Yearning for a Holocaust

Posted by David Swindle on May 12th, 2010
http://www.frontpagemag.com/

Visit Newsreal

On Monday, May 10, Editor-in-Chief David Horowitz gave a talk at UC San Diego to counter the Muslim Students Association’s Israeli Apartheid Week. (Horowitz made a point to properly describe the event as “Hitler Youth” week.) He was literally giving his speech at the same time as notorious anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein.

During the Question and Answer period Horowitz had a chilling exchange with a member of the MSA in which he prodded her to reveal the depraved depths of her Jew-hatred. What’s shocking is not so much that she holds such views, but rather that she was willing to admit it:

(Watch video here.)

Transcript:

MSA member: Good evening, I just wanted to say thank you for coming to campus tonight and presenting your point of view, its always important to have to sets of, ah, views going on at the same time. Um, very useful. My name is Jumanah Imad Albahri and I’m a student here at UCSD. Ah I was reading your literature, I found that much more interesting than your talk, and I found some interesting things about the MSA, which is an organization that is very active on campus and is hosting our annual “Hitler Youth” week, you should come out to those events. Um, if you could clarify the connection between the MSA and Jihad terrorist networks, because last time I checked, we had to do our own fundraising, and we never get help from anyone. So if you could clarify the connection between UCSD’s MSA or if you don’t have such information, if you could connect other MSA’s on UC’s, because the connection wasn’t to clear in the pamphlet, just if you could clarify.

Horowitz: Okay. Will you condemn Hamas, here and now?

MSA member: I’m sorry, what?

Horowitz: Will you condemn Hamas?

MSA member: Would I condemn Hamas?

Horowitz: As a terrorist organization. Genocidal organization.

MSA member: Are you asking me to put myself on a cross?

Horowitz: So you won’t. I have actually had this experience many times. You didn’t actually read the pamphlet, because the pamphlet is chapter and verse. The main connection is that the MSA is part of the Muslim Brotherhood Network as revealed…

MSA member: I don’t think you understood what I meant by that. I meant if I say something, I am sure that I will be arrested, for reasons of homeland security. So if you could please just answer my question.

Horowitz: If you condemn Hamas, Homeland Security will arrest you?

MSA member: If I support Hamas, because your question forces me to condemn Hamas. If I support Hamas, I look really bad.

Horowitz: If you don’t condemn Hamas, obviously you support it. Case closed. I have had this experience at UC Santa Barbara, where there were 50 members of the Muslim Students Association sitting right in the rows there. And throughout my hour talk I kept asking them, will you condemn Hizbollah and Hamas. And none of them would. And then when the question period came, the president of the Muslim Students Association was the first person to ask a question. And I said, ‘Before you start, will you condemn Hizbollah?’ And he said, ‘Well, that question is too complicated for a yes or no answer.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll put it to you this way. I am a Jew. The head of Hizbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. For or Against it?

MSA member: For it.

Horowitz: Thank you for coming and showing everybody what’s here.

*******

This is the reality of what we’re facing today. We are in a global struggle with Islamic Nazis who brazenly, openly advocate a second holocaust. We are at war with a totalitarian enemy that seeks world domination.

There is really only one question that’s relevant after you’ve watched this video: What are you going to do about this? How are you going to participate in the fight against Nazism? What are you going to do so that “Never Again” really means Never Again?

Update: Thanks to Pamela Geller who linked and who has more on the truth about the “Palestinian Cause” at Atlas Shrugs.

Categories: FrontPage

Tags: answer period, anti semite, association, chief david, Chief David Horowitz, connection, David Horowitz, good evening, Hamas, hitler youth, Israel, Jew-hatred, member, MSA, Muslim, muslim students association, Norman Finkelstein, Pamela Geller, question, San Diego, Santa Barbara, talk, TIME, uc san diego, week

What Did You Say About Muhammad?!

As Muslims fume over Western cartoons of Muhammad, check out the disturbing things non-Westerners publicly say — and get away with — about the prophet. (And don't miss Zombie: "Fatwa Headbutt: Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks attacked.")

by Raymond Ibrahim
http://pajamasmedia.com/
May 12, 2010

Which is more likely to elicit an irate Muslim response: 1) public cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, or 2) public proclamations that Muhammad was a bisexual, sometime transvestite and necrophile, who enjoyed sucking on the tongues of children, commanded a woman to “breastfeed” an adult man, and advised believers to drink his urine for salutary health?

Based on the recent South Park fiasco — where an animated episode depicting Muhammad in a bear suit sparked outrage among various Muslim groups, culminating with the usual death threats — the answer is clear: cartoons, once again, have proven to be the Muslim world’s premiere provocateur. Indeed, just yesterday, during a university lecture, Swedish artist Lars Vilks, whose life is in jeopardy due to his depiction of Muhammad as a dog, was violently assaulted to undulations of “Allahu Akbar!” (Islam’s primordial war cry).

Yet how can cartoons rouse Muslim ire more than public assertions that Muhammad was a bisexual, a transvestite, a necrofile, et al? First, context:
The evangelical Arabic satellite station, al-Haya (Life TV), regularly takes the Muslim prophet to task, especially on two weekly programs: Hiwar al-Haq (Truth Talk), hosted by Coptic priest Fr. Zakaria Botros (pictured at right), and Su’al Jari’ (Daring Question), hosted by ex-Muslim Rashid. Both shows revolve around asking uncomfortable questions about Islam and its founder in an effort to prompt Muslims to reconsider the legitimacy of their faith. (It is on these shows that the aforementioned, unflattering assertions of Muhammad originate; see here and here for English summaries.)

These broadcasts are viewed by millions of Arabic-speaking Muslims around the world. That the satellite station strikes a Muslim nerve is evinced by the fact that it is formally banned in several Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, and is regularly condemned by Islam’s demagogues on mainstream Arabic media, including al Jazeera.

When the programs first began airing, they certainly caused uproar in the Muslim world. Then, Muslims regularly called in cursing the hosts, promising them death and destruction (both here and in the hereafter). Al-Qaeda reportedly put a $60 million bounty on Fr. Zakaria’s head; and the priest is on CAIR’s radar. (See the father explain his mission in this rare English interview.)

Far from being cowed by the daily death threats, however, Life TV and its unrepentant hosts have responded by upping the ante and providing even more anecdotes discrediting Muhammad. Rashid recently examined the theological implications of Muhammad’s hatred for the gecko lizard, which the prophet accused of being “an infidel and enemy of the believers.” Muslims who kill it in the first strike receive 100 “heavenly-points,” whereas those who kill it in two strikes receive only 70. More graphically, Fr. Zakaria recently examined canonical hadiths (authenticated Muslim accounts) that record Islam’s first believers eating Muhammad’s feces, marinating food in his sweat, drinking the water he gargled and spit out, and smearing his phlegm all over their faces — all to his approval.

Needless to say, Life TV’s hosts — especially the flamboyant Fr. Zakaria — are hated by Muslims around the world. But to the careful observer, the outrage appears to be subsiding, ostensibly replaced by apathy — that is, the default strategy when threats and displays of indignation fail. Most callers are now Muslim converts to Christianity, who encourage and thank Fr. Zakaria and Rashid (often in tears). Conversely, the diminishing angry callers usually spew a barrage of insults, culminating with a “may-you-burn-in-hell,” and quickly — almost as if ashamed of their childish behavior — hang up.

Now, back to our original observation: how can Life TV get away with outlandish weekly disparagements concerning Muhammad, whereas Western cartoons spark widespread outrage? Considering that millions of more Muslims watch Life TV than have ever heard of South Park makes the question doubly puzzling.

