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Congress Mulls Probe of Communists' Ties to Appeasement Movement, Radical Islam
NewsMax.com ^ | Feb.28, 2003 | Wes Vernon

Posted on 02/28/2003 6:35:58 AM PST by conservativecorner

See part one of series, "Useful Idiots: Marxists Exploit the Appeasement Movement." Part two: 'Hate-America Leftists' Lead the Appeasement Movement. WASHINGTON – NewsMax.com has learned that preliminary inquiries are or soon will be under way on Capitol Hill exploring the possibility of investigating the link between communists and radical Islamic terrorists. Evidence mounts that this coalition orchestrated the recent appeasement demonstrations against President Bush’s policy in Iraq.

No decisions have been made on whether such a probe will go forward or what committee would be in charge. But conservatives who have seen documented evidence of that link believe now that the GOP controls the House and Senate, there is no excuse for not holding hearings.

A full-scale Senate or House probe is viewed as a means of informing an American public that is kept in the dark by a mainstream media that looks the other way on the hard-left/terrorist alliance.

The biggest question mark is whether the Justice Department, the FBI or other security agencies are paying much attention to the veteran hard-left groups backing the appeasement demonstrations. The fear is these agencies are inadequate because much of their investigative authority was defanged in the 1970s.

The post-Watergate congressional hearings by the Church and Pike committees on Capitol Hill resulted in tarnishing the CIA, FBI and other intelligence entities. That in turn prompted the legislative and executive branches of government to tie their hands. They were even forbidden to keep a file of information readily available to any citizen, such as newspaper clippings on subversive organizations.

Some of the restrictions were lifted after 9/11. For example, now they can clip newspaper stories. Still, the new policies fall short of what is needed, according to security experts talking with NewsMax.com.

The rules “were not changed enough to let the FBI do the kind of work that needs to be done watching these groups,” former congressional and executive branch security official Herbert Romerstein tells us.

When those seven men were caught breaking and entering at the Watergate Hotel in June 1972, little did anyone suspect they had set off a chain of events that years later would cripple America’s ability to protect itself at a time when this nation is under a greater threat than at any time in the memory of most citizens.

On the other hand, well-placed sources in the government have told NewsMax that “someday someone is going to write a book” about all the behind-the-scenes security efforts to protect America since 9/11.

All very assuring, and Attorney General John Askcroft’s efforts to put accused terrorists in the slammer are widely applauded. But it is not known whether the Justice Department, the FBI or any national security, intelligence, or law enforcement agency has focused specifically on the terorrist-communist connection. NewsMax has found no one in government who claims to know one way or the other.

Workers World Party, a tiny Marxist organization that admires North Korea's repressive dictatorship, has coordinated much of the anti-war activity, partly through such fronts as A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), which uses former LBJ Attorney General Ramsey Clark as its public face.

Another key player is United Justice for Peace. Leftist-turned-conservative David Horowitz has identified its leader Leslie Cagan as “a '60s Stalinist.”

In a syndicated column just this week, Mona Charen, author of the timely book “Useful Idiots,” defined A.N.S.W.E.R. as “explicitly communist.” If a journalist can make that identification, observers are asking, what is Congress waiting for? Let’s get this on the record for the American people.

If you read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” Horowitz warns, you see “how kooky views can result in the deaths of seventy million people.” Just because the leaders of the appeasement demonstrations don’t make sense “doesn’t mean they are not [dangerous or that they will not] get hundreds of thousands and millions of followers.”

Any Capitol Hill investigation of the hard-left/Islamic terrorist alliance would require a committee chairman and Republican committee members who will stand their ground, because some Democrats on the panel are likely to try to torpedo any meaningful inquiry. That is because, as Horowitz explains to NewsMax, “the Democratic Party is deeply infiltrated and also dependent on these people.”

The “Leslie Cagans of the world” have been organizing at the local level, he adds.

Finally this warning from a man who has viewed the hard left from the inside: “I guess my greatest concern is the complacency of conservatives who think we can’t lose this country. We can.”


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: activists; answer; blackshirts; communistsubversion; culturewar; enemywithin; fifthcolumn; jihadinamerica; lesliecagan; marxists; ramseyclark; traitorlist; usefulidiots; workersworldparty
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To: conservativecorner
I'm extremely SHOCKED to see such a weak response to such a serious article. It is the naivity of Americans regarding these groups that is truly frightening.

These groups are extremely well organized, have communist ties, and obviously are extremely capable of organizng and doing so quickly. Once they turn violent, Americans won't be able to come out of their own homes!!!

Only 20 responses to this article as I type this, and two were mine as I couldn't get the post to show up yesterday.

I'm going to bump this article and ping it. I'll bump it by posting some articles I have gathered over several months, about these groups.

Our enemies have figured out how to use our basic freedoms against us (Free Speech) and then further insult us by using our tax codes!!

Read on people!!!! Articles to follow this post!

THIS IS TO IMPORTANT TO IGNORE!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE PING EVERYONE ON EVERY LIST YOU HAVE TO THIS ARTICLE!!!

Vets
21 posted on 03/01/2003 10:36:12 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: conservativecorner; JohnHuang2; MeeknMing; Jim Robinson; Budge; billbears; sweetliberty; ...
I'm extremely SHOCKED to see such a weak response to such a serious article. It is the naivity of Americans regarding these groups that is truly frightening.

These groups are extremely well organized, have communist ties, and obviously are extremely capable of organizng and doing so quickly. Once they turn violent, Americans won't be able to come out of their own homes!!!

Only 20 responses to this article as I type this, and two were mine as I couldn't get the post to show up yesterday.

I'm going to bump this article and ping it. I'll bump it by posting some articles I have gathered over several months about these groups. I IMPLORE PEOPLE TO READ UP ON THESE ANTI-WAR/APPEASEMENT GROUPS!! I DON'T TAKE PINGING LIGHTLY.. PLEASE PING THE MAIN ARTICLE!!

Our enemies have figured out how to use our basic freedoms against us (Free Speech) and then further insult us by using our tax codes!! They watched our weaknesses during Vietnam, and are using those weaknesses against us now. They are as sly as a fox. We need to outsmart them!!

NUMEROUS Articles to follow this post!

THIS IS TO IMPORTANT TO IGNORE!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE PING EVERYONE ON EVERY LIST YOU HAVE TO THIS ARTICLE and this thread!!!

Vets
22 posted on 03/01/2003 10:40:14 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
THE APPEASEMENT MOVEMENT PART I

Useful Idiots: Marxists Exploit the Appeasement Movement
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003

WASHINGTON – Longtime communist supporters in the United States are rallying behind post-9/11 jihadists who want to kill Americans. Security experts have told NewsMax.com that longtime leftist America-haters are deeply involved in organizing the appeasement demonstrations against war with Iraq.
The mainstream media, which fawned over these demonstrations, painted a picture of Main Street America trying to send a grassroots message to President Bush. But they did not connect any of the dots tracing their control and organization to tiny but influential Marxist organizations.

Why would old communist supporters back Islamist extremists?

David Horowitz, author of the new book “The Hate America Left,” says hard-line leftists doing the bidding of fanatical Islamic fundamentalists “don’t have a plan beyond destruction.”

Longtime security official Herbert Romerstein agrees.

The pro-Marxist group “that really started the demonstrations and controlled the demonstrations that took place in Washington in the last year or so is a group called the Workers World Party, which is ideologically in support of the North Korean government,” he told NewsMax.

He says the group’s plan of “destruction,” to which Horowitz alluded, fits hand in glove with North Korea’s “creating provocations to get our attention off Iraq” and “are very happy that these people are in the United States organizing demonstrations in support of Iraq.”

Romertstein has been watching Workers World Party for years going back to his days as a top staffer for the House Internal Security Committee (the renamed House Committee on Un American Activities). In 1974, the year before congressional left-wingers put it out of business, that committee issued a report, based largely on Romerstein’s investigations, exposing in detail WWP, citing names and dates of its pro-North-Korea drive.

In his NewsMax interview, he said it was “a little bit bizarre that anybody should pay attention to the lunatics ... constantly making pilgrimages to Pyongyang to lay flowers at the grave of [the late dictator] Kim Il Sung, and to pledge their support to [son and successor] Kim Jung Il.”

Horowitz and Romerstein say North Korea’s interest in supporting Iraq’s interests lies in the old adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my freind.”

Horowitz, a “red diaper baby” who grew up in a communist household and later became a conservative, knows the hard left all too well.

He told NewsMax that the demonstrations here in Washington and in other cities included operatives from “the old communist left, the new communist left, and the next communist left. These are people who have supported America’s enemies for 20, 30, 40 years.”

Not all of them are “genetic leftists,” he said, “but they subscribe to the fundamental views of the left which is that America is the great Satan and that private property and ‘corporations’... are the source of evil in the world.”

Ronald Radosh, another “red diaper baby” and author of the book 2001 book “Commies,” has said there is certainly room for a true grassroots anti-war movement in this country. But for the likes of Workers World Party to manage and direct the appeasement movement is to distort and corrupt the debate.




23 posted on 03/01/2003 10:41:07 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
THE APPEASEMENT MOVEMENT PART II

'Hate-America Leftists' Lead the Appeasement Movement
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Feb. 27, 2003

WASHINGTON – America-haters ran the recent appeasement demonstrations. These longtime enemies of America are collaborating with radical Islamists who want to kill Americans. That fact belies the mainstream media's portrayal of "soccer moms," veterans, Democrats, Republicans, and other ordinary Americans as reflecting grassroots anger at President Bush’s policies in Iraq.

Workers World Party (WWP), which organized the demonstrations, is ideologically aligned with the Stalinist nation of North Korea. This tiny Marxist-Leninist group is behind A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), with which former LBJ Attorney General Ramsey Clark is involved.

David Horowitz, author of “The Hate America Left,” tells NewsMax this organization has been around since the late 1950s.

He believes the majority of the demonstrators were manipulated by hard-line Marxists, not by Mom and Pop America.

Herbert Romerstein, who spent years of his professional life as a security official in the legislative and executive branches of the government, says WWP provided the people who stuffed the envelopes, made the arrangements, dealt with the logistics, provided the transportation and, most importantly, controlled who got to speak at the rallies.

