DIANA WEST: SPIKING THE EXAMINER….MUST READ
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2199/Spiking-the-Examiner.aspx
News flash: The Washingon Examiner spiked my syndicated column on the Muslim Brotherhood and why five House Republicans — Reps. Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Tom Rooney and Lynn Westermoreland — were correct to call on Inspectors General to investigate MB influence on US government policy-making. And therein lies a tale.
If the newspaper’s online search function is accurate, it is even more perplexing to note that the Examiner hasn’t run a single news story on the media-politics feeding frenzy, led by Sen. John McCain, directed at Rep. Michele Bachmann for raising questions about strong indications of Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the Washington policy-making chain. The geyser of Left-cum-GOP-Establishment hysteria arose from Bachmann et al pointing out in a letter to the State Department IG that Huma Abedin, a top advisor of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has close family members involved in MB-associated groups and movements, which are dedicated to the destruction of the West. Indeed, it was on the mention of Huma Abedin that the Examiner told me the paper turned down my column (full column reprinted below).
A little backstory.
I have noted before with dismay that the Washington Examiner automatically spikes any syndicated column I write regarding what might be referred to as President Obama’s identity issues.
These include: the debate over the constitutional requirement that the president and vice president be “natural born”; this same debate as it enters court in eligibility challenges litigated from New Jersey to Georgia to the US Supreme Court; and related pieces of “natural born” legislation introduced in some state legislatures, including Arizona’s. Since April 27, 2011, when Obama published a highly problematic illustration of a birth certificate on the White House website, the debate has taken a darker turn. There is now extensive evidence that fraud and forgery took place in the creation of the White House birth certificate. What that means to the Examiner is that it now also auto-spikes columns about this evidence and other sensational news coming out of the Cold Case Posse investigation mounted by the renowned Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Regrettably, Townhall.com has this year decided to spike columns on this same subject by myself and others. In fact, the silence on this epic story extends across the public square, from Left to Right, from CNN to Fox, from Democrats to Republicans. When, earlier this year, this began happening to my column in a more systematic way, I was shocked. Others, too. I will note for the record that concerned scribes expressed outrage and alarm over such censorship, for which I remain grateful. It is a more than passing strange sensation to write about what clearly seems to be important news in our country’s history involving Americans from different states, from different walks of life — lawyers, judges, detectives, computer experts, government officials including the president, and more — knowing full well that some outlets won’t run it because the subject is verboten in the public square. I have even come to expect this treatment on the subject, which must be some dangerous stage of complacency.
In a way, then, I almost welcome this latest, very different spike as a salutary jolt of alarm.
Here’s how Examiner editorial page editor David Freddoso explained why the column didn’t appear:
We opted not to use it this week. We also passed over other syndicated columnists’ offerings about the insinuations against Huma Abedin. The reason is simply that there is no hint of proof that she has done anything improper.
But the five House Republicans made no such claim. Amid their broad concerns about MB influence on US government policy-making, the members raised a red flag over Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to the US Secretary of State. Why? Abedin’s family members have been deeply involved with groups and movements dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization. This concerns the five House members. As it should, in my opinion — which is what my fact-based opinion column argued. What we learn from this escapade is that such an opinion is not considered printable at the Examiner.
Meanwhile, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy writes:
A person is not required to have done anything wrong to be denied a high-ranking government position, or more immediately, the security clearance allowing access to classified information that is necessary to function in such a job. There simply need be associations, allegiances, or interests that establish a potential conflict of interest.
To sample some of what McCarthy has further reported:
1) Saleha Abedin, Huma’s mother, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood.
2) Saleha is also a board member of the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief. The IICDR has been long banned in Israel for supporting Hamas.
3) Moreover it turns out that Huma Abedin herself was, until late 2008, a member of another of her mother’s Islamist organizations, the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.
Huma’s parents actually started this institute in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, McCarthy explains, “with the backing of Abdullah Omar Naseef.”
Who is Naseef?
McCarthy: “Naseef is a former secretary-general of the Muslim World League, which, as I’ve previously explained, has long been the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology. Under the auspices of the MWL, Naseef not only backed the IMMA” — which, remember, was Huma’s parents’ Saudi project — “Naseef founded the Rabita Trust, which …is a specially designated international terrorist organization under federal law.”
