May 09, 2008
What is George Bush Doing in Lebanon? ZILCH to Stop Hezbollahstan
This morning, former Bush campaign spokesman, John Truscott, went on a major Detroit radio station to flack and shill for Hezbollah agent and federally convicted insurance fraud perpetrator Ali Jawad, whom the John McCain campaign wisely and swiftly dumped as soon as they learned of his identity.
And it made me wonder on which parallel planet they were living. While this Hezbollah agent and Bush operative together told the pandering, ignorant radio host that Lebanon is controlled by many peoples of many religions who are living together in peace, Lebanon was actually being taken over by Hezbollah through blood, guns, and violence.
Yesterday, Hezbollah captured Beirut. And George Bush did nothing. They will soon have control of the whole country, and Bush will do nothing. In many ways, Bush is to blame for this fiasco, as is Israel.
By invading Iraq and handing it over to Shi'ites, Bush completed the mission that neither Khomeini, nor Ahmadinejad never could. By removing Saddam Hussein and the entire Sunni government structure from Iraq and giving it to Shi'ites who won't hire Sunnis for any government and law enforcement positions, Bush ignited a Shi'ite revival--an extremist revival throughout not just the Middle East, but throughout the world. He created a contiguous, non-stop crescent-shaped Shi'ite region, ruled by Iran and its partner Syria--two terrorist states. And he did nothing to buffer or hinder it.
In one of its darkest days, when Israel wantonly pulled out of South Lebanon in 2000--in just an hour--it started the Shi'ite revival and began the handover of Lebanon, once a Christian Phoenician country, over to Hezbollah. Shi'ite moderates and others who helped Israel keep the peace in South Lebanon feared for their lives. Many left, many others were murdered, and still others were persecuted or had to move away from the South. It taught those peaceful forces of moderation and western influence a lesson: Don't trust Israel, at least not the Israel of Ehud Barak, and since, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. They threw the good Lebanese to the wolves of Nasrallah and Iran and Syria.
Then, Israel did it again, in the summer of 2006, when the country haphazardly invaded Lebanon, under Olmert--the first Israeli Prime Minister with no real military experience. When a lawyer runs a war, you know you're not in it to win. Olmert could have defeated Hezbollah, had he known how to conduct a ground and air campaign. Or had he even wanted to win.
But, tragically, none of those necessities of war applied to Olmert's malpractice-ridden war. Instead of defeating Hezbollah soundly, which he could have done had he wanted to, he wasted Israeli lives--especially the lives of poor, religious settlers (the ones whose families' homes he took away and continues to). And he emboldened and strengthened Hezbollah for decades and for its current successful bid in finally taking over Lebanon completely, once and for all.
Even under Ronald Reagan, who is given far too much credit for "fighting" terrorism, we were attacked--300 U.S. Marines and civilians murdered while they slept--by Hezbollah, and we did nothing . . . except pull out and run away from the country. We should have decimated Hezbollah then and allowed Israel to clean house.
But instead we ran, and we pressured Israel to do the same, which they ultimately did with the 2000 cut-and-run, now celebrated annually by Hezbollah over there and Hezbollah agents, Osama Siblani, Ali Jawad, and others here in Little Hezbollahstan a/k/a Dearborn, Michigan. The same goes for the Hezbollah torture-murder of Navy Diver Robert Dean Stethem on the plane it hijacked, TWA 847, in 1985. He was murdered. We did little or nothing in response.
When Bush pressured Lebanon for more free elections, just as he did in Gazastan, he got the mirror image of the resulting HAMASastan . . . Hezbollahstan. More Hezbollah Members of the Lebanese Parliament were elected where before there was just one, and Hezbollah literally married its alliance with the Shi'ite Amal militia, headed by Lebanese Parliament speaker Nabih Berri. Berri's immediate family is married into Hezbollah. As a result of Bush-Rice engineered elections, Hezbollah gained control of most of the major government ministries, several seats in Parliament, and essentially the slow, complete emasculation of the Fouad Siniora Lebanese government that we now see essentially toppled this week, with the loss of Beirut.
So, now, will George Bush enter Lebanon to end the Shi'ite Hezbollah/Iran Revolution he started? With only 7.5 months left of his administration, not a chance. He blew his capital in Iraq, starting up the revolution that he now can neither stop or even put partially back into the bottle. For all the claimed "Texas swagger," wimpitude and dhimmitude to the Shia Revival is all he shows the scared Cedars Revolution democrats in Lebanon who want to be free of Hezbollah.
While meeting with Assad of Syria and pressuring Israel to give in to terrorists and give them half the state, Bush and Condi Clueless missed the opportunity of a lifetime to finally free Lebanon of Iran and Syria by annihilating Hezbollah. He'd have enjoyed the support in such an effort from Lebanese Christians all over America--the largest and most patriotic group of Arabs in the U.S.--and from his Sunni, Gulf State oil buddies the Saudis and their neighbors, all of whom badly fear and want to put down this Shia rebellion and swath of takeover that now spans the Mid-East.
So, now, Beirut has fallen. And it's long been only a matter of time until the entire Lebanon becomes Hezbollahstan.
But instead of fixing the problem he helped create and expand geometrically, Bush is coasting to retirement and high-paid speeches. And Lebanon is burning.
But this Hezbollah takeover, as I said, is not confined to the Mid-East. I see it on the streets of the Detroit area, where Shi'ite Hezbollah agents like Ali Jawad are neither embarrassed of their criminal records, nor do they shy away from their open support of Hezbollah--a group that willingly killed 300 U.S. Marines and embassy staff and blew up the Jewish Community Center and Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.
And such is their power that a spineless radio talk show host sees no problem in that. Nor does he see a problem in Jawad's claim that Hezbollah didn't commit the Beirut bombings of Americans. That's a settled question.
But the Shi'ite Revolution that Bush jump-started and which has reached its latest pinnacle, this week, with the takeover of Beirut, has unsettled all established fact.
And it will be a problem for America in the near future that we created and now ignore.
But we will soon learn that was a huge mistake.
Posted by Debbie at 03:39 PM
May 08, 2008
ACTION ALERT: When the Guy Running for State Rep. Funded Hezbollah, Took Money From Iran, Helped Enable Medicaid Fraud
Many people have asked me about Paul Welday, a Republican primary candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives from the Detroit suburbs of Farmington and Farmington Hills. They know I own the websites PaulWelday.com, .net, and .org.
Knowing his disturbing record, I bought those domain names for the day when Paul Welday ultimately fulfilled his dark dream to run for public office. Now, sadly, that day has arrived.
I have known Paul Welday for over two decades, and he is a political hack who is in the back pocket of Islamists in CAIR (HAMAS front-group, Council on American-Islamic Relations) and an Iranian terrorist group. He's a well-paid lobbyist for a number of organizations that don't have America's best interests at heart (and he's played the other side, trying to get Jewish lobbying money, too).
* Paul Welday & Muslim Alien Medicaid Fraud/Islamic Anchor Babies
Welday's brother, Doug Welday, is the Chief Financial Officer of Oakwood Hospital, the hospital raided in 2002 by the FBI for knowingly engaging in Medicare fraud, helping Muslim aliens deliver their children here courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Surprise!--Welday's the lobbyist for Oakwood.
That Medicaid fraud continues to this day, and thanks to Paul's brother (and Paul's lobbying), you continue to pay for this, and these Muslim aliens get American birth certificates and citizenship for their children, which they can sell on the open market. Doug Welday has performed well in conducting Oakwood's "finances" because he continues to perpetrate Medicaid fraud for pregnant Islamic alien women at his hospital and to cheat you, the American taxpayers. Millions and possibly billions of dollars involved.
Oakwood Hospital was never prosecuted for this continuing crime, of which Welday's brother is well aware (in a court, he'd be called a "co-conspirator"). And, sources say, that has something to do with the fact that Paul Welday sat on the Republican selection committee that helped recommend to President Bush candidates for U.S. Attorney and the Federal Bench (Welday raised over $100,000 for Bush). A man Welday helped recommend, U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III, is the only man who can prosecute Oakwood Hospital. And--shocker!--so far Murphy has declined to do so. Yesterday, Murphy had his U.S. Senate Confirmation hearings for the Federal Judge nomination Bush gave him.
You know how political hacks operate: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. In Welday's case, it's kept his brother in the cushy life and out of prison and lined Welday's pockets with hefty Oakwood "lobbying" fees.
* How Paul Welday Got Millions in Tax $$$ for Hezbollah
Welday has a long past of pan-Islamism. In 2000, I asked him why he got his then-boss, pan-Islamist Congressman Joe Knollenberg--for whom Welday was Chief of Staff--to introduce a bill seeking $268 million for "South Lebanon" a/k/a Hezbollah. He told me, and The Detroit News, that he was doing it at the behest of the openly pro-HAMAS/pro-Hezbollah Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute.
In the end, Welday and Knollenberg succeeded in getting $86 million. All of it went to Hezbollah, and Welday never conducted any oversight. Why would he? His boss received thousands of dollars from Hezbollah agent Nijad Fares (whose father was the Hezbollah-backed Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon) and from the Hezbollah-allied American Task Force For Lebanon, Fares' PAC.
* Paul Welday & His CAIR Buddies
In 2004, I went undercover to a CAIR-Michigan election event. It was open to the public, and I went to see who in Michigan would be appearing and what they would say to get extremist Muslims to vote for them. I was "outed" at the event, but not before most people--including Paul Welday--spoke. For the most part, I wasn't surprised by who appeared and what they said.
I wasn't even mildly surprised when I saw and heard Welday speak on behalf of the Bush re-election effort and told the CAIR crowd that they were the most democratic group of people he's ever seen. And when he morally equated Israelis victims of terrorist attacks with Yasser Arafat, I can't say I'm surprised that this two-faced well-paid lobbyist did so. He thought he was "among (Muslim) friends."
On that day, I decided to buy PaulWelday.com, .net, and .org, because I knew of Welday's dream--and America's nightmare--of his running for Congress, where he still ultimately wants to end up. And, on those site, I wrote up my little "experience" hearing the real Paul, or at least seeing yet another of his many faces. Here's a little taste:
Is President Bush really the anti-terror President?Then, why was his campaign honcho, Oakland County, Michigan Republican Chairman Paul Welday, praising a HAMAS front-group as having "shown the most commitment to democracy of any group I've ever known"?
And why did Welday (pfw@renaissancestrategies.us) equate Israeli efforts to eliminate terrorists with mass homicide bombings in pizza shops and coffee houses?
Welday isn't just anybody. He was one of the few Bush "Pioneers" in 2000, raising over $100,000 for the campaign. In the important swing State of Michigan, Welday, a lobbyist, regularly appears on Michigan television on behalf of Bush and the GOP.
On Sunday, Welday, appeared on behalf of President Bush (at the White House's and Congressman Joe Knollenberg's request) at the Michigan candidate forum held by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
"Appeared" is a loose term. "Pandered" is more accurate. . . .
In his remarks, Welday, told the CAIR-Michigan audience:
This group - many of you - friends of mine - does a great job of showing the balance of the Muslim community as committed Americans . . . . You have shown the most commitment to democracy of any group I've ever known.Even more nauseating, Welday went on to equate efforts to fight terrorism with the terrorism attacks themselves. "We need to stop the [Israeli's] sending of missiles into the Gaza Strip. We need to stop the violence on both sides."
Israeli missiles in Gaza were directed specifically--and successfully--at HAMAS and other terrorist leaders. The latest was in response to Palestinian terrorists' murder of two young Ethiopian Israeli boys while they were playing outside.
Paul Welday apparently thinks those leaders deserve to live to continue masterminding their mass murders of women and children eating pizza, drinking coffee, and playing ball. In Welday's world, terrorists and their victims are morally equivalent. . . .