Censorship

Anyone not supporting the propaganda purposes of Marxist dogma was not allowed to speak to the crowd.

“If somebody hadn’t done it for them [the demonstrators], they wouldn’t be out there,” he told NewsMax. “The Workers World provides the opportunities for these people to get out and demonstrate.”

Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in Media, in a paper bluntly titled “Communists Run Anti-War Movement,” reports that the networks and metropolitan dailies ignored communist banners prominently displayed at the site of the Washington demonstration.

The usual suspects were there: Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, Progressive Labor Party, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, World Socialist Website, Cuba Solidarity, Spartacist League, Revolutionary Communist Party USA, and radical Muslim and pro-Palestinian organizations.

When ex-communist Horowitz considers these groups and others that participated, he concludes in his NewsMax interview that “the vast majority” of demonstrators have supported America’s enemies for years, and in some case “their parents before them.”

'The Fascistic Left'

“This is the fascistic left,” Horowitz adds, “anti-Semitic, anti-American, and dedicated to establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

There are “useful idiots” or dupes who have fronted for this nation’s enemies.

Ramsey Clark is a perennial in this role. (It was learned Tuesday that CBS was granted its Dan Rather interview with Saddam Hussein after Rather’s good friend Clark “put in a good word” for him with the Iraqi dictator.)

Romerstein says Clark has collaborated with WWP activists John Catalinotto and Sarah Flounders in their apologia for Slobadon Milosevic.

Horowitz identifies United for Peace and Justice as a part of the coalition that was behind the New York demonstration. That group, he says, is headed by Leslie Cagan, “a '60s Stalinist ... pro-Castro, of course. She ran an organization that did the propaganda for the Cuban gulag.”

Not a Bit 'Liberal'

Adds ex-communist Horowitz in our interview: “It’s time for conservatives to stop calling these people liberals. They are leftists, and they are hate-America leftists.

"And when your country is under attack, as ours is, you can’t have a peace movement. You can only have an appeasement movement, and a movement to betray your own country.”




24 posted on 03/01/2003 10:42:35 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
Thank you for the ping

bttt....to read a little later
25 posted on 03/01/2003 10:43:18 AM PST by firewalk
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
The march to save Saddam
TownHall.com | 2/17/03 | David Horowitz


Millions of people poured into the streets of cities from Melbourne to New York on Saturday February 15 to protect Saddam Hussein from an imminent American attempt to disarm and dethrone him and disable his arsenal of chemical, biological and proto-nuclear weapons. They professed concern about Iraqi children (bearing mock bodies to symbolize their alarm) but marched in solidarity with Palestinians and Arabs who kill their own children by strapping bombs to them and telling them to blow up other children -- Jew children -- so that they will go to heaven and their families will receive a $25,000 reward.

In politics intentions count for nothing; actions are what matter. If the marchers are successful, Saddam will survive to be stronger than ever. All over the Middle East and the Muslim world fanatical haters of Americans, Christians and Jews will take heart from Saddam's successful defiance, will draw the conclusion that the West is weak, and will be inspired to commit new atrocities against its most defenceless citizens.

All the marches were organized by supporters of Communist and other totalitarianisms, and by the fifth column agents of Islamo-fascism. All the demonstrations promoted Iraqi war propaganda -- myths about starving children and about alleged mercernary interests behind American policy; all of them had one purpose -- to disarm the American force already in the Middle East and allow Saddam to fight another day.

It is true that some of the marchers were well-intentioned or at least not so blind yet that they could look past the evil that is the regime in Iraq. What of it? What could be more irrelevant than splitting critical hairs when your country is under attack and your actions serve the aggressors?

During the Cold War there were many intelligent souls on the left who joined the "peace" demonstrations in the West organized by Communists and their supporters, but described themselves as "anti-anti-Communists." They meant by this that they knew that Communism was bad, but were against the cold warriors who were locked in mortal combat with the Soviet empire. The Gorbachev regime in their eyes was bad, but Ronald Reagan was a "warmonger" and therefore worse.

The anti-anti-Communists may have been good at stimulating critical discussion. A democracy can always benefit from dissenters because no faction has a monopoly on truth. But in practice the decent opponents of Cold War encouraged the Communists to hold onto their slave empire and resist the presures of the free world. In the end it was Ronald Reagan and the Cold Warriors he led who stymied the Communists' ambitions, brought down the Soviet empire and liberated more than a billion people. In the scales of that historic struggle, when it came to mobilizing the military resources that backed the enemy down, the anti-anti-Communists ultimately put their weight on the other side of the scale.

During the Vietnam War -- the clearest parallel to the present events -- the anti-war movement was organized by Communists who wanted the other side to win. The non-Communists who joined their marches, whatever their intentions, served the same practical end. America was divided at home and these divisons evnetually forced its armies to retreat from the field of battle. As a result, the Communists won and proceeded to slaughter two-and-a-half million peasants in Indo-China between 1975 and 1978. This is the scenario that the people (mostly the same people) who are leading Saturday's protests hope to accomplish: the defeat of the West and the triumph of Islamo-fascism and its friends.

Today's "peace" movement -- the innocent-intentioned along with the malevolent rest -- is a fifth column army in our midst working for the other side. Already their leaders have warned that if the United States remains determined to oppose this totalitarian evil and stay its intended course, they will act within our borders to "disrupt the flow of normal life" and sabotage the war. This is ultimately the most ominous threat Americans face. Abroad we can conquer any foe. The real danger lies at home.



©2003 FrontPageMag.com

26 posted on 03/01/2003 10:45:04 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
Congress Mulls Probe of Communists' Ties to Appeasement Movement, Radical Islam



"I'm extremely SHOCKED to see such a weak response to such a serious article. It is the naivity of Americans regarding these groups that is truly frightening."


What kind of responce do you want to Congress "mulling" about "Probe of Communists' Ties to Appeasement Movement, Radical Islam"?

Congress isn't going to do squat.
27 posted on 03/01/2003 10:46:25 AM PST by philetus (Keep doing what you always do and you'll keep getting what you always get)
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
I believe this was from FR. I'm sorry I can't give credit to the poster who did all the work. I inadvertantly did not copy the posters information. My apologies. But this is an excellent source for information.

See also, form http://www.sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/01/1562311.php:

International A.N.S.W.E.R. is a post-9/11 creation of the International Action Center, one of many front groups for the Workers World Party. The Workers World Party:
» supported the Chinese government's 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre
http://www.workers.org/ww/tienanmen.html
» supports the "socialist" North Korean dictatorship of Kim Jong Il
http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/korea0425.php
http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/korea0509.php
» and views Iraq's Saddam Hussein as a beacon of anti-imperialist resistance
http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/iraq0125.html
» defends the genocidal Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic
http://www.iacenter.org/yugo_milosdeligation.htm
http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/larry0228.php
http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/milosevic1108.php
http://shadow.autono.net/sin001/clark.htm

For these reasons, as well as Workers World's poor track record of relations with other groups, some people refuse to attend A.N.S.W.E.R. events, including the January 18 anti-war protest.

On the pro side, A.N.S.W.E.R. has proven skill at organizing massive demonstrations. Most who attend the group's protests know nothing about their actual political leanings and merely wish to express their opposition to war in Iraq

And many people and groups who are repulsed by A.N.S.W.E.R.'s support for genocidal dictators choose to attend their anti-war protests anyway, because they feel it is so urgent to stop the Iraq war.

See, for example, Z Magazine's Q&A on the topic (A.N.S.W.E.R. is discussed in #8):
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2527)

To help you make up your mind, we've assembled links to a range of writings on the topic - some more factual, some more polemical, from various points on the political spectrum:
* http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/03/1946241&mode=nocomment&
Lengthy, detailed expose of International Action Center's politics
* http://www.infoshop.org/texts/wwp.html
Anarchist critique of Workers World Party
* http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/50/news-corn.php
David Corn critique of A.N.S.W.E.R.'s October 26 D.C. anti-war march
* http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/16/protest/
Salon reporter's critique of A.N.S.W.E.R. and other far-left anti-war groups
* http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-11/11dominick.cfm
A critical response to Corn and other A.N.S.W.E.R. detractors
* http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=featherstone
An example of A.N.S.W.E.R.'s relations with other groups
* http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/1/BenShepard/index.html
Why the A.N.S.W.E.R. style of political mobilization is inherently disempowering

brought to you by International A.O.W.C.U.T.G.D.F.P.




www.authoritarianopportunistswhocozyuptogenocidaldictators-forpeace.org/




28 posted on 03/01/2003 10:46:52 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife; sweetliberty; Internet Golfer; Miss Marple; xJones; Jim Robinson; ...
Tracking Down A Fifth Column Front [Who Funds the Anti-War Movements?] FrontPageMag ^ | September 18, 2002 | Edward Immler


Tracking Down A Fifth Column Front
By Edward Immler

Vietnam-era anti-war protestors continue their demonstrating today, most recently in San Francisco against a potential Iraq war, but the sponsorship, partnerships, and funding of these groups raise questions about their real purpose. They are very organized, have a significant Internet presence, and actively raise large amounts of money.

This all started when I saw the name of a protest group listed in an AP wire story. I wondered a bit about this and tried to find out about this group via the Internet. I found that I could trace it back at least to 1987 (in various forms, though at the same address). Note that if a foreign country wanted to fund anti-war activism regarding Iraq, all they'd need to do is donate to a day care center in New York (and it's deductible).

This is the AP story that piqued my curiosity:

SEPTEMBER 14, 17:02 ET
5 U.S.-Born Terror Suspects Charged

By BEN DOBBIN

Associated Press Writer

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Five American-born men accused of operating a terrorist cell linked to al-Qaida appeared in court Saturday and were charged with providing material support to terrorists.

[...snip...]

Just before the hearing in U.S. District Court, a carload of people drove by the federal building chanting: ``U.S.A! U.S.A!'' Three members of the protest group Act Now to Stop War and End Racism silently held signs reading ``Stop the racist witch hunt'' across the street...

So, what on earth is the group "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism?" I did a Google search and came up with a website:

http://www.internationalanswer.org/
They call themselves International A.N.S.W.E.R (acronym for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). Looks like an old anti-war group from the Vietnam era, complete with Ramsey Clark speaking at a rally (look at the upper right hand side of the webpage). I did a little digging and turns out this is an Iraqi support group. The name changes but the address and phone remains the same.