Can’t you just hear the background-checker? So, Huma, your folks were in business with a guy who started a designated terrorist group, your mom’s on a board of a group banned in Israel for supporting Hamas, and you want top secret clearance to work alongside the SecState…HAHAHAHAHA.
And there’s even more, so much more. But let just this much sink in while I note that I sent this information (and more) to the Examiner, asking the editorial page editor to examine the evidence for himself, and, I hoped, run my column belatedly this week.
No soap.
Response: “I’ve had a look, and I will not be using the column.”
I’ve had a look, too — the newspaper’s lack of columns on this whole controversy, the newspaper’s lack of news on this whole controversy — and I will not be using the Examiner.
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The Verboten Column:
“Outing the Muslim Brotherhood”
Be alarmed: The U.S. government continues to be “advised by organizations and individuals that the U.S. government itself has identified in federal courts as fronts for the international Muslim Brotherhood.”
So wrote Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in a lengthy, heavily footnoted answer to a query last week from Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. He was seeking more information about the reasons Bachmann plus four other House Republicans – Louis Gohmert (Texas), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.) and Thomas Rooney (Fla.) – requested Inspector General investigations into “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of the government. (See all of the letters here.)
Yes, that would be the same Muslim Brotherhood whose leaders are sweeping to power in the Middle East – most recently in Egypt. There, the new president, Mohamed Morsi, fired up voters this spring by declaring: “The Koran is our constitution. The Prophet Muhammad is our leader. Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.” That, by the way, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto.
Brotherhood-linked groups in the U.S. still take a low-key approach, at least publicly. Thanks to the FBI discovery of a key Muslim Brotherhood document, we know what they’re up to, even who some of them are. The document, entered into evidence during the landmark Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial, presents the Brotherhood plan for “civilization-jihad” against the U.S. It describes the group’s “grand jihad” to destroy “the Western civilization from within … so that it is eliminated and (Islam) is made victorious over all religions.” Further, it declares Brotherhood support for “the global Islamic state wherever it is.” It also lists 29 of “our organization and the organizations of our friends” – i.e., front groups. Among them are such well-known Islamic organizations as the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, and the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, both of which remain unindicted co-conspirators.
What is beyond shocking – beyond reason – is that such anti-American Brotherhood-linked groups and individuals have variously engaged, particularly since 9/11, with the U.S. government. Is it a coincidence that U.S. policy has since become receptive to, if not openly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood? This is the serious question these House Republicans want answered.
“Influence” can be an intangible thing, but sometimes there are signs. For example, someone, something, somehow managed to convince Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in 2011 that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “largely secular organization” without “an overarching agenda.”
This is a laughable statement – unless spoken in earnest by the DNI. Then the question becomes: Is it possible that in Clapper’s chain of information there is, in fact, disinformation? Other questions Bachmann and her colleagues have concern the Homeland Security Department, where, for example, Mohamed Magid, head of ISNA, the largest Brotherhood front group, according to the U.S. government itself, also serves as a member of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group.
Are there national security implications in the influence of Brotherhood front groups on Justice Department and FBI policies on terrorism? Bachmann & Co. want to find out. How about the ongoing relationship between domestic Brotherhood front groups and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC? As Bachmann notes, this foreign bloc of 57 Muslim nations “claims jurisdiction over Muslims in non-Muslim lands, defines human rights as Shariah, and advocates that Muslims not assimilate into the cultures of non-Muslims.” What of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to team up with the OIC to pass a U.N. resolution to restrict free speech deemed to be “defamation” of Islam? Such an effort flouts the First Amendment and also reverses U.S. policy. Could malign influence be a factor?
These five Republicans have also expressed concern over media reports that Clinton’s longtime top aide Huma Abedin has family relations (late father, mother, brother) with ties to Muslim Brotherhood groups. Her mother, for example, reportedly belongs to the Muslim Sisterhood, a group the new first lady of Egypt also reportedly belongs to. Are such reports true? Do they have security implications? These are questions Americans have a right to know.
“For us to raise issues about a highly based U.S. government official with known immediate family connections to foreign extremist organizations is not a question of singling out Ms. Abedin,” Bachmann writes. “In fact, these questions are raised by the U.S. government of anyone seeking a security clearance.”
I’m guessing the bit about Abedin is the only piece of this complex story most readers have heard of. It has come to dominate and distort the response to a rational and patriotic effort to bring more transparency to government decision-making in order to ensure that it remains Muslim Brotherhood-free.
Why would anyone want to stay in the dark about that?
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