WELDAY'S HISTORY OF TERROR-PANDERING
Welday, who hopes to run for Congress, isn't new to the terror-pander industry. As chief of staff to Congressman Joe Knollenberg (R-Michigan), he sought $268 million in tax-funds for Hezbollah-controlled Southern Lebanon, at the request of Jim Zogby of the Arab-American Institute (who also heads up Arab-American Democrats and was a Gore campaign senior advisor). That's almost a million for every U.S. Marine Hezbollah murdered. Welday's boss, Knollenberg, was repaid for this effort, receiving big campaign dollars from Nijad Fares, son of Hezbollah-backed Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares.
* Paul Welday Paid Off by Iranian Terrorist Group That Held Americans Hostage
In September of last year (2007), Welday wrote a guest opinion column in the Detroit Free Press, asking for America to take Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) off the State Department Terrorist List. According to the column, he is a paid lobbyist for MEK's American front group, Iran Policy Committee. But MEK was not only part of Khomeini's Iranian revolution, it took part in the 1979 seizure the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the 444-day kidnapping of U.S. hostages. And in 1991, MEK helped Saddam Hussein murder Shi'ites and Kurds who rebelled.
This is who is lining Paul Welday's pockets.
* How Paul Welday Spent Your Tax $$ . . . @ the Gym
I saw first-hand what kind of "public servant" Paul Welday will be. When he was on the taxpayer dole, as Chief of Staff for Congressman Knollenberg, we worked out at the same gym. I kept track of how I regularly saw him there, working out for hours during the business day on the almost $150,000 per year salary paid for by American taxpayers. Yup, you paid for him to work out. Predictably, when he left Knollenberg to make even more money as a lobbyist, he stopped spending the workday at the gym and got back to his old, corpulent self. Because he was no longer on your dime.
* WHAT YOU CAN DO TO STOP PAN-ISLAMIST PAUL WELDAY FROM GETTING ELECTED
Richard Lerner, a longtime Republican and a strong candidate, is running against Paul Welday in the Republican primary. Unlike Paul Welday, he has spent his life in the private sector as an economist and businessman. Also, unlike Welday, Mr. Lerner is endorsed by local and community leaders and residents, whereas Welday is endorsed by the same old, tired, career hacks, including the anti-Semitic, drunk Brooks Patterson, the "county executive" who has taxed and increased my county government spending geometrically.
I urge you to help him and to donate to his campaign.
Regardless of where you live, if you are a U.S. citizen, you can donate to Richard Lerner's campaign and can give up to $500, the Michigan campaign finance limit. Again, you do not need to be a Michigan resident to donate. This race has important implications for our entire nation.
And, of course, if you live or know anyone who lives in the Detroit suburbs of Farmington or Farmington Hills, Michigan, please tell them to vote for Richard Lerner in the August 5th Republican primary. And tell anyone who lives nearby to volunteer and help out in his campaign.
This is so very important.
We cannot afford for Paul Welday--enabler of Medicaid fraud and friend of CAIR, Hezbollah, and Iranian terrorist group MEK--to get elected to the Michigan Legislature . . . or any legislature.
NOT PAID FOR BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE COMMITTEE.
Posted by Debbie at 12:48 PM
May 06, 2008
How Not to Disprove Your Support for Hezbollah & Other Mistakes by Ali Jawad
I've been writing in major newspapers for over two decades. And in that time and the several years that I've maintained this site, I've never once been sued for defamation. That's because I check and double- and triple-check everything I wrote that I independently report. I'm an attorney, and I know what defamation is. I don't engage in it. And my credibility is important. If I don't have solid proof and reliable sources to back up my information, I don't run it.
Over the last 24 hours-plus, I've been inundated by inquiries from reporters and readers regarding my column on Ali Jawad, the Hezbollah agent and federally convicted insurance defrauder who was dumped by the John McCain campaign almost two weeks ago.
It's the usual M.O. from the extremist Islamic community, and I was prepared.
In 2003, when--in response to a New York Post column I wrote--the FBI revoked a planned national award to "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, a man who engaged in marriage fraud to stay in the U.S., Hamad and his friend Osama Silbani had a whining press conference. They threatened to sue me--even though they knew they had no grounds, nor plans to actually follow through on what was an empty threat.
Yesterday, Ali Jawad and his close friend, Osama Siblani, Editor and Publisher of the Arab American News held a press conference to claim that everything I've written about Jawad is "untrue" and "rumor and innuendo" and that he doesn't support Hezbollah. But Jawad would not specifically denounce or condemn Hezbollah at his press conference. And having Siblani--who repeatedly, openly praises Hezbollah in mainstream media sources--as the host of the event, doesn't exactly help Jawad's case. It just bolsters the very strong and iron-clad case I've made.
Here are some of Osama Siblani's comments on Hezbollah and HAMAS, which he's repeated on Detroit radio station WJR and on National Public Radio, as well as at multiple Hezbollah rallies at which he's been a featured speaker:
When asked if Hezbollah is a terrorist group, Siblani replies, "No, They are not terrorists. Absolutely not. No. They are freedom fighters."And what about Hamas? "Freedom fighters as well," Siblani said.
Moreover, Siblani attended a Dearborn meeting described in Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah as a meeting of American Hezbollah operatives.
That Siblani hosted and conducted the press conference for Ali Jawad, who is now, suddenly, trying to distance himself from Hezbollah--the group he previously praised--should tell you something.
At yesterday's press conference, neither Jawad nor Siblani would respond to any of the specific charges I've made about Jawad. That's because everything I've written about Jawad is absolutely solid, and he knows it. He can't refute it, so that's why he issued a general, false "It's not true" claim.
I didn't make up the 2002 Detroit News article, in which Jawad praised Hezbollah and said it wasn't a terrorist group. Funny now how he's trying to pretend he didn't say those things. Interesting that he didn't protest this quote attributed to him, when the story ran back in 2002. That's because he said it--that he supports Hezbollah--and he meant it.
And I didn't make up his federal conviction for insurance fraud and the fact that he and his company, Armada Oil Company had to pay over $250,000 in fines and restitution for it. That's not "rumor and innuendo," nor is it "untrue," as Jawad claimed at yesterday's dysfunctional, yet predictable whine-fest.
Also not a rumor is the fact that his co-convict in USA v. Makki et al, Michael Mustapha Makki, is from the Hezbollah Makki family, many of whose members were convicted of smuggling cigarettes for Hezbollah--the same cigarettes he is accused of selling in his gas stations. Makki went to prison for his part in Jawad's insurance fraud scheme. Why him and not Jawad? Draw your own conclusions.
Nor did I make up his two 2003 trips to Lebanon to meet up with his Hezbollah official buddies. I didn't make up the fact that in 2003, Jawad accompanied indicted Hezbollah financier and fugitive Talal Chahine to Lebanon and that they visited Hezbollah strongholds. He told that to the local papers. Was he lying then? I don't think so. But he is lying now by denying his previous descriptions of the trip.
Nor did I make up the fact that in another trip that year, Jawad traveled to Hezbollah strongholds to meet with key Hezbollah officials, accompanied by indicted Saddam Hussein spy Muthanna Al-Hanooti. That was published in a newsletter by Jawad's buddy, the FBI award revokee and "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, who orchestrated the trip with him. Did Hamad lie to his own newsletter? I don't think so.
And I didn't photoshop the photo of Jawad with his good buddy, Abed "Abboudi" Bazzi, brother of his other good friend, Hezbollah-backed Lebanese Member of Parliament Ali Bazzi. That's one of the people he's repeatedly met with in Lebanon. This is one of the Lebanese "government officials" he keeps talking about. Indeed.
Also not made up: Jawad's brother's marriage into the Safieddine family, closely related to both the current and heir apparent leaders of Hezbollah. Is he now denying this? No.
So why, after declining to comment, and accepting his fate from the McCain campaign, are Ali Jawad and his band of the usual suspect extremist Muslims who openly support Hezbollah and HAMAS suddenly whining?
Jawad knew for almost two weeks that he was dumped from--or in one of his latest, ever-changing versions of events, quit--serving on the Michigan Finance Committee for John McCain in connection with a Michigan fundraiser. Yet, he waited silently (and declined comment to the Detroit Free Press) for almost two weeks, planning this last-minute phony indignation ambush on John McCain, claiming that what I wrote--all of which he knows to be absolutely true--isn't.
If Jawad was so insulted by the McCain campaign, where was he for the last two weeks? And why did he "quit" on his own, as he claims? If I were unfairly or falsely accused of something, I certainly wouldn't admit it and "quit" (he was summarily cut from the campaign).
Because he knew then I caught him with his pants down (and with his yellow/green Hezbollah underwear showing) and this is just a tactic to hurt John McCain in Michigan. Sour lemons.
Despite his blowhard-fest yesterday,Jawad knows he is guilty as charged of everything I've written about him, just as he was guilty as charged--and pleaded to it--in a federal indictment for insurance fraud. Anybody else would have been ashamed of that. But not Jawad. He's trying to be the Tony Rezko of the McCain campaign. But it won't work. Jawad was cut loose. And John McCain isn't dumb enough to invite him back aboard to sink the ship . . . I hope.
One media report quotes CAIR-Michigan executive director Dawud Walid--another guy who won't condemn Hezbollah or HAMAS and says they aren't terrorist groups--as urging Jawad to sue me. (You know when an organization, CAIR, which the government has identified as an unindicted co-conspirator, attacks you, you're on the right side. CAIR's not in a position to distinguish between terrorists and non-terrorists.)
And Jawad was asked about, but declined to say, yesterday, whether he would file suit. I'm not worried because everything I wrote is true, and, again, he knows it, too. But he also knows, in the event he does file suit against me, I will countersue him for such a frivolous action, and I'll subpoena and discover the heck out of him. I've only written about the tip of his iceberg. He doesn't want to provide me with fodder for more and even more evidence on top of what I already have. Does he?
Most Muslims are not supporting John McCain, anyway. It's common knowledge they are vastly behind Barack Obama. This posturing by Siblani and Jawad and the usual extremist shakedown suspects that McCain will "lose" the Muslim vote over dumping a federally convicted insurance defrauder is not only phony, it's illuminating. It shows their community--or at least the ones who purport to speak for them--not only have no shame, but they openly support Hezbollah (as I've been saying all along) and demand that a Presidential candidate see their way on Hezbollah and look the other way on major federal convictions and insurance fraud.
Guys, thanks for informing us about your community. Nothing I didn't already know. But now the rest of Michigan and the McCain campaign knows.
And just so you know, there are plenty of Arabs and Muslims who've contacted me--who are very happy I enlightened the McCain campaign and got them to dump Jawad.
I received several letters such as this one, from a patriotic Lebanese Arab-American, who read about Jawad being dumped on the Lebanese site, Naharnet. This is the kind of Arab-American we need far more of, as much as we need far fewer Ali Jawads and Osama Siblanis:
I didn't know about your blog until today after I read a Lebanese news website (Naharnet.com) where you were mentioned. I am an American (Lebanese-American), who immigrated (legally) to the USA in 1987.I was pleasantly surprised to read your blog and noticed that your news about Lebanon are accurate; as well as names and their difficult spelling and pronunciation.
I hope the present US government and future ones keep supporting the pro-western government of Lebanon. That's the only way to stop the wave of Iranian extremism ad their allies.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks. I will. And whining by Ali Jawad and his friends won't stop me. They will only bring me more new readers, like you. Unlike Hezbollah-occupied Lebanon, this is a free country. . . for now.
***
Reader Bob writes:
They play the martyr card with the best--they whine with their accent, "I love this country. I am an American citizen. This is outrageous how we are treated...." blah blah barf!!!
That's it in a nutshell.
