CAIR's Money Laundering Scheme

My article from today's issue of FrontPage Magazine:

CAIR's Money Laundering Scheme

By Matthew Vadum

The Muslim Brotherhood’s front group in the United States conceals donations from Islamist governments overseas by maintaining a complex web of shell organizations, according to a new report.

Right under President Obama’s nose, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) engages in an ACORN-like game of corporate musical chairs with its convoluted corporate structure and head-spinning funding machinations, Charles C. Johnson reports in the Daily Caller. Among the bombshell allegations, previewed Friday in FrontPage, are that CAIR has been “washing” millions of dollars from oil-rich nations without disclosing the donations to the U.S. government, as the law appears to require.

CAIR, a social welfare and lobbying organization recognized under 501c4 of the federal tax code, is the Islamofascist group in the United States most favored by leftists, Islamist fellow-travelers, dupes, and useful idiots. While CAIR’s parent organization is the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, it also has ties to Hamas and al-Qaeda. CAIR is a de facto agent of hostile foreign powers, including those in the business of exporting terrorism to our shores.

Since its creation nearly 20 years ago, CAIR has posed as a civil rights organization in order to immunize itself from criticism and has enjoyed remarkable success in infiltrating the American political establishment. Indeed, the Obama administration has gone out of its way to aid CAIR over and over again.

Court documents indicate CAIR took in at least $2,792,203 in contributions, income and money from foreign principals, including “a $2,106,251 mortgage loan from a foreign principal for CAIR’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and at least $54,500,000 in pledges from foreign principals,” the Daily Caller reports.

The government of Qatar gave CAIR $405,000 over five years. CAIR’s lobbying arm gave CAIR a little over $1 million in the same period. It’s unclear where that money came from.

Revealed: The Obama FBI’s Illicit Partnership with CAIR

My article from the Sept. 20, 2013 issue FrontPage Magazine:

 Revealed: The Obama FBI's Illicit Partnership with CAIR

By Matthew Vadum

A government watchdog’s new report takes the FBI to task for violating its own policies by continuing to work with the Muslim Brotherhood’s front group in the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
 
The report came as CAIR issued a new report denouncing the so-called “Islamophobia” of the Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, David the Horowitz Freedom Center, and others who dare to engage in an honest discussion of Islam and the politics surrounding it. Islamophobia is a concept invented to intimidate critics of Islam and Islamic jihad by implying that any and all criticism of the Muslim religion is animated by bigotry or ethnic animus. CAIR has urged Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI, which it characterizes as corrupt.

The report from the Justice Department’s inspector general faults FBI headquarters for repeatedly providing its field offices with conflicting information and pinpoints five examples in which FBI field office special agents-in-charge ignored or deliberately defied FBI policy.

Five years ago the FBI was directed to end its working partnership with CAIR that was part of the agency’s gooey, politically correct public relations effort in Muslim communities in the United States.

The ban on contact with CAIR applies only to outreach efforts. The FBI continues its normal investigatory work, looking into criminal and civil rights complaints involving Muslims and working with any organizations to which they may belong.

FBI field office resistance to the policy goes back to late 2008.

Clinton Muslim Brotherhood Operative Arrested in Egypt

My article from the Sept. 19, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

 Clinton Muslim Brotherhood Operative Arrested in Egypt

By Matthew Vadum

A fugitive Muslim Brotherhood leader and Clinton operative has been arrested by Egyptian authorities in an ongoing roundup of seditious Islamist militants.

The arrest of Gehad el-Haddad for inciting violence is a sobering reminder not just of how close Hillary Clinton’s network is to the brutal Muslim Brotherhood, the Left’s favorite Islamofascist cell, but also of the extent to which Islamist enemies of the United States have infiltrated the American political establishment.

And it is yet another vindication for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) who has been viciously attacked by left-wingers and leaders of her own party for having the courage to sound the alarm about radical Islam’s penetration of the U.S. government.

A mere month after Haddad quit his Clinton Foundation job for full-time employment with the Brotherhood a year ago, now-deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi received an invitation to deliver a major address at the Clinton Global Initiative, a high-profile project of the foundation. Morsi calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Exploiting Tragedy

My article from the Sept. 17, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Exploiting Tragedy

By Matthew Vadum

After a gunman calmly murdered 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard yesterday, the Left began trying to exploit the Navy employees’ deaths to advance its never-ending campaign to disarm law-abiding citizens.

