Tuesday, August 30, 2011

ZAP! Ann Barnhart is a straight shooter. She's right, of course.
"...Here is the next DEMAND that MUST be made of politicians. The United Nations is a criminal organization. It is an evil mafia. Straight up. It has no legitimacy and serves no good purpose whatsoever. Not only that, but the U.N. is actively engaged in sedition against the United States and its constitution via the Small Arms Treaty, Agenda 21, and the "Resolution Against Religious Defamation", which is Sharia Law, among other things. The U.N. is also embezzling and redistributing U.S. tax dollars to criminal and corrupt regimes, many of which are engaged in war, both overt and covert, against the United States, and in genocides against their own people. The U.N. is also using the United States military as its de facto mercenary force (see Libya and Yemen). This MUST stop..."
Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage
Or perhaps the UN could benefit from relocating to a more centrally located spot with fewer parking problems and shorter journeys for most of the members. Much desirable real estate would be freed up in NY . Nouakchot might be a fine substitute. Any minor drawbacks such as six months of dust storms could be easily handled by doubling up on the car air filter budget.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

August 19, 2011
Promoting Islam at Lackland Air Force Base
Timothy Furnish, PhD
On August 7, 2011, in a chapel converted to a mosque on Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, the U.S. government officially became a sponsor of the Mahdi. No, not Barack Husein Obama, but a much more serious and overt candidate: Adnan Oktar, a.k.a. “Harun Yahya,” the Turkish Creationist whose followers consider him the “rightly-guided one” of Islamic tradition, expected to come before the end of time to make the entire world Muslim. 
 Mahdism was my original area of academic specialization within Islamic history (about which I wrote my doctoral dissertation, first book and numerous articles, and which I track via this website); I interviewed Oktar in Istanbul a few years ago; and, finally, I spent time in the military, both enlisted and commissioned, the latter training to be a chaplain. So I have some familiarity with all aspects of this troubling story, which came to my attention early on 14 August 2011 via photos posted to my Facebook page by contacts within Oktar’s organization.  I contacted the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) at Lackland and, in summary, was told the following: that such “religious education” classes are provided every weekend from “other” faith perspectives (Latter Day Saints, Buddhists, Pentecostals) besides the main ones (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox); that these are entirely voluntary; that the “program chaplain …was aware of and approved of the speaker.”
 
The speaker in question was from Oktar’s organization , an Islamic Creationist one, which is very inimical to Darwinian evolution as well as a strong proponent of Islamic Mahdist da`wah (“propaganda” or “evangelism”). From Istanbul Oktar presides over a publishing and Internet franchise dealing in a double-sided coin of Islamic anti-Darwinism and belief in the imminent arrival, if not presence already, of the Islamic deliverer—most likely in the guise of Oktar himself. The Harun Yahya movement resembles that of fellow Turk Fethullah Gülen, insofar as both spring from a neo-Ottoman Sufism with Mahdist overtones. But the latter, with his global chain of Islamic charter schools, is taken more seriously and viewed by many in the U.S. as an ideological threat.  The fact that Gülen lives in exile in the U.S. has so far provided him a higher profile here. But Oktar and his people, while heretofore playing Avis to Gülen’s Hertz, are definitely trying harder—and succeeding even where Gülen’s people have so far feared to tread: onto the U.S. Air Force’s only basic training installation.
 

 
According to both my sources--Oktar’s organization and the Public Affairs Office (PAO) at Lackland—on the first Sunday in August a representative of Harun Yahya was allowed, following an invitation from the Muslim chaplain at Lackland, Captain Sharior Rahman, to present two classes: a morning one on “The Collapse of Darwinism and the Fact of Creation” and an evening one covering “Miracles in the Qur’an.” It would appear that the morning class was attended solely by basic trainees, as the photo above shows (note the screen, which says “The Collapse of Evolution and the Fact of Creation”).
 
The Turkish Muslim group further claims about the evening class (of which I have no pictures) that “attendants were high rank officials [sic]: sergeants, master sergeants and captains. The talks were very well received and appreciated and the attendants were gifted the Quran [sic] (emphasis added). The captain presented a special medal as the token of appreciation to Mr Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya).” “The captain” would be, presumably, Chaplain Rahman—which brings up its own troubling issues, as I shall examine below.
 
Another picture shows a dozen female trainees, sitting separately from the males—whether out of military, or Islamic, mandate is unclear:
 

 
 A wider shot of the Mahdist group’s Islamic Creationism class is this one:
 

 
And at the top of this article, we see Adnan Oktar himself on screen, providing instruction.  
 
