Beautiful Nadya! Your New Russian Fiancée!

Well it beats a desperate plea from a deposed former official of the Nigerian government whose parents, wealthy international mining commodities merchants, left an inheritance of $12.500.000 (Twelve Million, five hundred thousand dollars) in a suspense account in a local bank in Lagos.

Nope, here's the actual message from sweet "Nadya" pictured below:

Hello my new friend!

I understand, that you do not know me and I do not know you, but probably in the future all can change. All good always occurs in the future and I ask a few patience from you to read my letter up to the end. In the beginning I want to be presented you and to tell a little about my life. My name is Nadya and to me it will be very pleasant, if you will name me so. Was born 35 years ago and all this time I live in Russia, in Cheboksary. I give many time to work, I work Stomatologist, in local hospital. It is possible to tell and in other words that I the dentist. I communicate every day with different people and to all the separate approach is necessary. In my work there are people from absolutely small age and to the adult. My life goes in regular intervals and every day is similar on previous. I like my friends and love my family. Certainly the most important i want to found love and my the husband to be the happiest woman in the world. For all my life I could not meet the man to which I could trust completely and with which I would like to connect my life, but very much I want.

Several days ago I laid at home on a bed and thought. Why I am lonely? Why I cannot find my special the man? Probably I have made nothing to be happy? Certainly I can be together with the man which I not love, to give birth to the child and simply to be mum, but to not be happy in the family, but I do not want it. I want to love the man and simply be happy to be with him. Also I have thought. Why to not try to get acquainted with the man from other country if I could not find my special man here in Russia? Now we live in 21 century and I know, that many people use the Internet and "Marriage agencies" to get acquainted with suitable the man in any point globe. I do not want to be lonely during my life or simply to sit and wait, when my love will come to me. I want to do itself my life happy and have found such marriage agency here in my city. I knew, that their help will be not free-of-charge, but they have asked the big sum of money from me ....

There's more to the e-mail, but I'm sure folks get the picture.

Nadya's good friend forwarded my e-mail to her. Too bad I'm already married!

(P.S. Guys, if this is sounding good, uh, better think again: "A Russian Fiancee? Don't Be a Victim of Scam").

What's the Frequency, Khalid? -- REM Calls for Guantanamo Closure

From the BBC, "REM Call for Guantanamo Closure":

Rock bands including Pearl Jam and REM have joined a coalition of musicians to support the US president's efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

The National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, which also includes former military officers, launched on Tuesday.

Many of the artists who have signed up are angry that their music was used as an interrogation tool in the jail.

But CIA spokesman George Little said music was used only for security, rather than "punitive purposes".

In a statement, REM said: "We have spent the past 30 years supporting causes related to peace and justice. To now learn that some of our friends' music may have been used as part of the torture tactics without their consent or knowledge, is horrific. It's anti-American, period."

Other artists to sign up to the coalition include Jackson Browne, Steve Earle, Roseanne Cash, Billy Bragg, Bonnie Raitt and Rage Against The Machine.

This is why I disassociate politics -- as much as possible -- from the music and the musicians I enjoy.

REM is pretty cool. I'm just not so thrilled that they're joining up with folks like communist Zach De La Rocha to help gain the release of enemy combatants like Khalid Abdullah Mishal al Mutairi, a suspected fighter-terrorist captured at the AF-PAK border in 2001. He was released from Guantanamo and sent to Kuwait last week, on October 13. Khalid Abdullah was trained by Laskar-e-Taiba and fought against American and Northern Alliance forces during Operation Enduring Freedom. Should he gain release ultimately, no doubt he'll be joining back up with his Talaban-Lashkar-Al Qaeda homies in no time. Maybe he'll wear a shirt of violent green, uh-huh.

Peter Dreier, Hardline Activist and Radical Professor, Decries Conservatives' 'War on ACORN'

Peter Dreier, a radical professor of public policy at Occidental College, offers a pathetic defense of ACORN at this morning's Los Angeles Times, "The War on ACORN."

Dreier's essay is comedy gold in its weasely dismissal of ACORN'S long history of corruption. Brushing off recent evidence of voter fraud, facilitation of tax evasion, and subornation of criminal prostitution, Dreier writes:

The attack on ACORN is not really about bogus names on voter forms or about staffers encouraging people to lie on their tax forms. Rather, it is part of a broader conservative effort to attack progressive organizations and discredit President Obama and his liberal agenda.

You think?

Hello.

ACORN is a socialist filth outfit of lying community shakedown artists. Big Government's done the nation a massive favor in not only outing ACORN, but in totally discrediting the Obama-Media Complex that's working in tandem with radical socialist factions to destroy America.

You have to read Dreier's essay to believe the depths of this man's postmodern denial.

At one point he claims, "Did ACORN engage in election fraud? Absolutely not." Such categorical dismissal of ACORN's blatant and criminal pattern of fraud is at least intellectually dishonest, if not morally bankrupt, since there's a preponderance of evidence of ACORN voter fraud (see, for starters, John Fund, "A Victory Against Voter Fraud").

But check out Dreier on the Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe ACORN sting:

And what about the prostitute-and-pimp video? It also isn't quite what Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly would have you believe. Two "gotcha" right-wing activists showed up at about 10 ACORN offices hoping to entice low-level staff to provide tax advice for an illegal prostitution ring. In most ACORN offices, the staff kicked the pair out. In a few cities, staffers called the police. In two offices, however, the staff listened and offered to help. That was wrong. But ACORN immediately fired the errant staffers.

Unbelievable, really.

Just yesterday we saw Big Government's release of the Philly video that once again catches the lying ACORN corruption machine red-handed. See, "ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in Philadelphia, PA Part I." Plus, see also, "The Media’s Complicity: Analysis of ACORN Coverage."

Professor Dreier is a huge backer of President Obama, and thus he has a natural incentive to try to repudiate the evidence of ACORN's criminal activities and radical socialist programs.

Unfortunately for him, the good professor's own reputation is going down with the criminal outfit he's hopelessly attempting to save.

See also, "Reds, Radicals, Terrorists and Traitors -- Progressives For Obama."

Georgia Executes Mark McClain: Activists, Communists Protest 'Freakish' System of 'Arbitrary' Punishment

Mark McClain, the so-called "Pizza Store Killer," was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening. The Georgia Department of Corrections issued a pre-execution press release, "McClain Execution Media Advisory." And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a report, "State Executes Pizza Store Killer":

Condemned inmate Mark McClain was killed by lethal injection at 7:24 p.m. Tuesday in Jackson.