The answer is simple: the South Park incident is less a reflection of Muslim anger and more of Western appeasement. By constantly buckling in to the slightest Muslim displeasure — whether by altering films, removing museum art, or canceling book launches — the West has perpetuated a vicious cycle wherein Muslim sensitivities are ever heightened and outraged at the slightest slight, and Western freedoms of expression are correspondingly diminished and trampled upon. What’s worse, such self-imposed censorship falls right into the hands of homegrown Islamists actively working to subvert Western civilization from within.

Conversely, by holding fast to onetime Western principles of free speech and open dialogue, Life TV has conditioned its Muslim viewers to accept that exposure and criticism of their prophet is here to stay. As Fr. Zakaria often points out, every religious figure is open to criticism: so why should Muhammad be sacrosanct? (Indeed, Comedy Central, which was quick to acquiesce to Muslim demands to censor South Park, is “brave” enough to run an entire cartoon series mocking Jesus.)

Of course, one need not agree with Life TV’s tactics or evangelical mission to appreciate the lesson it imparts: Muslim outrage — as with all human outrage — is predicated on how well it is tolerated. Continuously appeased, it becomes engorged and insistent on more concessions; ignored, it deflates and, ashamed of itself, withers away. Put differently, if you voluntarily act like a dhimmi — a subjugated non-Muslim who must live in debased humility — you will be treated like a dhimmi (including by being killed for the slightest offense); conversely, if you assert yourself like a freeman, you will be perceived as a freeman — even as you are hated.

To be fair, there is one caveat: whereas Muslims have no choice but to interpret South Park’s and Lars Vilk’s caricatures of Muhammad as egregiously offensive — no known Muslim records depict Muhammad as a bear or dog — the much more disturbing Life TV anecdotes all originate in Islam’s most authoritative sources (Koran, hadiths, tafsirs, fatwas, etc). In other words, perhaps the anger toward Life TV is subsiding as Muslims become reconciled to the fact that, no matter how abominable, what is being said about their prophet is, in fact, grounded in Muslim sources, and thus must be true.

Yet if that is the case, seems like silly cartoons of Muhammad are the least of Muslims’ problems.

- Raymond Ibrahim is the associate director of the Middle East Forum, the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, and a guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College.

O's new terror tack

By Ralph Peters
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com
May 11, 2010

Why is the Obama administration now taking terrorism so seriously?

In the immediate aftermath of the May 1 Times Square bombing attempt, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano -- in typical fashion -- rushed to minimize the plot, calling it a likely "one-off" attack.

But scarcely a week later, Attorney General Eric Holder is seeking a significant rollback in suspects' Miranda rights -- so as to better head off the next one.

Talk about whiplash.

President George W. Bush was savaged by Obama's liberal allies for supposedly "shredding the Constitution" in the War on Terror, but he never called into question the 44-year-old Supreme Court decision that formalized an American's "right to remain silent" while in police custody.

(Just imagine if he had!)


Attorney General Eric Holder. (AP)

The 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona deemed inadmissible in court any statement a defendant made before cops verbally informed him of his rights.

Yet Holder on Sunday said he wants legislation expanding an exemption to the rule, to apply when investigators interview terror suspects like Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized citizen.

Such authority would let cops immediately grill suspects about other plots and plotters -- without worrying that the questioning would harm their legal case.

It's certainly no coincidence that Holder also confirmed that the Pakistani Taliban was "intimately involved" in the bombing attempt. "We know they helped direct it, and I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped to finance it," he said.

But is chipping away at Miranda the proper response? Hard to say.

It's an incredibly fraught subject: While one could make the case that the original Miranda decision gave defendants more rights than the Constitution requires, it's a fixture of the US legal system.

Given the nature of all governments to gather power toward themselves, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

What's more, watering down Miranda would start to blur the heretofore bright line between US citizens and foreign terrorists -- who deserve to be treated as enemy combatants, no questions asked.

These are unavoidable tensions for those with the difficult job of fighting terror in a free society.

What's noteworthy -- and welcome -- is that Team Obama seems to be starting to realize that the nature of the threat re quires hard choices to be made.

After all, these were the folks who not too long ago were insistent on trying ruthless foreign terrorists as civilians in Lower Manhattan (though, sadly, Holder still hasn't ruled that out).

So something really must have frightened them.

And that spooks us, too.

How Al Capone was untouchable

By JONATHAN EIG
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com
May 9, 2010

When Al Capone left Brooklyn, he was a 21-year-old nothing. When he turned 28, by then living in Chicago, he was one of the world’s most famous men, his face as recognizable as that of Babe Ruth or Lucky Lindbergh, his name a synonym for “gangster” in languages all over the earth.

But Al Capone’s story has never been properly understood. The man known as Scarface has been turned into a cartoon bad guy. And in almost every account of Capone’s villainy, the role of the good guy is played by Eliot Ness, the dapper young Prohibition agent who led his team of so-called Untouchables in battering down doors and chopping up beer barrels to ruin the Capone empire and bring Public Enemy No. 1 to justice.

That’s not the way it really happened.

Al Capone was not the biggest bootlegger of the Prohibition age. He wasn’t the most ruthless gangster of his time. What really separated him from other criminals of his era was his style. While other gangsters went about their dirty business quietly, Capone cried out for attention. He posed for photographers, chatted easily with reporters and threw lavish parties in for the city’s respected citizens.

He fancied himself a businessman, and, as fancies go, it was not so ridiculous. In the 1920s, everyone was breaking the law. Everyone was seeking fame and taking chances. Capone fit right in.

But by the late 1920s, the mood of the nation was starting to change. Chicago business leaders were tired of seeing their city’s reputation stained. And the federal government was embarrassed that Prohibition had become a national joke.

So, when Herbert Hoover became president in 1929, just weeks after Capone’s men were involved in the shocking St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, he made the takedown of the mobster one of his top priorities. Not since the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth had so many federal resources been devoted to the pursuit of one man.

The feds discovered a problem, however. Most of Capone’s purported crimes were local, and the police in Chicago were entirely uninterested in doing anything. Capone had paid them off.

The job of making a case against the gangster fell not to Eliot Ness but to a deeply conservative, mild-mannered lawyer named George E.Q. Johnson, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Johnson had a team at his disposal that included Ness, but the most important men operating at his command were from the Bureau of Revenue, in particular an agent named Frank Wilson.

Johnson had been experimenting with tax cases. When he couldn’t get criminals off the street for their more celebrated crimes, he tried to bust them for tax evasion. The approach had proven successful, standing up to several court challenges.

Other gangsters had claimed that they hadn’t paid taxes because their income was derived illegally, and paying taxes would have amounted to an admission of criminality. That defense routinely failed.

But Capone was savvy. He claimed he never had any income. Sure, he made some money from gambling, he said, but he lost just as much, if not more. And it was true that Capone was one of the worst gamblers of all time.

When Frank Wilson set out to establish Capone’s true income, he was astonished. The feds believed that Capone personally earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but they couldn’t trace any of it. They couldn’t find his name on any of the syndicate’s checks or bank ledgers.

The investigation dragged on years. While it did, police in Philadelphia locked up Capone on a simple gun-possession charge, stirring huge embarrassment among the feds. At one point, prosecutors in Miami threatened to take the case away from the team in Chicago.

Finally, Frank Wilson found a single ledger book that seemed to indicate payments to Capone. It was the only hard evidence they had, and Johnson went to work building a tax-evasion case around it.

Even so, he ended going to trial with a case built entirely on circumstantial evidence. He established that Capone spent lavishly — on everything from silk underwear to suits with reinforced pockets to hold pistols — and they asked the jury to believe that the money must have come from illegal activity.

