by Steven Shamrak

Not long ago, a spokesperson for Pope Benedict XVI said that the Pope would not visit Israel until a caption attached to a photo hanging in Yad Vashem of Pope Pius XII, who reigned during the Holocaust era, was removed. The caption states that Pius XII “abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews” and “maintained his neutral position throughout the war”.

Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, stands by the description and affirms that it has ensured that the presentation of the subject in the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem is based on the best research regarding this topic.

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By Aaron Eitan Meyer*

On October 4^th, the London Telegraph reported that YouTube had taken down comedian Pat Condell’s video “Welcome to Saudi Britain,” with the only explanation being that the video constituted a “terms of use violation.” In the video, which is now back up on YouTube, Condell took aim at the institution of Shari’a courts in Britain, terming them fundamentally unfair to women and criticizing the fact that “we’re now accommodating Saudi Arabian legal principles here in Britain.” A YouTube spokesman told the Telegraph that the site has guidelines regarding certain types of content, including ‘hate speech.’

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By Andrew Cochran*

This morning, the U.S. Treasury is announcing a new designation of the Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI) for providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL). The Iranian regime is allegedly using the EDBI as a financing mechanism as a substitute for Bank Sepah, whose international financing capabilities have been sharply curbed since the Treasury designated it in January 2007 and persuaded our allies to join in that freeze. Contributing Experts Jonathan Winer, Matthew Levitt, Victor Comras, Michael Jacobson and I have written extensively on the series of international sanctions against Sepah and other elements of the Iranian financing system. The Treasury statement alleges that “EDBI has facilitated the ongoing procurement activities of various front companies associated with MODAFL-subordinate entities.” The Treasury designated MODAFL and associated entities in October 2007 for activities to promote Iran’s ballistic missile program.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Ten months after their deaths, the FBI finally described Yaser Abdul Said’s murder of his two daughters as an “honor killing.” I wrote about it HERE. Fox News also did. However, within ten-twelve days, the FBI deleted this description from their Most Wanted poster. Once again, Fox News wrote about it. Most kindly, Fox’s journalist, Maxim Lott, interviewed me for both articles. … (Continue reading…)

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Barack Obama and his supporters have tried to claim that his associations with people like Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, James Meeks, John Lewis, Alcee Hastings, Bill Ayers, Mahdi Bray, and Nihad Awad, and his connections with organizations like Trinity United Church of Christ, ACORN, the Muslim American Society’s (MAS) Freedom Foundation, and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), were all innocuous. When people question Obama’s character vis-à-vis these relationships, his campaign and followers retort that he is being unfairly accused using guilt by association. In fact, Obama has had long-standing relationships, and/or relationships of convenience, with such people/entities, and his connections to them are far from innocuous.

First, Jeremiah Wright. From ABC News:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Barack Obama is desperately trying to distance himself from ACORN, but there’s no question that he is linked to the group. His campaign has even added a page to its website which denies all connections to ACORN, and makes it easy for visitors to copy and paste an obfuscatory sound-byte and email it to their friends. This blurb has already started to show up verbatim all over the Web.

ACORN is becoming an even bigger problem for the Obama camp, as it was revealed by The New York Times that, “Acorn’s top management is separately facing questions over its handling of the embezzlement of $1 million of its money by the brother of the group’s founder.”

Andrew C. McCarthy, writing for the National Review Online, pointed out today that Obama’s legal team has concocted a diversionary strategy to get out from under the big, heavy falling ACORN. These lawyers are twisting a supposedly legal issue into a purely political smokescreen meant solely to obscure the truth about the “grass-roots” organization’s nefarious activities. McCarthy provides a mountain of evidence documenting Obama’s relationship to ACORN, shows the extent to which the group has meddled with the voter registration process, and demonstrates how the Obama campaign is obfuscating, for example, trying to blur the lines delineating state and federal laws. The article also contains evidence of the Obama campaign’s disturbing funding sources. You should read the entire article, but I’ve selected some of the best sections below:

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By Phyllis Chesler

When a woman friend of mine recently called to tell me that she had been offered a well paid position in Afghanistan I told her not to go. When she insisted, I said: “Alright then, you’d better get a gun, learn how to use it, and get psychologically prepared to shoot yourself in case you are captured but not instantly killed.” She was shocked, shocked. And so I continued: “But you might be easily disarmed. Better have a dentist implant a cyanide tablet, (or something more merciful), in your teeth so that you can opt out of the repeated rapes or the video-ed be-heading.” Now, she was silent and listening carefully. I continued. “You may not be held for ransom, so if you absolutely must go, I would request that your do-gooder work be carried out entirely within an American Army base — but please understand, they, too, have been successfully attacked.” … (Continue reading…)

