Frank Gaffney on "Islam v Islamists"

From The Washington TImes:

As one of the film's co-executive producers, I began to receive a number of congratulatory messages from all over the country. Most were from people who had followed the saga of this documentary about moderate Muslims who have courageously challenged co-religionists known as Islamists -- adherents to a totalitarian political ideology seeking to dominate the Muslim faith and, in turn, the world. Like innumerable editorialists, bloggers and ordinary citizens around the country, the authors of these messages had been frustrated and outraged when PBS and its Washington flagship, WETA, culminated months of efforts to alter and then censor "Islam vs. Islamists" by refusing to broadcast it, as planned, as part of the "Crossroads" series rolled out last month. They assumed the Oregon announcement meant national distribution was imminent.

Unfortunately, the CPB's arrangement with the Oregon PBS means no such thing. Far from the treatment accorded other "Crossroads" series programs -- nationwide broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service, in prime-time with a substantial promotional budget -- "Islam vs. Islamists" would simply be "made available" to PBS stations. Maybe some would decide to run it over the next few months. Maybe they would do so at 3 a.m. or Sunday afternoons when practically no one is watching. There are no guarantees of pick-up in any, let alone all, major markets.

Worse yet, the Oregon distributors have announced they will accompany the film with the equivalent of a consumer warning label -- a "discussion" that will provide "context" for viewers. Presumably, this means the sort of "context" our film's critics at PBS and WETA kept trying to impose on us: Changes they believed would make it, in their words, less "one-sided" (read, fairer to the Islamists) and less "alarmist."

If past practice is any guide, those recruited to provide such "balance" will likely be representatives of organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Though these groups are well-known Saudi-funded, pro-Islamist fronts, their views were exclusively and highly sympathetically featured in a documentary called "The Muslim Americans." PBS seemed to have no reservations about airing this wholly one-sided film during the "Crossroads" series roll-out in April.

In short, now that widespread criticism has made it impossible to sustain PBS' suppression of "Islam vs. Islamists," the anti-Islamist Muslims who are its subjects are to be remanded to decidedly second-class coverage. Call it CPB's version of the "Rosa Parks treatment."

Recall that Rosa Parks could have got to her job via public transportation -- as long as she "knew her place" and agreed to ride in the back of the bus. So, too, moderate Muslims can have their stories, as recorded in a film produced with some $675,000 in public monies, shown on the public airwaves -- in at least a few locations at some point in time.

But these heroic figures must know their place, too. And their place is not in prime time, nor national distribution. Only Islamists and their apologists are entitled to front-of-the-bus treatment from those like Robert MacNeil (the host of the "Crossroads" series and producer -- thanks to a sweetheart deal -- of "The Muslim Americans" show), Sharon Percy Rockefeller (wife of one senator and daughter of a former senator, Jay Rockefeller and Charles Percy, respectively, and president of WETA) and the handful of others responsible for PBS' rejection of "Islam vs. Islamists."

If ever there were a time when the American people are entitled to the most comprehensive presentation possible of information concerning the struggle for the soul and future of Islam, this should be it. After all, last week a Pew Research poll found roughly a quarter of the Muslim-American population thinks suicide bombing is legitimate in at least some circumstances. An even larger percentage claimed not to believe that Arabs perpetrated the attacks of on America of September 11, 2001.

The particular irony is that the whole idea behind "America at a Crossroads" was that it was intended to offer the American people 20 programs featuring differing viewpoints and a variety of stories that would, taken together, help inform the public about the post-September 11 world. This creative vision demands that the experiences and warnings of authentically moderate, pro-democratic and tolerant Muslims be treated at least as favorably as the portrayal of those in the Muslim community determined to stifle their voices. Certainly, public broadcasting should not be party to such suppression.

Cuban-American Filmmaker Battles PBS

Our favorite Cuban-American filmmaker, Agustin Blazquez, has sent us this account of his battles against PBS censorship, in the light of the Ken Burns scandal:

PBS: EXCLUSION AND POLITICAL DISCRIMINATION © 2007 ABIP
by Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton

I am not surprised by the recent commotion, scandal and fight for fairness by Latino organizations in the U.S. against the Public Broadcasting Service -- especially the notable effort of Dr. Maggie Rivas Rodriguez, associate professor at the School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin. She has been tireless in fighting the unforgivable exclusion in the fourteen-and-a-half-hour documentary The War, by PBS protégé Ken Burns, of the Latino and Native American contributions and sacrifices during War World II.

I think these Latino organizations are doing a superb job of exposing the elitist and arrogant PBS, and I hope their actions will force the broadcaster to begin playing straight and fair with all minority groups. After all, these minority groups support PBS with their tax money.

This recent blunder by PBS calls attention to the problem that another Spanish-speaking minority has been having with PBS: for decades, PBS has sponsored and broadcast programs about Cuba that depict the opposite of the reality that Cubans experience first hand. This has been a disservice not only to Cuban Americans but also to the American people as a whole. In spite of multiple complaints by Cuban Americans, however, PBS continues to offend them.

I have written more than 300 articles over the last several years about Cuban affairs and am producing an ongoing series of educational documentaries on the subject.
[http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com/2007/05/agustin-blazquez-speaks.html]

I have been working on this series at great personal sacrifice as an independent; I have received no grants and in fact am not aware of any grants to Cuban Americans for our educational projects. I have produced and directed five documentaries for this series and am now working on the sixth. I have submitted these documentaries to PBS and its series P.O.V. and Frontline. They were rejected. In fact, the works of other Cuban American filmmakers that are contrary to PBS’s point of view are consistently rejected.