Posted by Debbie at 02:42 PM
The Real Ali Jawad: Meet the Chutzpah-dik Hezbollah Agent John McCain Dumped, Who Now Wants an Apology
Over the last two days, Ali Jawad--an open supporter of Hezbollah and a federally convicted insurance defrauder--has been holding press conferences demanding that John McCain apologize to him and invite him back to his campaign. He claims that everything I wrote about him isn't true, but won't refute a single thing I've written because it's all true. I'm writing a longer response to his hilarious, sudden demands, which he waited on for two weeks and is doing now to embarrass and hurt John McCain. But for now, I'm reposting what I wrote last week about who Ali Jawad is. Note that I haven't retracted or changed a single word because it's all true, and you need to know about this chutzpah-dik man with no shame.
***
EXCLUSIVE: Who is Ali Jawad?: McCain Campaign Dumps Key Hezbollah Agent, Convicted Insurance Defrauder; Feds, MI GOP Should Follow Suit
Over the past week, I spent far less time writing for this website than planned. Instead, I spent hours on the phone with John McCain staffers and key supporters in Michigan to right a mistake.
And, unlike the Barack Obama who clings to anti-Semites and terrorism supporters, John McCain did the right thing: He dumped Ali Jawad--an open Hezbollah supporter and key agent of the terrorist group in the Detroit area. Jawad is also a federal insurance fraud convict.
On Friday, I received this written confirmation that Jawad was cut:
From: Danny Diaz - CommunicationsDate: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 6:14 PM
Subject: RNC Response
To: writedebbie@gmail.com
Ali Jawad is no longer participating in efforts - whether fundraising or otherwise - on behalf of McCain Victory 2008.
-Danny Diaz, RNC Spokesperson
Danny Diaz
Republican National Committee (RNC)
(Emphasis added.)
I congratulate John McCain and his campaign because they proved that McCain truly is a maverick and independent of the Republican establishment who brought Mr. Jawad to his campaign. McCain's Michigan and national staff have shown courage in bucking what is a sad trend on the part of the Michigan Republican Party: going for pro-Hezbollah Shiite cash and support. Michigan GOPers took lots of money from Jawad.
Last week, several high-dollar Michigan Republican donors received an invitation to a May 6th $2,300 per head campaign fundraiser. Both John McCain and Mitt Romney are scheduled to attend. The donors noticed the name, "Ali Jawad," prominently listed on the Finance Committee and contacted me, knowing I had mentioned and written about him in the past.
Here are the specifics on Ali Jawad:
Ali Jawad and his company, Armada Oil, were convicted of insurance and mail fraud in federal court and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution and fines. Michael Mustapha Makki, Jawad's co-defendant--also convicted--in the case, USA v. Makki et al, is a member of the Makki family, many members of which were convicted of cigarette smuggling for Hezbollah.
Several sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirm that Jawad sold cigarettes obtained from out of state and avoided paying the exorbitant Michigan cigarette tax he collected, pursuant to the scam. Although key members of law enforcement were aware of this, they were ordered by late, then-Dearborn Mayor Michael Guido not to pursue the matter and to call off their investigation. Mr. Jawad was a major donor to Guido, as was indicted Hezbollah financier and fugitive, Talal Chahine. In 2003, Jawad--originally from the Hezbollah stronghold of Nabatiya--and Chahine, together, accompanied Mayor Guido on a trip to Lebanon, for which they raised thousands of dollars. They visited the Hezbollah-controlled cities of Bint Jbeil and Qana.
Jawad is known as one of the most important agents of Hezbollah in the U.S. He is related (through his brother's marriage into the Safieddine family) to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and the man Iran has designated as Nasrallah's heir apparent, Hachem Safieddine (currently a member of the 7-member Hezbollah ruling council, the Shurah Al-Karar). The Jawad and Safieddine families have many business dealings together. Both Ali Jawad and the Safieddines own many gas stations throughout the Detroit area. Armada Oil--of which Jawad is CEO--also distributes gas to gas stations throughout the Detroit area.
Jawad isn't shy about his support for Hezbollah. He defended Ali and Mohamed "Mike" Boumelhem, when they were caught by U.S. Customs agents trying to smuggle weapons to Canada and ultimately to Hezbollah. And he told The Detroit News that the terrorist group, which murdered more Americans than any other besides Al-Qaeda, isn't a terrorist group:
Killing innocent people -- we reject that. Hezbollah does not fit this category. It has protected its people.
Translation: The hundreds of Americans and Jews Hezbollah murdered are not "innocent people." Hezbollah protects Shi'ite Muslims, and they're the only ones worth protecting.
In May 2003, Jawad again traveled to Lebanon--this time, with his close friend, FBI award revokee and "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, a man who engaged in marriage fraud. Also with them was Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a Ba'ath Party member recently indicted for being a Saddam Hussein spy. Hanooti was a key official of LIFE for Relief and Development, an Al-Qaeda and HAMAS charity raided by the FBI and the U.S. Army.
During that trip, they met with Nabih Berri, head of the Hezbollah-backed Shi'ite Amal militia, who also heads the Lebanese Parliament. Berry was Hezbollah's negotiator for the Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, during which Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem was trampled to death. Federal agents have long told me that they believe Hamad's annual trips to Lebanon with these malefactors--often including visits to Bashar Assad of Syria--are terror-related trips with money-laundering as a likely purpose.
The alleged purpose of the May 2003 trip was to introduce Berri and other Hezbollah members of the Lebanese parliament to Bachar Sbeiti Kachkouche, then a 3-year-old Lebanese Canadian "child prodigy," who lived in Windsor, Canada, just over the border from Detroit. Hamad and company were purportedly raising money for Kachkouche, allegedly so he could attend Roeper, an expensive Detroit-area private school, college, and ultimately medical school. When you think about it, this is a brilliant scheme. No-one is looking at donations allegedly for the schooling of a gifted and talented toddler, nor at the ultimate destination of the money. And the toddler then gets to traverse the international borders daily. Do you think they'd search this cute, smiling boy or the vehicle in which he was riding on a daily basis? Detroit FBI agents told me they notified Canadian authorities about this scheme.
Roeper School would not confirm whether Bachar Sbeiti is currently or has ever been a student, or whether he is or was ever a scholarship recipient from the school, which would negate the need for private fundraising. Alleged "scholarship" money for Sbeiti was being raised by LIFE for Relief and Development, which was raided by FBI agents in the Detroit-area and the U.S. Army in Iraq. LIFE is believed to fund Al-Qaeda and was openly funding HAMAS' Jordanian operation for several years. Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a top LIFE official was recently indicted as a Saddam spy, and the charity's founder was identified as an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Alleged "scholarship" money for Sbeiti was also being raised by Hamad's ADC (American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee). "Donors" were instructed to make checks payable directly to LIFE and ADC. An examination of the federal tax filings for both organizations indicates no outlays for Sbeiti's education or any indication of the ultimate use of monies raised in Sbeiti's name.
But, despite all this, Ali Jawad remains "untouchable," say concerned citizens.
That might have something to do with the tight relationship both Jawad and his friend, the "former" Islamic terrorist Hamad, have with key feds. The photo above shows Ali Jawad at a recent banquet held by Hamad and a Nabih Ayad, a lawyer for Islamic terrorists. Jawad is shown sitting at the head table next to Michael Rosen, a lawyer and policy advisor with the U.S. Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes of the U.S. Treasury Department. To Rosen's right, the man who is laughing is Michigan FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew Arena. Previous to his Michigan assignment, Arena was in charge of Counterterrorism for the New York FBI and told the Christian Science Monitor that, in that capacity, his job was to set the public--and agents--straight, after a poll showed 50% of Americans had a negative view of Islam.
Also sitting at the table and shown in the next picture with Jawad and Hamad, are Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Julie L. Myers and Michigan/Ohio ICE Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz. On the far right of the photo, next to Myers, is Abed "Aboudi" Bazzi, a close friend of Jawad. Bazzi is the brother of Ali Bazzi, a Hezbollah-allied Member of the Lebanese Parliament, who is from the Shi'ite Amal militia.
Oh, the company they keep.
Fortunately, John McCain is not also keeping company with Ali Jawad. Unlike these feds, he did the right thing. But several Michigan Republicans haven't.
The list of Michigan Republicans who've taken money from Ali Jawad includes Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos, Congresswoman Candice Miller, and Congressman Joe Knollenberg a/k/a "Hezbollah Joe" (who sent $86 million in US money back to Jawad's Hezbo buddies in South Lebanon, to return the favor), U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham (who sponsored the $86 Mill Hezbo giveaway with Knollenberg), Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Cliff Taylor, and former State Rep. and failed Supreme Court nominee Marc Shulman.
On the Democratic side, Jawad gave to reliable pan-Islamist Congressmen John Conyers, David Bonior, John Dingell, and Cynthia McKinney. But as you can see, he's given primarily to Michigan Republicans. And it's a trend Michigan Republican Chair Saul Anuzis shows no willingness to stop. After I pointed out that he tried to recruit pro-Hezbollah Shi'ite Nasser Beydoun to run in 2002 as a Republican for Michigan's U.S. Senate seat, I asked Anuzis whether he would decline in the future to "outreach" to Shi'ite Muslims who support Hezbollah. He would only answer that he would appeal to whomever will vote Republican. And campaign finance reports show he's not turning away this poisonous money, either.
Other than that, Jawad is a major donor to the Dearborn-based, Islamist-dominated Arab American Political Action Committee (AAPAC), run by Osama Siblani--who was identified in Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah as an agent of Hezbollah--and Abed Hammoud. Both have compared Israel to Nazis and openly praised "the Hezbollah martyrs" as "freedom fighters." Imad Hamad is also active with the group, as is Nael AbuNab, who was convicted of several felonies for selling cars with fraudulent speedometers. AAPAC's Secretary, Lola Elzein, was removed after I sent a demand letter to Siblani, noting Elzein's multiple, written, obscene, Holocaust-denial death, rape, and torture threats to me, my parents, and grandparents.
So, how did Jawad formerly come to be one of six members of John McCain's Michigan campaign finance committee in the first place? Neither the McCain campaign nor the RNC is saying. Federal campaign finance reports show he hasn't donated a penny to the McCain. Privately, though, some people listed on the invitation are saying Jawad "came over from the Romney campaign." This is interesting, since Jawad also hasn't donated a penny to Mitt Romney, either. Perhaps he was picked because he's a Muslim name.
Or perhaps he was tapped because he was a major donor to Michigan Attorney General Cox. Cox was McCain's Michigan campaign chairman, but resigned last summer, when it looked like McCain's campaign wasn't going to succeed. Now that McCain is the presumptive nominee, though, fair-weather friend Cox is back on board and has his name on the invitation. As a Jawad donee, Cox--who is running for Michigan Governor--played both sides of the war on terrorism.
After he appeared and spoke at a pro-Israel rally, during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Cox then campaigned at the dinner of the extremist, openly pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan dinner. And he visited the offices of Jawad's friend Imad Hamad--the openly pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS Michigan ADC--asking what he could do for them. That's not to mention that he lied about and refused to pursue millions of dollars in Medicaid fraud by pregnant foreign alien Muslims perpetrated by the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS).
Cox waited for the last of the Medicaid defrauders to leave the country before he filed a few toothless, token warrants for their arrest, sending out press releases and going on national TV to brag about it. When Cox was contacted by Michigan Republican legislators, upon ACCESS chief Ismael Ahmed's nomination to head the Michigan Department of Human Sevices (overseeing billions in Medicaid), Cox declined to give them any information and was suddenly mum, unlike his effusive "O'Reilly Factor" appearance regarding the topic.
And finally, there is Jim Nicholson, a millionaire Michigan businessman and Michigan Finance Chairman of the McCain campaign. Jawad donated heavily to liberal Republican Nicholson's failed 1996 U.S. Senate bid, and Nicholson's name appears atop the McCain invitation.
