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San Francisco supervisors condemn Savage
Officials pass resolution against talker for 'hate speech'

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today condemned nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Michael Savage, whose program originates in city by the bay, for "hate speech."

It was the board's second attempt at a resolution to condemn Savage for his criticism of illegal aliens in the U.S.

In August, a single vote by a member whose grandfather emigrated from China seven decades ago halted a similar resolution its tracks.

The previous vote was 9-1, with third generation San Franciscan Ed Jew turning in the veto vote, after getting up and affirming Savage's First Amendment right to express his opinion.

Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval had introduced the resolution in August to condemn the radio talker. After the vote, he called for the tally to be rescinded and the proposal sent to committee, which essentially is a polite way of letting the issue die.

"For the record, I do not agree with comments allegedly made by Mr. Savage, but the First Amendment gives him the right to make those comments," Jew said.

Sandoval responded with a personal challenge to Jew.

"If this commentary was directed at the Chinese-American or the Asian community, you would not be resorting to this rigid formalism on your part," he said.

That first effort was an attempt to pass the hate crimes condemnation unanimously to avoid a committee hearing. Having missed out on the unanimous vote, the measure is back now from committee.

"This is a dry run against free speech in America by the Islamists and the illegal aliens who are now becoming one and the same," said Savage in August. "It's the same organizational structure. … I am the target of this dry run. They want to see how far they can get in silencing a voice of freedom in the United States of America. They want to see which, if any, governmental agencies will stop them."

"Guess what they learned so far?" he continued. "That not only will no governmental agency stop them in their attempts to kill free speech, they will aid them in their attempts to kill free speech. We have lost our freedoms already.

"Lady Liberty has been hog tied. She is being raped by the illegal aliens. She is being raped by the landlords who are using the illegal aliens. Lady Liberty is there in bindings screaming for us to release her," he said.

Sandoval, who spearheaded the measure, said condemnation of immigrants "leads to the beating of Muslim-Americans and many other Americans."

"This attempt to vilify Latino-Americans will not be tolerated," he said. "We are saying first that we are recognizing this speech is hateful and we are condemning it. Don't fool yourselves. This kind of speech just incites behavior that is nothing short of hysteria. It's the kind of hysterical behavior we saw in Nazi Germany 60 years ago."

One of the nation's top civil rights attorneys offered his assistance to Savage in suing Sandoval.

Daniel A. Horowitz of Oakland, Calif., wrote to Savage after Sandoval introduced his resolution.

"You have a strong federal civil rights action that you can file against Supervisor Sandoval and the city of San Francisco," he advised. "You have a constitutional right to state your political opinions and no city official has the right to lie about what you said or to call for a mob to come to your door to threaten you and to try to have you fired."

Horowitz said the Civil Rights Act of 1871, designed to tame the terror of the Ku Klux Klan, can be used as the basis for a federal civil rights action against the official and the city.

"You are protected by this civil rights act because you are the victim of the same type of mob terror that (the) Klan used to inflict," wrote Horowitz. "This terror is being organized against you simply because people do not like what you say. Translated into legal language, you are being attacked by a type of terrorist because you have exercised your First Amendment rights."

Horowitz wrote: "The Klansman in your case is wearing a suit and not a white robe. He is doing his dirty work under the hood of his elected position instead of under the coward's hood of the Klan."

The call for action against Savage came at the same time city supervisors were considering using taxpayer dollars to pay for immigrants' green cards and citizenship.

Sandoval's resolution condemns Savage for "defamatory language ... against immigrants." The resolution was in response to Savage's July 5 broadcast, when the talker commented on a group of students who had announced they were fasting in support of changes in immigration policy.

"I would say, let them fast until they starve to death," quipped Savage, "then that solves the problem."

Sandoval's resolution calls Savage's comments "symbolic of hatred and racism."

"I really for the life of me cannot understand why there is not more media outrage to what Michael Savage said," Sandoval said. He plans to hold a press conference on the steps of City Hall Tuesday just before the entire Board of Supervisors votes on his resolution against Savage.

"The intolerant and racist comments of Michael Savage demand a strong condemnation," Sandoval insisted.

In response, Horowitz wrote: "This Sandoval fellow accused you of using 'defamatory language ... against immigrants.' Of course, this statement by Sandoval is slander. I have listened to your show. You are very complimentary of immigrants. In fact, you frequently mention that your parents were immigrants. The slander by Sandoval arises because he claims that your opposition to illegal entry into this country is somehow a stand against Hispanics. That is like saying that every Border Patrol agent and every Congress person is anti-immigrant because they don't condone illegal border crossing."