Even on the eve of the trial, Johnson knew his case was weak, and that the jury might acquit. At one point, according to documents newly discovered in my research, Johnson convinced his superiors in Washington, DC, that they ought to cut a deal with Capone for a two-and-a-half year prison term.

Luckily, the deal never happened. Frank Wilson found just enough evidence to make a case. Johnson, with help from a friendly judge, took his case to trial, and Capone received a sentence of 11 years in prison. It wasn’t pretty, but the law worked.

In all likelihood, Capone never heard of Eliot Ness. He almost certainly never met him. Ness and his men did break up some of the gangster’s breweries and disrupted Capone’s cashflow.

But Capone knew all too well that President Hoover, George Johnson and Frank Wilson were his real enemies. He even explored the possibility of bribing them, but Johnson and Wilson were too honest. They were the true Untouchables.

Jonathan Eig’s new book, “Get Capone: The Secret Plot that Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster” (Simon & Schuster) is out this week.

In Your Face

French attempts to outlaw the burqa strike a blow for the rights of women.

By Christopher Hitchens
http://www.slate.com/
Posted Monday, May 10, 2010, at 11:16 AM ET


The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa—whether the garment covers "only" the face or the entire female body—are often described as seeking to impose a "ban." To the contrary, they are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority, and a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face. The proposed law is in the best traditions of the French republic, which declares all citizens equal before the law and—no less important—equal in the face of one another.

Woman wearing a niqab veil

On the door of my bank in Washington, D.C., is a printed notice politely requesting me to remove any form of facial concealment before I enter the premises. The notice doesn't bore me or weary me by explaining its reasoning: A person barging through those doors with any sort of mask would incur the right and proper presumption of guilt. This presumption should operate in the rest of society. I would indignantly refuse to have any dealings with a nurse or doctor or teacher who hid his or her face, let alone a tax inspector or customs official. Where would we be without sayings like "What have you got to hide?" or "You dare not show your face"?

Ah, but the particular and special demand to consider the veil and the burqa as an exemption applies only to women. And it also applies only to religious practice (and, unless we foolishly pretend otherwise, only to one religious practice). This at once tells you all you need to know: Society is being asked to abandon an immemorial tradition of equality and openness in order to gratify one faith, one faith that has a very questionable record in respect of females.

Let me ask a simple question to the pseudoliberals who take a soft line on the veil and the burqa. What about the Ku Klux Klan? Notorious for its hooded style and its reactionary history, this gang is and always was dedicated to upholding Protestant and Anglo-Saxon purity. I do not deny the right of the KKK to take this faith-based view, which is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I might even go so far as to say that, at a rally protected by police, they could lawfully hide their nasty faces. But I am not going to have a hooded man or woman teach my children, or push their way into the bank ahead of me, or drive my taxi or bus, and there will never be a law that says I have to.

There are lesser objections to the covered face or the all-covering cloak. The latter has often been used by male criminals—not just religious terrorists but common thugs—to conceal themselves and make an escape. It has also been used to conceal horrible injuries inflicted on abused females. It is incompatible—because of its effect on peripheral vision—with activities such as driving a car or negotiating traffic. This removes it from the sphere of private decision-making and makes it a danger to others, as well as an offense to the ordinary democratic civility that depends on phrases like "Nice to see you."

It might be objected that in some Muslim societies women are not allowed to drive in the first place. But that would absolutely emphasize my second point. All the above criticisms would be valid if Muslim women were as passionately committed to wearing a burqa as a male Klansman is committed to donning a pointy-headed white shroud. But, in fact, we have no assurance that Muslim women put on the burqa or don the veil as a matter of their own choice. A huge amount of evidence goes the other way.
Mothers, wives, and daughters have been threatened with acid in the face, or honor-killing, or vicious beating, if they do not adopt the humiliating outer clothing that is mandated by their menfolk. This is why, in many Muslim societies, such as Tunisia and Turkey, the shrouded look is illegal in government buildings, schools, and universities. Why should Europeans and Americans, seeking perhaps to accommodate Muslim immigrants, adopt the standard only of the most backward and primitive Muslim states?
The burqa and the veil, surely, are the most aggressive sign of a refusal to integrate or accommodate. Even in Iran there is only a requirement for the covering of hair, and I defy anybody to find any authority in the Quran for the concealment of the face.

Not that it would matter in the least if the Quran said otherwise. Religion is the worst possible excuse for any exception to the common law. Mormons may not have polygamous marriage, female circumcision is a federal crime in this country, and in some states Christian Scientists face prosecution if they neglect their children by denying them medical care. Do we dare lecture the French for declaring simply that all citizens and residents, whatever their confessional allegiance, must be able to recognize one another in the clearest sense of that universal term?

So it's really quite simple. My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine. Next but not least comes the right of women to show their faces, which easily trumps the right of their male relatives or their male imams to decide otherwise. The law must be decisively on the side of transparency. The French are striking a blow not just for liberty and equality and fraternity, but for sorority too.

Like Slate on Facebook. Follow Slate and the Slate Foreign Desk on Twitter.

Britwatch Update

[Mark Steyn]
http://corner.nationalreview.com/
Monday, May 10, 2010

Gordon Brown began his "resignation" statement by observing that "we have a parliamentary system, not a presidential system."

Indeed. And anybody who thought the British and American systems were broadly similar — two parties each with a principal candidate to serve as the country's leader — should have been disabused of that by the day's events.
Britain does not elect prime ministers. (Only the voters of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath elect Gordon Brown.) But it generally elects parties under known leaders offering themselves, in effect, as prime minister.

Reuters Pictures

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown departs from Downing Street by a side door, London May 11, 2010. Britain's Liberal Democrats said talks to form a new government had entered a decisive phase on Tuesday, after Labour PM Brown's dramatic announcement he would step aside to ease a centre-left coalition.

Before last week's vote, the United Kingdom had a head of government who had never submitted himself to the electorate in that capacity, nor had he even been elected as leader by his party. Rather, Gordon Brown became prime minister because of a long-ago private deal with Tony Blair that Brown chose to invoke when Blair got into his post-Iraq difficulties. In a democratic age, this is not a satisfactory arrangement. So the election was, aside from anything else, an exercise in retrospective legitimization.
Instead, post-election, the "unelected" prime minister is now insisting he'll stay in office until he can make way for another "unelected" prime minister from his own party — the party which lost the election — once it has successfully concluded negotiations with the party that came third in the election.

Even if this arrangement — a brand new leader unknown to the electorate at the time of last week's vote presiding over a coalition of the second- and third-placed parties — were to come to fruition, it would not command a majority in the House of Commons. To stay in power and function in any way, it would be dependent on the support (explicit or less so) of various regional entities — the fourth-placed party (Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists), the fifth (the Scottish Nationalists), and the seventh and eighth (Plaid Cymru from Wales and the SDLP from Ulster). Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are already disproportionately represented at Westminster and have already been bought off to the extent that government now accounts for between 73 and 78 percent of their various economies, which is about all one can expect to achieve short of full-scale Sovietization. Nonetheless, a Labour–Liberal Democrat alliance would shower the Celtic fringe with whatever's necessary and stick English taxpayers with the tab.

Meanwhile, the party that won the most seats throughout the UK, and a clear majority in England, will be entirely excluded. And possibly in perpetuity — since the deal the LibDems are angling for from Labour is one that would change Britain's electoral system to something "fairer" (i.e., more beneficial to them). The various Scots, Ulster, and Welsh parties may yet have some "fairness" in the game, too.

So much for those Yank-style televised leaders' debates only a couple weeks back. Instead, Britain will end up with a leader who didn't participate in the leaders' debates, presiding over a coalition that wasn't on the ballot, implementing a platform no party ran on, yet committed to transformative electoral reform for which there is no mandate.