As I said, I’ve interviewed Oktar and some of his supporters, read his writings and corresponded with members of his organization for several years. I think they are sincere, well-meaning and peaceful Muslims, whose view of the Mahdi as a pacific figure runs counter to that of him among the Sunni jihadists, as well as the ruling clerical clique in Iran—both of which see the Mahdi as a global warlord who will come to earth not to bring peace, but a bloody sword. But the degree to which Oktar and his people hold moderate Muslim positions is not the issue. Rather, the issues are as follows:
 
1)    The whole question of something being “voluntary” in basic training is debatable.  As one online basic training survival site says, “In the military, there will ALWAYS be someone telling you what to do, when to do it, and how to do it -- and you've got to do it…. Military boot camp is like nothing you've ever experienced. However, the rigid routine and absolute control over every aspect of your life is several times worse than normal military duty -- on purpose. It's the job of the Training Instructors (T.I.'s) and Drill Instructors (D.I.'s) to…adjust your attitude to a military way of thinking (self-discipline, sacrifice, loyalty, obedience)….” All it would take for these “voluntary” Sunday morning classes to become rather more compulsory would be for a T.I. to suggest that anyone not attending Christian chapel services find something productive to do—or spend extra time shining brass or doing KP (kitchen patrol) duty while their mates are at church. Given such a choice, agnostic trainees might very well opt for the Islam classes.
 
2)    And these were not simply general classes on Islam provided by a mainstream Sunni group; rather, they were sect- or cult-specific classes on highly charged topics.    Oktar’s book “Miracles of the Qur’an,” no doubt used as the basis for that lecture, is a long proselytizing work purporting to explain how the Qur’an is the word of God. His works “The Collapse of Evolution” and “The Fact of Creation” are stridently anti-Darwinian evolution. But both these salients are simply gateways, for Harun Yahya, no doubt leavened with references to the group’s most important teaching: the centrality of the Mahdi to human history. Mahdism is a controversial topic within Islam, and many Muslims consider Oktar to be a charismatic cult leader—even heretic. Even allowing such a contentious Islamic group to teach other Muslims on a US military installation would be problematic, analogous to bringing followers of a heterodox Christian like Perry Stone, or a very controversial one like John Hagee, to lecture on to Christian trainees. Permitting them to teach non-Muslims—in effect, to proselytize—is simply beyond the pale. 
 
3)    This is the crux of the issue: According to the Lackland PAO, not only are such classes as this important to upholding First Amendment rights of military personnel, they are necessary: “if we did not allow trainees to attend the services or religious classes of their choice,” their religious rights would be violated. But this is absurd. When I attended Army chaplain’s school at Ft. Jackson, we were taught that providing First Amendment rights for troops meant that, for example, if you had three Buddhist soldiers and no Buddhist chaplain, you could scour the local village for a Buddhist priest and ask him to come minister to them weekly—it did NOT mean that a Buddhist monk could be invited onto base and allowed to, in effect, recruit among non-Buddhist personnel. The Air Force, at least at Lackland, is thus allowing Islamic proselytizing among non-Muslim Air Force trainees (and possibly higher ranking permanent party). 
 
4)    The Lackland basic training command seems to have deferred to the Muslim Chaplain, Rahman, on this issue—and the PAO told me as much. I have no desire to cast aspersions on Chaplain Rahman, for I have never met him and know little about him. But if a non-mainstream group like Oktar’s can gain entrée so easily to a major US military installation simply on the Muslim chaplain’s advice, what’s to prevent another Muslim military chaplain in this, or another, branch of service from signing off on Hizb al-Tahrir’s preaching their plans for peacefully resurrecting the caliphate or Tablighi Jama’at from inculcating trainees with ideal Islamic piety and the need for shari`ah?  Both HT and TJ are non-jihadist and operate (at least in this country) via Islamic da`wah (“missionary work”), not terrorism. But should the U.S. military really have such a coarse vetting net—based on this episode—that it could very readily allow these, or similar, groups to slip through and disseminate their ideas to some of the most impressionable members of our military?
 