He had no visitors Tuesday, though a Department of Corrections spokeswoman said he talked to two relatives by phone. McClain, 42, declined to eat his final meal and refused a sedative offered one hour before his execution. At around 6:15 he learned from his attorneys that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied a motion to stay, just as the Georgia Supreme Court had ruled earlier in the day.

McClain did not issue a final statement. When asked if he wanted a prayer said for him, he replied, "No, I'm fine." He lay expressionless and made no eye contact with the attorneys, prison officials and members of the media who witnessed his execution. As his death drew near McClain's ruddy complexion turned pale. His body lunged forward slightly as the potassium chloride raced through his veins, but otherwise his passing was quiet.

His execution, unlike most, kept to schedule.

There were no relatives present, which is not uncommon, according to Department of Corrections spokeswoman Joan Heath.

McClain was sentenced to death by a Richmond County jury for the 1994 murder of Kevin Brown, 28. The Domino's Pizza store manager was shot once in the chest for the $130 in his till.

The Journal-Constitution also published a report critical of Georgia's death penalty system, "Death Sentence for Killer 'Freakish'":

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined the facts and circumstances behind 2,328 murder convictions in Georgia from 1995 through 2004. In a series published in 2007, the AJC found Georgia law has fallen short of ensuring a predictable and even-handed application of the death penalty. Instead, death sentences were being arbitrarily imposed, the investigation found.

The main reason was the way state prosecutors handled armed-robbery murder, one of Georgia’s most prevalent capital crimes.

In 1995, McClain’s case proved remarkable because it was the only one of its kind. Over the decade studied, seven other men were sentenced to Death Row for armed-robbery murder. Another 432 got life in prison.

These armed-robbery murders, like McClain’s, did not involve torture, maiming, murder-for-hire or police killing.

The newspaper is attacking the death penalty as unconstitutional as per Furman v. Georgia (1972).

The Augusta Chronicle used McCain's execution as an opportunity to repudiate the system, "Death Penalty Opponents Say Practice a Failure, Waste of Money":

The same day convicted Richmond County killer Mark McClain was executed at a Georgia prison, one of the nation’s leading non-profit death penalty research organizations released a harsh assessment of the practice.

A report by the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center released Tuesday said state executions are wasting millions of dollars that could be funneled to other anti-crime efforts, and that law enforcement officials increasingly view it as a low priority for reducing actual crimes.

The Augusta Chronicle piece never mentions the circumstance of McClain's crime. The story just promotes the NCADP agenda. The organization boasts a large affiliate network of organizations with deep ties to hard left's "struggle" to end the death penalty. The NCADP's former chair is Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking. Prejean is a longtime peace activist with ties to hardline antiwar groups and communist organizations. Prejean is founder of the Moratorium Campaign. The outfit seeks to

Affiliates of the Moratorium Campaign includes the neo-communist Campaign to End the Death Penalty (see its pamphlett, "Five Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty"). Marlene Martin, a CEDP board member, published "Death Penalty in Retreat" at International Socialist Review in 2007. Another affiliate of Sister Prejean's Moratorium Campaign is Death Penalty Focus, a Marxist international solidarity group in California.

Adam Folk, the reporter for the Atlanta Chronicle, who was an official witness to McClain's execution, has a follow-up report, "Georgia's Execution Procedure Appears Cold, Precise and Final":

As the designated monitor, I was the lone media representative tasked with watching nurses prepare Mr. McClain for his death.

I was inches away from the glass.

When the door opened, the warden entered first, then the guards, then Mr. McClain. He barely glanced our way as he lay down on the table and was strapped into place. His expression never changed.

We were told he had no visitors before the execution. Mr. McClain’s parents are dead and so are the parents of the victim, Kevin Brown. Instead, he had a room filled with more than 20 people who were there because of work or requirement to watch him die.

When he was prepared, they brought in the other reporters, along with the sheriff's investigator who put him in jail and an attorney from Augusta.

With no noise, we watched as the drugs were automatically pumped into his veins -- as his normally ruddy complexion flushed red.

We waited.

His chest heaved violently for about a minute then stopped.

His face turned purple. Then gray. Then white.

A housefly danced upon the white sheet that covered Mr. McClain’s legs. It was the only movement in the room.

Finally, a pair of doctors lifted his lifeless eyelids with their fingers and listened to make sure there was no heartbeat.

The process was complete and Mr. McClain was dead.

We left the room quickly and I didn't look back.

See also, the hardline Atlanta Progressive News, "Vigils Across Georgia to Protest McClain's Execution."

Caught on Tape! Media Matters Totally PWNED - Truth Deficit for ACORN's Katherine Conway Russell!

Once again, the crew at Big Government has totally pwned ACORN and their despicable media enablers. See," **BREAKING** ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in Philadelphia, PA Part I."

But what's especially indescribably delicious is Big G's decimation of Media Matters', "Philadelphia ACORN Office Says it Called Police After O'Keefe Asked Suspicious Questions." That post features this video of pathetic liar Katherine Conway Russell, of ACORN's Philadelphia office:

Added Bonus: David Weigel widens his credibility gap even further. See Weigel's "Breitbart, ACORN Foes Release Strange Video of Philadelphia Sting." Actually, the only thing "strange" here is Weigel's pathetic defense of the criminal ACORN enterprise.

More at Memeorandum.

RELATED: Fox News, "Filmmakers Show Video of ACORN 'Sting' in Philadelphia."

Added: Doug Ross, "ACORN and Media Matters Ensnared in Breitbart's Roach Motel."

Nuclear Testing Will Ensure the Credibility of Our Deterrent

I've been preparing a brief talk on arms control and nuclear proliferation for my afternoon lecture in world politics. Senator Jon Kyl's piece at today's Wall Street Journal is thus perfectly timed. See, "Why We Need to Test Nuclear Weapons":

President Barack Obama made history last month when he presided over the nuclear nonproliferation summit at the United Nations Security Council. Since nuclear proliferation is among the most pressing threats facing the world, one would have thought that the president would use the Sept. 24 summit to condemn the newly discovered uranium enrichment facility in Qom, Iran.

