Tag Archive for: Southern Poverty Law Center

The SPLC Seeks to Profit Off of Alleged Hate

/in , , , , , , /by

Are parents who are concerned for their children’s education “haters”? Are they bigots? Do they deserve to be treated as “domestic terrorists”? The answer to all of these questions should be, “No.”

But lately, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group that claims to be the last word in who are haters and hate groups in America, has now added Moms for Liberty to their infamous “map of hate.”

WATCH: The Southern Poverty Law Center is a Scam

This means, according to the SPLC, that right up there—or really, right down there—with the skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan is this grassroots organization of mothers concerned about their children’s education.

The website of Moms for Liberty explains why they exist: “The organization’s mission is to organize, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”

Tyler O’Neil of the Heritage Foundation wrote the book on the SPLC. It’s called Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I‘ve had the privilege to interview O’Neil about the infamous work of the SPLC. He told me, “The Southern Poverty Law Center is a morally bankrupt organization with upwards of $700 million endowment. And they make their money by demonizing people who disagree with them.”

Just last week, O’Neil wrote, “The SPLC, which has weaponized the program it used against the KKK in the 1980s to attack mainstream conservative and Christian organizations, in June added parental rights groups to its so-called hate map, among them Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, Purple for Parents, and Courage Is a Habit.”

This is scary. America is in the midst of a crisis of education, and a crying need for more parental involvement in their children’s education. But according to the SPLC, if they are parents with a conservative point of view, then they’re bigots.

For the American experiment in self-rule under God to work, said virtually every founding father, the people themselves have to be virtuous.

George Washington, whose birthday we celebrate soon, said famously, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

But today’s elites seem committed to promoting irreligion and immorality. And if you oppose any of these things, you might just find yourself labeled as a hater or a hate group.

That may seem preposterous, but my employer, Coral Ridge Ministries (also known as D. James Kennedy Ministries) has been labeled as a hate group by the SPLC. And we can be found on their “hate and antigovernment groups” map. Why? Because we disagree with same-sex marriage. We sued them for libel, but they basically said they were practicing their First Amendment right of free speech. When they appear in the media, they appear as Arbiters of Hate. But when it came time to defend their hate designation in court, they meekly stated that it was simply a matter of opinion. Our appeals all the way up to the Supreme Court failed.

There was a time when the SPLC did some good work to try and curtail racism in America. But in the last few decades or so, they seem to spend all their considerable resources trying to vilify conservatives and Christians.

The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Tom Parker once told our viewers in a television interview that the SPLC is basically a gigantic fundraising machine: “They have been able to squirrel away overseas while they continued to purport to represent those in poverty and in need.”

Parker made an interesting suggestion when we were making a documentary on the SPLC. He said we should take our TV crew and go across town, to the other side of the tracks, and get some footage of some of those still experiencing Southern poverty that the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t lift a finger to help. We followed up on the Chief Justice’s idea.

All of this makes one wonder: Who died and put the SPLC in charge of determining who hates and who does not?

Many of the groups that the SPLC now targets as alleged hate groups are perhaps being so labeled because they are effective in making a positive difference, like the Alliance Defending Freedom (which has won a number of significant cases at the Supreme Court), Liberty Counsel, the Family Research Council, and a host of other conservative Christian groups that defend religious liberty and traditional marriage.

The SPLC sets themselves up as prophets. But judging by the endowment they’ve built up by scaring northeastern liberals who don’t know any Christians, it seems that perhaps they’re more driven by profits.

The words of the ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah come to mind. He said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

Copyright 2024.  Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. All rights reserved.

Southern Poverty Law Center Endorses Labeling National Review and Pro-Israel Organizations as Hate Groups

/in , , , , , , , /by

CAIR’s Islamophobia reports have been around for a while. And they deserve as much credibility as anything from an officially unindicted co-conspirator Islamist organization ought to.

Here’s the DOJ on the subject.

In 2008, the FBI developed a policy on its interactions with CAIR based in part on evidence presented during the 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.! The evidence at trial linked CAIR leaders to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization, and CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. The policy was intended to significantly restrict the FBI’s non-investigative interactions with CAIR and to prevent CAIR from publicly exploiting such contacts with the FBI.

Expect every media report on CAIR’s new Islamophobia report, Hijacked by Hate, to ignore this minor detail.

The report contains an intro from its executive director, Nihad Awad.

In 1993 Awad, who had developed into an increasingly outspoken advocate for the rights of Palestinians, became the public-relations director of the Islamic Association for Palestine(IAP)—a front for Hamas.