PBS appears to be interested only in the point of view reflecting its political agenda, contrary to its statement that it does not interfere with “program content” [see the recently issued “Public Broadcasting Statement on Editorial Independence,” [http://www.apts.org/upload/Public Broadcasting Statement - May 2 07.pdf]

PBS’s statement that it does not interfere with “program content” is belied by its recent announcement that it has arranged with Ken Burns to add the Latino contribution to World War II to his documentary (per a letter dated April 11, 2007 from Paula Kerger, president and CEO of PBS, to the Defend the Honor Campaign in response to complaints about the documentary’s lack of attention to the taxpaying Latino community of the U.S.) [http://www.nahj.org/nahjnews/articles/2007/april/lettertodth.pdf]

It is evident that PBS’s prohibition against interfering with “content” is not absolute; it can be lifted at will, in this case because of political pressure from the Latino community (whose position in this case I support 100 percent).

So, Cuban American filmmakers are excluded -- actually, politically discriminated against -- by PBS, not because of the quality of their films but because of content. I think that is called censorship.

Even the Oscar-winning Cuban exile Nestor Almendros had to agree to allow PBS to edit (shorten) his documentary Nobody Listened before PBS would air it -- and it was broadcast in tandem with Saul Landau's pro-Castro documentary. And PBS’s Frontline rejected Nobody Listened by stating, “Frontline doesn’t produce anti-Communist programs.” PBS appears to be concerned about not offending Castro while not caring about his victims.

Nestor Almendros said in 1990 that he believed taxpayer-funded PBS leans unashamedly toward the political left. “The only country that resisted [showing his documentaries], the only place where there was still strong pro-Castro sentiment, was the U.S.”

Recently, a Latino reviewer in the U.S. said about my documentaries that I am "the most important Cuban documentalist in exile with a very solid body of work." And following the screening of my latest documentary in Madrid, Spain, another reviewer wrote in the Spanish cultural magazine Revista Hispano Cubana, "Agustin Blazquez is one of the most representative filmmakers in exile and his documentaries should be valued at the same level as the best Cuban documentaries of this genre."

In the same review he called my earlier documentary about the Elian Gonzalez case "a masterpiece for its sensibility and poetic air." PBS also rejected this documentary.

On March 6, 1996, the issue of the rejection of my first documentary by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was raised at a hearing before a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee.

I decided to test the waters again and on April 2, 2007 I submitted a formal proposal package to PBS for a documentary about Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

On May 8, John Prizer, vice president of television program development at CPB, who assists in developing CPB funding priorities and strategic direction for investing programming funds, telephoned to inform me that my project had been rejected.

Mr. Prizer said that PBS would never air my proposed documentary; this was the reason, he explained, that I was the only producer of the 30 who submitted proposals that he called.

He also said that PBS is looking for documentaries of more than one part or miniseries. Since that requirement is not specified in the “PBS Mission,” I think it was a convenient excuse. At any rate, I have repeatedly submitted my series, COVERING CUBA, and PBS has repeatedly rejected it.

PBS does whatever it wants and changes its rules at will, as demonstrated by its contradictory statements and actions regarding the content of Mr. Burns’ documentary.

PBS to date has been untouchable, but we’ll see what happens after the war declared by the Latino organizations to protect their honor. Cuban Americans, as part of the Latin American population living in the U.S., also need to save our honor from PBS exclusion and censorship.

PBS has consistently objected to the content of our documentaries. I feel that this is a violation of our freedom of speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, specifically because the money PBS distributes is public money.

Meanwhile, the pro-Castro documentaries of Estela Bravo (a native New Yorker who has lived in Cuba since 1963 as a member of the pro-Castro privileged foreign elite and a known collaborator with that regime) are shown on PBS without the benefit of showing an opposing point of view. In 1992 and 1993, for example, PBS showed Bravo’s documentary Miami-Havana.

In it, deriding the Cuban American community, Wayne Smith said, “But what you have in Miami, I think, is a very extreme ultra-right group who want no kind of improvement on relations between the two countries.”

In such a way PBS offers opportunities for the pro-Castro side to openly express its contempt and hatred for the Cuban American community in the U.S.

PBS has a history of showing documentaries containing propaganda that has offended my community, documentaries that have not contributed to a better understanding of the Cuban tragedy. In many instances we are misrepresented and maligned in comments by the people featured in those productions. For example, Wayne Smith and others have been featured in various documentaries on PBS qualifying Cuban Americans as “the right-wing fringe,” “virulently anti-Castro,” “fiercely anti-Communist,” “hard-line exiles,” “strident anti-Castroites,” “Miami Mafia” and other epithets.

I am not aware of any current documentaries by Cuban American filmmakers being shown on PBS, with the exception of Adriana Bosch’s documentary about Fidel Castro that aired on January 31, 2005. But either she didn’t research her subject thoroughly or she had to omit a lot of key information in order for her documentary to be aired by PBS.

On Saturday, March 26, 2005, while watching “Viewer Favorites” on PBS/WETA, I was shocked and offended by the singer Eric Burton -- formerly of the rock group The Animals -- wearing a Che Guevara shirt while performing a song on a segment of the presentation.

On March 29, 2005, I wrote a letter to Sheryl Lahti, director of audience services, requesting an apology. I said, “It is shocking that your educational public television station is not aware of Che’s criminal record and let pass such an insensitive and offensive display of disrespect to Che’s victims and the Cuban American community in the U.S. If Mr. Burton had worn a Hitler shirt, he wouldn’t have been presented -- rightfully so -- in order not to offend the Jewish victims and Holocaust survivors.”

