Category Archives: Frank Gaffney

Connecting the Dots 101

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-213433477By Frank Gaffney:

The dramatic events in Boston last week have given rise to what President Obama would call a “teachable moment.”  The question is, will we “connect the dots”?  And, more to the point, will our leaders, the media and the rest of us have the intellectual integrity and courage to learn the evident lessons?

The initial indicators are not encouraging. We now know that, despite the unconcealed hopes of some elected officials, elite journalists and most especially the self-appointed arbiters of “hatred” – the hate-mongering Southern Poverty Law Center, the perpetrators of murderous attacks at the Boston Marathon and in the days that followed turned out not to be white Christian or anti-tax extremists, but Caucasians of a very different stripe.  Yet, their true character and motivations continue to be obscured.

In fact, Timerlan and Dhozkhar Tsarnaev were jihadists, born in the turbulent Russian republic of Chechnya – a honing fire for terror-wielding Islamists – and named, respectively for prominent figures in that movement’s distant and more recent past.

Here’s what we have learned from this episode that is highly instructive about the wider war we are in:

  • The Tsarnaev brothers became “radicalized” as they embraced their Muslim faith.  The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that their mother encouraged this course, that the elder boy brought along his younger sibling and that they attended the Islamic Society of Boston/ISB.  As a powerful video produced by Americans for Peace and Tolerance makes clear, the ISBCC is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood – a group that seeks to impose its supremacist Islamic code of shariah worldwide.  Shariah commands its adherents to engage in or otherwise support jihad (or holy war).
  • Sources at the Tsaraevs’ mosque are spinning the press with stories that Timerlan was ejected at one point for challenging an imam’s endorsement of Martin Luther King. Also, shortly after the Marathon bombings, the ISBCC issued a press statement condemning the terrorist attack.  Yet, these deflections cannot be allowed to obscure the reality that this mosque – like many others in America – promotes shariah and jihadism.  (See the peer-reviewed study published in 2011 by the Middle East Quarterly in which a random sample of one hundred such institutions found that 80% of them are associated with both shariah and jihad.)  As such, mosques like the Islamic Society of Boston must be considered to be part of the problem.
  • The FBI interviewed Timerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of a Russian government evidently concerned about the jihadist inclinations of this Chechen expat.  The Bureau says it “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the [Russian] government in the summer of 2011.”  Unfortunately, this statement seems to say more about the politically imposed limitations on the Bureau’s ability to understand and identify the roots in jihad of such terrorism than provide an accurate assessment of the elder Tsaraev’s behavior.
  •  Among such political constraints is President Obama’s assiduous rejection of any  association between terrorism and Islam.  In fact, his administration has gone so far as to characterize the former as “violent extremism,” “man-caused disasters” and “workplace violence.”  In response, the FBI has purged its files of training materials that might “offend” Muslims. That would, it seems, include any information about the direct connection between shariah, jihad and “terrorism.”  Like other government agencies, moreover, the Bureau has been directed to consult with “community partners” – which seems to mean Muslim Brotherhood front organizations – before engaging trainers or their curricula.
  •  Then there is this:  In 2012, the FBI adopted “Guiding Principles” that say, among other things, that “mere association with organizations that demonstrates both legitimate (advocacy) and illicit (violent extremism) objectives should not automatically result in a determination that the associated individual is acting in furtherance of the organization’s illicit objective(s).”  In other words, Timerlan Tsarnaev could not be considered dangerous as long as his jihadist affiliates also engaged in “legitimate” (that is, non-violent) efforts to bring about the triumph of shariah.
  • This absurd justification apparently underpins as well the Obama administration’s engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, both at home and abroad, resulting in the latter’s legitimation, empowerment, funding, arming and ascendancy – with our help – throughout the Sunni Muslim world.  The strategically disastrous consequences of this policy are now becoming manifest.

Given the foregoing problems, it is hardly surprising that the American people are largely uninformed about the true nature of the threat we are facing.  As a result, they are not being engaged, as they must be, in the defense of our republic against enemies foreign and domestic.