WHOIS:
Domain Name.......... internationalanswer.org
Creation Date........ 2001-09-18
Registration Date.... 2001-09-18
Expiry Date.......... 2002-09-18
Organisation Name.... International Action Center
Organisation Address. 39 West 14th Street, Room 206
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. New York
Organisation Address. 10011
Organisation Address. NY
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

A Google search on the phone number (212) 633-6646 brings back something that I had to take from the Google archives...the link is no longer any good. Note that the address of the Iraq Sanctions Challenge is the same as the WHOIS address above. Do a Google search on the phrase using that phone number and you bring up all sorts of things. Must be an interesting office, what with the Free Mumia crowd, the Iraq Sanctions Challenge, U.S. Out of Korea Committee, and the Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Mideast, among others.

Formerly found at: http://www.salam.org/activism/challenge-success.html:

Delegation Delivers Over $4 Million of Medicine to Iraq
Press Release - 13 May 1998

The 100 strong Iraq Sanctions Challenge delegation has returned after delivering over $4 million worth of medicine to Iraq in defiance of the genocidal U.S.-led U.N. Sanctions.

Below are the press releases that have been sent out by the Iraq Sanctions Challenge office in New York with day by day updates on the Challenge's

activities and progress.

Iraq Sanctions Challenge
39 West 14 Street, Suite 206
New York, NY 10011
(212) 633-6646
Fax (212) 633-2889
iacenter@iacenter.org


For Immediate Release

Attention: Assignment Editor

Contact: Deirdre Sinnott
Greg Butterfield
(212) 633-6646


Iraq Sanctions Challenge Delegation Returns to Home With No Governmental Interference. New phase in the Struggle to End Sanctions is Opened. "We must force the U.S. government to end the sanctions policies, " said Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, from Baghdad.

From May 6 to 13, 100 Iraq Sanctions Challenge delegates visited Iraq in defiance of the U.S.-led United Nations sanctions. The delegates brought more than $4 million worth of medicines for the Iraqi people. They visited hospitals, schools, water sanitation facilities, and other areas hard-hit by sanctions. More than 1.5 million people have died as a result of the sanctions, mostly children and the elderly.

The Iraq Sanctions Challenge has an iacenter.org email address and a WHOIS for iacenter.org gives another organization at the same address:

Registrant:
International Action Center (IACENTER2-DOM)
39 West 14th Street, #206
NY, NY 10011
US
Domain Name: IACENTER.ORG
Administrative Contact:
Flounders, Sara (SF1171) iacenter@IACENTER.ORG
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
(212) 633-6646 (FAX) (212) 633-2889

A September 25, 2001 New York Post article lists several more organizations at that same office.

Mumiacs for Terror -- Chez, 18:50:20 09/25/01
THE organizers of Saturday's "vigil against racism and war" in Union Square Park - and a rally there the next day in solidarity with "Arab and Muslim sisters and brothers" - are being led by Ramsey Clark. Clark, who was LBJ's attorney general, is chairman of the International Action Center, an umbrella group which shares its West 14th Street office and its telephone with such groups as Iraq Sanctions Challenge; Peace for Cuba; U.S. Out of Korea Committee; Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Mideast, which was created in 1990 before the Gulf War; and Millions for Mumia, which works to free cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Clark and his comrades, including the pro-Palestinian group Al-Awda, now have a new committee, Answer: Act Now to Stop War and Racism. They march on Washington, D.C., next week.

Here's another group that uses that address and phone number:

Peoples Video Network
International Action Center

Workers World Party

INVITE YOU TO CELEBRATE ELLEN ANDORS' LIFE

SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 2001, - 3:00 p.m.

55 W. 17 St., Fifth Floor, NYC

R.S.V.P. Peoples Video Network

212-633-6646 extension 15

Ellen Andors, Ph.D., videographer, anthropologist, teacher, socialist, political organizer, and single working parent, died on August 2, 2000, at the age of 54.

As a teacher of anthropology in the City University system for 25 years, Ellen used multi-media as a way to educate about capitalism's ills and the need to struggle against them.

In 1994, Ellen became a member of Workers World Party, and joined the Peoples Video Network. She became a driving force in producing progressive videos documenting numerous struggles. She produced and edited many political videos that are broadcast around the globe.

The stunning Metal of Dishonor is a groundbreaking expose of the Pentagon's use of depleted uranium weapons. The Prison-Industrial Complex: An Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal features the political prisoner and award-winning journalist speaking from Pennsylvania's death row with Monica Moorehead and Larry Holmes.

At the time of her death, Ellen was compiling footage for a comprehensive video exposing the dangers NATO poses to the peoples of the world. The Peoples Video Network is committed to finishing this important project...

*Tax-deductible donations to complete production of the video about NATO that Ellen began can be sent to People's Rights Fund/Ellen Andors Memorial Fund, at 39 W. 14 St., Suite 206, New York, N.Y. 10011. For information: Call 212-633-6646

Who provides their funding? From their donations link:

The People's Rights Fund is a fiscal sponsor for the International Action Center and A.N.S.W.E.R., including demonstrations, teach-ins and other activities held in Washington on September 29, 2001, and April 20 and the recent June 1 National Anti-war conference in New York City and a protest at FBI headquarters on June 29 as well as the upcoming Independent Commissions of Inquiry into U.S.-backed Israeli War Crimes. The People's Rights Fund is sponsoring the holding of educational events to inform the people of the U.S. about the dangers of a new war initiated by the U.S. government, about the racist attacks in this country, and concerning the threats to civil liberties to the people of this country. The Fund is also sponsoring the production of educational materials on these subjects.
And who is this?

People's Rights Fund
The People's Rights Fund is a small foundation with limited resources that has channeled its support to projects often considered too controversial for more traditional funders. This has included the production of educational material opposing sanctions against defenseless populations, and combating racism and anti-Arab bigotry during the buildup to the Gulf War against Iraq. Its grants allowed the production of leaflets and other materials for the first U.S. demonstrations against the Gulf War. It has also helped provide informational material for major rallies against the blockade of Cuba.

A grant from the People's Rights Fund initiated the work on this book, the children are dying.

The People's Rights Fund is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, educational organization. It depends on contributions from people who understand that grassroots activism can mobilize progressive public opinion into a powerful force. It has supported projects that use literature and/or video and have mobilized both small groups and great public assemblies to protect and advance the rights of the poor, the powerless, and the oppressed.

For more information or to send a donation, write to:

People's Rights Fund
39 West 14th Street, #206
New York, NY 10011, USA

The People’s Rights Fund (fiscal sponsor for the International Action Center) has a website. You can see that they have branches across the nation and plan events long in advance.

The People's Rights Fund is a reporting charity, claiming to be a day care center at one time (at least to get IRS approval), apparently.

Found via: http://www.guidestar.org/servlet/SearchServlet:

Peoples Rights Fund, Inc.
39 W 14TH ST STE 2ND FL
NEW YORK, NY 10011

Information in this report is derived from IRS Form 990 or IRS Form 990-EZ, an annual report filed by nonprofit organizations.

Who We Are

Day care center

Program / Activities

Education N.E.C.

Financial Info

Fiscal Year: 2000

Assets: $92,737

Income: $382,377

This organization files an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.

more financial information

EIN: 13-3270831

Ruling Year: 1987

These five contributions shown below were pretty hefty no matter what scale is used. Anti-war activism is clearly no small enterprise. The obvious question is, who donated that money and what was the original source? Was it overseas money laundered through a US citizen?

This was foound at page 13: http://www.guidestar.org/pdf/2000/133/270/2000-133270831-1-9.pdf:

Peoples Rights Fund, Inc 13-3270831
Schedule A: Identification of Excess Contributions included on Part IV, line 26B
*** Not Open To Public Inspection ***
Total Contribution/Excess Contribution

60,000. 38,285.
74,000. 52,285.
60,000. 38,285.
25,000. 3,285.
30,000. 8,285.


Total Excess Contributions to Schedule A, Line 26B
140,425.

Is it possible to link the International Action Center to Iraq? Very easily, as it turns out. Iraq’s ambassador, Dr. Saeed Hasan, participated in a program sponsored by the International Action Center in 1999:


Program: First Hearing of the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia
July 31, 1999 • New York City

[We are preparing transcripts of as many speeches and papers as possible from the Initial Hearing; watch this page for links to individual names]

Schedule

10:00 am - 11:00 am Opening Plenary
11:15 am - 1:00 pm Panel Discussions
1:00 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch in the Hall
1:30 pm - 3:30 pm Panel Discussions
3:45 pm - 6:00 pm Closing Plenary featuring Ramsey Clark


Program

Opening Plenary: The Case for an Independent War Crimes Tribunal
Moderator: Sara Flounders, International Action Center

Presenters:

David Jacobs, attorney, Canadian lawyers group
Michel Chossudovsky, economist and author
Roland Keith, OSCE monitor in Kosovo
Monica Moorehead, Workers World newspaper and Mumia Awareness Week introducing a taped message from Mumia Abu-Jamal
Dr. Saeed Hasan, Ambassador, Permanent Mission of Iraq to the UN

There is an excellent article about Ramsey Clark, head of the International Action Center here. This article describes the relationship between Clark, the International Action Center, and the Workers World Party (described as an orthodox Stalinist sect). The policies of the Workers World Party add a level of complexity here. Are we still fighting the Cold War? Or is the Workers World Party simply a funding device? If it is the latter, then the immediate question is about the source of funds. The next question is, why? The International Action Center is able to raise significant amounts of tax-deductible money, that’s clear. The purpose is not so simple. Is this a means for the Workers World Party to develop an anarchistic atmosphere in the United States? Divide the population and jump into the gap to gain political control?

Louis J. Freeh, Director of the FBI, stated in testimony before the Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and Select Committee on Intelligence: From: http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress01/freeh051001.htm

“Anarchists and extremist socialist groups -- many of which, such as the Workers' World Party, Reclaim the Streets, and Carnival Against Capitalism -- have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States. For example, anarchists, operating individually and in groups, caused much of the damage during the 1999 World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Seattle.”
The International Action Center is not a one-pony show. There are many elements of it beyond the anti-Iraq war aspect (North Korea/Cuba/Mumia/etc.). I believe they are acting to disable and destruct society’s institutions in order to forward an agenda. The oath of enlistment of a soldier in the US Army begins, "I WILL SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST ALL ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC;..."