Regardless of how Ali Jawad came to the John McCain campaign, John McCain and his people did the right thing and immediately dumped this malefactor, once they learned who he is. When will the feds and the Michigan Republican Party do the same?
And when will Barack Obama follow suit by dumping his many anti-Semitic, anti-Israel foreign policy advisors and supporters?
We know who the real counterterrorism candidate is. And that's why I plan to vote for John McCain. He won't be bought by campaign money. And, in this case, he's saying no to the forces of political correctness and Islamofascism.
NOT PAID FOR BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE COMMITTEE.
Posted by Debbie at 10:44 AM
May 05, 2008
Barbara Walters: The Selfish, Sleeping Dog Who Won't "Lie"
This is one of those rare cases where "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie" isn't just a figure of speech.
In this case, the female dog who was sleeping around and won't stop talking about with whom she allegedly slept, has the surname of Walters, the first name of Barbara. And she has the very sad, insatiable need at her twilight age of 78 to get more attention.
Walters, in a bid to sell her new 612-page book, "Audition," is pimping out former U.S. Senator Ed Brooke . . . telling the world that she had a long-term sexual affair with him, while he was married to another woman.
But the man she's throwing under the bus is 88 years old. He only recently fought off breast cancer and had a mastectomy. He is on the edge of his grave and certainly toward the end of his life. Why is she doing this now . . . or ever? Why is she doing this, other than to sell books and earn for her publishers the $4 million advance she received for this $30 tome of drivel?
And why does a woman, who's made millions each year and is in the wealthiest 1% of Americans, need to ruin this man's life at the end of it--just to sell books and make a few more dollars she doesn't need? Are the millions not enough? Are her inane celeb-filled specials and daily stupid daytime yenta-fest on ABC not enough?
Apparently.
Edward Brooke is a private citizen who has been out of politics and public life for three decades. He has three children and countless grandchildren. They are the ones who will be hurt and embarrassed by Walters' unnecessary TMI (Too Much Information) revelations. The only ones who will benefit from this gossip are Walters, her publisher, and her book agent.
This happened over three decades ago. Why bring it up now?
Other than gossip and selling books, it also appears that Walters wants to show us how "hip" she was because she slept with a Black man. But it doesn't show us her hipness or racial diversity of bed partners. Instead, it shows us what bad taste and poor judgment of character Brooke had because he made the huge mistake of sleeping with this yenta with extremely loose lips and zero sense of decency.
These days, interracial relationships aren't a big deal, and we really don't care about the "implications" the revelation might have had then for their respective careers. Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton, Roxie Roker (Helen Willis of the interracial couple on "The Jeffersons") and Sy Kravitz (parents of Lenny Kravitz), and a host of others had relationships. But they didn't pimp each other out for a few million dollars the way Walters has.
Brooke is a fiercely private man. After a divorce in 1978, he publicly decried his dirty laundry being aired in public. Surely, Walters knows that. You'd think that after recently battling serious cancer and moving on from Walters and public life for over three decades, Brooke would enjoy a right to privacy and a right to live his last years in peace. But those two things are now null and void because Barbara Walters, yet again, is showing the world her vulgar personality, he utter lack of class and dignity, and--frankly--her despair that she and the details of her life are no longer important, nor are they interesting.
So, to make them seem interesting, to sell books, Walters is provocatively dishing on this poor octegenarian/soon-to-be-nonagenarian on--where else?--"The Oprah Winfrey Show" (airing Tuesday). It's sickening. One woman of questionable high regard ruining a man's life on the salacious, patronizing show of another woman of even more questionable high regard. This is the double-team nightmare no red-blooded American male ever fantasized about, surely not the classy Ed Brooke.
Walters writes that if her father and sister were still alive, she couldn't have written the book: "It'd be too painful for them, too personal." How exactly does she think it is for Brooke, who is very much alive? Walters writes that she was "embarrassed" and "ashamed" of her mentally-disabled sister. It should have been vice versa.
In news reports of Walters' revelations, Brooke is being called "the Barack Obama of that day." Puh-leeze. Obama doesn't even come close. The only thing they share is skin color. Brooke was a class act--a brilliant liberal Republican whose foreign policy positions, unlike Obama's, were actually pro-American. He didn't hang out with people who bomb the Pentagon and the Capitol, and he didn't hang with supporters of Islamic terrorism or Nation of Islam loons. Or preachers who print the HAMAS charter and hang with Farrakhan and Qaddafi. Unlike Obama, Brooke is a man I'd gladly have voted into the White House.
And for that--and sleeping with a tasteless big-mouth, long past her expiration date--he must now pay.
While the thrice-divorced Walters may think she's revealing something here, the only thing revealed is solely about Walters: that she was a skank before the slang term was born, that she continues to have no class, and that the level of respect and gushing traditionally showered upon her is vastly over-rated and always has been. Nothing new in any of these revelations.
I've never understood the conventional torrent of respect showered on this woman by the world that calls her "a great journalist." This is journalism? We're told she "paved the way." As far as I can tell, yes, she did pave the way for journalists with thick Boston accents and heavy lisps, all one of them. For the rest of us, she paved nothing but Monica Lewinsky interviews and stupid questions about trees. Well, she's tight-lipped about at least one thing: We don't yet know what kind of tree Senator Brooke would have aspired to. Thank Heaven for small favors from this extremely selfish woman.
"Don't kiss and tell" is sage advice, clearly never taught to Ms. Walters. What a shame that in all those hours in "The View" dressing room--while a skilled hairdresser manicly teases the seven hairs left into a faux mass of volume atop her still-scheming scalp--no-one thought to teach Walters that a woman of any substance never tells.
Yes, "never kiss and tell" would have been great advice for Walters. But even more sage advice for prominent men in America would have been, "Don't sleep with Barbara Walters."
At this stage of the game--and, likely, many decades before it--that's a warning most straight American men with eyesight don't need to hear, anyway.
Most of them, except, sadly, then-Senator Brooke.
At age 78, Barbara Walters has shown us that she's shown common sense and dignity the door.
If only she'd gone quietly into the good night. But since she won't--and she's trying to take down a man who deserves to be left alone--it's just time, well past time, for her to go.
Her decency--if she ever had a shred of it--already left long ago.
Posted by Debbie at 11:00 AM
May 02, 2008
About That Op-Ed in Today's Detroit Free Press: WITHOUT My Permission, Detroit Paper Guts My Op-Ed To Remove All Terrorism References to Protect "Former" Islamic Terrorist, U.S. Attorney
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE #2 - Free Press Editor Stephen Henderson displays more ignorance and shows more true colors; Now, Islam is a "race." ****
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE - Free Press Editor Stephen Henderson shows his true colors ****
Some of you may have seen "my" Op-Ed column in today's Detroit Free Press. I say "my" in quotation marks because it is NOT MY WORK. I DID NOT WRITE IT. Had I seen the draft of what ran, I'd have said, "DON'T run it." But I did not get that chance.
This whole experience has been very enlightening to me, because it shows me just how much the Freep sees itself as the protector of Islamic terrorists and "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad. It's eye-opening. I also shows me the extent to which Free Press editors will go--they lied and made up allegations about me--to keep my opinion from getting exposure. Sorry, guys (and gals), but the Internet isn't owned by you, and you can't stop me.
I can say, without qualification, that I've never ever submitted a comment to the Free Press website. I don't do that. I comment on THIS website. But many of my Detroit-area readers have posted my work or links to it in the comments section of the Free Press site. I have nothing to do with that, and it's beyond my control. The pan-Islamist Free Press news editors don't like that. You can't have another point of view than the one they express that "Islam is peace," etc. But the reason my many Detroit readers--without my involvement or encouragement--post my work or links to it on the Freep site is that they're sick of the Islam co-opted "news" they get from most Free Press reporters.
I feel bad for Stephen Henderson, because I believe he's a good guy who tried to do the right thing. He does try to put in all points of view on his op-ed page. But the PC forces at his paper over-ruled him and put him between a rock and a hard place in running my work. That's standard practice, apparently at the Free Press, and for the Mainstream Media, and why I've had to have my work on what's going on in Detroit run in other papers, like the far more read/far more prestigious Wall Street Journal and New York Post--both more open to many points of view.
And then, there's the standard practice at the Free Press. In February, for example, Detroit Free Press Reporter Dan Cortez initially reported on the Freep website that Michigan State Police detectives and federal agents said that a giant food stamp fraud ring they foiled was likely tied to Hezbollah and that they were investigating that. Those two paragraphs were removed from the story by Detroit Free Press editors Theresa Mask and Ritu Sehgal to protect to the Detroit Muslim community and hide this from readers. And not a single name, of the 18-21 Muslim food stamp fraud ring members, was mentioned in the story.
When I asked Mask and Sehgal why they did this, both responded, "I don't have to answer that. I'm an editor for the Free Press. I don't have to tell you why we removed it." Both hung up. Complaints to their boss, Detroit Free Press Editor Jeff Taylor, their boss, were dismissed. He said the issue "is far more complicated than you think." Um, not really. Whenever they tell you it's "complicated," that's an elitist exercise in camouflaging something that's actually very simple. They just want the protesting "little people" to forget about it and go away.
Henderson says that Detroit Free Press editors tell him that Hamad says I've been "stalking" him. That's interesting to me, since I've never in my life contacted the guy, yet I have many unanswered, creepy e-mails sent to me from Imad Hamad, in which he begs me to meet with him and/or have a "dialogue" with him. While I never responded, he didn't get the message and kept sending 'em. Someone at the Freep desperately needs to consult a dictionary on the definition of stalking. I've been stalked by Hamad, NOT the other way around. Writing about and exposing an Islamic terrorist, which is not stalking. If reporting the facts is "stalking," the Freep editors can rest assured that they are NOT "stalkers," especially not editors Mask, Sehgal, and Taylor.
Here's the e-mail sent to me by Stephen Henderson, Deputy Editorial Editor of the Free Press explaining the PC-whitewash of Islamic terrorism from my piece:
From: Henderson, Stephen shenderson600@freepress.comSent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 5:19 PM
To: Debbie Schlussel
Subject: edited column.
Hey Debbie, there have been some late changes to your column that I need to explain.
We think that, given your recent rather personal run-ins with Imad Hamad on our forums [DS: Again, this never happened. I DON'T comment on Free Press forums. I comment HERE on MY site. But, now, it's official--the Freep is the official guard for Imad Hamad.], it's probably not a great idea to have you commenting on "Islamic terrorists" in your Fieger piece. Frankly, it will only cause you grief and detract from the excellent point you're making about the frivolity of campaign finance laws. Without those comments, you can't even rationally be accused of being anti-Arab or anti-Muslim; any detractors will have to focus on your arguments alone.
I'm sorry for that, and sorry for the late notice, but it's better, in our judgment, to have you avoid commenting on that issue for us.
So I had to do a little surgery with your piece . . . I think it hardly reads any different..
Um, "a little surgery"? More like a heart transplant. No, make that a mastectomy.
To say I'm PO'd is an understatement. But it is instructive, just how occupied by PC and Pan-Islamism the Detroit Free Press pages and leadership is. I abided by the 650-word limit and sent the piece in, early Monday Morning. Then, at 5:19 p.m. yesterday, I was sent a completely different version, which I never saw or approved. I first read it, along with you, this morning.
Compare what I sent the Free Press, with the completely terrorism-whitewashed BS they ran. Here's what I, in fact, wrote, which was set to run until 5:19 p.m. The deleted parts are in bold:
By Debbie SchlusselWho is a bigger threat to America--Geoffrey Fieger or Islamic terrorists?
If you listen to the feds downtown, the answer is the former.
While soldiers are dying overseas and crime is at its highest levels in Detroit, we are focusing on the extremely dangerous . . . sub-rosa campaign contributions by Fieger to a failed Democratic Presidential candidate?