No PBS station would dare show a performer wearing Ku Klux Klan apparel or logos that are pro-David Duke or anti-Arab, anti-Islam, anti-Chinese or anti any other minority group in the U.S. It would have been simply edited out without any regard to what its creator intended.

With my letter to Lahti I enclosed an open letter to Carlos Santana by musician Paquito D’Rivera dated March 25, 2006. D’Rivera criticized Santana for wearing a Che T-shirt at the Oscar ceremony. Also enclosed was my article “Che’s Motorcyle Follies” [http://www.camcocuba.org/ADDITIONAL PAGES/BLAZQUEZ/Agustin/BLAZQUEZ-7.html]. I sent copies to Michael Pack and John Prizer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. To date, I have not received a reply.

A Cuban American advocate for democracy and human rights in Cuba from New York City who read my letter at [http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com/] wrote a letter of complaint about the Eric Burton blunder on April 4, 2006. The next day he received an e-mail message from Danielle Dunbar [ddunbar@weta.com], WETA’s audience service coordinator.

She wrote, “While WETA airs the fundraising special, we did not produce the program. The show was produced by TJL Productions and distributed by PBS. TJL Productions is solely responsible for its content. Nonetheless, as a public broadcaster that produces, broadcasts and values a wide range of programs that cover a divergent range of topics, it would be inappropriate for WETA to engage in such censorship. While you may dislike images of a particular subject, others may respond favorably to the same image. It is not our intent or role to suppress or promote either view, but to present the program as the show's creator intended. How you feel about that is a matter of personal choice. Further, there are no elements to the program that violate any FCC rules or guidelines. ‘My Music’ has been a very popular program with WETA's members and viewers, and I expect that we will air it again in the future.”

I consider her arguments to be invalid. Of course PBS is responsible, because it uses public money and it decides what to air and what not to air. It is very careful not to show any material that might be offensive to certain minorities -- but it obviously is not concerned about offending Cuban Americans.

I was shocked by Globe Trekker episode 47, “Cuba & Haiti,” broadcast on PBS/WETA on May 18, 2003 and repeated on April 15, 2007. In that episode, the host of the show promoted tourism to Cuba and presented a rosy, fun, happy-go-lucky and exciting view of my country -- where I lived for 21 years -- that was completely at odds with the harsh reality that Cubans face every day.

It is obvious that PBS is choosing to misinform and mislead the American public about Cuba instead of educating them, and it is doing so with taxpayer money.

Now, with Latino organizations’ battle against PBS over Ken Burns’ documentary The War, it is time to reconsider and take some concrete action to correct PBS’s arrogance and bias.

I think the government overseers of PBS should demand that PBS answer the following questions:

How many Cuban American documentary films have been funded by CPB since its inception?
How many of these documentaries have been shown on PBS?
What Cuban American films have been shown on PBS (names, dates, etc.)?
How many Cuban American films or film proposals have been submitted to CPB and/or PBS in the last six years?
How many of these films or proposals have been rejected and for what reasons?

On the May 14 edition of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez said, about Mr. Burns’ documentary, “One weakness that I have seen is that I really do not understand how PBS, in six and a half years, didn’t raise the flag on this. It seems very difficult to understand.” That was a very good point. I guess it will take a public scandal and a threat from the U.S. government to retire taxpayer funding to PBS in order for that biased organization to mend its ways.

If not, the taxpayers and their government representatives are paying for television programs that are misleading the people of this nation.

© 2007 ABIP

Agustin Blazquez, founder and president
UNCOVERING CUBA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION (UCEF) A non-profit organization [501 (c) (3)]
AB INDEPENDENT PRODUCTIONS (ABIP)
Producer and director of the documentaries:

COVERING CUBA, premiered at the American Film Institute in 1995, CUBA: The Pearl of the Antilles, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation, premiered in 2001 at the U.S. Capitol in and at the 2001 Miami International Book Fair COVERING CUBA 3: Elian presented at the 2003 Miami Latin Film Festival, the 2004 American Film Renaissance Film Festival in Dallas, Texas and the 2006 Palm Beach International Film Festival, COVERING CUBA 4: The Rats Below, premiered at the two Tower Theaters in Miami on January 2006 and the 2006 Palm Beach International Film Festival and the 2006 Barcelona International Film Festival for Human Rights and Peace, Dan Rather "60 Minutes," an inside view , RUMBERAS CUBANAS, Vol. 1 MARIA ANTONIETA PONS, COVERING CUBA 5: Act Of Repudiation premiered at the two Tower Theaters in Miami, January 2007, at the Hispanic Cuban Club in Madrid, Spain and will be at the 2007 Palm Beach International Film Festival, and the upcoming COVERING CUBA 6.

Author of more that 300 published articles and author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING and translator with Jaums Sutton of the book by Luis Grave de Peralta Morell THE MAFIA OF HAVANA: The Cuban Cosa Nostra.

PBS Newshour on Robert Zoellick

Someone I know said this discussion of Robert Zoellick, President' Bush's nominee for head of the World Bank, on the PBS Newshour, moderated by Ray Suarez, was interesting, so here's a link.

RAY SUAREZ: What do people understand the purpose of the World Bank to be?

SEBASTIAN MALLABY: In a very general sense, everyone says -- and that's right -- the World Bank's purpose is to relieve poverty. The difficulty comes when you try to define, what do you do to relieve poverty? Because it's a multifaceted problem.

You know, more roads in some areas in rural Africa can help you to get farm goods out to the market, and that can relieve poverty. Or it could be that you need to have more clinics, so people are well enough to actually work. Or perhaps they need education.

