Terry Krepel has some interesting background to a WorldNetDaily article about Wikipedia:
A March 8 WorldNetDaily articleby Aaron Klein asserts that Wikipedia editors “has been deleting within minutes any mention of eligibility issues surrounding Barack Obama’s presidency, with administrators kicking off anyone who writes about the subject” — curiously failing to mention that Wikipedia has an entire pagededicated to Obama citizenship conspiracies. Klein related the experience of “Wikipedia user ‘Jerusalem21′” in trying to add the information to Obama’s page.
Krepel points out that the only other edits to Wikipedia by “Jerusalem21” are on the page for…Aaron Klein. On that page, “Jerusalem21” puffed Klein’s work, added pictures and links…and deleted critical material added by Krepel.
Klein is WND‘s Jerusalem correspondent – his main shtick is to interview Islamic extremists for juicy quotes about why they prefer Obama to Bush, but he also promotes various Jewish “community activists”, who, with a bit of googling, turn out to be assorted extremists and Kahanists. Krepel has been noting these links for some time – one article (which gives me a credit) can be seen here.
WND founder Joseph Farah has a morbid horror of Wikipedia – when his own page was vandalised in December to suggest that the mustachioed editor was a “noted homosexual”, the incident received massive coverage. Gen J.C. Christian sent some words of advice.
Well, it looks as though someone scraped together the necessary cash (there was a hitch) which will allow Walid Shoebat to dispense his wisdom at Western Michigan University:
The topic of the speech is Why We Want To Kill You and deals with the mindset of a terrorist. Introduction by General Gordon Cucullu. Admssion free.
Shoebat’s answer to the title’s question, of course, is because Islam is inherently violent – although Shoebat has remarkably managed to milk this monomanic assertion into a never-ending gravy-train (adding stuff about a Muslim anti-Christ when in church settings).
Cucullu, meanwhile, is yet another “security hawk” pundit on the right-wing circuit; a profile at “The Intelligence Summit (TM)” tells us that:
Gordon Cucullu is a former Special Forces lieutenant colonel with more than four decades of experience dealing with the tumultuous region of East Asia, including North and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia. He is Senior Non-resident Fellow at the Center for Security Policy…Gordon is recognized as one of the leading authorities on the complex, dangerous threat posed by North Korea through its deadly connections to other American enemies in the war for the free world.
He recently wrote a book entitled Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay; this was puffed a few days ago by the good Christians at OneNewsNow. There are some interesting cross-overs between these kinds of characters and church groups in America – just a short time ago I noted Shoebat’s appearance at Messianic venue in Florida, where the organiser also runs “Terrorism Preparation & Disaster Relief” seminars.
According to the Kalamazoo News, Shoebat’s Michigan jaunt has been organised by a student group called International Conservatives, led by a certain Chris McCann; I’ve also seen that “advance work” was apparently undertaken by “investigative journalist” and Frontpage-r Lee Kaplan.
The Kalamazoo News laughably calls Shoebat a “peace activist”. Here’s a video that’s embedded on the “peace activist’s” website (made by his son), which invokes a militarised Christian fundamentalism to oppose Muslims and scientists (Charles Darwin appears, Emmanuel Goldstein-like, at 3:08, wreathed in flames and with the words “give them the ability to filter out evil” superimposed over his face) :
UPDATE: An account of the meeting, in a letter to the Western Herald from student Andrew Lennox:
The audience was fairly diverse showing the variety of students at WMU. Beginning the presentation a former Special Forces officer led the audience in the pledge of allegiance, something I hadn’t done since middle school
…There was a certain undertone where each statement made Muslims seem worse and worse. I noticed the younger students begin to leave row by row; but being an anthropology student I was determined to stay. Suddenly I looked around and the room was filled with older white people nodding their heads and saying god bless America.
By the end of the speeches the crowd was yelping and whistling with patriotism due to the presenter’s constant references to American pride. I felt very uncomfortable feeling like I had just watched George Wallace speak in 1963, there was an ominous anti Muslim feeling in the room. After one Arab student’s outburst, he was shoved by a white student, and when the Arab student asked, “Who are you?” The second student shouted, “I’m America!” and the Arab student was escorted out by police.
UPDATE: Lee Kaplan responds (see comments). He points out that he is a “wellpaid journalist” and that Shoebat is a “bestselling author”, whereas I am an “unpaid blogger”. Does this not therefore prove that everything Shoebat says is true and that any criticism I may have can be discounted?