He did not. Instead he asked the Security Council to pass a nonbinding resolution stressing the urgency of global disarmament and arms-control treaties among the five permanent Security Council members. The resolution never mentioned Iran or North Korea.

Mr. Obama also said, on behalf of the U.S., that "We will move forward with the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty" (CTBT). This is a profound mistake, as a ban on testing nuclear weapons would jeopardize American national security. Ten years ago this month the U.S. Senate rejected the treaty, and the reasons for doing so are even stronger today.

The CTBT then, as now, does not define what it purports to ban, which is nuclear-weapons testing. This ambiguity leaves countries free to interpret the treaty (and act) as they see fit. Thus, if the U.S. ratified the treaty, it would be held to a different standard than other nations.

Another concern in 1999 was that clandestine nuclear tests could not be verified. That, too, is still the case. While the treaty has not entered into force, the world still uses the treaty's monitoring system (the CTBT Organizations International Monitoring System) to detect nuclear-weapons tests. But even when Pyongyang declared that it would conduct a nuclear-weapons test and announced where and when it would occur, this monitoring system failed to collect necessary radioactive gases and particulates to prove that a test had occurred.

The CTBT relies on 30 of 51 nations on its executive council—most of whom are not friendly to the U.S.—to agree that an illegal test has been conducted, and then to agree to inspect the facilities of the offending country (which can still be declared off-limits by that country). This enforcement mechanism is obviously unworkable.

But there's another defect in the CTBT. There were concerns a decade ago that the U.S. might be unable to safely and reliably maintain its own nuclear deterrent—and the nuclear umbrella that protects our allies such as Japan, Australia and South Korea —if it forever surrendered the right to test its weapons. Those concerns over aging and reliability have only grown. Last year, Paul Robinson, chairman emeritus of Sandia National Laboratory, testified before Congress that the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons still cannot be guaranteed without testing them, despite more than a decade of investments in technological advancements.

Treaty proponents, nevertheless, believe the prospective benefit of ratification outweigh its risks and problems. And what, exactly, is the benefit of ratification?

More at the link.

A perfectly argued commentary (which, of course, won't get much traction with the arms control freaks ready to sell off American security to some amorphous multilateral "peace" consensus among academics and America's enemies.)

Climate of Fear? How Leftists Minimize Jihadist Terrorism

A great esssay from David Solway at Pajamas Media, "Terrorism? What Terrorism?":

Leftist poster boy and university folk hero Al Gore, having misled filmgoers on climate change, also practices his wiles on the reading public. In his most recent book, The Assault on Reason, Gore claims that “terrorism relies on the stimulation of fear for political ends. Indeed its specific goal is to distort the political reality of a nation by creating fear in the general population that is hugely disproportionate to the actual danger that the terrorists are capable of posing.” Given his appeasing rhetoric in the face of Islamic terror, I sometimes think the former vice president’s name should be changed to al-Gore.

This is essentially the same argument developed in Ian Lustick’s Trapped in the War on Terror. Lustick, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that the threat has been grossly exaggerated, that the fear factor has been exploited by business and government for profitable ends, that terrorism is mainly a European problem, and that 9/11 was a one-off attack, forgetting that it was owing to sheer dumb luck that 40,000-50,000 people did not perish in the inferno — and, indeed, only by grace of a miscue that the Madrid attack did not claim thousands of victims. Conveniently, he pays no heed to the many subsequent terrorist attempts, not only in the UK and Germany, but in Canada and the U.S. that have been foiled by alert surveillance. Canadian author Howard Rotberg has aptly countered Gore’s and Lustick’s trendy prattle in Second Generation Radical, where he writes that “the situation is not that the fear of terrorism is disproportionate to its danger, but that the danger is disproportionate to the fear. … ‘Fear’ is not the problem; the problem is delusional responses to that fear.”

A more recent example of the spurious argument involves former CIA case officer Marc Sageman, who, according to his bio, holds various positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland. In a review of his Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, Daniel Pipes has pointed out how easily numbers and statistics can be manipulated to support a partisan thesis. Sageman contends that America’s presumably softer, assimilationist approach to its Islamic community gives it an advantage over Europe’s alienating tendencies, thus reducing the threat of internal jihad. “The rate of arrests on terror charges per capita among Muslims is six times higher in Europe than in the United States,” Sageman claims, explaining that the difference lies “in the extent to which these respective Muslim communities are radicalized” ....

As we can see, there is plainly no shortage of academics and faculty lounge debaters peddling chimeras, striving to minimize the very real danger we are in, and working to narcotize us into a state of political and cultural somnolence. Academic John Mueller, author of the rather fatuous Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them, has recently jumped into the game, appearing on a panel at Ohio State University discussing Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which, along with fellow professor John Quigley, he sought to further diminish the reality of the terrorist threat. Osama bin Laden, it turns out, is really a 21st-century anti-colonialist and the attack on the WTC was carried out by the American government. Interestingly, the panel was co-sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Afghanistan Troop Reinforcements Can't Wait

From Investor's Business Daily:

The president's decision to withhold more troops over the country's less-than-pristine election is nothing but stalling. For our soldiers, desperate for reinforcements, it's a slap in the face.

No doubt, a legitimate government, complete with free and fair elections, would be good for Afghanistan. Its Aug. 20 vote was loaded with trouble because the Taliban sliced off purple-inked fingers to discourage voting and because a United Nations electoral watchdog found widespread voter fraud.

Yes, correct the problems. But holding U.S. troop reinforcements hostage isn't the way to do it. Elections aren't why we have troops in that country. They're there to fight a war against terrorists that President Obama once declared to be "necessary."

Time is growing short, and the Taliban insurgency is gaining ground. Pakistan has struck hard against the Taliban in its western region, a campaign that could drive more terrorists into Afghanistan and make our war harder. Terrorist recruiting is up and the Taliban doesn't lack money. The Pentagon consensus is that the window to win is closing and the opportunity will be lost soon.

More at the link.

Also, at the new Washington Post's Democratic-heavy poll, "U.S. Deeply Split on Troop Increase for Afghan War." (Via Memeorandum.) Actually, Americans aren't split, if you look at a reputable survey. See IBD, "Americans, In Reversal, Now Back Afghan Troop Surge":

RELATED: Hot Air, "WaPo/ABC Poll Uses Skewed Sample to Show Public-Option Support." And the Los Angeles Times, "Karzai Bows to Pressure, OKs Runoff."