5)    Where is the inimitable Mikey Weinstein on this issue? The anti-Christian fulminations of him and his group, the Orwellian-named “Military Religious Freedom Foundation,” just recently intimidated the command at Vandenberg Air Force base into dropping just war classes for officers because they dared include the Bible. One would think this case would set him salivating. But Mr. Weinstein seems to view Christianity as the only First Amendment threat to our military, alas.  What would be his response if a Christian group were to give out Bibles to non-Christians, as Oktar’s Muslim representative gave Qur’ans to non-Muslims? Mikey would be calling for the unit commander and probably the entire chain-of-command to be crucified.
 
I first learned Arabic in the mid-1980s at the Defense Language Institute, and I have been studying Middle Eastern and African Islamic history for two decades. I have no problems with Muslims attempting to spread their faith peacefully in this country, nor even with our military service members learning about Islam as an important adjunct to the global struggle in which we are engaged. What I do have a problem with—as an American, a veteran, a Christian and an Islamic expert—is Islamic groups being given access to young, impressionable basic trainees under the spurious guise of the First Amendment. 
 
As it is, Lackland Air Force base is in the business of promoting Islam in general, and the Mahdi in particular, over the faith of the vast majority of military personnel (73% of Air Force enlisted are Christian; 0.2% are Muslim).  And that should be unacceptable to all Americans. 
 
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Timothy R. Furnish is a conservative Christian with a PhD in Islamic history, a US Army veteran, and a published author of one book and numerous articles in  venues such as The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, The Lutheran Witness  and History News Network (HNN).  His website is www.mahdiwatch.org and he also blogs on HNN as Occidental Jihadist.
 
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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

So bored with the same old green beans with shallots that I goggle green bean salad and came upon this treasure of healthy plain good old food recipes and made this for tonight when the hunter gatherer gets home.

green bean salad with fried almonds | smitten kitchen

Friday, August 12, 2011

Mark Steyn: Lessons for us from London in flames | london, want, book - Opinion - The Orange County Register

Mark Steyn:
"...Britons are beginning to realize that the remote desert island of "Lord Of The Flies" is, in fact, located just off the coast of Europe in the northeast Atlantic. Within two generations of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, a significant proportion of the once-free British people entrusted themselves to social rewiring by liberal compassionate Big Government and thereby rendered themselves paralytic and unemployable save for nonspeaking parts in "Rise of The Planet Of The Apes." And even that would likely be too much like hard work..."

Mark Steyn: Lessons for us from London in flames | london, want, book - Opinion - The Orange County Register

WalidShoebat.com - The Plight of Assyrian Christians (Part 3)

WalidShoebat.com - The Plight of Assyrian Christians (Part 3)

WalidShoebat.com - The Plight of Assyrian Christians (Part 2)

WalidShoebat.com - The Plight of Assyrian Christians (Part 2)

Thursday, August 11, 2011

WalidShoebat.com - The Plight of Assyrian Christians (Part 1)

"...Over one million Iraqi Christians displaced under the American occupation of Iraq. This is a disgrace and tarnish on our country. The persecution of Christians has been tens times worse under US jurisdiction than under Saddam Hussein. The Politicians and Christian leaders in USA are silent, Shame upon them! It is time for American Christians to take a stand and stop this appeasement of Islam..."


WalidShoebat.com - The Plight of Assyrian Christians (Part 1)

Who Lost the Middle Class? by Fred Siegel - City Journal

"...New York is the picture of what the Tea Party fears for the country at large. In the 1970s, liberal mandarins seized the high ground of American institutions in the name of managing social, racial, gender, and environmental justice on behalf of the disadvantaged. Their job, as they saw it, was to protect minorities from the depredations of middle-class mores. In the wake of the Aquarian age, the U.S. developed the first mass upper-middle class in the history of the world. These well-to-do, often politically connected professionals—including the increasingly intertwined wealthy of Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley—espoused what might be called gentry liberalism, a creed according to which the middle classes had to be punished for their racism, sexism, and excess consumption..."

Who Lost the Middle Class? by Fred Siegel - City Journal

Felonious Munk Presents: Stop It B! OBAMA PAY YOUR &*%$#% BILLS - YouTube

Felonious Munk Presents: Stop It B! OBAMA PAY YOUR &*%$#% BILLS - YouTube
Major Resource: The Shadow Party, by David Horowitz and Richard Poe (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2006), pp, 106-128.

"First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair), the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare -- about 8 million, at the time -- probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls." Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."

Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all -- working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act.