If all the above doesn't sound terribly democratic, well, at least, Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs of Little Stitch-Up-On-Thames can still elect their Member of Parliament and know who they're going to get. As it happens, that's what the LibDems want to change — to some Continental-style "proportional" system. The way things are going, giving every voter a blindfold and a pin would make as much sense.

05/10 11:51 PM

Frank Frazetta, Illustrator, Dies at 82; Helped Define Comic Book Heroes

By BRUCE WEBER and DAVE ITZKOFF
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Published: May 10, 2010

Frank Frazetta, an illustrator of comic books, movie posters and paperback book covers whose visions of musclebound men fighting with swords and axes to defend scantily dressed women helped define fantasy heroes like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, died on Monday in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 82.

Frazetta Properties. LLC

Mr. Frazetta in 1994.

The cause was complications from a stroke, said Rob Pistella and Stephen Ferzoco, Mr. Frazetta’s business managers.
Mr. Frazetta was a versatile and prolific comic book artist who, in the 1940s and ’50s, drew for comic strips like Al Capp’s “Lil’ Abner” and comic books like “Famous Funnies,” for which he contributed a series of covers depicting the futuristic adventurer Buck Rogers.

A satirical advertisement Mr. Frazetta drew for Mad earned him his first Hollywood job, the movie poster for “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965), a sex farce written by Woody Allen that starred Peter Sellers. In 1983 he collaborated with the director Ralph Bakshi to produce the animated film “Fire and Ice.”

His most prominent work, however, was on the cover of book jackets, where his signature images were of strikingly fierce, hard-bodied heroes and bosomy, callipygian damsels in distress. In 1966, his cover of “Conan the Adventurer,” a collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, depicted a brawny long-haired warrior standing in repose on top of a pile of skeletons and other detritus, his sword thrust downward into the mound, an apparently naked young woman lying at his feet, hugging his ankle.

The cover created a new look for fantasy adventure novels and established Mr. Frazetta as an artist who could sell books. He illustrated many more Conan books (including “Conan the Conqueror,” “Conan the Usurper” and “Conan the Avenger”) and works by Edgar Rice Burroughs (including “John Carter and the Savage Apes of Mars” and “Tarzan and the Antmen”).

Frazetta Properties. LLC

Frank Frazetta's defining cover for “Conan the Adventurer.”

“Paperback publishers have been known to buy one of his paintings for use as a cover, then commission a writer to turn out a novel to go with it,” The New York Times reported in 1977, the same year that a collection of his drawings, “The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta,” sold more than 300,000 copies.

Frank Frazzetta was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 9, 1928, and as a boy studied painting at a local art school. (Early in his career, he excised one z from his last name because “with one z it just looked better,” Mr. Pistella said. “He said the two z’s and two t’s was too clumsy.”)

Mr. Frazetta began drawing for comic books of all stripes — westerns, mysteries, fantasies — when he was still a teenager. He was also a good enough baseball player to try out for the New York Giants.

The popularity of Mr. Frazetta’s work coincided with the rise of heavy metal in the early 1970s, and his otherworldly imagery showed up on a number of album covers, including Molly Hatchet’s “Flirtin’ With Disaster” and Nazareth’s “Expect No Mercy.” Last year, Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist for Metallica, bought Mr. Frazetta’s cover artwork for the paperback reissue of Robert E. Howard’s “Conan the Conqueror” for $1 million.

Mr. Frazetta married Eleanor Kelly, known as Ellie, in 1956. She served as his occasional model and as his business partner; in 2000 she started a small museum of her husband’s work on their property in East Stroudsburg, Pa. She died last year.

Mr. Frazetta is survived by three sisters, Carol, Adel and Jeanie; two sons, Alfonso Frank Frazetta, known as Frank Jr., and William Frazetta, both of East Stroudsburg; two daughters, Heidi Grabin, of Englewood, Fla., and Holly Frazetta, of Boca Grande, Fla.; and 11 grandchildren.

After Ellie Frazetta’s death, her children became embroiled in a custodial dispute over their father’s work, and in December, Frank Jr. was arrested on charges of breaking into the family museum and attempting to remove 90 paintings that had been insured for $20 million. In April, the family said the dispute over the paintings had been resolved, and the Monroe County, Pa., district attorney said he would drop the charges.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 11, 2010, on page B15 of the New York edition.


Frank Frazetta dies at 82; renowned fantasy illustrator

His covers for "Conan" paperbacks and others in the 1960s set the standard for sword-and-sorcery-genre artwork.

By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/
May 11, 2010

Frank Frazetta, the fantasy painter and illustrator whose images of sinewy warriors and lush vixens graced paperback novels, album covers and comic books for decades and became something close to the contemporary visual definition of the sword-and-sorcery genres, died Monday after suffering a stroke the night before. He was 82.

Frazetta had gone out to dinner with his daughters Sunday and then had a stroke at his home in Boca Grande, Fla. He died at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., his manager Rob Pistella told the Associated Press.

"He's going to be remembered as the most renowned fantasy illustrator of the 20th century," Pistella said.

Frazetta's most famous works were in oil, but his canvases were rarely seen in museums; instead his legacy was defined by barbarians and warlocks who reached out to readers from book covers on dime-store spinner racks. But as comic books and fantasy entertainment gained a wider audience in the 1970s and '80s, Frazetta became a brand name and his original artwork became a sensation. Last November, one of his pieces, a berserk battlefield image that graced a "Conan the Conqueror" paperback, sold for $1 million to a private collector.

John Milius, the screenwriter whose credits include "Apocalypse Now," "Clear and Present Danger" and "Red Dawn," was the director and co-writer of "Conan the Barbarian," the 1982 film that was based on the warrior character created by pulp writer Robert E. Howard in 1932. Milius said Monday that it was Frazetta's muscular paintings of Conan that defined the character for him and modern generations of fans.

"Not that I could ever redo Frazetta on film — he created a world and a mood that are impossible to simulate — but my goal in 'Conan the Barbarian' was to tell a story that was shaped by Frazetta and Wagner," Milius said.

Frazetta was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 9, 1928. By age 8, he was studying at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Art. One of his key influences was Hal Foster, the great comic-strip artist whose "Tarzan" became a compass point for Frazetta's own jungle scenes.

By 16, Frazetta was working in the booming field of illustration in New York. He toiled under Al Capp on "Li'l Abner" and on his own strip, "Johnny Comet," in the early 1950s. In comic books, he worked on "The Shining Knight" and a western hero called "Ghost Rider," but his fame would come with a paintbrush and in a more sensual sector when, in the 1960s, he began painting covers for paperbacks and magazines.

It was his covers for the "Conan" paperbacks of the 1960s, especially, that created a new overheated vision of fantasy realms. Later in life he told an interviewer that he didn't find his strange beasts, sullen warriors or buxom maidens in the text of the books he fronted with his art.

"I didn't read any of it," Frazetta said. "I drew him my way. It was really rugged. And it caught on. I didn't care about what people thought. People who bought the books never complained about it. They probably didn't read them."

Perhaps, but the readers of those Conan books — as well as the "Tarzan" and "John Carter Warlord of Mars" novels that Frazetta famously painted covers for — said they found the words and pictures melded with a resonant power.

Guillermo del Toro, the Oscar-nominated co-writer of "Pan's Labyrinth," which he also directed along with the "Hellboy" films, said that Frazetta was nothing less than "an Olympian artist that defined fantasy art for the 20th century." The filmmaker, reached Monday in New Zealand where he is working on a two-film adaptation of "The Hobbit," said Frazetta's influence is difficult to explain to people outside the fantasy world, just as Norman Rockwell would be an elusive figure to define for someone unfamiliar with the U.S. heartland.