The FBI identified the shooter, who was killed in a gun battle with police, as Aaron Alexis, 34, of Fort Worth, Texas. A civilian military contractor who was reportedly a practicing Buddhist at one time, Alexis received a general discharge from the Navy Reserve in 2011 after a shooting incident in his home. A general discharge usually indicates a problem in a serviceman’s record. He was previously arrested in Seattle 2004 after shooting out the tires of a vehicle.

During the assault around Building 197 in the military installation near the Washington, D.C. Nationals ballpark, Alexis used a shotgun, handgun, and an AR-15, the same kind of rifle used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre in December.

As with elementary schools and other “gun-free” zones, perpetrators know they can carry out mass shootings at military bases because the personnel there have been disarmed.

Obama's Syria Spin

My article from the Sept. 16, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Obama's Syria Spin

By Matthew Vadum

Even with the assistance of his media minions, President Obama is failing to articulate any kind of a rational defense of the administration’s nonsensical, on-again, off-again policy toward Syria.

Yet somehow despite Obama’s bumbling on the domestic and world stages, Russia and the United States agreed Saturday to take custody of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons by the middle of next year. Syria is required to hand over an inventory of the illicit weapons within a week.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the pact will be backed up by a UN Security Council resolution. Noncompliance could lead to sanctions or other actions, he said. Kerry said the inspections could begin by November and that destruction of the weapons could get underway in 2014. Assad sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon promising that he will sign the international treaty that bans chemical weapons today.

One Year Since Benghazi

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

One Year Since Benghazi

By Matthew Vadum

Thanks to President Obama’s shameless obstructionism, a year after four Americans died in a terrorist attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, it remains unclear what Obama knew about the attack and when he knew it.

“When you look at the list of unanswered questions, it is startling how little progress has been made in this investigation over the past year,” said Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.).

Amidst White House stonewalling, intimidation of witnesses, and Republican gutlessness, little has been done to move the ball forward in the investigation surrounding the deaths on Sept. 11, 2012, of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at U.S. facilities in eastern Libya.

The Islamofascist offensive took place a year ago today, a day of great symbolic importance to both America and the Islamic world because it was the eleventh anniversary of al-Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Perhaps more importantly, it also took place at the height of one of America’s nastiest presidential election cycles, just a few weeks before Election Day.

Since Sept. 11 of last year Obama has sent military aid to his terrorist friends in the Middle East. A spokesman for the Islamist-heavy coalition fighting the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad acknowledgedyesterday that the coalition has received both lethal and non-lethal aid from the Obama administration. The administration sent support to the government of Egypt’s Islamist president Mohammed Morsi until he was overthrown in July.

What’s happening now in Syria may be connected to what happened a year ago in Libya, according to Congressman Wolf.

The people’s representatives need answers about Benghazi, especially now that President Obama is seeking congressional authorization to intervene on behalf of the terrorist-dominated opposition in the Syrian civil war, Wolf said.

Whither the Anti-War Left?

My article from the Sept. 6, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Whither the Anti-War Left?

By Matthew Vadum

As America’s leftist president demands war against Syria, the anti-war Left is nowhere to be found.

Democratic lawmakers who reflexively oppose any military action proposed by a Republican president are for the most part missing in action now that a Democrat occupies the Oval Office.

Earlier this week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 10 to 7 to authorize the president to use U.S. forces to attack Syria. The resolution stipulates that military action is restricted to within Syria’s borders, forbids U.S. troops on Syrian soil, and limits hostilities to a maximum of 90 days. Newly elected Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) heroically emulated Obama in his earlier legislative career by voting “present.”

The White House lauded senators for “moving swiftly and for working across party lines on behalf of our national security.”

Democrat are coalescing behind Obama because they don’t want him to be a lame duck for the rest of his time in office after he foolishly threw down the gauntlet against Syria in his “red line” speech last year.

On MSNBC, former top congressional aide turned liberal logorrheic Chris Matthews put the situation bluntly:

I think the Democrats are going to be forced to sacrifice men and women who really, really don’t want to vote for this. They’re going to have to vote for it to save the president’s hide. That’s a bad position to put your party in.

