Policy Archives - Page 1759 of 1796

Islamists’ “Christian-Jewish Phobia”

March 18, 2014/in Commentary, Culture War, National Security, News, Policy/by Dave Gaubatz

“A Radical Muslim’ is a ‘Practicing Muslim’, a ‘Moderate Muslim’ is a ‘non Practicing Muslim’ or otherwise known as an Apostate of Islam. The penalty for Apostasy under Sharia law is Death”

Whenever any person or organization refutes the actions, statements, and/or objectives of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) organizations and their supporters, the executives of these organizations immediately go into their modus operandi. Essentially this means the MB (Islamic based terrorist groups) immediately begin to blackmail, threaten, intimidate, physically attack, discredit (false and deceptive, but truth is of little concern to groups who kill, rape, and rob from even innocent Muslims themselves), and these groups use the infamous ‘lawsuit’ to ‘force’ their enemies into silence.

Nehad Hammad (AKA: Nihad Awad)

These terrorist organizations are beginning to realize the power, stamina, persistence, and love/allegiance of the American people to our country and our children. With the recently released best seller ‘Muslim Mafia’, it has made at least one terrorist supporting group Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) realize that Dave Gaubatz does not go away easily. As readers are reviewing this article I will give you a typical scenario within CAIR National.

CAIR’s executive director Nehad Hammad (AKA: Nihad Awad), their spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper, and government relations director (contractor Simple Resolve) are under immense stress. They know they have committed felonies and the FBI are looking at their actions, they know they support the same violent ideologies as Hamas and Al Qaeda, they know foreign governments support them (illegally), they know they have intimidate and blackmailed large and small corporations such as Burger King, NIKE, Bank of America and dozens more. They have used the same tactics against individuals to include Glenn Beck when he was at CNN, Fox’s O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and many more news journalists. They know that Saudi Arabia is behind the Islamophobe campaign and dumps millions of dollars into U.S. corporations to silence them.

Readers need to ponder and seriously question why even Fox journalists seldom (specifically after 11 Sept. 2001) question, condemn, or conduct investigations in regards to the Saudi government. Does Mr. O’Reilly and Beck (both of whom I have respected) aggressively pursue allegations Saudi Arabia is behind and/or endorse the terrorism committed against innocent people around the world? Does any Fox journalist question why Saudi Arabia donates millions to CAIR, spends millions building mosques throughout America, and at the same time allows 50 year old men to marry 7 year old girls? Does Fox or any other American network question the Saudi leadership about spending millions to distribute hate material against Christians and Jewish people in America? Not only is the material ‘hate’ related, but also the material condones killing Americans to include our children.

Since it can be easily proven no major network condemns the violent actions of Saudi Arabia, one must ask why. There can only be four possibilities:

1. Saudi Arabia is a rich and powerful country and puts billions into the American economy; therefore news organizations do not want to offend the ‘elite’.

2. Mr. Beck (former Fox journalist), O’Reilly, Hannity and others have personally been intimidated by terrorist groups like CAIR, and they personally are fearful for not only their financial careers, but the safety of their families and themselves. Readers should note that no amount of personal security will protect you if Al Qaeda targets you or related group of killers. O’Reilly, Hannity, and Beck are smart enough to know this. If CAIR or one of their affiliates in the Muslim Brotherhood labels you an Islamophobe and oppressor of Islam, they have in reality put you on a ‘hit list’. They rely on the Major Hasan’s from Ft. Hood, and thousands more like him to carry out physical attacks when the time is correct.

3. Saudi Arabia has many powerful and influential political leaders they have essentially’ bought over the years, and major news organizations are fearful of ‘offending’ former Presidents and they’re Saudi ‘thugs’.

4. Investigative journalists from major news organizations are not experts and for the most part only report what their ‘assistants’ hand to them. Their assistants know even less about the Middle East, Islam, or Islamic terrorist organizations. Although they believe themselves to be the most informed and reliable people to bring the news to the American people, this is by far more of a fantasy than reality.

Readers are now asking what is the correct answer from above. The truthful answer is a combination of all four. Saudi pumps millions into our economy, CAIR (MB) has threatened numerous journalists like Hannity, Saudi officials have personal friendships and business dealings with powerful Americans, to include U.S. Presidents. Lastly, news journalists are not experts on Islamic based terrorism.

Below is an example of how the peace loving Muslims within this terrorist group (CAIR) attack anyone who dares to ask ‘tough questions’.
From CAIR National:

1. “Attacks on CAIR are the work of a very finite and interrelated band of Career Islamophobes, whose own credibility is in doubt, who profit economically and politically by bashing Muslims and smearing their leaders and organizations.

2. This band includes Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Joe Kaufman and David Horowitz together with affiliates like Stephen Schwartz and Andrew Whitehead. These individuals who are all staunchly pro-Zionist and anti-Muslim and create the bulk of the anti-CAIR literature, which is consumed and circulated by others.

3. All of them spew their bigoted conspiracy theories primarily through the internal which is an un-relegated medium with no professional standards as far as content or fact-checking.

4. They promulgate their content through thousands of than their own Islamophobic sentiment.5. Some of their lies and conspiracy theories seep through right wing AM and Cable TV radio talk shows that lean towards accepting their conspiracy theories about Muslim Americans and their organizations (Savage, Medved, Prager. O’Reilly, Carlson. Beck, FrontPage Magazine, the online hate site, etc…)”

Again I ask readers to observe how many times CAIR uses the term Islamophobe and hate. CAIR executives remind me of small children. Often children use the strategy of name calling to resolve disputes, but most children grow and become more adult like and professional as they mature. CAIR executives are highly educated, yet still use childlike defense mechanisms instead of facing realities head on. Seldom will you hear any Islamic terrorist use sound and rational reasoning to confront Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, David Horowitz,or myself. In addition CAIR executives are not refuting the documents within our book. The thousands of documents my team obtained from CAIR were salvaged before CAIR had an opportunity to shred them. CAIR officials knew the documents contained criminal information against them. They know the documents show the true CAIR, which is a terrorist organization operating in America. Instead they are using the typical ‘name calling’.

I will close by asking the novice counter-terrorism reader and the more versed reader why anyone takes the name calling by a terrorist organization seriously. I ask all to think of the absurdity of Islamic terrorists calling any American an Islamophobe when the Saudi government does not allow (and this is highly encouraged by CAIR, ISNA, and many others) Christians or Jewish to live and practice their respective religions inside Saudi Arabia. Would this logic not equate to every Saudi citizen and anyone who supports Saudi to be Christian-Jewish Phobes, and hate mongers? By CAIR’s own definition this would be true.

American citizens need to contact Fox and the other networks. Ask them why they have not examined and reported on the documents presented inside ‘Muslim Mafia’. Ask them to choose from the four alternative answers mentioned above, or feel free to add their own reasons. I encourage readers to write me with the results.

Virginia: Muslim Couple Arrested on Immigration Charges for Harboring Domestic Slave

Dearborn, MI: Lebanon-born Muslim arrested at airport on way to join Hizballah

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a 13th century Belgian Manuscript illustrating the dialogue between the jew “Moyses” and the Christian “Petrus”. Illustration of “Dialogi contra Iudaeos” written by en:Petrus Alphonsi. This is a photograph of an exhibit at the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv en:Beit Hatefutsot. (Photo taken by en:User:Sodabottle)

The First International Symposium on Liberty and Islam, Melbourne, Australia

March 18, 2014/in National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Video/by Jihad Watch

Here is video of my remarks at the SION/Q Society at the First International Symposium on Liberty and Islam, which was held in Melbourne, Australia on March 9, 2014.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/dnFF90zhkvo[/youtube]

State Department: New moderate Iran “very actively” pursuing clandestine nuclear procurement efforts through front companies

California: National Guardsman, convert to Islam, plotted to bomb LA subway, arrested for trying to aid al Qaeda

Virginia State Legislature commends mosque with jihad terror links

Michigan: Muslim arrested for plotting to join jihad terrorists of Hizballah in Syria

An Analysis of President Obama’s Terrorism Doctrine

March 17, 2014/in Featured, National Security, News, Policy/by Dr. Rich Swier

Perhaps it is time to analyze the Obama Doctrine on terrorism as we reflect, as a nation, on our loses in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Benghazi attack, Extortion 17, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Crimea and the over 55 attacks against the homeland by terrorists since 2008.

On August 3, 2011 President Obama released the National Strategy on Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism. The strategy, now known as the Obama Doctrine, was based upon the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) study group findings and recommendation developed in 2010 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CVE has become the blueprint for both domestic and foreign policy when dealing with terrorism. The Obama Doctrine redefined “terrorism” as “violent extremism”.

The DHS website states, “The threat posed by violent extremism is neither constrained by international borders nor limited to any single ideology. Groups and individuals inspired by a range of religious, political, or other ideological beliefs have promoted and used violence against the homeland.”

Who developed the Obama Doctrine?

The Obama Doctrine is based in large part upon the 2010 findings and recommendations of a Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council. The twenty member advisory council is unique in its composition, with eight members who are Islamists, three representing large Islamic communities and one openly supportive of Islam.

Islamist members included: Nimco Ahmed, Policy Aide, Vice-President of the Minneapolis City Council, Omar Alomari Community Engagement Officer, Ohio Homeland Security, Asli Bali Acting Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, Mohamed Elibiary President and CEO, The Freedom and Justice Foundation, Amin Kosseim Deputy Inspector, New York City Police Department, Imam Mohamed Magid Executive Director, All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS Center), Asim Rehman President, Muslim Bar Association of New York and Dalia Mogahed Senior Analyst and Executive Director, Gallup Center for Muslim Studies

Members from predominantly Islamist communities included: Michael Downing Deputy Chief, Commanding Officer, Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, Los Angeles Police Department and Ronald Haddad Chief of Police, Dearborn Police Department. Richard Cohen President and CEO, Southern Poverty Law Center, was a pro-Islamist council member. Pro-Islamist subject matter experts advising the council included: Arif Alikhan Assistant Secretary, Policy Development, DHS and Laurie Wood, Analyst, Southern Poverty Law Center/Instructor, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

According to Clare Lopez, former CIA Operations Officer and co-Author of the book Shariah: The Threat to America:

Muhammad Magid is not only the head of the ADAMS center, he is the son of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Grand Mufti of Sudan and current president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an MB front group named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation – HAMAS (HLF) terror funding trial. Magid is also one of the closest advisers of the National Security Council of the USA (in particular Denis McDonough). He’s an A-list invitee at the White House. Some believe he may be the head of the North American MB Shura Council.