"He gave the world a new pantheon of heroes," the filmmaker said by e-mail. "He took the mantle from J. Allen St. John and Joseph Clement Coll and added blood, sweat and sexual power to their legacy.... He somehow created a second narrative layer for every book he ever illustrated."

There were also rock album covers: Molly Hatchet, Nazareth, Yngwie Malmsteen and Wolfmother all tapped into the clanging combat and temptress imagery of Frazetta's easel.

His long, restless career took him into Hollywood work, posters, animation, commercial art and almost every corner of American illustration. The artist's final year had been a wrenching one; his wife and partner, Ellie Frazetta, died in July, setting off a dispute among the Frazetta children about the custody of their ailing patriarch and his art collection, which by some estimates was worth $20 million.

The quarrel reached a bizarre zenith in December when his son Alfonso "Frank Jr." Frazetta used a backhoe to knock down a wall of a small castle-like building that housed much of his father's premium artwork. That building was a mini-museum that sat on the elder Frazetta's farm in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and the bizarre invasion led to a criminal case, although charges were dropped during a recent settlement among the Frazetta siblings.

Besides his son Frank, Frazetta is survived by another son, William; two daughters, Heidi Frazetta Grabin and Holly Frazetta; and 11 grandchildren.

geoff.boucher@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times


Frank Frazetta, master of fantasy art, dead at 82

By HOWARD FRANK
Pocono Record Writer
http://www.poconorecord.com/
May 11, 2010

He lived among dragons, battlefields and medieval landscapes. And in the end, he was master of them all.

Frank Frazetta Sr., one of the most renowned fantasy illustrators of the 20th century, died Monday at a hospital near his home in Boca Grande, Fla. He was 82.

Frazetta suffered a stroke at home Sunday after having lunch with his daughter and grandchildren. He was flown to Lee Memorial Hospital, where he died.

Frank Frazetta Sr. in the mid-1960s. The famed fantasy artist died at a hospital near his home in Boca Grande, Fla., on Monday afternoon, May 10, 2010, one day after suffering a stroke. Photo courtesy of the Frazetta family.

He owned a home in Marshalls Creek, where his family operated a museum that displayed his works. He became a local icon, as fans of his art traveled to see the originals and meet the master.

Frazetta, whose dazzling images influenced a generation, was regarded as one of the world's premier fantasy and comic book artists. His art was known for muscular heroes, voluptuous women and ferocious beasts.

A plain-spoken, down-to-earth man with a heavy accent that betrayed his native Brooklyn, Frazetta had movie-star looks. His trademark flowing hair and pompadour styling added to the allure of a man who could create such wildly unique visions.

Frazetta's work dates back to the 1940s, when his vivid characters decorated Buck Rogers comic book covers for Famous Funnies. That work brought him to the attention of Al Capp, and Frazetta began drawing for the syndicated comic strip "Lil' Abner." He also did illustrations for "Little Annie Fannie" for Playboy magazine.

In the '60s, Frazetta began illustrating paperback covers. Some of his best known work was for the Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian books. His 1976 "Dark Kingdom" painting featuring the Death Dealer became the cover art for rockers Molly Hatchet's first album. In all, he provided cover art and illustrations for more than 150 books, calendars and album covers.
Frazetta's artwork has appeared in countless magazines, including Newsweek, Esquire and National Lampoon.

One of Frazetta's most popular images, the Death Dealer, became the adopted symbol of the U.S. Army's III Corps heavy maneuver force in 1985. A life-sized statue of the painting was commissioned by the Army and unveiled at the force's headquarters at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. It depicts an armored 6-foot-6-inch warrior wielding a menacing hatchet sitting astride an imposing Shire draft horse.

Success almost from the start

Frazetta was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1928, and went to the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts. But when the school closed in 1945, Frazetta was forced to find work to earn a living.

He began drawing for comic books at age 16, during the medium's golden age. His first work was in animal comics, and then for others, including "The Shining Knight" and "Ghost Rider," as well as his own strip, "Johnny Comet."

In his late teens, Frazetta had dreams of playing major league baseball and was pursued by several professional teams. But after a tryout with the New York Giants, he decided to stick with art.

Frazetta married Eleanor Kelly in 1956. She managed his business interests throughout their 53-year marriage. "Ellie" died after a battle with cancer in 2009.

After her death, infighting among Frazetta's two daughters and two sons led to a series of lawsuits and legal proceedings. But just weeks before his death and during a two-day marathon mediation in federal court in Scranton, an agreement was reached among family members to settle all legal actions.

Frazetta's art was recognized with four Chesley Awards and a 1966 Hugo Award. He received the Spectrum Grand Master of Fantastic Art Award in 1995.

Frazetta's oldest son, Alfonso Frank Frazetta of Marshalls Creek, owns East Stroudsburg retailer Golf World. His youngest son, Bill Frazetta of East Stroudsburg, owns Frazetta's Fantasy Costumes, housed in the same East Stroudsburg building as the golf shop.

"His legacy is going to go on," Bill Frazetta said.

Funeral services will be private.


Related Stories
Frazetta's place in fantasy art history secure

Links
Frank Frazetta Museum: Official Site
Frazetta Art Gallery
Complete Coverage: Frank Frazetta

Memories of Lena Horne: The Calm After Stormy Weather

In Memoriam

By Aaron Goldstein on 5.11.10 @ 6:07AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

Like many youngsters growing up in the mid-1970s I watched Sesame Street. In addition to Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, Sesame Street provided me with my first glimpse of the likes of Stevie Wonder, Richie Havens, Paul Simon and Madeline Kahn amongst many, many others.

And then there was Lena Horne.

Although Horne had four decades of show business under her belt the first thing I think of when I hear her name are those appearances on Sesame Street. It should come as no surprise that I am not the only one.

Until I learned of her death early Monday morning I had not seen these appearances in nearly three decades. But they never left my mind. Watching them again reminded me why she left such a deep impression on me.

First of all there was her ageless beauty. One look at her face and you would never forget those striking features. Then there was that voice. She could sing anything and make it meant something including the alphabet.
But perhaps what came across most strongly was her warmth. It radiated at its brightest when she helped Grover overcome his shyness through song.
Well, it worked. Perhaps it worked too well. Whatever tendencies towards reticence Grover might have had were certainly gone by the height of the Disco era.

She looked both self-assured and reassuring. In watching her hug Grover so tightly one would have never known of all the bigotry she endured in trying to find success as the first black contract player for MGM and as a nightclub singer. In watching her kiss Grover on the nose one would have never known that a few years earlier she had lost her father, her husband and her son in rapid succession. But what would a little boy know about stormy weather? He only saw the calm that came after.

By the early 1980s, Horne was at the height of her renaissance. She was the toast of Broadway with a Tony Award and Grammy Award winning one woman show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. It was during this time she was the subject of a profile on 60 Minutes by Ed Bradley. During the interview she put the sensual dimension of her persona on display. She told Bradley, "If a lady treats other people as she like to be treated she's allowed to roll in the grass if she wants to." To which Bradley asked, "Even if she is sixty-four?" "Even if she is sixty-four; particularly then," replied Horne with a flirtatious smile.

A few years later, Horne made a memorable appearance on The Cosby Show in which she sang for Cliff Huxtable as a birthday surprise. But what I remember most about her guest appearance was when she met with the Huxtables after her set. In particular, I remember her words of wisdom for Denise Huxtable (played by Lisa Bonet). When Denise tells Horne she is sixteen Horne says, "I wish I could get that year back. I blew sixteen. I walked around in a blue funk all the time feeling sorry for myself." Cliff retorts, "You sure hit that on the button." But then Horne assures Cliff that Denise will grow out of it. When Cliff asks her how Horne says, "When she realizes what she's got and she's got a whole lot. I noticed it when I was out there singing. You've got a whole lot of love right here in your family." Sometimes everything that you need is right in front of you and it takes someone else to tell you what is there. And who better to hear that from than Lena Horne?

