Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dave Gaubatz, the first U.S. civilian (1811) Federal Agent deployed to Iraq in 2003. He is the owner of DG Counter-terrorism Publishing. He is currently conducting a 50 State Counter-terrorism Research Tour (CTRT). He is the co-author (with Paul Sperry) of the new book, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America. He can be contacted at davegaubatz@gmail.com. Visit his new site MuslimMafiaInternational.com.

FP: Dave Gaubatz, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s talk about the recent botched terror attempt on Flight 253 and whether it has been a wake up call for Americans and the Obama administration.

Gaubatz: I wish I could tell you that it has been a wake-up call but unfortunately that is not the case.

Let me begin by saying this: I believe if you ask the same left-wing politicians (who wittingly and unwittingly are supporters of Islamic-based terror groups) if America should again start using the correct terminology of “The War on Terrorism,” there would be no change in their attitude or way of thinking in regards to Islamic terror groups. Most politicians and news organizations still have more allegiance to Saudi Arabia than they do America and our children.

FP: Can you explain further what you mean by this?

Gaubatz: Well, Jamie, our book, Muslim Mafia, reveals the strong ties the Saudi government has in influencing the shape of America in regards to instilling more violent aspects of Islamic Sharia law into our system.  Our security actually comes down to money. The more money we allow Saudi Arabia to pump into our country, the more control and influence they have over every aspect of our lives.  Why we allow a country that advocates the destruction of our country to dictate what news journalist’ provide to the public is a good question for Americans to ask.

In 2007, during my first-hand research at Islamic centers across America, I was continually coming across a booklet being distributed by CAIR (Muslim Brotherhood). The booklet cover seemed innocent enough, but when I began reviewing the editors and authors of this book, it was apparent they were Wahhabi and had Saudi-backing. Some were convicted terrorist serving life prison sentences in America.

I personally coordinated with the Saudi Embassy in Washington DC to determine if they (the Saudi Govt.) were responsible for distributing materials to innocent children written by convicted terrorists trying to destroy America.  I asked the Saudi Embassy to send me their best example of Islam. A few weeks later, the Saudi Embassy sent me a book by Ali Al Timimi. Timimi and others had been plotting to commit terrorism against innocent men, women, and children in America.  The Saudi Government said Timimi was their best example of Islam.  Readers should note they did not send me the Qur;an; they sent convicted terrorist material.

FP: You have the evidence?

Gaubatz: Yes. I have my recorded conversation with the Saudi Embassy and the original manual and package that the Embassy sent the material in.

Keep in mind Jamie that the Saudi government and CAIR also put this manual in our schools and public libraries.

FP: This is crazy. What can be done about this?

Gaubatz: While in high school and college I was very interested in history.  Numerous times I asked myself how did the world allow leaders such as Adolf Hitler and his supporters to exterminate over six million Jews (men, women, and children)?

Now in January 2010, I am asking myself: How can the world allow innocent people and countries to be so terrorized by Islamic based terrorist groups when we know their intentions are to destroy the world and kill millions of people in order to meet their objectives of an Islamic Ummah (Nation) under Sharia law?

Well, part of the answer is that today our country has a man as our President who is more interested in apologizing for America to foreign dictators than to show allegiance to his country and fight for its security. The media, meanwhile, refuses to expose OBama’s negligence; instead giving groups like CAIR airtime to propagandize their violent ideologies. They give CAIR more airtime than they do a U.S. military veteran like me.

CAIR presents no evidence, only rhetoric that time after time is proven to be full of lies.

And why? Because many journalists are fearful of the Saudi influence. Many politicians gain financially from their dealings with the Saudis. Many media businessmen have more allegiance to the Saudis than they do our own country.

FP: In your book, you mention the U.S. military has been infiltrated by Islamic terror supporters. Can you be more specific?

Gaubatz: Over the years, specifically since returning from Iraq in 2003, it still amazes me that people find it difficult to believe terrorists would infiltrate the world’s best equipped and well-trained military. It amazes me even more how our nation’s leaders do not even address this national security matter.