In 1994, then-IAP president Omar Ahmad convened a meeting with Rafeeq Jaber and Awad to discuss the possibility of branching IAP out in another direction. As a result of that meeting, in June of 1994 these “IAP three” incorporated the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—as Awad put it, “to bridge the chasm of ignorance between Muslims in America and their neighbors.” Awad became the group’s executive director—a post he continues to hold—and Ahmad was named chairman of the board. Awad then solicited his friend and colleague from the Bosnian Relief Committee, Ibrahim Hooper, to serve as CAIR’s communications director. With the help of a $5000 donation from the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)—yet another Hamas front group—CAIR opened up an office in Washington, DC.

At a March 22, 1994 symposium at Barry University in Florida, he declared: “I used to support the PLO, and I used to be the President of the General Union of Palestine Students which is part of the PLO here in the United States, but after I researched the situation inside Palestine and outside, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.”

In an interview that same year with newsman Mike Wallace, Awad was asked if he supported the “military undertakings of Hamas,” to which he replied: “The United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation [the right] to defend themselves against illegal occupation.”

Again, expect the media not to cover any of this.

But the latest Islamophobia Report breaks new ground in not only going after the expected targets, David Horowitz, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, David Yerushalmi, Pamela Geller, and other people who have called attention to the problem of Islamist violence.

This time this supposed review of “Islamophobic hate groups” drags in the National Review. Really? The National Review.

And a laundry list of pro-Israel organizations including CAMERA, EMET, FLAME, MEMRI, aside from the latter, the rest don’t even concentrate on Islam, they just oppose Islamic terrorism against Israel.

While this would be easy enough to dismiss, except that the report comes with an endorsement from Heidi Beirich, the creepy point woman on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s infamously sloppy hate lists.

That means the SPLC has gotten to the point where it’s willing to denounce mainstream pro-Israel groups as hate groups. That’s the direction it went with socially conservative Christian groups. Pro-Israel groups are next.

RELATED VIDEOS: The Ides of March mean Islamophobia awareness day? Links 1, March 15 2020

RELATED ARTICLES:

Iran Spreads the Coronavirus Throughout the Middle East (Part 2)

US conducts airstrikes against multiple Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia sites in Iraq

Only 4% of migrants on Greek border are Syrians, large number are Muslims from North Africa, not war refugees

UK: Muslim journalist says “I’d rather take my chances with the virus than consume an Israeli vaccine”

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s Tyrannical Tactics to Suppress Religious Belief in Traditional Marriage

/in , , , , , , , /by

ANN ARBOR, MI—Watching, listening, tracking, and compiling secret dossiers on dissidents until they are finally accused and prosecuted—these are the police-state tactics one might associate with an authoritarian regime in a World War II movie.

Yet, these are the very methods the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) has found are being used by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel acting in concert with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On February 19, 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a notorious and discredited radical left-wing anti-Christian organization, published its annual Hate Map report which listed 31“hate” groups operating in Michigan in 2018.  Listed in that group as “ANTI-LGBT” was Church Militant, a nonprofit Michigan-based religious media organization which advocates traditional Catholic belief that marriage as instituted by God is for one man and one woman.

Three days later, on February 22, 2019, a disturbing joint news release by Attorney General Nessel and the Director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights was issued referencing and linking to SPLC’s Hate Map. The joint release contained Nessel’s promise to establish a hate-crimes unit to fight against hate crimes and hate groups which have been allowed to proliferate in Michigan.

Nessel’s spokeswoman, Kelly Rossman-McKinney, noted that SPLC is a good place to start when investigating hate and bias.

The Director of the Civil Rights Department told a Detroit News reporter that the Department is creating a database which would document hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime or civil infraction.

Additional damning evidence of AG Nessl’s hostility toward traditional marriage was provided by the findings of Chief Judge Robert Jonker of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. In a published 2019 legal opinion, Buck v. Gordon, Judge Jonker found that Nessel attempted to stop St. Vincent Catholic Charities from performing adoption and foster placement services because it professed the Catholic belief on marriage. Judge Jonker said that past statements by Nessel “raise a strong inference of hostility toward a religious viewpoint.”

Jonker concluded that “St. Vincent was targeted based on its religious belief, and it was Defendant Nessel who targeted it.”

Concerned that AG Nessel is continuing to weaponize the Attorney General’s Office to suppress religious beliefs in traditional marriage by threats of investigation and prosecution, the Thomas More Law Center, a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a request for records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Using sham excuses, Nessel refused to supply crucial records that would shed light on her use of her law enforcement powers to target organizations that opposed her personal ideology supporting same-sex marriage.

