Idiot Islamist Keith Ellison Attacks Rep. Michele Bachmann as 'Anti-Women'

I can't believe how bad this sounds, and from a sitting congressman. Fox & Friends' Gretchen Carlson just lays into the dude:

Via Atlas Shrugs, "MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD CONGRESSMAN HAKIM "KEITH ELLISON" MUHAMMAD (D) IN ISLAMIC MISOGYNY ATTACK ON AMERICAN WOMEN, NAMELY MICHELE BACHMANN."

Ezra Levant Interviews Pamela Geller

Via Blazing Cat Fur:

Nidal Malik Hasan to Face Death Penalty

At The Western Experience, "Islamist Shooter in the Fort Hood Massacre Will Face Death."

Jewish Defence League Protests Omar Barghouti in Toronto

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Omar Barghouti - Disrupted."

There's a little bit of discussion of whether free speech rights are violated, and thus conservatives are just as bad as communists and jihadis. As I noted at the comments, I thought about heckling Noam Chomsky at UCLA, but I might not have had any backup, and would have been swarmed by the Student for Justice in Palestine jihadis! That said, there's a lot of frustration on the right, so I can see the temptation. As Vlad Tepes notes:

It appears that the Jewish Defense League has given some Islamic BDS people a taste of thier own medicine that we have seen at so many campus’ across the world from Scotland to Sweden and through the USA ...

Obama Administration Seeks Warm Relations with Islamists

The Wall Street Journal reports, "U.S. Reaches Out to Islamist Parties":

The Obama administration is reaching out to Islamist movements whose political power is on the rise in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

The tentative outreach effort to key religious political groups—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennahdha in Tunisia—reflects the administration's realization that the spread of democracy in the region requires it to deal more directly with Islamist movements the U.S. had long kept at arm's length.

Speaking to reporters during a visit Thursday to Budapest, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration is now seeking "limited contacts" with Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections slated for later this year.

"It is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence," Mrs. Clinton said. "We welcome, therefore, dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us."

Seems to me some folks were rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood as a governing party in Egypt just a few months ago. I'll check for a link. Meanwhile, here's this from Frank Gaffney, "The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood":

The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation's birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States' extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to downplay the momentousness of this major policy shift by portraying it during a stopover in Budapest as follows:

"The Obama administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years." In fact, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in a characteristically brilliant, and scathing, dissection of this announcement, Team Obama's official, open legitimation of the Brotherhood marks a dramatic break from the U.S. government's historical refusal to deal formally with the Ikhwan.

Read it all at the link above. And see also, Andrew McCarthy, "The Obama Administration Opens Formal Contacts With the Muslim Brotherhood." And Big Peace, "No Evidence Muslim Brotherhood Is Committed To Democracy."

Melanie Phillips Quits Britain's Spectator Magazine

She has two announcements, "Why I left the Spectator," and "My blog's new home."

There's very little written regarding an explanation why, although Phillips writes: "Those interested to learn more can do so in the update on this CiF Watch post, the original quote from which led to this apology." The apology issued was to Alastair Crooke, Director of Conflicts Forum, "an international movement which engages with Islamist movements broadly ..."

Given Mr. Crooke's background, folks probably have an inkling as to what happened: Melanie blogged about Crooke, he got mad, launched legal action, harming the Spectator financially, and Melanie Phillips felt it necessary to resign.

That just the line of logic, but let's see if I can piece some of this together. For one thing, reports indicate that Alastair Crooke, a former member of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency, had direct and ongoing contacts with Hamas as part of his official business at the British consulate in East Jerusalem. A 2007 blog post by Israeli Eliyahu m'Tsiyon has the details, including a quotation from Melanie Phillips which is no longer available elsewhere. And London's far-left Guardian reported on this, "UK recalls MI6 link to Palestinian militants." These are some really sinister dealings, and Phillips wrote about them. See Jihad Watch, "Melanie Phillips on Alistair Crooke." And following the links takes us to FrontPage Magazine, "Alistair Crooke's Meeting with Sheikh Yassin." I don't see the exact date of Crooke's departure from MI6, but even left-wing sources report on his deep ties to global terrorism. See Mother Jones, "The Spy Who Loved Hamas. And Hezbollah. And Iran."

Now note that the Spectator published an apology to Alastair Crooke, cited by Roy Greenslade at the Guardian:

A blog by Melanie Phillips posted on Jan 28 2011 reported an allegation that Alastair Crooke, director of Conflicts Forum, had been expelled from Israel and dismissed for misconduct from Government service or the EU after threatening a journalist whose email he had unlawfully intercepted. We accept that this allegation is completely false and we apologise to Mr Crooke.

Again, I'm piecing things together, but it looks like Spectator issued the apology as part of a legal settlement, which has the New Statesman's Mehdi Hasan jumping for joy:

... was this a voluntary or enforced departure? The blogger Guido Staines beat me to it, but I can't help but notice how the Spectator has had to apologise to Alastair Crooke, director of Conflicts Forum, on its website this week, after a blogpost by Phillips made "false" allegations about Crooke's past. Phillips's decision to move on might just be a coincidence but a well-connected source tells me that the payout to Crooke cost the Spectator "tens of thousands of pounds" and left Fraser Nelson and Andrew Neil "furious" with her.