People need to ask themselves: Why would Islamic terrorists not join the U.S. armed forces?  Where else can they receive better military training and collect intelligence on their enemy? This is fundamental 101 in the intelligence field.  My team and I did not rely on 2nd or 3rd hand intelligence in regards to determining if the Muslim Brotherhood was active in America. We went inside. The best source of intelligence is always ‘inside’. This is why CAIR pushes for more Muslims in political positions. They can control America from inside. The documents in Muslim Mafia support this and thousands other documents we obtained provide more details.

FP: Let me ask you about your knowledge concerning “Friendly Fire” incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During your research at Islamic Centers you came across information in 2007 about these incidents that reveal that some of them may not have been so “friendly.”

Tell us what you have learned.

Gaubatz: In regards to ‘Friendly Fire’ incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, if I were the son, daughter, mother, father of some of the soldiers who were killed in these countries by alleged friendly fire, I would be demanding full investigations.

On Dec. 14, 2007, I went to an Islamic Center in Knoxville, TN. (yes recorded and evidence obtained). I had an extensive conversation with a long-time member of this mosque. He was also a former Nation of Islam member. This man described to me in detail how some U.S. Muslim soldiers are killing their own troops because, per his words, U.S. Muslims do not want to kill their brothers (the Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan).

FP: Did you provide this information to law enforcement?

Gaubatz: I provided the intelligence to the organization that paid for the research and strongly encouraged this intelligence to be provided to law enforcement immediately.  During the Mapping Sharia research project we uncovered numerous pieces of intelligence similar to this.

FP: What’s next?

Gaubatz: First-hand intelligence is always the best evidence. I have developed a web site to provide concerned people copies of Muslim Brotherhood material my team and I have collected during the last few years from Islamic Centers in America.  I will have thousands of audio lectures, Islamic terrorist manuals, books, videos, Islamic School manuals (advocating violence), and other related materials for people to use as education, research, and evidence to demand their elected leaders and law enforcement to take legal action against Islamic leaders advocating treason and sedition against our country. The site is Muslim Mafia International. All funding received from this project will go directly into conducting more first-hand research.

FP: Dave Gaubatz, thank you for joining us.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is a columnist for National Review and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.

FP: Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

First things first, let me ask you this.

If our government was serious about fighting Islamic terrorism and saving lives, wouldn’t Abdul Mutallab be getting water-boarded just about now?

We know that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed – which included waterboarding – forced KSM to give up crucial information that ended up preventing countless terrorist attacks and saving an infinite amount of innocent lives. It allowed, for instance, the U.S. to capture key al- Qaeda terrorists and to thwart a planned 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.

But now, thanks to the Obama administration and its approach to the terror war, Abdul Mutallab will probably be getting a lawyer and not have to say anything. This, naturally, drastically increases, rather than minimizes, the possibilities of a future terror attack on our soil and against our citizens.

Your thoughts?

Hanson: I don’t think right now the question is over interrogation techniques, but rather not giving this foreign national would-be mass murderer full rights, as if he were a common criminal rather than a non-uniformed soldier at war.

Mutallab apparently, has been happy to tell all he knows without even being interrogated formally, which makes the entire foiled attack even more absurd: a Nigerian radical Muslim buys with cash a one-way ticket, carries no check-in luggage, was previously reported by his own father as a threat to America, and boards a plane to America after previous stays in Yemen?

Before we even get to questions of interrogation, how about first some sanity? And in reaction to all this, Secretary Napolitano nonchalantly talks about the system working like “clockwork”? I think very soon we will hear of no more “overseas contingency operations” and “man-made disasters”—and no more Janet Napolitano as head of our homeland security.

And when the next official struts and says “Bush did it”, the public will sigh “Thank God, he did”, since in comparison with the seriousness with which the prior administration dealt with terrorism, the Obama team seems to consider radical Islam an interesting catalyst for a civil liberties debate. “Reset” button probably won’t be used any more either—the phrase is too ironic now, and would mean going back to our anti-terrorism policies from 2001-9, which are preferable to the present mess. In political terms, one cannot ask millions of Americans to take off their belts and shoes, and then not put someone like Mutallab on a no-fly list.

FP: The fate of Gitmo?