"I will back you, Michael, and file this lawsuit if you wish," concluded Horowitz.

Haters Against "Hate"     

The immensely popular conservative broadcaster Michael Savage, who won the 2007 Talkers magazine Freedom of Speech Award, is under assault from a newly formed, benignly named organization: the Hate Hurts America Interfaith and Community Coalition (HHA). But as you will see shortly, HHA itself has intimate ties to some of the vilest hate, bigotry, and intolerance imaginable.

What Is HHA?

HHA describes itself in sanctified terms as “a coalition of religious and civic organizations that was formed to address the rising problem of hatred against American minorities.” “Hate hurts America by eroding our country’s great traditions of religious and cultural tolerance and mutual respect,” says HHA. “Hate-filled words can and do lead to violent actions.”

Closely allied with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), HHA was established for the singular purpose of trying to ban Mr. Savage, host of the daily program The Savage Nation, from the airwaves. Toward this end, it has sent letters urging the program’s sponsors to “stop supporting” the “hate speech” of a “hatemonger” and to “pull their advertising dollars” from Savage’s show. This campaign was ostensibly sparked by what HHA calls Savage’s “history of hateful and bigoted comments against minorities including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Catholics, Jews, immigrants and women.” But clearly HHA’s chief concern is the broadcaster’s critical commentary about Islam and Muslims, as evidenced by this excerpt from its letter to the sponsors:

      “As people of diverse faith and cultural backgrounds, we realize that maligning any religion negatively impacts our country by perpetuating stereotypes and discrimination in society. We stand in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters against bigotry.”

Deceitful Knaves Who Twist the Truth

HHA cited the following comments by Savage as being particularly egregious:

    * “I’m not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I’m not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I’m not getting’ on my all-fours and braying to Mecca. And you could drop dead if you don’t like it. You can shove it up your pipe. I don’t wanna hear anymore about Islam. I don’t wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your religion and shove it up your behind. I’m sick of you.”
    * “What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document [the Koran] in their hand, which is a book of hate. Don’t tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation. I don’t need reeducation. Deportation, not reeducation.”
    * “Make no mistake about it, the Koran is not a document of freedom. The Koran is a document of slavery and chattel. It teaches you that you are a slave.”
    * “I think [Muslims] need to be forcibly converted to Christianity ... It’s the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings.”

Notably, HHA made no mention of the fact that the context of all these comments was the rising tide, in the United States and around the world, of violent Islamic extremism -- with its calls for jihad, Muslim dominion over the earth, the slaughter of infidels, the universal adoption of Muslim customs, and the institution of Sharia (Islamic law) in non-Muslim nations. Nor did HHA point out that Savage had made positive comments about Muslims who have rejected such hateful extremism. But then again, cheap, transparent smear jobs are not very well known for presenting both sides of an issue.

Taking exception also to a few more remarks by Savage, HHA cited the following quotes as objectionable:

    * “In referring to Asians in 2004, he [Savage] stated, ‘the Asians still chew 'em [dogs] up.’”

      In actuality, as the full context of the quote clearly reveals, Savage was not speaking about Asians per se; he was referring specifically to natives of China, where in fact dogs are eaten in relatively large numbers. Simply because he chose not to phrase this fact more delicately is not a signal that he is bigoted against Asians.
    * “In reference to African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement, Mr. Savage stated, ‘Everything’s about Brown v. The Board of Education, it’s sickening. ..”

      By presenting this quote out of context, HHA apparently aims to give readers the impression that Savage has disparaged the Brown decision and somehow favors America’s return to a segregated public school system. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Savage’s point had nothing whatsoever to do with the Brown case, as a reading in full context clearly shows. Rather, he was complaining about the Left’s unceasing propensity to depict America as an irredeemably racist nation, and about the Left’s attempt to draw what he called a “seamless connection between the black civil rights movement … and the gays getting married.”
    * “Mr. Savage has also smeared Hispanics…. [He] said that ‘our brown brethren’ entering the United States may ‘erase’ the ‘European-American, or the white person…’”

cont'd

      Though HHA took great exception to this assertion, there is in fact a clearly articulated strategy by activist Hispanic and Chicano organizations to take over the Southwestern United States by means of a demographic invasion of sorts, and to displace white people as a majority in the region. Consider the unambiguous objectives of just a few of these groups:

      (a) La Raza Unida (“The Unified Race”): Claiming that its constituents’ ancestral homeland was stolen by white Americans, this organization maintains that large regions of the American Southwest do not rightfully belong to the United States. It supports an open borders policy of unrestricted immigration, as well as amnesty, civil liberties protections, and expanded rights for illegals already residing in the U.S. The organization explains that its “spirit and force” were “truly embodied … under the leadership” of its founder Jose Angel Gutierrez, an open borders advocate who once stated, “We have an aging white America ... They are dying. ... They are sh---ing in their pants with fear! I love it! ... We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”

      (b) National Council of La Raza (“The Race”): This group favors amnesty for illegal aliens already among us, and open borders henceforth. In La Raza’s calculus, any restriction on the free movement of immigrants constitutes a violation of their civil rights, and any reduction in government assistance to illegal border-crossers is “a disgrace to American values.” Thus La Raza supports continued mass Mexican immigration to the United States as a means of achieving the re-partition of the American Southwest as a new state called “Aztlan.”

      (c) Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF): This organization condemned Operation Gatekeeper, a U.S. government program intended to restore integrity to a portion of the California-Mexico border, across which many thousands of illegal aliens streamed each year. MALDEF charged that Americans opposing unrestricted immigration were motivated largely by “racism and xenophobia.” Its founder, Mario Obledo, said in 1998: “California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. They should go back to Europe.”

      (d) League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC): In 2005 LULAC created an online petition calling for comprehensive immigration reform that would convert all illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States, into legalized citizens. José Velez, who headed the League from 1990 to 1994, has said that the U.S. Border Patrol is “the enemy of my people and always will be.”

      (e) Mexica Movement (MM): This organization views existing borders as the arbitrary constructs of the “illegal squatter descendants” of “pirates” who are unjustly occupying land that is not rightfully theirs. “This whole continent is our [Mexicans’] homeland,” says MM. “We are not bound by the colonial illegal boundaries of the Europeans … We have no obligation to be foreigners in our own land, on our own continent.” In MM’s view, the entire North American land mass should be open to the unfettered migrations of all its indigenous inhabitants -- who constitute “one Anahuac nation.”

      (f) MEChA: This coalition of radical Chicano student groups aims to return the Southwestern U.S. to Mexican authority. MEChA’s core philosophy is set forth in its founding manifestos, “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” and “El Plan de Santa Barbara.” In the former document, MEChA declares, “We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent [the United States],” and vows to repel the “brutal ‘gringo’ invasion of our territories.” MEChA’s mission is conveyed in the organization’s slogan, “Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada,” which translates to: “For the race, everything. Outside of the race, nothing.”

The foregoing facts about these pro-illegal immigration advocates make it clear that Michael Savage was accurate in suggesting that there exists a broad effort to “erase” white Americans from at least a portion of the North American continent. In their own clearly worded threats and declarations, the aforementioned groups make it known that they not only loathe whites, but that they also, in some cases, reject the very legitimacy of America as a sovereign nation.

Members of the HHA Coalition

The two most notable HHA coalition members are the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association – West. Let’s take a brief look at each:

A) Council on American-Islamic Relations

CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook and served as Hamas’ recruitment arm in the United States. CAIR opened its first U.S. office with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-described charity (founded by Marzook) which in December 2001 would be shut down by President Bush for collecting money on behalf of Hamas.

CAIR knows a great deal not only about hate speech, but also about plain, old-fashioned, unvarnished hate:

    * Co-founder Nihad Awad asserted at a 1994 meeting at Barry University, “I am a supporter of the Hamas movement.”
    * On February 2, 1995, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory Board member Siraj Wahhaj as one of the “unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators” in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman’s foiled plot to destroy several New York City monuments. On June 6, 2006, CAIR’s Ohio affiliate held a large fundraiser in honor of Wahhaj.
    * In September 2003 CAIR’s former Community Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi, pled guilty to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Federal investigators said that a group Khafagi founded, the Islamic Assembly of North America, had earmarked money for terrorism-supporting activities and had published material advocating suicide attacks against U.S. interests.
    * In July 2004 Ghassan Elashi, a founding Board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter and a former Holy Land Foundation (HLF) official, was convicted of having illegally shipped computers to the terrorism-sponsoring states of Libya and Syria. That same month, he was charged with having funneled more than $12.4 million through HLF, to Hamas. And in April 2005 he was convicted of knowingly doing business with Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, his brother-in-law.
    * Randall Todd Royer, who served as a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator for CAIR, trained with Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the State Department’s international terror list. He was also indicted on charges of conspiring to help al Qaeda and the Taliban battle American troops in Afghanistan, and was later sentenced to twenty years in prison on firearms charges.
    * Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad was deported from the U.S. because of his work as Executive Director of the Global Relief Foundation, which helped finance al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

There you have it: CAIR -- which has all these ties to Islamist organizations dedicated to Jew-hatred, terror, and genocide -- thinks it has the moral standing to lecture Michael Savage (and everyone else) about “hate” and its fearsome capacity to breed violence. Perhaps someone should inform the bigots at CAIR that this all sounds like a very bad joke.