Mohamed Elibiary is affiliated with numerous identified MB figures who are members of the Freedom and Justice Foundation Advisory Council: they come from the Muslim American Society (MAS), CAIR, ISNA, and the Islamic Association of North Texas. He publicly criticized the HLF trial convictions and has written admiringly of Sayyed Qutb.

IIIT likewise is listed in the MB’s “Explanatory Memorandum” of 1991 as one of its ‘friends and the organizations of our friends’.”

The Obama Doctrine states, “Government officials and the American public should not stigmatize or blame communities because of the actions of a handful of individuals.” The doctrine notes, “This type of violent extremism is a complicated challenge for the United States, not only because of the threat of attacks, but also because of its potential to divide us.” The Obama Doctrine states, “Violent extremists prey on the disenchantment and alienation that discrimination creates, and they have a vested interest in anti-Muslim sentiment.”

The Obama Doctrine is based on, “[A] paradigm of engagement with Muslim communities around the world, based on mutual respect and interest manifest in our new partnerships and programming…” To accomplish this, “The Federal Government will work to communicate clearly about al-Qa’ida’s destructive and bankrupt ideology, while dispelling myths and misperceptions that blame communities for the actions of a small number of violent extremists.”

Myths and misperceptions are other words for “Islamophobia”. The neologism “Islamophobia” did not simply emerge ex nihilo. It was invented, deliberately, by the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), which is based in Northern Virginia.

The Obama Doctrine states, “Today, as detailed in the National Security Strategy and the National Strategy for Counter-terrorism, al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents represent the preeminent terrorist threat to our country.” The role of the Muslim Brotherhood in creating al-Qa’ida and its affiliates is omitted. While the Obama Doctrine targets al Qaeda it is currently materially supporting al-Qa’ida and its affiliates in both Libya and Syria.

Lopez states, “The Obama administration has had an inordinately substantive influence on the Islamic Awakening through the deliberate, selective empowerment and enrichment of the Muslim Brotherhood (both domestically and abroad) and al-Qa’eda. We would not be seeing the re-emergence of the Islamic Caliphate were it not for the full-on support of the Obama administration for the forces of jihad and shariah.”

President Obama openly embraces the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization which created al-Qa’ida, its affiliates and adherents.

One of the key outcomes of the Obama Doctrine is to stop training by non-Muslims and former Muslims, which may offend Islam or be offensive to Muslims. This is codified in the Obama Doctrine by the statement, ”Strong religious beliefs should never be confused with violent extremism.”

The oxymoron is that violent extremism in Islam is consistently preceded by strong Qur’anic religious beliefs.

A major impact of the Obama Doctrine is to blunt if not hand cuff US law enforcement, our diplomatic corps and military with “political correctness” as a national policy. This leads to issues like orders to “stand down” in the face of aggressors, such as happened in Benghazi, Libya and Afghanistan. The effort to “engage with Muslim communities around the world” causes our military not fire when fired upon, even when in self-defense.

The Obama Doctrine has had questionable impact in the Muslim Ummah and less impact with Islamic governments such as Syria, Iran, Libya and Egypt.

EDITORS NOTE: If you do a web search on Obama Targeting al Qaeda while embracing the Muslim Brotherhood you will get the results listed in this document.

Tenth Anniversary of legalized “therapeutic” prostitution in San Francisco

March 17, 2014/in Culture War, Featured, Healthcare, News, Policy, Regulation/by Dr. Judith Reisman

Here is the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality—again—offering a 2004 California State approved certificate for what amounts to therapeutic prostitution. The “course” provides credits toward the PhD and all other sex ed degrees at the IASHS. Note the “baby massage” is included with the “erotic” training and remember the IASHS has sold child pornography to Hustler and has advocated child adult sex in publications and it is implicit in its mission statement. As you know, most of our “trained” researchers have been trained at the Kinseyan IASHS or by their graduates, on downward.

For a larger view click on the image.

The World Net Daily article below includes the police view of the IASHS as establishing scientific cover for giving certificates for current open door policy to California Sexual Trafficking:

Basically, what the district attorney is saying to the pimps, the panderers and traffickers of women is, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing because we’re not going to do anything about it.'” The new law also does away with restrictions against sexually suggestive advertising and loosens restrictions on trainees. …[USING] a “culturally sensitive test to all applicants, in the applicant’s own language, to confirm basic proficiency in massage before issuing a permit.” Goodwin says the term “culturally sensitive” casts a wide net in San Francisco, pointing out that some massage schools are explicitly prostitution oriented, such as the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality’s program in “Sexological Bodywork.”

LAW OF THE LAND: Prostitution legal in San Francisco? City quietly passed measure liberalizing massage industry.

Originally posted: July 20, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Ten weeks before San Francisco shocked the nation by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the city quietly took another step in America’s cultural
revolution by liberalizing its massage permit laws to the point where some critics call it de facto legalization of prostitution.

Addressing the issue of sex workers in the massage industry, outgoing Mayor Willie Brown, with the nearly unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors, signed a new law Dec. 5 that redefines it as a public health issue rather than a matter of law enforcement.

The law went into effect July 1. By removing a requirement that applicants submit to fingerprinting and provide photo IDs, the measure opens the door to include most anyone in the massage industry, including convicted pedophiles and rapists, asserts Brian Goodwin, a massage therapist in San Rafael, Calif., near San Francisco.

Goodwin, largely through his website, has been a relatively lone voice sounding the alarm about legislation that has received scant attention in the press. “Basically, San Francisco’s new massage law is the only massage law in the world written specifically for the benefit of criminals, to help criminals to commit crimes, especially those crimes related to sex-slave trafficking, prostitution, rape, pedophilia, etc.,” Goodwin says.

After its passage, the leading public lobbyist behind an effort to decriminalize prostitution in the massage industry, David Palmer, hailed San Francisco’s “humane and compassionate” approach to the issue.

“San Francisco has not chosen to take a standard route to separate or distinguish adult entertainment from therapeutic massage,” Palmer, president of the San Francisco
Coalition of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, said in the July issue of the trade newsletter Massage Today. “San Francisco is a trendsetter,” he added. Palmer’s website acknowledges the ordinance comes at the end of a long process that began with the Board of Supervisors establishing a Task Force on Prostitution in March 1994. The task force’s final report, in 1996, admitted San Francisco “may not unilaterally legalize or decriminalize prostitution.”

Nevertheless, the panel urged the board to “remove authority for the licensing of massage parlors, masseuses and masseurs and escort services from the Vice Crime
Division’s jurisdiction and place it with agencies already qualified to grant other standard business licenses.”

At the time, the task force received wide media coverage and was roundly condemned in local newspaper editorials. Also, the first attempt to act on the recommendations, under the leadership of Supervisor Tom Ammiano in 1999, received attention. But passage of the recommendation Nov. 18, led by Supervisor Chris Daly, received barely a mention — one paragraph in the San Francisco Examiner in November, buried in a listing of recent board decisions, with no reference to the 1996 Task Force on Prostitution that inspired the changes. The item in the Nov. 21 Examiner reads:

In other actions: The board adopted a measure sponsored by Supervisor Chris Daly that transfers the licensing and regulating of massage parlors and massage practitioners from the Police Department to the Department of Public Health, in effect, saying that massage is more a health concern than a criminal one. [Supervisor Tony] Hall cast the lone vote in opposition.

Daly did not return a request for comment by press time, but in January, he told the Examiner the regulatory change would in no way affect the police department’s
jurisdiction in enforcing illegal activities such as human trafficking and prostitution, said to be an increasing problem. But Goodwin sees the city easing up on enforcement,
noting on June 24, San Francisco District Attorney Harris dropped all criminal charges in a prostitution sting operation, declaring, “Prostitution and regulatory violations at the clubs raise complex issues involving worker safety, exploitation of women, equity and fair notice.”

San Francisco Police Department Capt. Tim Hettrich summarized the city’s response: “Basically, what the district attorney is saying to the pimps, the panderers and traffickers of women is, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing because we’re not going to do anything about it.'”

Opening the door

How does San Francisco’s new massage law open the door to prostitution?

Under the old law, Police Code 27, applicants for a massage permit were required to undergo an identification process that included photographing and fingerprinting. That has been removed from the code, along with a section that prevented anyone convicted of prostitution from getting a permit. The latter omission was one of the main objections voiced by Hall. The new law also does away with restrictions against sexually suggestive advertising and loosens restrictions on trainees. Previously, the trainee could work only for the massage school in which he was enrolled, and the trainee permit could not be renewed beyond three months. The new law also has a trainee permit, but its only requirement is the payment of fees and registration as a student, and it can be renewed indefinitely.

For a full permit, the director of the Department of Public Health must administer a “culturally sensitive test to all applicants, in the applicant’s own language, to confirm
basic proficiency in massage before issuing a permit.” Goodwin says the term “culturally sensitive” casts a wide net in San Francisco, pointing out that some massage schools are explicitly prostitution oriented, such as the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality’s program in “Sexological Bodywork.”

The most drastic change, he says, is how violations are treated.

Under the old law, violators were misdemeanor criminals, threatened with revocation of the massage permit and up to six months in jail and a fine.

Under the new law’s Section 1928, however, violations no longer are crimes but simply treated like parking tickets, with “administrative fines.” The law may be violated as often as desired, as long as the fines are paid.

“The ramifications of this law have yet to be seen,” says Goodwin, who believes the previous law’s inclusion of identification requirements served as a deterrent to sex
traffickers who enslave women and children as prostitutes.

The old ID requirements also served to deter the San Francisco Bay Area’s 8,000 registered sex offenders from becoming massage therapists, he says.

But now, Goodwin contends, anyone can quickly acquire get a “trainee” massage permit by paying the fees and lying about identity.

