By Phyllis Chesler

I once lived in the East Village–’twas back in the early 1960s, long before it became as fashionable as it now is. I moved away long ago but over the years, I would return to visit friends, sometimes to attend meetings, but mainly to enjoy feminist-experimental theatre. Last night, I returned to East 4th St. in the hope that a well reviewed play about four Arab women would establish a point of connectivity for me, a road through the nightmarish impasse of Big Lies.

I arrived early. Right next door stood a small and unpretentious cafe. I ordered espresso and looked around. Ellen Stewart’s fabled theatre Cafe La Mama stood right across the street. I looked up and saw two quotes from Emma Goldman mounted on the wall: one about freedom of speech and one against war. Once, long ago, I taught Emma Goldman’s work and I quoted her in my own earliest works. I called the proprietress over and she told me that although she did not know Goldman’s work, she had “liked” what Goldman had said.

(more…)

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)*

Officials at the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) have long maintained that they have no relationship with Hamas, a specially designated terrorist group.

But HLF’s own list of speakers from abroad, seized by federal agents in 2001, is a veritable roster of Hamas leaders and activists. In a Dallas courtroom Tuesday, FBI Special Agent Robert Miranda told jurors in HLF’s terror support trial how he used telephone records and other information to cement more than three dozen HLF “overseas speakers” to Hamas.

“This is an organization that’s all about money,” Miranda said of HLF. “Who’s raising it for them?”

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Our “friends,” the Saudis, have created a program so that “Saudi Youth [can] Enter Rehab to Overcome Their Terrorist Ways.” As the Saudis encourage terrorism through funding and ideological support, can we even take this seriously? The kingdom itself has suffered from terrorist attacks. Perhaps the royal family thinks it can neutralize its homegrown terrorists — but with a rehab center sporting a “pool, a library, a volleyball court, gardens and other leisurely quarters?” How do the Saudis hope to indoctrinate and then un-indoctrinate terrorists at the same time? This is just another example of the contradictions inherent in Arab/Muslim dictatorships (e.g., Egypt having a treaty with Israel, but spewing all sorts of anti-Semitism). From Fox:

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

CAIR is on the defensive. The organization is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Trial; is facing a plummet in membership; it withdrew a lawsuit against Anti-CAIR’s Andrew Whitehead; and the news about its ties with terrorism are well-documented (but censored by the do-good MSM). Some high-profile coverage from Scott Johnson at today’s NRO:

…CAIR is, in fact, among the more than 300 unindicted co-conspirators of the Holy Land Foundation named by the government in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution. The trial has already produced evidentiary bombshells detonating along a path leading to CAIR. It has introduced evidence placing CAIR executive director Nihad Awad at the 1993 Philadelphia meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. FBI agent Lara Burns has testified that CAIR was listed as a member of the Palestine Committee. The evidence introduced at trial is conspicuously missing from the New York Times; the Times isn’t covering the trial. I found reports of the evidence introduced at trial posted on the invaluable Counterterrorism Blog by Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism. …

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

This is just precious:

The French magazine Paris Match touched up a photograph of President Nicolas Sarkozy on his US holiday, making his figure more svelte.

Leading news weekly L’Express printed before and after shots, showing a distinct tightening of the area it called poignees d’amour (love handles).

L’Express quotes Paris Match as saying the president’s seating position made the bulge look more prominent.

Paris Match said it had tried adjusting the lighting on the picture.

“The correction was exaggerated during the printing process,” the magazine told L’Express. …

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

How many times are we going to go through this? This time: a real estate bubble; last time: a stock bubble. Our financial markets are supposed to be transparent. And they are… generally. Most of the time, all the information is out there, but some information is more easily accessed than other information, and investors make certain assumptions about the quality of the information. Many investors depend on financial ratings services. Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch Ratings are supposed to investigate and assess the risk/reward of investing in companies’ stocks, bonds, and other types of securities.

But it turns out that the ratings firms had the same type of incestuous relationships with lenders as did the investment banks with the crappy dot-com companies of the 1990s. This time around, it is banks, investors, and would-be, sub-prime homeowners that will end up losing up to $150 billion — and that number may grow. Note that there is no excuse, as home buyers with bad credit shouldn’t have been borrowing, lenders shouldn’t have been lending to people with bad credit, and the ratings services shouldn’t have been putting lipstick on risky mortgage-backed securities so brokers could hock them to unwary investors. But the concept of systemic transparency (openness, truthfulness) has again taken a back seat to greed. Here’s how the real estate shell-game worked:

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

The Islamist regime in Iran is sending a clear message to its political opponents: shut up or die. About 30 Iranians have been hanged in public in the past 30 days. According to the Guardian, this “spectacle” of repression and violence was held at a “location, near many office blocks and the Australian and Japanese embassies, [which] meant [the hangings] were seen by many middle-class Iranians who would not normally witness such events:”

Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown prompted by alleged US-backed plots to topple the regime, The Observer can reveal.

Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West. Opposition sources say at least three of the dead were political activists, contradicting government insistence that it is targeting ‘thugs’ and dangerous criminals. The executions have coincided with a crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a ’soft revolution’ with US support.

