: "Of Pet Rocks And Anonymous Bloggers, Specifically The Remarkable Similarities Between The Two." I think the main thing, as Dan points out, is whether the blogger in question is really a serious writer with critical things to say, and would rather speak freely and often harshly without fear of retribution, or whether you have bloggers whose sole existence online is to demonize and destroy those whom they hate. American Nihilist, for example, exists for the sole purpose of attacking me personally with the most demented bile imaginable, and that blog has gotten more perverted over time, eventually devolving into a Satanic hate outlet for workplace intimidation and non-stop vicious personal diatribes. It's a hate blog. It exists for no other purpose but to spew invective and evil. And I've repeatedly challenged the authors to put or up shut up by posting their full personal identification and contact information, but they have not done so. And that's cowardly.

And thinking about it, people like that --- Repsac3 and his hate-merchants of death, and all the others of similarly-warped criminal minds online --- are the types that Kyra Phillips is referring to in her attacks on bloggers in this CNN clip:

"There's going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable ... How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they're actually given credibility, which is crazy. They're a bunch of cowards, they're just people seeking attention."

The prompt for this, surprisingly, is the Shirley Sherrod story. Of course, Andrew Breitbart is anything but anonymous, so the real question CNN is weighing is accountability. And as the whole NAACP episode has shown, accountability has been provided by information dissemination. The more information that became available, the more we knew exactly what happened. Who won the "debate"? Each side is claiming victory, with leftists saying Breitbart's credibility has been destroyed while ABC's Terry Moran and conservatives across the 'sphere recognized the massive victory against the left's race-baiting industry.

No Sheeples Here! has a great discussion of the larger debate, "Fear The Blogosphere." And see also Serr8d's Cutting Edge, "A damned shame you have to go overseas to read media coverage that's not tainted with the biases of the American Left. We have no good new organizations left on this continent, it seems."

More at Memeorandum.

PREVIOUSLY: "Blogging Anonymity and Blogging Ethics."

Out Tuesday: The Post-American Presidency

I'm looking forward to reading it: The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America.

Woman Survives Buffalo Attack at Yellowstone

Big animals!

Reagan Baby on NAACP Race-Baiting

Via Megan "Reagan Baby" Barth:

Boeing F-18 Super Hornet

Another cool airshow clip, via Theo Spark:

Red Eye Blogging

Change-of-pace early morning edition, with Greg Gutfeld:

It's true. Maintain your dignity at "Flying Pasties."

More Red Eye blogging at Washington Rebel.

Obama Talking Crap

Pure gold, from Andrew Klavan:

I Wanna Push You Down, Well I Will, Well I Will...

Our radical feminist friend Olga wasn't too hip on Charged GBH, so how about something a little bit more contemporary. Enjoy Matchbox Twenty, "Push":

she said I don't know why you ever would lie to me
like I'm a little untrusting when I think that the truth is gonna hurt ya
and I don't know why you couldn't just stay with me
you couldn't stand to be near me
when my face don't seem to want to shine
cuz it's a little bit dirty, well

don't just stand there, say nice things to me
cause I've been cheated, I've been wronged, but you
you don't know me, yeah, well I can't change
Well, I won't do anything at all

I wanna push you around, well I will, well I will
I wanna push you down, well I will, well I will
I wanna take you for granted, yeah I wanna take you for granted
Yeah, yeah, well I will ...

I'll just add that this is something right out of the American Nihilist playbook: "I can hardly imagine how tough it must be to pretend to be a legitimate political science professor while slut shaming, opposing accessible birth control, and completely misrepresenting the blogs of people who oppose you."

General Stanley McChrystal's Retirement

At ABC NEWS, "McChrystal: Service Did Not End Like I'd Imagined":

"This has the potential to be awkward," General Stanley McChrystal said tonight at his retirement ceremony -- his first public comments since he was fired by President Obama as the commander of troops in Afghanistan.

His 34-year-old Army career ended abruptly on a sweltering parade field at Fort McNair in Washington, DC just one month after he and his aides were quoted in a Rolling Stone article bashing senior members of the administration's leadership, including the president himself.

Though tonight's ceremony contained the usual pomp and circumstance reserved for a four-star general, it marked the unceremonious end for a military leader hailed as a visionary savior of the war in Afghanistan just months ago when President Obama rolled out a new war strategy based in large part on McChrystal's recommendations.

"My service did not end as I'd imagined," he conceded, addressing his inglorious termination directly.

Also at NYT (FWIW), "McChrystal Ends Service With Regret and a Laugh."

And if you missed it somehow, at Rolling Stone, "The Runaway General."