TMLC filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims on January 9, 2020, against Nessel for her refusal to comply with Michigan’s FOIA.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, which represents Church Militant and its Founder and President Michael Voris, commented: “This lawsuit is about the right of the people to know what their public officials are doing. We believe that Attorney General Nessel targeted Church Militant because of its stance on traditional marriage as she had done in the case involving St. Vincent.”

Continued Thompson: “The combination of actions by the Attorney General Nessel, the Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech and religion not only of Church Militant, but every religious group in Michigan that stands for traditional marriage.”

Astonishingly, Nessel’s office admitted in its response to Thomas More Law Center’s FOIA request that:

  • It had no policies in place to safeguard the constitutional rights of individuals who committed no crime but are being investigated for espousing traditional marriage.
  • It has no clear definitions of “bias incidents” or “hate crimes” against LGBT persons that are backed up by Michigan statutes or court decisions.
  •  The AG’s Office failed in its FOIA response to provide any clear policies or parameters governing the prosecution of hate crimes. Nor does it have a clear definition of what constitutes a “hate group.”

Without policies to adequately guide the actions of the Hate Crime Unit, it is free to roam about launching secret investigations against any organization based solely on the fact that it supports traditional marriage.

Consequently, it was easy for the Attorney General’s Office to claim that Church Militant was under investigation to avoid turning over records and to escape public scrutiny.

“Nessel has single-handedly turned the Attorney General’s Office into an instrument of thought control by intimidation, using its law enforcement powers to police the speech of Michigan residents.

“One of her primary goals is to suppress the religious definition of marriage that does not conform to her opinions on same-sex marriage,” Thompson said.

Church Militant, headquartered in Ferndale, Michigan, reports on current events around the world from a Catholic perspective. Defending the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman has always been a major theme of its video broadcasts and written reports, which are viewed by millions of people throughout the world via its website and YouTube channel.

Click here to read TMLC’s full complaint.

RELATED ARTICLES:

A SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT – Thomas More Law Center Uncovers Taxpayer-funded Islamic Propaganda Forced on Teachers

Cardinal Raymond Burke Endorses Thomas More Law Center For Its Important Service Restoring Christian Culture

Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Is Petitioned to Rehear the Federal Refugee Resettlement Opinion ‘Painfully’ at Odds with Supreme Court Precedent

What Teaching in China Taught Me About Religious Freedom

EDITORS NOTE: This Thomas More Law Center column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

AmazonSmile Program Prevents Customer Donations to Pro-Israel Organization

/in , , , , , , , /by

Here’s the disturbing tale:

Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN), a Tennessee-based non-profit evangelical Christian organization committed towards standing with Israel and fighting antisemitism, has been removed from the AmazonSmile program, which enables Amazon customers to donate a percentage of their purchase to their favorite charity.

PJTN President Laurie Cardoza-Moore told JNS that “all of a sudden, we began being inundated with e-mails from supporters whose AmazonSmile donations to Proclaiming Justice to the Nations had been repeatedly rejected. They were being instructed to choose another charity, despite wanting to support PJTN.” After reaching out to Amazon for an explanation—assuming it was a technical glitch—the retail giant informed PJTN that customers would no longer be able to donate towards the organization using the AmazonSmile platform, following the listing of PJTN as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The SPLC, whose website says that part of its mission is to monitor domestic hate groups in the United States, has PJTN listed on its “hate map” as being one of 36 Tennessee-based hate groups. SPLC specifically accuses PJTN of being “anti-Muslim.”

Amazon employs 566,000 people worldwide. The company clearly does not lack for personnel to study non-profit groups and to  advise Amazon as to which ones qualify for its customers to use the AmazonSmile platform, which allows them to donate part of their purchase to a favorite charity.

But Amazon chose not to do that work itself. Instead, it handed over the decision making as to which groups are to be considered “hate groups” to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has a grand total of 254 employees. That means that for every employee of the SPLC, Amazon has more than 2,000 of its own. Is the SPLC so very good at its job that mighty Amazon, with its 566,000 employees, is right to rely on the 254 employees of that outside group? For years, the SPLC presented itself as beyond reproach, an organization of selfless do-gooders at a non-profit. But in recent years, defectors from the group have painted a grim picture of an organization run by scam artists – its head a “flimflam man” — who have arranged colossal salaries for themselves, in some cases have been guilty of sexual harassment of fellow employees, have exhibited racist attitudes, and have been thoroughly unmasked for these and other offenses in numerous damning reports.

Here is some of what Jessica Prol Smith, of the Alliance Defending Freedom, discovered about the SPLC:

For years, former employees revealed, local journalists reported and commentators have lamented: The Southern Poverty Law Center is not what it claims to be. Not a pure-hearted, clear-headed legal advocate for the vulnerable, but rather an obscenely wealthy marketing scheme. For years, the left-wing interest group has used its “hate group” list to promote the fiction that violent neo-Nazis and Christian nonprofits peacefully promoting orthodox beliefs about marriage and sex are indistinguishable. Sometimes, it has apologized to public figures it has smeared, and it recently paid out millions to settle a threatened defamation lawsuit.