(more…)

by Caroline Sevier*

On March 4, 2007, Shadi Sadr and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh were among nearly three-dozen Iranian women detained after they participated in a peaceful demonstration in protest of the trial of several women’s rights activists arrested nine months before.[1] Family members and supporters gathered outside Tehran’s Evin prison to protest the detentions.[2]

(more…)

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)*

A visitor stopped by the Gaza office of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) in December 1999. It was Dallas Morning News reporter Steve McGonigle, who was reporting about alleged links between the Richardson, Tex.-based charity and Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government four years earlier.

McGonigle testified about that trip on Monday in the material support trial of the HLF and five of its officials. HLF officials did not know he was coming to Gaza, McGonigle said, and telephone calls between HLF officials in Gaza and Texas that prosecutors played seem to confirm that. McGonigle didn’t realize it, but his unannounced visit created a bit of a stir.

McGonigle wanted to meet families helped by HLF charities. The men on the phone calls, including HLF Chief Executive Shukri Abu Bakr, agreed not to take him to families of prisoners or martyrs.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

Saudi Arabian Airlines declares on its English-language website that the kingdom bans “Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David.” Until the Saudi government changes this detestable policy, its airline should be disallowed from flying into Western airports.

Michael Freund brought this regulation to international attention in a recent Jerusalem Post article, “Saudis might take Bibles from tourists,” in which he points out that a section on the Saudia Web site, “Customs Regulations,” lists the forbidden articles above under the rubric “Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam.”

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

The Middle East is in a new era, very different from the politics and strategic situation we have been used to for so long.

For 55 years the region has lived under Arab nationalist dominance. Every Arab regime, except perhaps Sudan, is Arab nationalist, governed by that basic system and world view.

Of course, these regimes have governed badly, not keeping pledges to unite the Arab world, minimize Western influence, destroy Israel, or bring rapid social and economic progress. Still, they know how to stay in power.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

There really has been a sea-change in France — the turning point being the 2005 riots. The Foreign Minister today saying France “could offer support to end sectarian violence” in Iraq? From the Beeb:

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad for a visit at the invitation of the country’s president.

The trip marks the first time a French minister has been to Iraq since France opposed the US-led invasion in 2003.

The election in May of Nicolas Sarkozy as French president brought an improvement in relations with the US.

Mr Kouchner said France could offer support to end sectarian violence, but the solution lay in Iraqi hands.

“I want to listen to the people… We have to understand this country, we have to understand what’s going on between the Shiites and the Sunnis, not only in Iraq,” he said in a joint news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. …

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them… Did the great Maya — masters of astronomy, architecture, poetry, hydrology, engineering, mathematics, art, written language, agriculture, road building, politics, pageantry, propaganda, weaponry — see the end coming? Were they so different from us? Millions now sit back indulging in perversions masquerading as “entertainment,” like Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning, Xtreme Fighting, Grand Theft Auto, and Top (Dead) Model’s beautiful corpses. Are we so different from them? Look at this Classic Age fresco, from National Geographic, most assuredly a piece of mainstream Mayan propaganda and/or art (below).

Are we at the edge now? Not yet. Is the precipice in sight? I would say that prime time porn and violence is a bad sign. Don’t remember the Mayan ball game? How about the Colosseum or Circus Maximus? It hasn’t been that long since Andy Griffith was considered mainstream. Look where we are now. Why repeat the mistakes of the past when they are enumerated in text books?

In a terrifying expression of royal power, a stucco mural at Toniná shows a turtle-footed skeleton grabbing the hair of a severed head—with portrait-like features, perhaps of a real person—and a mythical rodent holding another head in a ritual bundle. These characters were the wayob, the affliction-spewing alter egos of kings that were used to curse enemies. They work here amid a scaffold bearing the heads of human sacrifices.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

So animals aren’t smart? Just ask Oscar the cat — or note that crows employ and/or make tools. Researchers studying our avian friends found that New Caledonian crows “can use separate tools in quick succession to retrieve an out-of-reach snack,” and concluded “that because the birds were able to solve [a] problem on their first attempt they were using analogical reasoning rather than trial and error.” From the BBC:

…The birds surprised the scientists with their quick thinking.

Alex Taylor, lead author of the paper, said: “The creative thing the crows did was to use the short stick to get the long tool out of the box so that they could then use the long stick to get the meat.”

Russell Gray, another author of the paper, told the BBC News website: “What is most amazing is that most of them did this on the first trial. …

Crow after bending a wire into a hook — making a tool.

(more…)

by Bill Levinson

The National Jewish Democratic Council is again trying to downplay, deny, and whitewash the vicious anti-Semitic hate speech that is coming from the Democratic Left. We are surprised that the NJDC would again bring itself to our attention in this manner, noting its own publication of anti-Semitic and anti-Christian hate propaganda. Nonetheless, we are always delighted to accommodate them, and we will take this opportunity to remind them that we asked them for their position on Al Sharpton, MoveOn.org, and Jeremiah Wright.

Surfin’ the Net By Steve Sheffey, NJDC Activist

Whether it is because they have too much time to surf the net or whether it is because they are still chagrined that Al Gore claimed he invented it, some Republicans are now blaming Democrats for anti-Semitic postings on certain web sites. …However, it does not follow from the presence of bad comments posted on left-wing web sites or on sites that support causes that Democrats are weak on Israel.