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Yet another scandal has surfaced regarding ACORN — this time to do with nepotistic embezzlement. From the New York Times:

… Acorn’s top management is separately facing questions over its handling of the embezzlement of $1 million of its money by the brother of the group’s founder. …

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by Michael Rubin*

As markets floundered amid the credit crunch, Iran’s leadership celebrated the West’s economic crisis. On Oct. 11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, “The claim that the free market manages all things is a huge lie and benefits only thieves and criminals.” Two days later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei decreed that the West’s financial crisis was a sign of “the ineffectiveness of liberal democracy-based policies.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The FBI has opened an investigation into ACORN’s alleged voter registration fraud. The Obama camp is desperately trying to distance itself from ACORN, but there’s no question that Obama is linked to the group. Obama is also seeking to distract attention from the fraud allegations by trying to paint the ACORN investigation as “politically motivated.”

From the Voice of America:

… U.S. media report that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether a group called ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, coordinated a national effort that produced flawed registration applications. …

Obama has denied having significant ties to the group. …

Obama does indeed have significant ties to ACORN. From Fox News:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Barack Obama has gotten away with his past associations to ugly characters like John Lewis, Alcee Hastings, Bill Ayers, James Meeks, and Louis Farrakhan. So it should come as no surprise to find that Obama is courting the votes of extremist Muslim-Americans. The Obama campaign has been reaching out to the likes of Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society’s (MAS) Freedom Foundation.

CAIR is a Saudi-funded, Islamist front for whitewashing terrorism. CAIR’s Awad once stated publicly, “I am in support of the Hamas movement,” a group whose founding charter requires it to destroy Israel, i.e., to commit genocide.

The MAS “was founded as the United States chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Islamist, anti-Western organization whose goal is the ‘introduction of the Islamic Shariah as the basis controlling the affairs of state and society’.” The MAS’ Bray “has defended terrorists and those alleged to be supporting them.”

If Obama is courting the votes of such characters and organizations, a valid question for Obama would be: “What type of influence will these groups have over you if you become president?”

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By Phyllis Chesler

On October 4, 2008, for the first time ever, the FBI described the double homicides of Sarah and Amina Said in Dallas as an “honor killing.” This language accompanied the photo of Yaser Abdul Said on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. On January 1, 2008, Said took his Egyptian passport,and $9,000.00 and, with his wife Tissy’s help, shot and killed both his daughters in his taxi cab. He has not been seen since then. … (Continue reading…)

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

John Murtha, Democrat from Pennsylvania, has called his own constituents “racists.” In a story about Murtha’s foolishness, the AFP actually stated that he “… conceded his district is ‘racist’ but will still vote for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama …” Conceded? That is a highly-loaded term for a news agency to use, especially when describing such a subjective emotion like bigotry, and when applied to an entire region of America’s sixth largest state, with a population of 12,281,054. “Conceded” implies that Pennsylvanians in his district are in fact racist. (Concede: “To acknowledge, often reluctantly, as being true, just, or proper; admit.”) This is no less than an insult to his constituents, and a form of bigotry in and of itself as he and the AFP are stereotyping his people — and making a very serious accusation. Of course he provided no demographic study to prove his awful allegations. Furthermore, for Murtha to conclude that his district will vote for Obama is conceited and a stretch of imagination. Murtha is just acting inappropriately, which is par for the course for him.

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By Phyllis Chesler

… Neither candidate seemed to notice the “rough beast whose hour has come round.” Three debates — and neither Obama nor McCain seriously wrestled with the imminent danger of Islamic jihad, Obama because he does not see it that way, McCain because he has chosen not to make an issue of what is possibly the Mother of all issues. … (Continue reading…)

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The violence that Martin Luther King, Jr. abhorred, understood, and then finally took him from us, has stained his great legacy. The Rev. James L. Bevel was a “top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr.,” but turned out to be a sexual predator — a fox tending the chickens, as he “was a key architect of the 1963 Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Ala.” From the AP, Bevel:

… was sentenced Wednesday in a Virginia court to 15 years in prison for incest for having sex with his teenage daughter. …

The prison sentence was the most severe the judge could impose. Sentencing guidelines called for a term of probation and the jury that convicted Bevel recommended the 15-year sentence. …

During the trial, Bevel’s daughter testified that she was repeatedly molested by Bevel beginning when she was just 6 years old, culminating in sexual intercourse in 1993 or 1994 that formed the basis of the incest charge. …

It is a credit to the judge for not holding back on Bevel’s sentence, as taking advantage of children is the worst form of perversion.

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