Read more at Center For Security Policy

Frank Gaffney: Is North Korea Planning to Launch EMP Attack?

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Frank Gaffney appeared on the Kudlow Report on CNBC to discuss North Korea. Amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula, the North Korean government told foreign governments to leave South Korean territory for their safety. Today, Kim Jong Un’s government may launch missiles in a provocative test.

Gaffney points out that Obama’s actions and rhetoric toward American nuclear disarmament is dangerous, and has contributed to North Korea’s aggressiveness. In addition, what’s the possibility of North Korea’s use of Electromagnetic Pulse attack?

GAFFNEY: How Muslim proselytizing creeps into public schools

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b1-gaffney-apple-iislam-gg_s160x215By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.:

The Loudoun County School  Board is reaching the denouement of a multiyear deliberation about an  application for a charter school that has strong ties to Fethullah Gulen,  a Turkish Islamist. His followers have already started some 135 American charter  schools. Their focus is to promote an increasingly Shariah-dominated Turkey.

Incredibly, the school board’s  members are studiously avoiding any acknowledgment or discussion of the role of  Fethullah Gulen and his movement in the charter  school. They have wrestled for many months with a host of problems with the  application — such as serious deficiencies with the proposed curriculum, the  financing, the management, the teachers and Maryland’s  Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School, the school  in Anne Arundel County specifically cited as the “model” for the Loudoun  Math and Information Technology Academy.

Yet the members of the school board  have, to date, been unwilling to recognize that these problems are actually  endemic in Gulen-associated schools — including Chesapeake Science Point. These problems are also  much in evidence in three Gulen charter schools in  Fulton County, Ga. Two of the three have lost their charters; the third — an  elementary school — may soon follow suit.

I had the occasion to visit Fulton County last week and talked with several  people involved in one aspect or another of its difficulties with the Gulenists.  These included a former teacher, the parent of a former student and a local  administrator. One thing is clear from these conversations: You simply cannot  begin to understand, let alone cope with, the sorts of issues inherent in “Gulen-inspired” schools if you indulge — for whatever  reason, be it “political correctness,” sensitivity to “diversity,” fear of  litigation or being branded an “Islamophobe,” racist, etc. — in the pretense  that applications like the one in Loudoun County can be properly evaluated while  excluding from the evaluation process the 800-pound gorilla in the room: the  applicants’ manifest associations to the Gulen  movement.

Read more at The Washington Times

Related posts:

http://counterjihadreport.com/category/fethullah-gulen/

Allen West Interviews Frank Gaffney on Mali/Africa Conflict – Obama and Bush Policies Faulted

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In a preview of the new PJ Media Next Generation TV show Allen West is joined by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy and John Phillips to discuss the situation in Mali and Algeria. Gaffney, although a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, faults both the Bush and Obama administration policies regarding Islamists, Sharia, and the more recent Arab Spring.

Go to Next Generation TV to see the interview

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A World Without America

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flag distressCenter for Security Policy

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly declared that “a world without America is not only desirable, it is achievable.”  While that sentiment won’t be embraced in President Obama’s inaugural address next week, all other things being equal, it seems likely to be the practical effect of his second term.

Of course, Iran’s regime seeks a world literally without America.  More to the point, Ahmadinejad and the mullahs in Tehran are working tirelessly to secure the means by which to accomplish that goal.  Specifically, they have or are developing the ability to engage in devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, biological warfare and other asymmetric terrorist strikes.

For his part, Barack Obama seems to have in mind bringing about a world without America in a geo-strategic sense.  As Mark Steyn notes in a characteristically brilliant essay in National Review Online, that would be “Obamacare’s other shoe.” It would amount to a “fundamental transformation” of America’s place in the world, evidently intended to be the President’s second-act counterpart to the socialist transformation of this country that dominated his first term.