Dissent is one thing, and is a Constitutional right, but we must not forget that there can be domestic enemies.




29 posted on 03/01/2003 10:49:08 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
I'm extremely SHOCKED to see such a weak response to such a serious article. It is the naivity of Americans regarding these groups that is truly frightening.

These groups are extremely well organized, have communist ties, and obviously are extremely capable of organizng and doing so quickly. Once they turn violent, Americans won't be able to come out of their own homes!!!

The ties aren't just communist, nor is communism the most dangerous aspect this coalition...

Unholy Alliance
By J. Michael Waller
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 20, 2003

The convergence of the radical Left and radical Islam continues. Former icons of social tolerance and sexual liberation are making common cause with the most intolerant and sexist social forces on earth. Left-wing American defenders of Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for his ethnic cleansing campaign to exterminate Muslims from the former Yugoslavia, now welcome U.S. Muslim groups as building blocks in their coalitions. Trendy supporters of revolutionary cop-killers like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal link their heroes’ murderous causes (while proclaiming Peltier and Mumia’s innocence) to those of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the various Islamic Jihad terrorist groups.

On February 15 and 16, they joined forces in the streets of hundreds of cities and towns around the world  – literally from Boston to Baghdad – in coordinated protests unseen in size and scope since the Soviet Union ran the nuclear freeze movement two decades ago.  Remnants of the old Communist Party USA like Leslie Cagan coordinated protests on one end through her United for Peace and Justice entity; the fanatically pro-North Korean Workers World Party (WWP), via its International Action Center (IAC) and International ANSWER front groups, organized on the other, pausing to wish a happy birthday to Kim Jong-il, who turned 61 over the weekend. Kim’s party paper, Rodong Sinmun, exhorted followers to “burn with hatred and hostility in their hearts” toward the United States.

Some of the nation’s most prominent Muslim groups, or more correctly, a collection of small but vocal groups that claim to speak for American Muslims, joined the protests.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), at the state level, endorsed the U.S.-out-of-Iraq demonstrations coast to coast. In Chicago, CAIR endorsed the protests, calling itself “one of the initial endorsers and organizers” for the event. CAIR formally joined the ANSWER coalition in Los Angeles.

Nationally, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) joined the ANSWER coalition, urging the “community” to take to the streets against President Bush’s efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein and liberate the Iraqi people. In a weird February 11 statement, it asked “Americans” to “defend White House employees” – a reference to a low-ranking White House staffer whom critics say has a pattern of clearing pro-terrorist Muslim American activists into meetings with President Bush and other senior officials.

The American Muslim Council (AMC) didn’t make a public show over the February 15 weekend, but it did join the ANSWER coalition’s January 18 protests that marked the 12th anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, or what AMC referred to as the “war against the people of Iraq.” While the AMC joined others, particularly semi-official voices in the Saudi press, calling on Saddam Hussein to resign, it also embraced ANSWER. On January 15 it circulated an ANSWER flyer on its listserv, exhorting followers via e-mail to march on the White House. AMC national board treasurer Ali Khan led a caravan of Indiana and Chicago activists to the demonstration in Washington.

AMC, like other U.S. Muslim groups that have long coveted legitimacy in official Washington, likes to play things both ways. Click to its website, www.amconline.org, and a ghostly image of Malcolm X flashes for a fraction of a second before a very mainstream-looking, red, white and blue homepage appears. That’s just a symptom of how the AMC operates. Since September 11, 2001, AMC has demanded – and received – the highest-level acceptance in the U.S. government. FBI Director Robert Mueller even spoke at the AMC’s national convention last June 28, with an FBI spokesman calling the AMC “the most mainstream Muslim group in the country.”

The FBI media unit, when pressed, could produce nothing to substantiate the claim, but a visibly uncomfortable Mueller addressed the conference anyway. That appearance, with the FBI publicity unit’s imprimatur, gave the AMC more credibility than ever – even though that very month the organization was haranguing the Bureau for its investigation of domestic Muslim groups.

The AMC calls itself an “active member” of the National Committee to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), a William Kunstlerite group founded in the 1960s to provide legal support to terrorists and those who raise money and provide material support for them. Its causes have ranged from members of the Weather Underground to the Maoist Shining Path of Peru, to Abdul Rahman, the Egyptian “Blind Sheik” responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. NCPPF’s executive director is Kit Gage works full-time as head of the old Stalinist National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Its president is Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who reportedly was a founding leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

AMC founder Abdurahman Alamoudi is by his own admission an enthusiastic supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah – the latter being responsible for the 1980s killing of 241 U.S. Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing, and for the car bombing of the American Embassy in Lebanon. Alamoudi recruited young and attractive Muslim political activists and helped them set up spinoff groups to influence mainstream political parties. He provided seed money for one of those groups, the Islamic Institute, which is chaired by his former protégé, Khaled Saffuri.

The AMC likes to say now that the controversial Alamoudi is no longer with the organization and that it condemns all forms of terrorism. But Alamoudi isn’t alone. AMC’s former executive board president, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, was twice on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Under his old name in the 1960s as H. Rap. Brown, he threatened to assassinate Lady Bird Johnson when she was First Lady of the U.S. He’s now a lifer in a Georgia prison for the 2000 murder of Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Kinchen.

AMC’s new leadership is no less extreme. In the week before the FBI director’s speech to the organization, various television talk show hosts including Alan Keyes, then of MSNBC, and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, tried to get the AMC executive director, Eric Ervan Vickers, to denounce Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda by name. While denouncing acts of terrorism, Vickers avoided denouncing the terrorist groups themselves.

On June 19, 2002, Linda Vester of Fox News asked Vickers, “Do you condemn al Qaeda by name and condemn Hamas by name?” According to the transcript, Vickers would not. Fox News anchor Brit Hume commented, “All right, so, there you go. And she pressed him further, but that’s as far as she ever got with that.”

Journalist Fred Barnes, on a panel with Hume, illustrated the hypocrisy: “These groups are outraged about what the victims are doing here in the United States. Their big effort is to oppose reasonable steps to protect the United States from further attacks. That's where they aim their fire, not at these terrorists who are doing this in the name of their very own religion.”

The night before Mueller addressed the AMC, guest host Mike Barnicle on CNBC's Hardball asked Vickers to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. Vickers would not. Barnicle followed, "How about al-Qaeda?" According to the transcript, Vickers' only response was, "They are involved in a resistance movement."

Morton Kondracke commented on Fox, “If that guy truly reflects American Muslims -- and he is the executive director of this large organization -- then God help us. We've got -- that guy sounds like the fifth column, frankly.”

It certainly sounds that way. Across the board, the AMC and other leading Muslim advocacy groups are “against us” in the war on terrorism. Responding to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Speech on January 29, 2003, Vickers stated, “in invoking God to be with American soldiers in our apparently imminent war with Iraq, what the president did not say is that he is calling on God to kill innocent Iraqi children.”

The next day he called on the “U.N. to conduct an inquiry into the “political repression of Muslim and Arab and Asian Americans by the United States government,” and led a protest against a new FBI policy to count mosques. In a note to imams across the country, Vickers wrote, “AMC calls upon you to demonstrate mass criticism and activism against the new FBI policy, which directs FBI field offices nationwide to conduct an inventory of mosques and Muslims as part of their charge to develop demographic profiles of their regions to combat possible terrorism.”

Meanwhile, the AMC and others, by virtue of their shrillness and persistence, continue to enjoy protected status from the federal government. One of the reasons, senior officials say, is that no truly mainstream national Muslim political group exists for the administration to engage. Until such an organization is created and supported, the vocal and well-funded jihadists will maintain their chokehold on the voice of American Muslims, in concert with the most extreme leadership of the “anti-war” Left – and with Uncle Sam’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. This, just when President Bush needs American Muslims to support him openly in the war against terrorism.

J. Michael Waller is vice president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.
LINK







30 posted on 03/01/2003 10:50:57 AM PST by Sabertooth
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To: Sabertooth
Thanks FRiend. Excellent article. This cannot be ignored by Americans. It is extremely dangerous to do so.

I posted a response on this thread yesterday that Under "Indviduals" near the top.. showed Dr. Sami Al-Arian listed!!!! By now, everyone knows he is the Southern Florida University Professor who was the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the US, RIGHT???

I pray to GOD that our Government DOES expose these groups!!
31 posted on 03/01/2003 10:56:01 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
I'm posting some old stories to point out that these groups were sending off warning signals VERY early!! People/Journalists, have since been digging up a lot of stuff on these groups. There is no reason for "ignorance" regarding these groups anylonger. The truth is out there.. we just need to GET IT OUT THERE!!

In the anti-war movement is only one A.N.S.W.E.R. right?
The Georgetown Voice - Georgetown University's Weekly Newsmagazine ^ | January 30, 2003 | Eric Nazar





Less than two weeks ago on the National Mall beneath the Capitol, thousands took part in a demonstration against the impending U.S invasion of Iraq. About 150 Georgetown students were there, but just how many protesters attended in total depended on who you asked. At 1 p.m. on a clear day where the wind chill hovered around 10 degrees, many had already begun to leave the Mall on a planned march to the Navy Yard in Southeast Washington. That's when Rev. Lucious Walker, took the stage. "There must be half a million people here," he shouted to cheers from the remaining protesters. For the International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition--the group that organized the demonstration and march--that number sounded perfect. The mainstream media and a few police sources offered numbers considerably lower--most in the tens of thousands.

While disputes over numbers colored much of the coverage of the Jan. 18 protest, pundits and organizers agreed that the turnout represented an increasingly mainstream demographic, and that development portends a significant leap in political viability for the anti-war movement.


Though the numbers debate may prevent ANSWER from getting the credit it feels it deserves for organizing what may have been among the largest protests ever in Washington, its increasing success in attracting "real" Americans to protests has raised serious questions in the media and activist communities surrounding ANSWER's role as the current leader of the anti-war movement. The group is at the center of a growing controversy surrounding the anti-war movement, how it should be run and just who ought to be running it.