Or maybe the macroeconomic environment around all these things need to be right, because if you've got hyperinflation, no one can get out of poverty. Or maybe it's corruption. So there are all these different issues under the heading of poverty relief, and that's where I think Zoellick needs to pick a theme, partly just for sort of inspiring people to believe in it. You can't just say, "I'm for everything." You've got to say, "Here's where I'm trying to focus. Here is my vision."

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor, with more than 180 members, does an answer to the question, "What is the World Bank for in 2007?" Does the answer depend on who you ask?

KENNETH ROGOFF: Absolutely. I mean, it's an incredible muddle. The World Bank is a sponge for every do-good idea to relieve poverty. I think Sebastian is absolutely right that the next president, Zoellick, needs to regain its focus.

They haven't just experienced mission creep; they've had mission sprawl. They're just all over the place in religion, in gender and development, health and development, education development, microstructure and development, all good things, and there are dozens others, but they simply can't do it all. They need to have more focus.

And I think that the top priority for Zoellick is very quickly to get an idea, "In five years, where do I want the bank to be? What is my vision?" And try to execute it in a way that brings everybody on board and doesn't just try to, you know, do it by himself, but he has to think about it.

Zoellick is an alumnus of the same college that someone I know and yours truly attended--Swarthmore College, a small Quaker liberal arts school, where he graduated with "Highest Honors" a few years ahead of us. He was already known for being the smartest student on campus. One legendary story has it that at his Honors examination, he ran out of time. When the proctor asked for his blue book, he snapped that he wasn't finished yet--and the proctor allowed him to take more than the alloted hours. Good for him.

Yet, given his "Highest Honors" degree from Swarthmore, and his track record as aide to James Baker and other Bushies, one might predict that Zoellick would make an intelligent and hardworking head of the World Bank (Swarthmore traditionally churns out grinds to do the scutwork for Harvard and Yale graduates, which is where George W. Bush went to school). On the other hand, his very Swarthmore success indicates that Zoellick probably would make a rather unimaginative and conventional president for the international lending institution...

James Taranto Talks To Benjamin Netanyahu

From OpinionJournal.com:

I ask Mr. Netanyahu if the U.S. made a mistake in liberating Iraq. He says it did not: "I think it was right to bring down Saddam Hussein, who murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people." But he brings the discussion back to Iran. "It would have been prudent to use the rapidity of success of victory--that is, the fact that the U.S. had accomplished in three weeks what Iran couldn't accomplish in 10 years and a million casualties--to deliver a stern warning to Iran to dismantle its nuclear program. In a way, this was achieved without design with Libya's nuclear program that had been much more advanced than anyone understood. . . . That same leverage could have been used on Iran."

If Mr. Netanyahu seems preoccupied with Iran, it is not because he is dismissive of other threats, including al Qaeda. "Of the two, Iran is more dangerous, because the Sunni militants so far have not gotten their hands on a nuclear weapons program. . . . If the Taliban were to topple the current regime in Pakistan and get their hands on nuclear weapons, I would say they're more dangerous than Iran, or equally dangerous."

He sees al Qaeda as existing on a continuum with Tehran's Shiite fundamentalists: "They're now competing with each other on the soil of Lebanon to gain paramountcy--al Qaeda in the north and Hezbollah in the south. But both of them practice suicide attacks, both of them have the cult of death, and both of them are absolutely uninhibited in the use of force against their chosen enemies. Now, is there a difference? Yeah, I suppose. I think one wants to send us back to the ninth century and one wants to send us back to the seventh century." The Shiite extremists, Mr. Netanyahu quips, "give us two centuries extra."

Yet he is careful to distinguish between "militant Islam" and the broader Muslim population. "Militant Islam condemns and intimidates and kills Muslims before anyone else. That's what they're about. The infidels are defined first as the renegades of Islam--that is, Muslims who do not practice some . . . pre-medieval religious creed that is hopelessly antiquated for most Muslims and most Arabs."

Because of the militants' power to intimidate and the weak civic institutions in Arab societies, Mr. Netanyahu is wary of pushing those societies too quickly toward electoral democracy. He thinks it was a mistake to allow Hamas to compete in last year's Palestinian voting. "But I think that one element that should be expedited as rapidly as possible is the democratization of markets. I think that expanding economic freedom is just as important--in some cases more important--in moderating societies than accelerated moves to political freedoms without the proper democratic institutions."

I ask if he can point to any positive examples in the Arab world. "How about Dubai? How about the Gulf states? What you see there is quite remarkable. It also tells you that Arabs and Muslims are not inherently or genetically programmed to oppose free markets. That's just nonsense. With the right system of incentives and economic freedoms, you see this explosive growth that I, frankly, admire. . . . We always said that if we have peace, then we'll have prosperity. It may be the other way around."

Christopher Hitchens on Jimmy Carter

From Slate:

Leave aside the sophomoric slackness that begins a broken-backed sentence with the words "as far as" and then cannot complete itself. "Worst in history," as the great statesman from Georgia has to know, has been the title for which he has himself been actively contending since 1976. I once had quite an argument with the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who maintained adamantly that it had been right for him to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 for no other reason. "Mr. Carter," he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had." ...

...Here is a man who, in his latest book on the Israel-Palestine crisis, has found the elusive key to the problem. The mistake of Israel, he tells us (and tells us that he told the Israeli leadership) is to have moved away from God and the prophets and toward secularism. If you ever feel like a good laugh, just tell yourself that things would improve if only the Israeli government would be more Orthodox. Jimmy Carter will then turn his vacantly pious glare on you, as if to say that you just don't understand what it is to have a personal savior.

