Several presidential candidates and other prominent politicians appeared at this weekend's Arab American Institute conference, and they appear to have indulged in a good deal of sobbing and handwringing over the alleged human rights abuses that Arab Americans currently suffer, while saying nary a word (at least from the looks of this story) about our shared responsibility to resist the jihad threat. But of course, candidates like Richardson, Paul and Kucinich would say, "What jihad threat?" It has all been cooked up by the State Department to provide a foundation for their imperialist project, doncha know.
And those boys over at CIA and State are good: look at all the violent material they've managed to finagle into the Qur'an and Sunnah.
"Arab Americans host hopefuls: Richardson, Paul, Kucinich attend conference, speak," by Niraj Warikoo in the Detroit Free Press:
After three days of networking and political speeches, Arab Americans who attended a national conference in Detroit say they went home committed to continuing their fight for constitutional rights and restoring the United States' image in the world.[...]
The conference reflects the growing clout of the Arab-American community, which not too long ago was avoided by presidential candidates: In 1988, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis rejected the endorsement of a major Arab-American group. This year, Democratic party leaders gave the candidates permission to address the conference despite a campaign boycott of Michigan because legislators moved up the date of the state's primary.
A mix-up over the boycott might explain why none of the leading candidates appeared at the conference, institute head James Zogby said.
"We ran into this cross fire with the early states versus Michigan," he said.
But he noted that the campaign teams sent high-level surrogates, including Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's adviser, Tony Lake, and former Sen. John Edwards' campaign manager, former Michigan congressman David Bonior.
The candidates who did appear were warmly received.
"I will follow the Constitution of the United States," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, said Sunday to loud applause. "The erosion of our civil liberties is not just something that is felt by minorities -- it affects all Americans."
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, was the first candidate to speak Sunday. He spoke about meeting with victims of war in Lebanon and criticized current U.S. foreign policy.
Republican candidates were also invited, but only Ron Paul addressed the conference.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean slammed those who divide the nation by scapegoating those with Middle Eastern ancestry.
"You have been singled out unfairly and unjustly ... by politicians who hope to have a cheap electoral trick," Dean said.
He cited successful Arab Americans such as former Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.
"It is important for us to stand and recognize these leaders at a time when this community is under siege by those who would divide America in order to win elections," Dean said.
Well I know who not to vote for.
They are confusing, and have been led to confuse, the ethnic designation of "Arab" (or, in the case of many Maronites and Copts, the forcible identification with "Uruba" or "Arabness" that does not correspond to the truth: Copts were in Egypt, and Maronites in Lebanon, before the Arabs arrived, with their gift of Islam and of the Arabic language, both imposed on a great many Copts, a great many Maronites) with the more important matter -- that of Islam, that is of identifying oneself as a Muslim with all that that necessarily means or certainly implies, including an acceptance of everything written in the Qur'an (9.29 and a hundred other Jihad verses) as the immutable Word of God. No Muslim in the advanced West can claim ignorance of the contents of the Qur'an, of the Hadith, of the Sira -- not in the way that an illiterate villager in a mountain valley in Afghanistan might be able to claim it.
Those who express such diseased sympathy ought rather to express sympathy for those who, in the case of many Lebanese-Americans, having ancestors who came not as "Arabs" (their Ottoman-Empire passports often read "Siriano" or "Turco") but rather as "Christians" who also happened to speak Arabic, use Arabic, even have Arab names, but were not Arabs, and whose organization of Arab-Americans has been successfully taken over by Muslim Arabs and collaborating islamochristians of the zogby variety, eager to exploit the good reputation of Lebanese-Americans and Coptic-Americans for their own purposes, which purposes means the agenda of promoting, and protecting, and deflecting all criticism from, Islam, Islam, Islam.
That is what it is all about. Richardson, Kucinich and Paul either know this and do not care, or do not know it, in which case they have been grossly negligent. They deserve, on this basis alone, to be opposed. It is clear that their opposition to the Iraq War is for the wrong reasons. They oppose it not because it squanders American resources, not because it attempts to attain an unattainable goal, not because the goal sought to be attained makes no sense from the Infidel point of view, but because they are perfectly willing to refuse to recognize the threat of Jihad, and the instruments of Jihad other than terrorism. Bush's continuing obstinate folly in Iraq simply gives such people a temporary plausibility that they haven't earned and do not deserve.
I think, on 9/11, we learned which "community was under seige".
This deflection of sympathy to the ideology that started this campaign of terror is curious.
Is it colossal stupidity, anti-Western self-loathing, or simply pimping for votes?
Either way, it leaves a slime trail.
Luckily, these candidates will be looking for work on the day after the election.
I hear Muslim communities need dog catchers.
Since they consider man's best friend to be an unclean abomination.
