Quick Takes: <i>News You May Have Missed</i>

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

By: Aaron Klein

Published: June 29th, 2011

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Obama Connection To Terrorist Supporters?

President Obama has ties to Chicago activists whose homes were raided last September by the FBI as part of a terrorism probe.

Now those activists are organizing a counter-offensive utilizing local unions aimed in part at pressuring the White House and Justice Department to drop the inquiry.

The Washington Post reports indictments may be forthcoming in an investigation of 23 Chicago activists for possible “material support” for Colombian and Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. government as terrorists.

The Post left out Obama’s ties to those whose homes were raided.

One activist raided by the FBI was Hatem Abudayyeh, the executive director of the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.

As this columnist was first to report, Obama, while serving as a paid director of the far-left nonprofit Chicago Woods Fund, provided two grants to the AAAN. Obama served at the Woods Fund alongside Weather Underground terrorist-group founder Bill Ayers.

AAAN was founded by a longtime Obama associate, Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, is president of the Arab American Action Network.

In 2001, the Woods Fund, with Obama and Ayers on the board, provided a $40,000 grant to the AAAN. The fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.

The $40,000 grant from Obama’s Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about a fifth of the Arab group’s reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings obtained by WorldNetDaily.

The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted about one-fifth of AAAN’s reported grants for that year.

Another activist whose home was raided on Sept. 24, 2010, was Joe Iosbaker, 52, a University of Illinois-Chicago office worker and a union steward for his SEIU local.

Iosbaker and his wife, Stephanie Weiner, worked as leaders of the Chicago New Party, a controversial 1990s political party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.

The Manchurian President, the bestselling book written by this columnist, presented evidence from the New Party’s own literature and documents showing Obama was listed by the party as a member.

Pa Official Accuses One Of Its Own

Of Supporting Al Qaeda-Linked Groups

A Palestinian Authority investigation last week accused one of its own top leaders of funneling money to Al Qaeda-linked groups in the Gaza Strip.

This journalist first reported in 2008, quoting informed Mideast security officials, that Mahmoud Dahlan, had been providing financial support to Al Qaeda allies in the Gaza Strip, including some of the most radical Islamist organizations in the territory. He was aiding those groups in a bid to destabilize Hamas, which engaged in a series of fire clashes with the Al Qaeda organizations.

Dahlan, a leader in PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, closely coordinates security with the U.S. His security agencies have been the direct recipient of over $300 million in U.S. financial aid and scores of U.S. weapons transfers for over a decade.

Also, the U.S. has provided training for Dahlan’s forces since the early 1990s.

As part of a Fatah investigation, Dahlan last week was directly accused by the PA of funneling millions of dollars in aid and weapons to the Gazan Islamist organizations, including Al Qaeda ideologues.

Dahlan was formally expelled from Fatah on June 11, the culmination of Abbas’s massive crackdown on the Fatah strongman, which began in December amid reports Dahlan was contemplating challenging Abbas for his PA leadership role.

Is Turkey Arming Syrian Radicals?

NATO member Turkey has been arming and training militants leading an uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, charged an official from Assad’s Baath party.

Assad has accused the opposition in his country of being aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and promoting Islamic fundamentalist ideology.

“We can be a tough regime, but we’re a secular, liberal regime,” said the Baath party official, speaking to this column on condition of anonymity.

“Any Syrian replacement will be a tragedy for the fate of minorities in the region, especially Christians and Druze,” said the official.

The Baath official said Syrian forces in recent weeks caught convoys of arms attempting to cross the Turkey-Syria border. He said the weapons were meant to arm the Syrian opposition.

The official also said that recently captured Islamic opposition militants admitted to Syrian interrogators they received training and weapons from Turkey.

Syrian troops this week reportedly tightened their grip on villages near the Turkish border, setting up checkpoints and roadblocks in a bid to both stem weapons smuggling and the flow of Syrians fleeing into Turkey.

Turkey, ruled by the Islamist AKP party, has been a vocal critic of the Assad regime.

Following Assad’s promise of reforms this week, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said the Syrian leader’s pledges are “not enough,” adding that Assad should transform Syria into a multi-party system.

During last week’s elections in Turkey, the AKP, headed by the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayip Erdogan, won almost 50 percent of the votes cast – its biggest electoral triumph since it came to power in 2002.

Since first rising to power, the AKP has sought to reduce the influence of the more secular Turkish military while it has helped Islamists dominate the supreme court and major institutions of power.

Turkey, already a NATO member, has been negotiating possible membership in the European Union.

The country is a staunch supporter of Hamas and has been in a diplomatic crisis with Israel following Turkish support for a flotilla last year aimed at disrupting Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Turkey is also in a strategic alliance with Iran.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m.

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About the Author: Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m (CHANGE TO 7-9 p.m.). His website is KleinOnline.com

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

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