Study finds current US Penal Codes based on Scientific Fraud and Child Sex Crimes

HEALTH ALERT: Condoms never FDA-approved for sodomy

Enemy of the State, Friend of Liberty by Lawrence W. Reed

March 17, 2014/in Commentary, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Question: If you could go back in time and spend one hour in conversation with 10 people—each one separately and privately—whom would you choose?

Cicero

My list isn’t exactly the same from one day to the next, but at least a couple of the same names are always on it, without fail. One of them is Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was the greatest citizen of the greatest ancient civilization, Rome. He was its most eloquent orator and its most distinguished man of letters. He was elected to its highest office as well as most of the lesser ones that were of any importance. More than anyone else, he introduced to Rome the best ideas of the Greeks. More of his written and spoken work survives to this day—including hundreds of speeches and letters—than that of any other historical figure before 1000 A.D. Most importantly, he gave his life for peace and liberty as the greatest defender of the Roman Republic before it plunged into the darkness of a welfare-warfare state.

Cato Institute scholar Jim Powell opened his remarkable book The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000-Year History, Told Through the Lives of Freedom’s Greatest Champions (Free Press, 2000) with a chapter on this Roman hero—a chapter he closed with this fitting tribute: “Cicero urged people to reason together. He championed decency and peace, and he gave the modern world some of the most fundamental ideas of liberty. At a time when speaking freely was dangerous, he courageously denounced tyranny. He helped keep the torch of liberty burning bright for more than two thousand years.”

Who wouldn’t want to have an hour with this man?

Cicero was born in 106 B.C. in the small town of Arpinum, about 60 miles southeast of Rome. He began practicing law in his early 20s. His most celebrated case, which he won, required him to defend a man accused of murdering his father. He secured an acquittal by convincing the jury that the real murderers were closely aligned to the highest public officials in Rome. It was the first but not the last time that he put himself in grave danger for what he believed to be right.

In 70 B.C, 10 years after his victory in that celebrated murder trial, Cicero assumed a role uncommon for him—that of prosecutor. It was a corruption case involving Gaius Verres, the politically powerful former governor of Sicily. Aggrieved Sicilians accused Verres of abuse of power, extortion, and embezzlement. The evidence Cicero gathered appeared overwhelming, but Verres was confident he could escape conviction. His brilliant defense lawyer, Hortensius, was regarded as Cicero’s equal. Both Verres and Hortensius believed they could delay the trial a few months until a close ally became the new judge of the extortion court. But Cicero outmaneuvered them at every turn. Verres, all but admitting his guilt, fled into exile. Cicero’s speeches against him, In Verrem, are still read in some law schools today.

Roman voters rewarded Cicero with victory in one office after another as he worked his way up the ladder of government. Along the way, the patrician nobility of Rome never quite embraced him because he hailed from a slightly more humble class, the so-called equestrian order. He reached the pinnacle of office in 63 B.C. when, at age 43, Romans elected him co-consul.

The consulship was the republic’s highest office, though authority under the Roman Constitution was shared between two coequal consuls. One could veto the decisions of the other and both were limited to a single one-year term. Cicero’s co-consul, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, was so overshadowed by his colleague’s eloquence and magnetism that he’s but a footnote today. In contrast, Cicero emerged as the savior of the republic amid a spectacular plot to snuff it out.

The ringleader of the vast conspiracy was a senator named Lucius Sergius Cataline. This disgruntled, power-hungry Roman assembled an extensive network of fellow travelers, including some fellow senators. The plan was to ignite a general insurrection across Italy, march on Rome with the aid of mercenaries, assassinate Cicero and his co-consul, seize power, and crush all opposition. Cicero learned of the plot and quietly conducted his own investigations. Then in a series of four powerful orations before the Senate, with Cataline himself present for the first, he cut loose. The great orator mesmerized the Senate with these opening lines and the blistering indictment that followed:

How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience? And for how long will that madness of yours mock us? To what end will your unbridled audacity hurl itself?

Before Cicero was finished, Cataline fled the Senate. He rallied his dwindling army but was ultimately killed in battle. Other top conspirators were exposed and executed. Cicero, on whom the Senate had conferred emergency power, walked away from that power and restored the republic. He was given the honorary title of Pater Patriae (Father of the Country).

But Rome at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy was not the Rome of two or three centuries before, when honor, virtue, and character were the watchwords of Roman life. By Cicero’s time, the place was rife with corruption and power lust. The outward appearances of a republic were undermined daily by civil strife and a growing welfare-warfare state. Many who gave lip service in public to republican values were privately conniving to secure power or wealth through political connections. Others were corrupted or bribed into silence by government handouts. The republic was on life support and Cicero’s voice was soon to be drowned out by a rising tide of political intrigue, violence, and popular apathy.

In 60 B.C., Julius Caesar (then a senator and military general with boundless ambition) tried to get Cicero to join a powerful partnership that became known as the First Triumvirate, but Cicero’s republican sentiments prompted him to reject the offer. Two years later and barely five years after crushing Cataline’s conspiracy, Cicero found himself on the wrong side of senatorial intrigue. Political opponents connived to thwart his influence, resulting in a brief exile to northern Greece.

He returned to a hero’s welcome but retired to his writing. Over the next decade or so, he gifted the world with impressive literary and philosophical work, one of my favorites being De Officiis (“On Duties”). In it he wrote, “The chief purpose in the establishment of states and constitutional orders was that individual property rights might be secured . . . It is the peculiar function of state and city to guarantee to every man the free and undisturbed control of his own property.”

Politics, however, wouldn’t leave Cicero alone. Rivalry between Caesar and another leading political figure and general, Pompey, exploded into civil war. Cicero reluctantly sided with the latter, whom he regarded as the lesser of two evils and less dangerous to the republic. But Caesar triumphed over Pompey, who was killed in Egypt, and then cowed the Senate into naming him dictator for life. A month later, Caesar was assassinated in the Senate by pro-republican forces. When Mark Antony attempted to succeed Caesar as dictator, Cicero spearheaded the republican cause once again, delivering a series of 14 powerful speeches known in history as the Phillippics.

Cicero’s oratory never soared higher. With the remnants of the republic hanging by a thread, he threw the scroll at Antony. The would-be dictator, Cicero declared, was nothing but a bloodthirsty tyrant-in-waiting. “I fought for the republic when I was young,” he asserted. “I shall not abandon her in my old age. I scorned the daggers of Catiline; I shall not tremble before yours. Rather, I would willingly expose my body to them, if by my death the liberty of the nation could be recovered and the agony of the Roman people could at last bring to birth that with which it has been so long in labor.”

Antony and his fellow conspirators named Cicero an enemy of the state and sent the assassin Herennius to take him out. On December 7, 43 B.C., the killer found his target. The great statesman bared his neck and faced his assailant with these last words: “There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.”

With one sword stroke to the neck, the life of the last major obstacle to dictatorship was extinguished. At that moment, the 500-year-old republic expired, too, to be replaced by an imperial autocracy. Roman liberty was gone. On the orders of Antony, Cicero’s hands were severed and nailed along with his head to the speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum. Antony’s wife personally pulled out Cicero’s tongue, and in a rage against his oratory, stabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin.

Powell reports in The Triumph of Liberty that a century after the ghastly deed, the Roman writer Quintilian declared that Cicero was “the name not of a man but of eloquence itself.” Thirteen centuries later, when the printing press was invented, the first book it produced was the Gutenberg Bible, but the second was Cicero’s De Officiis. Three more centuries after that, Thomas Jefferson called Cicero “the first master of the world.” And John Adams proclaimed, “All the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher” than Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Some might say Cicero’s labors to save the Roman Republic were, at least in hindsight, a waste of time. He gave his life for an ideal that he was able to extend tenuously for maybe a couple of decades.

But if I had an hour with Cicero, I would thank him. I would want him to know of the inspiration he remains to lovers of liberty everywhere, more than two millennia after he lived. I would share with him one of my favorite remarks about heroism, from the screenwriter and film producer Joss Whedon: “The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.”

And that is exactly who Cicero was.

RELATED VIDEO: The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels | Lawrence Reed. Lawrence Reed speaks about the parallels between the fall of Rome and the modern United States. This talk was delivered at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/FPFlH6eGqsg[/youtube]

ABOUT LAWRENCE W. REED

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s. Prior to becoming FEE’s president, he served for 20 years as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan. He also taught economics full-time from 1977 to 1984 at Northwood University in Michigan and chaired its department of economics from 1982 to 1984.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a fresco titled Cicero Denounces Catiline located on the Palazzo Madama, Rome.

The Caleb Bonham Show: Common Core Math for Dummies

March 17, 2014/in Education, News, Policy, Video/by Dr. Rich Swier

This video is courtesy of the Caleb Bonham Show and illustrates how mathematics under Common Core State Standards makes no sense, even for college students.

Caleb Bonham is the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform. Previously, Bonham served as editor-at-large for Revealing Politics, host of The Caleb Bonham Show, and Crossover with Caleb Bonham. Caleb’s videos have received over 3 million views on YouTube. Caleb’s work has been published in hundreds of national and international news outlets, including the Fox News Channel, CNN, the Drudge Report, Business Insider, The Huffington Post, TheBlaze, and others. Caleb is a frequent television guest on several national news programs.

Extra difficult without a reason. Keep it simple stupid!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Ldyl_uYrojs[/youtube]

Hillary Clinton: Abortion Needed for Equality and Human Development?

March 17, 2014/in Culture War, Featured, Healthcare, News, Policy, Politics, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

Restoring Liberty reports, “Twenty years after the Clintons failed to get countries to declare a right to abortion, Mrs. Clinton told a posh UN crowd that humanity cannot advance without reproductive rights. ‘You cannot make progress on gender equality or broader human development without safeguarding women’s reproductive health or rights,’ she declared. Clinton is adamant that reproductive health includes abortion.”

“The undisputed leader in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination was the highlight of International Women’s Day at UN headquarters last Friday [March 14th], drawing thunderous applause from a well-heeled audience as she decried how women’s equality remains “the great unfinished business of the 21st century,” notes the editors of Restoring Liberty.