This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. The three met in January 1966, at a radical organizers' meeting in Syracuse, New York called the “Poor People's War Council on Poverty.” Wiley listened to the Cloward-Piven plan with interest. That same month, he launched his own activist group, the Poverty Rights Action Center, headquartered in Washington DC. In a calculated show of militancy, he sported dashikis, jeans, battered shoes, and a newly grown Afro. Regarding the Cloward-Piven strategy, Wiley told one audience:

“[A] a lot of us have been hampered in our thinking about the potential here by our own middle-class backgrounds – and I think most activists basically come out of middle-class backgrounds – and were oriented toward people having to work, and that we have to get as many people as possible off the welfare rolls.... [However] I think that this [Cloward-Piven] strategy is going to catch on and be very important in the time ahead.”

After a series of mass marches and rallies by welfare recipients in June 1966, Wiley declared “the birth of a movement” – the Welfare Rights Movement. In the summer of 1967, he founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 1970, "There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests - and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones."

These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," wrote Sol Stern in the City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy."

The National Welfare Rights Organization pushed for a “guaranteed living income,” as prescribed by Cloward and Piven, which it defined, in 1968, as $5,500 per year for every American family with four children. The following year the NWRO raised its demand to $6,500. Though Wiley never made headway with his demand for a living income, the tens of billions of dollars in welfare entitlements that he and his followers managed to squeeze from state and local governments came very close to sinking the economy, just as Cloward and Piven had predicted.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven had given special attention to New York City, whose masses of urban poor, leftist intelligentsia and free-spending politicians rendered it uniquely vulnerable to the strategy they proposed. At the time, NYC welfare agencies were paying about $20 million per year in “special grants.” Cloward and Piven estimated that they could “multiply these expenditures tenfold or more,” draining an additional $180 million annually from the city coffers.

New York City's arch-liberal mayor John Lindsay, newly elected in November 1966, capitulated to Wiley's every demand. An appeaser by nature, Lindsay sought to calm racial tensions by taking “walking tours” through Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and other troubled areas of the city. This made for good photo-ops, but failed to mollify Wiley's cadres and the masses they mobilized, who wanted cash. “The violence of the [welfare rights] movement was frightening,” recalls Lindsay budget aid Charles Morris. Black militants laid siege to City Hall, bearing signs saying “No Money, No Peace.”

Lindsay answered these provocations with ever-more-generous programs of appeasement in the form of welfare dollars. New York's welfare rolls had been growing by 12% per year already before Lindsay took office. The rate jumped to 50% annually in 1966. During Lindsay's first term of office, welfare spending in New York City more than doubled, from $400 million to $1 billion annually. Outlays for the poor consumed 28% of the city's budget by 1970. “By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy,” Sol Stern wrote in the City Journal.

As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.

Crucial to Wiley's success was the cooperation of radical sympathizers inside the federal government, who supplied Wiley's movement with grants, training, and logistical assistance, channeled through federal War on Poverty programs such as VISTA's.

The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in "the end of welfare as we know it" -- the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements.

Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990s. As his drive for welfare reform gained momentum, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage. "This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a July 20, 1998 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."

In a January 2011 article in the Nation magazine, Frances Fox Piven would reflect upon the elements that had helped make the welfare-rights movement successful in the 1960s:

"[B]efore people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves 'mothers' instead of 'recipients,'"

In the same 2011 article, Piven noted that "protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands."

After the welfare-rights movement had run its course by the mid-1970s, Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "Voting Rights Movement," which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Cloward and Piven despised America's electoral system every bit as much as they despised its welfare system, and for much the same reason. They believed that welfare checks and voting rights were mere bones tossed to the poor to keep them docile. The poor did not need welfare checks and ballots, they argued. The poor needed revolution.

In their 1977 book, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, Cloward and Piven asserted that the “electoral process” actually served the interests of the ruling classes, providing a safety valve to drain away the anger of the poor. The authors wrote that “as long as lower-class groups abided by the norms governing the electoral–representative system, they would have little influence.… [I]t is usually when unrest among the lower classes breaks out of the confines of electoral procedures that the poor may have some influence,” as when poor people engage in “strikes,” “riots,” “crime,” “incendiarism,” “massive school truancy,” “worker absenteeism,” “rent defaults,” and other forms of “mass defiance” and “institutional disruption.”

In 1981, Cloward and Piven wrote that poor people lose power “when leaders try to turn movements into electoral organizations.” That is because the “capability of the poor” to effect change lies “in the vulnerability of societal institutions to disruption, and not in the susceptibility of these institutions to transformation through the votes of the poor.”