That agenda is strongly evident in Mr. Obama’s choices for key national security cabinet positions: John Kerry at the State Department, Chuck Hagel at Defense and John Brennan at the CIA.  The three are, like the President, imbued with a post-American, post-sovereignty, post-constitutional, transnationalist outlook.  In his administration, it would appear that their mission would be, as the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka puts it, to manage the United States’ decline.

Having addressed previously in this space the serious problems with the judgment, records and policy proclivities of Messrs. Hagel  and Kerry let’s consider those of John Brennan to further illustrate the syndrome.

Brennan is a textbook example of a U.S. official who has “gone native.”  He speaks Arabic and was formerly the top CIA officer in Saudi Arabia.  He has shown himself to be deeply sympathetic to Islamists — for example, excusing and dissembling about their commitment to jihad and the necessity of not offending them.

After President Obama himself, John Brennan is, arguably, the single most important enabler of the Islamic supremacists’ agenda in government today. In his role as Homeland Security Advisor to the President — a position that does not require Senate confirmation and that he was given as a consolation prize when it became clear that he might not be confirmable as CIA director back in 2009 — Brennan has helped legitimate, empower, fund, arm and embolden them abroad, and embraced and appeased them here at home.

Of particular concern is the fact that John Brennan has presided over: the policy of engaging the Muslim Brotherhood, which has consequently been portrayed by a politicized intelligence community as “largely secular” and “eschewing violence”; the shredding of training briefings and the proscribing of trainers that might upset Muslims by telling the truth about shariah and the jihad it commands; the penetration of U.S. agencies by Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals as employees and/or senior advisors; and misrepresentations to Congress about the true, jihadist character of the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi last September 11th.

Of particular concern is the prospect that Team Obama’s second-term team will, if confirmed, be even more insistent than their predecessors on engaging Iran.  Make no mistake about it:  The practical effect will be to buy the regime in Tehran the last few months it evidently needs to achieve what it has sought for decades: the means to have the world not only bereft of America’s leadership and stabilizing force, but to neutralize and perhaps eliminate the United States as a 21st Century society.

Ordinarily, a president should be given wide latitude by the Senate to appoint those he wants to staff his administration.  This is no ordinary time, though, and this is no ordinary president or administration.  The circumstances are such that a Team Obama that is pursuing so dangerous a policy course must be challenged and impeded, not encouraged and abetted.

The Senate’s constitutional responsibility to confirm senior executive branch appointees is one of the few it hasn’t compromised, or allowed the president to expropriate.  It must exercise its authority to assure “quality control” with respect to his picks for top national security cabinet posts.

Indeed, the fact that President Obama seeks not one or two, but three individuals who share his determination to achieve the radical and dangerous national security transformation he seeks in his second term demands that Senators defy him.  After all, should the Senate fail to object to this trajectory by rigorously debating and defeating any — and preferably all — of these problematic choices, its members risk not only allowing, but becoming party to, the realization of a world without America.