In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president's dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House "Bible study" sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia. It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.

Martin Kramer on the Wilson Center's Iran Hostage Crisis

From Martin Kramer's Sandstorm article about Haleh Esfandiari:

The reinvention of the Wilson Center began in 1999, when Lee Hamilton took over. Coming straight from 35 years in Congress, he knew how to manage the critics on the Hill. But more important, he came with a vision of a different kind of Center, one closely attuned to informing foreign policy debates. When I returned to the Wilson Center as a public policy fellow in 2000, the Hamilton era was well underway. The Center had moved into spanking new quarters, and every program had been realigned with the mission of policy relevance. Personally, I liked it, and it's where I wrote about a third of my book Ivory Towers on Sand--to be precise, the chapter on the policy irrelevance of Middle Eastern studies.

The Wilson Center today is a privileged conduit between government and academe, and it's now urgent to defend that space against its enemies, foreign and domestic. Abroad, there are Middle Eastern governments like Iran's, which cannot imagine an institution like the Wilson Center as anything but a front for espionage and subversion. But the academic left in America is as doctrinaire as Iran's fanatics in shunning the United States government as though it were the Great Satan incarnate.

An example is Ervand Abrahamian, an Iran specialist at the City University of New York, who said this in response to Esfandiari's arrest: “It has to be stressed that scholars such as Haleh have nothing to do with U.S. policy of ‘regime change.' We academics need to distance ourselves from policy makers in D.C.” Abrahamian is right about Esfandiari--she hasn't been an advocate of regime change--but he's utterly ignorant of the Wilson Center's mission, which is to engage policy makers on a continuous basis. If Wilson Center fellows distanced themselves from policy makers, there would be no point in the taxpayer maintaining them in Washington. The Center's fellows and staff could be dispersed to the universities, where they could talk to one another and to Abrahamian--on someone else's tab.

So the Esfandiari affair is really about this: her right, and the right of all scholars, to enjoy open and private contacts with U.S. policy makers and U.S. public officials. This too is an element of academic freedom, and it's precisely this element that's under assault by Iran in Esfandiari's case. This is why I'm pleased to see the likes of the Middle East Studies Association rising to Esfandiari's defense: inadvertently, no doubt, they're defending the mission of the Wilson Center, and the right of every scholar to enter and inhabit that space between academe and government, without being accused, Iran-style, of espionage, collusion, or complicity.

One spin on the Esfandiari case actually undermines that right. Robin Wright of the Washington Post, who can be relied upon to get everything wrong, described the arrest of Esfandiari and other "soft hostages" as "an Iranian reaction to the Bush administration's $75 million program to promote democracy in Iran." The Wilson Center even felt compelled to note that it doesn't receive funding from that pot. Come on. For nearly thirty years, Iran's leaders have lived in the certainty that Washington is running a massive covert operation to subvert them, one that makes $75 million look like chump change. If they've decided you're a part of the plot, one more proof against you is that you don't get a share of the overt money. So repeat after me: It's not Bush's fault. If you split the responsibility for Esfandiari's fate, you're helping to seal it, and undercutting everyone else's academic freedom.

So what is to be done by the rest of us, beyond signing petitions? (I signed this one.) I don't support the idea of an academic boycott of Iranian scholars, but Iran's official representatives are another matter. For example, there's Iran's smooth-talking ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who's finishing his stint in New York. He did the rounds of universities and think tanks this spring, even as Iran barred Esfandiari from leaving his country. Zarif spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations (March 27), the Nixon Center (March 29), and Columbia University's Middle East Seminar (May 2), and I saw him perform via video link at Harvard University's Belfer Center (May 8--the day Esfandiari was thrown into prison). No academic institution or think tank should agree to host him, his successor, or any other Iranian official until Esfandiari is freed. Collegial solidarity demands no less, and allows no exceptions.

Beyond that, I recommend doing what I've just done: make a gift to the Wilson Center, from the sidebar here. You don't have to agree with everything it's sponsored over the last few years to cherish what it legitimizes: scholarship in the nation's service.

Finally, as someone who's appreciated the transformation Lee Hamilton has wrought at the Wilson Center, I'd like him to reassure the American people, as well as Ahmadinejad, that the Wilson Center won't depart from the course he set for it. Indeed, even as Esfandiari languishes in prison, it's incumbent on the Wilson Center to sponsor debate and analysis of what her arrest tells us about the situation in Iran (nothing good, I believe), and convey that to officials in Congress and the Executive Branch.

May Haleh soon be among us again.

Amnesty International Persecutes Israel

According to Gerald Sternberg in the New York Sun, while the NGO turns a blind eye to Islamist extremist terrorism, Amnesty International refuses Amnesty to the Jewish State (ht lgf):

For many journalists, diplomats, and political activists, Amnesty International is considered to be a highly reliable and objective source of information and analysis on human rights around the world. But the halo that surrounds its reports and campaigns is beginning to fray, as the evidence of political bias and inaccuracy mounts.

Recently, the Economist, published in Britain, noted that "an organisation which devotes more pages in its annual report to human-rights abuses in Britain and America than those in Belarus and Saudi Arabia cannot expect to escape doubters' scrutiny." Other critics, including law professor at Harvard, Alan Dershowitz, and the U.S.-based Capital Research Center, have been more pointed, providing evidence of Amnesty's systematic bias and reports based largely on claims by carefully selected "eyewitnesses" in Colombia, Gaza, and Lebanon.