So we're now back to Melanie Phillips' blog entry, where she writes, "For legal reasons, I cannot go into the details."

The legal reasons appear to be (further) threats of legal action, but Melanie Phillips has rejected the premise of the apology. And CiF Watch says Phillips made "no such" allegation regarding threats from Alastair Crooke.

Well, we know that Alastair Crooke's collaborating with terrorist organizations, and as Melanie Phillips was writing about it, my sense is that someone made threats, and since this controversy involves people at the highest levels of British power, clearly some pro-jihadists had strong incentive to destroy Melanie Phillips. And what's more fascinating is that so called right-wing outlets are simply crippling under threats and apparent litigation. Indeed, Mehdi Hasan can't contain his glee:

Blinded by their monomaniacal obsession with Islamists under every British bed, members of the UK media's neoconservative faction have been the subject of other (successful) legal complaints and libel actions in recent years.

These legal complaints look sketchy, "successful" or not, given all that we know about Alastair Crooke. Clearly, if Melanie Phillips was speaking truth to power her own health and livelihood became increasingly at risk. And this is something I've been writing about quite a bit, since Scott Eric Kaufman and Carl Salonen launched campaigns of workplace intimidation against me, including libelously false allegations of sexual harassment, with potentially very damaging personal consequences, simply for speaking truth to their evil deeds. And while I'm not an author of such prominence as Melanie Phillips, some allegations against me have gone all the way to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat. So the similarity is to the lengths at which progressives will go to literally destroy those who speak the truth. Remember, for radical leftists and jihad enablers, "truth is the new hate speech." And I want to remind people of my report on Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who announced on Canadian television:

The thing is, you don't care about freedom of speech until you've lost it. But I'm here to tell you that I will never, ever give up the fight for freedom of speech.

Neither will I.

Israeli Actor Impersonated Activist in Video Attacking Gaza Flotilla

At New York Times, "Israeli Video Blog Exposed as a Hoax."

The funny thing about this is that for progressives to denounce what's apparently a hoax, they also have to reject the message at the video, and the Israel-hating left is all too ready to do that. Indeed, Max Blumenthal, that conspiracy-driven self-hating Jew extraordinaire, was the first to point out the discrepancies. Check the link, in any case. Progressives are eating this up, so you know they're jonesin' for some PR victories.

Islam Encourages Rape

Commentary from Pat Condell (via Gates of Vienna).

The silence of Western "feminists" is literally killer:

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

At WSJ earlier this week, Geert Wilders mentioned that Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff wasn't as lucky as he was to be acquitted. She was convicted in February for "incitement to hatred" and "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion” for giving informational seminars on Islam."

This is another Ezra Levant interview that really crescendos with power. Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff concludes:

The thing is, you don't care about freedom of speech until you've lost it. But I'm here to tell you that I will never, ever give up the fight for freedom of speech.

Huma Abedin's Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood

Jamie Glazov interviews Walid Shoebat at FrontPage Magazine, "The Dark Muslim Brotherhood World of Huma Abedin."

Glazov also interviewed Robert Spencer, "Abedin/Weiner: A Marriage Made by Hillary Clinton and the Muslim Brotherhood?"

And at World Net Daily, "Weiner's mother-in-law a member of Muslim Brotherhood."

Two Men Arrested in Plot to Attack Military Recruiting Station in Seattle

At the Seattle Times, "Two men arrested in plot to attack Seattle military processing facility" (via PACNW Righty):

Two men have been arrested in Seattle in what federal agents say was a terrorist plot to attack a military recruit processing station in Seattle.

Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, also known as Joseph Anthony Davis, 33, of Seattle, and Walli Mujahidh, aka Frederick Dominque Jr., 32, of Los Angeles were arrested Wednesday and charged in a complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Among the charges were conspiracy to murder U.S. officers, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and unlawful possession of firearms.

Both men appeared this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler, who ordered them held pending a detention hearing next Wednesday. A preliminary hearing is set for July 7, which will be held only if the men are not indicted by a grand jury before then.

Both men face up to life in prison if convicted.

Okay, the system worked. Move along. Nothing to see here.

RELATED: At the DoJ, "Two Men Charged in Plot to Attack Seattle Military Processing Center" (via Memeorandum.)

In Defense of 'Hurtful' Speech

Some big news today on Geert Wilders' acquittal, at Telegraph UK, "Geert Wilders 'delighted' after being cleared of 'hate speech'."

And he writes about it at Wall Street Journal. A snippet:

The biggest threat to our democracies is not political debate, nor is it public dissent. As the American judge Learned Hand once said in a speech: "That community is already in the process of dissolution . . . where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists to win or lose." It has been a tenet in European and American thinking that men are only free when they respect each other's freedom. If the courts can no longer guarantee this, then surely a community is in the process of dissolution.

RELATED: At Atlas Shrugs, "PAMELA GELLER, BIG GOVERNMENT: GEERT WILDERS VERDICT: WEST 1, ISLAM 0."