Al Gore Profits from the Stealth Jihad

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Current AlJazeeraBy Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Let’s call it Al Goreera.  That seems a fitting title for the new network that former Vice President Al Gore is launching with the jihadists’ favorite television outlet: Al Jazeera.  The effect will be to create vast new opportunities for our enemies to propagandize the American people, a key ingredient of their “civilization jihad” against our country.
It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this treachery.  Imagine the furor that would have erupted if, during the Cold War, one of the United States’ most prominent former leaders had enriched himself to the tune of $100 million by giving the Soviet Union’s intelligence service, the KGB, a vehicle for engaging in information and political warfare in some 40 million homes across this land.  If anything, the danger posed by Al-Goreera today is even greater since most of us — and especially our elites — are unaware that such warfare is even afoot.
Yet it is.  In the Holy Land Foundation trial — the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history — the government introduced into evidence the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic plan for its operations in America. This 1991 document, entitled “The Explanatory Memorandum on the Strategic Goal of the Group,” established that the Brothers’ mission here is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within…by their hands [meaning ours] and the hands of the Believers  so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Toward this end, Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood employ various subversive techniques.  Among the most important are those aimed at achieving what the military calls “information dominance.”  Al Jazeera is used by jihadists the world over — including its Wahhabi owner, the Emir of Qatar — to promote their narratives of hatred of the infidel West in general, and Israel and the United States in particular.
The Washington Free Beacon recently identified (http://freebeacon.com/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-al-jazeera/) seven illustrative examples of the network’s regular dissemination of praise for terrorists and their sponsors.  These include the likes of the late Yemini-American al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Sudan’s genocidal dictator, Omar al-Bashir.  The virulently shariah-promoting, Qatari-based cleric Yousef al-Qaradawi even has a regular show on Al Jazeera’s programming for Muslim consumption.  He uses it to sanction murderous holy war against American soldiers and Israelis, including women and children.
Of course, those promoting the network’s penetration of the United States — among them Mr. Gore, who will get a board seat on the new network to be formally known as Al Jazeera America — tend to pooh-pooh concerns about the Arabic-language mother ship’s service to the jihadi cause.  In any event, these apologists insist that the programming in English is objective and fair, claiming that Colin Powell says it is the only network he watches.  Who knows, given their appalling predilections, it may also be the favorite of President Obama’s newest nominees, Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel and CIA Director-designate John Brennan.
The truth, however, is that over time if not immediately, the dictates of the owner and the editorial board in Doha will ensure that the content of Al Goreera helps obscure, rather than illuminate, the ominous nature of civilization jihad and promotes the shariah doctrine it seeks to insinuate into this country.
Regrettably, the Federal Communications Commission has washed its hands of this transaction claiming, in the words of a spokesman, it “doesn’t have regulatory oversight of transactions relating to ownership of cable networks.”  It’s a safe bet that the deeply Islamist-penetrated Department of Justice (see Part 9 of www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com) won’t intervene, either.  In light of the stakes, Congress must inject itself into the matter.
At the very least, Al Jazeera America should be obliged to register as a foreign agent.  That term is defined by the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) as individuals or entities that are wholly owned by a foreign government, that take instruction from the owners or their agents and that attempt to influence public opinion and policy in America.  Al Goreera would certainly fit that description, and Congress should ensure that its broadcasts are identified accordingly.
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The Sharia Threat to America

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By Fred Grandy

There is a great deal of misinformation circulating with regard to sharia and  the threat it poses to America and Western Civilization.

Some  misinformed observers and members of the Muslim Brotherhood liken concerns over  sharia to prejudice and bigotry, but the facts say otherwise.

sTerrorism  experts in the law enforcement, military and intelligence communities have cited  sharia as the Jihadists’ enemy threat doctrine in an intensive study called “Shariah:  The Threat to America,” a scholarly, 352-page book based on  authoritative sources of sharia, or Islamic law. While sharia does include  “prayer and fasting” and “worship,” sharia is also an all-encompassing legal and  political code that covers aspects of life that have nothing to do with  religion.

Perhaps  most importantly, unlike other forms of religious law, such as canon law and  Jewish law, sharia is the only form of religious law extant that is also meant  to apply to people of other faiths, i.e. non-Muslims.

The  threat from sharia has nothing to do with prejudice or bigotry. The threat from  sharia is real and multifaceted.

Some  claim that sharia is no threat to the American legal system, but research shows  such a threat does exist. Just as sharia has gradually become embedded in the  legal systems of many European nations over the past generation, it is beginning  to be found in US court cases. An initial study by the Center for Security  Policy entitled “Shariah  Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court  Cases,” examined 50 cases from 23 states that involved conflicts  between sharia and American state law. The study’s findings suggest that sharia  has entered into state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and  state public policy.

This  incursion of sharia into US court systems usually manifests itself in the form  of foreign law from nations such as Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan,  Libya, Syria and other predominantly Islamic nations.  As a result, four  states, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona and Kansas, have passed into law “American  Laws for American Courts,” legislation. Several more states are considering  American Laws for American Courts. Unlike Oklahoma’s infamous constitutional  amendment, American Laws for American Courts does not ban sharia. American Laws  for American Courts protects individual, fundamental constitutional rights by  preventing courts from applying foreign law when the application of that foreign  law in the case at hand would result in the violation of a fundamental  constitutional right, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due  process and equal protection.