Just like human non-Muslims.
lmao @ reading this hit piece by the local edition of Der Volkischer Beobachter...errr, I mean detroitistan freeforall press...
more birds of a feather
I'm surprised howard the deaniac's head didn't explode on this one, too...
YYEEEAAAOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!
lol
HISTORY OF GIRLS BEING KIDNAPPED IN EUROPE AND ENDING UP IN MOROCCO !!!
ROBERT - IS THIS A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF YOUR HISTORICAL REFERENCES TO MUSLIMS RAIDING EUROPE FOR SLAVES ??
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=490468&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
The insider at Metodo 3 said of the American girl: "Investigators came across her as they were working to find Madeleine and have tipped off Interpol. There is a long history of girls being kidnapped from Europe and ending up in Morocco.
O to suck up to any vote bearing group.
Life as a political whore without principle.
Vote for a useless pol - vote for the Dems and other unprincipled losers.
In this great diverse universe we live in, there are many slots available for useful idiots.
Not that I needed another reason NOT to vote for these Democratic hopefuls, but really....
Such "persecution" of Arab Muslims in this country that they still somehow managed to hold this convention. I'd like to see such a convention of Christians, et al in these Arab Muslims' former countries - well, won't be holding my breadth.
I'm not sure which is worse for this country - stupid or ignorant "leaders" like these three, along with the usual suspects throughout the federal government and current administration. stupid because it implies lack of mental ability to "get it" or ignorance because it implies willful refusal to acknowledge the obvious...
"It is important for us to stand and recognize these leaders at a time when this community is under siege by those who would divide America in order to win elections," Dean said.
-------------------------------------------------
When Howard Dean was running for President in 2004, he promised that he would give OBL a fair trial. I take that to mean the "jury of his peers" would be all Islamist!
In my arrogant, overbearing opinion, Howard Dean is a pandering jerk. I don't thnk George Mitchell and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs are of Arab descent. Mitchell is half Lebanese - not necessarily Arab.
I'm gonna guess that AAI is wholly controlled by Muslim Arabs.
Doesn't matter...
the best judge of ones character is by the company they keep...and this says it all.
lol
Hugh,
I've always been a very interested follower of most of your writings. In this one I'd beg to differ.
"Those who express such diseased sympathy ought rather to express sympathy for those who, in the case of many Lebanese-Americans, having ancestors who came not as "Arabs" (their Ottoman-Empire passports often read "Siriano" or "Turco") but rather as "Christians" who also happened to speak Arabic, use Arabic, even have Arab names, but were not Arabs"
First of all, I'm half Arab. Now as I won't deny that Islam, in one way or another, intentionally or not, is an ideology that hides an ancient backward Pagan Arabic agenda and dresses it up as a religion which can only be understood when the language is spoken (and therefore, imposing the Arabic language/culture on foreign Muslims/prospective Muslims), I also would have to say that from what I've seen, (Don't know what the case is or was in the USA) some western anti-Islamic rage attacks have mistakenly targeted non-Muslim Arabs along the way. So if sympathies need to be expressed, they're not necessarily “diseased”. I believe that this particular issue doesn't need to be looked at from a Conservative-VS-Leftist angle.
Second: Regardless of historical background, and especially when dealing with an issue like Islam, confining the non-Islamic Arabic identity on those who are not originally Arabs, could cause a grievous damage to this cause. If a Mexican speaks American and is a citizen, that would make them American. Likely, if an American came from a non-Muslim-Arabic background, they wouldn't need a historical check proving that they're Maronites or Copts--They're non-Muslim Arabs. And if they were to be addressed with Sympathy they deserve, they wouldn't need a historical back check.
I thought Jihad watch was about watching Jihad and reforming Islam (if ever possible), so let's keep it that way. Although I understand how related could the Arab culture be with Islam, I believe it is best to be careful and not mix a cultural conflict with racial issues. I say the cultural routes are more worthy of efforts.
Regarding "Lebanese-Americans, having ancestors who came not as "Arabs" (their Ottoman-Empire passports often read "Siriano" or "Turco") but rather as "Christians" who also happened to speak Arabic, use Arabic, even have Arab names, but were not Arabs, and whose organization of Arab-Americans has been successfully taken over by Muslim Arabs and collaborating islamochristians of the zogby variety", have they done anything to dissociate themselves from Muslim Arabs or have they used the numbers of Muslim immigrants to expand their groups for their own purposes in the past? How many were at this conference? Victimhood and group rights are still big business.
'No one' for President, looks better and better all the time. No matter who you vote for, 'No one' will win. 'No one' is better qualified for the job than these candidates. 'No one' is perfect, but then, 'No one' expects perfection. 'No one' would be a better president than anyone. 'No one' would agree with that...'No one' cares, 'No one' is watching over us.
That's why I like 'No one' for president.
It just does not get any better than that. 'No one' told me to post this...
"This year, Democratic party leaders gave the candidates permission to address the conference..."