To advance their radical agenda, Cloward and Piven focused more intently on transforming the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. Because Democrats professed to represent the lower classes, many poor people believed they could get what they wanted by voting Democrat. Thus their energies would be channeled into useless “voter activity,” rather than strikes, riots, “incendiarism” and the like.

Ten years earlier, when Cloward and Piven determined that the welfare state was acting as a safety valve for the establishment, they resolved to destroy the welfare state. The method of destruction they chose was drawn from the teachings of Saul Alinsky: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” And so they did, challenging the welfare state to pay out every penny to every person theoretically entitled to it. Alinsky called this sort of tactic “mass jujitsu” – using “the strength of the enemy against itself. Now Cloward and Piven concluded that the Democratic Party was also acting as a safety valve for the establishment. Thus they would try to force Democrats to "live up to their own book of rules" -- i.e., if the Democrats say they represent the poor, let them prove it.

Cloward and Piven presented their plan in a December 1982 article titled, “A Movement Strategy to Transform the Democratic Party,” published in the left-wing journal Social Policy. They sought to do to the voting system what they had previously done to the welfare system. They would flood the polls with millions of new voters, drawn from the angry ranks of the underclass, all belligerent and the demanding their voting rights. The result would be a catastrophic disruption of America's electoral system, the authors predicted.

Cloward and Piven hoped that the flood of new voters would provoke a backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike, who would join forces to disenfranchise the unruly hordes, using such expedients as purging invalid voters from the rolls, imposing cumbersome registration procedures, stiffening residency requirements, and so forth. This voter-suppression campaign would spark “a political firestorm over democratic rights,” they wrote. Voting-rights activists would descend on America's election boards and polling stations much as George Wiley's welfare warriors had flooded social-services offices. Wrote Cloward and Piven:

“By staging rallies, demonstrations, and sit-ins … over every new restriction on registration procedures, a protest movement can dramatize the conflict.... Through conflict, the registration movement will convert registering and voting into meaningful acts of collective protest.”

The expected conflict would also expose the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party, which would be “disrupted and transformed,” the authors predicted. A new party would rise from the ashes of the old. Outwardly, it would preserve the forms and symbols of the old Democratic Party, but the new Democrats would be genuine partisans of the poor, dedicated to class struggle. This was the radical vision driving the Voting Rights Movement.

ACORN spearheaded this "voting rights" movement, which was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Also key to the movement were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.

All three of these organizations -- ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE -- set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which President Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. At the White House signing ceremony for this bill, both Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were in attendance. The new law eliminated many controls on voter fraud, making it easy for voters to register but difficult to determine the validity of new registrations. Under the new law, states were required to provide opportunities for voter registration to any person who showed up at a government office to renew a driver's license or to apply for welfare or unemployment benefits. “Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship,” notes Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his book, Stealing Elections. “States had to permit mailing voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election officials. Finally, states were limited in pruning 'deadwood' –people who had died, moved, or been convicted of crimes – from their rolls.

The Motor-Voter bill did indeed cause the voter rolls to be swamped with invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people -- thus opening the door to the unprecedented levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections during the 1990s, and culminating in the Florida recount crisis in the 2000 presidential election. On the eve of the 2000 election, in Indiana alone, state officials discovered that one in five registered voters were duplicates, deceased, or otherwise invalid.

The cloud of confusion hanging over elections serves leftist agitators well. “President Bush came to office without a clear mandate,” the leftwing billionaire George Soros declared. “He was elected president by a single vote on the Supreme Court.” Once again, the "flood-the-rolls" strategy had done its work. Cloward, Piven, and their disciples had introduced a level of fear, tension, and foreboding to U.S. elections previously encountered mainly in Third World countries.

In January 2010, journalist John Fund reported that Congressman Barney Frank and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer were preparing to unveil legislation calling for "universal voter registration," whereby any person whose name was on any federal roll at all -- be it a list of welfare recipients, food stamp recipients, unemployment compensation recipients, licensed drivers, convicted felons, property owners, etc. -- would automatically be registered to vote in political elections. Without corresponding identity-verification measures at polling places, such a law would vastly expand the pool of eligible voters, thereby multiplying the opportunities for fraudulent voters to cast ballots under other people's names.

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and his "Shadow Party," through whose support the Cloward-Piven strategy continues to provide a blueprint for some of the Left's most ambitious campaigns to overload, and cause the collapse of, various American institutions. Leftists such as Barack Obama euphemistically refer to this collapse as a "fundamental transformation," on the theory that society can only be improved by destroying the deeply flawed existing order and replacing it with what they view as a better alternative."