These shameful secrets are no longer hidden in shadows. The New York Times, Politico, NPR and a host of other mainstream publications are reporting on the corruption and widening credibility gap. The SPLC dismissed its co-founder in March, and its president has resigned amidst numerous claims of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism within the organization — a parade of disgraces that vividly force the conclusion: The SPLC is hollow, rotten and failing at the very virtues it pretends to celebrate.

Morris Dees, co-founder of SPLC, was dismissed for many reasons. A multimillionaire from his work as a direct-mail marketer before founding SPLC, Dees was reportedly more concerned with fund-raising than with litigating; he had not tried a case in more than a decade, and other than raising money for himself and others, took little part in the SPLC’s day-to-day operations. During his tenure, there were accusations of gender discrimination and racism in hiring and promotions, as well as sexual harassment. The SPLC’s president, Richard Cohen, apparently resigned for much the same reasons — charges of race and gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and other, unspecified offenses. Both Cohen and Dees had been receiving very large salaries, way out of whack with non-profits of similar size.

The criticism comes from many corners. There’s the Current Affairs editor who seems sympathetic to the center’s progressive mission but decries its “hate group” list as an “outright fraud” and a “willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC.”

There’s the retired investigative journalist who helped research and write an eight-part series on the center’s “litany of problems and questionable practices” in the mid-1990s. His Washington Post opinion piece reads with a thinly veiled message: We nearly got a Pulitzer Prize for TELLING YOU SO.

But perhaps most damning of all are the indictments leveled by former employee Bob Moser in The New Yorker. He remembers being welcomed to the “Poverty Palace” and recounts the heart-sinking reality of it all — being “pawns” in a “highly profitable scam.”

Stephen Bright, a Yale law professor and former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, has long questioned what he calls the center’s “fraudulent” fundraising.

“The chickens have had a very long trip, but they finally came home to roost,” Bright said.

“Morris is a flimflam man and he’s managed to flimflam his way along for many years raising money by telling people about the Ku Klux Klan and hate groups,” he said. “He sort of goes to whatever will sell and has, of course, brought in millions and millions and millions of dollars.”

While the SPLC funded some good work, Bright said, he had long heard complaints about race discrimination and sexual harassment from the center’s former attorneys and interns.

The SPLC has been thoroughly discredited during this last year, yet Bezos has not said a word. Could it be he still doesn’t know about the scandalous goings-on at SPLC, or is that he doesn’t care? Perhaps he’s been busy, swallowing up yet another industry, but he really ought to give Amazon’s reliance on SPLC for deciding which are the “hate groups” to be banned from AmazonSmile more of his attention. And then he might decide to cut the cord.

Given all this, here’s what Jeff Bezos ought to do to spare himself further embarrassment. He ought to read what Tim Moser, the former employee of SPLC, wrote about the organization in The New Yorker. He should read the eight-part series by an investigative journalist on the “problems and questionable practices” at SPLC. He ought to find out what The New York Times, Politico, and NPR have reported about SPLC, which has led many to conclude, with Ms. Smith, that the SPLC “is hollow, rotten, and failing at the very virtues it pretends to celebrate.” And he ought to interview Yale Law Professor Stephen Bright, to find out why he calls Morris Dees a “flimflam man.”

What were the charges, not specified at the time, that forced SPLC co-founder Morris Dees to resign in disgrace?  What were the charges that led President Richard Cohen to quit the SPLC? What have close observers of the SPLC discovered about how it has been run, to their dismay and horror?

Jeff Bezos should take a day or two out of his busy schedule of insensate empire-building in order to learn more about the SPLC, on which he has chosen to rely for the identification of “hate groups.” He needs to do more than read what Moser, Bright, and a dozen others who have either worked for SPLC or been close observers of the organization, have written. He needs to talk directly with them, so that he will realize the full extent of the SPLC’s transgressions, can ask them probing questions, and learn more about those “flimflam men” at the top, who have lately been exposed as being guilty of gender and race discrimination, among many other sins.

Bezos should also investigate SPLC’s readiness to label as “anti-Muslim hate groups” those who do not preach hate of any sort, but are simply islamocritics. The SPLC long ago consigned Jihad Watch to the outer darkness. When it included Maajid Nawaz, the founder of the Quilliam Foundation, on a 2016 list of “anti-Muslim extremists,” the SPLC was sued by Nawaz, who won a $3.4 million dollar judgment against the group. That has not stopped the SPLC from continuing to describe Jihad Watch, AFDI, and similar websites as being “hate groups.” SPLC describes, with its wonted tone of hysteria, Robert Spencer as that “notorious Muslim-basher and pretend expert on Islam.”