In the below video of UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka eerily echoes Clinton when she states “progress for women is progress for all.” Celebrating progress already made for women’s rights, women’s empowerment and gender equality, she further urged women, men, youth, and leaders of nations, communities, religion and commerce to recommit to making gender equality a global reality.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/ZVuBI6qXvcI[/youtube]

So why is abortion needed for gender equality and human development? We have heard similar words before from Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood:

“More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief aim of birth control.” – Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

Are men less fit than women? Is it necessary to abort more males than females? It is also interesting to note that Mlambo-Ngcuka is black. Margaret Sanger wrote on blacks, immigrants and indigents:

“…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ‘spawning… human beings who never should have been born.” – Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people.

Linda Gordon, in Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America,”We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Today we read stories that there are more black abortions than births in New York City and a 73% black abortion rate in Mississippi. Some have labeled this national birth control effort “Black Genocide. ”Several years ago, when 17,000 aborted babies were found in a dumpster outside a pathology laboratory in Los, Angeles, California, some 12-15,000 were observed to be black,” noted Erma Clardy Craven (deceased) Social Worker and Civil Rights Leader.

Edwin Black, author of War Against The Weak, writes, “The global effort to help women make independent choices about their own pregnancies was dominated by one woman: Margaret Sanger… Motherhood was to most civilizations a sacred role. Sanger, however, wanted women to have a choice in that sacred role, specifically if, when and how often to become pregnant.”

Black notes, “… Sanger vigorously opposed charitable efforts to uplift the downtrodden and deprived, and argued extensively that it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help, so that the eugenically superior strains could multiply without competition from ‘the unfit.’ She repeatedly referred to the lower classes and the unfit as ‘human waste’ not worthy of assistance, and proudly quoted the extreme eugenic view that human ‘weeds’ should be ‘exterminated.’ Moreover, for both political and genuine ideological reasons, Sanger associated closely with some of some of America’s most fanatical eugenic racists.” Sanger stated, “My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the ‘failure’ of philanthropy, but rather at its success.”

VIDEO OF UN WOMEN’S DAY PANEL WITH HILLARY CLINTON:

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is courtesy of United States Mission Geneva. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

U.S. Energy, Ukraine and Russia

March 17, 2014/in Economy, Energy, National Security, News, Policy/by Alan Caruba

Ukraine came apart when a protest against its president forced him to flee to Russia. The issue was whether the Ukraine would be allied with Russia or with the European Union. Due to a combination of the obscene corruption of its former president, Viktor Yanukovych, and the mismanagement of the nation in general, the Ukrainian Parliament ousted him in February, a move supported by 328 members of the Parliament. He still claims to be president.

In contrast to the “melting pot” of America where people come from all over and develop strong feelings for our nation, the Ukrainians, divided primarily between the East and West, never quite gelled, the younger generation does not want to be back under the sway of Russia while many of the older ones, recalling the bad old days when it was, want closer ties with Europe. It remains divided and whether it will reunite is anyone’s guess.

If it does reunite, it will be missing the Crimean republic which has been seized by Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. It had been part of Russia for hundreds of years and represents a critical warm water port. Krushchev relinquished it to Ukraine, but Putin will not. Sending troops into a foreign nation is an act of war, but I doubt that many Crimeans, see themselves as a foreign nation. They were Russian and they are Russian. Let’s move on.

Putin’s bold action brought a lot of other issues into play, not the least of which is Russia’s provision of natural gas to Ukraine and many European nations that depend on it, not the least of which is Germany.

One thing is for sure, NATO will not intervene to restore Crimea to the Ukraine and the European Union has so many financial ties to Russia that there is little reason to do anything than go through the charade of sanctions and criticism. I think the general consensus is that while Putin would like to expand the Russian Federation to the size of the former Russian empire, the cost of similar military actions would be too high.

The response of President Obama has been predictably weak. He is abandoning the Middle East to Islamic fascists. He has failed to provide an umbrella of military protection to Europe. He and Democrat members of Congress continue to tell us that the greatest threat here and worldwide is a global warming that isn’t happening.

The greatest threat to American security is President Obama for two reasons: (1) He has deliberately weakened the U.S. military and (2) his domestic energy policies have failed to take advantage of discoveries of massive amounts of natural gas and oil reserves. Drilling for them on federal lands and offshore has been largely thwarted. As a result the U.S. economy has limped along when it could be booming just from the energy sector alone.

Two reporters for The Wall Street Journal spelled out why the “U.S. Push for Natural-Gas Exports to Ukraine Faces Hurdles” in its March 12the edition.

“Neither the infrastructure nor international markets for natural gas have evolved to the point where the U.S. can step in and provide the kinds of energy supplies that would quickly reduce these nations’ dependency on Russian gas.”

“U.S. energy companies need several more years to build plants to export the gas—and Ukraine doesn’t have the facilities to receive it…The giant machines and cooling towers it takes to make liquefied natural gas, or LNG, take years to construct and cost billions of dollars.” There is at present a LNG terminal in Spain that could take gas shipments that could be added to the extensive European pipeline network, helping many nations there such as Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Suffice to say, U.S. policy and lawmakers have failed to take the actions necessary to respond to the recent surge in natural gas and oil supplies. Many Americans will be surprised to learn that in the 1970s Congress made it illegal to export domestically produced crude oil without a license. Those were the days of the Arab oil embargo.

At this point, the U.S. has more untapped oil than Saudi Arabia, as well as enough natural gas and coal to make us energy independent.

In addition, an odd and idiotic law requires the production of ethanol, a gasoline additive. In 2013, ethanol production was 316,964 thousand barrels. Ethanol not only decreases the mileage of the gasoline we purchase at the pump, it damages auto engines, two very good reasons to end this conversion of corn into energy that in turn drives up the cost of countless food products.

Even moving crude oil around the domestic U.S. poses a challenge despite a network of pipelines. Doing so by train has created many new problems. President Obama has delayed the Keystone XL pipeline that would increase crude oil supplies to our Gulf State’s refineries; thus denying us the jobs its construction would create and other benefits. The good news is that the U.S. has become one of the largest gross exporters of refined oil products such as gasoline and diesel.

If the U.S. government would get out of the way, new refineries and export facilities for natural gas could be built. The U.S. would prosper and energy costs would be reduced, along with our national debt. For now, however, the Ukraine, a longtime financial basket case, and Europe are not going to get a surge of natural gas or crude oil that would help reduce their dependence on Russia.

So long as President Obama remains in office, none of the steps that must be taken to restore the nation’s economy and tap the huge potential of our energy sector will occur.

Gates and Duncan and Their Common Core “Freedom” Charade

March 17, 2014/in Culture War, Education, Featured, Government Transparency, News, Policy/by Mercedes Schneider

In his purchased keynote at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) (I know, huh?), billionaire-with-zero-teaching-experience Bill Gates insisted that the feds are getting the bum rap when it comes to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). As Huffington Post’s Joy Resmovits notes:

Gates went on to address critiques that the Common Core represents a national curriculum, a federal takeover or the end of innovation. He said these claims are false and distract from teaching — and that teachers can provide the most effective response to critics. [Emphasis added.]

However, Resmovits continues with details that do indeed implicate US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his USDOE in attempting to fashion “a national curriculum, a federal takeover, and an end to innovation”:

The creation of the Common Core started in 2009, and thanks in part to nudges from the federal government via the Race to the Top competition and the application process for waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act, most states have adopted them.

“Nudges”?? Come now, Joy.

Robert Scott: CCSS-adoption Pressure Is Real

Consider Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott’s account of of the “nudge”:

“We had just spent three to four years developing our own college and career readiness standards,” Scott said referencing the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills) as the main reason Texas was not interested in adopting the Common Core State Standards. However, there was still tremendous pressure being applied for something that, according to Scott, he was told was voluntary and state led.

“We said no to Common Core and they said, ‘you want Race to the Top money?’ That was $700 million. They said, ‘do it.’ Well, we still said, no thanks.” Scott recalled. The feds also asked if Texas wanted an No Child Left Behind waiver and again, the state said no.

Scott was education commissioner until late 2012. It was his successor, current commissioner Michael Williams, who applied for a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver, which Texas was granted. Both RTTT and the NCLB waivers are tied to federal accountability mandate, which means testing. Education Week reported, even though Texas took the waiver without adopting the Common Core State Standards, the state still “had to scrap its own state accountability system in favor of one that aligns with federal requirements. It also had to redo student achievement goals.” Even Politico reported that Texas made concessions, buckling and giving into political coercion. [Emphasis added.]

Texas is one of five states that did not sign on to RTTT– that is how Texas escaped CCSS. As part of RTTT, states were required to demonstrate that they were part of some “common standards”– and CCSS was the only game in town. Thus, those “45 states and the District of Columbia” supposedly “volunteering” for RTTT were required to submit this CCSS memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the governor and the state education superintendent as part of the RTTT application.

That is hardly Duncan/USDOE neutrality when it comes to CCSS.

But Bill is trying. And he doesn’t need truth to back his claims. He has his money– thus, he is his own truth.

Next step in this reform charade: Gotta pull Arne in line with Bill’s truth.

Hey, Arne, Follow Bill

Resmovits continues by noting that Indiana might be the first to escape CCSS:

In recent weeks, several states have made moves to hobble or scrap the Common Core entirely. Indiana has come closest, with its state Senate on Wednesday approving a bill that withdraws the state from the initiative and adopts its own set of academic standards to “maintain Indiana sovereignty” by July.

Now, I know this must just be a matter of coincidence, but it so happens that Arne told The Blaze on March 15– the day after Bill’s NBPTS speech– that Indiana is free to exit CCSS:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told The Blaze Friday that states are completely free to discard Common Core education standards. ...

This week, the Indiana legislature sent a bill to the desk of Gov. Mike Pence to pull out of the Common Core standards….

The Blaze asked Duncan during the White House press briefing Friday to comment on the final approval in the Indiana legislature.

“They absolutely have the right to do this,” Duncan told The Blaze. “This is a state-led effort; it always has been, always will be. And whatever Indiana decides, we want to work with them to make sure that students have a chance to be successful.” [Emphasis added.]

Duncan isn’t fooling anyone with his sudden benign attitude toward states’ altering– much less dropping– CCSS.

He has pushed this “common standards” idea since 2009; he has told newspaper editors how to report on CCSS; he has insulted parents and offered this tepid backpedaling on his insult.