Major Resource: The Shadow Party, by David Horowitz and Richard Poe (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2006), pp, 106-128.

Copyright 2003-2011 : DiscoverTheNetworks.org
The Soros Loophole

Posted by Matthew Vadum Bio ↓ on Aug 11th, 2011

"...It wasn’t that long ago that currency speculator George Soros​ was traveling the globe urging a regulatory crackdown on the same financial sector that has allowed him to become a billionaire 14 times over.

In late 2008 the preachy political radical who has given more than $8 billion to charities and left-wing causes lectured a congressional committee. “The entire regulatory framework needs to be reconsidered and hedge funds need to be regulated within that framework,” he pontificated.

Soros got his wish, and the lawmakers his money helped to install in Congress dutifully approved the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Public Law 111-203).

Soros talks a good game when it comes to openness and transparency. With an obedient media in tow, he postures as a defender of business ethics and good government but the lofty ideals he espouses apply only to other people. In the end, when his personal interests are at stake, his professed ideals get discarded like yesterday’s racing form.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this man who has described himself as “some kind of god” now doesn’t want to comply with new disclosure rules that accompany the Dodd-Frank law. To avoid complying, he is closing his $25 billion Quantum funds to investors outside his family.

What new regulation does Soros consider to be so burdensome? A mere requirement that hedge funds such as his with more than $150 million under management register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by March 2012. A loophole allows a fund to skip registering if it manages only a family’s funds.

Why would Soros, benefactor of the aggressively leftist Open Society Institute, not want to register like all the other big players on Wall Street? In the scheme of things registration isn’t a big deal. Its major drawback is that it would open up Soros’s shady dealings to unprecedented public scrutiny..."

The Soros Loophole | FrontPage Magazine

Wednesday, August 10, 2011


"...Obama to Become the National Landlord Now?

Fundamental transformation proceeds apace, from the “ownership society” straight to neo-feudalism.

The Obama administration may turn thousands of government-owned foreclosures into rental properties to help boost falling home prices.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Wednesday it is seeking input from investors on how to rent homes owned by government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.

That would be, the recently downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Moving along..."

The PJ Tatler Obama to Become the National Landlord Now?

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Seek and ye shall find a most helpful resource:

discoverthenetworks.org

"Founded in 1916, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest organization of education-school professors and researchers in the United States. Its 25,000+ members also include K-12 teachers, school administrators, counselors, graduate students, behavioral scientists, and government-agency personnel who work with testing and evaluation. The Association's mission is “to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good.”

Through its books, published studies, and journal articles, AERA helps to determine what is taught in teacher-training programs at universities across the United States and, ultimately, what is taught to students in America's K-12 classrooms. Moreover, the Association's quarterly series, Research Points, is designed to affect public policy by “bring[ing] essential information on education research to federal, state, and local policy makers.”

AERA's worldview proceeds from the axiom that America is a nation replete with deep-seated racism, sexism, and discrimination against nonwhites and females. To counter these allegedly pervasive societal ills, the Association has established an Affirmative Action Council which endorses race- and gender-based preferences as means by which to level the proverbial “playing field” in academia. AERA also has a Scholars of Color in Education Committee and a Committee on Scholars and Advocates for Gender Equity in Education, which focus on issues of race and gender, respectively. The Marxist Analysis of Schools and Society Special Interest Group, meanwhile, evaluates educational theory and practice from a Marxist perspective.

Another of the Association's most noteworthy divisions is its Social Justice Action Committee, which seeks to counter America's inherent racism and sexism with a strong emphasis on promoting "diversity and inclusiveness" – not only within AERA itself, but throughout the field of education. This Committee endorses a brand of “social justice” that abjures capitalism while embracing socialist principles. For a comprehensive discussion of how such “social justice” themes are routinely injected into K-12 curricula, click here.

The most politically and ideologically significant official in AERA's hierarchy is the former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, who in March 2008 was elected (by a large majority of his peers) as the Association's Vice President for Curriculum Studies. At the time of his election, Ayers, a leading proponent of social-justice indoctrination in the classroom, was a professor of education at the University of Illinois. According to a former AERA employee, “Ayers' radical worldview, which depicts America as “the main source of the world's racism and oppression,” thoroughly “permeates” AERA.

