Monthly Archives: May 2007

Islam vs. Islamists, PBS

PBS stations will air ‘Islam vs. Islamists’

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The Washington Times reports:

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) announced a joint agreement yesterday to make “Islam vs. Islamists” available to the 354 Public Broadcasting Service member stations across the nation as a “stand-alone” TV program, with a little extra embellishment. “We plan to distribute the film to any public broadcasting station that wants it. We’ll package it and also produce some sort of discussion to accompany the film, and give it some context,” OPB President Steve Bass told The Washington Times yesterday.
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The often-disquieting 52-minute film explores the struggles of moderate American Muslims at the hands of their radical brethren and gives details about a “parallel” Islamist society that is slowly but surely developing within the U.S. borders. The film was produced by conservative columnist Frank Gaffney Jr., founder of the Center for Security Policy, filmmaker Martyn Burke and Middle East scholar Alex Alexiev.

Originally made for the six-part PBS series “America at a Crossroads,” the film was intended for broadcast in early April. It never made it to the air, however. The producers, who received $675,000 in funding, said their work was shelved in “an ideological vendetta” and stifled on “political grounds.” They offered critical production notes from PBS as evidence. The lengthy notes said, among other things, that the documentary “demonized Islam” and promoted fear of Islamist organizations.

“This is a well-documented, textbook case of the abuse of taxpayer funding by elements in the public broadcasting system to advocate their agenda and ensure that people who have a different agenda don’t get on the air,” Mr. Gaffney said at the time. “The public ought to be allowed to see a film which PBS doesn’t want them to see.”
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The details have not been hammered out, but OPB’s Mr. Bass anticipates that the documentary — and its extra taped discussion — will be made available nationwide in the next few months.

Also see Hot Air’s take on this.

Political wind, War on Terror

Edwards is so over the ‘War on Terror’

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Former Senator John Edwards makes a lot of promises; if it is a problem, he’ll create a government program to “fix” it. With him as the Commander-in-Chief, Osama bin Laden and the rest of al Qaeda will need good lawyers except he never says how he is going to get them into court:

Democrat John Edwards Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.

In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan Bush had used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison to the invasion of Iraq.

“We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”

With John Edwards as President, ours would be a parade field military. That ought to scare our enemies into submission.