Muslim Brotherhood Holds Secret Meeting
The Muslim Brotherhood held a secret meeting in Egypt last week to coordinate the Islamic group’s rise to power in countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, this column has learned.
Egyptian security officials said the meeting included Brotherhood members from Syria, Jordan, Sudan and Egypt (as well the Gaza Strip). The group discussed methods of gaining more influence in their respective countries.
The security officials said that Muslim Brotherhood members at the meeting identified militant Salafist organizations as a threat to the Brotherhood’s plan of taking power via elections.
The meeting followed the Brotherhood’s sweeping victory in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, taking 47 percent of the seats in the new assembly.
Iran Offered China Cheap Oil In Exchange For UN Veto
Iran offered China a deal to purchase oil at a cheaper price in exchange for vetoing a UN resolution this past weekend that backed an Arab plan calling on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign, according to a senior Egyptian security official speaking to KleinOnline.
Assad’s regime has been facing a violent insurgency. The Syrian president’s security forces were accused of a massacre this week, in its shelling of the insurgent stronghold of Homs.
Syrian officials, however, say well-armed Islamic extremists have been shooting at their forces and deliberately drawing retaliatory fire into civilian populations.
Russia and China torpedoed the UN Security Council resolution that endorsed an Arab League plan for Assad to hand power to a deputy to make way for a transition towards democracy.
Reuters reported that Russia complained the draft resolution was an improper and biased attempt at “regime change” in Syria, which is Moscow’s sole major Middle East ally, an important buyer of Russian arms exports and host to a Russian naval base.
John Bolton: Obama Is Surrendering To The Taliban
President Obama is surrendering to the Taliban by ending combat missions in Afghanistan in 2013, contended former UN Ambassador John Bolton in an interview with “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”
Bolton went on to say that he is concerned Obama’s reelection will “gravely impair” what he described as an already “seriously weakened” U.S. national security.
Asked how Obama’s reelection would affect U.S. foreign policy, Bolton replied: “I think the announcement that the U.S. hopes to end combat operations in Afghanistan by 2013 is all but running up the white flag to the Taliban. The withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq has sent a terrible signal to America’s Arab friends in the region.”
He added: “This inability to acknowledge the reality of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, our continued hostility under the Obama administration to Israel, is a pattern of America in decline.
Concerning the upcoming elections, Bolton said, “If he is reelected [and] doesn’t have to face the people of the United States ever again, I just think the vista that lies in front of us is truly worrying.”
Group Tied To Obama Pushes Fairness Doctrine
An organization that helped craft President Obama’s environmental policies has recommended the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, purportedly as a method of silencing critics of the theory of global warming.
The Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, released an extensive list of recommendations for the White House in a 75-page paper reviewed by this column and entitled, “Building the Obama Administration’s Climate Legacy.”
One key recommendation in the report is the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Reads the PCAP report: “National discourse today is tainted – and in some cases poisoned – by unbalanced ideological use of the public airwaves… To improve and better inform public discourse, it is time for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.”
The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the Federal Communications Commission that required the holders of broadcast licenses to discuss issues of public importance in a manner that was, in the Commission’s view, honest, equitable and balanced.
Critics have attacked the doctrine as an attempt to regulate news and talk radio and as an attack on First Amendment rights.
The University of Colorado-based PCAP draws up climate-policy recommendations for the White House and has been working with members of the Obama administration.
Following Obama’s victory in 2008, PCAP began working with John Podesta, co-chair of Obama’s transition team, to help the incoming president formulate an initial 100-day environmental agenda. Podesta is president and CEO of the highly influential Center for American Progress.
William S. Becker, PCAP’s executive director, confirmed to KleinOnline in a November 2009 interview that his group “continues to work with some colleagues inside the [Obama] administration, as well as continuing to push for bold action from the outside.” Becker said the White House “adopted quite a few of our recommendations or variations of them.”
PCAP is not alone calling for the silencing of the critics of global warming. As this journalist was first to report, just prior to his appointment as Obama’s so-called regulatory czar in 2009, Cass Sunstein wrote a lengthy academic paper suggesting the government should “infiltrate” social network websites, chat rooms and message boards.