An email request by JNS [Jewish News Service] to SPLC asking for an explanation about their listing of PJTN went unanswered as of press time.

When asked by JNS what would cause the SPLC to label her organization as being anti-Muslim, Cardoza-Moore responded, “Proclaiming Justice to the Nations exists to fight the oldest hate on earth: antisemitism. We were given no explanation as to why we were blacklisted. If our work highlighting antisemites like [Reps.] Ilhan Omar [D-Minn.] and Rashida Tlaib [D-Mich.] got us on the list, we’ll wear it as a badge of honor. Despite the financial penalties that we are facing with AmazonSmile, will not be silenced for fulfilling our biblical responsibility to defend the State of Israel and Jewish people in the face of growing global antisemitism.”

She added that “sadly, the SPLC lost its way long ago, becoming a tool to shame any organization that doesn’t share their extremist agenda.”

Cardoza-Moore said that initially, she thought it was a joke that PJTN had been placed on the SPLC list of hate groups alongside the KKK. However, she said that “I have now learned that this political witch hunt against those who don’t share SPLC’s extremist liberal views has been adopted as a religious doctrine by Amazon. This could dramatically affect our ability to raise funds and function as a nonprofit organization.”

She added that it appears that Amazon “has become the nation’s new moral compass powered by the subversive Southern Poverty Law Center. Charities should not be persecuted in this way; this has to stop.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to JNS via email that PJTN had been dropped, saying in a general statement that according to their policy, “organizations that engage in, support, encourage or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering or other illegal activities are not eligible.”

Just as a matter of interest, perhaps Amazon would care to tell us if CAIR is eligible to receive donations through AmazonSmile. If it does, would Bezos be willing to consider the evidence that CAIR just might be an organization that “encourages or promotes intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence”? And while we’re at it, have any of the many pro-BDS groups that many of us believe encourage “intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence” been banned from participating in the AmazonSmile program?

The statement [from Amazon] mentioned that since 2013, Amazon has relied on the SPLC along with the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (of the US Department of the Treasury) to make its determination on which organizations are eligible for the AmazonSmile program.

Cardoza-Moore says that as a result of being dropped, she is calling on her donors to bypass Amazon in order to help support Israel and combat antisemitism.

“We have asked our donors to continue supporting PJTN directly instead of through AmazonSmile. Nobody will silence us, even when we stand up against giants like Amazon; we know that we have truth and justice on our side,” she said.

“Our answer to this hateful blacklisting will be to continue building more PJTN chapters across the United States and beyond. We will continue to fight antisemitism and defend the State of Israel, wherever and whenever necessary,” she continued. “We will endeavor to reach more people than ever because our message is needed now, more than ever.”

A statement from PJTN said that in recent months, the organization has led the struggle against the BDS movement in the United States with a wave of state resolutions, and has exposed textbooks used in public schools that it says are indoctrinating children with inaccurate historical information and bias that do not reflect American values.

In 2016, JNS reported that PJTN drafted the state of Tennessee’s anti-BDS resolution, which passed in the General Assembly, making it one of the first states to pass such state-level legislation against BDS.

So PJTN, unbowed, continues to be active in its campaign against the BDS movement. And its donors will now simply find other, more direct ways to support it, now that PJTN has been banned, so absurdly, from the AmazonSmile program. Many people, as they find out more about Amazon, and its continuing reliance on the discredited SPLC for its determination of which groups promote “hatred” and “intolerance,” may want to express their own displeasure with that malevolent and powerful Amazon, and take their custom elsewhere.

COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

RELATED VIDEO: Students for Justice in Palestine: “We are going to have an Intifada in every classroom”

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Jewish agency and Islamic Center working together to bring more Syrians to the U.S.

/in , , , , , /by

We’ve told you previously that apparently the city of Pittsburgh has run out of America poor people and is looking to import more poverty from the Middle East, Africa and Asia so at least their poverty would be diverse.

The mayor, Bill Peduto, wrote to Obama in September looking especially for thousands of Syrians.

I’ll bet African American voters helped put this guy in office and they don’t get it that he is now bringing in competition for low income housing and jobs for low-skill workers. (The city is 26% African American, here)

This is the latest from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (housing and jobs are in short supply, no kidding?):

While the city of Pittsburgh might be welcoming more refugees from war-torn Syria, it is local agencies such as Jewish Family & Children’s Service and the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh that are working to make their lives here possible.

