I was surprised and honored that Jihad Watch was among the nominees for the People's Choice Blog Award, sponsored by Right Wing News and TheTeaParty.net, to be awarded at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2013.
As you can see from the vote above, Jihad Watch won decisively, getting over 50% of the vote in a field of fifteen. And I received confirmation of the victory from one of the organizers of the CPAC blog awards when I asked him when voting officially ended:
From: XXXXXXXXX
Subject: Re: You've Been Nominated For A People's Choice Award At the CPAC Blogger Awards
Date: March 2, 2013 2:58:26 AM EST
To: Robert Spencer <director@jihadwatch.org>Robert
It officially ended at midnight. You won!
But as time went by and no announcement was made of this victory, and the voting continued despite my having been told that it officially ended last Friday night and that I had won, and the promised links and other placement promised to the winning blog didn't materialize, I started to wonder. So I contacted the organizer who had written me telling me I won and asked him what was going on.
He told me that there was a slight problem: the Tea Party group, which co-sponsored this People's Choice Blog Award, didn't want to allow me to receive it at CPAC next week unless I promised not to criticize Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan as I accepted the award.
I told the organizer that I couldn't agree to that. He asked me if I had planned to talk about Grover and Suhail. I said no, I hadn't, but I had to now.
So that's that. The People's Choice Blog Award is now the Grover's Choice Blog Award. I will not be going to CPAC and will not be receiving this award.
And since I will not be allowed to receive this award at CPAC, I will talk about Norquist and Khan here.
As I wrote in this article:
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) called Norquist out for this on the House floor in October 2011, saying of the anti-tax hero: “Documentation shows that he has deep ties to supporters of Hamas and other terrorist organizations that are sworn enemies of the United States and our ally Israel.” He pointed out that “around the years 2000 and 2001, Mr. Norquist’s firm represented Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was convicted two years later for his role in a terrorist plot and who is presently serving a 23-year sentence in federal prison.”Norquist, reported Wolf, “also associated with terror financier Sami Al-Arian, according to Mary Jacoby’s reporting in March 2003, in the St. Petersburg Times. Al-Arian pled guilty in 2006 ‘to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law,’ and is under house arrest, according to a Department of Justice press release. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s ‘paramilitary wing—the al-Quds Brigades—has conducted numerous attacks, including large-scale suicide bombings,’ according to the National Counterterrorism Center.”
And according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism:
Grover Norquist hoped to…harness votes from the country’s growing Muslim population by creating the Islamic Free Market Institute in 1998. He did so with significant financial help from Abdurahman Alamoudi, then one of America’s most influential Muslim activists and head of the American Muslim Council. Today, Alamoudi is serving a 23-year prison sentence after admitting to illegal transactions with Libya and being part of a plot to assassinate the then-Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Alamoudi was also found to be a long time secret financial courier for Al Qaeda while at the same time being routinely invited to the Clinton White House for receptions and meetings.
And as for Suhail Khan, Paul Sperry summarized the evidence in the New York Post in January 2011:
* In June 2001, Khan personally accepted an award from the now-notorious Abdurahman Alamoudi, then head of the American Muslim Council.* "We have with us a dear brother," Alamoudi said as he prepared to honor Khan with a plaque at the group's annual conference. "I'm really proud to be with Suhail Khan. Some of you saw him today in the White House, but inshallah [Allah willing], you will see him in better places in the White House, inshallah."
Khan thanked his patron, saying "Abdurahman Alamoudi has been very supportive of me. . . . I hope, inshallah, we can keep working together."
Just days earlier, Sen. Arlen Specter of the Judiciary Committee had cited a New York Post report documenting how Alamoudi had supported terrorists and "declared an interest in destroying America." By 2003, Alamoudi had been busted for plotting a terrorist attack; the top al Qaeda fundraiser is now serving 23 years in federal prison.
* In September 2001, four days before the 9/11 attacks, Khan spoke at the Islamic Society of North America's convention. Introducing him was Jamal Barzinji, whose offices and home were raided by federal agents after 9/11. "Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], but also with Hamas," according to the search-warrant affidavit. (A lawyer for Barzinji, who has not been charged, says he is the victim of a government "witch hunt.")
At the event, Khan shared his experiences from "inside" the White House, and praised his late father, Mahboob Khan, for helping found ISNA -- which the government now says is a front for the radical Muslim Brotherhood and has raised money for jihad. The founding documents of the Brotherhood's operation in America (recently seized by the FBI) reveal that it is in this country to "destroy" the Constitution and replace it with Islamic law.
Khan's father also helped found the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, Calif. This Khan family mosque is listed in the Muslim Brotherhood's own documents as one of "our organizations." In the 1990s, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, it hosted Ayman al-Zawahiri -- now al Qaeda's No. 2 -- as he toured the US raising money.
And Khan also spoke at a September 2012 convention of the Hamas- and Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of North America, where Muslims were told not to talk to the FBI.
Norquist and Khan are the controlling forces at CPAC. They have this year finally succeeded in barring AFDI from hosting an event about the Islamic supremacism they enable. And now they have overruled the People's Choice for the winning blog, and made sure that one more voice exposing their unsavory activities will not be heard. This is the conservative movement in 2013.
RSS Feed
The Grover's Choice Award: Jihad Watch wins CPAC award, barred from receiving it
.................................
*Appalling*. Jihad Watch didn't just win—at 52% it got twice the votes of the next runner up, the popular Politichicks site.
CPAC has become completely corrupted.