This shouldn't suprise anyone. The Democratic leadership would sell their souls for the votes necessary to gain and hold power. They catered to the Black vote in 2004 by allowing a bigot like Al Sharpton to run on the Democratic Party ticket as if he were a perfectly respectable political leader. And if they thought they could get away with it, every illegal in this country would have access to the voting booth.
They'll do what the've always done, set themselves up as the champions of oppressed minorities, which in this case are Muslims.
Hugh,
All this Arabism is not the fault of the Arabic-speaking Christians, it is the fault of Americans and Europeans.
The native Christians have preserved their identities albeit forgetting their ancestral languages. The Copts have preserved their name Copts or al-Qubt which is the Arabic form of the Greek Aigyptios 'Egyptian', and they have preserved their ancestral Coptic and Greek languages in their daily liturgy and in their libraries. The Maronites have conserved their name Syrian Maronites or al-Suryan al-Mawarina and their ancestral Syriac language in their daily liturgy and in their libraries. The (Orthodox and Catholic) Levantine Greeks have conserved their name Greeks or al-Rum (which refers to what in the West is known as Byzantines, i.e. Eastern Romans) and their ancestral Greek and Syriac languages in their liturgy and in their libraries. In fact, the library of the monastery of Mt Sinai contains one of the largest and oldest collections of Greek manuscripts; those manuscripts were conserved by Arabic-speaking Greeks.
Yes, the native Christians have conserved traces and features of their identiites, and so did the Mizrachi Jews. But it was the 19th century Europeans and Americans who were eradicating the native identities of these peoples by replacing it with the Arab identity. That's because in the mind of those 19th century Westerners language was one of the bases of a nation, and if you spoke Arabic, you must be an Arab.
It is those British and American Protestant, European Catholic and Russian Orthodox missionaries that planted the idea of Arabness in the minds of the native Christians.
We have a saying here in Lebanon which dates to the 19th century: "Franje brenje". "Franje" is "Frank", i.e. European and American, and "brenje" is the Turkish "birinci" i.e. "first". Every thing Westerner was seen as superior, surely because it was superior. Can anything be superior to the telegraph in 1860? Thus, Westerners were seen as having superior knowledge. Whatever those European missionaries were teaching in schools was absorbed without opposition. If a Frank told you you were Arab then you had to believe so because he is a Frank and "Franje brenje".
Read the acts of the American missionaries who founded the American University of Beirut, in the Missionary Herald. You will see what I mean. In fact, it is the Arabness of King, Fisk, Daniel Bliss and Vandyck which accounts for this overdose of Arab nationalism still found among AUB's faculty.
The missionaries knew better in every aspect of life and they had to be faithfully followed by the natives. Of course, the missionaries knew nothing about the identity and history of the Christian natives. Worst than that, they had no interest in it. See the catalogue of manuscripts at AUB's Jafet Library and you will find less that 10 Syriac manuscripts and two or three leafs from Greek manuscripts which were not catalogued until I saw them by myself. The rest is nothing but Arabic manuscripts, that's because the missionaries taught only Arabic and English and were not interested in anything else. I think you can find more Greek and Syriac manuscripts in some university in Japan than here.
When the Lebanese Christians came to American, they were sometimes considered Turks or Asian Turks, sometimes Syrians. Later after 1940, and synchronically with the rise of Aramco and of its Arabists, the Americans acquired in their minds the idea of an Arab world and of Arabs who speak Arabic. At that time, the Lebanese Christians were still in the mentality of "Franje brenje". Thus when the new immigrants were confronted with Americans identifying them as Arabs, they had to identify themselves as such because in their minds Americans knew better than themselves.
It is only because Americans identify them as Arabs that folks like Zogby do the same. This is the common wisdom of the American society in which they live and Zogby and his likes were not going against that common wisdom.
Anything going against common wisdom is offending for those who hold to this wisdom. That is why whenever I tell foreigners that visit Lebanon that I am not an Arab I sense that most of them were offended. Some of those Western foreigners went aggressive when I told them I am not an Arab but I am an Arabic-speaking Greek who originates from Lebanon not from Greece.
It is a shame that there are still people who know nothing about you and about your history but who want to impose on you an alien identity.
Pols aren't the only ones pandering to the islamicommie alliance...
From the words of one of the biggest islamicommie lackeys himself...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?hp
so..."islamofascism" is a figment of the *ahem* "neo-con" imagination.
(funny, being called "neo-con", by a neo-COM)
Yep, that's basically what paul krugman is saying.
and the MSM considers him a "moderate"! LOL
So, in other words, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, secular or traditional-doesn't matter...if you believe islamofascism is real, you're considered by this Krugman neo-COM kook to be a "neo-con".
(probably pi$$ed off at me for calling him what he is in a previous thread-with countrymen like that red diaper doper baby, who the hell needs enemies.
