Divest terror, Iran, Iraq, War on Terror

Terror’s lobbyist

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Since 1979, Iran has funded and directed Middle-Eastern terrorist organizations and those organizations have murdered hundreds of Americans. U.S. intelligence sources recently stated that Iran supplied the equipment and training used to kill at least 171 of our troops in Iraq. Currently, 22 senior members of the al Qaeda — including Osama bin Laden’s son — are in Iran and there is no evidence to prove they are in custody, despite that regime’s assertions. And Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Given all that, why would any U.S. company do business with Iran when it continues to murder Americans and poses such an obvious threat to our national security? While our laws prohibit direct trade with Iran, it is taking place by proxy. In this morning’s Washington Times, Frank Gaffney provides an example of what is going on and explains what some states are attempting to do about it:

This week, the Ohio Legislature will hold its second hearing on legislation designed to help the state make a real contribution to America’s triumph in the War for the Free World. It would prevent investment by Ohio’s public pension funds in companies that do business with the terrorism-sponsoring, nuclear weapons- and ballistic missile-building and genocide-threatening Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unfortunately, the Iranian regime and the corporations partnering with it (almost all of them foreign-owned and -operated, since American companies are prohibited from participating directly in such dealings and only a few circumvent that by using offshore subsidiaries) are abetted by a well-heeled Washington lobby: the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC). Its president is William Reinsch, and the effect of its lobbying at the moment would be to keep American taxpayers and pension fund beneficiaries underwriting our enemies through their institutional and personal investments.

Mr. Reinsch had a checkered career prior to assuming his current role as Terror’s Lobbyist. For example, during the Clinton administration, he used his senior position in the Commerce Department to facilitate and excuse China’s acquisition of an array of sensitive and even dual-use technologies, despite restrictions on such transfers.

Now, the former Commerce undersecretary heads a trade council that favors doing business with America’s enemies and runs interference for those determined to do so. In his present role, Mr. Reinsch works to counter citizens and their elected representatives who believe such business dealings are strategically ill-advised and morally repugnant.

Specifically, Mr. Reinsch’s trade association is mobilizing its considerable resources to help public pension fund managers, their Wall Street advisers and state treasurers fight off initiatives like one adopted last year by Illinois. It ended investments on the part of that state’s firefighters, police officers, National Guard personnel and other public employees in companies doing business with the Islamofascist and genocidal regime in Sudan.

Until, that is, Mr. Reinsch and his friends sued to have the law overturned… READ THE REST

In addition, please take the time to learn more about the Center for Security Policy’s Divest Terror Initiative.

Islam vs. Islamists, Political wind

PBS’ Islamist Apologists Muzzle Muslim Moderates

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After the Center for Public Broadcasting spent $675,000 of taxpayers’ money for Martyn Burke to create ‘Islam vs. Islamists’, Washington’s PBS affiliate, WETA, led the effort to remove the documentary from the ‘America at a Crossroads’ series. WETA’s President and CEO is Sharon Percy Rockefeller, the wife of Senator John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. In a recent Human Events interview, Martyn Burke explained how WETA influenced PBS’ decision:

Q: A lot of people don’t realize that documentaries are not meant to be balanced and neutral — they always have a point of view. So what is the slant or agenda of “Islam vs. Islamists”?

A: One of the absolutely growing elements of hysteria from WETA within PBS was that we have a point of view. We said, “Of course we have a point of view.” Our point of view — based on the research, based on the reporting and the discussions with all these world-class reporters that we had engaged on this topic — was that there is a large community of moderates within the Muslim world who are afraid to speak up and we’re showing why. It’s because of the attacks of the Islamists.

What PBS/WETA attacked us on was they wanted us, in our opinion, to become virtually apologists for the Islamists, those who are the fundamentalists in this world. Basically, the attitude of this one small group — and again I have to say within WETA — was that the Muslims we were portraying as the moderates were in some way, in their view, not true Muslims because they were Westernized; they believed in democracy, which by the way the Islamists do not and will openly say that.

But they (the group within WETA) felt that the Islamists … somehow represented a truer strain of Islam. We said that is not the case as we have found it. And it became a sort of battle, with them saying to us, “Well, you control this. It is your film, but” – and it was a huge, capital-letter “But” – “if you do not do what we want, we will throw you out of the series.”

PBS apparently believes there are no real “moderate Muslims” in the U.S., just like there is no “Global War on Terror” according to Rockefeller’s party.

Liberal Washington power broker Anne Wexler is WETA’s Vice Chairman. Her USA*Engage team lobbies to stop, stall, and water down trade sanction legislation, such as with Iran. In 1998, the Wexler Group lobbied to de-fang legislation that imposed sanctions against nations that persecuted people for their religious beliefs.

Senator Rockefeller is a leading critic of the Patriot Act. His name appeared in the December 2005 New York Times article that revealed the classified NSA program that monitors communications in and out of the United States when one or more of the parties is suspected of having ties to terrorism. The left contends that both infringe upon free speech, people’s privacy, and the right to be protected from unreasonable searches. Conversely, his wife heads the PBS affiliate that silenced a documentary about moderate Muslims who spoke out against the Islamists and WETA’s Vice Chairman hinders legislation that attempts to end religious persecution abroad.

The canning of ‘Islam vs. Islamists’ probably does not signal a convergence of America’s vast, left-wing conspiracy with radical Islam. More likely, elite liberals think terrorism is manageable yet moderate Muslims are out of control and must be crushed.