Hanson: With over 100 Yemenis in Guantanamo, I doubt the facility will be closed; perhaps it will be virtually closed like the Iranian deadlines to stop building a bomb, or the health-care deadlines. I doubt too that Khalid Sheik Mohammed is ever tried in New York; that partisan gambit will be quietly Guatanamoized.

The present Obama diffidence—trash the Bush anti-terrorism protocols, bow, and apologize abroad, contextualize the US in the Al Arabiya interview and Cairo speech, promise to try KSM in New York, shut down Guantanamo—does not quite work in the context of a new series of human IEDs being unleashed against the US. Surely there are one or two astute advisors who will take the President aside and quietly say, “Your present rhetoric and policy are nuts! And you will destroy the Democratic Party for 30 years if you continue!”

FP: Abdul Mutallab doesn’t seem to come from the ranks of the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden. What does this do to the Left’s belief that the devil made them do it when it comes to our enemies?

Hanson: Well that debate was over long ago, when we learned of the past profiles of the 9/11 killers, the West Bank suicide monsters, and many of the human bombs who went off in Iraq.

The angriest at the West are those with enough money, and education to have developed a full sense of inferiority, self-disappointment, envy, and jealousy. A Major Hasan or Mutallab or Atta inside the West sees the prosperity, liberality, informality, and success around him, begins to figure that no such thing exists in the world of the Middle East and Islamic world, and, presto, believes America and the Jews ensured that there is no resurgent majestic caliphate. We excite the appetites in these characters faster than radical Islam can repress them. That we too often apologize and convey a sense of shame about our own culture only emboldens these killers in their fantasies.

Every bit as important as our military response and vigilance, is our moral tone, which should be along the following lines: “Dear radical Muslims, you, not us, created your present misery through religious intolerance, gender apartheid, statism, corruption, tribalism, anti-scientific fundamentalism, and autocracy, and we have neither regrets about our own success nor responsibilities for your own self-induced miseries, unfortunate as they are.” Until they get that message, we will have the sort of image conveyed by Obama in Cairo and his Al Arabiya interviews: pleasing to the world, but a signal to those who despise the US that we really do not believe in our own exceptional history and institutions.

FP: You mentioned Napolitano, her moronic statements, and how she might not be around much longer. What’s the psychology here of this administration and its overall dance with denial?

Hanson: They seem very naive and inexperienced, almost as if to say: “This is not supposed to be happening to me; I was elected to undo George Bush’s anti-constitutional, so-called war against terror, not actually fight real life terrorists.” In this administration everything is “isolated” and “allegedly”, unless you’re the Cambridge police, and then we really can snap to instantaneous judgement.

Again, I think the Obama administration felt that it would prance in, and end the bad war in Iraq, finish off the good war in Afghanistan, and dismantle the unnecessary Bush crusade against mythical dragons. Instead, they learned that Iraq was essentially won by Bush, Afghanistan is heating up, and there are thousands of al Qaeda terrorists who hate us for who we are, and don’t give a damn that our President’s middle name is Hussein. We are no longer dealing here with college deans and TV pundits who are wowed by split-the-difference, hope-and-change soaring rhetoric.

FP: Two of the four leaders behind the Northwest Airlines passenger jet appear now to have been released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007. Significance?

Hanson: It reminds us of what happens when the Bush administration caved to the popular slur that Guantanamo was a veritable Gulag, and also reminds us that those in Guantanamo were there for a reason.

We have this la-la land fantasy that there are perfectly good and bad choices. But there are no such things. We are targeted by premodern killers, out of uniform, who are keen students of Western doubt and guilt. And in dealing with them, there are no easy solutions, as is always true when the postmodern meets the premodern.

Guantanamo was a bad solution amid far worse alternatives. Candidate Obama demogogued the issue, as he did tribunals, renditions, and the Patriot Act, and now, invested with responsibility rather than mere rhetoric, can’t close it when he promised. ‘Guantanamoize’ is a good verb for incessant rhetorical deadlines that are never met. Ask Ahmadinejad.

FP: Concluding thoughts? What most worries you about the threat we face and the people who are supposedly overseeing our protection?

Hanson: Our well intentioned leaders see radical Islam more as an alternative world view that has grievances, rather than a sick, perverted Nazi-like creed that wants to take the world back to a 7th century theocracy, where freedom is denied, heretics and gays stoned, and women relegated to servile status–all overseen by rather creepy autocrats that destroy almost any modern institution they encounter.