The challenges, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said, are housing and jobs.

Leslie Aizeman 2

Leslie Aizenman of the local Jewish resettlement office explains how her organization uses your tax dollars to find housing and jobs for refugees

“It’s not the city government that does this work,” Mr. Peduto said at “A Syrian Summit” Thursday night at East Liberty Presbyterian Church. “It’s the agencies … they look at those two critical factors.”

[….]

Dozens of people attended the meeting, sponsored by the Southwest PA division of the National Association of Social Workers, to ask Mr. Peduto and other speakers what Pittsburgh is doing for Syrian refugees and to advocate for them to live here. Four families already do.

[….]

The city will be able to take 500 refugees — not just Syrians — this year, he said.

Continue reading here.

Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Pittsburgh is a sub-contractor of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, here. Don’t forget, HIAS is the organization that wrote a report in 2013 which urged the Southern Poverty Law Center to investigate (and label as racists, bigots and xenophobes) anyone who had problems with the social and economic upheaval from refugee resettlement in their communities.

Pennsylvania is in the top FIVE states ‘welcoming’ mostly Muslim Syrians, see here.

Click here for everything we have said about Pittsburgh in previous posts.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Angry Turkish Prez: We will open our gates and let them go through to Europe

Greenwich, CT not getting refugees anytime soon (so they think!)

DNI Clapper on Hill today: ISIS will attack US;refugee flow infiltrated

Lutheran refugee contractor convinces SD legislator to withdraw bill

Is FBI report attempting to chill free speech? Reads like it was authored by the Southern Poverty Law Center!

/in , , , /by

World Net Daily writer Leo Hohmann (who has written extensively on the Refugee Program) reports on a document that the FBI will not deny is theirs.

The gist of it is that the FBI is watching militia groups they claim are anti-Islam and asserts that the groups are getting their inspiration from World Net Daily, the Blaze, Fox News and Pamela Geller among others.  Below we have snipped a bit of Hohmann’s report.

FBI

But, first a suggestion from a political observer to me:

This appears to be a free-political-speech threat.

Grassley (Senate Judiciary) or Goodlatte (House Judiciary) should open an investigatory hearing on this “intelligence bulletin”, swear all the administration witnesses, ask who directed such instructions, and at least publish a report or a staff study on their findings.

Here is World Net Daily (ignore the confusing headline) on the astounding “intelligence bulletin:”

Just three weeks after ISIS attacked a Muhammad cartoonist event in Garland, Texas, the FBI began circulating an intelligence bulletin that alerts state, federal and local law enforcement about the likelihood of attacks against Muslims by “militia extremists.”

The bulletin, marked “sensitive” and not for distribution without FBI authorization, cites evidence gathered since 2013 that American militia groups are planning attacks on mosques, Islamic centers and possibly individual Muslims.

The document is dated May 28, 2015, and was leaked to Public Intelligence, an online information site committed to exposing government secrets and data. Public Intelligence posted the document on its site Aug. 18.

Named in the bulletin as news sites that provide information that supposedly fuels the militia groups were WND.com, Fox News, the Blaze, Western Journalism Center, Patriot Newswire and Pamela Geller’s blog, AtlasShrugs.com.

[….]

The FBI concludes that there are “salient perceptions within militia extremism that contribute toward an anti-Muslim bias.” The FBI says such “bias” against Islam is based on the following beliefs among the “extremists”:

~“Islam represents a foreign threat, equivalent to those which emanate from illegal immigration or international terrorism.

~“The President of the United States not only sympathizes with Islamic extremists but directs U.S. Government policy to align with their goals.”

[….]

WND contacted the FBI with several questions about the bulletin and got the following response from Joshua Campbell, supervisory special agent of the FBI office of public affairs.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any information on the authenticity or contents of the referenced document. Our standard practice is to neither confirm or deny investigations or comment on bulletins provided to law enforcement partners.”

One of the questions WND asked was if he FBI had documented any actual militia attacks on Muslims over the past seven years.

None, I am sure, or it would have been all over the news.

Go to WND to read what some of those fingered by the FBI have to say.

RELATED ARTICLES:

National Suicide: Number Of Syrian Muslim Refugees To U.S. Expected To Quadruple

Cool map tells us which immigrant ethnic group holds demographic dominance in each state

Pamela Geller: Halt Refugee Resettlement Program — Southern Poverty Law Center a “smear machine”

/in , , , , /by

Yesterday, Pamela Geller writing at World Net Daily urged readers to contact their members of Congress to support Rep. Brian Babin’s bill to suspend the UN/US State Department Refugee Resettlement Program until the costs were thoroughly analyzed and the security issues were fully addressed.

