Jane Fonda: “I Have Never Done Anything to Hurt My Country”

Last Saturday, actress-turned-fitness guru Jane Fonda was to appear on the shopping TV network QVC to peddle her new lifestyle book Prime Time, until the channel suddenly canceled her appearance. In response, Fonda wrote an angry opinion piece for the showbiz website “The Wrap,” explaining that “The network said they got a lot of calls yesterday criticizing me for my opposition to the Vietnam War and threatening to boycott the show.” (QVC issued a statement that answered Fonda’s comments only by noting that such scheduling changes happen often and unexpectedly on the network).

Fonda was “deeply disappointed that QVC caved to this kind of insane pressure by some well funded and organized political extremist groups.” Perhaps the actress in Fonda can’t resist the melodramatic wording, but a threatened boycott on the part of some QVC viewers does not constitute “insane pressure.” Threats of murder and mayhem from Islamists against Comedy Central’s South Park creators, yes; a boycott against a prominent actress always able to command a megaphone, no. Surely such a successful anti-war activist as Ms. Fonda was in one of her previous lives understands that a boycott is a perfectly fair and reasonable form of protest. It’s curious that she is so irked by one, since she boasts that “threats of boycotts are nothing new for me and have never prevented me from having best-selling books and exercise DVDs, films, and a Broadway play.” If boycotts have no effect on her success, then why the outrage? Perhaps it has less to do with book sales and more to do with what she dismisses as “far right lies.”

Obama's Muslim Outreach - Epic Fail

When Barack Obama took over the Oval Office from George W. Bush in 2009, he was riding the crest of a tidal wave of gullibility among his supporters, who believed him to be the Chosen One bringing salvation and deliverance from the wasteland of the Bush years. In their fevered imagination, the inept, moronic, old-fashioned cowboy Bush had disastrously bungled his terms in office and caused the world to hate us. Now the multicultural, transnational, post-American demigod Obama had arrived, a deus ex machina from the heavens, offering hope and change to all. He was going to get the world to like us, really like us again.

But this self-delusional, media-assisted narrative has a tragicomic twist: two and a half years into his term, Obama not only hasn’t healed the oceans, harmonized the races, boosted the economy, or repaired our supposedly tattered reputation abroad, he has actually exacerbated all those issues. And now it’s confirmed that he hasn’t been any more successful at resolving the clash of civilizations either.

Behind Obama's Defense of a Mexican Killer

Last week Texas Governor Rick Perry resisted pressure to spare the life of Humberto Leal Garcia, 38, who had raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl, and instead had the convicted rapist/murderer put to death for his grotesque crimes.

Weathering such protests is nothing out of the ordinary for Perry; a strong proponent of the death penalty, he has overseen the execution of more than two hundred “dead men walking.” But what made this instance noteworthy is that the pleas came not just from the typical capital punishment opponents but from international diplomats, judges, military officials, politicians, even the United Nations. On a website devoted to Leal one can find a list of his supporters almost as long as the screw-studded stick he left inside his teen victim’s vagina. The topper was an eleventh-hour appeal from the Obama administration itself.

Narco-Terrorism’s Latin American Nexus

“Terrorism and drugs,” former Attorney General John Ashcroft once said, “go together like rats and the bubonic plague” – a plague that is increasingly spreading across our southern border and empowering the networks of both terrorists and drug traffickers.

For over twenty years Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the American Center for Democracy and the Economic Warfare Institute, and author of the important book Funding Evil, among others, has been hard at work exposing this toxic partnership. Currently writing a book about the Muslim Brotherhood and its financial network, Ehrenfeld is also the inspiration for “Rachel’s Law,” a key victory for free speech over the intimidating threat of “libel tourism,” and a fascinating story on in its own right. The law stemmed from an attempt by Khalid bin Mahfouz’s attempt to silence her accusation in Funding Evil that the Saudi billionaire had helped fund al Qaeda. The New York law (versions of which have spread now to seven other states) limits the enforcement of foreign libel judgments against American writers and publishers, in print and on the internet.

'Altamont Augie' and the War for a Generation’s Soul

“If you can remember the sixties,” quipped Timothy Leary, “you weren’t there.” Well, for those who can’t remember, or weren’t ever there, Richard Barager’s new novel Altamont Augie thrusts the reader into the torrent of that tumultuous era more successfully, and from a more unique perspective, than any I’ve read.

The book’s quirky title holds twofold significance. For anyone who does remember the sixties, “Altamont” is somber shorthand for the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, a rock concert in late 1969 attended by hundreds of thousands and featuring powerhouse bands of the day like the Jefferson Airplane and the Rolling Stones, who headlined the show. The concert is most notorious for its degeneration into increasing crowd violence, culminating in the stabbing death of a drug-fueled, gun-wielding concertgoer by a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, whom the Stones had hired for security – all captured on film for the documentary Gimme Shelter. Long forgotten is another death at that concert – a man was found drowned in an irrigation canal. The victim’s name remains unknown, and the mystery of his identity lies at the heart of this novel.