Since the protest, stories in The New York Times, Newsday, The National Review, National Public Radio and online newsmagazine Salon.com have questioned the leadership and goals of ANSWER. In her Jan. 20 article, Salon writer Michelle Goldberg refered to ANSWER as "a front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party." Other reports drag out a laundry list of ANSWER members' dirty deeds: "supporting" hard-line communist regimes in North Korea and elsewhere, defending convicted war-criminal Slobodan Milosevic and vacationing in Cuba. NPR aired '60s radical-turned-Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin, who unfavorably compared ANSWER's far-left leadership to the "ecumenical" Students for a Democratic Society, which lead the anti-Vietnam war movement through the '60s and '70s. The Times quotes Rabbi Michael Lerner as being frustrated with the group's "knee-jerk anti-imperialism," while the conservative National Review denounces ANSWER as obnoxious, inflammatory and anti-American.


"Red-baiting, pure and simple" is how William Hackwell, an ANSWER spokesman, describes the media attacks. "They come from people who are pro-war and are trying to divide the anti-war movement. It's exactly like what happened in the '50s, during the McCarthy Era."


Hackwell and ANSWER see both the low-balling of protest numbers and statements like Goldberg's as part of an effort by the police and pro-war elements in the mainstream media to discredit the anti-war movement. Examining the content of the articles themselves, Hackwell has a point. They include little from activists actually working with ANSWER or in other anti-war groups, besides sound bites, and generally fail to analyze or address the group's organizational activities and structure.


While ANSWER is weathering the media criticism well enough, more ominous voices of dissent have risen within the activist community, challenging ANSWER's tactics and relations with other activist groups. While all anti-war groups place a great deal of importance on the value and appearance of unity, activists within ANSWER and from other groups have each claimed that the other is responsible for efforts to divide the peace movement.


To ANSWER, the numbers game comes with the territory. "We've been in a constant legal battle with the police over numbers," said Hackwell from San Francisco, where ANSWER organized a rally, its major west coast demonstration, on the same day as the D.C. protest. "This time, we rented our own helicopter in order to take aerial photos of the protest. Afterwards, they were saying 50,000. 60,000, tops," Hackwell recounted. "But when we showed them the photos and threatened to sue, they had to revise their numbers to 150,000."


The criticism aired over the past weeks, however, is directed more towards discrediting the group. The media's critique of ANSWER is directed primarily on the coalition's founding leadership, and its affiliation with the socialist Workers World Party. Brian Becker and Larry Holmes, co-founders of ANSWER and lead spokesmen for the coalition, are both members of the WWP secretariat. Becker writes frequently for the Party's newspaper, The Workers' World, and has appeared on Fox television in New York as a political commentator. It's from the newspaper and public speeches that critics of ANSWER have gleaned Becker's views on Iraq, North Korea, Milosevic and other topics. The roots of ANSWER's core leadership lie in the International Action Center, founded in 1991 by Becker, Holmes and other Workers World Party leaders. After Sept, 11, 2001, IAC leaders called for the formation of ANSWER to serve as what Hackwell called "a broader-based coalition."


ANSWER headquarters are housed within the Manhattan offices of the IAC, but the organizational structures of the two groups are significantly different. The ANSWER coalition is administered by a steering committee of representatives from 11 established activist organizations, one of which is the IAC. The other 10 groups are generally small and tend to represent less radical causes. One member group is dubbed "Pastors for Peace."


Charles Kaufman, national co-coordinator of the Nicaragua Network, a group that has worked for social and economic justice in Nicaragua for over 20 years, is on the ANSWER steering committee. "We all share the same basic viewpoints. We're all anti-imperialist, and we're all anti-war," he said. According to Kaufman, the steering committee makes all decisions on protest dates and speaker lists in a consensus-based, democratic manner.


Hackwell rejected the notion that holding unpopular political opinions makes the ANSWER leadership unfit to lead the anti-war movement. "We don't discriminate as to who can be a part of our organization," he said. "The groups on our steering committee, they aren't just names; they're real groups that have been organizing against war and racism for years."


But even if the coalition is "broad-based," that doesn't change the fact that its leadership puts a radical face on the organization, critics say. Chuck Munson is a longtime D.C. activist who has been involved with the Mobilization for Global Justice and the Anti-Capitalist Convergence and currently runs the website infoshop.org. Munson stressed that simply labeling ANSWER a "front group" for the Workers World Party is misleading, but did claim that "their organizational goals revolve around promoting the best interests of the [WWP]."


In any case, Munson claims that the leaders' politics are nevertheless detrimental to the anti-war effort as a whole, as war supporters use ANSWER's political background to smear the peace movement. "The skeletons in their closet add lots of negative baggage to the peace movement," Munson said. "The pro-war side is already mentioning the WWP's long-standing support for anti-U.S. dictators."


Since October, two additional (organizers are loath to say competing) anti-war coalitions have sprung up, representing a more mainstream constituency of nonprofit and faith-based organizations. United for Peace and Justice, probably the second most prominent national anti-war coalition, is organizing major protests in New York and San Francisco on Feb. 15 and 16. So far, UFPJ has attracted the support of many activist organizations--currently around 150--that have been reluctant to sign on with ANSWER, including the National Council of Churches, Pax Christi, Peace Action and Veterans for Peace. While some of their members have been outspoken critics of ANSWER's organizing tactics, the leadership of UFPJ has emphasized publically that any organization against the war is ultimately good for the cause.


Jennifer Carr, the Washington representative of United for Peace and Justice, quickly defended ANSWER when asked about the recent attacks. "I don't support the attacks on ANSWER," Carr said. "They are just attempts to discredit the movement as a whole." Carr said she doesn't see the political affiliation of ANSWER's leadership as being particularly relevant.


In addition to ANSWER and UFPJ, the National Council of Churches, which represents 36 national denomination, founded a third coalition group, Win Without War last December. Carr sees the presence of multiple coalition groups as a positive development. "Not everyone is going to gravitate toward exactly the same things, and that's why these different coalitions exist. It shows a huge, broad movement."


"There's already a really broad range of people who oppose the war," Carr said. "Focusing on one small fragment of a movement is divisive and discredits what they did on Jan. 18, in bringing out a very diverse and broad range of people."


Carr also explained that UFPJ attracts the more mainstream activists and organizers, while ANSWER attracts the revolutionary socialist bloc, which represents a gain for the movement as a whole.


The only problem with that analysis is that, as Jan. 18 showed, ANSWER is already seems to be attracting the mainstream to its protests. What's notably absent amidst the name-calling among activists and the staid media criticism is an analysis of just how ANSWER gets so many people out for their protests and how they build alliances within the activist community.


But according to its critics from the activist community, the real story is how ANSWER doesn't build alliances, and instead uses cutthroat tactics, bullying and misrepresentation to bolster its prestige and credibility as leader of the anti-war movement. Even before the April 20 marches, organized separately by four different coalition groups, ANSWER was positioning itself to take credit for the entire convergence.


"The recent protest numbers have been more of a wave of dissent that ANSWER is riding than any big testimony to ANSWER's organizational abilities," Munson mused. He went on to predict that after a few more big rallies, ANSWER will be eclipsed by more fractious groups. "People aren't going to wait for ANSWER to tell them when to protest," he said.


"We've organized three major demonstrations in the past year, each one doubling in size," Hackwell responded. "If you're looking for a sign that we're weakening, well, that's surely not it." In addition to the Jan. 18 protest, Hackwell referred to the Oct. 26 anti-war demonstration held near the Vietnam War Memorial that ANSWER claimed 200,000 attended and an April 20 anti-war and pro-Palestine march that drew an estimated 70,000 to D.C.


But as the rallies grow, the ranks of the discontented likewise grow. Among them is recent Wesleyan University graduate Jessie Duvall, who was one of the lead organizers for the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, which planned an anti-war march, called United We March, for the April 20 protests. Duvall said he was "very frustrated" with ANSWER's tactics. "I found [ANSWER] disrespectful of established decision-making processes, uncooperative, controlling and deceitful. They would say one thing and do something else or agree to something, and then not do it," he wrote in an e-mail to the Voice.


Duvall claimed ANSWER leaders arbitrarily made decisions not agreed to by other groups, making them essentially irreversible by announcing them in news releases. "It was impossible to go back on [the releases] without it seeming like the United We March coalition was trying to split the movement," Duvall said. "Every time the United We March coalition hesitated on making a decision or disagreed with a proposal that ANSWER made, we were were accused of trying to split the movement."


In the end, observed Duvall, ANSWER's tactics allowed them to take credit for work other groups were responsible at least in part for. Munson and others make similar claims that ANSWER hijacked a Sept. 2001 anti-globalization protest in D.C.organized by multiple groups, scheduling its own anti-war protest on the same day, and then taking credit for the entire weekend.


More recently, Iraq Pledge of Resistance, a UFPJ member group, complained about ANSWER's predilection for hijacking others' protests. IPR had scheduled a march through the streets of D.C. for Jan. 19, the day after ANSWER's rally and march. Upon hearing that ANSWER had scheduled a "youth and student march" at the same time and for the same location, IPR national coordinator Gordon Clark attempted to compromise with the group, only to be met with an e-mail from ANSWER coordinators Sarah Sloan and Peta Lindsay accusing UFPJ of disrespecting ANSWER and claiming that ANSWER had put out the call for their march first. It read in part, "Since United for Peace has been unwilling to endorse the Jan. 18 No War on Iraq National March on Washington, it will be considered divisive that United for Peace has called for another demonstration in Washington the day after the Jan. 18 demonstration." On Jan. 19, according to observers, including members of Georgetown Peace Action, ANSWER drove their sound truck into the middle of IPR's demonstration, drowning out that groups chanting with their own and refusing requests to let IPR protesters use their loudspeakers.


But while such tactics may outrage other organizers in the activist community, they are part of the reason why ANSWER has taken a leading role in the anti-war movement. While the group's position at the vanguard may leave the movement as a whole more vulnerable to media attack on ANSWER's ideological background, it has ironically served to create the appearance of unity that activists both within and opposing ANSWER have so desired. Specifically, ANSWER's centralized decision-making body led by a vanguard of experienced activists is a main reason for its success. While many claim that such a structure undermines the democratic process, some are beginning to consider it necessary to the anti-war movement's success.