Too often Obama, Biden, Holder, Napolitano, etc. see terrorists in terms of domestic criminals, not as enemy combatants. But once one wades into that legalistic mess of war being a judicial circus, nothing good comes from it: is it a supposed sin to water-board the confessed architect of 9/11 to find out about future mass murdering, but OK in legal terms to be district attorney, judge, jury, and executioner in a nanno-second when sending Predator drone hellfire missiles into the mud-brick compounds of suspect terrorists and their families in Waziristan?

We are in a race between sober people around Obama trying to apprise him of the danger, and his natural Carter-like take on America’s partial culpability for world tensions. Let us hope that the serious people win.

FP: Victor Davis Hanson, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a columnist for National Review. His book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008), has just been released in paperback with a new preface. Check out a description from Encounter Books.

FP: Andrew C. McCarthy, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Your thoughts on how the Obama administration is handling Abdul Mutallab in comparison to how it handled Hasan? The embarrassing and leaving-us-open-to-terror saga continues? Napolitano, as we know, emerged with some moronic statements. Your thoughts?

McCarthy: Jamie, thanks for having me.  It’s a pleasure.

It would be nice if the government spent half as much energy focusing on what actually catalyzes jihadist terror as it does denying that there is terrorism.  This problem is not unique to Obama officials, but this administration is raising willful blindness to a new level.

Basically, unless they catch a guy wearing an al Qaeda t-shirt, their default position is that everyone is a lone-wolf with no connection to any larger enterprise — and God forbid that we should ask exactly what it is that somehow inspires all these lone-wolves to attack Americans.

In my book, I describe how, right after Sayyid Nosair murdered Meir Kahane in 1990, the first impulse of the NYPD’s chief of detectives was to portray him as a lone, crazed lunatic who was certainly not part of a broader conspiracy and whose religious beliefs were irrelevant — and, as their public statements at the time demonstrate, the FBI went right along publicly with that theory.

Of course it was idiotic for Napolitano to say Hasan’s was not an act of terrorism and that there are no indications Mutallab is part of a larger terrorist conspiracy. Already, evidence to the contrary is overwhelming, on both scores.  But this is the same error we’ve been making for 20 years. We don’t want to come to grips with the fact that something we can’t control — something we can only fight or surrender to — is causing Muslims to terrorize us.  So we pretend the something and the terrorism don’t exist.

FP: It appears that former Gitmo detainees released in 2007 may be behind this latest terror effort. The significance?

McCarthy: Well, we plainly should not have been releasing jihadist detainees all along, and this obsession to shutter Gitmo is sheer madness. Common sense says that, if even the Obama administration realizes it would be problematic to release the last 200 of them, these remnants must be a very serious national security threat.  And yet, less than two weeks ago, we shipped another half-dozen back to Yemen — as a harbinger for what the administration hoped would be the return of dozens more (Yemenis account for about 90 of the remaining 198 or so detainees).  That’s nuts.

The Yemeni government, while it periodically feigns friendship with the U.S., makes common cause with Qaeda jihadists — using them to help fight Shiite insurgents.  The government has a history of releasing and allowing the escape from custody of anti-American terrorists.  Sending them to Yemen — as well as to Afghanistan and Somaliland, as we’ve taken to doing — is like sending them right back to bin Laden.

The only thing possibly more absurd is the delusion that we can move them away from jihadism by sending them to a Wahhabist re-education course run by the Saudis, who have spent billions of dollars and half a century propagating the ideology that fuels Sunni terrorism.

FP: Why was Abdul Mutallab able to board Flight 253? What needs to be done to prevent such a person from boarding another flight? Is our administration capable of getting that done?

McCarthy: He was able to board the flight due to a series of small but mind-boggling failures which take place in the context of a huge conceptual blunder. For now, let me just address the small failures:

They include issuing him a multiple-entry visa without any investigation to speak of; allowing him to begin his trip in Nigeria — a notoriously weak link in airport security — and then connect in Amsterdam without significant, invasive search and inquiry; and, of couse, failing to make sure the information provided by Mutallab’s father to the State Department made its way through all the proper intelligence channels and ultimately the no-fly list.