But by the time 1998 rolled around Horne would show a much different side than with what I was familiar. Horne was a guest on The Rosie O'Donnell Show to promote her penultimate CD Being Myself in what turned out to be her last television appearance. After singing "Stormy Weather" Horne sat down with O'Donnell. When O'Donnell showed a GAP commercial featuring Horne singing "Winter Wonderland" she noticed Horne looking away from the clip. Horne told O'Donnell, "I want to be Aretha Franklin. I don't want to hear that other lady." The audience erupted in laughter. O'Donnell tried to reassure Horne by telling her, "I bet Aretha Franklin wants to sound like you." But it was no avail. "No, no, I don't think so," said Horne.

O'Donnell concluded the interview by saying she had to remind herself she was in the presence of Lena Horne to which Horne gave a most revealing response. "Sometimes with me to come face to face with myself, me and then the other Lena Horne, it's very difficult," said Horne. While O'Donnell was clearly in awe of Horne it was equally clear that Horne was very much down on herself. The confidence that had shined through on Sesame Street, 60 Minutes and The Cosby Show was nowhere to be found.

I wish Grover had been there to hug her tightly and give her a kiss on the nose. But perhaps it was too late to have done much good. If the stormy weather hadn't returned then perhaps the dark clouds had begun to gather. Our time here is not infinite and even the most gifted amongst us can lose faith in what has been given to them by God. For whatever her reasons, it would not be long before Lena Horne would fully retreat from public view.
But now that Lena Horne is gone I will remember the Lena Horne whose beauty stopped storms, whose voice gave meaning and whose warmth brought sunshine into a young boy's heart.

Aaron Goldstein writes from Boston, Massachusetts.

Why the Ground Zero Mosque Must Be Stopped

By Madeline Brooks
http://www.americanthinker.com/
May 10, 2010

Planting a mosque just two blocks from where Muslims murdered Americans on 9/11 in the name of Islam is a huge slap in the face. Why shouldn't Muslims be sensitive enough to realize that a huge mosque planted right near the horrific wound to the U.S. created at Ground Zero by Muslims is outrageous to us? They claim a right to be insulted by cartoons mocking their prophet, even to the point of beheading people.

The Imam of the Ground Zero Insult, Faisal Abdul Rauf, is not the nice guy he likes to hold himself out to be. At his Friday afternoon khutbah services and in his book What's Right With Islam Rauf states that he wants the mosque to be a place where inter-faith understanding is fostered. His sonorous voice is smooth and almost hypnotic. His writing style appears to be rational and unthreatening.

However, this does not jibe with the aspects of him that are downright hostile and frightening.

During a recent Friday sermon, this writer did due diligence as a mosque monitor and heard Rauf deny that Muslims perpetrated 9/11. In an interview with CNN shortly after 9/11, Rauf said, "U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. We [the U.S.] have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. Osama bin Laden was made in the USA." Elsewhere, Rauf has stated that terrorism will end only when the West acknowledges the harm it has done to Muslims. And that it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians.

Rauf has numerous ties to CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Department of Justice funding case brought against Hamas, an openly terrorist organization. CAIR is also the initiator of numerous cases designed to intimidate non-Muslims from criticizing aggressive Muslim behavior, and to use our own legal and democratic processes to undermine and dominate America, forcing it to become Islamic.

Rauf calls himself a Sufi, evoking among non-Muslims a "peace and love" image. But that's not the whole picture. Sufism has many sides to it, including the Koranic injunction to spread Islam one way or another, and it has a rich history of waging war, too. Could it be that one of the frequently used tools of war, lying to the enemy, explains the contradiction between Rauf's image as reconciler of religions and his sympathies and associations with terrorists?

A previous Rauf project, Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, clearly shows on its website that it is headed and funded by individuals from Saudi Arabia, the country that spawned fifteen of the nineteen jihad jockeys who rode the 9/11 planes of destruction. The funding for the mosque at Ground Zero is much murkier so far. All that has been publicly disclosed is that the support comes from unidentified sources in Saudi Arabia and Muslim-ruled Malaysia. Rauf reportedly says he paid $4.85 million for the property -- in cash. Where exactly did this money come from? Was it Wahhabist-supporting Saudi sources, which have already funded many other mosques in New York City?

The mosque is called Cordoba House. Muslims like to refer to Spain and especially the city of Cordoba as a place where their rule reached a glorious peak. Contrary to the myth of a Golden Age of equality during the Muslim occupation of Spain (and in particular in Cordoba), Spain and Cordoba were places where Christians and Jews suffered as social inferiors under Islamic oppression. Equal civil rights never existed for non-Muslims under Sharia, or Islamic law. Rauf even admits as much when he writes, "Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule simply had to pay a tax to finance their protection by their Muslim overlords." This is not equality! Americans do not demand a special tax to protect Muslims from ourselves. That would be extortion, not "protection."

Through another organization Rauf started called the Cordoba Initiative, he created the "Sharia Index." This will measure how closely countries follow Sharia, or Islamic law. While Sharia can cover such relatively innocuous aspects of Muslim life as religious weddings (hopefully not to twelve-year-old girls), it also demands that all Muslim life be governed by laws derived from the Koran, without the intervention of civic institutions, such as democracy. And the Koran dictates that everyone, even non-Muslims, must ultimately live under Sharia. Do you understand how that is in direct conflict with our Constitution and other aspects of our secular society?

Rauf gets even trickier here. He states in What's Right With Islam that a society that follows natural law, such as America, is already practicing Sharia. However, he does not note that his peculiar definition of Sharia acceptance is shared by just about no other Imam. So what prevents him from adjusting his singular idea of Sharia back to the norm of forced conversions, murdering non-Muslims and apostates, amputations of thieves' hands, stoning of adulterous women, execution of homosexuals, etc.? Throughout his writing, Rauf floats an image of a harmonious, pleasant Islam -- nice to everybody. But this is totally disconnected from Islam's actual history of bloody conquest, enslavement, and humiliation of other people -- which he never acknowledges.

Still another unsettling part of Rauf's problem mosque is why the city has given the building a pass. Records for the Department of Buildings have shown numerous complaints for illegal construction and no access, yet the issues were listed as "resolved."

Community Board One's financial district committee needs to reconsider its endorsement of this mosque. The prestigious American groups that are reportedly also financing the mosque, The Ford Foundation and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, need to think again about what they are getting into. The Department of Buildings needs to reassess its action. The Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, which supports the project (Why? What has a religious building got to do with immigration?) needs to reevaluate its approval.

Mayor Bloomberg himself needs to withdraw his support for this mosque, especially in light of the recent Times Square car bomb attempt. If not, he will be helping to provide a handy meeting place for future terrorists, those who understand Imam Rauf's real message: Speak sweetly, appear to be a well-adjusted member of American society, and plan the destruction of America, either with bombs or "peaceful" undermining.

Madeline Brooks is an NYC resident and writer.

Jim Jones’s Tenured Apologist

Thirty years after Jonestown, Rebecca Moore tries to rehabilitate Peoples Temple.

