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Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

By: Aaron Klein

Published: January 19th, 2011

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Group Calling For Beck’s Ouster

Tied To Soros, Liberal Activists

An organization leading a crusade demanding that Fox News fire host Glenn Beck is backed by philanthropist George Soros and is tied to many of the liberal activists that Beck routinely excoriates on his highly rated program, this column has learned.

Jewish Funds for Justice, or JFSJ, a charity that campaigns for social change, delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Fox News this past week in protest of a program in which Beck specifically targeted Soros, calling the businessman the “puppet master.” JFSJ deemed the show anti-Semitic.

During the program, Beck highlighted nine people of the 20th century who contributed to what he called “the era of the big lie.” All nine of those figures were Jewish, including psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, columnist Walter Lippman and Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania.

JFSJ is funded by Soros’s Open Society Institute.

In 2009, the Open Society provided a $150,000 grant to the JFSJand its associated group, the Funder’s Collaborative on Youth Organizing.

In 2010, the Open Society provided a $200,000 grantto last a period of two years.

JFSJ says it believes that “by transforming leaders, we are better able to transform society” and “create a more just world.”

JFSJ has worked with a who’s who of radical left groups and leaders. Many of its leaders and board members come from the organized labor community.

JFSJ’s runs a Selah Leadership Program, which provides community organizing training to local leaders. As of mid-2007, more than 200 leaders from 165 organizations had gone through the program.

Past participants include Heather Booth, founder of the radical Midwest Academy, which teaches the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky.

This column was first to reportthat the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit on which Barack Obama served as director alongside Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, provided money to Midwest Academy.

This column also broke the storythat the executive director of Midwest Academy was part of the team that developed a group of volunteers for Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Another past participant in JFSJ’s training program is Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor.

The group has previously worked with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

“We are proud to be associated with the work of CAIR,” declared Jeffrey Denko, JFSJ’s senior vice president.

Finger-Pointing Victim

Called Beck A Fascist

A victim of the Arizona shootings who had been widely quoted in the news media as blaming the massacre on rhetoric from Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin is a known liberal activist who has previously campaigned against Beck, calling him a fascist.

As has been widely reported, the victim, James Eric Fuller, was arrested Saturday at a Tucson town-hall meeting after shouting “You’re dead!” at Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries.

Fuller, a 63 year-old disabled military veteran, was shot in the knee and back during the attack that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and left six people dead and 13 others wounded.

Following the shooting, Fuller gave an interview to the far-left Democracy NOW, in which he did not mince words at apportioning blame for the tragedy.

“It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Fuller said.

“Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled – senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even nine-year-old girls,” he added, referring to the death of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green.

Fuller was subsequently widely quoted in the news media, including in pieces by the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.

This column has learned Fuller has a history of activism against Beck.

In a March articleat a website called PoliticsUnlocked.com, Fuller denounced Beck. “It’s true,” he wrote, “that fireball Beck somehow arrived at his delusions via the public library, a system founded by Benjamin Franklin for the public good, but his identity is in the bloody realm of Benito Mussolini,” he wrote, “because Beck is a passionate believer in the merger of corporate and state power.”

“You ought to call a fascist a fascist,” added Fuller.

Christian Lebanese Leaders

Fear Mounting Syrian Influence

Top Christian leaders in Lebanon believe Syria is poised to become the dominant player in Lebanon after the Damascus regime cut deals with the Obama administration.

The leaders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they are fearful of a new assassination campaign in Lebanon targeting the country’s pro-Western alliance, similar to the slew of assassinations in Lebanon in 2005 and 2006. They also said they are fearful of a major outbreak of sectarian violence.

Separately, a source in Lebanon’s pro-Western parliamentary alliance told this column that last week’s collapse of Lebanon’s government by the Iranian-backed Hizbullah and its allies came after Hizbullah rejected a deal by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Hizbullah is trying to pre-empt a United Nations investigation into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The long-delayed probe, which may be released within weeks, is set to finger Hizbullah members in the murder. Hizbullah does not want the Lebanese government to cooperate with the investigation or its release.

The pro-Western Lebanese political sources said that Hariri, who was in Washington today when Hizbullah led a resignation campaign that collapsed his government, adamantly refused Hizbullah’s main demand that the Lebanese government not prosecute any Hizbullah member indicted in the assassination.

The sources said Hariri had proposed a compromise whereby Hizbullah could remain in power, but not as an entity. Hariri said he would not object to Hizbullah members serving as individuals in the Lebanese government, but he did not want the group acting like a bloc.

The sources said Hizbullah refused this compromise.

Top Christian leaders in Lebanon, meanwhile, told this column that they believe Hizbullah’s militant stance follows a larger deal between the Obama administration and Syria.

Two weeks ago, Obama bypassed the U.S. Senate by using a congressional recess period to directly appoint four new ambassadors, including the first U.S. envoy to Syria since 2005.

Also, this column reported,the U.S. has been attempting to jumpstart talks between Israel and Syria aimed at an Israeli retreat from the strategic Golan Heights.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant 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

Finger-Pointing Victim

Christian Lebanese Leaders

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