When FBI agents raided Fieger's offices and his employees' homes, they outnumbered FBI agents who searched for Osama Bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora. While the U.S. Attorney's Office has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars prosecuting Fieger, Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse finds that U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III--a Bush nominee to the federal Bench--has one of the country's lowest rates of pursuing terrorist cases referred to him by federal law enforcement agencies, and an even more paltry rate of convictions in the few cases pursued.
Yet, confidential informants and furtively taped conversations at the Fieger law offices surpass the energies in any local federal terrorism case pursued to date. Fieger was pursued with far more vigor and faces far more time in prison than Nada Nadim Prouty, a Hezbollah spy in both the FBI and CIA.
As a conservative, I could not disagree more with Fieger's politics and career achievements--representing Dr. Death and expanding America's litigation explosion. But I appreciate the trial going on at the federal court building as a waste of federal firepower--a politically--motivated burn of resources that won't achieve much for the citizens of the Eastern District of Michigan, regardless of outcome.
Fieger and law partner Ven Johnson are accused of violating federal campaign finance laws and the $2,300 limits they impose on donations per Presidential candidate per cycle. The Justice Department claims that Fieger illegally reimbursed employees for donations to John Edwards to get around the limits.
It's not the first time U.S. Attorney Murphy squandered federal tax dollars on this kind of prosecution. Amongst the accusations leveled at Carl Marlinga--who was ultimately acquitted--were allegations that Marlinga induced some contributors to launder campaign contributions through family members to get around federal limits for his Congressional run.
But these laws are inconsistently applied and anachronistic. That's why Fieger's donations aren't a hot-button issue. Talk radio is not exploding with callers angry about what Fieger and Johnson allegedly did. Wealthy Americans routinely skirt campaign finance limits by legally donating thousands more through their under-aged children. Also legal are the myriad independent expenditure campaigns, which spend millions for and against candidates, whose donors' identities are often murky and unknown until after the election. The same goes for millions of dollars in free campaign publicity Oprah Winfrey gave Barack Obama on the campaign trail, in her magazine, and on her daytime talk show--worth well over the $2,300 limit.
No-one's indicting Winfrey. So, why is the government going after Fieger? Wouldn't it be better if we did away with campaign finance limits? Not that I will ever be able to give anything approaching $2,300 to a candidate. But campaign finance limits drive wealthy donors underground, encouraging them to hide donations through third parties. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Now, more than a decade into the internet age, with instant candidate campaign finance reporting, it's time to do away with Byzantine, anachronistic campaign finance limits and equally backward prosecutions. If Geoffrey Fieger wants to donate over $100,000 to a candidate, let him. So long as there's full reporting, campaign opponents can always use that information against the willing recipient.
Campaign finance rules began after insurance executive W. Clement Stone donated $2 million to Richard Nixon's re-election effort in 1972. Jealous politicians and the loyal opposition balked. And now here we are.
I'm not sure it's so bad if a candidate is "bought," so long as there's full disclosure of who's doing the buying.
Prosecuting Fieger is just "bad priorities." It's the litigation equivalent of digging for Jimmy Hoffa.
That this version didn't run is absurd. But, sadly, I couldn't avoid the PC-police at the Detroit Free Press. And, as I noted, it's not the first time the Detroit Free Press has whitewashed Islamic terrorism out of what you read.
The Detroit Free Press' slogan is "On Guard for [100-odd] Years." Needs to be changed to:
On Guard for Islamic Terrorists and Imad Hamad.
**** UPDATE: Earlier today, above, I wrote that Detroit Free Press Stephen Henderson was a good guy, but based on his responses to some of my readers, I've re-evaluated that assessment. While he was nice to me and told me he wanted to write the piece as is, it appears that he was either not telling me the truth or has changed his story as a stuck response to readers. Either way, instead of defending his paper's absurd PC, pan-Islamist editorial censorship policies, he's attacking me.
Here's an exchange between Henderson and a righteously disappointed reader:
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 2:06 PMTo: Henderson, Stephen shenderson600@freepress.com
Subject: Gutting D. Schlussel op/ed
I didn't think papers changed writers op/ed's anymore.
It's why your industry is a slowly dying one. Too bad, papers used to be about getting information out without bias.
Not anymore!
Good day!
***
From: "Henderson, Stephen" shenderson600@freepress.comDate: Fri, 2 May 2008 14:12:13
Subject: RE: Gutting D. Schlussel op/ed
Are you joking? You obviously know nothing about the newspaper business.
EVERY op/ed is subject to editing. Every one. Debbie's was changed less so than any I've touched in the past three weeks.
She is whining about three grafs that were excised, essentially to protect HER from charges that she has some wanton anti-Arab bias that infects everything she writes.
That's what editors DO, my friend, always have, and always will.
Nice elitist, patronizing response. Very defensive, too. Interesting way of elevating a profession that ain't rocket science and telling my readers they "just don't understand."
Um, no, Stephen, editors EDIT. They don't editorialize, unless they, themselves, are writing an editorial or commentary. What Henderson and his editors above did was change the point of view of what I wrote. That's NOT editing. That's writing, in my name, something I didn't say, because they don't want people to read what I really wrote.
Hey, Stephen, whatever happened to those "Sunshine Week" editorials you wrote about the public's right to know everything? As we now know, they were total BS and complete hypocrisy.
One other thing, my writing is NOT anti-Arab. I've praised many Arabs on this site. I write about Islamists, something Henderson would know if he had even the slightest interest in accuracy, which he apparently does not.
Hilarious that a guy who is the deputy editorial page editor of a major newspaper in the heart of Islamic America, still--6.5 years after 9/11--doesn't know that there is a difference between Arabs and Muslims. Hello . . . ?
Still, good to know that he and the Freep see themselves as the guardians of all things Arab. Best to see anything they "report" in that vein, ie., propaganda and advocacy, NOT journalism.
**** UPDATE #2: Hmmm . . . getting more and more examples of responses to readers from an angry Stephen Henderson, op-ed page editor for the Detroit Counterterrorism-Free Press. Boy, was I ever wrong in my assessment that he was a good guy. Thought I was a good judge of character, but you know what they say about exceptions to every rule.
Now, I'm a "racist." Islamic terrorism is a race? Since when? What color are they? Playing the race card--the 2nd to last refuge of a scoundrel; the first refuge of Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson . . . and Detroit Free Press op-ed page editor Stephen Henderson.
Oh, and now Henderson is saying that all terrorists are Arabs. I wrote in the piece about Islamic terrorists. Again, the dude needs a clue on the diff between Arabs and Muslims, which living in the Detroit area is really like knowing how to read at a first-grade level. And again, Arabs--whom I do NOT attack on my site and whom I've praised (Michael Monsoor, Mayor Allan Monsour, Brigitte Gabriel, Edward Masry, etc., etc., etc.)--are a "race"? What an ignoramus.
It's all in this exchange yet another reader, Joe, had with Henderson. Joe says, "Debbie, he claims to be saving you from yourself. Helluva nice guy." Yup, Joe has him pegged. I love his face, all two of them:
From: JoeSent: Friday, May 02, 2008 4:45 PM
To: Henderson, Stephen
Subject: Debbie Schlussel
Mr. Henderson,
Nice two face you have there, sir. Shmooz Ms. Schlussel, hijack her story and mold it to fit your taste. That should sell papers. You are a discredit to the paper you for. Guys like you are murdering a dying industry.
***
From: Henderson, Stephen shenderson600@freepress.comSubject: RE: Debbie Schlussel
To: Joe
Date: Friday, May 2, 2008, 4:48 PM
Hijack?
We excised THREE grafs on a topic that, frankly, she has NO credibility on. [DS: Um, he wishes I had no credibility.]
Her piece got the lightest editing of ANY I've touched in the last three weeks. What a whiner.
Everyone knows she's anti-Arab. . . they would simply have disregarded her very, very strong points about the First Amendment and political prosecution if that other stuff had stayed in.
That is one of the paramount roles of an editor: to save authors from themselves, when necessary. [DS: I don't need saving, but when I do, I'll ask for Prince Charming, not Prince of PC.]
Sorry you think that is "murdering" a "dying" industry. You're just wrong.
As a point of example, take a look at the comments underneath her piece on our website:
No one is trashing Debbie for her well-known racist rants; they're arguing the merits of her argument in the piece. That's not an accident, and owes entirely to the editing we did.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Stephen Henderson
Deputy Editorial Page Editor
Detroit Free Press
313-222-6659
So much for Henderson's dumb "We Changed Debbie's Opinion Column to Save Her From Her Opinion on Islamic Terrorists, So No-One Would Attack Her On That" Defense. Check out the Free Report From Thursday, which reported on what I wrote about Ali Jawad's ties to Hezbollah. No comments there attacking me in the way he claims (not that I can't handle it if they did--what am I, a powder puff?):
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080501/NEWS15/805010438/1008/NEWS
***
From: JoeSent: Friday, May 02, 2008 5:31 PM
To: Henderson, Stephen
Subject: RE: Debbie Schlussel
Maybe the readers that take exception to what she writes about are from the vast Islamic extremist bastion of Dearborn. Maybe they are too blind to assess the threat around them and the importance of the case for our national security. I guess if a lot of people that want more lenient sentences for guilty helpers of terrorist write enough comments in your paper, it just shows the clientele that has become your audience. I'm not one of them. I'm not a sheeple. Your credibility with your extremist supporters is obviously intact. She has gone undercover into mosques and community centers, risking her life for her country. That is credibility.
Her work is on display everyday and credits sources. Just because she's Jewish doesn't mean she's without credibility.
***
From: Henderson, Stephen shenderson600@freepress.comSubject: RE: Debbie Schlussel
To: Joe
Date: Friday, May 2, 2008, 5:32 PM
HA! Debbie's detractors are the extremists???? Best laugh I've had all week.
And being Jewish has nothing to do with her credibility. Being a bigot does.
Stephen Henderson
Deputy Editorial Page Editor
Detroit Free Press
313-222-6659
***
Joe's last e-mail to Stephen Henderson sums it up for me:
From: JoeDate: Fri, May 2, 2008 at 5:38 PM
Subject: RE: Debbie Schlussel
To: "Henderson, Stephen" shenderson600@freepress.com
Boy your living up to the 2 face nick name. On her site she claimed, at first that you were probably not the one to carve up her work because you seemed like a nice guy. Slow day at the dying paper today, huh? You got right back to me in like 95 seconds. There has to be more important anti terror stories out there to expose. Guess that's not your main priority these days. Good job.
Although I did not ask Joe or the other reader who wrote Henderson to write, I think the letters and the responses they got are enlightening, especially to me. Henderson was dishonest with me and played good cop/bad cop, claiming that he did not agree with the views of his fellow liberal Freep editors about my writing. But, with the plethora of immature, baseless name-calling about me, which he's very unprofessionally engaged in with my readers, he's betrayed that claim. And I just have one name to call him: liar.
Joe got the better of this guy and pointed out why the Freep and other mainstream newspapers are losing their appeal and their circulation is nosediving.
Posted by Debbie at 10:09 AM
May 01, 2008
On Holocaust Remembrance Day: "My Father, Of Blessed Memory"
By Mayer Busak/ Translated from Hebrew by H.L. Schlussel, MD, Z"L
[Note From Debbie: Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. This article, "My Father, Of Blessed Memory," originally written in Hebrew by Holocaust survivor Mayer Busak in Israeli newspaper HaZofe in 1991, was translated into English by my own father, of blessed memory, H.L. Schlussel, MD. With the permission of Mr. Busak, my father translated this very moving, sad article about the days in the camps and submitted it for publication to a few different Jewish magazines. He was, sadly, rejected. After my father passed away in September, I was cleaning out his office and found the article, along with a 1991 rejection letter from Commentary Magazine. Silly them.
