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The White House quietly ordered a widespread review of government counterterrorism training materials last month, following Danger Room’s reports that officials at the FBI, military and Justice Department taught their colleagues that “mainstream” Muslims embrace violence and compared the Islamic religion to the Death Star.
According to a Pentagon memorandum acquired by Danger Room, the White House’s National Security Staff in October requested “Departments and Agencies” to “provide their screening process for CVE trainers and speakers.” (.pdf) CVE refers to “Countering Violent Extremism,” the euphemism du jour for the war on terrorism. The memorandum says that “recent media attention” led to the review, and contains a single attachment to demonstrate that attention: “Spencer Ackerman’s Wired.com article.”
Obama administration lawyers stated Thursday that American citizens are legitimate military targets if they're waging war against the United States. This came just a day after it was revealed that the administration had ordered a Shariah-compliant scrub of all counterterrorism materials, so that they wouldn't say anything about Islam or jihad and would leave law enforcement officials completely unequipped to understand the enemy ideology.
Taken together, these two decisions are ominous. If we are not fighting against Islamic terrorists, then who exactly is the enemy? Which Americans will Obama target? And it is Obama's decision: Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson said Thursday that it was up to the executive branch to decide whether an American citizen was waging war against the United States and thus had no legal immunity, and needed to be taken out.
Obama spent his youth in Indonesia. He studied quran at his school. It is important to remind readers of this so that they better understand Obama's world view. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, lauded in the West for its moderation despite the increase in the persecution, oppression, slaughter and subjugation of Christians there.
Originally posted by karen61057
reply to post by Daedal
Barack lived in Indonesia from age 6 to age 10. Dont know how much Quran he might have studied. He is a Christian today so....
Your thread is not getting much attention. Guess that says it all.
I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn't 'fall out in church' as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn't want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.
There is one thing that I want to mention that I think is important. Part of what we've been seeing during the course of this campaign is some scurrilous e-mails that have been sent out, denying my faith, talking about me being a Muslim, suggesting that I got sworn in at the U.S. Senate with a Quran in my hand or that I don't pledge allegiance to the flag. I think it's really important for your readers to know that I have been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, and I have never practiced Islam. I am respectful of the religion, but it's not my own. One of the things that's very important in this day and age is that we don't use religion as a political tool and certainly that we don't lie about religion as a way to score political points. I just thought it was important to get that in there to dispel rumors that have been over the Internet. We've done so repeatedly, but obviously it's a political tactic of somebody to try to provide this misinformation.
Obama, who polls show many Americans think is a Muslim, was asked by a participant at a campaign-style New Mexico event why he was a Christian.
"It was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead -- being my brother's and sister's keeper, treating others as they would treat me," he said.
"And I think also understanding that, you know, that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings -- that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that we ... achieve salvation through the grace of God."
Obama rarely speaks about his faith, though many Americans use religious convictions as a criteria when choosing who to support for political office.
Obama said religion took on a stronger meaning for him as an adult.
"My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life," he said.
The president, who has voiced strong support for the right of Muslims to build a community center near the site of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, said he tried to express his religious beliefs through his job.
"I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith," he said.
"As president of the United States, I'm also somebody who deeply believes that ... part of the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and of no faith."
Barack Obama never met Saul Alinsky, but the radical organizer’s thought helps explain a great deal about how the president operates.
Alinsky died in 1972, when Obama was 11 years old. But three of Obama’s mentors from his Chicago days studied at a school Alinsky founded, and they taught their students the philosophy and methods of one of the first “community organizers.” Ryan Lizza wrote a 6,500-word piece on Alinsky’s influence on Obama for The New Republic, noting, “On his campaign website, one can find a photo of Obama in a classroom teaching students Alinskian methods. He stands in front of a blackboard on which he has written ‘Relationships Built on Self Interest,’ an idea illustrated by a diagram of the flow of money from corporations to the mayor.”
What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), whose members in the late 1960s and early 1970s invaded welfare offices across the U.S. -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. In the late sixties, ACORN co-founder Wade Rathke was an NWRO organizer and a protegé of Wiley. Rathke also organized a draft-resistance campaign for the militant group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the same period.
In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti -- Al Capone’s second-in-command -- gave Alinsky clout on the street.
In our book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, my co-author David Horowitz and I trace the rise of Alinsky’s political influence since the 1930s.
In 1988 Obama applied for admission to Harvard Law School. At the time, a Muslim attorney and black nationalist named Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour asked civil rights activist Percy Sutton to send a letter of recommendation to his (Sutton's) friends at Harvard on Obama's behalf.
Al-Mansour formerly had been a close personal adviser to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, having helped them establish the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. He thereafter became an advisor to a number of Saudi billionaires known for funding the spread of Wahhabi extremism in America. Al-Mansour also showed himself to be a passionate hater of the United States, Israel, and white people generally
Harvard has offered courses in the history of the Ottoman Empire and Arabic language since the nineteenth century. An endowed chair in Arabic has existed for nearly a century. Chairs in Islamic art and architecture, as well as staff and resources in these fields, were created in the 1960s. Several faculties at Harvard have devoted their resources to create additional junior and senior positions in fields of Islamic studies. The generous gift from Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud in 2005 will provide, when complete, four new endowed chairs, graduate fellowships, and research facilities, such as a library portal that will make rare Islamic textual sources and maps available online.