Obama's War on Fox News

Well, I'm thinking the comrades over at The People's Cube are reading my blog! Recall my earlier post, "Mao Tse Dunn: Another Communist at Obama White House." It turns out The People's Cube's got the iconography. From "Obama's War on Fox News Becomes a Quagmire":

Despite the President's promise of a swift and decisive victory, Obama's War on Fox News has developed all signs of an unwinnable quagmire, making the White House even more isolated in its unilateral attempts to crush the growing media insurgency. As the war continues to grind on for a second month, public opinion is shifting towards a quick and complete withdrawal. While many observers still agree that the "War on Limbaugh" is a "just and necessary war," even the former supporters of the war effort are now labeling the War on Fox an "unnecessary war of choice" and claim that the cable channel had nothing to do with Obama's falling approval numbers ....

Accusations of war crimes continue to surface, the most recent war atrocity being Katie Couric's interview with Glenn Beck, after which the prominent Fox News commentator was found outside the CBS studios disoriented, with plucked eyebrows, and a coveted jar of M&Ms stolen from his pocket.

While the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison is being shut down, President Obama is rumored to be in talks with Fidel Castro to use the East German political prison on Cuba's Isle of Pines as a secret detention center for the "enemy commentators." However, the White House's unilateral decision to classify all Fox News journalists as "enemy commentators" has been roundly criticized by human rights organizations, who maintain they should be covered by the "Inside the Beltway Convention."

Great reporting, guys!

Check also, Tom Maguire, "I Assume The Right Will Support The President At This Critical Moment In The War."

Doug Hoffman Breaks Out in NY-23!

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza offered the Beltway take yesterday, "NY-23: Can Doug Hoffman Win?" But for the inside angle, see Robert Stacy McCain, "It's Up to You, Upstate New York":

Rob Ryan's hoarse voice rumbled with laughter Tuesday afternoon as he reacted to reports that liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava had called police on a reporter who asked too many questions after her Monday speech.

"The only thing the police need to investigate in this race is if Dede Scozzafava is impersonating a Republican," Ryan said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Yet the media coordinator for New York congressional candidate Doug Hoffman was less jocular when discussing the Conservative Party campaign's most pressing need in the crucial 23rd District special election. "We need money and we need it now," he said. Fundraising has been "picking up every day," Ryan said, and the Hoffman campaign is "getting donations from across the country."

However, Hoffman is battling against major party candidates, with the national GOP spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for Scozzafava -- angering conservatives like Michelle Malkin -- while the Democratic Party pours cash into the campaign coffers of its candidate, Bill Owens.
With high-profile supporters including Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Bill Kristol and the Club for Growth, the Hoffman campaign has become what John Gizzi of Human Events calls a "national conservative crusade."

Conservatives have had their eye on the Hoffman campaign for weeks, but now major national media are finally taking notice. "The race the nation should be watching is a special election in upstate New York," Newsweek magazine's David Graham wrote yesterday, saying the outcome would show "whether Democrats can hold on to voters who went for Obama in 2008."

More at the link. (And at The Other McCain.)

Plus, see Dana Loesch's new blog, "Dump Dede."

Video Hat Tip: Newsbusters, "Cops Called About Reporter Committing Journalism on Congressional Candidate."

California Pageant Sues Carrie Prejean Over Breast Implant Money

From New York Daily News, "Ex-Miss California Carrie Prejean Still Owes K2 Productions $5,200 For Breast Implants: Lawsuit":

Deposed beauty queen Carrie Prejean still owes $5,200 for breast implants floated by pageant organizers in January, a new lawsuit claims.

Ex-Miss California Carrie Prejean stiffed pageant organizer K2 Productions even though she requested the surgery "to be more competitive" at the April 2009 Miss USA pageant and verbally agreed to repay the K2 loan, a complaint filed yesterday states.

Prejean was stripped of her crown June 10 for alleged contract violations.

She later sued, accusing pageant officials of targeting her for a pageant answer she gave opposing gay marriage.

"Even before she became notorious for that answer and the ensuing media storm, Ms. Prejean was already causing difficulty," the K2 counter-suit states.

"With her new-found notoriety, an inflated sense of self, and the lure of financial gain available to her, Ms. Prejean turned even further against the Miss California USA organization."

The new suit accuses Prejean of missing events, lying about semi-nude photos, negotiating an unauthorized book deal and using her title without authorization to help promote the National Organization for Marriage's "campaign of intolerance" against gay marriage.

K2 asks for the proceeds from Prejean's planned book, the $5,200 from the breast surgery and other relief.

Plus, at E! Online, "Miss California Officials to Carrie Prejean: You Owe Us for Those Boobs!" And CNN, "Miss California USA Sued Over Breast Implant Money."

See also my earlier report, "Miss California Carrie Prejean’s Odyssey: Not Very Pretty."

Video Credit: "Miss California Carrie Prejean Lingerie Modeling Footage (VIDEO)."

'Bros Before Hoes' - America's Left-Wing Cult of Obama Worship

From El Marco, "Oh Wow! OBA MAO in Washington":

Obama White House Defends Sharia Law

Dalia Mogahed, President Obama's hardline Islamic advisor, is in the news today in two pieces: Stephen Schwartz's, "What Do Muslims Want? A White House Adviser Defends Sharia," and Cinnamon Stillwell's, "Does Sharia Law Promote Women’s Rights?"

Here's this from the Schwartz essay:

Dalia Mogahed has enjoyed a varied career. Born in Egypt, she was brought to America as a child and climbed a fairly ordinary professional ladder. She earned a master's in business at the University of Pittsburgh and pursued success in corporate life. But she became an American Muslim celebrity after joining Georgetown professor John L. Esposito, a tireless defender of radical Islam, in producing a controversial study, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. With its wildly overreaching subtitle, the volume was based on polling by the Gallup Organization, where Mogahed gained a post as Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

All of which was rather banal in Washington's subculture of Muslim advocacy, until President Obama named Mogahed to his Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Mogahed is now a prominent Obama satellite, and, as noted here last month, she appeared at a Pentagon iftar, or Ramadan fast-breaking event, alongside a noted Saudophile, James Zogby of the Arab American Institute.