In the post-9/11 reform craze, critics (myself included) argued that you don’t make security and communication better by creating additional bureaucracies (e.g., the National Intelligence Directorate) and moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic so government can appear to be doing something (e.g., the Department of Homeland Security).

To this day, we haven’t married up the various databases or even coordinated immigration tracking so we can monitor what aliens are in the country and whether they are actually engaged in the purpose for which they claimed to be coming here.  Addressing those rubber-meets-the-road tasks would be a far bigger advance for national security than growing government.

And no, I don’t think this administration has the inclination to get that done, far from it.

FP: What is the greatest failure on our side in all of this? What upsets and worries you most?

McCarthy: The much bigger problem is the failure to come to terms with the fact that we are being targeted by Islamic militants whose ideology — if not their methods — are shared by a broad mainstream of the world’s Muslims. Further, we lack the conviction and confidence that our way of life — the commitment to individual liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, equality of opportunity — is superior and worth defending on that basis.

We should unapologetically take note of the fact that we are being targeted for mass-murder attacks by Muslim terrorists and for gradual extinction by Islamist theorists (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yusuf Qaradawi).  That should inform our foreign policy and our immigration policy.

Regimes such as the Saudi government that support the Muslim Brotherhood and its “voluntary apartheid” strategy for destroying the West are our enemies, not our allies.  And the Constitution is not a suicide pact:  it does not require us to permit entry into our country, or maintain within our country, aliens who are not committed to the principles that are the backbone of our way of life. If you’re an alien who thinks sharia should be the law of the United States, you’re entitled to that viewpoint, but you’re wrong and we don’t need to have you here.

There’s no “marketplace of ideas” justification for making the country a safe-haven and breeding ground for people who want to destroy it.

FP: Andrew C. McCarthy, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Alide Forstmanis, the chair of Tribute to Liberty, a new organization based in Toronto that seeks to have a memorial built in Ottawa to the Victims of Communist Crimes, by November 2010.

FP: Alide Forstmanis, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Forstmanis: Thank you, I am grateful to FPM for this opportunity to inform its readers about Tribute to Liberty.

FP: Tell us about this memorial you are planning.

Forstmanis: We want a memorial built in our nation’s capital Ottawa to the victims of communism, a commemoration to the more than 100 million who were subject to the denial of their fundamental rights and freedoms, to torture, to deprivation, and to murder.

We are doing our utmost to have it ready next year. You might ask, why the rush? It took 15 years to complete a similar monument in Washington DC. The answer is very practical: we do not have those years available here. The fact is that many of the Eastern European victims of communism have passed on and those who are still alive are getting very old. We would like as many as possible of them to have a chance to see the monument.  The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in November has re-inspired our cause.

FP: What is your own personal background that explains your dedication to this issue?

Forstmanis: Both my parents are Latvian, but I was lucky to grow up in Sweden. Almost all of our relatives stayed in Latvia and some were also sent to Siberia. Living in Sweden I envied those that had cousins or other relatives living nearby, as we were just the four of us – my parents, my brother and me. I missed growing up with an extended family. Although that family lived on the other side of the Baltic Sea, only about 150 km away, it seemed very far, one could really sense a wall. I remember my parents listening to “Voice of America” and the other news sources that were being jammed by the Soviets – so our relatives in Latvia wouldn’t hear them. Our correspondence with Latvia was censured by the Soviets, and telephone calls were complicated to make, due to Soviet technical backwardness.  In sum, communication was difficult.

For us in Sweden, very little, if anything was taught in the Swedish schools about the Baltic States, and to us it seemed as if to Sweden and the rest of the world these states hadn’t ever existed. Balts where often called “Russians”. And if you were not a Swedish citizen you were a “stateless Soviet Russian” citizen, and needed a visa to be able to travel internationally.

These experiences left me with a strong sense of my Latvian roots, and with a feeling of urgency to respond to what was going on. I then became involved in the Latvian communities in the various places I lived – Sweden, the UK, Germany and Canada – and I have seen the passion and conviction the survivors, including my parents, have had and the need they felt to inform the world about communism’s evils. The least I can do is try to get their suffering recognized here in Canada.