Although Syrian authorities were accused of using chemical weapons around the beginning of this year, lawmakers didn’t care much about the issue until the White House starting breathing down their necks a few weeks ago.

Boehner's Syria Surrender

My article from the Sept. 4, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Boehner's Syria Surrender

By Matthew Vadum

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) indicated yesterday he trusts President Obama to carry out military strikes against Syrian government targets as punishment for that government’s alleged use of poison gas against its own citizens.

“The use of these weapons has to be responded to, and only the U.S. has the capability,” Boehner said after President Obama feted him at the White House. “I’m going to support the president’s call for action and I believe my colleagues should support this call for action.”

Boehner’s decision is already hurting his standing in his own political party, further embittering rank-and-file conservatives who accuse him of being a weak leader. Boehner’s action amounts to siding with the same administration that lied its way into war in Libya, tried to cover up the deadly fiasco in Benghazi, Libya, and that even now sides with the Islamofascist terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

On Aug. 31, with his approval ratings and second-term agenda in tatters, President Obama said ”after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets.”

It will not be “an open-ended intervention” and there would be no “boots on the ground,” he said. “I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.”

“What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”

After Obama described himself inaccurately as “president of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy” –the U.S. is a constitutional republic, not a democracy– he said he would ask Congress for authorization to use force overseas.

Conservative Enemies of the State

My article from the Sept. 2, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Conservative Enemies of the State

By Matthew Vadum

Conservative organizations are “hate groups” and Tea Party supporters are potentially dangerous extremists, according to educational materials the Obama administration is using to indoctrinate members of the nation’s armed forces.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by good-government group Judicial Watch, the Pentagon recently released 133 pages of lesson plans and PowerPoint slides provided by the Air Force from a January 2013 Defense Department diversity training center “student guide” entitled “Extremism.”

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton slammed the Department of Defense documents for what he described as their bias against conservatives.

“The Obama administration has a nasty habit of equating basic conservative values with terrorism. And now, in a document full of claptrap, its Defense Department suggests that the Founding Fathers, and many conservative Americans, would not be welcome in today’s military,” said Fitton.

And it is striking that some of the language in this new document echoes the IRS targeting language of conservative and Tea Party investigations. After reviewing this document, one can’t help but worry for the future and morale of our nation’s armed forces.

The DoD materials not only take aim at modern conservative groups but label America’s Founding Fathers as extremists who would be unfit to serve in today’s military.

The teaching guide advises that instead of “dressing in sheets,” radicals today “will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.” American patriots who fought for Independence from the United Kingdom in the 1700s are identified as adhering to “extremist ideologies.”

Mangling MLK’s Dream

My article from the Aug. 29, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Mangling MLK’s Dream

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama hijacked a solemn national occasion yesterday, fomenting racial resentment and making crass appeals to envy on the 50th anniversary of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

In his mercifully brief 29-minute oration on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Obama attacked Republicans without naming them. Obama and other Democratic politicians routinely beat up Republicans rhetorically. They claim Republicans want to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting, and accuse them of being fiscal tightwads who refuse to spend enough on education, the courts, the correctional system, and whatever else is on the Left’s hit parade that day.

“To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency,” Obama said.

“Whether by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote, or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all, and the criminal justice system is not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance.”

Of course Obama hasn’t lifted a finger to improve black educational outcomes or to strengthen the black family. Left-wing policies have made things worse, but Obama refuses to admit that. He prefers to use social misery to generate race hatred which can then be used to advance his political program.

Obama declared that “black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white unemployment,” but somehow failed to mention that it is his policies that are largely responsible for those high unemployment rates.

Top 10 Racist African-Americans

My article from the Aug. 27, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Top 10 Racist African-Americans

By Matthew Vadum

Sadly, racism is very much alive in America — among influential black Americans.

It was very much on display Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial where prominent black activists gathered a few days ahead of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I have a dream” speech in order to advance their careers by pretending to care about the state of race relations in the nation today.

Instead of simply using the opportunity to honor the work of his father in a dignified way, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, cheapened it by attempting to stir up racial hatred. He said the Trayvon Martin killing last year, ruled by a jury to be a justifiable homicide in which race played no role, shows that America is a deeply racist country.