Duncan wants CCSS and all of the trimmings– curricula and tests– and so does Gates.

Duncan and Gates can say that CCSS is not a federal coercion. However, one document interferes with their spin:

That pesky CCSS MOU.

The CCSS MOU; No State Freedom Here

The CCSS MOU is a contract that states entered into with USDOE as per USDOE’s requirement for vying for that $700 million of which Texas Ed Commissioner Scott spoke.

Duncan’s use of the term “state-led” is one used in the CCSS MOU to actually tell states that they are to lead:

Purpose: This document commits states to a state-led process…that will lead to the development and adoption of a common core of state standards.

So, the federal government has states sign a contract saying they will lead themselves– according to USDOE stipulation.

That’s right: The entire MOU is the federal government telling states that they will be “state led” and what that will look like, down to the details.

Duncan and Gates can cry foul all they like. This is the actual text from the CCSS MOU regarding “federal role.” It is a tourniquet of federal control, for it mandates that states “agree” to “common standards”:

Federal Role. The parties support a state-led effort and not a federal effort to develop a common core of state standards; there is, however, an appropriate federal role in supporting this state-led effort. In particular, the federal government can provide key financial support for this effort in developing a common core of state standards and in moving toward common assessments, such as through the Race to the Top Fund authorized in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Further, the federal government can incentivize this effort through a range of tiered incentives, such as providing states with greater flexibility in the use of existing federal funds, supporting a revised state accountability structure, and offering financial support for states to effectively implement the standards. Additionally, the federal government can provide additional financial support for the development of common assessments, teacher and principal professional development, and other related common core standards supports, and a research agenda that can help continually improve the common core over time. Finally, the federal government can revise and align existing federal education laws with the lessons learned from states’ international benchmarking efforts and from federal research.

And states tied to the CCSS MOU are tied to assess CCSS:

Purpose: This document commits states to a state-led process that will draw on evidence and lead to development and adoption of a common core of state standards (common core) in English language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. These standards will be aligned with college and work expectations, include rigorous content and skills, and be internationally benchmarked. The intent is that these standards will be aligned to state assessment and classroom practice. The second phase of this initiative will be the development of common assessments aligned to the core standards developed through this process. [Emphasis added.]

The bolded section above is the state agreement to the CCSS spectrum: CCSS, CCSS curricula, CCSS assessments.

Bill Gates comments on the necessity of this CCSS spectrum in his 2009 speech at the National Conference of State Legislatures–a group that he gave a $557,000 CCSS grant to in 2013. (See a video of Gates’ 2009 speech at the end of this post.)

As to the “adoption” of CCSS, the MOU is clear that CCSS must be adopted in its entirety. States can add but cannot remove CCSS. Notice that the language is carefully constructed to make it appear that this “effort” is not the coercion that it actually is:

This effort is voluntary for states, and it is fully intended that states adopting the common core may choose to include additional state standards beyond the common core. States that choose to align their standards to the common core standards agree to ensure that the common core represents at least 85 percent of the state’s standards in English language arts and mathematics. [Emphasis added.]

The only way that states are free from a CCSS tie to the federal government is to be released from the CCSS MOU.

A Challenge to Duncan

If Arne wants to go public and tell states that they are “completely free to discard Common Core,” then let him offer states a new MOU, one which clearly details this “freedom” and which declares the former CCSS MOU null and void.

The very existence of a CCSS MOU bespeaks federal coercion.

Never mind that it is ILLEGAL according to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Subpart 2, section 9527(c)(1):

(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal law, no State shall be required to have academic content or student academic achievement standards approved or certified by the Federal Government, in order to receive assistance under this Act. [Emphasis added.]

The USDOE has clearly overstepped its jurisdiction via its CCSS MOU and has been counting on no authority challenging its brazenness in doing so.

The crafters of ESEA apparently knew that there was no such thing as a “state led” federal MOU.

Bill and Arne: Who is in Whose Pocket?

Concerning Bill’s pushing the idea of no federal CCSS push: Even Arne is taking money from Bill, and Bill is clear that he seeks out those who might fulfill the goals of his foundation in order to offer them money.

Gates wants CCSS. Arne wants CCSS. But it goes a step further.

Gates purchased $1.4 million in “training and technical assistance” for USDOE.

USDOE is now indebted to Gates– and is allowing Gates to “help” it run the country.

This is truly sickening.

Arne and Bill, you are a disgrace to American democracy. Your presence in the affairs of American public education is nothing more than the stench of deceit and self-aggrandizement.

On the road to Fascism in America?

March 17, 2014/in Culture War, News, Policy, Politics, Video/by Bill Finlay

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana.

George Santayana, philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist, wrote:

American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism. All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.”

Question: Are liberal democrats resurrecting the principles of Nazi Germany?

I ask some probing questions.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/qWBIKWiC4b8[/youtube]

EDITORS NOTE: The edited featured photo is by Adam Jones, Ph.D. and of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau – Death Camp – Processing Center – of Jewish Couple with Star of David Armbands – Oswiecim – Poland. The original image may be viewed here. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau was the largest of the more than 40 camps and subcamps that made up the Auschwitz complex. During its three years of operation, it had a range of functions. When construction began in October 1941, it was supposed to be a camp for 125 thousand prisoners of war. It opened as a branch of Auschwitz in March 1942, and served at the same time as a center for the extermination of the Jews. In its final phase, from 1944, it also became a place where prisoners were concentrated before being transferred to labor in German industry in the depths of the Third Reich.

The majority—probably about 90%—of the victims of Auschwitz Concentration Camp died in Birkenau. This means approximately a million people. The majority, more than nine out of every ten, were Jews. A large proportion of the more than 70 thousand Poles who died or were killed in the Auschwitz complex perished in Birkenau. So did approximately 20 thousand Gypsies, in addition to Soviet POWs and prisoners of other nationalities.

The Essence of Sarah Palin’s Message for 2014

March 17, 2014/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, News, Policy, Politics/by Lloyd Marcus

I watched a great old movie in the time period of the 1700s starring Anthony Quinn. A small village was brutally abused by an evil bandit and his army of thugs. Quinn organized and inspired the fearful villagers to fight back. When villagers were killed, many blamed, criticized and rejected Quinn. Displaying true leadership, Quinn remained willing to fight. He informed his critics that cowardice begets more tyranny. Freedom ain’t free.

Folks, true leaders pay a heavy price which is why they, as do eagles, fly alone. Sarah Palin has led by example, displaying tremendous courage, backbone and grit by standing up for conservative principles, traditional values, freedom and liberty; even when some conservatives and establishment Republicans joined the chorus of liberals, Democrats and MSM calling her a fool.

Someone said if you promote a lie long enough, for some, it becomes reality. Such is the case regarding Palin’s smarts. Meanwhile, Obama’s list of faux pas including his recent inability to correctly spell “respect” are ignored or laughed-off.

Threatened by her enormous presence and the extreme impact of her inspiring 2008 VP nomination acceptance speech, Democrats and the MSM immediately launched a campaign to destroy Palin. In their joint effort to discredit her, every word out of Palin’s mouth has been viewed through an unjust false lens which assumes that she is an idiot. I challenge anyone on the planet to survive such extreme critical scrutiny.

Sarah Palin is not perfect. She is a human being like the rest of us. But, Sarah Palin is an unmistakably gifted charismatic born leader who inspires millions to fight back against the horrible evil attempting to overtake our great nation. Palin’s passion is fueled by her love for God, family and country and her knowledge that freedom ain’t free. Thank God Palin is conservative.

For those on our side who wish to nit-pic everything Palin says and does, I ask, what the heck are you thinking? Stop it! Obama and his vile minions (Lois Lerner and others) are launching daily unprecedented outrageous assaults on our freedoms. Why waste time, energy and resources beating up on one of our few generals leading the charge to restore America?

As a proud conservative, I hold our leaders to a higher standard than the Democrats. I expect conservative leaders to make character driven decisions rooted in the best interest of the American people. However, I think it is unfair and foolish to demand that our leaders be perfect in every way. We should not join our enemies in berating them every time a conservative has a less than home run hitting media appearance. Our laser focus should be on exposing and stopping Obama’s non-stop crimes against our Constitution. Attacking our own is counter productive.

Despite the left’s best efforts to silence her, Palin has been relentless, sounding the alarm of all the bad things that would accompany an Obama presidency. Palin was right. America’s chickens have come home to roost for electing Obama.

Here are Palin’s predictions which have come true.

Obama pacifying world aggressors would have negative consequences.

Russia (which had just invaded the sovereign nation of Georgia, a U.S. ally) would feel emboldened to send troops in Ukraine as well.

Under Obamacare there would be government “death panels” that would determine whether or not a patient should be eligible to receive life-saving treatments, or whether it would be cheaper to just let that patient die. Could you ever imagine such a thing in America?

A few liberals have admitted that Palin was right when she said Obama does not have a whole lot of substance.

Sarah Palin was right on all these issues.

But the most important thing that Palin has been right about, winning her my utmost respect, is her unapologetic advocacy of true Conservatism; confidently touting Conservatism as the miracle cure for all of America’s woes.

The 2014 midterm election must be a vote for Conservatism. Conservatives in office is the only way we defeat our outlaw president and his army of thugs. We must take the House and the Senate.

Palin’s CPAC speech confirms that she continues to lead the charge. Her battle cry is loud, strong and clear. If the GOP wishes to repeat the victory it enjoyed in 2010, it had better embrace the Tea Party (Conservatism).

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo of Sarah Palin is by Therealbs2002. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

From Lockerbie to 9/11: Iran is Let Off the Hook

March 17, 2014/in Featured, Government Transparency, National Security, News, Policy, Politics/by Clare Lopez

A documentary that aired 11 March 2014 on the Al-Jazeera America channel presented compelling new evidence that Iran and the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Counsel (PFLP-GC) directed and carried out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland on 23 December 1988. “Lockerbie: What Really Happened?” presented formerly classified documents and never-before revealed accounts from two of the investigators in the case—American attorney Jessica De Grazia and her Scottish colleague, George Thompson—both of whom were part of the defense team for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan security official eventually convicted of planting the bomb.