Early in October, Mogahed gave a telephone interview to a British Muslim fundamentalist television network, IslamChannel. The program also interviewed Nazreen Nawaz, a female representative of the ultra-radical Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT), or the Islamic Liberation Party, as a live guest. HT calls for a global Islamic regime (the "caliphate"), under sharia law, and the destruction of the West. The show was posted on Sunday, October 4, to HT's UK website here. While television debate between sharply-opposed individuals has become a dominant form of public communication all over the world, Dalia Mogahed made no effort, in her encounter with an extremist advocate, to establish any distance between their views.

Rather, Mogahed delivered a defense of sharia law, and, in particular, its application to women. She alleged that "the perception of sharia and portrayal of sharia has been oversimplified even among Muslims," and called for sharia to be viewed "holistically" (a meaningless cliché.) According to her, "the majority of women around the world associate sharia with 'gender justice.'" Presumably, her broad reference to "the majority of women," rather than Muslim women, was a slip of the tongue. But there is no doubt that in her perspective, sharia as public law guarantees Muslim women a dignity absent in the West.

Mogahed further declared that Muslim women support "universal values of justice and equality" but reject "Western values," which she associated with sexual promiscuity and male disrespect of women. As projected by Mogahed, the views of Muslims are either fundamentalist or confused. Their attitudes toward Islamic law are divided, in her terms, only between supposedly wanting sharia to be the sole source of governance and seeing it as one source of legislation among various canons. But for her, even this distinction is less important than proclaiming the satisfaction of Muslim women with sharia.

Mogahed cited "one woman in Malaysia" who "specifically" told the pollsters "she felt sorry for Western women because she felt that they always felt that they always needed to please men." As if choosing individual voices out of a putative billion were not absurd enough, Mogahed drew on another single citation to portray Muslim women abroad as complaining that Western women lack social status.

And from Stillwell:

In thinking about women’s rights, sharia law, or Islamic law, doesn’t typically come to mind.

Yet, according to a survey conducted by Dalia Mogahed, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and appointee to President Obama’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the two are closely intertwined. Her survey alleges that a majority of Muslim women believe sharia law should either be the primary source or one source of legislation in their countries, while viewing Western personal freedoms as harmful to women.

Palestinian Militants to Ehud Olmert: 'You Deserve to Be Executed!'

From the Chicago Maroon, "Jeers Stifle Olmert’s Speech":

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert struggled to make himself heard over a cacophony of protests in Mandel Hall Thursday, in what became more of a free-for-all than an international policy lecture.

Dozens of protesters inside the auditorium, and over 100 more outside, voiced their fury at alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Lebanon and Gaza during Olmert’s tenure. Meanwhile, Olmert articulated a two-state plan for peace in the Middle East, which has Israel sacrificing nearly all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights land occupied since the Six Day War in 1967.

The scheduled running time for Olmert’s remarks was 20 minutes, but ran nearly an hour-and-a-half after a series of false starts. Shouting from the audience dominated the event from the beginning, and ranged from the extreme to the absurd.

“You deserve to be executed!” shouted one protester. “Your face is ugly!” yelled another.

“I understand these emotions. There is the same rage from voices on the right in Israel,” Olmert said, referring to those who criticized his moderate party for giving concessions to Palestinian negotiators.

The lecture was part of the King Abdullah II Leadership Lecture series organized by the Harris School of Public Policy. Some protesters raised concerns that using the King of Jordan’s grant money to fund the lecture was a slap in the face to the Arab world.

Olmert’s remarks, fragmented and often inaudible, centered around a four-point peace plan he supported towards the end of his tenure as prime minister.

Olmert’s plan called for Israel to give the Palestinians land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that it occupied after the 1967 war, and for Jerusalem to be split into an eastern Palestinian portion and a western Israeli portion. Further, he advocated that the ancient religious sites in the Old City area of Jerusalem be administered by an international coalition, and Palestinian refugees be provided with resources to start new lives in Palestine.

“We have to make a choice of what we want. Do we want to fight these people forever, or do we want to make peace?” Olmert asked. “If people shouted less, we could have done great things” ....

Across the street on University Avenue, a group of six counter-protesters held up signs reading, among other things, “Let Israel Live in Peace.”

Inside the auditorium, Olmert faced more abrasive criticism.

“You’re a fucking snake! You goddamn pig!” shouted one heckler as police dragged him from Mandel Hall.

Well, these people don't want dialogue, obviously.

The protesters were from the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago and the U.S. Palestine Conference Network.

The PSG is a student front group for the International Solidarity Movement. The latter organization is most notoriously identified with Rachel Corrie, the American activist who was accidently killed by an Israeli tractor as she worked to protect Gazan arms smuggling-tunnels in 2003.

See also, FrontPage Magazine, "Discover the Arab Lobby 'Network'."

Hat Tip: From U.S. News, "Olmert Heckled at University of Chicago."

Just How Relevant Is Political Science?

From the New York Times, "Field Study: Just How Relevant Is Political Science?":

After Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, this month proposed prohibiting the National Science Foundation from “wasting any federal research funding on political science projects,” political scientists rallied in opposition, pointing out that one of this year’s Nobel winners had been a frequent recipient of the very program now under attack.

Yet even some of the most vehement critics of the Coburn proposal acknowledge that political scientists themselves vigorously debate the field’s direction, what sort of questions it pursues, even how useful the research is.

Much of the political science work financed by the National Science Foundation is both rigorous and valuable, said Jeffrey C. Isaac, a professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, where one new winner of the Nobel in economic science, the political scientist Elinor Ostrom, teaches. “But we’re kidding ourselves if we think this research typically has the obvious public benefit we claim for it,” he said. “We political scientists can and should do a better job of making the public relevance of our work clearer and of doing more relevant work.”

Mr. Isaac is the editor of Perspectives on Politics, a journal that was created by the field’s professional organization to bridge the divide after a group of political scientists led a revolt against the growing influence of statistical methods and mathematics-based models in the discipline. In 2000 an anonymous political scientist who called himself Mr. Perestroika roused scores of colleagues to protest the organization, the American Political Science Association, and its flagship journal, The American Political Science Review, arguing that the two were marginalizing scholars who focused on traditional research based on history, culture and archives.

Though there is still jockeying over jobs, power and prestige — particularly in an era of shrinking budgets — much of that animus has quieted, and most political scientists agree that a wide range of approaches makes sense.

