[RAICES] Say No To Pipes!

[thoughtcage .]

Say No To Pipes!

Stop the Nomination of Daniel Pipes to the US Institute
of Peace (USIP)

Demand Full Hearings of the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions.

Take Action Now!

http://www.actsofconscience.net/Pipes/stopthenomination
.html

Background: On April 2, 2003 the White House officially
nominated right-wing extremist Daniel Pipes to the
Board of Directors of the United States Institute of
Peace (USIP), and the nomination has been referred to
the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and
Pensions for approval. As the Washington Post has
written, when many first heard the news they thought it
was a joke. Pipes, perhaps best-known recently for
launching "Campus Watch", a surveillance network and
website reminiscent of the McCarthy era, has not only
been widely criticized as a racist, particularly with
respect to Arabs and Muslims, but noted for advocating
the use of force and fear rather than negotiation as
the means of choice for conflict resolution.

With Campus Watch, "a showcase for the signature
distortions on which Pipes has built his twenty-five-
year career..Pipes and supporters have been able to
expand their attacks into a virtually limitless
campaign of harassment and intimidation"

"I know," writes Yale Professor of History, Glenda
Gilmore in a recent article,"because I have been
branded a traitor. I wrote an op ed in the Yale Daily
News and received death threats and rape
wishes...Within a month, Daniel Pipes had reached
millions of people around the world." Gilmore and
Columbia History Professor Eric Foner together have
characterized this in kind with the most "shameful
anomalies in the history of civil liberties".

When Jim Sleeper, who also teaches ethics and political
science at Yale warned of the "neo-Stalinism wafting
up" from these activities he, too, found himself on the
pages of Campus Watch, and subject to a national smear
campaign. Similar stories from other campuses are easy
to find.

In addition, taken by many to be a virulent racist, and
often labeled as a "’Muslim-basher and
‘Islamophobe’"(6), Pipes, who has written in the
National Review that "Western...societies are
unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned
peoples...maintaining different standards of hygiene"
(1) and that there is "a well-established tradition of
American blacks who convert to Islam turning against
their country" (7) has claimed that "up to 15% of
Muslims are ‘potential killers’" (8).

In a recent interview on a nationally syndicated radio
show he refused to condemn the internment of Japanese-
Americans during World War II (8). Understandably, the
nomination has been strenuously opposed by leading
Arab-American groups such as the American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee (more here) particularly on
the grounds of Pipes’ racism, violent views of conflict
resolution, and campaign of intimidation and
distortion.

His own personal website is run by an Israeli settler
and Pipes, who opposes negotiations with the
Palestinians, is a regular contributor to Gamla, "an
organization founded by former Israeli military
officers and settlers that endorses the ethnic
cleansing of every Palestinian as "the only possible
solution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict"(1). Recently
the Washington Post (9) and the Dallas Morning News
(10) have come out against the nomination.

Urgent Call for Action: The Say No to Pipes Campaign is
a grassroots effort to derail the nomination of Daniel
Pipes. Time is limited. On best information the
nomination will not be considered before May 9, 2003,
and perhaps not for some time after that, but it could
happen very fast. Uncontroversial nominations to the
USIP are typically approved without public debate or
hearings. This cannot happen with this disastrous
nomination.

Below is a letter which will be sent both
electronically and by courier (delivery confirmation
required) to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions, Senators Judd Gregg (R), and Edward Kennedy
(D) respectively, with electronic and hard copies to
every member of the Committee (see members here), the
Majority and Minority Staff Directors and Press
Secretaries as well as members of the press. PLEASE
SIGN THIS LETTER, and then forward the link on to as
many people as you can. The "waft" of racism, neo-
McCarthyism, or neo-Stalinism, has already gotten way
too strong. Let's stop this nomination now.

THE LETTER

Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions Committee United
States Senate 428 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-6300

Re: Nomination of Daniel Pipes to the Board of
Directors of the United States Institute of Peace
(USIP)

Dear Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee,

As American citizens we are deeply concerned about the
nomination of Daniel Pipes to the Board of Directors of
the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). His views
are widely held to be deeply racist, and many,
including those from our most prestigious universities,
believe he is actively engaged in an attempt to revive
the tactics of McCarthyism, a most shameful chapter in
our nation’s history, as a means of silencing free
speech. In addition, Mr. Pipes’ often stated views on
conflict resolution which favor the use of force and
fear over negotiations contradict the stated purpose of
the USIP whose mission statement is "to promote
international peace and the resolution of conflicts
among nations and peoples of the world without recourse
to violence." Finally, at a time when our government is
already dealing with feelings in much of the rest of
the world that it is anti-Arab or anti-Muslim, the fact
that Mr. Pipes is widely seen as a radical anti-Arab
propagandist, as the Washington Post has put it, "is
salt in the wound." We stand with people of all
backgrounds, ethnicities, and religious persuasions
who, in the interest of the most cherished principles
of our democracy, condemn this nomination. We trust
that, as the Washington Post has also put it,"if the
White House does not rescind the nomination", the
Committee will "have the good sense to turn it down."
However, if for any reason the Committee has doubts
about rejecting the nomination, then we urge it
respectfully, in the strongest posssible terms, to hold
full and public hearings so that the nominee's
extremist views and practices may be brought out in the
light of day in front of the American people. Such an
extreme and completely inexplicable nomination cannot
be allowed to be rushed through to approval without a
chance for the American public to be heard. In our
view, however, the widely known facts are way more than
sufficient to warrant immediate rejection of the
nomination without any further examination and we hope
the Committee will do so.

Respectfully,

SIGN THE LETTER Privacy Statement: When signing the
letter you will be asked for your email address. Email
addresses will not be included with the list of
signatories to the letter and will not be given out to
any other third parties either. Only signatures from
vaild email boxes sent by the boxholders can be
counted. Contact: Say No To Pipes Campaign
http://www.actsofconscience.net/Pipes/stopthenomination
.html

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