Ayers articulated that worldview with especial clarity in his February 2009 AERA Curriculum Studies Newsletter, which displayed, above his “Message from the Vice President” essay, an artistic rendition of four Marxist philosophers discussing the demerits of “authoritarian” and “oppressive” – i.e., capitalist – social structures. In the essay itself, which AERA disseminated to all of its members, Ayers derided the U.S. for its shameful history as a “Slave State.” He then went on to depict modern-day America as a “War State” addicted to military spending; as a “prison society” wherein “2.3 million people” – disproportionately black – are “caged” like animals; as a “murdering-the-innocents state” wherein “the structural ecology of race and gender and ancestry” ultimately determine “whose children will suffer and be condemned to destruction, and whose will be shielded from harm”; as an “ostrich society” with its “collective head in the sand as the world careens toward environmental catastrophe”; and as a nation where there is “mass disenfranchisement of various populations,” most notably blacks and poor people. The teacher's task, as Ayers and AERA define it, is to make young teachers and their students aware of these societal failings, and to exhort them to rebel against the unjust “system.”

Setting the tone for AERA's educational philosophy and recommended practices, Ayers rejects traditional standards of academic measurement such as tests and grades. Indeed he rejects the very notion of certain knowledge and objectively defined competency – an attitude stemming from his animus toward “linear” thought, which he views as a defining characteristic of the Western culture that he detests. Indicting capitalism as an inherently racist system worthy of permanent destruction, Ayers consistently emphasizes that nonwhites are justified in feeling victimized by, and resentful toward, American society. Ultimately he seeks, through his influence with AERA, to inculcate teachers-in-training with a “social commitment” to the values of “Marx” and a desire to become agents of social change in K-12 classrooms. Whereas “capitalism promotes racism and militarism,” Ayers explains, “teaching invites transformations” and is “the motor-force of revolution.”

Brainwashing:

Breitbart.tv Van Jones and MoveOn Use Kids to Push Left-Wing Initiative

Is London Burning? You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your Well Runs Dry @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Is London Burning? You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your Well Runs Dry @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Monday, August 08, 2011

Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage

"...Obama gave an astounding speech earlier today. The Dow was already down hard but tanked to 500 lower after Obama declared credit ratings meaningless. He actually said the following at 6:28:

"No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a triple-A country."
Typical Marxist endgame propaganda. Namely that REALITY IS NOT REALITY. PERCEPTION IS REALITY. FEELING and SENTIMENT ARE REALITY. No matter what objective reality may show you, the only reality is what the state TELLS you it is. If we FEEL that we are still AAA, then we are still AAA and reality does not matter..."


Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage
Remember the violent and disgusting demonstrations over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doing away with the collective bargaining for teachers’ unions? The results are in. Some school districts went from a $400,000 deficit to a $1,500,000 surplus as a result. Why?

It seems that the insurance company that provided all the "so-called benefits” to the teachers was an insurance company owned and operated by the teacher's union. Since they were guaranteed to get the insurance business from the teachers, and the State had to pay for it and not the teachers, they were increasing the annual costs every single year to become the most expensive insurance company in the state.

Then the insurance company was donating millions and millions of dollars to their favorite (democrat) politicians, who when they got elected, guaranteed to keep funding the unions’ outrageous costs.

In other words, the insurance company was a "pass through" for Wisconsin taxpayer money directly to the democratic politicians who kept the whole scandal going.

Nice racket, and this is the racket that is going on in every single State that allows collective bargaining. No wonder the States are taking it away.

Now that the State of Wisconsin is free to put the insurance contract out for bid, and lo and behold, they have saved so much money it has turned deficits into surplus amounts. As a result, none of the teachers had to be laid off, everyone got a raise, etc., etc., and the taxpayers of Wisconsin don't have to pay more taxes to fund the union's political ambitions.

Here is the article:
Wisconsin schools buck union to cut health costs | Byron York | Politics | Washington Examiner

Friday, August 05, 2011

Useful idiots of Santa Barbara leftists:
"...Note the efforts of James Kyung-Jin Lee. He seeks Buck’s release hoping she can visit Southern California: Buck “would benefit from the refreshing environment and welcoming community, she would also, I believe, enhance the community through her example and fortitude in prison.” The letterhead on Lee’s lunacy? University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of Asian Studies. How reassuring that professors at California’s state university admit they would welcome a Marxist terrorist and feel sufficient sympathy on campus to use school letterhead.