What remains, though, is a nagging concern that the field is not producing work that matters. “The danger is that political science is moving in the direction of saying more and more about less and less,” said Joseph Nye, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, whose work has been particularly influential among American policy makers. “There are parts of the academy which, in the effort to be scientific, feel we should stay away from policy,” Mr. Nye said, that “it interferes with the science.”

In his view statistical techniques too often determine what kind of research political scientists do, pushing them further into narrow specializations cut off from real-world concerns. The motivation to be precise, Mr. Nye warned, has overtaken the impulse to be relevant.

There's more at the link.

This is an ancient debate, actually, and it's not going away any time soon. I don't think Coburn made the right call in attacking political science. He's a doctor himself, and no doubt lots of experimental - and ultimately unfruitful - research in medicine has been funded with the same basic kinds of grants as the NSF program the senator is targeting.

That said, check what folks on the research side of things are saying over at The Monkey Cage. The APSA has related information on and responses to Tom Coburn.

(P.S. I really like Coburn politically, so I'm interested to see how this controversy plays out.)

When Defeat is the ANSWER

From my essay yesterday at FrontPage Magazine, "When Defeat is the Answer":

President Obama is still dithering over the war in Afghanistan, but his hard-Left base has increasingly decided to break with the administration to cheer for American defeat overseas.

The latest sign of the Left’s defection over the war comes from the Los Angeles chapter of the anti-war group International A.N.S.W.E.R. On Sunday, ANSWER sponsored an antiwar “teach-in” on Afghanistan at Los Angeles City College. The event was the group’s latest “local action” in its self-described “struggle” against alleged U.S. imperialism in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, the Philippines, Latin America and beyond.” All this is standard fare for the radical group, with one notable exception: It now considers the Obama administration the enemy.

To that end, ANSWER is accelerating its calls for grassroots resistance to the administration. In particular, ANSWER organizers claim they are seeking to block U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recent request for an additional 40,000 troops. But ANSWER’s ultimate goal is to support the insurgency seeking to topple the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul. According to Richard Becker, ANSWER’s West Coast Regional Director, and a keynote speaker at this weekend’s teach-in, a defeat for the current American mission in Afghanistan would strike a blow to the American “empire” in South Asia.

Read the whole thing at the link.

RELATED: "Marxist Violent Revolutionary Doctrine - CAPITALISM IS A CRIME!."

Marxist Violent Revolutionary Doctrine - CAPITALISM IS A CRIME!

Check out this handout for the Party of Socialism and Liberation's workshop on "Capitalism Is A Crime!":

Organize To Fight Back!

Had Enough Cuts, Layoffs & Bank Bailouts? Fight For Revolutionary Change!

• What is Socialism? Is it possible in the U.S.?
• Fight the anti-worker capitalist agenda
• Stop police brutality & racist oppression
• Is a revolutionary party necessary for working class victory?
• Healthcare for all, not for profit
• Fight layoffs, evictions, foreclosures, education cuts & union busting
• Win full rights for all immigrants
• Capitalism must go: Stop racism, sexism & homophobia
• Socialism in Cuba & revolution in Venezuela

But see also Kelly O'Connell's piece at American Thinker, "If Obama Were a Marxist, What Would He Believe?":

Marxism is a violently revolutionary doctrine. Marx claimed capitalism's Armageddon was inevitable, but followers should bear arms to hasten change. Since the rich will never give up their capital voluntarily, it must be taken by force. After this, the arduous task of rebuilding society begins. Lenin's "New Man" is created by education. Those who don't adapt can be eliminated to purify the whole. But capitalism must be destroyed before healing can occur.

Also:

As Lenin in Russia, and Mao in China launched Communist revolts, the prophesied global apocalypse seemed imminent. But the staggering failure of Marxist theory to make productive societies, coupled with the West's relentless growth forced an intellectual crisis.

Twentieth century leftist progressives developed a Neo-Marxism less warlike and more psychologically attractive by combining Marx with Freud, creating a highly sexualized socialism. The Frankfurt School were academic Marxists who escaped Frankfurt, Germany to avoid Hitler's wrath. Relocated to the U.S., they successfully infused Marxism into American universities. For example, "Political Correctness" is a Frankfurt movement, and the first modern use of this phrase is found in Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book," according to Geoffrey Hughes' "Political Correctness: A History of Semantics."

Marxist theories now dominate Western universities. Movements like Race Theory, Feminism, Gay Rights, Modern Art, Critical Theory, Animal Rights, Gender Studies, abortion advocacy, Deconstruction, penal reform, Hate Crimes legislation, etc are all informed by Frankfurt scholarship. Redefined Marxism has produced spectacularly disruptive results. Some argue Obama's election is a direct result of cultural Marxism's success. Universal Health Care is another Marxist holy grail. The USSR had free medical treatment, notable for a staggering lack of basic supplies, horribly outdated methods, and horrifically filthy conditions.

See also, Dr. Sanity, "The Collectivist Undead."

Disastrous WaPo Health Survey: 7 in 10 Say ObamaCare 'Would Increase the Federal Budget Deficit' - Plus, 85 Percent Now Have Health Coverage!

Radical leftists are going to have a field day with these numbers, no matter how flawed the poll design.

A new Washington Post survey finds 57 percent of Americans would support "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans..."

The poll also shows that a statistically insignificant majority of 51 percent favors a "a law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, either getting it from work or buying it on their own?"

But in a follow up question, a huge majority rejects taxing the insurance plans of affluent Americans:

One idea would put a tax on the most expensive health insurance policies. (Supporters say this would help pay for health care reform, and encourage insurers to offer cheaper policies.) (Opponents say this would make these policies too expensive for people who want them.) Would you yourself support or oppose this tax?

Sixty-one percent of Americans oppose the idea.

Also, nearly 7 in 10 Americans believe ObamaCare socialized medicine will balloon the federal deficit:

Just your best guess, do you think health care reform would increase the federal budget deficit, decrease it, or have no effect? (IF INCREASE) Do you think that would be worth it, or not?

Sixty-eight percent said health reform would increase the federal budget deficit.

Interestingly, 85 percent of respondents said they "have some form of health insurance or health care coverage," which means there is no catastrophic healthcare crisis, as President Obama has trying to argue all year.

