By Climate Guest Blogger on Feb 13, 2011 at 10:39 am
More head-exploding stuff, via a TP cross-post. Be sure to read the final email in full on how they planned to use social media to exploit the account of their targets.
Thursday, ThinkProgress published an exclusive report that the law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing trade association representing big business, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress. According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Attorneys for the firm solicited a set of private security firms “” HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) “” to develop a sabotage campaign against progressive groups and labor unions, including ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.
New emails reveal that the private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, an executive at HB Gary. Barr circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives.
Cette nouvelle génération ne s’intéresse pas à l’idéologie : les slogans sont tous pragmatiques et concrets (“dégage”, “erhal”) ; il ne font pas appel à l’islam comme leurs prédécesseurs le faisaient en Algérie à la fin des années 1980. Ils expriment avant tout un rejet des dictatures corrompues et une demande de démocratie. Cela ne veut évidemment pas dire que les manifestants sont laïcs, mais simplement qu’ils ne voient pas dans l’islam une idéologie politique à même de créer un ordre meilleur : ils sont bien dans un espace politique séculier.
Roughly:
This new generation isn’t interested in ideology, their slogans are all pragmatic and congrete; they don’t speak of Islam the way their predecessors did in Algeria in the late 1980s. Above all they reject corrupt dictators and demand democracy. That’s not to say that the demonstrators are secular, but simply that they don’t see Islam as a political ideology to be used to create a better order, they’re well inside a secular political space.
This is a continuation of Roy’s work over the past several years on “the failure of political Islam.” The basic idea here is that in part thanks to the example of Iran, you just don’t have a mass constituency that’s prepared to believe that Islam or Islamic rule offers answers to the concrete problems of poverty, corruption, and slow economic growth. People may be religiously observant or culturally conservative in ways that western liberals (or even western cultural conservatives) would find alarming, but the Egyptian people are asking “where are the jobs?” and don’t think the answer is going to be found in the Koran.
A. Siegel has the story in a Get Energy Smart NOW!repost.
Innovation. It’s the new buzzword. Haven’t you heard. It’s the rage. Ten times “¦ The President used the word “innovation” ten times in the State of the Union speech:
CPAC is the year’s preeminent conservative conference, bringing together the right and the far-right, but one very prominent neo-conservative voice had vowed to boycott the event this year because, he claimed, the Muslim Bortherhood had “infiltrated” its ranks. Center for Security Policy head Frank Gaffney has made a career of spinning theories about Islamic extremists infiltrating the federal government, but could radical Reaganites really be abetting radical Islamists?
ThinkProgress asked him the question Friday afternoon when we spotted him breaking his self-imposed exile to “do some interviews” at CPAC (we saw him again Saturday morning as well). In a lengthy interview with ThinkProgress, Gaffney warned that Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist and influential Republican strategist, was spearheading “active measure” campaigns within the conservative establishment on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. “I believe the conservative movement is being subjected to a concerted Muslim Brotherhood infiltration effort,” Gaffney told us, adding that Norquist began his insidious effort in the 1980s. Norquist’s wife is Muslim.
Asked for evidence of infiltration at CPAC, Gaffney pointed to the presence of Norquist — indeed, they passed within 20 feet of each other at one point — and of former Bush Muslim outreach director Suhail Kahn, whom Gaffney also accused of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood. Asked for further evidence, Gaffney came up empty, saying, “I have not been here long enough.” The presence of Norquist and Kahn was “sufficient” evidence “to be of concern,” Gaffney explained. Watch ThinkProgress’ full ten-minute interview with Gaffney:
Showing he was deadly serious, Gaffney warned that the Mulslim Brotherhood “will kill homosexuals, they will kill feminists, they will kill Jews.” And saying the left “has the most to lose,” Gaffney complained that the progressives has “enabled” the insidious Muslim infiltrators by promoting equality and fighting Islamaphobia.
Gaffney took a shot at Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, calling him “ill-informed” for criticizing Fox News host Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theory about Egypt. Beck has been propagating a theory that Communists and radical Muslims are teaming up in the chaos of Egypt to start a Muslim caliphate that will one day taker over the world, but Kristol slammed the theory in a rare public rebuke of a fellow conservative, calling Beck “hyster[ical].” Gaffney dismissed Kristol and suggested that Beck is knowledgeable about the Middle East and Islam.
Gaffney also dismissed the concerns of law enforcement officials who have criticized Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) upcoming hearings on Muslim radicalization. Law enforcement officials have warned the hearings could alienate Muslims living in America, who have been invaluable sources in capturing terrorists in the past, but for Gaffney the real “problem” is that law enforcement witnesses are in danger from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Update
Salon’s Justin Elliott notes that anti-Muslim blogger and activist Pam Geller also fears Muslim Brotherhood infiltration at CPAC.
By Climate Guest Blogger on Feb 13, 2011 at 9:55 am
James Bradbury, in a World Resources Instituterepost.
On Capitol Hill last week, industry leaders and other experts explained why the upcoming U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standards on carbon dioxide emissions can benefit U.S. business and help drive innovation while keeping our air and water clean. Read more
Catherine Rampell reproduces Suzanne Mettler’s amazing chart from “Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenge of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era.”
The tax credits and deductions that lead this list are actually designed so as to obscure their government program nature. But it’s pretty amazing that 44.1 percent of Social Security beneficiaries seem to have convinced themselves that the single largest government social program—a program that consists of the government mailing checks to people—is not a government social program. And then there’s Medicare, the largest forward-looking source of budget deficits. This is all especially galling since in the Obama Era the over-65 demographic has become by far the most conservative group in America, even as it’s the group that gets the lion’s share of the benefits from big government.
CPAC is the year’s preeminent conservative conference, bringing together the right and the far-right, but one 