Aware that Al-Jazeera America has its own agenda and that this story may just fit rather neatly into it this time, the evidence presented by credible sources nevertheless makes this documentary worth serious consideration. Other, especially U.S., media have tended rather consistently to pass over evidence of the Iranian regime’s long record of support for terrorism (both Shi’ite and Sunni), even when that support has involved American citizen deaths, as in the two cases presented here. This Al-Jazeera documentary diverges from that typical media coverage of Iran and so earns our attention.

In the documentary, De Grazia and Thompson discuss classified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) cables they obtained and shared with Al-Jazeera, but never had the chance to present in court. Specifically, they document a March 1988 meeting in Malta among representatives of Hizballah, Iran, Libya, PFLP-GC, and Syria. According to a protected source who attended the gathering, this apparently disparate group found common cause in hatred for Israel and the U.S., and met to discuss general cooperation in targeting Americans and Israelis. The Iranians were willing to direct terror operations, but wanted both the fig leaf of deniability that proxies could provide as well as the demonstrated explosives expertise for which both Hizballah and PFLP-GC were known. Syria long has allowed PFLP-GC to keep its headquarters in Damascus.

The collaborative arrangement that began with that meeting in Malta received its first operational assignment shortly after the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in the Persian Gulf on 3 July 1988, with the loss of all 290 on board. Although the U.S. insisted the tragedy was due to misidentification of the Iranian plane and ultimately paid more than $100 million in compensation, a high-level Iranian defector reported that the Iranian regime nevertheless decided to seek revenge in kind, and quickly, by shooting down a similar U.S. civilian aircraft with a like number of passengers on board.

Abolghassem Mesbahi ran operations for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) in Europe before he defected to Germany in the early 1990s. His testimony about Lockerbie is especially credible because he also has testified in other cases involving Iranian complicity in terror attacks, including the Paris assassination of former Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar in 1991, the 1992 Mykonos Cafe assassination of Kurdish leaders in Berlin, and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires. Mesbahi was one of three Iranian defector witnesses in the Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al. legal case, in which Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York Federal District Court ruled in December 2011 that Iran and Hizballah “materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case.” (The author was an expert witness for the Havlish legal team and co-authored one of the affidavits, which is cited herein.)

Mesbahi’s original 1996-97 Lockerbie testimony (as well as his more recent contribution to this newer documentary) is further bolstered by striking parallels in his later recorded testimony in the Havlish case. As described to the Havlish legal team, the Iranian regime’s efforts to galvanize pan-Islamic unity to attack U.S. and Israeli interests did not begin with the 1988 meeting in Malta, but rather a couple of years earlier, in the mid-1980s, during the depths of the Iran-Iraq war. It was then that the plan known among Iranian intelligence circles as “Shaitan Dar Atash” (“Satan in the Flames” or “Satan in Hell,” meaning America, known as the “Great Satan,” in the flames). Because it was acknowledged that Iran lacked the military power to confront the U.S. directly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and MOIS were tasked with devising asymmetric means to destroy America. According to Mesbahi, the IRGC and MOIS discussed ways of attacking the U.S. critical infrastructure (electric, fuel, water distribution, etc.) and using civilian aircraft as “bombs inside U.S. cities” such as New York and Washington, D.C. The ultimate intent was to bring down the U.S. economy.

Efforts to unify the Islamic world across Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian lines redoubled after Iran’s revolutionary leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died in 1989. In the early 1990s, when Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were living under the protection of Sudan’s pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood leadership, President Omar al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi, his sometime political ally, organized a gathering of jihadist forces from across the Islamic world. The various Palestinian factions, including the PFLP-GC, plus Hizballah and the Iranian leadership all attended. It was in Khartoum that then-Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani offered bin Laden the explosive expertise of Imad Mughniyeh, his top Hizballah terror operative. That is the partnership, which endures to this day, that led eventually to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the wake of the July 1988 shoot-down of Iran Air flight 655, Iranian planners turned to PFLP-GC operatives who had made a name for themselves with several prior airliner attacks. According to De Grazia and Thompson, the DIA documents identify four PFLP-GC members who were involved in the Lockerbie plot: Ahmed Jibril, the PFLP-GC leader who possibly masterminded the attack; Hafez Dalkomoni, who led the German-based PFLP-GC cell suspected of involvement; Marwan Khreesat, a Jordanian master bomb-maker who may have made the bomb used on Pan Am Flight 103; and Abu Talb, the Egyptian-born leader of PFLP-GC’s Swedish cell, who is suspected of having couriered the Lockerbie bomb. German security forces were monitoring the Dalkomoni cell and arrested both him and Khreesat in October 1988, but a bomb found in Dalkomoni’s car was an exact match for the one that later brought down the Pan Am airplane. Both bombs were covered in Toblerone chocolate candy wrappers and concealed inside a Toshiba cassette player. Other bombs were discovered in Dalkomoni’s apartment, but the Germans recovered only a total of four out of five of the bombs they knew existed. The fifth exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 23^rd.

By the following summer of 1989, the British and Scottish investigators were ready to issue arrest warrants for fifteen PFLP-GC members they had identified as connected with the attack. According to investigators De Grazia and Thompson, the case was for all intents and purposes solved; all involved with it (including American, British, German, and Scottish intelligence and security representatives) were in agreement that the PFLP-GC had carried out the attack on orders from the Iranian regime.

And then, sometime in mid-1989, according to former CIA operative Robert Baer, President George H.W. Bush made a phone call to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and asked her to back off the case against PFLP-GC. In the Al-Jazeera America film, Baer claims that the U.S. government made an executive decision that the role played by the PFLP-GC (and by extension, its sponsors in Damascus and Tehran) would be quietly submerged and instead, the Libyans would be made the sole scapegoats. After that, the Lockerbie prosecution went after Megrahi and the Libyans, eventually convicting Megrahi, who spent eight years in a Scottish prison before being released on humanitarian grounds, dying in 2012 of cancer.

It is difficult to know why U.S. leadership decided to protect the PFLP-GC and Iranian regime, when all the investigative work had been done and all the evidence pointed strongly at their responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. Gathering tensions with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein over his Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs and the perceived need for Syrian support and, at a minimum, a pledge of non-interference from Iran may have been part of it. In the final analysis, though, Iran still has not been held to account: not for the murder of 270 people, mostly Americans headed home for Christmas, over Lockerbie, Scotland, and not for the nearly 3,000 killed on 11 September 2001. It is time that Iran is brought to account for its crimes against humanity.

CPAC 2014 – National “Insecurity” Conservative Conference

March 17, 2014/in Must Read, National Security, News, Policy, Politics/by Alan Kornman

The buzz on the floor among CPAC 2014 attendees was the virtual absence of National Security issues being debated or discussed. During the three day conference John Bolton was the only speaker to address national security in depth. There were two breakout sessions that tested the perimeter of national security issues but that was it for CPAC.

CPAC 2014 had a total of 57 events on the schedule during the three day conference. Only 3 of those events discussed some national security issues.

Perhaps, current events surrounding the Ukraine, Crimea, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Vladimir Putin, China, Russia, Venezuela, Islamic terrorism and expansionism, North Korea, Benghazi, Extortion 17, and our porous southern borders are not important enough national security issues for CPAC 2014 and the ACU Board of Directors.

Or, are there two or more individuals inside the American Conservative Union(ACU) successfully navigating the CPAC agenda away from national security issues – that will be for you to decide

American Foreign Policy Ignored At CPAC 2014

The American Conservative Union(ACU) positions itself as the oracle for conservative ideological issues important to conservative voters via the CPAC agenda. Why was CPAC not scheduling, at a minimum, one third of its agenda categorizing the failures of President Obama’s foreign policy and the threats to our nation.

This absurd notion floated by John Kerry that President Obama’s paralyzing weakness makes him strong while Putin’s takeover of the Crimea makes him weak is profoundly troubling. Daniel Greenfield sums it up nicely, “ Invading countries is an act of weakness. Being unable to do anything about it is an inaction of strength.”

Now lets turn our eyes to four Middle Eastern failures by the Obama Administration that were spiked from the CPAC 2014 agenda.

Egypt – President Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi ousting long time U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. When the Egyptian people voted out Mr. Morsi, President Obama stood and still stands with the Muslim Brotherhood, ceding most all of our past Egyptian influence into the hands of Vladimir Putin.

The new Egyptian government declared The Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, while Pres. Obama keeps political channels open with the Brotherhood further alienating the new Egyptian government. The ACU should be demanding Pres. Obama declare The Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Syria – President Obama sides with the ‘Syrian Rebels’ who are populated by various Al-Qaeda tied groups and The Muslim Brotherhood. Pres. Obama is backing the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists again. Pres. Obama ultimate folly was his famous shifting red line nearly drawing the USA into another Islamic civil war. Mr. Putin came to Pres. Obama’s rescue and brokered the ‘non-invasion’ and Syria is off the front pages. Vladimir Putin was playing chess and secured the warm water Syrian port of Tartus and cemented Russians long term influence in Syria. President Obama however, was playing checkers and America achieved nothing other than embarrassment on the world stage.

Iran – President Obama lifted partial sanctions on Iran if they open their nuclear production sites to inspections and stop their pursuit of weapons grade plutonium. The Mullah’s of Iran say they will keep up construction on the Arak heavy water plant, when operational, will produce plutonium. President Obama reacts by releasing hundreds of millions of dollars of Iranian assets. If Iran builds or buys a tactical nuke and threatens the free world, the dangerous geopolitical world as we know it, radically changes for the worse.

Israel – President Obama is pressuring Israel to recede to its 1967 borders and the formation of contiguous Palestinian State between the West Bank and Gaza. This two state option would leave Israel geographically incapable of defending her borders. Pres. Obama should be demanding the Muslim Brotherhood Hamas Palestinians and the West Bank Palestinians accept Israel’s unconditional right to exist and take all references to Israel’s destruction out of their respective charters, as a starting point for negotiations. However, President Obama is siding with The Muslim Brotherhood again as he did in Egypt and Syria.

