Dennis Kucinich
Posted on 11/30/2003 9:13:39 PM PST by Salvation
Kucinich headlines
Muslim fund-raiser
CAIR group tied to Hamas, Islamist goals
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Dennis Kucinich |
WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich headlined a fund-raiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group with ties to the Mideast terrorist organization Hamas and an agenda for an Islamic USA.
CAIR announced its national fund-raising campaign had topped its goal of $1 million thanks in part to the standing-room-only banquet Saturday evening attended by more than 1,000 people, including Kucinich and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
"We would like to thank all those who helped us reach our fundraising goal," said CAIR Chairman Omar Ahmad. "These added resources will enable us to continue and expand our work defending civil rights and promoting a positive image of Islam."
Kucinich has taken part in other CAIR events recently, including a Ramadan iftar, or fast breaking, on Capitol Hill hosted by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. That event was co-sponsored by co-sponsored by Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., Kucinich, Conyers, D-Ohio, Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., and Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
At least one elected official, Meeks, has second thoughts about participating in the CAIR event. When questioned about his attendance of a CAIR dinner earlier this month, he told the New York Sun: "I don't want to be associated with anyone who condones suicide bombers, anti-Semitism, or any group that condones the extremism in Islam." He added, "I'm going to do some checking into this right now. I am going to talk to some of my colleagues, particularly some of my Jewish colleagues."
He said that based on his conversation with the Sun, "I will probably not attend."
CAIR came under fire in the last year as individuals associated with the organization were indicted on federal terrorism charges.
Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of the Texas chapter of CAIR, was indicted Dec. 17, 2002, in the northern district of Texas for engaging in financial transactions with Hamas leader Musa abu Marzook.
Ismail Randall Royer, a CAIR communications specialist between 1997 and October 2001, was indicted by a grand jury in the eastern district of Virginia in June 2003, on charges that he and 10 other Muslim men were part of a conspiracy to support violent jihad overseas. According to the indictment, Royer traveled to Pakistan and trained with automatic weapons at a training camp associated with Lashkar E-Tayyiba.
CAIR's former director of community relations, Bassam Khafagi, was indicted in January on bank fraud charges.
Stephen Emerson, the director of the Investigative Project, a nonprofit group that examines terrorist connections in America, says the investigation was part of a larger terrorism case by the Justice Department.
"CAIR has been apologists for Islamic terrorism," said Emerson.
CAIR was criticized by some for not condemning Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization for the Sept. 11 terror attacks until three months later.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants the United States to become a Muslim country.
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," Hooper told the Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
Founded in 1994, CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association of Palestine, identified as a "front group" for the terrorist group Hamas, according to Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the FBI's counterterrorism section. Another ex-FBI counterterrorism chief, Oliver "Buck" Revell, has called the Islamic Association For Palestine – Hooper's former employer – "a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants."
CAIR advisory board member Siraj Wahhaj was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White on Feb. 2, 1995, as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments," including the World Trade Center in 1993.
Ahmad, the chairman, reportedly told a rally of California Muslims in 1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."
Any comments?
But consorting with the likes of John Conyers, Loretta Sanchez and Barbara Lee should be a matter of some concern...
What more could a Republican ask for than a Democrat who looks like Hitler's little bro.
Yes. President Bush, why are arab/muslim/'palestinian' terror front groups allowed to operate openly in the US under the guise of 'civil rights' groups?
They should be terminated. Yesterday.
That said, Kucinich couldn't happen to a nice party. I hope he becomes a real factor in the race.
Click to scroll to commentary.
Communist Party Praises Kucinich [by Ohio Communist Party leader Rick Nagin]
Peoples Weekly World ^ | November 23, 1996 | Rick Nagin
Posted on 03/09/2003 6:35 PM EST by Diago
From: scott@rednet.org (Peoples Weekly World) Subject: Kucinich win shows labor's political power Date: 1996/11/22 Message-ID: <574nh2$meg@news.missouri.edu> distribution: usa followup-to: alt.activism.d resent-from: rich organization: Scott Marshall newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive originator: rich@pencil.math.missouri.edu
**Kucinich win shows labor's political power**
(Reprinted from the November 23, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. May be reprinted or reposted with PWW credit. For subscription information see below)
By Rick Nagin
Cleveland - The election of Dennis Kucinich in Ohio's 10th Congressional District was a ground-breaking event demonstrating the powerful political potential of a mass, grassroots coalition led by labor.