For some of the early socialist lies on this, see Firedoglake, "Americans Care More About Having Public Option than Gaining Snowe’s Vote," and Plum Line, "WaPo Poll: Majority Wants Public Option More Than Bipartisanship For Its Own Sake."

Can't You Smell That Smell...

During this morning's drive time, 100.3 The Sound was playing classics from 1977. It's funny, but I just noted last weekend how listening to this station is flooding my mind with memories. I was in 10th grade in 1977. Lynyrd Skynyrd was big, and "That Smell" was always a favorite - although I can attest that a lot of folks didn't take the message to heart (harmful behaviors didn't change):



My good friend Tony at PA Pundits International is also a music aficionado. Tony's got a Sunday night music club going, and this week's entry is Bonnie Raitt's, "I Can’t Make You Love Me."

Head on over the PA Pundits International for some great conservative blogging altogether, and, as always, get your fill of hot babes over at Theo Spark's.

Bay Area Communists Protest Afghanistan War

Last weekend, the Oakland Education Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10, staged a Bay Area protest against the 8th anniversary of the Afghanistan war:

The OEA is a fringe union way to the left of the already liberal California's Teacher's Association. (CTA is my union, by the way, since I have no choice of union membership as a community college professor. Only recently have I had the option of not having my union dues spent in support of far left-wing candidates.) The OEA backed this year's ILWU May Day Action Against Iraq and Afghanistan. Cindy Sheehan and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke at the event. The union is a communist-front organization. The group held mandatory "Free Mumia" classroom teach-ins in the late-1990s (see, "For Class-Struggle Defense of Mumia!")

The ILWU is the West Coast Communist Party union organization of American radical Harry Bridges.

The video is via After Downing Street, the neo-communist action group currently allying with netroots activists and progressive Democratic Party officials. See, "Bay Area Trade Unionists Protest Afghanistan War On 8th Anniversary."

More on that alliance later.

Related: "Speaker Pelosi’s Controversial Marxist Connections."

Democrats Dither on Afghanistan Troop Surge

From the New York Times, "Decision on Afghan Troops May Wait":

The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United States.

As an audit of Afghanistan’s Aug. 20 election ground toward a conclusion, American officials pressed President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff vote or share power with his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister. Although Mr. Karzai’s support appeared likely to fall below 50 percent in the final count, together he and Mr. Abdullah received 70 percent, in theory enough to forge a unity government with national credibility.

The question at the heart of the matter, said President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is not “how many troops you send, but do you have a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need?” He appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

He echoed the thoughts of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a top Obama ally and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said in a separate interview from Kabul, “I don’t see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces, or even the further fulfillment of our mission that’s here today, without an adequate government in place.” His interview was broadcast on “Face the Nation.”

“It would be irresponsible,” Mr. Emanuel told CNN. Then he continued, paraphrasing the senator, that it would be reckless to decide on the troop level without first doing “a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing.”

The signals come as Republican critics already are complaining that the president is taking too long to decide whether to send the additional 40,000 troops requested by his commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. They argue that Mr. Obama has left the impression of indecisiveness that has only emboldened the Taliban, making the task of the 68,000 American troops already there that much harder.

But see Jules Crittenden, "Last-Man-Mistake-Death Opportunity Knocks":

Well, sometimes not making a decision is a decision. Not making a choice when you really have no choice is pretty much a forfeit, though. Imagine where we’d be in Iraq today if George Bush had dithered like this, maybe we will, maybe we won’t, while the Iraqi government went through its extended birth pains. Pretty much not in Iraq, I’d guess, but not in a good way, fighting a wretched rearguard action on the way out as Iran and al-Qaeda fought over the bloody leavings of the great Iraqi genocide of 2008. With every last one of our allies looking on, doing the mental calculus on which way to go now that the United States has shown itself to be utterly gutless and unreliable.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Related: See my essay today at FrontPage Magazine, "When Defeat is the Answer."

Free Speech and Canadian 'Human Rights' Commissions

Via Blazing Cat Fur, just the kind of essay I've been waiting for ...

From Barry Cooper, "It's Show Time! Free Speech and Canadian 'Human Rights' Commissions":

For those who have never taken the time to read dry legal documents, consider that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act declares that hate speech is constituted by words that are likely to expose somebody to hatred or contempt – and what that has meant for Canadians.

In early October, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant gave testimony before the House of Commons justice committee, currently considering whether section 13 should be repealed. Their remarks, available on You Tube, provide a short but thorough examination of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and its works.

They argue that the censorship implications of section 13 are an abomination in a constitutional democracy, that section 13 is the reason for so many complaints, and is why the entire administrative structure of this taxpayer-supported, government-backed human rights industry is broken past the point where it can be fixed. Any country, at least where freedom of expression and speech is truly valued, would have dissolved this outfit years ago.

Both Steyn and Levant have encountered Canada’s human rights bureaucrats first hand and written about their hair-raising experiences. The larger story, of an out-of-control bureaucracy that transformed itself from an organization charged with conciliation of differences among citizens into a politically motivated attack organ, should also trouble Canadians.

More at the link.

Some of the Steyn/Levant video is here, "Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant at JUST Subcommittee on Section 13." Check the Google video page for more ...

Rethink Afghanistan: Typical Neo-Communist Antiwar Propaganda

It's pretty telling that the far left-wing New York Times hammers Robert Greenwald's far left-wing documentary, Rethink Afghanistan:

In press materials, Mr. Greenwald says the documentary is at the “center of the movement” to end the American military involvement in Afghanistan. Well, he’s no Michael Moore in the public consciousness. And that’s probably a good thing: political discourse in this country could use fewer cults of personality among its commentators.

But it could also use balance, something in short supply here. At an almost breathless pace that leaves little room for reflection, Mr. Greenwald presents a flurry of sights, voices and figures, many of them compelling but all reflecting his point of view. A historical summary is fleeting. What appears, again and again, are terrifying images of children: dead, hideously maimed or, in one instance, almost put up for sale by a frantic civilian in a refugee camp. Military engagements, it seems, are messy and claim innocent lives.

Mr. Greenwald’s documentary has no time to approach an opposing view with sympathy or understanding for its concerns. It may inspire those already behind its cause, but it is unlikely to win over new supporters.

In Los Angeles, the neo-communist network is gearing up for another event this week, "Resisting the US Occupation of Afghanistan."