By Daniel J. Flynn
http://www.city-journal.org/
7 May 2010

Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple, by Rebecca Moore (Praeger, 179 pp., $34.95)


On November 18, 1978, a knife-wielding henchman of Jim Jones tried and failed to assassinate Congressman Leo Ryan, who was visiting Jonestown, Guyana, at the behest of concerned constituents—people who had left Peoples Temple, Jones’s organization, and relatives of people still within. Later that day, at an airstrip outside the agricultural commune, Jones’s gunmen finished the job, killing the California congressman, NBC reporter Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, and disenchanted cultist Patty Parks. Back at Jonestown, Jones then ordered his followers to join him in committing “revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world,” which they did. As with the nineteenth-century utopian experiments New Harmony, Brook Farm, and Oneida, the beautiful idea hadn’t failed; the world had.

But in its ghastly outcome, Jonestown was unlike past utopian communities entrenched in the American tradition of building “a city upon a hill.” It belonged more to the totalitarian socialism of the twentieth century. Peoples Temple attorney Charles Garry’s proclamation to journalists after visiting Jonestown—“I have seen paradise”—recalled the reactions of Lincoln Steffens, John Reed, and W. E. B. Du Bois upon making pilgrimages to the Soviet Union. And like the attempts to build paradise in Russia, Cambodia, and North Korea, Jonestown ultimately became not a heaven on earth but a hell. Just four cultists inside Jonestown when the “white night” began escaped their assigned fates; 909 perished. Code words delivered by shortwave radio even prompted a mother in faraway Georgetown, Guyana, to murder her three children and herself. Four months later, Jones’s spokesman, Mike Prokes, called a press conference in which he expressed allegiance to the aims of Peoples Temple and promptly killed himself. Jim Jones holds sway even from the grave.

Four pictures grace the cover of Rebecca Moore’s recent book Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple: a white woman teaching black children, a smiling multiracial group cooking a feast, a senior citizen receiving medical treatment, and a man working a pottery wheel. Rather than helping us understand Jonestown, the images create the impression that the South American jungle colony was really a pleasant place. Indeed, Moore contends that the commune’s “reality was not completely at odds with the façade” that Jim Jones presented to the world. She insinuates at every turn that the San Francisco political cult transplanted to Guyana wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be.

“There are apostate accounts that described the jungle community as a concentration camp,” Moore writes. “Although these stories prompted Congressman Leo Ryan to travel to Jonestown in November 1978 to investigate conditions, they exaggerated some problems.” What problems did they exaggerate? Moore doesn’t specify, simply implying that Jonestown was something other than a “concentration camp.” But armed guards, confiscation of passports, drugging of malcontents, incessant loudspeaker harangues, torture, public browbeating sessions, food rationing, and ultimately a survival rate below that of Auschwitz surely made Jonestown a concentration camp.

It would be tempting to dismiss Moore, who in addition to her latest apologia has authored such titles as A Sympathetic History of Jonestown and In Defense of Peoples Temple. But like the group whose reputation she seeks to resuscitate, Moore does not operate on the margins, however marginal her views. She chairs the department of religious studies at San Diego State. When the subject of Jonestown arises, as it did recently on the 30th anniversary of the events, media outlets solicit her expertise. Stanley Nelson’s PBS documentary “The Life and Death of Peoples Temple,” for instance, featured Moore as a talking head. And she published this latest book not out of her garage but through Praeger, a respected imprint of a major publishing house. However reassuring it is to believe that all cranks are tinfoil-hatted denizens of the furthest recesses of the Internet, the examples of Jones, the darling of the San Francisco power structure, and of Moore, a tenured, media-designated authority, prove that what’s comforting isn’t always what’s true.

The bodies of 914 people, including 276 children, were found in Guyana, South America.
Most of the dead - members of the People's Temple Christian Church - had consumed a soft drink laced with cyanide and sedatives.

For years prior to Jonestown’s cataclysmic finale, unheeded voices, such as journalist Les Kinsolving’s, warned America about the raven-haired preacher feted by San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, supervisor Harvey Milk, and mayor George Moscone. In her topsy-turvy narrative, Moore seems most concerned with refuting these lonely critics. She calls the relatives of Jonestown members who exposed oppression within the Temple “apostates” and “defectors,” faulting them for failing to “consider the effect these actions might have upon residents of Jonestown.” The slain Congressman Ryan didn’t provide adequate notice for his trip and embarrassed the Temple by bringing an entourage of journalists, Moore claims. “Violence erupted because Jonestown residents believed that Ryan jeopardized their ultimate concern, which was to be in solidarity with all oppressed peoples, but especially with African Americans. He represented the power of the state and its ability to destroy the community.” This is the kind of tripe that one would have expected to hear over a Jonestown loudspeaker. Here it is in a book by a department chair at a respected university.

Jones’s seductive rhetoric attacking racism, capitalism, and homophobia, which helped delude his supporters, has deluded Moore as well. In the Jonestown aftermath, the Left quickly distanced itself from Peoples Temple to save face; 30 years later, Moore highlights the Temple’s role within the American Left to revive the Temple’s reputation. If not exactly an attempt at innocence-by-association, this is at least an effort to use Jones’s associations with prominent Democrats and radicals to highlight what Moore sees as the Temple’s overlooked redeeming aspects.

Indeed, Jim Jones was a power player in Bay Area politics and thereby a player in national Democratic Party politics. Local politicians and activists benefited from the slave labor that he could provide on little notice to people political rallies and hand out campaign literature. In gratitude, Moscone appointed him chairman of San Francisco’s housing authority and Willie Brown likened Jones, a man who would eventually kill more African-Americans than any Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, to Martin Luther King, Jr. First lady Rosalyn Carter and her husband’s running mate, Walter Mondale, both met with the cult leader. Jones even appropriated the title of Huey Newton’s book, Revolutionary Suicide, to describe the extermination of his flock (which included several of Newton’s relatives). Once Jonestown’s residents had performed this “revolutionary suicide,” the wills left behind bequeathed all to the Soviet Union.

None of this would move any sane reader to think better of Jones, which is why his former political supporters, eager to distance themselves, attempt to paint him as a species alien to them—a religious crazy of the evangelical variety, in one too-convenient retelling. But Moore—correctly, for once—disdains the religious excuse and highlights the politics. “Jones gave no sermons in Jonestown, but instead interpreted international news, directed the Jonestown economy, and gave monologues—or harangues—at Peoples Rallies,” Moore explains. “When religion did come up, it was to criticize it. For example, when Jones exhorted residents to pretend to be ‘in’ the Holy Spirit, he was mocking the Pentecostal roots of the movement. He called Jesus an oppressor of black people. Peoples Temple was no longer a religious organization, at least not in Guyana, but was instead a socialistic utopian experiment.”


People's Temple founder Jim Jones

Peoples Temple disproportionately attracted vulnerable people, ensuring an easy-to-control flock: the very old and the very young, drug-culture dropouts, the urban underclass, and mush-headed idealists. In Jonestown, forced labor, a “snitch” culture, and sleep and nutritional deprivation conditioned docility. Politically predisposed and programmed to believe that American agents of capitalism and racism lay in wait to torture their children, Jonestown’s residents were fed misinformation and exposed to fake attacks—or, as Moore artfully puts it, Jones and his assistants “precipitated a state of siege in which residents believed that they were under attack.” Periodic acid tests weeded some people out and solidified the loyalty of the herd. Members signed paychecks and deeds over to Peoples Temple, uprooted their lives and moved to another continent to follow Jones, played along with his phony faith healings, falsely admitted homosexuality or allowed themselves to be taken sexually by Jones, aborted children on command, and participated in dry runs of suicide. And just in case this didn’t move them to stand obediently in the Kool-Aid line, Jones took the precaution of surrounding them with armed men when the time for death arrived.