FP: What is the importance of monuments such as these?

Forstmanis: A monument like this will be a recognition by Canada of the determination of millions to come to a country like ours that celebrates liberty and opposes the oppression of totalitarian communism. This recognition will also help us remember the suffering that many of those Canadians endured, as well as the suffering of the millions who couldn’t come, and of the many millions that perished in the Gulag. Further it is also important for Canada’s future generations, to understand different Canadians’ backgrounds and history and bring a better understanding of each other. This monument will hopefully generate curiosity about communist crimes and through studies teach Canadians to be aware of and vigilant about them, and of the capacity for such evil in the world when our liberties are not protected.

FP: Why a memorial in Canada?

Forstmanis: According to 2006 Census almost 9 million of Canada’s 33 million inhabitants come from either former or current communist led countries. This is close to a third of the Canadian population. That’s an incredible number of people who can establish some kind of personal connection to lives under communist regimes. By building this memorial, Canada will show that it recognizes these connections. It will also underscore the seriousness with which we take our freedoms, our democracy, and the rule of law we are privileged to have.

FP: Why do you think there is so much resistance in our society to talking/educating about the crimes of Communism?

Forstmanis: The resistance has been there for a long time. Make no mistake: communist regimes have consistently been imperialistic, genocidal, brutal, murderous, aggressive, discriminatory, destructive, oppressive, cynical – there is no end to the negative descriptors that can be used. This has frightened both governments and ordinary citizens.

Many families in the west did not dare talk openly about their families in their homelands, because it could hurt them there. Fear is a great and often very understandable motivator. In addition, communist propaganda machines like that of the former Soviet Union have been incredibly efficient around the world at hiding the evils of communism and spreading myths about the good life offered under it.  Many in the west bought this rhetoric – naivety, duplicity, ignorance – who knows the reasons. Many still refuse to acknowledge the truth about communism. And then there are those that say such extreme oppression is dead and that these crimes happened a long time ago so why dwell on them.

Luckily, in the last 20 years, archives have opened up and truths have been revealed. We must continue to bring this evidence to light however, to educate people about the monumental human suffering of the last century.

FP: How do you explain this monstrous evil of communism and how it has manifested itself — and continues to manifest itself? And even after massacring more than a hundred million people and causing unspeakable pain and suffering to millions of others, there are still myriads of believers. What are your thoughts on this phenomenon?

Forstmanis: Communism has existed for well over a century as an ideology and still maintains significant power in some countries. Ideologies can keep hold for a very long time.   But many wonder why communism – which was in part the inspiration for Nazism, managed to survive its brutal offspring for so long.   I think part of the reason was that the West had to make the communists our allies in the Second World War.   This was a necessary evil at the time, but the result was that Stalin emerged largely unscathed from public criticism in the West.   This despite his horrific abuses – the Holodomor genocide of Ukrainians, the Katyn slaughter of Poland’s senior officer ranks and intellectuals, to name just a couple.

Add to that the naive romanticism associated with communists – the legacy of the fight in the Spanish civil war against the fascists, the popular portrayal of Castro and Che Guevera, the popular portrayal of Mao (despite incredible slaughter) and you see a kind of branding that is extraordinarily positive. Finally, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, things begin to change, but people who had witnessed many of the worst horrors were older, and all were so focused on addressing economic anarchy that there simply wasn’t the kind of attention paid to the crimes of communism that there might have been otherwise.

There was no Nuremburg, there was no Truth and Reconciliation commission – that kind of public engagement still needs to occur. But when so many were caught up in the romanticism and are embarrassed by having to confront the realities, it makes it very hard to contemplate such engagement. After all, George Bernard Shaw himself denied the Ukrainian Holodomor – saying no famine was occurring.   So did New York Time journalist Walter Duranty. Such high profile endorsements are hard to ever shake free.

And then, recognize the continuing power of communism.   Speak to Chinese-Canadians about the fear – the still pervasive fear – about speaking out, when you have family and friends back home. Cuban Canadians understand it, so do Vietnamese, and Koreans and Tibetans. East Europeans understand constant fear of reprimand and reprisal – they all lived it.