Tom Hayden's speaking, but get this:

NOTE: Absolutely NO still or video photography allowed for security purposes. Please leave ALL cameras at home. People with cameras will be turned away.

Yeah. Great plan. That'll really keep the revolutionary agenda secret.

Hayden has a new book, by the way: The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama.

Tom Hayden political bio: $26.95. New Left communist endorsement of President Obama as '60s radical heir: Priceless.

STOP THE WAR! Teach-In on Afghanistan and the Anti-War Struggle - ANSWER L.A.

I had an interesting day at the ANSWER Coalition's "Teach-In On Afghanistan & the Anti-War Struggle: WHY WE MUST END THE WAR NOW!"

The event was held at Los Angeles City College, on Vermont Avenue, just north of U.S. 101. I parked on a sidestreet, and as I was walking over to the campus I snapped this shot of a street vendor's display. Che Guevara's quite hip with the L.A. homies:

Here's the scene inside the LACC Chemistry Building upon entering:

Some readers might remember the communist "sales" woman from the Westwood protest a couple of weeks ago. I hope she's making good money (despite ideological prohibitions against capitalist profiteering), because no doubt by now she's heard the Marxist-Leninist line ad nauseum:

Notice the black and green book at the lower-left of the display stand. That's the new release by ANSWER'S Richard Becker, Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire. I picked up a copy. More on that below.

This is Michael Prysner. He spoke at the Westwood demonstration against the Afghanistan war. I noticed him as I was finding a seat and asked if I could take his picture:

An Iraq war veteran, Prysner's a cadre with March Forward!, ANSWER's military resistance cell. During his talk, Prysner parroted the March Forward! talking points, which include such gems as:

Service members should no longer be sent to fight, kill, die, be seriously wounded and/or psychologically scarred furthering the domination of U.S. corporations over other nations. We have nothing to gain from these wars. The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan serve only the interests of the rich, not the service personnel who are sent over and over to repress people who have the right to determine their own destiny. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are not our enemies. The more than 800 U.S. bases in 130 countries around the world should be shut down and the troops, fleets and air power brought home.

I'm still a little dumbstruck by his speeches. Not mentioned in the March Forward! media-babble is Prysner's call for insubordination and mutiny in the ranks. Enlisted personnel should "fight the system" from the inside to sabotage the U.S. military's neo-imperialist global campaign. Disaffected G.I.s would join with the "entire nation" to repudiate the "criminal" deployments launched to fill the coffers of the hegemonic U.S. multinational corporations. It's not particularly original, but Prysner make up for it with an enthusiastic communist esprit de corps.

Okay, below is the start of the "teach-in" lectures. That's Muna Coobtee pictured. An activist with the National Council of Arab Americans (an ANSWER front group), she M.C.'d the Westwood Afghanistan rally on October 7th. Ms. Coobtee laid out the raison d'etre for the day's events. And like Michael Prysner, she hewed closely to the party line. The most important theme for the communists is that Afghanistan's a doomed neo-colonial war, and that American military goals are exclusively to "avoid defeat ... or to avoid the perception of defeat." Ms. Coobtee was following the script in ANSWER's communist pamphlet, Liberation. Specifically, Brian Becker's, "Afghanistan and Iraq Will NEVER Accept U.S. Colonialism."

Ms. Coobtee was followed by ANSWER's Peta Lindsay (a longtime cadre with the Party for Socialism and Liberation) and Blase Bonpane (of the Office of the Americas and KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles). Toward the end of his address, Bonpane argued that "the art of revolution is the art of organizing the majority of Americans to end the warfare state."

A number of other speakers also addressed the audience, seen below (and including those not pictured, probably seventy-five or so people altogether):

At the end of the lectures, I moved out to the building's front hallway to get a photo of Richard Becker:

Becker's part of ANSWER's national steering committee and he's the West Coast Director of the International Action Center (according to the website, the "IAC defines itself as an 'anti-capitalist' and 'anti-imperialist' organization").

Becker was talking to a supporter when I took the picture above. He was spooked and asked me who I was? I told him my name was "Donald," and Becker snapped back, "Donald Douglas?" I was surprised! I asked how he knew my name? "Someone said you were going to be here," was the reply (I guess ANSWER apparatchiks are reading my blog). He continued, clearly agitated: "What right-wing organization are you with?" I gave him my business card and told him "No one. I'm a professor." I hung out in the hallway a little longer but one of Becker's thugs starting herding people out of area, so I decided I'd better take off.

Richard Becker's a longtime U.S. communist hardliner. He's got a write-up at Discover the Networks, where it notes that "Becker detests America and has written, 'No one in the world ... has a worse human rights record than the United States'."

During his lecture, Becker made an extremely twisted defense of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Based on a single source (a 1998 interview with Carter NSA chief Zbigniew Brzezinski), Becker argued that the Soviet incursion was a strategic counter-thrust to U.S. imperial influence in Kabul. That is, the CIA had plans on tap for a U.S. colonial outpost in Afghanistan. The ultimate goal was to consolidate U.S. control over Caspian crude and to establish an oil pipeline to the Arabian Sea and the waiting arms of global capitalism's "Big Oil" multinational tanker fleet.

The region's geopolitics, of course, are much more complicated that than; and indeed, Moscow's interest was in propping up Kabul's pro-Soviet government that took power the early-1970s. American interests kicked up after the assassination of Muhammad Taraki by forces of the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. It's very difficult to impute U.S. imperial causes to the overthrow of Taraki's predecessor, the Mohammed Daoud regime. The Soviet invaded to bolster a pro-Moscow communist regime, not to overthrow an American neo-imperialist puppet (See, "The April 1978 Coup d'etat and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.")

In any case, Becker went on about how a defeat for the current American deployment under General Stanley McCrystal would strike a blow to the American "empire" in South Asia: "Every empire falls, and this empire will fall as well."

I was rolling my eyes, but the audience erupted in applause at Becker's exhortation for America's defeat.

Plus, recall that Becker's got his new book out, Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire. I was actually hesitant to purchase a copy, but after listening to this man's perverted historical revisionism my sense was that I'd do well to read the book. This type of anti-imperial gobbledygook has a way of making it into college classrooms, and I might as well be prepared to rebut the radical left's latest demonizations of Israel and the West.

P.S. Note that International ANSWER is organizing a National March on Washington, for Saturday, March 20, 2010. See the announcement here.