As Amnesty releases its annual report on human rights for 2006, amid highly choreographed public relations events, and repeating the familiar condemnations of Israel and America, NGO Monitor has also published a report on Amnesty's activities in the Middle East. The result is not a pretty picture for those clinging to the "halo effect."

Using a detailed and sophisticated qualitative model for comparing relative resources devoted to the different countries, this report clearly shows that in 2006, Amnesty singled out Israel for condemnation of human rights to a far greater extent than Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and other chronic abusers of human rights.

During the year, Amnesty issued 48 publications critical of Israel, compared to 35 for Iran, 2 for Saudi Arabia, and only 7 for Syria. Many of the attacks directed at Israel took place during the war with Hezbollah, but this terror group and state-within-a-state also got relatively little attention from Amnesty.

Furthermore, as Amnesty has almost no professional researchers, many of the "factual" claims in these reports were provided by "eyewitnesses," whose political affiliations and credibility can be only guessed. And the language used in these reports also reflects an obsessive and unjustified singling out of Israel, with frequent use of terms such "disproportionate attacks," "war crimes," and "violations of international humanitarian law."

And while Amnesty International was founded to fight for the freedom of political prisoners, the officials in charge of this organization failed to issue a single statement calling for the release of the Israeli soldiers that were kidnapped by Hezbollah and Hamas, and who have not been heard from since their illegal capture.

These and many other details published in NGO Monitor's report on Amnesty provide further evidence that this powerful NGO has lost its way, and is no longer a "respectable" or credible human rights organization.

Washington Post on PBS Censorship of "Islam v. Islamists"

From Paul Farhi's story in today's paper:

In an uprecedented move, the agency that oversees public broadcasting has stepped in to arrange distribution for a TV documentary on Islam that PBS had rejected as unworthy.

The federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting helped find a new distributor for "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center" after seven Republican members of Congress and one Democrat demanded that CPB ask PBS to air it or release it elsewhere.

The 52-minute film contends that moderate Muslims are being intimidated by radical Islamists in several Western democracies, including the United States.

The dispute over the film thrust CPB into the middle of a politically charged affair. The film's producers claim that PBS and its producing station, WETA, both of Arlington, are kowtowing to conservative Muslims in "suppressing" the film. In an interview yesterday, Frank Gaffney Jr., one of the film's executive producers, said PBS and WETA were predisposed against it on personal and ideological grounds.

"I am a person they regard as a conservative, and they regard the airwaves as a liberal domain," said Gaffney, a former Reagan administration defense official who now runs the Center for Security Policy.

WETA and PBS officials denied this yesterday. "We had no problem with the concept or ideology," said WETA spokeswoman Mary Stewart. "It was about filmmaking and documentary standards. We had no problem with the argument laid out in the film."

Andrew McCarthy Responds to Bob Kerrey on Iraq

In National Review:

Senator Kerrey is a principled liberal. Only a principled liberal could so vividly capture the cynical irony here. Though conceived as vital to our national security, the Iraqi chapter in the war on terror has been conducted, since Saddam’s expulsion, as a Wilsonian experiment. It assumes — against all reason and experience — that we’re all one human family, that everyone craves freedom, that everyone would use freedom the same enlightened way, and that we, the superpower, have a special obligation to make it happen. If the experiment were being conducted by liberals, rather than by George W. Bush, Democrats would be its staunchest defenders (and conservatives its wariest skeptics).

Iraq, however, is a frustrating slog precisely because it is an exercise in democracy building, not mere jihadist repulsion. Sen. Kerrey wants to have both Bush’s grandiose democracy project and Webb’s Spartan terrorist smacking … all without occupying anyone. It can’t be done.

We want, of course, to believe that we can democratize Islamic radicals into submission — it’s much more congenial than killing them or cooling their jets in Guantanamo Bay so we can get the intelligence needed to kill them before they kill us. But it’s a fantasy. The cold record shows that jihadists are much better at using democracy to pursue their ends than democracy is at quelling jihadist pathologies.

But let’s say you can’t or won’t believe that. Let’s ignore that jihadists planned 9/11 for months in the safety of Germany, Spain, and the United States. Let’s pretend that they haven’t attacked New York, Virginia, Madrid, and London because democratic freedoms made those places easy operating environments. The stubborn fact remains: If democracy is going to be your counterterrorism strategy, you’d better be ready to occupy. To occupy for decades in places where it is anything but clear that real democratic culture will take root despite your best efforts.

Senator Kerrey is to be congratulated for admonishing his party to stop denigrating a war its traditions counsel supporting. But if the politicizing ever does end, some adult reality will need facing — and not just by Democrats.

Much of the Islamic world does not want true democracy — and that’s by no means just the militants. If we really respected these Muslim millions, as we say we do, we’d concede that they’re not ignorant. They have, instead, made a different choice. They have chosen a submissive path, anathema to our sensibilities. If democracy is why we fight, then long occupation will necessarily be the price. And the attendant blood and treasure cry out for the compelling case no one has yet made: The case that democracy is likely to defeat jihadism. Faith may move mountains, but it is not a national-security strategy.

On the other hand, if occupation is a price we have neither the cause nor the will to pay, we must shun democracy imposition. Our finite attention should instead be focused on determining what measures are necessary to eradicate jihadist networks, and on bluntly considering how such steps square with our regnant international law infrastructure — the legacy of a world that no longer exists … if it ever did.

