The rollout of “Iranium” has been no exception, but the film’s director, Alex Traiman, hit a minor hiccup—admittedly only a few seconds out of a five minute discussion—in a recent Fox News interview. The interviewer appeared surprised when she asked where Traiman was from and he responded that “our offices are based in Israel.” This answer seemed to leave the Fox host momentarily stumped. After all, it’s a little hard to justify why someone whose offices are in a foreign country is advocating for a hawkish U.S. foreign policy on Fox News.
While she didn’t explore the implications of a West Bank settler promoting a film that encourages Americans to support harsh sanctions (and possibly the “military option”) against Iran, the moment did seem to raise an eyebrow– or at least offered a brief pause.
Check out the interview starting from 2:41:
]]>The CPAC agenda has [...]]]>
The CPAC agenda has not yet been formally released but a file posted by Citizens United to Scribd, a document sharing service, lists the “CPAC Theater Schedule – Sponsored by Citizens United Productions.” Three of the sixteen films scheduled for screenings are right up Frank Gaffney’s—and CPAC-approved Clifford May’s—alley.
They are:
“Iranium”- Ali and I just posted our review of the film on Tehran Bureau. The film is the latest production from the Clarion Fund. Clarion–which appears to be an offshoot of the evangelist, ultra-orthodox, Jerusalem-based Aish-HaTorah– gained notoriety for mailing 28 million copies of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” to swing state voters before the 2008 presidential election. “Iranium” contains similar themes to the Fund’s previous films, suggesting that a clash of civilizations is imminent and that anti-Semitism and irrational hatred toward Israel are key to understanding the anger and frustration voiced by Muslim countries in opposition to the United States.
“America At Risk: The War With No Name” – A Citizens United Production starring Newt and Callista Gingrich. Talking Points Memo’s Rachel Slajda observed that “America at Risk” bears striking similarities to Clarion Fund films. “This is the end of times. This is the final struggle,” intones a narrator in the film’s trailer.
“The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave Of The 911 Attack”— The documentary, executive produced by notorious anti-Jihad blogger Pamela Geller along with associate producer Robert Spencer, will document the anti-Park 51 Islamic community center campaign from last summer. The screening will be followed by “a question and action and strategy session on stopping the mosque.”
With films like these being promoted during the three day conference, it seems safe to say that Islamophobia and anti-Muslim propaganda will continue to find a safe haven at CPAC.
]]>Today, the right-wing Heritage Foundation announced that it would be hosting a special screening of Clarion’s latest film, “Iranium,” on February 1. The event will include an appearance and comments by none other than arch-neoconservative Richard Perle. Perle, whose nickname is “The Prince of Darkness,” is widely seen as playing an important role in shaping post-9/11 Bush administration foreign policy from his perch at the Defense Policy Board.
Perle’s institutional affiliations are a useful guide for anyone seeking to understand the intellectual underpinnings of the Bush administration’s (first term) foreign policy or diagram the web of neoconservative institutions in Washington, D.C. Perle is currently a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute; a letter signatory for the Project for the New American Century; a member of the National Security Advisory Council at Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy; a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and Committee on the Present Danger; and a board member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Hudson Institute.
Perle’s role in the Clarion Fund’s film screening would indicate that the organization is deeply embedded in the neoconservative movement. Given Perle’s track record for pushing the U.S. into aggressive wars of choice, this affiliation should be looked at closely as the Fund rolls out its latest documentary, which claims to document the “threat to international stability” presented by Iran’s nuclear program.
When not teaming up with one of the chief boosters of the Iraq war, Clarion has been adding Center for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney to its board. Gaffney was recently deemed too hot to touch by the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Sarah Posner spoke with Suhail Khan, a Muslim member of the American Conservative Union Board, the group which sponsors CPAC. Khan told Posner:
“Frank has been frozen out of CPAC by his own hand, because of his antics. We need people who are credible on national security . . . but because of Frank’s just completely irresponsible assertions over the years, the organizers have decided to keep him out.” That, Khan added, is similar reaction to current and former members of Congress, including Bobby Jindal, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and the late Henry Hyde, who distanced themselves from Gaffney.
The conservative shunning of Gaffney, said Khan, is not “because of any pressure from Muslim activists but because they didn’t want to be associated with a crazy bigot.”
CPAC is a major event for Republicans—a veritable Woodstock, of sorts, for conservatives, and, as I wrote last year, an event with no shortage of Islamophobic rhetoric. Gaffney being “frozen out” is a major blow for his credentials within the conservative movement.
But for Clarion, linking up with the arch-neoconservative Richard Perle, and a counter-Jihadi so extreme that his Islamophobia was too much for CPAC, shows that the organization and its films are well outside of the mainstream. In the past, Clarion has succeeded in getting its projects promoted in mainstream media venues such as CNN and Fox News. It will interesting to watch and see if an organization that has now publicly acknowledged its extreme neoconservative and Islamophobic leanings can get the same type of traction with “Iranium.”
While Clarion remains a fairly small organization (despite its $18 million distribution of “Obsession” DVDs before the 2008 presidential election), the links between ultra-orthodox Aish HaTorah, neoconservative extraordinaire Richard Perle and Islamophobe Frank Gaffney should raise questions. Perhaps most importantly, are these new connections for neoconservatives like Richard Perle? Or is this simply a rare public acknowledgment of the relationship between ultra-orthodox Israelis, Islamophobes, and neoconservatives?
]]>Martens points to Donors Capital Fund, a large, far-right “slush fund,” which shows a $17,778,600 grant issued to the Clarion Fund in its most recent 990 (PDF). The source of the Donors Capital Fund’s grant to the Clarion Fund is not specified.
