A Conservative frontbench spokesman, Michael Gove, has opposed plans to build a mosque in his constituency after it became the target of an “inflammatory and offensive” online campaign.

The shadow schools secretary, who warned that the west was facing a “total war” from Islamists in his book Celsius 7/7, had initially refused to take sides in the dispute over proposals to build a mosque next to Sandhurst barracks in Camberley, Surrey. But this week he said he had been convinced that the strength of feeling was threatening the area’s “good community relations” and called on local Muslims to withdraw the application.

“The issue has become a flashpoint and people from inside and outside the community were making statements that I did not think would further community relations,” he said.

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Neoconservative scholar-activist Daniel Pipes has a new article on the leading conservative website National Review Online, in which he suggests that President Obama can “save” his presidency…by bombing Iran.

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Look for more of this to come from [Bill] Kristol and the neo-cons in the coming weeks, as they re-align themselves with AIPAC and like-minded groups after their three-month campaign on behalf of Gen. McChrystal and the COINistas.

As eager as he is for war with Iran — the lead editorial in the new Weekly Standard is “A Nobel War Speech? Did Obama lay the groundwork for an eventual strike against Iran?” — Kristol doesn’t ask what may be the impact on McChrystal’s efforts of war with Iran. There’s every reason to believe, at least at this point, that the Pentagon is probably the national-security institution most adamantly opposed to an attack on Iran — be it by Israel or its own forces…

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These “Eurocons,” as they might be dubbed, share their U.S. counterparts’ devotion to military might and interventionist foreign policies. Although the unilateralism of U.S. neocons is tempered in Europe by a greater emphasis on the role of certain international alliances, the underlying vision is fundamentally the same. Eurocons see multinational institutions like NATO as vehicles for pushing the agenda of the United States and its European allies, and as instruments of global power, regime change, nation-building, and “democratization.” But they regard as illegitimate any attempt to check or curb Western power via the United Nations.

The label covers three broad ideological tendencies: establishment neoconservatism, the “decent left”, and the counter-jihad right.

The central organizing principle of these groups is that Europe and the United States today are engaged in a good-vs-evil struggle with ‘Islamic totalitarianism.’

Of course, the ’struggle’ is actually a trojan horse for a lot of other agendas.

Just as neoconservatism’s progenitors, the authoritarian political philosophers of the 1930s, blamed liberalism for the weakness of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis, so European liberalism—not Islamic extremism—is the real object of [Christopher] Caldwell’s contempt.

.

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Why, then, is he being attacked as a stooge for the Iranian regime? The answer is simple: while Parsi has harshly criticized the regime’s actions, he has joined Iran’s leading opposition figures in opposing the use of sanctions or military force against Iran, on the grounds that they would be likely simply to kill innocent Iranian civilians while strengthening the regime’s hold on power.

For the Iran hawks, this is a mortal sin. They will settle for nothing less than an Iranian Ahmed Chalabi — someone willing to tell them precisely what they want to hear, to claim that the Iranian people want to be bombed.

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Neocon WolverDean

The bright and challenging Dean Esmay from Dean’s World commented that most of us do not know what a neoconservative stands for and even though Dean self-identifies with the movement, he seems unwilling to divulge the secret. So let’s help him help us by going into the dark lair of some neocons and listen to them describe themselves. This is a rather long and recent diatribe in honor of Irving Kristol from a troublesome (but highly representative blog called The American Thinker). Be warned, the answer to the question: What is a neoconservative is long and treacherous. 

With the passing of the Godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, the release the same week of the book Why Are Jews Liberals, (2009), by Norman Podhoretz, and the arrival of the annual Jewish high holidays, one entertains the fascinating subject of American Jewish politics.

Neoconservatism, of course, is not essentially a Jewish political philosophy, and some of its leading exponents and adherents are/were not Jewish (Hons. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Scoop Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Wiliam J. Bennett, James Q. Wilson, and John Bolton, to name just a few admired American statesmen), but the list of Jewish intellectual forebears who inspired neoconservative ideas is impressive (Max Shactman, Leo Strauss, and Lionel Trilling, to name just a few).

continues…

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The purpose of Bolton’s excretings may be to make mere fanatic proposals to attack Iran look “middle of the road” by comparison. In an example of classic neoconservative cynicism, Bolton’s speech was titled, “Ensuring peace.”

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Here’s Glenn Greenwald describing Saban in an article about one of the deeply compromised, warmongering foreign policy ‘experts’ he promotes through the “Saban Center for Middle East Studies,” a Washington thinktank.

The above-the-political-fray [ken] Pollack is employed by the “Saban Center for Middle East Studies” at Brookings — so named because it is funded with many millions of dollars by billionaire Haim Saban, an Israeli-American neoconservative who was a 2004 supporter of George Bush, was a close associate of Ariel Sharon, and spent the 1990s persuading Bill Clinton (with millions of dollars in donations to the Democratic Party) to be more supportive of Israel.

In a 2004 glowing profile, the NYT described Saban as “throwing his weight and money around Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli,” and in that article, Saban told the NYT: “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.”

Richard writes, “If the emir of Qatar is seriously entertaining a Saban bid either he’s in financial difficulty or else he’s smokin’ some powerful weed.”

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Who is Manda Zand-Ervin? A former minister in the Shah of Iran’s government (which immediately renders her a deeply compromised figure to be advocating for human rights) who has since aligned herself with right-wingers and especially neo-conservatives in the US. She has written for such far-right publications and websites as Frontpage Magazine and Pajamas Media.

Last year, Zand-Ervin wrote a open letter to Obama proposing that he declare Iran a “gender-apartheid regime,” which she said would be a “bold and thoughtful way of managing the foreign policy of America.” She also criticized Obama’s position on negotiations with Iran in a breathtaking display of Orwellian opposite-speak:

Since you began talking about unconditionally dialoguing with the Islamic regime of Iran, you too have struck absolute fear in the hearts of the Iranian people, both inside and outside Iran.

Because peace is so much more threatening than war [to a neo-con.] The reporters at Adnkronos show dereliction of duty when they quote such figures without providing any context about who and what is speaking.

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Attendees include Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin.

Pitney recommends Trita Parsi of NIAC. Here’s what you can do:

This panel really needs some balance. If you’re interested in calling the committee and suggesting Trita Parsi (or someone else), you can reach them at (202) 225-5021. You can also call the offices of members of the committee — here are a few:

– Rep. Gary Ackerman (Chairman, Subcommittee On the Middle East and South Asia): 202-225-2601
– Rep. Donald Payne: 202-225-3436
– Rep. Brad Sherman: 202-225-5911
– Rep. Bill Delahunt: 202-225-3111
– Rep. Lynn Woolsey: 202-225-5161
– Rep. Barbara Lee: 202-225-2661
– Rep. Keith Ellison: 202-225-4755

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