Within the UFPJ coalition, members have complained internally that the organization needs to become more like ANSWER in order to organize effectively--whether that involves competing with ANSWER, or cooperating with them, or neither. In an internal memo obtained by The Voice, a lead UFPJ organizer argued that the coalition needs "an empowered steering committee that can actually set priorities for the coalition, and whose representative leadership we would all try to follow."


At their founding conference in October, the United For Peace and Justice coalition decided Feb. 15 as the date for a major protest in New York, marked to coincide with a predicted beginning of the war. On Jan. 8 ANSWER announced a planned "week of resistance" surrounding that date. Whether ANSWER will attempt to hijack and take credit for UFPJ's protest, in spite of the goodwill the two coalitions have shown each other publically, remains to be seen, but press reports are already giving credit to ANSWER for organizing these upcoming protests.


According to a Jan. 19 wire service report, "International ANSWER and other peace groups are calling for a week of anti-war actions in New York City starting on Feb. 15." In the volatile world of activist organizing, it seems that ANSWER has secured its position at the helm of the anti-war crusade for at least a few more weeks. Meanwhile, the controversy will most certainly continue.





32 posted on 03/01/2003 11:00:23 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife
I pray to GOD that our Government DOES expose these groups!!

To do so, many in government, in both parties, will have to expose themselves and their friends.

There is a nexus between Sami Al Arian, Grover Norquist, Sami Al Arian, and Suhail Khan, the depths of which haven't been fully explored. Al Arian raised money for Campbell's 2000 Senatorial campaign, for which Suhail Khan was the Campaign Spokesman. After Campbell's defeat, Norquist got Khan into the Bush White House. Al Arian gave an award to Norquist for his efforts in fighting anti-terror legislation two months before someone, yet unnamed, in the Bush White House overruled Secret Service objections and allowed Al Arian on the premises. I don't find the "well, the Clintons let him in too," excuse to be especially compelling, especially in light of this article from 1996...

In October 1995 Ramadan Abdullah Shallah took over as head of the Islamic Jihad, based in Damascus, Syria. From 1991 through early 1995, Mr. Shallah was a professor at Tampa's University of South Florida and director of the World Islamic Studies Enterprise, ostensibly an academic research center.

After the ex-professor assumed his Islamic Jihad post, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service raided his former campus office, as well as the offices and home of his USF colleague Sami Al-Arian, the founder of WISE and an affiliated "religious charity" called the Islamic Committee for Palestine. Federal investigators uncovered overwhelming evidence that both organizations were arms of Islamic Jihad. Under the cover of legitimacy its university affiliation provided, WISE actually brought terrorists into the U.S. and raised funds for Islamic Jihad. Mr. Al-Arian, now under federal investigation, organized a series of conferences for "Islamic leaders and thinkers" in Chicago and St. Louis between 1988 and 1992, which featured a number of the world's top, terrorist leaders. The evidence found in his home and office constitute one of the largest collections of raw terrorist material ever seized in the U.S.

According to federal sources, documents and testimony connected with the Florida investigation, the Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa had extensive financial and political ties with many Islamic extremist groups world-wide.They collaborated with Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman and others involved in the World Trade Center bombing. They also laundered millions of dollars, worked with Hamas leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere, and helped oversee terrorist cells in the Middle East. The spiritual head of Islamic Jihad, Abdul Aziz Odeh, who visited Tampa and stayed with Mr. Al-Arian several times, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing.

< -snip- >

At the same time, the Clinton administration has established close ties with groups like the American Muslim Council, which has supported Hamas and other radical groups. Hillary Clinton has worked particularly closely with the head of the AMC, Abdulrahman Al-Amoudi, who has openly collected funds for the legal defense of Mr Marzuk, the Hamas chieftain arrested at JFK Airport, and for Mr. Abdul-Rahman, who organized the World Trade Center bombing. Raising money for a criminal defense fund is perfectly legal, of course. But would Mrs. Clinton meet with the head of the defense committee for Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh? Earlier this year Mrs. Clinton met at the White House with Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR, based in Washington, was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, the former public relations director of the Texas-based Islamic Association of Palestine, which Oliver Revell, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism and now a security consultant, calls a Hamas front. Both CAIR and IAP have disseminated Hamas communiqu‚s and championed the policies of other radical Islamic groups. A recent CAIR report listed as a "hate crimes against Muslims" the conviction of Mr. Abdul-Rahman and the arrest of Mr. Marzuk. CAIR's Board of Advisors includes a number of radicals known for their virulent anti-Semitism and
Stop Aid and Comfort for Patrons of Terror
Wall Street Journal - August 5th, 1996
By Steven Emerson
support of the World Trade Center defendants.

All of these guys, along with Ali Tulbah, can be found at the National Conventions of terror sympathizing orgs like the American Muslim Council and the American Muslim Alliance, over the past several years. A glance at other featured speakers turns up many other shady names, like Khaled Saffuri, Muzzamil Siddiqi, Nihad Awad, Ibrahim Hooper, Dr. Yahya Basha, Abdulrahman Al-Amoudi, ect.

Here are some threads worth investigating. Lots of supporting links as you scroll through them.

Muslim council takes complaints to Bush (Grover Norquist Alert)
      Posted by Sabertooth
On 02/21/2003 8:47 AM PST with 74 comments


Washington Times ^ | February 21, 2003 | Ralph Z. Hallow
The Muslim council posted this call for action on its Internet site, together with praise for Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who has worked with Islamic groups in behalf of the Republican Party (see below - ST). Mr. Norquist has accused Mr. Gaffney of "racism" and religious bigotry, but he said he has had nothing to do with the criticism of Mr. Keene and Mr. Gaffney by the Muslim council, which he described as a "Democrat" group with which he has little contact. The National Journal reported that Mr. Norquist once arranged a meeting between the Muslim...
     
      Posted by Sabertooth
On 02/28/2003 8:23 PM PST with 23 comments


The New Republic ^ | November 19th, 2001 | Grover Norquist
CORRESPONDENCE Wild Pitch? Post date 11.08.01 | Issue date 11.19.01 To the editors: Franklin Foer is right to be bitter and fearful that George W. Bush and the Republican Party increased their support among American Muslims from 40 percent in 1996 to more than 70 percent in 2000 ("Fevered Pitch," November 12). That increase alone won Florida many times over. Bush demonstrated that a conservative can speak with respect, seriousness, and compassion to immigrants and minorities; that we earn their votes, not by moving left and offering patronage and welfare, but by campaigning for lower taxes, reforming social security, strong...
     
 
Islamist 'enabler' threatens 'grave harm to Bush presidency,' Gaffney warns
      Posted by Fred Mertz
On 02/26/2003 1:50 PM PST with 390 comments


Center for Security Policy ^ | 26 February 2003 | Frank Gaffney
Headline Story | Islamist 'enabler' threatens 'grave harm to Bush presidency,' Gaffney warns > Norquist's group took seed money from an avowed supporter of Hezbollah, the terrorist group that killed 241 US Marines in a 1983 Beirut bombing. A prominent conservative leader who allegedly has used undeclared foreign money and top political connections to promote terrorist sympathizers is an 'enabler' who threatens 'to do grave harm to the Bush presidency.' Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney issued the warning in a letter to Grover Norquist, founding chairman of the Islamic Institute, after Norquist publicly accused Gaffney of 'racism...
     
 
Muslim Extremists seeking to foster One Islamic World
      Posted by Seeking the truth
On 02/24/2003 8:53 AM PST with 71 comments


The Hill ^ | February 24, 2003 | David Keene
Muslim extremists seeking to foster one Islamic worldPresident Bush has come under some criticism recently for his outreach to the U.S. Muslim community because administration officials have apparently met with some groups that have ties -- direct or indirect -- with extremist groups here and in the Middle East.Still, and in spite of the criticism he continues to reach out.The president's position is understandable and even commendable. He doesn't want to do anything to make it appear that he's leading an anti-Muslim crusade because this would drive millions of Muslims into the extremist camp with Osama bin Laden and...
     
 
Muslim Extremists Seeking to Foster One Islamic World: Wahhabis scream down pro-freedom "bigots."
      Posted by JohnHuang2
On 02/19/2003 11:28 PM PST with 16 comments


FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | Thursday, February 20, 2003 | By David Keene
Muslim Extremists Seeking to Foster One Islamic WorldBy David KeeneTheHill.com | February 20, 2003 President Bush has come under some criticism recently for his outreach to the U.S. Muslim community because administration officials have apparently met with some groups that have ties -- direct or indirect -- with extremist groups here and in the Middle East.Still, and in spite of the criticism he continues to reach out.The president's position is understandable and even commendable. He doesn't want to do anything to make it appear that he's leading an anti-Muslim crusade because this would drive millions of Muslims into the extremist...
     
 
Grover Norquist's Strange Alliance With Radical Islam
      Posted by testforecho
On 11/01/2001 4:14 PM PST with 45 comments


The New Republic ^ | November 11, 2001 | Franklin Foer
GROVER NORQUIST'S STRANGE ALLIANCE WITH RADICAL ISLAM. Fevered Pitch by Franklin Foer Post date 11.01.01 | Issue date 11.12.01 On the afternoon of September 26, George W. Bush gathered 15 prominent Muslim- and Arab-Americans at the White House. With cameras rolling, the president proclaimed that "the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good." It was a critically important moment, a statement to the world that America's Muslim leaders unambiguously reject the terror committed in Islam's name. Unfortunately, many of the leaders present hadn't unambiguously rejected it. To the president's left sat Dr. Yahya Basha, president of the ...
     
 
Pocketbook morality: Debbie Schlussel denounces terrorist's favorite college
      Posted by JohnHuang2
On 12/25/2001 2:31 AM PST with 12 comments


WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, December 25, 2001 | Debbie Schlussel
The more terrorist sympathizers change, the more they stay the same. At long last, the University of South Florida has fired Islamic Jihad's U.S. chief, Professor Sami Al-Arian. But Al-Arian's long overdue firing is not enough. He should be deported, at the very least – and more deservedly, he should be punished with a long prison term. And the University of South Florida should be punished along with him for waiting so long to do the right thing, and for doing so for the wrong reasons. In my previous columns, I've outlined how Dr. Al-Arian operated the U.S. front ...
     
