"Obsession,' the fear-mongering movie produced by a Canadian-Israeli that suggests that Islam is trying to defeat the west and it's 1938 all over again, costs $14.95 from its website. But it is being distributed free in copies of the New York Times, as an insert paid for by the Clarion Fund, ye olde shadowy front. Says the Charlotte News and Observer, which has also distributed the film:
The DVD has already been inserted into copies of The New York Times
distributed in midwestern states. This weekend and next, it is slated
to be distributed in many newspapers in Ohio, Michigan, Florida,
Pennsylvania and Colorado, in addition to North Carolina.
Some have wondered if the distribution is intended to influence voters in swing states for this year's presidential election.
The
Clarion Fund refused to disclose its board of directors or donors. New
York state documents list Eli David Greenberg, a 49-year-old lawyer
with the firm of Freeman and Hertz, as the registered agent for the
Clarion Fund.
Greenberg is a registered Democrat and has donated
money to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. He did not return
phone calls.
Alan Dershowitz is in the film, so are Steven Emerson and Walid Shoebat. And as in all these efforts, the film and its backers conflate Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel with the U.S. problem with Muslim terrorists. Dailykos says the giveaway is a scare tactic aimed at the swing voters. It is remarkably similar to this effort by the Republican Jewish Coalition saying that voting for Obama is like voting for the next holocaust. Where is Obama? He is incapable of attacking the neoconservatives. (And here's the Times coverage of Obsession from a year back, suggesting that the film fails to distinguish between radical Islam and Islam generally, and saying it was being distributed by a pro-Israel network.)