So all of these factors combine to create an atmosphere where there is incredible ignorance. Here in Ontario the Ministry of Education decided to include teachings of genocide into its high school curriculum. They chose to include the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, ignoring the genocides communism has committed.

But things are starting to change. For example, in Sweden, the alliance government elected in 2006 is concerned about it. The Swedish minister of education has included teachings about communist crimes in his government declaration. This was done because a poll result a few years ago showed that only 10% of people aged ~15-25 knew about the Gulag.

I believe Hollywood has done a tremendous job in exposing and teaching about the Holocaust and its victims. It is time for Hollywood to make a few movies about life in the Gulag. It’s my understanding that there has been talk about making a film about the poisoned ex Soviet spy in London UK, however for some reason that production has come to a standstill, and the film might not be completed. I mentioned Shaw before.  Think about how many public figures were enamored with communism – the legacy of that remains hard to shake, and people are inclined to say oh why don’t we just move on. And today, when every one wants more trade with China, criticizing communism has economic consequences that many are afraid to deal with.

FP: Is there any opposition to your efforts? The Left must not be very supportive.

Forstmanis: We recently received approval from the National Capital Commission of both projects for the concept and its name. To our original title “Memorial to the Victims of Communism” we added the adjective Totalitarian, in response to an early concern by NCC officials that the title might target legitimate political views in support of a communist party. With this, the NCC officials took the proposal forward to their decision-making body for a monument.   That body agreed to the project in principle but still found objection to the revised name, arguing that it might offend communists, that it was not politically correct, and that it should mark all forms of oppression.

Needless to say this sparked derision when it got out. The media had a field day with it, and we think the NCC suddenly recognized how absurd their complaints were.   I don’t bear malice towards them: they like many others were oblivious – I go back to my earlier point about ignorance. We were able to convince the NCC that the scope and scale of abuse by communism – directly and indirectly against Canadians – was deserving of public memorial.   We agreed to an amended title of “Memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism; Canada, A Land of Refuge”.

We have not encountered much other resistance. I would note that we have written endorsements from Members of Parliament in the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the New Democratic Party. The Communist Party of Canada has written a letter to NCC asking them to reverse their decision, but this letter itself has sparked responses already – including a recent letter from the Vietnamese community. I can not imagine NCC reversing its decision.   When you think that approximately 25% of Canadians trace connections to countries currently or formerly under the fist of communism it is hard to imagine this memorial being rejected now.

FP: What do you hope the monument will help achieve?

Forstmanis: I hope it will give an incentive to people to explore and learn about communism. To see it for what it was and still is. It supposedly died 20 years ago for the West, although ByeloRussians will tell you that isn’t the case yet. And certainly its remaining outposts – particularly China – are not to be treated as of little consequence. There are several lessons I think.

First, that this was an extraordinarily evil ideology that took hold of incredibly large parts of the world and subjugated – and still subjugates – hundreds of millions to its oppression. People need to know this history and this reality – it is a part of knowing what we are and where we come from.

Second, the excesses of communist authority can exist under another name: the undermining of democratic processes by various regimes around the world – in Russia, in the middle east, in Latin America – looks awfully like communism by another name. By understanding communism and its terrible affects better, we are better able to address other oppressive regimes.

Third, I would like this monument to be a recognition for the many, many refugees from communist countries that arrived in Canada. It acknowledges and memorializes what they endured, and what those who could not follow them endured.

And fourth, and related to that last point, I would like the monument to help us remember that Canada is a land of liberty. Our great country took people in from around the world, and still does, because it believes in the fundamental dignity and worth of every individual. This liberty is to be vigilantly guarded– memorials like this can help us do that. It is important every new generation gets informed so that past mistakes are not repeated.

FP: Alide Forstmanis, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Frontpage encourages all of our readers to visit Tribute to Liberty.

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[To get the whole story on why the Left ferociously opposes a true account of, and final verdict on, communism's crimes, read Jamie Glazov’s new book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.]

FP: Ines Laufer, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

In our last discussion, we focused on how Germany has exposed a young girl to female genital mutilation and how Germany, and Europe in general, is not protecting young girls from this barbaric crime.

Today I would like to talk to you about a new campaign you have started. Tell us about it.

