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Meet New Anti-Obama Super PAC Donor Irving Moskowitz

Right-wing donor Irving Moskowitz

Karl Rove’s super PAC American Crossroads just got a new big-league donor. Bingo kingpin Irving Moskowitz gave $1 million to the group, according to a report by Paul Blumenthal at the Huffington Post.

Moskowitz generates his millions from a bingo enterprise in California. The catch is that the gambling license requires that Moskowitz only hand over 1 percent of gross receipts to the city so long as the rest of the profits go to the tax-exempt Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation (net holdings: $52 million). Through this foundation, Moskowitz gives to a bevy of less-than-savory causes — American Crossroads and its dishonest attacks are just the latest. Blumenthal notes that donations involving electoral politics are a relatively new thing for Moskowitz, but he’s got a long history of backing far-right-wing causes. Here are some of his greatest hits:

  • Islamophobia – Since 2002, the foundation has given $485,000 to the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish Washington think tank run by former Reagan administration official and conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney. As reported in CAP’s “Fear, Inc.,” Gaffney’s group pushes Islamophobia in the U.S., and Gaffney has proclaimed that practicing the Islamic faith is tantamount to “sedition.” Gaffney, who thinks President Obama is Muslim, also leads the advisory group of the Islamophobic group Clarion Fund, which produces documentaries that have been denounced as “inflammatory” and once published approving comments about Norwegian anti-Muslim mass-murderer Anders Breiviks views.
  • “Birthers” – Since 2006, Moskowitz’s foundation gave $200,000 to the Western Center for Journalism (WCJ), a non-profit founded by Joseph Farah. WCJ describes Farah as “the brains behind WND.com news website.” Formerly known as World Net Daily, WND is a hub for “birtherism,” the conspiracy theory that President Obama’s publicly released birth certificate is a fake, and that Obama therefore is not a U.S. citizen nor eligible to be president. WND even hosts conferences on the issue and WND Books published Jerome Corsi’s “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” tome just after Obama’s long-form certificate was publicly released — though that hasn’t stopped WND’s conspiracy theories. WCJ’s blog, naturally, pushes the same, lame discredited theories.
  • Israeli settlements – By far, Moskowitz’s most generous philanthropic work — and other non-philanthropic funding — goes toward projects linked to Israel’s settlement enterprise in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, considered “illegitimate” by the U.S. government and international bodies. In addition to gifts of at least $1.985 million to projects in West Bank settlements like Kiryat Arba and Kedumim, Moskowitz’s and his wife’s foundations have donated more than $300,000 to the Hebron Fund, which supports some 800 ideological settlers living in the Palestinian West Bank city. Moskowitz also focuses on East Jerusalem, giving huge sums to developments there, including one million dollars in the late 1980s to purchase a defunct hotel and, as of the late 1990s, more than $2 million to support a religious pro-settlement group in East Jerusalem called Ateret Cohanim.
  • So far, the millionaire-backed American Crossroads took cash from an oil speculator to run an ad campaign absurdly accusing Obama of driving up gas prices. If the ad campaigns are, as with this case, linked to the donor’s pet causes, American Crossroads could be on its way to putting out some of the most vicious attack ads of the election season.

    NEWS FLASH

    Syria Truce Holds As Ceasefire Deadline Passed | The U.N. and Arab League brokered ceasefire in Syria appears to be holding as Syrian troops held their fire on Thursday. “Syria is apparently experiencing a rare moment of calm on the ground,” said U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan in a statement as he briefed the U.N. Security Council. Annan pressed the Syrian government to fully comply with the ceasefire agreement and withdraw all its forces from urban areas. “The cessation of hostilities appears to be holding,” said Annan. “This is bringing much-needed relief and hope to the Syrian people who have suffered so much for so long in this brutal conflict.” Opponents of the regime are planning major protests tomorrow after weekly prayers which Reuters notes “will be the first major test” for the ceasefire.

    Update

    Syrian National Council’s spokeswoman Bassma Kodmani said the ceasefire is only being “partially observed” and that there “is no evidence of a significant withdrawal” of government forces from towns and cities.