Among  the organizations that are clouding the issue on sharia is the Saudi-backed  Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

ISNA  was named as an unindicted co-conspirator and revealed to be a Muslim  Brotherhood affiliate in the US v. Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism  financing prosecution in American history.

ISNA  was co-founded in 1981 by Sami Al-Arian, a man who is now in federal prison  after having been convicted on terrorism charges as a member of Palestinian  Islamic Jihad.

Read more at American Thinker

 

No Christmas future for the Middle East?

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ChristCenter for Security Policy

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Did you have a Merry Christmas?  If so, chances are you are not a Christian in the Middle East or many other parts of the world.Under the headline “Christianity ‘close to extinction’ in Middle East,” London’s  Telegraph reported this week on the findings of a shocking new study by a British think tank known as Civitas: the Institute for the Study of Civil Society.

The new study is entitled “Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack,” thereby making the foundational point that – as opposed to the purported problem of “Islamophobia” manufactured by Islamic supremacists to cow and induce Christians and other infidels to submit to their dictates – followers of Christ are truly being persecuted in much of the planet.  Civitas puts it this way: “It is generally accepted that many faith-based groups face discrimination or persecution to some degree. A far less widely grasped fact is that Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers.”

As the Telegraph observed, the report draws on published estimates showing that as many as “200 million Christians, or 10 per cent of Christians worldwide, are ‘socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.’” And “between a half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or been killed in the past century.”

The study’s author is Rupert Shortt, a journalist and visiting fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. He argues that, “Exposing and combating the problem ought in my view to be political priorities across large areas of the world. That this is not the case tells us much about a questionable hierarchy of victimhood.”

“Hierarchy of victimhood” is one, very anodyne way of describing the forces at work.  Another would be to call it what it is: a blatant double-standard that has the effect of excusing and enabling Islamists, the Chinese Communists and other totalitarians to engage in mass and often brutal repression of Christians for simply exercising religious liberties our country claims to consider unalienable.

The effect of this practice is especially palpable in the region that was the birthplace of Christianity.  Few native Christians feel safe living in Bethlehem anymore  and Islamic supremacists like Mahmoud Abbas instead preside over the holiday observances there.  Christians have fled Iraq – one of their ancient homelands – en masse.  Many of them have wound up in neighboring Syria where they and their native co-religionists face rape, torture and extermination at the hands of the “rebels” striving, with our help, to overthrow Basher Assad.

Meanwhile, in Egypt – a country that long was Christian before it was conquered by Muslims and still has a sizeable minority known as Coptic Christians – has just adopted a constitution based on shariah law.  Even before that legal basis was established for treating such Christians as dhimmis (enslaved peoples) they were relentlessly attacked, and in some cases murdered, as their businesses were ruined or expropriated and their churches burned.  In due course, it seems likely that those who can get out will do so.

Yet, as the Civitas study recounts, “Western politicians and media largely ignore the widespread persecution of Christians in the Middle East and the wider world because they are afraid they will be accused of racism.  They fail to appreciate that in the defense of the wider concept of human rights, religious freedom is the ‘canary in the mine….’”

Unfortunately, in the case of the present U.S. administration, the practice of ignoring Christians’ plight seems rooted in far more ominous impulses.  A powerful new book by Phyllis Schlafly and George Neumayr entitled “No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom,” recounts the President’s pervasive “Islamophilia” and relentless hostility towards other faiths.  The authors conclude that Mr. “Obama is at war with Christianity.”

Which makes all the more problematic the plight of Middle Eastern Christians seeking refuge from their oppressors.  Under a practice deplorably begun during the George W. Bush administration, Team Obama relies on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to determine who should receive that status and be allowed asylum in this country.  And since the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – the official Islamist multinational group that is the modern day equivalent of the Muslim world’s governing caliphate – largely calls the shots at the UN these days, we generally wind up bringing in Islamists unwilling, or at least unable, to assimilate.  Often they come from Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia, displacing Christians seeking to practice their faith in freedom and security.

