Is Bachmann the Real Government Infiltrator?

Juan Cole had an excellent post the other day. Michele Bachmann has charged Clinton aide Huma Abiden of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood…turns out Bachmann has deeper ties of her own.

http://www.juancole.com/2012/07/is-michelle-bachmann-an-agent-of-the-muslim-brotherhood.html

3. Bachmann is a supporter of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and tried to visit with them.. The Northern Alliance was a coalition of forces fighting the Taliban. It consisted in part of the Jami’at-i Islami, to which many of its prominent members belonged. The Jami’at-i Islami is the Afghanistan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Egyptian missionaries in the 1960s. Another component of the Northern Alliance was the Shiite Hizb-i Vahdat or Unity Party, which was allied with Iran in the 1990s.

So Bachmann is, once again, closely connected with the Muslim Brotherhood via the Afghanistan Northern Alliance.

Stories for the Weekend

1. Benighted wasteland Texas provides two stories, elected official Louie Gohmert, (R-Texas), reveals his understanding of a fiendish plot whereby terrorist pregnant ladies give birth in the US, then whisk their babies back to the Axis of Evil to rear them as Manchurian candidates…much like Barack Obama, himself.

…And it appeared they would have young women, who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby,” said Gohmert. “They wouldn’t even have to pay anything for the baby. And then they would turn back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists. And then one day, twenty, thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life.

“Coddled”? And by the way, why wouldn’t they have to pay anything for the baby? I mean, babies are free, in the sense that they just come right out of your body, but usually there are at least hospital bills involved.

Rep Gohmert is apparently climbing aboard the “ignore the 14th amendment” bandwagon that is gaining ground among Constitution-loving Americans.

2. Which reminds me to post a link a to this cool campaign by United Farm Workers. You think Mexicans are stealing your jobs? Apply for those jobs here.

3. Also in Texas news, taking a page from shariah law, the state GOP includes recriminalization of oral sex in its party platform.

I assume somewhere it also says it wants less government interference in people’s private lives.

4. Israel has seized seven oxygen machines that were donated to the Palestinian authority.

Israel confiscated seven oxygen machines en route to hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza based on the claim that there was a chance the generators attached to the machines would not be used for medical purposes, Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported Saturday.

5. Real Middle East expert Juan Cole is getting tired of dealing with fake Middle East experts. Also, this:

More recently I have provoked the ire of a burly former Israeli military prison guard at the notorious Ketziot detention camp during the first Intifada, who is among our foremost journalists of the Middle East and given a prominent perch at The Atlantic magazine–Jeffrey Goldberg.

Goldberg has not only not exactly been at the forefront of the peace movement, he has argued and agitated against doing anything practical to achieve this increasingly unlikely goal. He is the Rottweiler of ideologues when it comes to making sure that no Israeli policy is ever criticized by anyone without his branding the critics bigots and even genocidal. Since, as noted, Goldberg is possibly still an Israeli army reservist and actively served in the Israeli Army as a prison guard during the first Intifada or Palestinian uprising, I can’t understand why anyone takes him seriously when he lashes out at critics of Israeli policy. I mean, what would you expect? If an Arab-American had served in the Palestine Authority police, would anyone give him a perch at The Atlantic and routinely bring him on CNN to denounce critics of Mahmoud Abbas?

Watch The Colbert Report Wednesday

Stephen Colbert’s guest on Wednesday night’s show will be Juan Cole, presumably talking about his new book, Engaging the Muslim World.
I’ll be watching it Thursday, because 11:30 is way too late at night for me.

Stuff on Other Peoples’ Blogs

Today and yesterday Juan Cole published a couple good posts over at his blog, Informed Comment.

Today’s is Top Ten Myths about Iraq. From there:

2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.

3. Iraqis are materially better off because of Bush’s war. In fact, A million Iraqis are “food insecure” and another 6 million need UN food rations to survive. Oxfam estimated in summer, 2007, that 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished.

Yesterday’s post is about the crisis in Bethlehem:

Almost no one in the US knows that the Israeli wall or separation barrier, which has ghettoized many Palestinians and expropriated from them property and farm land, is strangling Bethlehem. The barrier cuts Bethlehem off from Jerusalem and steals private property from its residents. It has created an economic crisis that has caused Palestinian Christians to emigrate from the city. The “Christians of Bethlehem overwhelmingly (78%) blame the exodus of Christians from the town on Israel’s blockade . . .”

The distance from Bethlehem to Jerusalem is some 10km, but Palestinians must take a 26km secondary dirt road passing through Israeli checkpoints which are often closed with no warning or explanation. Palestinians in the West Bank are not permitted to enter Jerusalem without a date- and time-limited pass from the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) – more often than not refused. This has made the operation of the small but very courageous Bethlehem University very difficult.’

Aljazeera English reports on the hardships imposed on Bethlehem’s residents, including its Christians, by the Israeli separation barrier, by nearby illegal settlements by Israeli squatters in the West Bank, and by house demolitions conducted by Israeli security forces.