 
Getting the story straight: Grover Norquist replies to Ratner's accusation of selling out America
      Posted by JohnHuang2
On 06/07/2002 1:16 AM PDT with 4 comments


WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Friday, June 7, 2002 | Grover Norquist
Ellen Ratner and Gareth Schweitzer attempt to criticize me in their article "Removing Norquist's burkha" (WorldNetDaily, May 31) for a series of sins. I count 10 attacks, and each is a falsehood. One is always aware of one's very real deficiencies and failures – and thus, being attacked for things one didn't do is only mildly annoying, and as Churchill said, like being shot at without effect. The personal attacks are all borrowed without attribution from an article that printed in the New Republic last fall. I am not angry at Ms. Ratner, but disappointed that she could have avoided...
     
 
Has anyone on the Right taken Grover Norquist to task?
      Posted by Gurn
On 04/11/2002 10:22 AM PDT with 30 comments


Various FR threads | April 11, 2001 | self
A couple weeks back someone posted an article from the New Republic about Grover Norquist's going in the tank for Islam, and engineering Dub's "Islam is a religion of Peace" PR strategy. There was also an article from National Review Online on the topic.Someone in one of the threads mentioned that Grover is on the NRA board of directors. I informed the NRA that I wouldn't renew my membership if that remained the case.My question is, have there been any recent developments? I know that Weyrich and a couple other folks had mildly chastised Norquist; but it seems that if...
     
 
Norquist-Gaffney feud leads to exile
      Posted by Sabertooth
On 02/26/2003 5:39 AM PST with 180 comments


The Hill.com ^ | February 26th, 2003
FEBRUARY 26, 2003 OPEN SECRETS OF THE HILL BANISHEDNorquist-Gaffney feud leads to exileThe ongoing spat between tax reformer Grover Norquist and defense expert Frank Gaffney may have reached the point of no return. In the latest escalation, Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, informed Gaffney he was no longer welcome at meetings of his weekly discussion group. The reason, said Norquist, is the disparaging remarks he claims Gaffney made about Muslims at a convention of the Conservative Political Action Committee last month. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, accused Norquist and the Islamic Institute, which Norquist...
     
 
Frank Gaffney on Hugh Hewitt Right Now
      Posted by Sabertooth
On 02/25/2003 3:32 PM PST with 22 comments


HughHewitt.com ^ | February 25th, 2003
Go to HughHewitt.com for station info.
     
 
OUTREACH TO TERRORISTS?
      Posted by Fred Mertz
On 02/25/2003 11:53 AM PST with 9 comments


New York Post ^ | 25 February 2003 | FRANK J. GAFFNEY JR.
February 25, 2003 -- WHAT to make of the fact that a Muslim extremist (or "Islamist") named Sami Al-Arian was arrested and indicted last week on 50 counts, among them conspiracy to finance terrorist attacks that killed more than 100 people - including two Americans? It is not, as Al-Arian claimed when federal agents led him away, "all about politics." After all, this alleged leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad - which Attorney General John Ashcroft has described as "one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world" - was allowed into the Bush White House on at least one...
     
 
The plot thickens: Al-Arian in the White House
      Posted by SJackson
On 02/25/2003 5:24 AM PST with 46 comments


Jewish World Review ^ | Feb. 25, 2003 | Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
What considerations, political or otherwise, prompted members of Mr. Bush's staff to believe that Al-Arian was the kind of person they wanted on their team? Who bears responsibility for making those calculations? And are they continuing to do so with respect to other individuals and organizations that could, at the very least, embarrass Mr. Bush and, at worst, seriously undermine his efforts in the war on terror? What are we to make of the fact that a Muslim extremist (or "Islamist") named Dr. Sami Al-Arian was arrested and indicted last week on 50 counts, among them conspiracy to finance terrorist...
     
 
Hiding in Plain Sight (Al Arian at the White House)
      Posted by Sabertooth
On 02/23/2003 8:53 AM PST with 352 comments


Newsweek ^ | March 3rd, 2003 | Michael Isikoff
For George W. Bush, it was just another campaign stop. But for Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida engineering professor, it was a golden opportunity. When Bush appeared at Tampa’s Strawberry Festival in March 2000, Al-Arian sidled up to the candidate and had his picture taken. < -snip- > Al-Arian’s politics took on a decidedly darker cast last week when federal agents arrested him at his home in south Florida and charged him with being a top leader of one of the world’s most violent terrorist organizations: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). < -snip- > Al-Arian certainly didn’t act like...
     
 
THE STRANGE CASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN
      Posted by Utah Girl
On 02/22/2003 10:43 PM PST with 5 comments


NRO ^ | 2/21/2003 | David Frum
The arrest of Sami al-Arian on terrorism charges marks an epoch not only in the War on Terror, but in the history of the Bush administration. But let's rewind: Al-Arian, of course, is the professor at the University of South Florida who was yesterday charged with financially masterminding Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian terror group responsible for dozens of murders. He's now probably best known for his television confrontation with Bill O'Reilly - which ended with O'Reilly telling al-Arian that if he (O'Reilly) were the CIA, he'd follow al-Arian everywhere he (al-Arian) went. Well it looks as if the FBI has...
     
 
Removing Norquist's burkha (Grover Norquist Alert)
      Posted by Sabertooth
On 02/22/2003 7:19 PM PST with 43 comments


WorldNetDaily ^ | May 31st, 2002 | Ellen Ratner
Everybody knows that the issue of patriotism belongs to the right – right? And everybody knows that all those Americans who consort with those hostile to America are all left – right? You know, "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and Alger Hiss and the rest of those liberals – right? Well, here's a newsflash, folks – in this new millennium, it's not just my friends on the left playing footsie with the unfriendlies, they're also the right – right here in old (Potomac) River City, as "The Music Man" sang it. It's a Bushie, in fact – a man who has...
     
 
Professor Terror
      Posted by kattracks
On 02/21/2003 9:30 PM PST with 5 comments


Washington Times ^ | 2/22/03
The indictment Thursday of a college professor and seven other men on charges of conspiring to finance attacks by Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a reminder that al Qaeda is hardly the lone terrorist group operating in the United States. The 50-count indictment, delivered by a federal grand jury in Tampa, Fla., provides a detailed account of how Palestinian Islamic Jihad raised money and coordinated terrorist activities in the Middle East from the United States. Specifically, it charges that Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, "directed the audit of all monies and property of the Palestinian Islamic...
     
 
Alleged Terrorist Met With Bush Adviser (Al-Arian Part of Muslim Outreach)
      Posted by Sabertooth
On 02/22/2003 10:45 AM PST with 50 comments


Washington Post ^ | February 22nd, 2003 | Mike Allen and Richard Leiby
The meeting was controversial within the White House even before it took place. The group that included Al-Arian was scheduled to be briefed by Vice President Cheney, but Cheney canceled. That morning, the Jerusalem Post had run a front-page article headlined, "Cheney to host pro-terrorist Muslim group." (see below - ST) Several pro-Israel and conservative activists had warned administration officials not to meet with the American Muslim Council contingent because the group had courted controversy for years, knowledgeable sources said. Abduraham Alamoudi, a member of the organization also at the meeting with Rove, said at a White House demonstration in...
     
 
Bush's Terrorist Buddy (Al-Arian)
      Posted by joemurphy
On 02/21/2003 10:25 AM PST with 137 comments


worldnetdaily.com ^ | 2001 | Debbie Schlussel
Sami Al-Arian is a University of South Florida professor and the author of this speech: "We assemble today to pay respects to the march of the martyrs and to the river of blood that gushes forth and does not extinguish, from butchery to butchery, and from martyrdom to martyrdom, from Jihad to Jihad." But, according to the July 16 Newsweek, during a campaign speech in Tampa, last year, candidate Bush singled his son, Abdullah, out in the crowd, something done for specially selected, pre-screened individuals to which a candidate wants to draw attention. Calling Abdullah, "Big Dude" – one...
     

Lot's of extra evidence of the Radical Islamic penetration on those links, as you scroll though them.




33 posted on 03/01/2003 11:03:40 AM PST by Sabertooth
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: Sabertooth; wepollock; Budge; sweetliberty; Internet Golfer; Miss Marple; xJones; Jim Robinson; ...
From June/2002 IT ISN'T JUST ABOUT IRAQ.. IT IS ABOUT "THE HATE AMERICA" GROUP!!! Vets

[usas] Fwd: REPORT from ANTI-WAR CONFERENCE: 600 ATTEND, ANNOUNCE PLANS
From: peta (petalindsay_dc@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jun 03 2002 - 20:30:13 EDT

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--- "International A.N.S.W.E.R." wrote:
> Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 17:29:20 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "International A.N.S.W.E.R."
> Subject: REPORT from ANTI-WAR CONFERENCE: 600
> ATTEND, ANNOUNCE PLANS
> To: petalindsay_dc@yahoo.com
>
> 600 ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS ATTEND JUNE 1 EMERGENCY
> NATIONAL ANTI-WAR CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK CITY
>
> Report on the June 1 conference:
> - Plans announced for mass June 29 demonstration at
> FBI’s Washington D.C. headquarters to tell Ashcroft
> "Hell No, We Don’t Want Your Cointelpro"
> - This summer, Commission of Inquiry hearings on
> U.S.-backed Israeli war crimes against the
> Palestinian
> people will take place around the country
> - Great press coverage of the conference
> - List of speakers and topics of the conference.
>
>