There is a lot of talk at the moment about immigration reform.  One strategically vital place to start would be by revisiting the practice of importing: Islamic supremacist clerics under the R-1visa program; tens of thousands of Saudi “students” annually; lottery winners disproportionately drawn from Muslim-dominated nations and regions; and Islamist-heavy “refugee” populations, to the effective exclusion of Christians genuinely in desperate need of that status.

An “Islamophilic” Obama administration “at war with Christianity” is unlikely to take such steps left to its own devices.  The American people and their congressional representatives must therefore insist that it does so.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.

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Center honors Monica Crowley, spotlights ‘new media’ and mainstream bias at Mightier Pen event

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Monica CrowleyCenter for Security Policy | Dec 17, 2012

    On December 11, 2012 the Center for Security Policy honored radio host and bestselling author Monica Crowley with the Mightier Pen Award and hosted its annual National Security and New Media Conference. Frank Gaffney and Andy McCarthy introduced Ms. Crowley.

TRANSCRIPT

The Mightier Pen Award recognizes journalists who promote the need for robust US national security policies through the indispensability of American strength to preserving international peace. As a political and foreign affairs analyst, Monica Crowley has been a long-standing supporter of the Center’s belief that America’s national power must be preserved and properly used; for it holds a unique global role in maintaining peace and stability. Ms Crowley’s new book, What the (Bleep) Just Happened?, asks the questions that are on the minds of Americans today and makes the case for a “great American comeback,” including a return to the security posture that made America great.

 

TRANSCRIPT

In addition to the Mightier Pen Award, the Center’s National Security and New Media Conference brought together some of the the most experienced and provocative voices in journalism to address several problems in mainstream media reporting on national security topics, with an emphasis on the recent presidential election.

 

PANEL ONE: Beyond Bias: The Mainstream Media

Outraged.  That’s how Americans feel about the performance of the  mainstream media in the 2012 election season.  From the New York Times  to the networks, CNN and of course, MSNBC, they have now moved far  beyond their role as impartial journalists into active political  operatives.  What happens to a nation when the mainstream media  overwhelmingly become the propagandists for the Left? Featured  panelists:

  • Richard Miniter: Columnist, Forbes Magazine and New York Times best-selling author and investigative journalist;
  • Bill  Gertz: Senior Editor, Washington Free Beacon, Columnist, Washington  Times and Best-selling author of six books on national security; and
  • Andrew  McCarthy: Columnist, National Review Online and PJMedia, Executive  Director, Philadelphia David Horowitz Freedom Center and Former chief  prosecutor in the 1993 WTC bombing

Moderator: Fred Grandy

TRANSCRIPT

 

PANEL TWO: To the Rescue: The New Media

The election was the worst of times for the old mainstream media -  but the best of times for the independent new media investigative  reporters who are reinventing American journalism.  All our panelists  broke major stories during the campaign, as new media pioneers setting  the highest standards for professional journalism.  Can they and their  colleagues become the future of a free press in America? Featured  panelists:

  • Tiffany Gabbay: Assistant Editor, The Blaze;
  • Peter  Schweizer: Founder, Big Peace (Breitbart.com); William J. Casey Fellow  at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; New York Times and  Washington Post best-selling author; and President, Government  Accountability Institute
  • John Nolte: Editor in Chief, Big Hollywood (Breitbart.com)

Moderator: Frank Gaffney

TRANSCRIPT

 

A Turkish ‘Trojan Horse’ for Loudoun?