Although my father was a religious man and Torah scholar, he recognized--and lamented--that the horrors of the Holocaust caused some to lose their faith (though many others survived because of their faith). My father wanted more than anything for the world to read this article, as did its author, Mr. Busak. And I know of no better way to both honor that wish and remember the millions of victims of the Nazis than to print this exclusive English language translation of the article, herein.]
My father, of blessed memory, owned a large metal tool store in the city of Krakow, in Poland. But every day, before he opened his store, he would go, in the early hours of the morning, his Tallis [Jewish prayer shawl] and Tfillin [leather Jewish prayer item] sack under his arm, for morning prayers at his house of study.
And when my father, of penetrating eyes, wrapped himself in his Tallis, his pale, Nazarite face wreathed in his black, brown beard beamed with joy at Dvekus [Jewish concept of clinging to G-d].
I will not dwell here on the great suffering and travail that came to my father during the time of the German conquest, about the loss of my brother and sisters, on my mother being sent off to a factory for the manufacture of chemical weapons. I just want to present a few episodes from my father's last days in the Plashov concentration camp in which we were together.
My father worked in the metal shop in the camp and I in the carpentry shop. We lived in separate cabins. These were the type of large, wooden building that is always enveloped with darkness and mist. In every cabin, there lived about 500 men, that slept in four-tiered bunks made from boards. Between the rows of scaffolding supporting the bunks, there was a narrow passage way.
Every morning before I went out to formation that took place in the central square of the camp, in which the prisoners stood to be counted with their blocks, I would come to my father's cabin to see how he was. I also did this in the evening after work. My father spoke little during the days of the war. From the time that my mother was sent off from the Plashov camp, he actually became mute. Then, one evening, I noticed that for the last few days, my father had been humming and singing a melody that I remembered from the old days, from that distant house of prayer. But the words of the melody were hidden from me, as if they had sunk into the depths of the dark mist. I asked him what this melody was. Instead of an answer, he just waved his hand.
One evening, when I was standing next to his bunk, somebody approached and told the following:
"This morning after the night shift came back from work, the SS man, Green, came into the cabin. He saw Shlomo [Solomon] Goldblatt standing wrapped in his Tallis next to his bed on the end of the row of bunks. The German drew his pistol, he took Goldblatt to a pit near the cabin and shot him . . . It's anarchy . . ." finished the narrator. "I tell you, it is all anarchy." When he finished, the person that had told us of the incident stood quietly in his place, as if waiting for my father's response. But my father did not say a word.
The next morning when I came, as was usual, to my father's bed, the cabin was still enveloped in mist and silence. My father stood next to his wooden bad wrapped in his Tallis and sang and hummed his melody. Suddenly, I remembered. This was the melody from the Yom Kippur prayer that tells about the angels singing praise and asking each other, "Who dwells on high?"
One day, to my astonishment, it was as if my father smashed his silence, and he said:
Among the salesmen from the factories that used to come to my office, at the store, there was one that would always bring up matters of religion in the conversation. During the last period before the war broke out, he would tell about the atrocities in the German concentration camps. In general, he would then add, "and you are a religious man, a believer. Tell me, if He [G-d] exists, why does He permit it. Why doesn't He become involved?" . . . And there were arguments. Yes there was a world of arguments, he in his world and I in mine. . . Yes, it was a world of arguments . . .
And again, my father sank into the silence. Finally, I dared and I asked, "What are you thinking about?"
He answered, "The question of our first father [Abraham] gnaws at me . . ."
I did not know which question he meant.
This happened the night of the Seder of 1943. It was clear that for the Jews of the camp, this was just a date only for recalling memories. It was impossible even to dream about the Passover Seder feast. As usual, I approached the bunk of my father. And behold, from a bundle of old clothes that was sitting on the boards of the head of his "bed," my father took out matzoh [unleavened cracker traditionally eaten on Passover in lieu of bread, which is forbidden during the holiday] wrapped in a white shirt, which he had washed in the wash cabin of the camp. He gave it to me and he said, "East and recite the blessing, 'who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to eat matzoh.'"
I was astonished. - Where did he get matzoh? Then I noticed that the one gold tooth that he had in his mouth was missing.
I asked, "What happened?"
I was afraid that one of the SS men had knocked his tooth out with a blow.
I pulled it out, I sold it. I had the opportunity to send some money with one of the gentiles, to mother. From the rest, I bought a little flour from the camp bakery. I baked a few matzohs on the range in the metal shop and divided them among a few people.
He did not taste the bread ration that was distributed to the Jews every day in camp. He traded them for a few pieces of potato, and he lived on them all the days of Passover. [DS: Jewish law prohibits eating bread on Passover.]
On the 15th of Iyar [month on the Jewish/Hebrew calendar], a "selection" took place among the prisoners of the camp. In the central square of the camp, twenty thousand Jews were stood in their block - men, women, old people, and children. They were commanded to undress and to pass, one by one, by the tables that were set up in the corner of the square. Next to the tables stood the SS men. As each of the naked prisoners passed next to the tables, they stated their number. The SS man took out a card from one of the boxes that were sitting on the table, and cast a glance at the passing individual. With his pen, he made a mark on the card and returned it to the box.
In camp, there was talk that those who had been marked would be sent away soon.
A week after this, the prisoners of camp were called early one morning to formation in the central square. Nobody knew for sure what the reason for the formation was at such an early hour. Just about all of them took with them their bowl and plate in which they received their daily ration of thin soup. Who knew! Perhaps, they would be sent to another camp, and there they would need them. This time, the Jews did not have to undress. With an announcement of the names and numbers, people were separated from their blocks. About 2,000 men and women, young and old, were separated and marched in lines to the freight cars of the train that waited near the camp. That very day, the train arrived at the crematoria in Auschwitz.
The next day, my father's "bed" was empty. Only the bundle of his few clothes were left in its place and next to it, his spoon and bowl. But the Tallis in which he wrapped himself every morning was not there. It appeared he had taken it with him.*
Suddenly, there flashed within me the question of Abraham:
"Can the Judge of the Whole World not do justice?"
[* Jewish males are buried in their Tallis (prayer shawl).]
Posted by Debbie at 02:48 AM
April 29, 2008
EXCLUSIVE: Who is Ali Jawad?: McCain Campaign Dumps Key Hezbollah Agent, Convicted Insurance Defrauder; Feds, MI GOP Should Follow Suit
Over the past week, I spent far less time writing for this website than planned. Instead, I spent hours on the phone with John McCain staffers and key supporters in Michigan to right a mistake.
And, unlike the Barack Obama who clings to anti-Semites and terrorism supporters, John McCain did the right thing: He dumped Ali Jawad--an open Hezbollah supporter and key agent of the terrorist group in the Detroit area. Jawad is also a federal insurance fraud convict.
On Friday, I received this written confirmation that Jawad was cut:
From: Danny Diaz - CommunicationsDate: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 6:14 PM
Subject: RNC Response
To: writedebbie@gmail.com
Ali Jawad is no longer participating in efforts - whether fundraising or otherwise - on behalf of McCain Victory 2008.
-Danny Diaz, RNC Spokesperson
Danny Diaz
Republican National Committee (RNC)
(Emphasis added.)
I congratulate John McCain and his campaign because they proved that McCain truly is a maverick and independent of the Republican establishment who brought Mr. Jawad to his campaign. McCain's Michigan and national staff have shown courage in bucking what is a sad trend on the part of the Michigan Republican Party: going for pro-Hezbollah Shiite cash and support. Michigan GOPers took lots of money from Jawad.
Last week, several high-dollar Michigan Republican donors received an invitation to a May 6th $2,300 per head campaign fundraiser. Both John McCain and Mitt Romney are scheduled to attend. The donors noticed the name, "Ali Jawad," prominently listed on the Finance Committee and contacted me, knowing I had mentioned and written about him in the past.
Here are the specifics on Ali Jawad:
Ali Jawad and his company, Armada Oil, were convicted of insurance and mail fraud in federal court and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution and fines. Michael Mustapha Makki, Jawad's co-defendant--also convicted--in the case, USA v. Makki et al, is a member of the Makki family, many members of which were convicted of cigarette smuggling for Hezbollah.
Several sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirm that Jawad sold cigarettes obtained from out of state and avoided paying the exorbitant Michigan cigarette tax he collected, pursuant to the scam. Although key members of law enforcement were aware of this, they were ordered by late, then-Dearborn Mayor Michael Guido not to pursue the matter and to call off their investigation. Mr. Jawad was a major donor to Guido, as was indicted Hezbollah financier and fugitive, Talal Chahine. In 2003, Jawad--originally from the Hezbollah stronghold of Nabatiya--and Chahine, together, accompanied Mayor Guido on a trip to Lebanon, for which they raised thousands of dollars. They visited the Hezbollah-controlled cities of Bint Jbeil and Qana.
Jawad is known as one of the most important agents of Hezbollah in the U.S. He is related (through his brother's marriage into the Safieddine family) to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and the man Iran has designated as Nasrallah's heir apparent, Hachem Safieddine (currently a member of the 7-member Hezbollah ruling council, the Shurah Al-Karar). The Jawad and Safieddine families have many business dealings together. Both Ali Jawad and the Safieddines own many gas stations throughout the Detroit area. Armada Oil--of which Jawad is CEO--also distributes gas to gas stations throughout the Detroit area.
Jawad isn't shy about his support for Hezbollah. He defended Ali and Mohamed "Mike" Boumelhem, when they were caught by U.S. Customs agents trying to smuggle weapons to Canada and ultimately to Hezbollah. And he told The Detroit News that the terrorist group, which murdered more Americans than any other besides Al-Qaeda, isn't a terrorist group:
Killing innocent people -- we reject that. Hezbollah does not fit this category. It has protected its people.
Translation: The hundreds of Americans and Jews Hezbollah murdered are not "innocent people." Hezbollah protects Shi'ite Muslims, and they're the only ones worth protecting.
In May 2003, Jawad again traveled to Lebanon--this time, with his close friend, FBI award revokee and "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, a man who engaged in marriage fraud. Also with them was Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a Ba'ath Party member recently indicted for being a Saddam Hussein spy. Hanooti was a key official of LIFE for Relief and Development, an Al-Qaeda and HAMAS charity raided by the FBI and the U.S. Army.
During that trip, they met with Nabih Berri, head of the Hezbollah-backed Shi'ite Amal militia, who also heads the Lebanese Parliament. Berry was Hezbollah's negotiator for the Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, during which Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem was trampled to death. Federal agents have long told me that they believe Hamad's annual trips to Lebanon with these malefactors--often including visits to Bashar Assad of Syria--are terror-related trips with money-laundering as a likely purpose.
The alleged purpose of the May 2003 trip was to introduce Berri and other Hezbollah members of the Lebanese parliament to Bachar Sbeiti Kachkouche, then a 3-year-old Lebanese Canadian "child prodigy," who lived in Windsor, Canada, just over the border from Detroit. Hamad and company were purportedly raising money for Kachkouche, allegedly so he could attend Roeper, an expensive Detroit-area private school, college, and ultimately medical school. When you think about it, this is a brilliant scheme. No-one is looking at donations allegedly for the schooling of a gifted and talented toddler, nor at the ultimate destination of the money. And the toddler then gets to traverse the international borders daily. Do you think they'd search this cute, smiling boy or the vehicle in which he was riding on a daily basis? Detroit FBI agents told me they notified Canadian authorities about this scheme.