>
> PRESS RELEASE
> on June 1 Emergency National Anti-War Conference
>
> (June 2, 2002 - NYC) Over 600 activists with
> International A.N.S.W.E.R. met yesterday in New York
> City and announced plans for a mass June 29
> demonstration at the FBI's Washington D.C.
> headquarters to protest John Ashcroft’s domestic
> espionage program that targets political
> organizations, mosques and community groups.
>
> A.N.S.W.E.R. — which stands for Act Now to Stop War
> &
> End Racism — was one of the central forces behind
> the
> 100,000-strong March for Palestine April 20th in
> Washington, D.C. The activists who planned this
> demonstration came from around the country Saturday
> for an all-day, anti-war conference opposing Bush's
> war policies that threaten Iraq, Colombia, and the
> Philippines, back genocide against Palestinians, and
> take money from people's needs and funnel it to the
> Pentagon.
>
> A special section on the conference’s Opening
> Plenary
> entitled “Emergency action plan to fight back
> against
> the FBI and Ashcroft” featured Mara
> Verheyden-Hilliard
> and Carl Messineo, attorneys and co-founders of the
> Partnership for Civil Justice. “Today we have
> launched a national fightback movement to stop John
> Ashcroft and the FBI from bringing back the very
> worst
> features from J. Edgar Hoover’s reign over domestic
> intelligence,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, also
> a
> member of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition steering
> committee.
>
> “Ashcroft’s changes have been presented as an
> innocuous update of FBI procedures,” said
> Verheyden-Hilliard. “This has become the preferred
> method of presentation by Ashcroft as the Justice
> Department shreds the First Amendment and the Bill
> of
> Rights.
>
> “These changes, however, are much more insidious
> than
> simply allowing the FBI to surf the web,”
> Verheyden-Hilliard continued. “They are a
> full-scale
> revival of Cointelpro, the notorious government
> infiltration program which reached its peak in the
> 60s
> and was aimed at Martin Luther King and the civil
> rights movement.”
>
> “Ashcroft is facing a growing and powerful anti-war,
> anti-racist movement that won’t be easily
> intimidated,” said Larry Holmes, co-director of the
> International Action Center, also with A.N.S.W.E.R.
> “We’re not going to let Ashcroft, the FBI, Bush and
> his right-wing gang — with the complicity of the
> Democratic Party and Congress — tear up the
> constitution, open up a war on political dissent,
> and
> stop the very necessary movement against his
> war-mongering, pro-rich madness.”
>
> Later in the day -- after a reportback from
> A.N.S.W.E.R.’s medical and legal delegation that
> just
> returned from the West Bank and Gaza -- conveners
> announced plans this summer for mass public
> inquiries
> entitled Commission of Inquiry hearings on
> U.S.-backed
> Israeli war crimes against the people of Palestine.
>
> Details of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Action Plan will be
> released in the coming days.
>
>

>
> The June 1 Emergency National Anti-War Conference
> was
> one of the top stories on NY1. That story follows:
>
> TOP STORY:
> Anti-War Activists Hold Conference On War Against
> Terrorism
> June 1, 2002
>
> To view the 60 second clip that was shown many times
> on NY1, go to:
>
http://www.ny1.com/ny/Search/SubTopic/index.html?&contentintid=21994&search_result=1
>
> Anti-war activists gathered at a conference in
> Manhattan Saturday to rally against what they call
> the
> Bush administration's “war machine.”
>
> The demonstrators were part of the group ANSWER,
> which
> stands for “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.” The
> conference was held at the Fashion Institute of
> Technology.
>
> ANSWER members say they want to challenge efforts by
> Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI to give
> investigators new authority to keep tabs on
> Americans.
> They also say they plan to start a movement to stop
> any plans for a war in Iraq.
>
> “It is taking everything that we need for schools
> and
> hospitals and food and everything that people need
> and
> robbing it from us and pouring it into a military
> budget," Larry Holmes of the International Action
> Center said Saturday.
>
> ANSWER also wants to put an end to any racial
> profiling of Arabs or Muslims in the United States.
>
> The group is planning to hold a massive rally in
> front
> of FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. later this
> month.
>
>

>
> The conference included a wide array of speakers on
> many topics, including:
>
> - Elias Rashmawi, Free Palestine Alliance
> - Larry Adams, President, Mailhandlers Local 300;
> New
> York City Labor Against the War
> - Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney and co-founder,
> Partnership for Civil Justice
> - Larry Holmes, Co-Director, International Action
> Center
> - Yoomi Jeong, Korea Truth Commission
> - Chuck Kaufman, Nicaragua Network
> - Jennifer Wager, IFCO/Pastors for Peace
> - Arturo Garcia, Bayan International
> - Carl Messineo, attorney and co-founder,
> Partnership
> for Civil Justice; member of A.N.S.W.E.R. delegation
> to Palestine
> - Dr. Hillel Cohen, public health doctor and
> epidemiologist; delegate for 1199 Health and
> Hospital
> Workers Union; member of A.N.S.W.E.R. delegation to
> Palestine
> - Randa Jamal, Al-Awda NY-NJ, Free Palestine
> Alliance
> - Sara Flounders, International Action Center;
> member
> of A.N.S.W.E.R. delegation to Palestine
> - Brenda Stokely, President, AFSCME District Council
> 1707; New York City Labor Against the War
> - Williams Camacaro, member, Venezuela Civic Center,
> NYC
> - Teresa Gutierrez, Committee to Stop the U.S. War
> in
> Colombia
> - Ben Dupuy, Co-Director, Haiti Progres; Secretary
> General, National Popular Party in Haiti
> - Mahmoud Ahmed, Free Palestine Alliance-Chicago
> - Richard Becker, Western Regional Coordinator,
> International Action Center; member of A.N.S.W.E.R.
> delegation to Palestine
> - Gloria La Riva, President, Typographical Sector of
> the Northern Calif. Media Workers Union; National
> Committee to Free the Five Cuban Political Prisoners
> Held in the U.S.
> - Leslie Feinberg, author and lesbian/gay/bi/trans
> rights activist
> - Brian Becker, International Action Center
> - Renee Washington, volunteer organizer, All
> People’s
> Congress
> - Doreathea Peacock, coordinator, Boston Women’s
> Fightback Network
> - Sharon Ceci, Baltimore A.N.S.W.E.R.
> - William Guerrero, IAC
> - David Sole, Pres., Auto Workers Local 2334,
> Detroit
> - Ed Childs, chief shop steward, Local 26 HERE
> (Hotel
> Employees and Restaurant Employees), Boston
> - Lyn Meza, Vice-President, IUE-CWA Local 201
> - Mike Gimball, NYC AFSCME progressive caucus, local
> 375, delegate to NYC Central Labor Council
> - Trudy Rudnick, organizer, AFT (American Federation
> of Teachers) Local 3882 in NY
> - Andre Powell, trustee, AFSCME Local 119, Baltimore
> - Dave Welsch, retired Vice-President, National
> Association of Letter Carriers (NALC)
> - Andy Thayer, Chicago Coalition Against War &
> Racism
> - Roger Wareham, Aug. 17 Millions for Reparations
> march
> - Subash Kateel, DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving)
> - Khadouri Al-Kaysi, Committee in Support of the
> Iraqi
> People
> - Ismael Kamal, Sudanese American Society
> - Deirdre Griswold, Workers World newspaper
> - Peta Lindsay, youth and student coordinator,
> A.N.S.W.E.R.
> - Daniel Keesler, student, School Without Walls high
> school
> - Ayman El-Sawa, IAC
> - Deirdre Sinnott, A.N.S.W.E.R. organizer
> - Alicia Jrapko, Int’l Action Center-SF
> - Cherrene Horavuk, CISPES (Committee in Support of
> the People of El Salvador)
> - Bob Marsh, Iraq Sanctions Challenge
> - SOA Watch representative
> - Dan Wilson, Philippine Forum, Network in
> Solidarity
> with the People of the Philippines
> - Tom Burke, Colombia Action Network
> - Rebeca Toledo, Committe to Stop the U.S. War in
> Colombia
> - John Parker, International Action Center-LA





34 posted on 03/01/2003 11:06:23 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: Sabertooth
I think there is more to Al-Arian being let into the whitehouse than meets the eye. It has come out that he was being investigated at the time. Perhaps he was allowed in, in an effort to throw him off balance, to watch him even more closely? I think this whitehouse is way more savvy than even I'm able to give them credit for at times. They probably followed his every move after he was in the whitehouse, and obviously they have the dirt on him or he wouldn't be behind bars!!

There were (in the past) a few times I said "What in the world are they thinking??".. but was later proved wrong, and impressively so by this administration.

They inherited a HUGE HUGE mess. Fixing it, isn't a job I would relish, or want. I think history will show us just how lucky/blessed we were to have this administration in power at this time in our nations history.

I'm not one to show bias because of party affiliation. In fact, I've even defended McKinney's campaign contribution (for now anyway) by Al-Arian. There were members from both parties that rec'd them. It is an extremely complex system, and I think it needs changing.. but it would be at present, impossible for every candidate to know EVERY donor to their campaigns. It was pointed out to me that Rep. Henry Hyde found out Al-Arian had donated to his campaign, and then donated the money to charity. Once a candidate finds out that someone with shady dealings has donated, it is more interesting to see how they react to the news, and what they do with the money.

Until the system is fixed/improved upon, there is no way to change what happened with people like Al-Arian. After all, we/our government was only "watching" Al-Arian at the time of the political donations.

Like I said, the political donation system could certainly be improved upon, but I like the fact that average citizens can donate to a candidate of their choice. Unless a candidate shows a pattern of courting a certain group, one with ties to radical groups, etc, then we should give all candidates the benefit of the doubt when it comes to donations like Al-Arians. It really is HOW they treat the knowledge that counts for now.

Just MHO :o)
35 posted on 03/01/2003 11:19:01 AM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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Comment #36 Removed by Moderator

To: Vets_Husband_and_Wife; Fred Mertz; Sabertooth; Jael
PING
37 posted on 03/01/2003 12:06:42 PM PST by TLBSHOW (God Speed as Angels trending upward dare to fly Tribute to the Risk Takers)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: conservativecorner
But conservatives who have seen documented evidence of that link believe now that the GOP controls the House and Senate, there is no excuse for not holding hearings.

A full-scale Senate or House probe is viewed as a means of informing an American public that is kept in the dark by a mainstream media that looks the other way on the hard-left/terrorist alliance.

WES VERNON
38 posted on 03/01/2003 12:08:23 PM PST by TLBSHOW (God Speed as Angels trending upward dare to fly Tribute to the Risk Takers)
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To: conservativecorner
Let's hope that they do more tha "mull" over this train of thought.
39 posted on 03/01/2003 12:14:04 PM PST by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: Salvation
Useful Idiots: Marxists Exploit the Appeasement Movement
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/2/25/144636.shtml
40 posted on 03/01/2003 12:18:41 PM PST by TLBSHOW (God Speed as Angels trending upward dare to fly Tribute to the Risk Takers)
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