“The task is not done, the journey is not complete,” he said. “The vision preached by my father a half-century ago was that his four little children would no longer live in a nation where they would judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“However, sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin’s mother and father remind us that, far too frequently, the color of one’s skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder with no regard for the content of one’s character,” King said, throwing in a pitch to repeal “stand your ground” self-defense laws, which had no bearing on the Martin case.

King is not alone among black leaders in trying to leverage the Martin killing for political purposes and self-advancement. Pseudo-intellectuals like Georgetown’s Michael Eric Dyson said after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin that it would be a good thing for more white children to be murdered so Americans could better understand racism.

These people have become rich and famous by vilifying white people and the American system, claiming blacks are persecuted and discriminated against, and asserting that there is an invisible conspiracy of white supremacists preventing black people from becoming successful. Not everything they do or say is actually racist in any meaningful sense, but they routinely say things that conservatives would be pilloried for had they said them about people of a different race.

Hillary Clinton: Racial Demagogue

My article from the Aug. 20, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Hillary Clinton: Racial Demagogue

By Matthew Vadum

Hoping to keep Obama-generated racial animosity alive long enough to get her past the presidential finish line in 2016, Hillary Clinton has been bloviating about what racist election laws America supposedly has.

“In 2013, so far, more than 80 bills restricting voting rights have been introduced in 31 states,” Clinton told fawning admirers at a meeting of the American Bar Association. Such laws are part of a Jim Crow-like effort to “disproportionately impact African-Americans, Latino and young voters,” she said.

Hillary, of course, is a seasoned race-monger who knows when to pour it on thick.

This is the person who patronizingly stretched her syllables out in a slow drawl when she last ran for the presidency. “I don’t feel noways tired,” she said, quoting a hymn by the late Rev. James Cleveland.

Race-baiting and racial pandering have always been part of Hillary’s oeuvre. She was close to ACORN just as her husband was when he was president and Arkansas governor. She spoke at ACORN conferences and played up her ties to the group.

Speaking at ACORN’s 2006 national convention, Mrs. Clinton looked back fondly on her memories of the group’s early days in Arkansas. It was a love fest. After noting that she founded a group called Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families that dealt with many of the same issues ACORN focused on, she hailed ACORN as a group of vision. “I thank you for being part of that great movement, that progressive tradition that has rolled across our country.”

Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., Clinton said, “Let’s move it forward, let’s be drum majors for justice.”

More recently, Mrs. Clinton falsely claimed that the Supreme Court was in on the supposedly racist plot because it had “struck at the heart” of the Voting Rights Act this summer in a ruling denounced by left-wingers and the misinformed.

Reaping What Obama’s Sown in Egypt

My article from the Aug. 16, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Reaping What Obama’s Sown in Egypt

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama continues to offer his blessings to the theocratic totalitarians of the Muslim Brotherhood as they spill blood on Egyptian streets in an effort to restore Mohamed Morsi to power.

Our terrorist-supporting president has the gall to scold the military, the most stable, trusted institution in Egypt, while his Islamofascist allies burn scores of Coptic churches in the region where Christianity began more than six centuries before the birth of Mohammed. The military has been struggling mightily to shut down Morsi supporters’ camps that Islamists use to launch attacks.

Yesterday an angry-sounding Obama took time out from his busy golf schedule while vacationing in a $7 million mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. Ignoring the violent provocations of his friends in the Muslim Brotherhood, he declared that the interim government and security forces in Egypt were out of control.

The Egyptian government has embarked on “a more dangerous path taken through arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s associations and supporters, and now tragically the violence that’s taken the lives of hundreds of people and wounded thousands more.” Obama left out the fact that 

Morsi is a Holocaust denier who calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs” and who has vowed to wage war against Israel.

Without mentioning the weeks of murderous Morsi-supported attacks on innocents, Obama pontificated:

We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom, or that might makes right. And today the United States extends its condolences to the families of those who were killed and those who were wounded.

Just as he pretends not to be author of growing chaos stateside, Obama spoke as if a bystander, as if he himself were not the author of the events in Egypt. Obama, of course, backed the removal of Hosni Mubarak, a longtime U.S. ally who kept Morsi’s barbaric followers under control and respected Israel’s borders. Mubarak was forced out as Egyptian president on Feb. 11, 2011, after weeks of massive, violent, Obama-supported protests against his government.

What is happening in Egypt now is Obama’s will.