America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

From Angelo Codevilla, at American Spectator (a little on the paleocon-ish side for me on the foreign policy side, otherwise, a phenomenal essay):

The ruling class is keener to reform the American people's family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones. In no other areas is the ruling class's self-definition so definite, its contempt for opposition so patent, its Kulturkampf so open. It believes that the Christian family (and the Orthodox Jewish one too) is rooted in and perpetuates the ignorance commonly called religion, divisive social prejudices, and repressive gender roles, that it is the greatest barrier to human progress because it looks to its very particular interest -- often defined as mere coherence against outsiders who most often know better. Thus the family prevents its members from playing their proper roles in social reform. Worst of all, it reproduces itself.

Since marriage is the family's fertile seed, government at all levels, along with "mainstream" academics and media, have waged war on it. They legislate, regulate, and exhort in support not of "the family" -- meaning married parents raising children -- but rather of "families," meaning mostly households based on something other than marriage. The institution of no-fault divorce diminished the distinction between cohabitation and marriage -- except that husbands are held financially responsible for the children they father, while out-of-wedlock fathers are not. The tax code penalizes marriage and forces those married couples who raise their own children to subsidize "child care" for those who do not. Top Republicans and Democrats have also led society away from the very notion of marital fidelity by precept as well as by parading their affairs. For example, in 1997 the Democratic administration's secretary of defense and the Republican Senate's majority leader (joined by the New York Times et al.) condemned the military's practice of punishing officers who had extramarital affairs. While the military had assumed that honoring marital vows is as fundamental to the integrity of its units as it is to that of society, consensus at the top declared that insistence on fidelity is "contrary to societal norms." Not surprisingly, rates of marriage in America have decreased as out-of-wedlock births have increased. The biggest demographic consequence has been that about one in five of all households are women alone or with children, in which case they have about a four in 10 chance of living in poverty. Since unmarried mothers often are or expect to be clients of government services, it is not surprising that they are among the Democratic Party's most faithful voters.

While our ruling class teaches that relationships among men, women, and children are contingent, it also insists that the relationship between each of them and the state is fundamental. That is why such as Hillary Clinton have written law review articles and books advocating a direct relationship between the government and children, effectively abolishing the presumption of parental authority. Hence whereas within living memory school nurses could not administer an aspirin to a child without the parents' consent, the people who run America's schools nowadays administer pregnancy tests and ship girls off to abortion clinics without the parents' knowledge. Parents are not allowed to object to what their children are taught. But the government may and often does object to how parents raise children. The ruling class's assumption is that what it mandates for children is correct ipso facto, while what parents do is potentially abusive. It only takes an anonymous accusation of abuse for parents to be taken away in handcuffs until they prove their innocence. Only sheer political weight (and in California, just barely) has preserved parents' right to homeschool their children against the ruling class's desire to accomplish what Woodrow Wilson so yearned: "to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible."

At stake are the most important questions: What is the right way for human beings to live? By what standard is anything true or good? Who gets to decide what? Implicit in Wilson's words and explicit in our ruling class's actions is the dismissal, as the ways of outdated "fathers," of the answers that most Americans would give to these questions. This dismissal of the American people's intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about. Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others' comprehension.

While the unenlightened ones believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God and that we are subject to His and to His nature's laws, the enlightened ones know that we are products of evolution, driven by chance, the environment, and the will to primacy. While the un-enlightened are stuck with the antiquated notion that ordinary human minds can reach objective judgments about good and evil, better and worse through reason, the enlightened ones know that all such judgments are subjective and that ordinary people can no more be trusted with reason than they can with guns. Because ordinary people will pervert reason with ideology, religion, or interest, science is "science" only in the "right" hands. Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic matter only insofar as proper authority acknowledges them.

RTWT.

Bell City Government Falls Amid Salary Scandal

I reported on this previously, when LAT first broke the news.

At KABC-TV Los Angeles, "Bell Leaders Resign":

Plus, at ABC News New York/Washington, "Bell City Manager Paid Twice President Obama's Salary Resigns: Robert Rizzo Earns Nearly $800,000, Will Become Highest-Paid Public Pensioner in Calif."

BONUS: "Must Read Column at the Daily Caller: Left Coast Rebel Rings a Bell and Pages Chris Christie."

Shirley Sherrod: 'Andrew Breitbart Would Like to Get Us Stuck Back in the Times of Slavery'

I've seen so many of Shirley Sherrod's interviews that they've sorta blended together, but his sticks out, from Dan Riehl (via Memeorandum):

SHIRLEY SHERROD: I know I've gotten past black versus white. He's probably the person who's never gotten past it and never attempted to get past it.