Moore is too close to the story to see the picture clearly. “Because my parents and I had personal knowledge of some of the Jonestown victims, we were unable to accept pop psychological analyses of ‘brainwashed fanatics’ and ‘crazed cultists,’” she writes. “These descriptions did not apply to either of my sisters or to other members of Peoples Temple that we knew.” But they did. One of Moore’s sisters, Annie, lobbied Jones to poison his flock and administered the toxic concoction. The other sister, Carolyn, bore Jones’s child. Both sisters shared Jones’s bed, planned the killings, and ruled over the commune as part of its hierarchy, with Annie so high up that she is believed to have been the last person to die at Jonestown.

Rebecca Moore’s book is the equivalent, then, of a concentration camp warden’s kin putting the best face on his work. “I am convinced that given the right time, the right leader, and the right circumstances,” Moore admits, “I too might have joined a movement like Peoples Temple.” She convinces her readers of this point, if of nothing else.

- Daniel J. Flynn, the author of A Conservative History of the American Left, blogs at http://www.flynnfiles.com/.

High School Where Flag Flap Occurred Hides Racist Secret

What's more divisive: students wearing American flag shirts or administrators sanctioning a racial supremacist group? (Also read Roger L. Simon: "Identity Politics is for idiot sheep and the LA Unified School District.")

by Bob Owens
http://pajamasmedia.com/
May 9, 2010

On May 5, Austin Carvalho, Daniel Galli, Matt Dariano, Dominic Maciel, and Clayton Howard were at Live Oak High School, sitting at a table and talking, when Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez asked two of the students to remove the American flag bandannas they were wearing. They complied. Rodriguez then asked these young men to come to the principal’s office. Once there, Principal Nick Boden reportedly told these young men that wearing T-shirts with American flags on them was “incendiary” (even as other students wearing apparel featuring the flag were left alone). The students were told that they would be sent home if they did not turn their shirts inside out.

From left, Daniel Galli, Austin Carvalho, Matt Dariano and Dominic Maciel were sent home from school Wednesday because they were wearing American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
Photo by: Lora Schraft (Morgan Hill Times)

Not willing to dishonor the American flag by complying with an absurd request, they made a stand. What followed showed the courage of these young men, the ignorance and disrespect of the Latino community in California, the extremely questionable behavior on the part of school administrators, and the existence of a racial supremacist group on school grounds.When these young men refused Assistant Principal’s Rodriguez’s request to turn their shirts inside out, they were standing up for their First Amendment rights and pride in their nation. Hispanic students at the school threw a hissy fit. Roughly 200 Hispanic teens protested, claiming they were slighted by the young men wearing American flags on Cinco de Mayo. They chanted “We want respect!” and “Si se puede!”:

The group — mostly high school students — walked out of school this morning after the story of four students who were sent home because they wore American flag T-shirts went viral on TV and online. Many wear red, white and green and two large Mexico flags can be seen at the front of the line.

The students say they want people to know they’re proud of their heritage and they believe wearing red, white and blue on Cinco de Mayo is disrespectful.

How is wearing the American flag, in America, disrespectful to another culture? How is it disrespectful to your shared culture? These protesting scholars could not give a logical explanation (there isn’t one), but tried to use the bizarre argument that wearing the U.S. flag to school on Cinco de Mayo was the equivalent of wearing the Mexican flag on the Fourth of July.

The display of ignorance by these students shows that Live Oak High School administrators are not just guilty of First Amendment rights violations, but are utterly inept educators as well.

Mexico’s real Independence Day is not May, 5, but September 16. As a “Mexican” holiday, Cinco de Mayo is nearly ignored in Mexico. It isn’t even a national holiday. It is a minor celebration, commemorating an single day’s victory in a losing campaign against … the French.

Nevertheless, some Latinos have chosen to make this issue another ill-conceived battle. Hispanic students at the school showed that irony is another subject they failed, as they claimed that their Thursday walkout against the First Amendment rights of their fellow Americans was for “respect and unity.” Uh-huh. Somebody please hand these kids dictionaries.

Other Latinos “helped” the ignorant protest by calling in threats to other schools in the Bay Area named “Live Oak,” schools completely unaffiliated with the Morgan Hill school where this absurdity is unfolding. Threats of Latino gang violence by these “respect and unity”-loving groups have led students to stay home and have resulted in an increased police presence at Live Oak HS, where at least the law enforcement officers seem to have a grasp of rights and inclusiveness.

Predictably, some critics of this First Amendment and educational fiasco are calling for Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez to be fired for his role in creating this mess. I tend to agree with Dafydd Ab Hugh, who suggests that both the principal and assistant principal blew a chance to educate their students and should be held responsible for their support of another kind of bigotry:

The saddest part is that the vice principal and principal don’t even realize how it was they, not the five flag-wearers, who insulted and degraded the Mexican-American students yesterday. What could have been a teaching moment was instead warped by rampant political correctness into an incitement to racism and bigotry… against white students.

It could have been a teachable moment of tolerance, but because of the ineptitude of school officials, it turned into a display of bigotry that spun wildly out of control. This incident revealed more than just poor judgement. It showed a fundamental lack of respect from educators for the students and cultures of the community. It showed incompetence. Boden and Rodriguez would be doing the citizens of Morgan Hills a grave disservice if they continue to hold positions where they twist impressionable minds in their formative years. Luckily for the citizens of Morgan Hills, these administrators may have provided the school district with an excuse to help them seek “other employment opportunities.”

Mr. Boden and Mr. Rodriguez preside over a high school with various clubs and organizations. As administrators, they must sanction these activities.
There is the Anime Club, the Asian Student Union, the Black Student Union, the Drama Guild, the Chess Club, MEChA, the Patriot Club, and a raft of other extracurricular activities from which student can chose to participate. Shockingly, one of these groups is a borderline hate group that proclaims racial supremacy. While it may come as a shock to some of our more “progressive” readers, the oppressors are not the Patriot Club, but the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, or MEChA. Live Oak High’s Web site claims that the group has certain goals:

MECHA stands for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán). Aztlán was the homeland of the Mexicas (Mexicas is the root word of Chicano), also known as the people of the earth, who wandered from Aztlán to Tenochtitlan. Aztlán is believed to be located in the southern US and northern Mexico.

The group was [originally] formed to address issues in the Chicano movement of 1969 such as the need for better school conditions (resources, facilities), to learn Mexican studies, have more Mexican teachers, and higher expectations for Mexican students versus encouraging them to go to trade schools or for young Chicanas to stay at home.

And all of this is true — but it is not all of the truth, and there are clear warning signs for anyone paying the least bit of attention. MEChA’s militaristic logo is an eagle with a brutal obsidian-bladed Aztec war club called a Huitzauhqui in one claw and a lit stick of dynamite in the other. Is such violent symbolism an indicator that the group might need to be vetted a bit further? Reasonable people would think so.

Critics of MEChA claim that the organization is little more than a racial supremacist group seeking to carve out a country of their own, to be inhabited by their own race.

Wait a minute — that wasn’t from critics; it was a direct quote from the official MEChA website:

As Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztlán, we are a nationalist movement of Indigenous Gente that lay claim to the land that is ours by birthright. As a nationalist movement we seek to free our people from the exploitation of an oppressive society that occupies our land. Thus, the principle of nationalism serves to preserve the cultural traditions of La Familia de La Raza and promotes our identity as a Chicana/Chicano Gente.

MEChA is a paranoid, racist, nationalist group that seeks to claim northern Mexico and the southwestern United States as a nation called Aztlán. Principal Borden and Assistant Principal Rodriguez have allowed their school to be infiltrated by a seditious supremacist group.

Why are they still employed?

Bob Owens blogs at Confederate Yankee.

Link
http://www.morganhilltimes.com/news/265500-live-oak-students-we-want-peace-unity