Roeper School would not confirm whether Bachar Sbeiti is currently or has ever been a student, or whether he is or was ever a scholarship recipient from the school, which would negate the need for private fundraising. Alleged "scholarship" money for Sbeiti was being raised by LIFE for Relief and Development, which was raided by FBI agents in the Detroit-area and the U.S. Army in Iraq. LIFE is believed to fund Al-Qaeda and was openly funding HAMAS' Jordanian operation for several years. Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a top LIFE official was recently indicted as a Saddam spy, and the charity's founder was identified as an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Alleged "scholarship" money for Sbeiti was also being raised by Hamad's ADC (American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee). "Donors" were instructed to make checks payable directly to LIFE and ADC. An examination of the federal tax filings for both organizations indicates no outlays for Sbeiti's education or any indication of the ultimate use of monies raised in Sbeiti's name.
But, despite all this, Ali Jawad remains "untouchable," say concerned citizens.
That might have something to do with the tight relationship both Jawad and his friend, the "former" Islamic terrorist Hamad, have with key feds. The photo above shows Ali Jawad at a recent banquet held by Hamad and a Nabih Ayad, a lawyer for Islamic terrorists. Jawad is shown sitting at the head table next to Michael Rosen, a lawyer and policy advisor with the U.S. Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes of the U.S. Treasury Department. To Rosen's right, the man who is laughing is Michigan FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew Arena. Previous to his Michigan assignment, Arena was in charge of Counterterrorism for the New York FBI and told the Christian Science Monitor that, in that capacity, his job was to set the public--and agents--straight, after a poll showed 50% of Americans had a negative view of Islam.
Also sitting at the table and shown in the next picture with Jawad and Hamad, are Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Julie L. Myers and Michigan/Ohio ICE Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz. On the far right of the photo, next to Myers, is Abed "Aboudi" Bazzi, a close friend of Jawad. Bazzi is the brother of Ali Bazzi, a Hezbollah-allied Member of the Lebanese Parliament, who is from the Shi'ite Amal militia.
Oh, the company they keep.
Fortunately, John McCain is not also keeping company with Ali Jawad. Unlike these feds, he did the right thing. But several Michigan Republicans haven't.
The list of Michigan Republicans who've taken money from Ali Jawad includes Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos, Congresswoman Candice Miller, and Congressman Joe Knollenberg a/k/a "Hezbollah Joe" (who sent $86 million in US money back to Jawad's Hezbo buddies in South Lebanon, to return the favor), U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham (who sponsored the $86 Mill Hezbo giveaway with Knollenberg), Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Cliff Taylor, and former State Rep. and failed Supreme Court nominee Marc Shulman.
On the Democratic side, Jawad gave to reliable pan-Islamist Congressmen John Conyers, David Bonior, John Dingell, and Cynthia McKinney. But as you can see, he's given primarily to Michigan Republicans. And it's a trend Michigan Republican Chair Saul Anuzis shows no willingness to stop. After I pointed out that he tried to recruit pro-Hezbollah Shi'ite Nasser Beydoun to run in 2002 as a Republican for Michigan's U.S. Senate seat, I asked Anuzis whether he would decline in the future to "outreach" to Shi'ite Muslims who support Hezbollah. He would only answer that he would appeal to whomever will vote Republican. And campaign finance reports show he's not turning away this poisonous money, either.
Other than that, Jawad is a major donor to the Dearborn-based, Islamist-dominated Arab American Political Action Committee (AAPAC), run by Osama Siblani--who was identified in Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah as an agent of Hezbollah--and Abed Hammoud. Both have compared Israel to Nazis and openly praised "the Hezbollah martyrs" as "freedom fighters." Imad Hamad is also active with the group, as is Nael AbuNab, who was convicted of several felonies for selling cars with fraudulent speedometers. AAPAC's Secretary, Lola Elzein, was removed after I sent a demand letter to Siblani, noting Elzein's multiple, written, obscene, Holocaust-denial death, rape, and torture threats to me, my parents, and grandparents.
So, how did Jawad formerly come to be one of six members of John McCain's Michigan campaign finance committee in the first place? Neither the McCain campaign nor the RNC is saying. Federal campaign finance reports show he hasn't donated a penny to the McCain. Privately, though, some people listed on the invitation are saying Jawad "came over from the Romney campaign." This is interesting, since Jawad also hasn't donated a penny to Mitt Romney, either. Perhaps he was picked because he's a Muslim name.
Or perhaps he was tapped because he was a major donor to Michigan Attorney General Cox. Cox was McCain's Michigan campaign chairman, but resigned last summer, when it looked like McCain's campaign wasn't going to succeed. Now that McCain is the presumptive nominee, though, fair-weather friend Cox is back on board and has his name on the invitation. As a Jawad donee, Cox--who is running for Michigan Governor--played both sides of the war on terrorism.
After he appeared and spoke at a pro-Israel rally, during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Cox then campaigned at the dinner of the extremist, openly pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan dinner. And he visited the offices of Jawad's friend Imad Hamad--the openly pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS Michigan ADC--asking what he could do for them. That's not to mention that he lied about and refused to pursue millions of dollars in Medicaid fraud by pregnant foreign alien Muslims perpetrated by the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS).
Cox waited for the last of the Medicaid defrauders to leave the country before he filed a few toothless, token warrants for their arrest, sending out press releases and going on national TV to brag about it. When Cox was contacted by Michigan Republican legislators, upon ACCESS chief Ismael Ahmed's nomination to head the Michigan Department of Human Sevices (overseeing billions in Medicaid), Cox declined to give them any information and was suddenly mum, unlike his effusive "O'Reilly Factor" appearance regarding the topic.
And finally, there is Jim Nicholson, a millionaire Michigan businessman and Michigan Finance Chairman of the McCain campaign. Jawad donated heavily to liberal Republican Nicholson's failed 1996 U.S. Senate bid, and Nicholson's name appears atop the McCain invitation.
Regardless of how Ali Jawad came to the John McCain campaign, John McCain and his people did the right thing and immediately dumped this malefactor, once they learned who he is. When will the feds and the Michigan Republican Party do the same?
And when will Barack Obama follow suit by dumping his many anti-Semitic, anti-Israel foreign policy advisors and supporters?
We know who the real counterterrorism candidate is. And that's why I plan to vote for John McCain. He won't be bought by campaign money. And, in this case, he's saying no to the forces of political correctness and Islamofascism.
NOT PAID FOR BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE COMMITTEE.
Posted by Debbie at 12:26 PM
April 24, 2008
Racist Sharia Bankrupts Black Maryland Couple, Shuts Down Their Restaurant
I've been following First Islamic Investment Bank a/k/a Arcapita (it's new and sanitized name to hide its Islamic goals) ever since I wrote about its anti-American, pro-HAMAS corporate executive, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. The spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, oversaw the Sharia compliance for the company, specifically the halal nature of food products sold at the Islamic Bank's coffee chain, Caribou Coffee.
After I wrote about Qaradawi's oversight of the Caribou Coffee chain in the New York Post and discussed it on FOX News' "O'Reilly Factor" and MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," Caribou had its worst sales quarter ever and fired its then-CEO Donald Dempsey.
To combat the bad publicity about this sharia-led company's coffee chain, the Islamic bank hired a Jewish CEO for Caribou, Michael Coles, who gave pay-off donations to buy off Jewish Federations in markets where it had Caribou Coffee stores (including the Detroit and Chicago Jewish Federations). That worked. Soon, rabbis like Rabbi Paul Yedwab of Michigan, and other unelected community leaders like Jay Tcath, who heads the Jewish Community Relations Council of Chicago and Don Cohen, a sleazy then-reporter for the Detroit Jewish News, were giving the "kosher" seal of approval to Caribou in newspaper stories. (Cohen even accepted free coupons from Caribou and served as a marketer for the chain by sending out the coupons in e-mails, urging Jews to patronize the chain.)
The thing is, Arcapita/First Islamic Investment Bank, is owned by Saudi and other Gulf state sheiks, some of whom are believed to have donated to homicide bomber telethons, and one of whom is from the family that owns Al-Jazeera. And Arcapita/First Islamic still employs another Islamic sharia authority with ties to Al-Qaeda.
Now, fast forward a few years, over which I've been following Arcapita. The company threatened to sue a friend of mine for writing about Caribou and repeating what I wrote about its extremist Islamic ties. As his attorney, I wrote a long letter back to Arcapita's lawyer about records and individuals we'd depose if sued. Needless to say, Arcapita's lawyers sent us a quick letter of contrition and went away.
Still, Arcapita has acquired businesses and important installations all over America for its wealthy Islamic sheikh owners. As I've noted, Arcapita recently acquired an energy plant in Texas. And, as I've noted over the years, they continue to own Church's Fried Chicken.
And that's where our story begins. A few months ago, Fred Taub of Boycott Watch, brought to my attention an ongoing federal lawsuit between Marcus and Denise Beasley, an entrepreneurial Black couple, and Arcapita. Their race is important to the story.
I wanted to write about it then, but the Beasleys told Fred they wanted to wait. I deferred to them. Apparently, they've since talked to other parties, because the story is now out.
The Beasleys owned a Church's Fried Chicken franchise. They planned to offer breakfeast dishes, including pork and bacon. But, once Arcapita acquired Church's, Arcapita's strict sharia compliance requirements were foisted upon the Beasley's and they were restricted from selling the breakfast items. They say this is the reason their business failed and that they were driven to bankruptcy. They lost everything, including their home, as a result. In their lawsuit, the Beasleys claim that Arcapita allowed White-owned franchisees to continue to sell the non-halal offerings in their stores.
If this is true--and I imagine they must have some proof of White-owned Church's that sell non-halal meat and poultry--then it is emblematic of a part of Islam that is rarely broached in America: Islam's racist attitude against Black people. We all know what happened in Sudan, and I've written many times over the last decade about how Blacks are called "Abed" (slave, in Arabic) or "Abeed" (slaves) throughout the Muslim world. This worldview is now, apparently, the basis for doing business at Arcapita/First Islamic-owned businesses.
Here are excerpts from the Beasley's story of how Sharia put them into bankruptcy from Black Enterprise/The Baltimore Daily Record:
A Baltimore couple has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Islamic investment bank that owns the Church's Chicken fast-food chain, alleging their franchise failed because the bank's strict adherence to the religious code of Shari'ah prohibited the couple from selling pork.Marcus and Denise Beasley, who are black, claimed they were treated differently by the bank, now known as Atlanta-based Arcapita Inc., than non-black franchisees who were allowed to continue serving breakfast dishes containing pork after the chain was acquired by the bank in December 2004.
The couple did not benefit from the grandfather policy allowing the sale of pork even though their contract with the chain's former owners, AFC Enterprises Inc., to open a location in Baltimore/ Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport's new terminal predated the takeover and policy change, according to the suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
In the lawsuit, which seeks $5 million in actual damages, $5 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages, the Beasleys contend the bank's "stated reason" for disallowing the sale of pork in their case -- they had not yet opened for business - - was "pretextual."
"Arcapita permitted all of the other breakfast franchisees, which were approximately 30 Church's Chicken restaurants, to do so, all of which were owned by persons who are non-African American or Caucasian," the complaint states. "Of the Church's Chicken breakfast franchises that existed when Arcapita acquired the chain, plaintiffs are the only ones who are African American." . . .
Church's Chicken, which serves American Southern comfort food, was founded in San Antonio in 1952 and has approximately 1,500 franchises worldwide, some of which trade as Texas Chicken, according to the company's Web site.
On Dec. 26, Crescent Capital Investments Inc., the U.S. affiliate of Bahrain-based First Islamic Investment Bank BSC, bought Church's, according to the suit. First Islamic changed its name to Arcapita in March 2005, the compliant states.
In April 2005, the Beasleys entered into a sublease with BAA Maryland Inc., the developer of retail and concession space in the airport, to operate their restaurant in the Pier A/B Core Food Court, according to the suit. The franchise's menu, which included pork items, had to be submitted for approval and became part of the sublease, the suit states.