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GulenCenter for Security Policy

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

It is a commonplace, but one that most of us ignore:  If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  That applies in spades to a proposal under active consideration by the school board in Virginia’s Loudoun County.  It would use taxpayer funds to create a charter school to equip the children of that Washington exurb with enhanced skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.  Ostensibly, they will thus be equipped to compete successfully in the fields expected to be at the cutting edge of tomorrow’s workplace.
What makes this initiative, dubbed the Loudoun Math and IT Academy (LMITA), too good to be true?  Let’s start with what is acknowledged about the proposed school.
LMITA’s board is made up of a group of male Turkish expatriates.  One of them, Fatih Kandil, was formerly the principal of the Chesapeake Science Point (CSP) Public Charter School in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.  Another is Ali Bicak, the board president of the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation, which owns CSP and two other charter schools in Maryland.  The LMITA applicants expressly claim that Chesapeake Science Point will be the model for their school.
The taxpayers of Loudoun County and the school board elected to represent them should want no part of a school that seeks to emulate Chesapeake Science Point, let alone be run by the same people responsible for that publicly funded charter school.  For one thing, CSP has not proven to be the resounding academic success the applicants claim.  It does not appear anywhere in the acclaimed US News and World Report lists of high-performing schools in Maryland, let alone nationwide – even in the subsets of STEM or charter schools.
What is more, according to public documents chronicling Anne Arundel Public Schools’ dismal experience with CSP, there is significant evidence of chronic violations of federal, state and local policies and regulations throughout its six years of operations, with little or inconsistent improvement, reflecting deficiencies in fiscal responsibility and organizational viability.
Why, one might ask, would applicants for a new charter school cite so deeply problematic an example as their proposed institution?  This brings us to aspects of this proposal that are not acknowledged.
Chesapeake Science Point is just one of five controversial schools with which Mr. Kandil has been associated: He was previously: the director at the Horizon Science Academy in Dayton, Ohio; the principal at the Wisconsin Career Academy in Milwaukee and at the Baltimore Information Technology Academy in Maryland; and one of the applicants in a failed bid to establish the First State Math and Science Academy in Delaware.
These schools have something in common besides their ties to the peripatetic Fatih Kandil.  They have all been “inspired” by and in other ways are associated with Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish supremacist and imam with a cult-like following of up to six million Muslims in Turkey and elsewhere around the world.  More to the point, Gulen is the reclusive and highly autocratic leader of a global media, business, “interfaith dialogue” and education empire said to be worth many billions and that is run from a compound in the Poconos.
This empire – including its roughly 135 charter schools in this country and another 1,000 abroad – and its adherents have come to be known as the Gulen Movement.  But those associated with it, in this country at least, are assiduously secretive about their connections to Imam Gulen or his enterprise.  For example, the LMITA applicants, their spokeswoman and other apologists have repeatedly misled the Loudoun school board, claiming that these Turkish gentlemen and their proposed school have nothing to do with Gulen.
There are several possible reasons for such professions.  For one, the Gulen schools are said to be under investigation by the FBI.  A growing number of them – including Chesapeake Science Point – have also come under critical scrutiny from school boards and staff around the country.  In some cases, they have actually lost their charters for, among other reasons, chronic financial and other mismanagement and outsourcing U.S. teachers’ jobs to Turks.
The decisive reason for the Gulenist lack of transparency,however, may be due to their movement’s goals and modus operandi.  These appear aligned with those of another secretive international organization that also adheres to the Islamic doctrine known as shariah and seeks to impose it worldwide: the Muslim Brotherhood. Both seek to accomplish this objective by stealth in what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” and Gulen’s movement describes as “jihad of the word.”
This practice enabled the Gulenists to help transform Turkey from a reliable, secular Muslim NATO ally to an Islamist state deeply hostile to the United States – one aligned with other Islamic supremacists, from Iran to the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas to al Qaeda.  Fethullah Gulen’s followers clearly don’t want us alive to the obvious dangers posed by their penetration of our educational system and influence over our kids.
The good news is that members of the Loudoun County school board have a code of conduct which reads in part: “I have a moral and civic obligation to the Nation which can remain strong and free only so long as public schools in the United States of America are kept free and strong.”  If the board members adhere to this duty, they will reject a seductive LMITA proposal that is way too “good” to be true.
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