These four national security issues plus homegrown Islamic terrorism should have front and center on the CPAC 2014 agenda. Why weren’t they you ask? For the answer to this question, all roads lead back to two individuals at the American Conservative Union, Grover Norquist and Suhail Kahn.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Florida Rep. Allen West, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former chief assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy, and Frank Gaffney are putting their substantive knowledge of national security that this information on Norquist/Khan cannot be suppressed, ignored, or mischaracterized as it has been to date. The information these experts above are referring to is Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan’s documented ties to The Muslim Brotherhood and other convicted Islamic terrorists. (See Center For Security Policies 51 Page Report)

Suhail Kahn is an acting Board member of American Conservative Union.

Suhail Kahn, on video, declares that he has “devoted his life to the Ummah, the Muslim Nation’ ‘What are our oppressors going to do with people like us who love death more than they love life?”

Suhail Khan praises terrorists at 1999 ISNA conference from SuhailKhan Exposed on Vimeo.

Mr. Kahn has publicly acknowledged his parents’ leadership role in organizations that have been identified by the federal government as Muslim Brotherhood front groups, namely the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Student Association(MSA).

In June of 2001, at an American Muslim Council event Mr. Kahn personally thanked convicted terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi as someone, “who have been helping me keep going…and for being very supportive of me.”

At CPAC 2011 Suhail Kahn denied on camera The Muslim Brotherhood exists. At CPAC 2014 he admitted there is a Muslim Brotherhood but he doesn’t know much about them.

At CPAC 2011 David Horowitz said, “Suhail Khan’s failure to disassociate himself from his parents’ movement (The Muslim Brotherhood) is instructive: Horowitz went on to say, “When an honest person has been a member of a destructive movement and leaves it, he will feel compelled to repudiate it publicly and to warn others of the dangers it poses. This is a sure test of whether someone has left the Muslim Brotherhood or not.”

At a 1999 ISNA Convention Suhail Khan articulated his heartfelt identity which in and of itself should cause great concern to the ACU. Suhail Khan said, “Our freedoms, my dear brothers and sisters, are under attack…And those rights must be defended with all the determination, all the resources, all the unyielding vigilance of the believing mujahid. That is the spirit of Islam. The mark of the Muslim.”

Mujahid is singular for Mujahideen which translates as a follower of Islam who struggles in the path of Allah. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral root as Jihad. Mujahideen has been closely associated with radical Islam, encompassing several militant groups and struggles.

Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist also has documented ties to convicted terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi provided seed money for Norquist’s Islamic Institute which shares space with his Americans For Tax Reform. Norquist was instrumental in getting the terrorist Alamoudi access to a White House prayer service after the 9/11/2001 attacks.

Mr. Norquist “served as a key facilitator between Al-Arian, Alamoudi and the White House. … In June 2001, Al-Arian was among the members of the American Muslim Council invited to the White House complex. … The next month, the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom—a civil liberties group headed by Al-Arian—gave Norquist an award for his work to abolish the use of secret intelligence evidence in terrorism cases.” (Rep. Frank Wolf (R.-Va.)

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) agenda is determined by the American Conservative Union(ACU).”

Sami Al-Arian pled guilty in 2006 ‘to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law.

For a window into Mr. Norquist’s core beliefs, he used Americans for Tax Reform to circulate a petition in support of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’. The Ground Zero Mosque was the failed multi million dollar mega Mosque project a block away from the fallen twin towers on 9/11/2001.

In 2004, at age 48, Mr. Norquist married a Palestinian Muslim name Samah Alrayyes. Ms. Alrayyes-Norquist was the Director of the Islamic Free Market Institute which was connected financially to convicted terrorist Abduraham Alamoudi and founded by Grover Norquist.

EMPAct America Summit 2014 The Uninvited II

The vacuum created by the ACU and CPAC not addressing vital national security issues has been filled by war hero David Bellavia, Center For Security Policy, and Breitbart News.

Speakers for the event included Sen. Ted Cruz, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, Phyllis Schlafly, Frank Gaffney, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and many others.

Many of the speakers presenting at the Uninvited II were not invited to CPAC 2014. If the ACU continues to ignore our countries national security interests they will risk alienating a majority of the conservative base.

The loud whispers on the floor of CPAC 2014 was that its time to remove Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan bringing the ACU and CPAC back to its former influential relevance.

Connecting the dots is an essential part of constructing an individuals life and their core beliefs. Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan refuse to answer any questions pertaining to these troubling associations. Rather they both respond by attacking the individual who dares to bring their nefarious associations up publicly and privately.

Conclusion

Psychologists have long ago determined that individuals who have something to hide use these classic ‘avoidance techniques’ to deflect questions and accusations they can not or chose not to defend.

The Republican Party has long identified itself itself as the party of National Security. When the conservative movement has agents of influence like Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan in their high level ranks it is a personal assault on the GOP.

Attending CPAC 2014 gave me the opportunity to talk with scores of attendees who were aware of Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan’s troubling past and present associations. Many of those on the ACU board, speakers, and vendors were afraid to speak on the record about Norquist/Khan but off the record were concerned about the negative influence these two individuals have on the conservative movement.

In all fairness to Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan we did try to conduct personal interviews in the floor of CPAC 2014. Mr. Norquist and Mr. Khan were not forthcoming and came across ‘prince like’ in their self importance in answering even the most basic of questions.

Each year the number of grassroots conservatives who are unsettled by Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan’s well documented ties to Islamic terrorists and The Muslim Brotherhood is growing exponentially.

I challenge you to research the facts and come to your own conclusions.

EDITORS NOTE: The feature image is courtesy of the Center for Security Policy.

BREAKING NEWS: Pro-Russian rioters kill and maim Ukrainians in Donetsk

March 16, 2014/in Featured, National Security, News, Policy/by The Peoples Cube

A mob of pro-Russian protesters savagely attacked a pro-Ukrainian rally with clubs, metal rods, rocks, tear gas, and smoke bombs, killing a 22-year-old local man and seriously injuring scores of others Thursday in Lenin Square in Donetsk, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine.

According to witnesses, the pro-Ukrainian rally consisted mostly of local men and women, some with children, who came there after work to support the territorial integrity of Ukraine against Russia’s attempts to split the country. This angered a pro-Russian rally nearby, which held Russian flags and demanded that the coal-mining region be separated from Ukraine and joined with Russia.

At some point rocks, eggs, and smoke grenades started flying from the pro-Russian side towards a line of people who chanted Ukrainian slogans while holding a long banner with the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

As the rally ended, a large crowd of angry Russian nationalists surrounded their opponents, hurling ethnic insults, and preventing them from leaving. The confrontation quickly became violent.

A slideshow on this Ukrainian news site has the pictures. A 25-minute YouTube video, posted the same day by a local citizen reporter, shows uninterrupted footage of the most violent stage of the riot, helping to reconstruct the events.

As the police succeeded in letting most of the pro-Ukrainian side leave the square, they themselves got surrounded by an angry mob, with about twenty bloodied people huddled together next to a police bus inside a protective circle of policemen. The law enforcement, represented by both local and military police, was outnumbered; an officer was heard calling for reinforcement.

The crowd chanted “Russia! Russia!” while also screaming threats, insults, and ethnic slurs. They also chanted “On your knees,” demanding that the Ukrainian patriots kneel before their tormentors, who waved Russian flags.

As rocks, bottles, and smoke bombs continued to fly, the police managed to get the battered men into the bus, but the attackers slashed the tires and broke the windows, throwing more rocks and smoke bombs inside the bus, spraying pepper spray and forcing the people out into the street.

As the pro-Ukrainian demonstrators climbed out of the bus windows back into the street, the crowd broke the police barrier and began to beat up the unarmed men with fists and clubs, leaving several of them lying on the pavement, covered in blood, all the while calling their victims “fascists” and “faggots.” A few who tried to escape by breaking through the crowd were surrounded and beaten.

The chant “On your knees!” continued as the surrounded and beaten people, many of them unable to stand, crouched on the ground, which the mob finally perceived as compliance with their demand to kneel. Having carried the wounded away, the police were finally able to escort the remaining few to safety.

The video ends with the camera pointing downwards, as one of the pro-Russian attackers demands that the cameraman stop shooting because the footage may wind up in the “wrong” hands. During the time of this writing this video added half a million views on YouTube, with many comments in both Russian and broken English cheering the beating of Ukrainians and blaming America for the violence.

UPDATE: The New York Times posted its report with a similar account of the events and the same references, seven hours after mine in PJ Media. For once it’s good to see truthful reporting from the “newspaper of record.” They embedded a shorter video by the Vice News reporter Robert King, which shows the entire event unfold in brief segments, with English subtitles.

In another video, which shows an injured man being taken to an ambulance, gloating voices refer to him as a “Bandera” (a slur against Ukrainian nationalists) and an intruder from Maidan who got what he deserved for taking American money. This and other comments in the videos, as well as multiple pro-Russian comments on various YouTube threads, reveal a paranoid, hateful mind-set, which boils down to the following presumptions:

(a) The Ukrainian revolution was the result of a vast Western-Zionist conspiracy against Russia; (b) all pro-Ukrainian demonstrators are violent Nazis, fascists, and traitors who have been paid with dollars by their American, European, and Zionist masters; and (c) the demonstrators are all intruders from Western Ukraine, the land of hateful worshipers of the “Nazi collaborator” Stepan Bandera.

Such absurd beliefs are the result of a massive campaign of lies, distortions, provocations, and propaganda that the Putin government has been disseminating through all available media channels, both inside Russia and in the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, aiming to discredit and demonize the recent popular uprising against the corrupt pro-Russian government of Victor Yanukovich. Among the various reasons to suppress the Ukrainian revolution, probably the most important one was the Kremlin’s fear that it may soon spread from Maidan to Red Square.

Below is a pro-Russian sign opposing Ukrainian “fascism.” The blue and yellow Ukrainian flag never had the Nazi eagle as a symbol, but that didn’t stop the brainwashed activist from drawing it over the Ukrainian flag and then equating it with the Nazi flag.

After the Maidan uprising finally succeeded on February 22, the propaganda only intensified, with an added focus on stirring separatist sentiments and paranoia in the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, with the apparent goal of breaking the country apart in order to destabilize, demoralize, and subdue the new Ukrainian government – or, better yet, to absorb the breakaway regions into Russia.