And EXTRA LULZ: Lizard Loser Charles Johnson is bummed that Wilders was acquitted: "Dutch Hatemonger Geert Wilders Acquitted of Inciting Hatred."

Conservative Blogger John Hugh Gilmore Arrested in Muslim Hijab Altercation

The background's at AmericaBlog, "GOP blogger arrested at Netroots Nation for allegedly harassing two female bloggers for wearing Muslim head scarves in public. Women don hijabs and hold flash mob at right-wing blog conference to protest."

The guy's name is John Hugh Gilmore, of the Minnesota Conservative blog. The arrest sheet is here. And here's the flash mob:

Robert Stacy McCain was at Right Online and he reports, "Disorderly Conduct at Right Online?":

I have never met Gilmore and, until I saw this story, had never heard of him or his blog. The “hijab flash mob” appears to have been a provocative stunt by the Left — at one point, these women came to Right Online trying to waylay Herman Cain — and I regret that any conservative would allow himself to be provoked, which served only the purposes of the provocateurs.

The left goes around looking for trouble, exploiting the very stereotypes they allegedly decry. It's pretty bad, pathetic even. But when you got noting but bankrupt collectivism, you gotta try to generate some sympathy one way or another.

Islamic Mob Swarms Free Speech Protesters in Dearborn

At Zilla of the Resistance, with all kinds of links: "Standing Up Against Islamonazism."

And at Pamela's, "CHRISTIAN GROUPS PHYSICALLY ATTACKED IN DEARBORN, MICHIGAN."

Plus, at Detroit Free Press, "Pastor Terry Jones thwarted in Dearborn."

The guy's a freak, if I recall. But let him march, sheesh.

Canada's Hamas Flotilla

Called the Tahrir, the Canadian Boat to Gaza, of the Freedom Flotilla II.

Also known as the "Sea Hitler" by another name.

Background from Matt Gurney, at National Post, "The return of the NDP's anti-Israel fringe":

It was just over a year ago that Israeli forces went aboard the Mavi Marmara and six other ships that had set sail from Turkey. The vessels were filled with anti-Israel activists and aimed to deliver supplies to Gaza in defiance of Israel's arms blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory. Those aboard the ships were hoping to provoke an Israeli response and, unfortunately, they succeeded. While most of the ships were boarded peacefully, Israeli troops -armed only with light weapons, as they expected no resistance -were attacked when they boarded the Mavi Marmara. The situation escalated rapidly and, having failed to use the appropriate degree of force at the outset, Israeli troops had to use too much at the end. Nine activists were killed and Israel and its blockade were roundly criticized.

A year later, Canadian anti-Israel activists are hoping lightning strikes twice and are planning to sail a vessel from our shores to the Gaza Strip, despite the continuing Israeli military embargo. By forcing a confrontation with the Israelis, they hope to bring yet more international scorn down upon the Jewish state. They have a long list of supporters, including the usual suspects -but also one name that is a bit surprising: Alex Atamanenko, the freshly re-elected NDP MP for B.C. Southern Interior.

Mr. Atamanenko, first elected in 2006, has been quite public with his support of the Gazan cause before. He was quick to condemn Israel for the original flotilla incident. He also criticized its military operations against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip in 2008 and 2009. His endorsement of the Canadian Boat to Gaza is therefore logically consistent, if nothing else.

More at that link above. The NDP is the New Democratic Party, a national socialist party that is currently the official opposition party in the Canadian House of Commnons.

See also Gurney at FrontPage Magazine, "The Canadian Left Backs Upcoming Gaza Flotilla."

Yale Kills Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism

From Abby Wisse Schachter, at New York Post, "Yale's Gift to Anti-Semitism":

Yale University last week killed the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplin ary Study of Antisemitism -- the only program of its kind in the country, an academically stellar one-stop anti-Semitism research shop. Worse, it almost certainly did so because YIISA refused to ignore the most virulent, genocidal and common form of Jew-hatred today: Muslim anti-Semitism.

Citing an official review by a faculty committee that it refuses to identify, Yale will shut down the program at the end of next month. The university's top flack, Director of Strategic Communications Charles "Robin" Hogen, wrote an e-mail claiming that YIISA had failed a key test: It was supposed to "serve the research and teaching interests of some significant group of Yale faculty and . . . be sustained by the creative energy of a critical mass of Yale faculty."

Funny, last year, at YIISA's hugely successful inaugural conference on global anti-Semitism, Yale Deputy Provost Frances Rosenbluth said just the opposite, noting that YIISA was "guided by an outstanding group of scholars from all over the university representing many different disciplines," including professors of history, sociology, comparative languages, psychiatry, economics and political science. Actually, Hogen's e-mail itself contradicts Yale's stated excuse: He notes that "the steering committee did express continued support for the faculty reading group on anti-Semitism." Plus, "institutional support will remain for the group of faculty who wish to continue their scholarly exploration of this important subject."
Which is it -- no faculty interested in studying anti-Semitism, or lots of faculty interest in studying anti-Semitism?

Well, depends on what kind of anti-Semitism. Can't be studying the Islamic kind, now can we?