I think he would like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That's where I think he would like to see all black people end up again.

COOPER: You think -- you think he's racist?

SHERROD: ... I think he's so vicious. Yes, I do.

And I think that's why he's so vicious against a black president, you know. He would go after me. I don't think it was even the NAACP he was totally after. I think he was after a black president.

Of course it never was about Shirley Sherrod (or even Obama, in the first instance), but the NAACP, as Breitbart said from the beginning. Thus, as Dan Riehl notes:

Sorry, friends. But when I look below the headlines at the real Shirley Sherrod, as opposed to the fast spun media myth - I think I see her for what she really is. And it's a very clear portrait painted in sharp contrasts between black and white. Far from bringing the races together in America, the Shirley Sherrods of the world accomplish nothing but maintaining any distance, if not actually driving them apart. It's amazing how the conditions for having sainthood bestowed upon oneself have changed over the years.

Daily Beast's Brian Ries Wallows in Sarah Palin Facebook Attack

I'm a little late on this story but it's worth posting considering the continued fallout from the JournoList scandal.

It turns out that Brian Ries of The Daily Beast launched a coordinated attack on Sarah Palin's Facebook account this week that temporarily succeeded in deleting Palin's note on New York's Ground Zero Mosque. Here's a report from yesterday, "Palin Facebook Post on Ground Zero Mosque Deleted: Users complain about post, call it "racist/hate speech." And Pamela Geller fingers Ries at Atlas Shrugs: "The Beast Behind Facebook Fascism: Censoring Palin."

Ries is bragging about it on Twitter and Tumblr:

And at The Daily Beast, "My Facebook War With Palin":

When a Facebook post by the ex-governor slamming the "Ground Zero Mosque" disappeared, Brian Ries realized the reach of his effort to confront her on hate speech—and the wrath of her supporters.

Sometime Thursday morning I realized Sarah Palin's controversial Facebook note about the "Ground Zero Mosque" had vanished. In its place was an error message that explained the network "could not find the note you requested." It had "either been deleted” or had never existed in the first place.

In fact, the post had been removed by Facebook's automated systems, according to a spokesman, the result of a grassroots campaign by Tumblr users to report the former governor's post as a "hate speech." It was an idea introduced by a Tumblr blogger the media has identified as "moneyries." Hello everyone, that's me. And soon I was inundated with messages from her fervent fans.

Those of us following Palin's comments in the media throughout the past week or so would know that the former governor of Alaska had issued a screed on Facebook, her preferred form of communication these days, outlining the reasons she opposed the construction of an Islamic community center just a few blocks from Ground Zero.

The original note, titled "An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground," was a response to comments made by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in which he argued it's un-American to "keep people from building a building," especially in a city that stands for "tolerance and openness." It made me wonder where Facebook, a government unto itself with a user base larger than the U.S. population, would outline the lines of offensive material under their Terms of Service when one's simply preaching "common moral sense," as Palin would call it. Or, if its own laws on censorship and free speech could rely on its users to characterize user content as intolerant, or in this case, “hate speech,” themselves.

The truth is, many Internet communities lack any real transparency when it comes to governing the words of its users. Facebook's free speech policies are largely undefined, and it took the coordinated actions of a community a fraction of its size to prove it.

That all began when I decided to conduct a little experiment.

Read the rest here.

No one should be surprised at this.

Still, I'm somewhat dumbstruck at the genuinely brazen use of "hate speech" allegations to attack and destroy political opponents on social networking sites (a new frontier, I guess, but censorship nevertheless). What's also interesting is that there's little evidence that Ries' attack was fundamentally a protest about erecting an Islamist victory mosque above the recovery zone at Ground Zero. This is more an attack on Sarah Palin personally, driven by pure partisan extremism, ideological hatred, and misogynistic demonism.

And what's this with "hate speech" as the weapon of choice? There's no such thing as "hate speech" in the United States (except in college campus PC codes), but the left is picking up on totalitarian neo-communist campaigns around the world that have increasingly worked in suppressing the speech of those battling existential jihad.

This episode, while essentially a small blip in the larger political battles, is nevertheless immensely indicative of the shape of the enduring conflict. This attack on Palin is grounded in evil, and Ries is wallowing in it like a dying animal in the mud. It's sickening.

BONUS: Here's a leftist basically arguing "free speech for me, but not for thee": "Blogger Gets Palin’s Facebook Post Yanked and Palinistas Throw a Hissy Fit."

Tucker Carlson on JournoList: 'Liberal Journalists Decided to Subvert the News'

On Hannity's:

And check all the coverage at The Daily Caller.