Trade unionists and seniors provided the largest numbers of some 5,000 volunteers but many others came from Hispanic, environmental, peace and other organizations. Some were unemployed workers or shoppers at the outdoor mall where the headquarters was located who just walked in and offered to help. On any day after early September there were probably 100 people working for some period of time in the headquarters, a beehive of activity and camaraderie, where anyone could find plenty of baked goods, bagels and cream cheese and other snacks brought in by the volunteers.
According to the campaign staff, the volunteers canvassed at least 600 of the district's 750 precincts, some as many as four times. They turned the western half of Cuyahoga County and especially the west side of Cleveland into a sea of 15,000 bright yellow yard signs reading "Light Up Congress! Elect Dennis Kucinich" - a reminder of the historic fight Kucinich had waged as Cleveland mayor when he refused to sell the city-owned power plant to a private electric company.
The staff estimated that the volunteers made 100,000 phone calls and mailed out one million pieces of literature. Many organizations issued their own literature and did their own mailings including the AFL-CIO's Labor '96, the UAW CAP Council, the Sierra Club, Peace Voter '96, gay rights and senior groups. The United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers did plantgate distributions. The Ohio Council of Senior Citizens distributed 12,000 pieces with the positions of Kucinich and his opponent, incumbent Martin Hoke, on senior issues to senior buildings, nutrition sites and bingo games. This was after the National Council of Senior Citizens and the Cleveland AFL-CIO Retiree Council mailed voter registration and absentee ballot forms to 16,000 union retirees.
The coalition embraced many political viewpoints: Democrats, independents, Greens, socialists, Communists, members of the Labor Party, even some disgruntled Republicans. Democratic Party figures, including First Lady Hillary Clinton, Congressmen Louis Stokes, Joseph Kennedy and Barney Franks visited Cleveland to help in the effort. Especially significant were visits by Congresspersons Luis Gutierrez and Nydia Velazquez who spoke to large meetings and rallies and on the radio mobilizing an unprecedented vote in the Hispanic community.
But it was the grassroots, labor-community coalition that Kucinich had in mind on election night when he gave his impassioned victory speech with jubilant leaders of organized labor standing behind him, their right fists held high, chanting, "We are the party of the people! We are the party of the people!" The coalition was inspired by both Kucinich's personality and his program.
Respected as a champion of the underdog and working people, Kucinich was the son of a truck driver, who grew up in extreme poverty even living for a time out of the family car. As mayor, he had battled the power structure, the utilities, the banks, the mass media and, although his efforts saved the city light plant, he had waged the fight alone with no organized base and was ruthlessly crushed after the banks retaliated, forcing the city into default.
Despite years of ostracism and ridicule in the media, Kucinich staged a dramatic comeback in 1994, when he was elected to the state senate, one of the only Democrats in the country to unseat an incumbent Republican in the year of the Gingrich "revolution." At a time when other candidates of his party believed they should move to the right and fell like flies, Kucinich declared himself to be a Roosevelt Democrat and championed the views of an emerging left- center, labor-community coalition.
In the state legislature he spoke out on behalf of this growing coalition, leading fights against privatization, the locating of a nuclear waste dump in Ohio, and the cutting of badly needed services to seniors and Hispanics. With the AFL-CIO mobilizing to defeat the Gingrich gang in Congress, it was only natural that Kucinich's campaign would become a national rallying point.
Unlike many other Democrats whom labor supported as "lesser evils," Kucinich raised the stakes. He issued a bill of rights for working people stating his belief that people have a right to a job, a right to a safe workplace, to decent wages and benefits, to strike, to participate freely in the political process. Issued on glossy paper with a bright yellow background, the program was distributed throughout the labor movement and posted on union bulletin boards everywhere.