Mark on 'The American Hour' Radio Today

Today (Wednesday, July 6) I'll be on internet radio, The American Hour, discussing the politics behind ABC/Disney's refusal to re-air or release a DVD of the controversial miniseries The Path to 9/11, which I worked on. Tune in at 1 p.m. PST here.

George Soros and the Muslim Brotherhood

In a recent interview with prominent TV journalist Christiane Amanpour, who never misses an opportunity to promote a repellant moral relativism about fundamentalist Islam, Middle East analyst Marwan Muasher declared that “The Muslim Brotherhood has been used for a long time as a scare tactic.” [Emphasis added] This eyebrow-raising dismissal of legitimate concerns about the world’s largest Islamist movement went unchallenged by Amanpour – no surprise there – although Muasher did weakly concede this: “That is not to say they don’t have designs.”

“Designs” indeed: nothing less ambitious than the downfall of the West and the establishment of a medieval dystopia known as the worldwide caliphate. Is it a mere scare tactic to point out that internal Brotherhood documents themselves reveal that the “elimination of Western civilization” is a goal? Or that the Brothers’ motto is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”?

Inside Egypt

The eyes of the world have been on Egypt this year as the 30-year stability of the Mubarak regime collapsed in the wake of popular protests that have since echoed throughout the Arab world (and been mischaracterized in the now-ubiquitous phrase, “Arab Spring”).

Speculation and analysis abound about the future of our relations with Egypt, the ascendance there of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the threat of impending war with Israel. There is no shortage of pundits on the outside looking in, but for a perspective from the eye of the storm, so to speak, I reached out to interview my courageous friend Cynthia Farahat in Cairo.

Cynthia is a young political activist, dissident, and Coptic Christian – a combination that paints a bright red target on one’s back in Egypt. Her recent article in the Middle East Quarterly and an interview with Bill Whittle of PJTV have begun to earn her recognition as a political analyst.

Mark Tapson:         Let’s begin by talking about your politics and your work.

Cynthia Farahat:   My political philosophy is somewhere between American Conservatism and Objectivism, and I am very fond of and inspired by the American Tea Party movement. I have learned so much from the Tea Parties all the way out here in Cairo.

My political activism began after 9/11, for two reasons: first, I was heartbroken by the shocking evil and cowardice of the attacks on the unsuspecting, peaceful people in the Twin Towers. Second, I was compelled by the fact that those people were paying tax dollars to fund the so-called "moderate" Mubarak dictatorship, whose state-sponsored media celebrated 9/11 and the death of American "infidels." The virtue of empathy is severely lacking in Arab regimes. We don't even have a word for "empathy" in Arabic.

I saw that I would be compliant with their crimes if I stayed silent. My main goal is to collaborate with strong secular civil groups against theocratic forces, because I have seen their ideas fly into your buildings. So I met with like-minded people and co-founded the Egyptian Liberal Party, the first political party in Egypt that openly calls for secularism and capitalism. Our party was banned by a court order at the same time that the Mubarak regime opened up the parliament for the Muslim Brotherhood. I always believed the Brotherhood was part of the Mubarak regime, and that he couldn't have functioned without it.

Bob Hamer Hits the Bullseye with "Targets Down"

Working undercover meant more than a fake driver’s license and a fictitious name. It was living life as a liar for hours, days, even months at a time. It meant becoming one of them without becoming one of them. Distance offered detachment, but when you went undercover, it became personal. It was getting close to people you will ultimately betray and probing the darkest side of humanity, including your own. Unlike Hollywood, there were no retakes; a botched line, a missed mark, a mistake could mean instant death. Matt Hogan walked in the flames many times; he experienced the fire.           - From Targets Down, by Bob Hamer

“Write what you know” is the first and most basic advice every aspiring creative writer tries to take to heart. Like all writing advice, this is easier said than done, and few novelists make that formula work more successfully and naturally than Bob Hamer, author of last year’s Enemies Among Us and the new Targets Down.

Undercover FBI agent Matt Hogan, the fictional protagonist of both thrillers, bears a striking resemblance to his creator, who spent 26 years as a street agent for the FBI, usually undercover. Hamer, also a Marine Corps vet, relates that remarkable quarter-century backstory in his engrossing, sometimes shocking first book, The Last Undercover: The True Story of an FBI Agent's Dangerous Dance with Evil.

In his capacity as an undercover agent, he walked convincingly in the flames with drug dealers, pedophiles, gangs, international arms dealers, and killers. Hamer brings this gritty experience to bear on every page of his novels, lending them a degree of detailed authenticity that’s unusual in the thriller genre. No less a thriller authority than Vince Flynn confirms this, having said of Hamer that he "delivers realism only an undercover FBI agent can bring."

Mark on Clash Radio Again

I'll be a guest again on the always-entertaining-and-enlightening Clash Radio today, Friday, at 8:20 a.m. EST, discussing American exceptionalism and Hollywood's Primetime Propaganda. Check it out if you can, and if not, click on the first link above to go back to the site later for the archived show.