Joseph Velasco, a self described “teacher, storyteller and artist” sent a letter to DOJ arguing for Buck’s release saying: “someone like Marilyn is a role model . . . . I welcome the creativity and intellect that she will bring to our community. . . . Marilyn will find a welcoming home here.” The letterhead on Velasco’s letter to DOJ? The official stationary of the Santa Barbara School District, Santa Barbara High School.

A letter from Das Williams states Buck “participated in many educational and cultural activities. . . . Having her serve any more time is pointless and will accomplish nothing more than wasting of government funds.” Williams sends this letter on the letterhead of the City Council of Santa Barbara, where Das served on city council. Williams now serves in California’s State Assembly.

There are many more. Philip Moffitt of the Life Balance Institute argues in a letter Buck’s release “would be a positive step toward healing the past and our society.” Merle Woo, “retired educator,” tells the DOJ “what a shame she cannot be among us, the public, who could benefit so much from her teachings and great human spirit. . . . With her brilliant human insights, she has given us tools to live better, more enlightened, more conscious lives.” Woo was a professor of woman’s studies at San Jose University. No surprise that she “usually used Marilyn’s poetry and essays in my classes.” Other apologists for the murderer Buck include California attorney Robert Bloom (“loving kind person”), retired math professor Elana Levy (Buck’s “caring for others also continually reminds me of how to live in a compassionate manner.”) and Zaveeni Khan-Marcus , the director of the University of California Santa Barbara multicultural center (“I welcome the creativity and intellect she will bring to our community.”)

Students of history often wonder how civilized countries can devolve into murderous nightmares. These letters provide a homegrown American example of sophisticates excusing murderous behavior because they agree with the murderer’s political philosophy. Simply, they are chilling..."

Leftist Activists Convince Eric Holder’s DOJ to Set Violent Marxist Free - Big Government

Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage

Ann Barnhart:"...In case you are wondering, this is all modeled precisely after the Soviet Union. The "Supreme Soviet" was the name of the token legislative bodies - what we would call "Congress". The Supreme Soviet would "elect" (wink wink) a "Presidium of the Supreme Soviet" which was made up of a chairman, 15 deputies, a secretary and 20 members. The "SuperCongress" that has now been established is patterned DIRECTLY off of the Soviet Presidium. And, exactly as is being propagandized today, the Presidium (SuperCongress) was "accountable to the Supreme Soviet" (Congress). Yeah, right. Sure it was. Read up on this stuff. It's right on wikipedia.
Guys, when I say that the Obama regime is Communist and/or Marxist-Leninist, I'm not just hurling mindless insults. I'm dead serious and specifically accurate. This shit is patterned off the Soviet system down to the letter. WE HAVE BEEN OVERTHROWN BY COMMUNISTS. Honest to goodness, card-carrying Marxist-Leninist Communists."



Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Children Dying to Kill - A Society that Consciously Sacrifices its Own Youth

"...What kind of a society consciously and purposely sacrifices its own youth for political gain and tactical advantage? Suicide bombers are an escalation of a small-arms war introduced during the first Intifada (1987-1993 Palestinian’s uprising) and championed by Palestinian leaders, even prior to Arafat’s arrival from Tunis in July 1994. Today the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs nurture a blind hatred of Israel. They created a cultural milieu of vengeance, violence and death - preparing their children to be sacrifices in a death cult. Proud parents dress up their toddlers not in clown costumes, but with suicide belts,1 and countless others celebrate their children’s deaths with traditional sweet holiday cakes and candies..."


Children Dying to Kill - A Society that Consciously Sacrifices its Own Youth

Blog: We The Stupid

"...Obama is the enemy. Obama is a Marxist-Communist usurper and puppet front for a cabal of Marxist-Communists who are actively trying to destroy the United States of America. Everything they have done, are doing, and will do has the single goal of collapsing and destroying the U.S. economy, military, constitutional government and culture. What part of "Marxist Revolution" do you not understand?

The Obama regime is not a failure. The Obama regime is not incompetent. The Obama regime has achieved more in two and a half years than anyone could have possibly foreseen. It has debased the currency by 50% of the GDP and guaranteed that our economy will collapse. It has looted the Treasury for more than the size of a top-ten economy and embezzled that wealth into the hands of their fellow Marxists in preparation for the final collapse of the United States. It has ground the economy of the United States to a screeching halt. It has destabilized the entire Muslim world and ensured that there will be a nuclear war centered around Israel within the decade. .."

Blog: We The Stupid