The Republicans reacted with fury to this open challenge to their decades of labor-baiting bully tactics. Kucinich's program, Republican county chairman Jim Trakas announced, is "very similar to the Communist Manifesto" and is "what Lenin stood for." Kucinich blasted this reversion to "McCarthyism."
Martin Hoke, a loutish multi-millionaire, had been lucky to face seriously wounded opponents in his two previous races. He had unseated Mary Rose Oakar in 1992 when the longtime Congresswoman was embroiled in the House banking and post office "scandals." In 1994 he faced County Treasurer Francis Gaul, the focus of blame for the collapse of a key bond fund. Hoke, as Kucinich was fond of saying, was a man who woke up one day on third base and thought he had hit a triple.
After the 1994 elections, Hoke jumped on the Gingrich bandwagon with a vengeance, championing the Contract on America, denouncing labor, federal social programs and efforts to raise the minimum wage while skipping important votes for photo opportunities with the House Speaker.
At first Hoke adopted an upbeat, positive posture,bwith TV ads showing him fraternizing with workers and playing the piano for senior citizens. But as an AFL-CIO television campaign exposed his ultra-right voting record and positions, he found himself trailing by eight to ten points. The mask was then removed and the phony smile replaced with the snarl of labor-baiting and character assassination. Voicing his class hatred, Hoke assailed "Washington labor bosses" who, he said, were "stealing their members' dues" to "run a campaign of lies and smears" against him.
In fact, It was Hoke's campaign that degenerated into lies and smears as he saturated TV with ads slandering Kucinich's role as mayor and wildly charging that his health care proposals would bankrupt the country. When Rep. Barney Frank appeared for a Kucinich fundraiser, Hoke falsely charged that Kucinich advocated homosexual marriage and scurrilous, unsigned leaflets were distributed at churches, charging that Kucinich's supporters favored sex with children and animals.
The smears were endlessly propagated by a right-wing talk show host who made it his mission three hours every morning to stop Kucinich. The poisonous attacks, aimed at suppressing voter turnout, caused the race to tighten considerably. In the final week before the election the focus of the Hoke campaign shifted to virulent red-baiting directed at this writer.
In what was probably a first since the beginning of the Cold War, Kucinich refused to knuckle under, calmly stating that I was one of 5,000 volunteers and declaring, "It's Halloween and Hoke is dressing up as Joe McCarthy. Karl Marx is not running my campaign but apparently Harpo Marx is running his." On Nov. 5 Hoke was defeated by a vote of 108,000 to 102,000 with 10,000 going to a candidate of the Natural Law Party. It was a stunning rebuke to Hoke's shameful attempt to whip up hatred and hysteria. Although he spent a million dollars - over twice as much as Kucinich - he could not shake the solid majority of voters who showed outstanding maturity.
Unable to accept defeat gracefully, he never actually conceded and the next day denounced what he claimed was a "war that John Sweeney and the AFL-CIO declared on the people of America." The "war," he whined, will continue because the Republicans, although seriously weakened, retain control of Congress. While the war was hardly declared by labor, it is certain that labor and its allies will continue their efforts to reverse the nearly two decades of assault on unions and all that is decent in this country, and they will be able to count on the staunch, heart-felt support of Congressman Dennis Kucinich. ##30##
************************************************************ *** * Read the Peoples Weekly World * ********* **** * Sub info: pww@igc.apc.org * **** * **** 235 W. 23rd St. NYC 10011 *** * ** **** * $20/yr - $1-2 mos trial sub * **** * *** * * ********* ************************************************************ Tired of the same old system: Join the Communist Party, USA Info: CPUSA@rednet.org; or (212) 989-4994; or http://www.hartford-hwp.com/cp-usa ************************************************************
From the article:
The coalition embraced many political viewpoints: Democrats, independents, Greens, socialists, Communists, members of the Labor Party, even some disgruntled Republicans.
1 posted on 03/09/2003 6:35 PM EST by Diago
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
This is a must see:
http://www.kucinich.com/
2 posted on 03/09/2003 6:46 PM EST by Diago
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.