Oregon Public Broadcasting to Distribute Islam v. Islamists

This just in:

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) announced on May 23 that it will distribute Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center to public television stations across the country under an agreement reached between The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

"Islam vs. Islamists addresses very difficult issues," said Steve Bass, president and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting. "We are pleased to facilitate a dialogue on one of the central issues in the world today in conjunction with the broadcast.”

"As stewards of the investment in public broadcasting, this fulfills our responsibility to the taxpayer," said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Some OPB history:

OPB provides free access to programming for children and adults which is designed to give voice to community and connects Oregon and its neighbors to illuminate a wider world. Every week, over 1.5 million people tune in to or log on to OPB's Television, Radio and Internet services. OPB is one of the largest producers and presenters of national television programming through PBS, and is also a member station of NPR, Public Radio International (PRI), and American Public Media (APM). The OPB Web site is www.opb.org.

Washington Times story here.

Bob Kerry: Iraq & the Democrats

From the Wall Street Journal:

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."

This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn't have lasted a week.

Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn't exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism.

The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them.

Che's Idiots

Agustin Blazquez passed this event anouncement along for our readers in the Miami, Florida metropolitan area:

SPECIAL EVENT

"Every American should read this book." --David Horowitz

Meet
Humberto Fontova
Reading and discussing
Exposing the Real Che Guevara...And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him
(Sentinel, $23.95)
Monday, May 21, 8pm
Books & Books, Coral Gables

Who was Ernesto Che Guevara?
MYTH:  International man of the people. Humanitarian. Brave freedom fighter. Lover of literature and life. Advocate of the poor and oppressed.

REALITY: Cold-blooded murderer. Sadistic torturer. Power-hungry materialist. Terrorist who inspired terrorism and bloodshed through Latin America.  Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the mainstream media celebrate Che as a saint and a sex symbol--a selfless martyr with a love of humanity second only to Jesus Christ's.

But their ideas about Che--Fidel Castro's henchman whose face adorns hipsters T-shirts, posters, and ad campaigns--are based on a murderous communist regime's outright lies.

As Humberto Fontova reveals in this myth-shattering book, Che was actually a bloodthirsty executioner, a military bumbler, a coward, and a hypocrite. This biographical account proves it€'s no exaggeration to state that Che--who was captured and killed nearly forty years ago--was the godfather of modern terrorism.

And yet Che's followers naively swallow Castro's historical revisionism. They are classic 'useful idiots,' the name Stalin gave to foolish Westerners who parroted his lies about communism's successes.

Fontova interviewed the few people still alive who interacted with Che and can tell the truth about him, while overturning the myths and legends. You'll learn:

How Che longed to destroy New York City with nuclear missiles.

How Che promoted book burning and signed death warrants for authors who disagreed with him. (So why did Jean Paul Sartre praise him as a 'perfect' intellectual, and why did Time name him one of the 100 most influential people of the century?)

How Che made amazingly racist sentiments about blacks. (So why do Jesse Jackson, Jay-Z, and Mike Tyson say nice things about him?)

How Che persecuted gays, long-haired rock and roll fans, and religious people.

How Che, the devoted communist, loved material wealth and private luxuries. (So why do the mainstream media still depict him as an ascetic?)

After reading this book, the only question you'll still have is whether Che's fans are too ignorant to realize they've been duped--or too anti-American to care.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Humberto Fontova fled Cuba in 1961, at the age of seven, with his family. He is a journalist who resides with his family in the New Orleans area. Fontova holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of New Orleans and a master’s degree in Latin American studies from Tulane University. He is a frequent commentator on both English- and Spanish-language media and is the author of four books, including Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant.For media inquiries, call Cristina Nosti at (305) 444-9044 or visit our virtual location at www.booksandbooks.com

Bernard Kouchner New French Foreign Minister

Dennis Broyles profiles the founder of Doctors Without Borders in National Review (ht lgf).

WSJ: Clean Up World Bank, or Shut It Down!

Which is why Wolfowitz thought he could get away with hanky-panky there, IMHO...

Today's editorial comment in the Wall Street Journal calls for greater scrutiny of the World Bank on the part of the USA. About time::

If there is a silver lining here, it is that the public has been able to get a glimpse of how the World Bank works and what it actually accomplishes. Among other lowlights, we've recently been reminded that the bank annually pushes billions in loans to countries like China and Mexico that can easily get credit in private capital markets. We've seen that many of those loans go to projects in places like India or Kenya that are riddled by corruption; the bank may have lost as much as $8 billion to corruption in 25 years of lending to the Suharto regime in Indonesia. We've also learned that the bank funds literally hundreds of projects from Albania to Niger that were ill-conceived and proved to be failures.

We've seen that senior bank personnel, such as former Indonesia country director Dennis de Tray, openly argue that corruption is no big deal and should not get in the way of the bank's "helping people." We've seen how the bank trashed the careers of longstanding and well-regarded employees such as Bahram Mahmoudi, who blew the whistle on a misamanaged project. We've seen how Shengman Zhang, the bank's No. 2 under former President Jim Wolfensohn, seems to think there's nothing amiss with calling for Mr. Wolfowitz's resignation despite the fact that Mr. Zhang's wife was swiftly promoted while working under him.

We've seen how the board of directors apparently covered for one of their own--British Executive Director Tom Scholar--when he was accused of having a conflict of interest because of a personal relationship with an employee at the bank. And we've seen how the bank has served as a well-paid sinecure for out-of-office politicians such as Dutchman Ad Melkert, who has moved comfortably within multilateral institutions making an enviable tax-free salary while performing incompetently and behaving dishonorably.