While Marten rightfully focuses on the large grant to the Clarion Fund, another group, Security Research Associates, shows up in the 990 as well. Security Research Associates, an organization headed by Tom Trento, a former pro-life activist who assisted the Clarion Fund in the distribution of Obsession, received $148,892 from the Donors Capital Fund in 2008.
Trento—on his now defunct watchobsession.org website—offered ‘helpful’ tips in the “Good Muslim vs. Bad Muslim” four page pamphlet on how to tell if a Muslim is of the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ variety. Trento also awarded Geert Wilders, the notoriously Islamophobic Dutch politician, the “International Freedom of Speech Award”.
It looks like Trento’s assistance in distributing the Obsession DVDs was financed, at least in part, by the same funding sources that bankrolled the Clarion Fund.
The Clarion Fund’s latest film, Iranium, is “coming soon to DVD.” According to the film’s website, it is intended to shed light on how “the Iranian regime has and continues to threaten the United States, Europe and the world at large.”
It will be interesting to track if Donors Capital Fund bankrolls the production and distribution of Iranium.
]]>I ran a reverse DNS search of obsessionthemovie.com this morning and found that the Clarion Fund, which funded and produced Obsession and The Third Jihad, has registered a new website and made, at this point, a fairly bare-bones site for its new film, Iranium.
Iranium‘s website is http://www.iraniummovie.com.
Here are two of the possible DVD covers for the film. The website is currently running a poll to select which cover will be chosen.
Iranium will be released in September, just in time for mid-term elections in November!
The website offers the following synopsis of Iranium.
Since the inception of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has displayed hatred for the West. Coupled with an extremist and apocalyptic messianic ideology, this regime has terrorized the world at large for over 30 years.
The 45-minute film will explore the principles of the revolution, and expose the hatred and violence exhibited by Iran’s brutal leadership. The film will document the development of the Iranian nuclear program, the threats posed by such a program, and the West’s inability to recognize the true nature of an extremist Islamic Revolutionary regime that does not represent the worldview of the majority of its citizens.
As highlighted in the Rebutting Obsession project (which, in full disclosure, I contributed to) the Clarion Fund participates in rewriting history to portray Muslims as irrational and suicidal participants in a global movement to destabilize and dominate the west.
The depth of Clarion’s willingness to contribute to Islamophobic hysteria and promote conspiracy theories was made clear in The Third Jihad, a film that bore striking similarities to the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Our former colleague, Khody Akhavi, did some of the initial research linking Clarion to HonestReporting, and Ali Gharib and I have written about Clarion’s ties to European far-right groups (including one in Belgium that sought amnesty for convicted Nazi collaborators) and Islamophobic networks.
I have no doubt that Iranium will live up to the reputation of Clarion’s previous films, but this time it seems that its agenda is to push the U.S. towards a confrontation with Iran.
Clarion’s list of interview subjects for the film (which can be viewed here) include former CIA director and PNAC letter signatory James Woolsey, Irving Kristol Award recipient Bernard Lewis and Rachel Ehrenfeld.
All three are also members of the neoconservative Committee on the Present Danger.
Harold Rhode is also listed as an interviewee. Rhode, a protege of Bernard Lewis and Richard Perle, is a former Foreign Affairs Specialist in the Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense.
In their January, 2004, Mother Jones article “The Lie Factory”, Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest write:
Called in to help organize the Iraq war-planning team was a longtime Pentagon official, Harold Rhode, a specialist on Islam who speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian (Parsi/Farsi). Though Douglas Feith would not be officially confirmed until July 2001, career military and civilian officials in NESA began to watch his office with concern after Rhode set up shop in Feith’s office in early January. Rhode, seen by many veteran staffers as an ideological gadfly, was officially assigned to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, an in-house Pentagon think tank headed by fellow neocon Andrew Marshall. Rhode helped Feith lay down the law about the department’s new anti-Iraq, and broadly anti-Arab, orientation. In one telling incident, Rhode accosted and harangued a visiting senior Arab diplomat, telling him that there would be no ‘bartering in the bazaar anymore…. You’re going to have to sit up and pay attention when we say so.’
Rhode refused to be interviewed for this story, saying cryptically, ‘Those who speak, pay.’
In a Jerusalem Post interview on April 9th, Rhode continued to defend the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq but took issue with the decision to use Iraq’s supposed pursuit of WMDs as the justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
]]>How would you have wanted it presented?
For what it was… He [Saddam] was clearly involved with these bastards, with al-Qaida and all sorts of other fundamentalists who are out to destroy the West.
Why should Saddam, a secular Sunni, get involved with al-Qaida? What was his motivation?Let’s say say that everybody here is helping everybody else. I help you in ways that are good for you, and you help me in ways that are good for me. I have a money system that can transfer things; you use it. I need weapons transferred to someone that you have connections with. I’m not your leader, you’re not my leader. It’s mutual. They’re all on the same side here… Look, there were times the KGB and the CIA were on the same side and there are times right now that this country [Israel] and Saudi Arabia are on the same side – that’s until the day Iran is taken care of and then that will end.
If he’s secular, why did he write “Allahu akhbar” in his own blood on the flag, why did he supposedly have a Koran written in his blood? Why? I don’t know what secular means. Secular is a nice Western word. The best way you can put that in Arabic is la diniyah. La means no and diniyah is the law. That means you don’t fear God, you don’t fear judgment day. That means you can kill me or I can kill you and I’m not afraid of what God will say.