We urge you to read her entire commentary here, but bring your attention to what she says about the Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC) which has been called upon by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to expose this blog and anyone who questions the program as “racists.”   (See my previous post, LOL!, HIAS is obviously using Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals for guidance!).

Here is what we said last summer about the HIAS report (Resettlement at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local Communities) siccing the SPLC on us.

And, before I get to what Ms. Geller says, I just saw yesterday that Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (author of the report!) is presently chairing the lobbying consortium for the refugee contractors (Refugee Council USA aka RCUSA) and some of their NO Borders friends in Washington.

Melanie Nezer

Melanie Nezer is author of the HIAS report calling on the SPLC to smear us and is presently chairing the refugee resettlement industry’s lobbying arm in Washington.

Longtime readers know that Ms. Nezer is one of the first to call for 15,000 Syrian Muslims a year to be admitted to the US.   Now, RCUSA (and the newly re-branded HIAS) have upped the ante and are behind the drive to admit 65,000 Syrians to your towns and cities by the time Obama leaves office!

We have also learned from inside sources that RCUSA put out an alert to their member resettlement contractors (and mentioning me by name!) to NOT give out any information to any of you calling your local contractor’s offices.  What are they hiding?

Back to World Net Daily and what Pamela Geller says about the SPLC (emphasis is mine):

The only thing more dangerous than the jihadists in our midst are their patrons and benefactors.

WND reported that “the refugee resettlement industry, which includes legions of immigrant rights advocates, lawyers and community organizing groups funded by George Soros, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, among others, churned out a document in 2013 on how to deal with so-called ‘pockets of resistance.’ The document, authored by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of the nine government contractors doing resettlement work, advised refugee advocates to research the backgrounds of local people who oppose resettlements and turn them over to the Southern Poverty Law Center for public shaming as ‘racists’ and ‘anti-Muslim’ bigots.”

This is further proof that the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, is nothing more than a smear machine designed to destroy the forces of good. These are the tactics of totalitarians and supremacists. And this is who the media turns to for comment on the work of my colleagues and me. There is not one mainstream media outlet that does not quote the SPLC libels when reporting on my work.

Freedom-loving Americans must understand that this is what every one of us, the individual, is up against: a billion-dollar machine of destruction and hate. Churchill said of Islam: “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” And I would add one thing.No stronger retrograde force exists in the America today than the left.

Continue reading here.

Alert!  The most important thing any of you could do right now is to get your member of Congress to co-sponsor the Babin bill.  Who supports Babin’s modest approach, and who doesn’t! is going to tell you all you need to know about your member of Congress!

RELATED ARTICLE: Bob Enos of Willmar, MN speaks, won’t be deterred!

Blind Hate Cuts Down Three Lives at Kansas City Jewish Complex

/in , , , /by

Yesterday, we received a call alerting us to the shooting at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom assisted living center complex in Overland Park, Kansas.  I called a member of my small synagogue here in Pensacola, Florida, a native of St. Joseph Missouri, who I knew had a relative who lived at the Overland Park Village Shalom assisted living complex. When he returned my call he said he had spoken to his cousin who said he was secure in a lockdown of the assisted living complex.  Like millions of Americans my friend’s cousin wanted more details on the innocent victims and the perpetrator of this heinous crime.  All we knew at the time was that the perpetrator had been apprehended allegedly shouting “Heil Hitler”.

Reat Underwood KC JCC Shooing victim Sining contestant

Reat Underwood 14 Year Old Shooting victim

For some hours news media locally in Kansas City and nationally wouldn’t reveal anything about the identities of the perpetrator and his victims.  Tragically, as the facts emerged, we learned that the alleged perpetrator was a known Supremacist and ex-KKK official,  who in 2006 and 2010  had run  on a white supremacist  platform for  both the US House Senate, 73 year old Frazier Glenn Miller of Aurora, Missouri.

Two of the victims were a well regarded Johnson County physician and his talented 14 year old grandson, Dr. William Lewis Corporon and Reat Griffen Underwood, a freshman at Blue Valley High School.  They were at the JCC for a singing contest.  Both Dr. Corporan and his grandson were members of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leewood.  Dr. Corporon had moved to Kansas City from Oklahoma to be closer to his grandchildren.

The identity of the third murder victim, a Jewish woman shot in the parking lot of the assisted living center has yet to be identified. Similarly, the identity of the Jewish teenager being treated in a local hospital was shot several times and seriously wounded by Miller in the JCC parking lot   Her identity has not been revealed.