Thanks for proving my point, Krugman.
Case-in-point my coinage of the NYSlimes.
The old "gray lady" has gone completely demented.
lol
I have two threads of ancestry -- one Scot line that goes back to the 1600s, and on the other I have second generation Greek heritage. Almost everyone I know I have to educate about the Christian East. People have no idea how Christians have survived for more than thirteen hundred years despite Islamic domination. My grandfather left Greece so his decendents would not have to live under the dark cloud of Islamic theocracy, as his ancestors did. The Islamic legacy of taking whatever they want from Christians, and kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering Christians under Islalmic law has not been forgotten by many of us: it is part of our family history. If anything, Americans should be asking what that history is. That is the importance of the Armenian Genocide Bill -- it's survivors are still alive, they can still witness to the world what living with an Islamic majority is. That is why Islamic special interests are lobbying so desparately to kill that bill in Congress. If you deny it long enough, people start to believe you. The stories of Islamic degradation of Christians are beyond numbering. The survival of Christians despite Islamic persecution is heroic. Those stories need to be told at theatres, on DVD, and on the internet.
We're very familiar with the history...at least I am. After all, the Byzantines outlasted the Romans by a millenia.
But give the armenian genocide bell a rest, enough is out already that, despite it being undeniable, it was no introduced for forthright and honest reasons, but to usurp it to force a change in policy by someone of rank too low to make that call, pelosi (the bill was dated January 30th of this year, so waiting until now wasn't coincidence, but orchestrated)
Perhaps in time,yes...and even I agree with said idea...in principle, but her actions were not honest and straight up, but rather to usurp authority not hers to implement.
Doing it for the right reasons, nobody has a problem with...pelosi didn't do it for the right reasons.
I know that well...I live in an area of California teeming with Armenians...Assyrians, and they also saw her actions as deceitful-and only served to hurt the cause, not help it (it came off to them as using the dead to further her own self-interest/cause that bore no link to an otherwise undeniable genocide)...
In the end that day will come, and for the right reasons, which hers was not...in the mean time, we can hold onto it, and pass it down until that time does come, and it will come...just not yet.
Neither Mitchell nor Jobs is Arabic. Neither Mitchell nor Jobs is a Muslim. These are the best examples of Arab Americans that Howard Dean could come up with? Mitchell and Jobs are members of a "community under siege"? Really? Being a Senate Majority Leader in one case and a billionaire in the other hardly seems to qualify as "under siege" to my untrained eye.
Where is this "siege" we keep hearing about? Names, places, dates; any details whatsoever? There is no siege against Muslims, there is no siege against Arabs. Calmly noting that the Qur'an is filled with hatred and justification for violence is not a "siege" against Arab Americans.
I never understood what the big deal was with Dean's "rebel yell", but this is crazy talk. These are insane ramblings.
Dean's trying to imply WE are "attacking" THEM (as if those of us exposing islamofascism are the real enemy, and they're the good guys-clear sign of whose side they're on)...
but what else is new when their MSM lackeys like the NYSlimes post I posted above (krugman) runs interference for them 24/7/365, especially with such illucid and schizophrenic comments as he spewed forth in that "COMMUNtary" of his.
You're right sg,
their take is insane (or is that inane?...well, both apply).
(on a lighter note)
PS-in.re. dean's outburst...
(to understand why it came off badly in peoples eyes, let's see it again in its context)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5FzCeV0ZFc
yes, it was funny
(and normally it would've been harmless),
but to those in the political world, especially after he was soundly defeated
(placing 3rd, after #1 everywhere else=instant crash & burn, & showed him badly shaken by it),
then went into that near-hitleresque tirade just before his outburst, made him look like a rabid inmate out on a day pass to the general public-candidates don't act that irrational.
Ya see, when he started in on where he was going next, naming state after state, getting as rabid as hitler in his speeches, many asked "what's next? "then we're goin' to the Sudetenland! Then Czechoslovakia! Then Poland! etc etc etc" leaving most to ponder in dumbfounded silence: "WTF?", even to his adversaries.
He melted down, he's out...and now we're glad he did-he's downright loony-tunes.
There is a bright spot...some enterprising capitalists want to use howl as a car alarm-that banshee scream would scare the living shit out of satan himself...picture it now:
The Howard Dean Car Alarm: YYEEEAAAOOOWWWWW!!!!
...but that's another story...lol
I can't get over the way the MSM referred to Howard Dean as the "former Democratic front-runner" in the 2004 presidential election. It was obvious that the MSM endorsed him in the first place. He was a candidate that did not win a SINGLE PRIMARY but claimed moral victory as an also-ran.
--
Bob in CT, USA
because the deaniac was their favorite son...you don't seriously think they were REALLY "objective journalists" as they claimed, do ya?
(rhetorical jest)
lol