According to the complaint, the Beasleys had been assured they would be receiving the same letter Arcapita had sent to other existing franchisees, which said the parent company would not be collecting royalties on pork products.
But "approximately one week before" the Beasleys' May 18 opening, the suit states, Arcapita informed them that, as new franchisees who had not yet opened, they may not serve pork, which Islam considers unclean.
The restaurant opened on schedule -- but never served pork -- and closed in late July 2006.
Part of the "substantial economic losses" the Beasleys suffered was the loss of their house, according to their attorney, Paul M. Vettori of Kenny & Vettori LLP in Towson.
"As the result of the failure of their business at the BWI airport, they were unable to repay the bank for the loan they took out and the [home] was sold at foreclosure," Vettori said.
I have looked at the pleadings in this case, and based on what I've read, I believe the Beasley's version of events and case against Arcapita is solid. I hope they are victorious.
But, whatever happens in this case, it is an important example of the harms that come from forced sharia imposed upon America: racism, bankruptcy, and extreme financial difficulties.
The Beasley case is only the beginning. Expect much more of this to come as more and more Muslims insert themselves and their mores upon America, because President Bush and future presidents and politicians allowed it to happen.
America, still asleep at the wheel.
Posted by Debbie at 11:34 AM
April 22, 2008
The Strange Case of the Alleged Israeli Spy
I begin this by saying I am absolutely against spying on America. It's against the law and a betrayal. We are supposed to be loyal American citizens and support our country. We do not spy on it for third parties.
But America, sadly, has a very spotty--and biased--record with regard to whom we prosecute for spying and how tough a sentence we seek in relation to the damage to America's national security.
Jonathan Pollard--a man in very poor health--has been in prison for over two decades for spying for an ally, Israel. Much of the information he gave Israel was info America pledged to give Israel per treaties both countries signed, but which America didn't give. He also was accused at trial of disclosing information to the then-Soviet Union, which we now know was the work of Aldrich Ames. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison.
Contrast that with Chinese and Muslim spies--including the glaring case of Hezbollah spy Nada Nadim Al-Aouar Deladurantaye Valley Prouty. They spied for America's enemies and, despite the irreparable national security havoc they wreaked, they received light sentences.
Prouty (who was technically not Muslim, but spied for them) will do less than six months in jail, if that, despite giving sensitive info to terrorist groups. Another man, a U.S. citizen with several aliases including Noureddine Malki and Almaliki Nour, served as a translator for our troops in Iraq and tipped off Al-Qaeda insurgents to our troop movements. This resulted in many IED explosion murders of our troops. The man was to be sentenced recently, and prosecutors were only seeking ten years in prison for him.
Now comes the case of Ben-Ami Kadish. Today, this 84-year-old man was indicted and arrested for allegedly spying for Israel . . . over 20 years ago, in 1985. Apparently, he had the same Israeli handler as Pollard, Yosef Yagur.
Kadish, it is claimed, shared nuclear secrets with Israel. (That's strange, since by that time, Israel already had fully developed nuclear weapons.) Also alleged is that he shared info on F-15 fighter jets (which Israel has long since had) and the Patriot Missile (which America gave to Israel during the first Gulf War). In related news, Kadish has also been charged with industrial espionage for sharing Atari and BetaMax technology with Israel in the late '70s/early '80s.
There's the obvious question: Why now? If authorities really believed Kadish was a spy for Israel, why didn't America indict him then--when they went after Jonathan Pollard?
The conventional story is that America always believed there was a second Israeli mole, other than Pollard, and that the key to finding out his/her identity was the handler, Yagur. But Yagur left for Israel when Pollard was caught. If he was going to talk--which he wasn't--he'd have talked then. I find it hard to believe that he, suddenly, went to American authorities and spilled "the goods" on Kadish.
And that's not the case. The indictment details recent surveillance on Kadish and Yagur. So, it's quite obvious the government knew about Kadish for years and has been watching him . . . and doing nothing until now, more than two decades later.
Frankly, I find the case very odd and absurd. If you knew a man spied in 1985, why are you suddenly indicting him now, when he's barely alive?
I'll tell you why.
We are, thankfully, in the last throes of the Bush Administration. After 6.5 years of failing to be the counter-terrorism President and--instead--wasting it on pressuring Israel, Bush and Condi Clueless want to give it one last, brute-force, old school try.
Making Israel look bad--and like it's just another "enemy" that spies on America--is a brilliant PR move. It's a great way to pressure Israel into giving up the store to the Islamic world's favorite football, the Palestinians.
Using a doddering, ailing 84-year-old widower--not so brilliant. Just a shame.
If Ben-Ami Kadish was truly a spy against America--and perhaps he was, he should have been prosecuted . . . in 1985.
Now, it's just ridiculous and reminds me of the FBI digging up a farm to find Jimmy Hoffa (when the oldest available suspect was 93). I can't wait to see the forthcoming excuses about why they waited 23 years.
The government has been pursuing a trumped-up "espionage" case against two pro-Israel lobbyists who worked for the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), for several years now. The case--which has dragged on and on--even has the judge publicly doubting the case.
My view is that, since that case failed to adequately demonize Israel into capitulation, this is the next best thing that's been waiting in the hopper.
And I believe it will go nowhere.
Much worse, the PR campaign for the "Get Israel" crowd is failing in this case on the first day. Carl in Jerusalem has a video report on the indictment. Where's the video of this frail old man being arrested? That is must-see viewing and surely tells all about the validity of bringing this case, so many years later.
It's embarrassing. Which is probably the word that encapsulates this entire non-sensical case.
If he is found guilty, I wonder if he will get the six-months-or-less sentence that Hezbollah spy Prouty will get.
And I'd love to see how much money and resources are being spent on this versus current cases of Muslim spying. We are in the fight of our lives against Islam, and instead, we are using our energies to fight an ally who did something wrong 23 years ago.
What a waste of firepower.
***
FYI, in case you were wondering about the photo above, Kadish fought for the U.S. and Britain in World War II and that pic is from the Jewish War Veterans, his local post of which, he was the commander. He also fought with the Haganah to help in Israel's founding.
Posted by Debbie at 03:14 PM
April 21, 2008
Meet "Qaeda Morgan": Where in this Fantasy is Osama Bin Laden?
You've heard of Tokyo Rose. You've seen Hanoi Jane. You've joked about Baghdad Bob.
Now meet Qaeda Morgan.
Osama Bin Laden has found in Morgan Spurlock the embodiment of all the previous enemy propagandists. Except this one has a major film production deal.
The fake-umentary maker who lied about McDonald's in "Supersize Me," lies about Islam, America, Israel, and Jews in "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" in theaters, this past weekend.
In 2005, Spurlock made a pro-Muslim episode of his F/X series, "30 Days" for which he won predictable awards and accolades from the pan-terrorist Muslim Public Affairs Council and CAIR. I was asked by Spurlock's people to be in it, but I refused and wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal. Carefully orchestrated, Spurlock already decided his favorable conclusion about American Muslims, before he even began filming. He's making the same case for extremist Muslims worldwide in this deceptive movie and working with the same crew of propagandist filmmakers.
In this silver screen version of slant, Spurlock presents Osama Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda terrorists as animated baseball players on cards and in music videos, and terrorism as some sort of video game. And it is, indeed, all a game to him. His fellow left-winger, vegan chef girlfriend is pregnant with his kid, and he's worried about his kid being born into an "unsafe world." Therefore, feels the need to track down Bin Laden. Whatever. For the first ten minutes of the movie it's all "me, me, me." We watch Spurlock go through myriad stupid counterterrorism training and exercises while donning a wife-beater tank top.
And it's all downhill from there.
In this so-called documentary, the most hostile people are not Muslims, but Israeli Orthodox Jews. The most menacing terrorist threat in Israel is . . . a bikini. Almost all Muslims love America and Americans. They only dislike our foreign policy. They are just like us with the same hopes and dreams for their children, and they almost universally deplore Bin Laden. Terrorists and terrorism are created not by Islam or Bin Laden, but by America propping up pro-American dictators, instead of letting, say, the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt democratically to become the latest Al-Qaeda state. Christians are not persecuted in the least in any Islamic country (except Saudi Arabia).
Oh, and America must force Israel to acquiesce to the Palestinians and give them a state (which they de facto already have) to "take away an argument" from Al-Qaeda. Plus, HAMAS doesn't really have anything against Jews, per se, just Israel. And terrorism--as we were also told by everyone else after 9/11--that's not Islam.
Uh-huh.
These and other fantasies and Brothers Grimm material make up the crux of Morgan Spurlock's foray into high quality Bin Laden cinema. And although Spurlock's deliberate selectivity and prompting of Muslims to say what they think will please Americans on film, a minor detail he forgot to edit out was very telling and subtly betrayed his message to the few who know better.
In denouncing the fence that Israel has been forced to erect to try to keep Islamic terrorists out, Spurlock shows carefully edited shots of graffiti on the fence that make the Palestinians look sympathetic. The irony of part of the graffiti he showed was lost on him. It was a picture of a young, beautiful Muslim woman in a kheffiyeh with the quote underneath: "I Am Not a Terrorist."
Problem is, that picture, near the Ramallah checkpoint, is a photo of Leila Khaled, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group. The famous picture of her doesn't include the AK-47 she actually held in the real-life portrait. Khaled, carrying grenades, hijacked TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and tried unsuccessfully to hijack El-Al Flight 219 in 1970 (also with grenades). Even though she failed to hijack the El-Al flight, her hijacking partner shot El-Al flight crew member Shlomo Vider at least five times, seriously wounding him.
As I've noted on this site, Khaled planned the hijacking operation in 1970, which included the successful hijacking of three other planes, and she uttered the code "go" phrase, "Labnah Sandwich," which set off the attack. Details of the hijacking operation are well laid out in the book, "Terror in Black September," by David Raab, which I am currently reading and which will be reviewed soon on this site. Raab was a hostage on one of the flights that was successfully hijacked by Khaled's gant.
One of the reasons Khaled was so attractive was that she had massive plastic surgery to conceal her identity in order to carry out more Palestinian terrorist attacks. Her face has graced pro-Hezbollah rallies in Dearbornistan, and she has the dubious distinction of being the first known female Islamic terrorist.
Now, she's "Not a Terrorist"?
That's symbolic of the lies and fraud throughout this movie. Everywhere Spurlock goes--whether it's Egypt or Jordan or Gaza or the Palestinian Authority or Aghanistan or Morocco or Pakistan, everyone is nice and friendly, hates Bin Laden, and loves Americans . . . again, just not our foreign policy. We are shown a HAMAS city councilman from Gaza, who apparently never read the HAMAS Charter calling for the elimination of all Jews. He claims that he and the rest of HAMAS aren't against Jews. They just don't like Israel. Riiiight.
The only bad places in this movie are Saudi Arabia . . . and Israel. The most hostile people Spurlock encounters in the entire Middle East are ultra-Orthodox Jews in the religious Meah Shearim section of Israel. Unlike the friendly hijab-encrusted Palestinian Muslim women and HAMASniks and even extremist Saudi Arabians (the only Muslims Spurlock portrays accurately), these men won't talk to Spurlock. And he shows endless footage of them refusing his inquiries. Smart men. But, of course, as we know, there are plenty of Israelis who would talk to him. They just didn't make it on film because that wouldn't serve Spurlock's propaganda purposes (but for an anti-Israel far left Israeli journalist, Yair Lapid, whom he briefly interviews). One of the Orthodox men shouts
Get out of here, you filth.
My sentiments on Spurlock, exactly. Great minds think alike.
Oh, and that's after he shows a "frightening" bomb scare in Israel. After showing us the alleged damage Israelis did to Gaza and denouncing the fence bordering it, Spurlock shows us scared Israelis and a robotic team out to defuse a bo