In a better world, the bank would shrink to perform only its core mission of helping the world's poorest nations. That's not going to happen, however, so the best that President Bush can do now to minimize the damage of the Wolfowitz putsch is by replacing him with someone who shares his agenda and will clean the place up. No European should have a chance to do that given what has transpired, not even Tony Blair. Nor should he name another well known member of the Council on Foreign Relations seminar circuit whom the Europeans and staff can quickly capture.

We've suggested former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who saw first-hand how these institutions function while investigating the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. But whoever it is, the core task of Mr. Wolfowitz's successor should be to clean the World Bank stables, or shut it down.

How To Save BBC Reporter Alan Johnston from his Gaza Kidnappers

Memo to the Director-General of the BBC:

Here's an idea to save BBC Reporter Alan Johnston's life that does not require giving in to Al Qaeda's demand to release its leader from a British prison: Journalists will simply announce that until Alan Johnston is released, the BBC and all sympathetic Westerm media outlets will no longer air any news from Gaza, nor any accounts sympathetic to any Palestinian cause.

If this embargo is activated, my guess is that Johnston will be released pretty soon--good p.r. from the BBC and other Western media is the oxygen these groups need to live. Cut it off, and they will die in short order.

So, rather than die, they will release Johnston.

Oh, what's plan B, if they behead Johnston, you ask? Simple: No p.r. for any Palestinian or Islamist cause, ever again. Total news blackout--and the end of the Palestian dream (IMHO, more of a delusion verging on nightmare).

Try it-unless the BBC is more dedicated to the Palestinian and Al Qaeda cause than to the life of its own staffer...

Heck of a Job, Wolfie...

Wolfowitz-gone.

Story from the BBC:

Mr Wolfowitz will step down after he was caught up in a bitter row surrounding the promotion and salary of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza.

The World Bank said that Mr Wolfowitz had acted in good faith, but admitted that a "number of mistakes" were made.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been mentioned as a possible replacement.

World Bank Sleaze Oozes Around Wolfowitz Scandal

In the light of Paul Wolfowitz's troubles, Bret Stephens reports in today's Wall Street Journal on a new allegation of hanky-panky at the World Bank:

"Please know," read the text of the email written by a bank employee, "that UK ED Tom Scholar is continuing an affair with [a bank employee]. This woman has been given preferential treatment in [the department] because of her relationship with this powerful ED, this affair is well known, and is in violation of the Bank Staff Rules and the Boards Standards of Conduct."

"ED" means executive director. There are 24 such directors at the World Bank; collectively, they form the board that oversees the bank's work on behalf of its 185 member countries. Mr. Scholar is the ED from the United Kingdom. This week, all eyes were upon these officials as they decided on Paul Wolfowitz's future as president of the bank. Whether their conclusion is fair is a subject for another time. But no less important is whether, while penalizing Mr. Wolfowitz, the board isn't also covering up its own multitude of sins.

I first became aware of the 37-year-old Mr. Scholar--a former private secretary to British Chancellor Gordon Brown who also serves as an executive director at the International Monetary Fund--following the publication of my May 1 column, "Notes on a Scandal." The column, which detailed the hypocrisy of some of Mr. Wolfowitz's public detractors, including former World Bank senior managers with conflict-of-interest issues of their own, clearly struck a nerve within the bank. Many former and current bank staff wrote me to share stories of other bank managers or directors who, they claimed, had violated staff rules with impunity. Mr. Scholar's name kept coming up.

In one email, a correspondent wrote to say that "just like Wolfowitz, Scholar has a romantic relationship with a female employee at the World Bank. Scholar has never officially disclosed this relationship even though it clearly interferes with his oversight responsibilities as a Board member." The author signed off by saying that he (or she) "regrets to have to stay anonymous for fear of reprisal and hope for your understanding in this respect." ...

...Why does any of this matter? For one thing, it suggests the board lacks the most basic institutional mechanisms to police the conduct of its own members. This ought to call into question its fitness--and particularly Mr. Scholar's fitness--to judge the conduct of others. For another, the Daily Telegraph has reported that Mr. Scholar is likely to become Gordon Brown's chief of staff once the latter moves to 10 Downing Street.

But it matters most of all because the departure of Mr. Wolfowitz is being demanded by his most vehement critics to show that the World Bank is serious about setting the right example when it comes to governance. If it's a spring cleaning they want, why stop there?

A Panda Sneezes

Just saw this on Google video...

William Stearman: Ken Burns Should Not Spotlight Latinos

The debate over Ken Burns' WWII film is heating up, it seems, from this letter published in the Washington Post:

'Red-Blooded Americans, Fighting for Our Country'
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A14

As a World War II combat veteran, I was both disappointed and concerned that Ken Burns let himself be pressured into singling out Latino contributions in his World War II documentary [Style, May 11].

Our landing ship, which saw considerable action in the Pacific, had onboard people of ethnic origins including Italian, Polish, Latino, Greek, German, Irish, Armenian, British and African. Incidentally, the black sailors involved lived fully integrated with the white sailors, and all were on gun crews.

Had anyone sought, for example, to single out Radioman Campo for attention because of his Latino ethnicity, he, no doubt, would have been perplexed, if not affronted. We would all have described ourselves simply as true, red-blooded Americans fighting for our country.

As to Mr. Burns's documentary, I would support highlighting exclusively ethnic units such as the valiant and effective Army Air Corps/Force Tuskegee pilots in all-black formations, the brave and battle-savvy Japanese American infantry units (in Europe), and the invaluable Navajo "code talkers" attached to the Marine Corps.

WILLIAM LLOYD STEARMAN
North Bethesda

Agustin Blazquez Speaks!

On Google Video, about why he makes documentary films.