A pro-Russian rioter in Donetsk burns a blue-and-yellow ribbon with Ukrainian symbols. He himself is wearing a yellow-and-black St. Georgy ribbon, which symbolizes Russia’s military pride and commemorates the Soviet victory over the Nazi Germany. Russians wearing these ribbons in Ukraine imagine they are fighting “Nazism,” which in their minds gives them a moral license to act like Nazi thugs.

The same propaganda, in a more subtle and less anti-Semitic, less gay-bashing form, has found its way to the West — first through the usual hard-left and “anti-war” channels, as well as a hired army of trolls posting anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian comments on the Internet and social media; then through more established news media and talk radio.

An important part in this propaganda has always been played by RT, or Russia Today — the second most-watched foreign news channel in the U.S. after BBC World News and the number one foreign station in five major U.S. urban areas, boasting on its Wikipedia page about being “very popular among younger American people, U.S. college students, and in U.S. inner city neighborhoods.”

Reporting on the riot in Donetsk, for example, RT predictably blamed the violence on the pro-Ukrainian side, who allegedly provoked the Russian nationalists “by shouting far-right slogans ‘Glory to Ukraine’ and ‘Glory to heroes,’ loudly demanding the respect of Ukrainian territorial sovereignty.” In that statement alone, preemptively disseminating the “correct” narrative, the RT editors revealed the unmasked voice of pervasive Russian chauvinism: how dare Ukrainians be patriotic and stand up for Ukraine while in their own country?

The important part of the story is that both the attackers and the attacked spoke Russian, which is the native tongue for the majority of people in eastern parts of Ukraine. Similarly, many speakers in Kiev’s Maidan and a large number of anti-government protesters also spoke Russian and carried Russian-language signs. Admittedly, the majority of Russian speakers in Ukraine think of themselves as Ukrainians, and favor independence from Russia and the territorial integrity of their country.

Why would one group of Ukrainians attack another group of Ukrainians for espousing allegiance to their common country?

To be sure, this isn’t a conflict between Ukrainians and Russians, or between the Ukrainian-speaking and the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine, no matter how much the Kremlin desires to turn it into one. It is a conflict of two mindsets, two ideologies, and two allegiances. One side is nostalgic for the old Soviet era with its imperial, autocratic , and collectivist mode of existence. The other side desires freedom, individual rights, and the dignity of living outside of Russia’s shadow.

In addition, according to local sources in Donetsk, there was evidence that at least some of the attackers, who shouted at the local Ukrainians to “go home,” themselves had been intruders from the neighboring Russia. It is hardly a coincidence that during pro-Russian actions in Donetsk all local hotels were occupied by young visitors from Russia, while the separatists posing as Ukrainian citizens weren’t familiar with the name of the local governor.

Pro-Russian demonstrators, earlier that day in Donetsk, getting ready to attack the pro-Ukrainian “fascists.”

This wasn’t their first riot, either. On March 1, a 7,000-strong pro-Russian separatist rally in the same Lenin Square in Donetsk marched on the office of the regional government, took down the Ukrainian flag on its spire and raised the flag of Russia instead.

Earlier they demanded that the Donetsk region split from Ukraine and join Russia, declared the new Ukrainian government illegitimate, refused to obey the newly appointed local governor, and elected a local populist leader, Pavel Gubarev, as “the people’s governor.”

Gubarev then declared that the local law enforcement and military units must obey his orders and compared himself to the Venezuelan Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez, as well as such autocratic leaders as Belarus president Lukashenko, Russian president Putin, and Kazakhstan president Nazarbayev, adding that the future belongs to the Eurasian Union, which is based on the authoritarian model of government.

Russian and communist flags together in Lenin Square, Donetsk. Communists strongly support pro-Russian separatism, willing to split Ukraine and join Russia.

A speaker at a Maidan rally in Kiev later described these events, suggesting that the only way for the Ukrainian patriots to stop such Russian intruders from going to Ukrainian cities, inciting separatism, and tearing down Ukrainian flags with impunity was to start shooting them so they begin to respect another country’s sovereignty.

A video of that speech soon went viral in Russia. Taken without context, a claim that Ukrainian protesters now want to start shooting Russians stirred a wave of indignation among Russian nationalists. It is easy to imagine that part of this indignation translated in today’s beatings of local pro-Ukrainian demonstrators in Donetsk, whom the pro-Russian attackers imagined to be “murderous intruders” in the service of “Western imperialism.”

So far, however, the only people killed and maimed were those on the Ukrainian side. In the meantime, anti-Ukrainian propaganda and the incitement of ethnic hatred by the Kremlin continues unabated at home and in many languages abroad, creating preconditions for more military incursions to “protect” ethnic Russians from “Ukrainian violence.”

In a predictable development, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the new Kiev government is unable to control the situation in Ukraine and, therefore, Moscow reserves the right to protect its “fellow citizens” on the Ukrainian territory.

A pro-Russian rioter waves Russian flag in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

Study finds current US Penal Codes based on Scientific Fraud and Child Sex Crimes

March 16, 2014/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Featured, Government Transparency, News, Policy, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

“As legal, social, and educational decisions turn on public trust in scientific honesty, scientific fraud and misconduct can and do result in fatal consequences. Law thus holds the scientist accountable for knowingly injecting false data into the societal stream of consciousness, even where no discernible harm results,” states a new study titled “Reliance on Kinsey’s ‘Scientific’ Child Sex Atrocities and the Effects of His Crime and Fraud on Past and Current Law and Public Policy” by Judith Gelernter Reisman, Ph.D., visiting Professor of Law, Liberty University School of Law, Mathew D. Staver, Esq., Shawn D. Akers, Esq., Stephen M. Crampton, Esq., Richard L. Mast, Esq. and Daniel J. Schmid, Esq.

The study notes:

Alfred C. Kinsey has been likened by supporters to a “scientific” Prometheus – bringing the equivalent of fire from the gods to enlighten mankind. Singlehandedly creating a sexology movement, his Kinsey Institute is the foundation of the Model Penal Code and all modern jurisprudence relating to sex and morality. But unlike Prometheus, Kinsey was fanned by his own base desires. Kinsey set loose fraudulent sexual fires upon the world that matched his own sexual psychopathologies and created a conflagration of human passions, released from the bonds of traditional jurisprudence and morality. His statistical lies were translated into laws that destroyed extant common law protections for women, children, and the family. His acolytes built upon his frauds a medical-psychological-educational-legal complex that is destroying our children and our society. If we are to halt our moral annihilation, all legal doctrines based on his crimes and fraud must be exposed like the Tuskegee Experiment and overturned. The dysfunctional laws underlying the education, media, entertainment, and other aspects of society that stand on Kinsey’s criminal frauds and child atrocities must be reversed.

[…]

Kinsey’s adult population sample was aberrant. He directed and colluded in the sexual torture of up to 2,035 infants and children. Moreover the Kinsey team for Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) engaged in criminal, sexual atrocities against from 317 (minimum) to 2,035 little boys, the youngest 2 months of age, covered up by the scientific establishment from 1948 to today. Scientific fraud and misconduct always poisons the stream of knowledge…

“The Judiciary has cited, condoned, and collaborated with Kinsey’s sex science frauds and child sex atrocities for over seventy years. Judicial endorsement of Kinsey’s bad sex “data” has contaminated every core value of society. Kinsey’s sexual psychopathologies have been and are now used daily in workshops, seminars, films, textbooks, and conferences to train the teachers who train millions of school children. In his 2013 law journal article, retired Australian Chief Justice Michael Kirby thanked Kinsey for bringing Kirby “out,” thus aiding in his judicial rulings. The ‘Out’ Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG hyped Kinsey’s pioneering study in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies,” write Reisman et. al.

This study is a must read for all citizens, lawyers, judges and legislators at every level. Current penal codes are based upon false science and the abhorrent abuse of children by Alfred Kinsey. Laws must have a moral basis and officers of the court must hold accountable those who produce, promote and practice false science.

To download the full PDF version of the “Reliance” study click here.

To understand the impact of Kinsey on public policy read a February, 2014 Daily Mail investigation which discovered that British Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman, her husband, home affairs spokesman Jack Dromey, and former health secretary Patricia Hewitt were all leading officials in the National Council for Civil Liberties. The Mail found:

Miss Hewitt described PIE [Paedophile Information Exchange] in glowing terms as ‘a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children’;
The NCCL lobbied Parliament for the age of sexual consent to be cut to ten – if the child consented and ‘understood the nature of the act’.
It called for incest to be legalised in what one MP dubbed a ‘Lolita’s charter’;
The NCCL claimed research shows young paedophile victims are often ‘consenting or even the initiators of the sexual acts involved’;
It filed a submission to Parliament claiming that ‘childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult, result in no identifiable damage’.
Miss Harman, as NCCL legal officer, tried to water down child pornography laws.
NCCL lawyers acted for a PIE member who was quizzed by police over appalling behaviour.

The Mail has repeatedly sent detailed questions to Miss Harman, Miss Hewitt and Mr Dromey about their links to PIE and whether they now regret supporting such a vile group. Neither Miss Hewitt nor Mr Dromey replied.

There is an effort in America by B4U-ACT to categorize pedophiles and pederasts as “minor attracted persons”. This movement is not unlike the normalization of homosexual marriages and introduction of the homosexual lifestyle into public schools via the national anti-bullying campaign. The idea is to make deviant sexual behaviors permissible by calling these sexual acts a “civil right”.

The B4u-ACT website states:

B4U-ACT assembled a list of over 30 credentialed practitioners in Maryland who agreed to its Principles and Perspectives of Practice, and who were willing to provide caring and inviting services to clients who are sexually attracted to minors. Lay volunteers were sought who would be trained to operate a hotline for the purpose of referring minor-attracted individuals to these professionals.

Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) reported:

On Wednesday, August 17, [2011] child advocates Matt Barber, Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action, and Dr. Judith Reisman, a visiting law professor at Liberty University School of Law, attended a Baltimore, MD conference hosted by the pedophile group B4U-ACT. Around 50 individuals were in attendance including a number of admitted pedophiles – or “Minor-Attracted Persons” as they prefer to be identified (MAP “sexual orientation”) – as well as several supportive mental health professionals. World renowned “sexologist,” Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University gave the keynote address, saying: “I want to completely support the goal of B4U-ACT.”