    NEWS FLASH

    Michelle Obama Marks Anniversary Of ‘Joining Forces’ Military Employment Program On Colbert | Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama announced that as part of the Obama administration’s “Joining Forces” program, companies pledged to provide more than 15,000 jobs for military spouses. Last night, she went on the Colbert Report to mark the first anniversary of the program. “We have seen people hiring our veterans and finding wonderful flexible opportunities for spouses,” she said. In part two of the interview, Obama said that meeting military families on the campaign trail in 2008 “inspired” her, along with Dr. Jill Biden, to start the program. “I said on the campaign trail that…I would try to be their voice and tell their stories because I think that most Americans are like me and like you, we are not apart of the military community so we don’t understand that sacrifice,” Obama said. Watch the clip of part one:

    Erdogan Suggests Invoking Article 5 Of NATO Charter To Protect Turkey’s Border With Syria

    Earlier this week, Syrian government forces fired their weapons across the Lebanese and Turkish borders, killing a television journalist and at least two people in a refugee camp in Turkey. In response, the Turkish government summoned the Syrian ambassador to protest what was the first attack from Syria since Turkey began hosting refugees.

    Yesterday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised the possibility of invoking Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and calling on NATO to protect Turkey’s border:

    “We have many options. A country has rights born out of international law against border violations,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Hurriyet daily and other newspapers.

    Also, NATO has responsibilities to do with Turkey’s borders, according to Article 5,” added Erdogan, whose country is a NATO member.

    According to Article 5, NATO members “agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence.” NATO first invoked Article 5 after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.

    CNN reports that State Department officials have said that the Obama administration is discussing creating a buffer zone on the border between Turkey and Syria. “It would be correct to say this idea is getting another look in the last week or so,” one official said about the buffer zone.

    NEWS FLASH

    VIDEO: Iran Civil Society Says Attack Gives Regime ‘Perfect Excuse To Oppress The People’ | The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran yesterday released a video and launched a letter-writing campaign following up on a July 2011 report culling views from Iran’s human rights community and civil society groups opposing military action against the Islamic Republic. One academic commented that an attack would “give the regime a perfect excuse to oppress the people even more.” An interactive webpage also outlines bios for and quotes from activists, artists and literary figures who unanimously view a Western attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities with trepidation, fearing that, as one imprisoned activist put it, “If war breaks out, democracy, human rights, and civil society will be the main losers.” Watch the video:

    NEWS FLASH

    Majority Of Republicans Say The War In Afghanistan Hasn’t Been Worth Fighting | A majority of Republicans and 66 percent of Americans now say the war in Afghanistan hasn’t been worth fighting according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll results showing a dramatic drop in the U.S. public’s support for the over a decade long war in Afghanistan may pose a challenge to Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, who has frequently criticized President Obama’s war strategy and said the goal in Afhganistan should be to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield. The poll showed that U.S. support for the war is at an all-time low with only 30 percent of respondents saying it has been worth fighting.

    National Security Brief: April 12, 2012


    – GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney hopes to challenge President Obama on foreign policy but a new Washington Post/ABC poll suggests that might be an uphill battle as Americans trust Obama over Romney on international affairs by 53 to 36 percent.

    – Shelling by Syrian government forces has come to an end as a U.N.-Arab League brokered ceasefire goes into effect, say Syrian activists, but the exiled Syrian National Council reports that raids and arrests of the government’s opponents in some suburbs of Damascus are ongoing.

    – Testing a U.N.-backed agreement, Syria’s main opposition group called for the “Syrian people to protest strongly” on Friday, but urged caution in expectation that the fragile ceasefire enacted just today will not hold, and government forces will attack demonstrations.

    – Iran will offer unspecified “new initiatives” at the upcoming nuclear talks between the P5+1 and Tehran, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saed Jalili, said on Wednesday.

    – A massive oil price spike caused by a military confrontation with Iran is now seen as the biggest threat to the U.S. economy according to nine out of 18 economists surveyed by CNNMoney.

    – Iran offered favorable credit terms to potential buyers of its oil — a sign that the reduction in exports due to Western sanctions is biting — though few have yet taken up the Islamic Republic on the deal.

    — Israeli officials quietly met this week with the Finnish diplomat charged with organizing a conference on making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, though its not clear if Israel will attend.

    – Improved battlefield diagnosis has led to a record number of concussions detected among U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq last year. It was the highest pace for traumatic brain injuries of any period in 10 years of combat, according to data provided to USA Today.

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