Laufer: Thanks Jamie.

Our research brought to light that to up to 400,000 sponsored girls who are marketed by the big development organizations PLAN International, World Vision, Kindernothilfe and ChildFund do not receive protection from female genital mutilation. We have started a new campaign, at sponsoredgirl.com, to protect the girls from female genital mutilation. We invite your readers to come join us.

These children are marketed in order to acquire money from trustful donors. The donors pay about 30 Euros per month – which means 360 Euros per year, in the belief that the organizations do all they can for providing a better life — including health for the sponsored children. PLAN International for instance, acquires about 72 million Euros every year, just by marketing the 240,000 concerned girls.

But asked about female genital mutilation on the sponsored girls, these organizations openly and publicly claim that demanding the safe protection of the girls would be against their approaches and against their policy.

So, by failing to demand, to stipulate and to control the protection of the sponsored girls from FGM, the organizations must be considered complicit in every single crime perpetrated against a little girl in this regard.

We are The Alliance for Protection of Girls from Female Genital Mutilation. We consider this simply scandalous and unacceptable. It is a crime against the girls and also a system of defrauding the donors.

That’s why we launched this campaign. It is suited to go the largest step forward in the direction of an end of FGM since the beginning of the fight against these practices. It could lead to true and immediate protection of a few million girls.

FP: Ok, what concretely does the campaign demand?

Laufer: It demands that all organizations who work with the sponsored-child-system, should make sure that all girls in their projects – in the relevant regions – are safely protected from violence like female genital mutilation.

This demand is based on the cognition that it is not only possible but very easy to achieve that goal – and even more: It does not cost any money.

It is just about the change of the attitude, approach and policy of the organisations. We call for:

[1] The stipulation of the safety and protection from FGM of the sponsored girls in the preconditions for support for the communities – and regular check ups.

[2] A careful selection of the project partners, which means that only those communities that support children’s rights will be targets of help. This means an investment of donations in the most economic and effective way.

[3] The complete solution – the two steps to safe protection – you find here.

FP: How do the mentioned organizations react to your activism on behalf of the victims of FGM?

Laufer: To be honest, Jamie, they all react quite similar so far, with a mixture of ostrich behavior (putting their heads into the sand) and helpless efforts to defend their current policy of tolerating and accepting the mutilations of thousands of sponsored girls.

But in fact, they deliver us one proof after the other that confirms how much this campaign is needed – how important it is and that it will have a deep impact to truly stop FGM.

To the people who sign and send the petition letters, they send standard-answers which make clear that they did not even read or understand what we demand. They still refuse to admit that they are fully responsible for every single mutilated girl in their projects because of their failure to implement the adequate protection measures. And they do not have any scruple to simply tell tales.

We can sum it up as following: There is much ignorance and denial and no adequate seriousness or goodwill to even understand what should be changed and how.

But I am sure this will change soon.

Only, it doesn’t lie in our hands anymore. Now, the world public – every person who feels concerned and disturbed by the knowledge that every day, thousands of little girls are mutilated by FGM – is asked to help the campaign.

FP: What exactly can people do to help the campaign? Is it about money and donations?

Laufer: No, Jamie – it is absolutely not about money or donations. It is about something much more important: It’s about the power of everyone’s voice. By investing exactly two minutes of time and a few clicks, everyone can help – while comfortably sitting in front of the computer. Every reader can help free this world from the nightmare of female genital mutilation. It has never been so easy.

At the www.sponsoredgirl.com website, you find four prepared letters, addressed to PLAN International World Vision, Kindernothilfe and ChildFund, see here.

Every person who signs and sends the letters – and who even steps back from current sponsorship-contracts, enlarges the pressure on the organizations. And this helps us to strengthen our efforts in demanding them to consequently protect the children.

That’s why: Please sign the letters and send them to your friends that they can do it too.

FP: So how has the campaign been going?

Laufer: Well, let me tell you this. In the last ten days, more than 750 letters have been sent to the organizations already. But we would like to achieve at least 5,000 to put the campaign at the next level of public pressure.

FP: Ines Laufer, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview. I encourage all of our readers who want to help stop this genocide against girls to go to www.sponsoredgirl.com.