B) Muslim Students Association – West

Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Islam expert Robert Spencer has called “the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda,” MSA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of the Brotherhood’s likeminded “organizations of our friends” who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. These “friends” were described by the Brotherhood as groups that could help teach Muslims “that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.”

cont'd

MSA solicited donations for the aforementioned, now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. MSA also has strong ties to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which was founded by Osama bin Laden’s nephew and raises funds for Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas.

    * On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama, then-President of the UCLA Muslim Students Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the Israeli consulate in chants of “Death to Israel!” and “Death to the Jews!” One guest speaker at the event was Hamid Ayloush, a member of CAIR, which co-sponsored the rally. In his speech, Ayloush solicited contributions for none other than his beloved Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
    * In recent years, MSA members at UCLA have raised money for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists at their annual “Anti-Zionist Week.”
    * In March 2003, speaker Muammad Faheed told an MSA meeting at Queensborough Community College in New York, “The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!”
    * At the February 2006 MSA West Conference at Sacramento State University, guest speaker Abdel Malik-Ali praised the late Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin and rejoiced at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s failing health.
    * MSA co-founder Ahmad Totonji was a major figure in the Virginia-based, Muslim Brotherhood-dominated SAAR network which, according to federal investigators, may have had financial ties to al Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.

This is but a tiny sampling of what MSA and its various chapters all over North America have said and done. As with CAIR, the notion that this group has the moral standing to chastise others for allegedly promoting “hate” and “violence” is absurd in the extreme.


Additional HHA Members

Most of HHA’s other coalition members are individuals (such as Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun) affiliated with religious groups and leftist organizations such as:

    * The War Resisters League West: One of the oldest anti-war organizations in America, WRL is a member organization of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition led by the longtime pro-Castro Communist, Leslie Cagan. WRL was among the first major anti-war groups to blame America for the terrorist attacks of 9/11. On that very day, WRL released a statement saying, “The policies of militarism pursued by the United States have resulted in millions of deaths.… [M]ay these profound tragedies [of 9/11] remind us of the impact U.S. policies have had on other civilians in other lands.”
    * The American Friends Service Committee: AFSC has a long history of supporting Communist causes and condemning the United States, all under the banner of pacifism. In the 1970s John McAuliffe, who then headed AFSC’s Indochina program, initially characterized the news of Cambodian massacres under Pol Pot as an American “misinformation campaign,” and lauded the Pol Pot regime as “the example of an alternative model of development and social organization.” In recent decades AFSC has agitated for the unilateral disarmament of the United States.

HHA’s Leading Official

HHA is headed by Sabiha Khan, who also serves as Communications Director for CAIR of Southern California. Previously, she was a spokesperson for CAIR-Los Angeles and Executive Director of CAIR-Orlando. She attended the University of California, Irvine, where she was a member of the Muslim Student Union, an organization notorious for featuring guest speakers who advocate Israel’s destruction, liken Israelis to Nazis, and deny the Holocaust.

During her tenure as CAIR-LA spokeswoman (from 2001-2006), Khan worked closely with Hussam Ayloush, the chapter’s Executive Director, to defend the radical cleric Wagdy Ghoneim. Ghoneim is affiliated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and is known for his repeated calls for violent jihad against Jews. When Ghoneim was denied bond after his 2004 arrest in the U.S. for immigration violations, Khan organized an “emergency town hall” meeting to address the matter. She told the Orange County Register, “Yes, people are worried that we are being persecuted because we are Muslim.”

In May 2005, Khan penned a guest editorial for The Geeze news website, where she conflated American society’s concern about “[t]he actions of extremist Jews, Muslims, Christians or others,” disingenuously implying that Americans as a whole felt equally threatened by extremism from each of those quarters. Her piece said nothing about Islamic extremism specifically, focusing almost entirely on such alleged U.S. transgressions as “actions at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the torture tactics, the long, indefinite detentions of prisoners without charges, the use of heavy bombs on largely civilian areas, and the constant disregard of the Geneva Conventions and our own American values.”

This, then, is the Hate Hurts America Interfaith and Community Coalition, the organization hounding Michael Savage about his “hate speech”; an organization that wouldn’t be caught dead supporting bigotry of any kind; an organization solemnly pledging its undying “support for the American traditions of religious and cultural tolerance and mutual respect.”

Go ahead. It’s all right; go ahead and laugh.