Miller had allegedly stalked his victims with a question, “Are you Jewish”. His hatred was so febrile that without receiving an answer from Dr. Corporon and his grandson, Reat, he shot them simply because he presumed they were.  Blind hatred knows no bounds; these Christian victims of yesterday’s mindless tragedy were simply in the way of his murderous anti-Semitic intent to kill Jews at the beginning of Holy Week. A period that celebrates the festival of Passover commemorating  Freedom of Ancient Israelites from enslavement in Egypt and the resurrection of Christ on Good Friday,  prelude to the Joy of Easter.

That imagery was evident in the remarks of Senior pastor at their Methodist church, Rev. Adam Hamilton, who said:

This is obviously a horrible, horrible thing that you wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through. They are really remarkable people. Being with them, what stood out was their strength of faith and confidence that this was not God’s will.

Reat’s mother, Mindy Corporon, speaking with amazing composure   at an interfaith gathering at St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Overland Park said:

I am the mother of the son, who was killed. I came upon the scene very, very quickly, before the police, before the ambulances. And I knew immediately that they were in heaven. I know they are in heaven together.

We were having life, and I want you to know that we are going to have more life.

Watch this Kansas City Star YouTube video of Mindy Corporon’s remarks at the interfaith gathering in Overland Park, Kansas:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/8N1_qcUwTeQ[/youtube]

Pastor Hamilton in his remarks noted the support network in the community and the imagery of a Good Friday memorial service:

They have a great network who want to be there and care for them. They said we have the utter confidence that our son and dad are together with God now; that brings them comfort. Their hope is that something good will come from this. This evil thing this person has done will not have the final word here.
Somehow it seems fitting that on Good Friday, when Christ’s own death was taking place and yet out of that horrible evil there was going to be something good that would come from it. And that’s really part of what we’re looking at here.

The Southern Poverty Law Center noted the long dossier of the perpetrator Miller:

Miller has been involved in the white supremacist movement for most of his life. He founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was its “grand dragon” in the 1980s. The Army veteran and retired truck driver later founded another white supremacist group, the White Patriot Party, the center said.

Miller was the subject of a nationwide manhunt in 1987 for violating the terms of his bond while appealing a North Carolina conviction for operating a paramilitary camp. The search ended after federal agents found Miller and three other men in an Ozark mobile home, which was filled with hand grenades, automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Miller tried running for U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010, espousing a white power platform each time.

President Obama offered his condolences to the victims of this hate crime by Supremacist Miller amidst FBI investigations along with local law enforcement officials in Overland Park, Kansas.  Kansas Governor Sam Brownback vowed to bring the perpetrators and others involved to Justice, saying:

My heart and prayers are with all those who were affected by today’s events.  We will pursue justice aggressively for these victims and criminal charges against the perpetrator or perpetrators to the full extent of the law.

Michael Siegal, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in an email comment that “no community should have to face a moment such as this one.”

But sadly we must remember the tragic assault  eight years ago in July 2006, by a Muslim supremacist at the offices of the Jewish Federation in Seattle when the assailant penetrated security, shot six and killed one member of the staff.

Blind hate in Seattle and blind hate yesterday in Overland Park, Kansas were both spurred by supremacist hatred of both Jews and Christians.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured painting is titled “Consumed” by artist Jennifer Hansen. Hansen writes:

Before I became a Christian, I was oblivious to sin and the authority of Christ. I could care less for religious things, and hated anything that had to do with Jesus. I failed to see my need for a Savior; Let alone seeing Jesus as being the only way. My series “Wasting Away” reveals the effects, and reality of sin, which is rebellion against God. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.” Romans 6:21. The work expresses human depravity, destructive desires, and suffering in desolate urban environments. It pictures the finiteness of people, and impending death. The absence of a single light source emphasizes the blindness of the individual against such conditions, and failure to discern the way out; which emphasizes the need for hope.

I work with graphite, charcoal, and oil on white gessoed canvas. My process includes many translucent layers of oil on top of dry media to show each layer and stage of the painting. This symbolizes the complexities of people and how we are each not yet completed; we are a “work in progress”. The viewer is meant to be able to “peer” through the window of the person, seeing ones vulnerability and exposing the deep recesses of the heart; which is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Jeremiah 17:9

Despite the dark tone of my work, the overall message is to magnify and communicate the hope of the Gospel: Jesus Christ died and rose again to save sinners according to the scriptures. Your sin is worthy of death before a holy and righteous God. But God being compassionate and merciful, sent His own Son, Jesus who was mocked, scourged, beaten, and crucified for our sin. He alone bore the penalty and satisfied the wrath of God, taking the punishment you deserve. Then, rising again from the dead, conquering sin and death, Christ is seated at the right hand of God ever living and reigning. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned: but he who does not believe is already condemned, because He has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation: that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.” John 3:16-19.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.