Businesses who don’t follow government orders would be suspended for at least 90 days with no congressional oversight
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
An amalgamated cybersecurity bill that lawmakers hope to pass before the end of the year includes new powers which would allow President Obama to shut down not only entire areas of the Internet, but also businesses and industries that fail to comply with government orders following the declaration of a national emergency – increasing fears that the legislation will be abused as a political tool.
The draft bill is a combination of two pieces of legislation originally crafted by Senators Lieberman and Rockefeller. One of the differences between the new bill and the original Lieberman version is that the Internet “kill switch” power has been limited to 90 days without congressional oversight, rather than the original period of four months contained in the Lieberman bill.
In other words, President Obama can issue an emergency declaration that lasts 30 days and he can renew it for a further 60 days before congress can step in to oversee the powers.
The new powers would give Obama a free hand to not only shut down entire areas of the Internet and block all Internet traffic from certain countries, but under the amalgamated bill he would also have the power to completely shut down industries that don’t follow government orders, according to a Reuters summary of the new bill.
“Industries, companies or portions of companies could be temporarily shut down, or be required to take other steps to address threats,” states the report, citing concerns about an “imminent threat to the U.S. electrical grid or other critical infrastructure such as the water supply or financial network.”
The only protection afforded to companies under the new laws is that they would have to be defined as “critical” in order to come under government regulation, but since the government itself would decide to what companies this label applies, it’s hardly a comforting layer of security.
“Even in the absence of an imminent threat, companies could face government scrutiny. Company employees working in cybersecurity would need appropriate skills. It also would require companies to report cyber threats to the government, and to have plans for responding to a cyber attack,” states the report.
As we have highlighted, the threat from cyber-terrorists to the U.S. power grid or water supply is minimal. The perpetrators of an attack on such infrastructure would have to have direct physical access to the systems that operate these plants to cause any damage. The recent Stuxnet malware attack, for example, was introduced and spread through a physical USB device, not via the public Internet.
Any perceived threat from the public Internet to these systems is therefore completely contrived and strips bare what many fear is the real agenda behind cybersecurity – to enable the government to regulate free speech on the Internet.
Handing Obama the power to shut down certain companies or businesses is likely to heighten already existing fears that the new cybersecurity federal bureaucracy could be used as a political tool.
As we reported back in March, the Obama administration’s release of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a government plan to “secure” (or control) the nation’s public and private sector computer networks, coincided with Democrats attempting to claim that the independent news website The Drudge Report was serving malware, an incident Senator Jim Inhofe described as a deliberate ploy “to discourage people from using Drudge”.
Senator Joe Lieberman appeared to admit that the legislation had more to do with simply protecting US infrastructure when he told CNN’s Candy Crowley that the bill was intended to mimic the Communist Chinese system of Internet policing.
“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” said Lieberman.
As we have documented, the Chinese government does not disconnect parts of the Internet because of genuine security concerns, it habitually does so only to oppress and silence victims of government abuse and atrocities, and to strangle dissent against the state, a practice many fear is the ultimate intention of cybersecurity in the United States.
The implementation of the cybersecurity apparatus would represent another huge expansion of the federal government, creating an Office of Cyber Policy within the executive branch and also “A new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) within the Department of Homeland Security, led by a separate director who would enforce cybersecurity policies throughout the government and the private sector.”
Lawmakers have indicated that they intend to push through the bill before the end of the year, though with Congress set to leave Friday amidst deadlock on a number of issues, cybersecurity looks like it will have to wait until mid-November, providing its opponents with extra time to point out the inherent threats the legislation poses to free speech and free enterprise.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The 5 Biggest Lies about Liberalism
Multiculturalism, Feminism, The Poor, Pro Peace, Patriotism
The 5 Biggest Lies about Liberalism
By Daniel Greenfield, CFP, Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Multiculturalism
If you haven’t seen the billboards yet, liberals love multiculturalism, they embrace all races and religions because they believe in diversity. True? Nope.
Liberals follow the left’s paradigm of waging class warfare. Their interest in minorities extends only to enlisting some disenfranchised groups in their class warfare. Contrary to all the multicultural billboards, liberals are primarily interested in unsuccessful minorities, because they can frighten them, exploit them and farm them as voting blocks. Successful minorities such as Asians, Indians and Jews are wanted only as window dressing. And get the short end of the stick when a real issue comes up.
Multiculturalism is really only class warfare disguised as opposition to bigotry. Take away all the historical revisionism about the Democratic party’s ugly civil rights history and the empty slogans about diversity, and what you have left is naked political opportunism. The Democratic party trafficked in racism when it suited them (and still does) and dons the halo of tolerance when it suits them now. The left was equally at home working both sides of the street, and the views of great socialists from Jack London to Karl Marx on race, differed little from those of the Nazi party.
Multiculturalism isn’t a philosophy, it’s a political organization tactic to bring the groups they consider part of the working class under one umbrella. It’s the same old class warfare organizational tactics applied to race and ethnicity. The goal of these tactics is not empowerment, but to create a voting bloc of people who have been convinced that they’re doomed to helplessness, without the leadership of the left “fighting” on their behalf.
Liberals can still be and often are bigots. Their bigotry is just informed by political necessity. As a bonus, having the “diversity” brand allows them to describe the opposition as bigots, without ever being called out for their own bigotry.
Feminism
We all know of course that liberals are the biggest feminists out there, except when they’re running against a woman. Or when a woman accuses their candidate of rape or sexual harassment.
Like multiculturalism, owning the feminist brand has been convenient. And it was easy enough to manage once feminism became a wholly owned product of academia, funded by liberal groups like the Ford Foundation. This brand of feminism has as much to do with equal rights for women, as African Studies have to do with equal rights for African-Americans. They’re basically little more than ways to repackage the agenda politics of the far left in identity colors. That way socialism can be dressed up as a civil rights agenda, and opposition to it becomes racism or sexism.
That leads us to the absurd spectacle of academic feminists declaring that successful female candidates who don’t share their politics are not feminists, but male candidates who do, are. Dig down to their real definition of feminism, and it turns out to be liberalism.
None of this has anything to do with women, just as multiculturalism has nothing to do with race. Take away the disguises, and you end up with the same old ideology marketed to target groups as a political organizing tactic. It’s no different than selling cereal, except the cereal is red and comes with a few dozen textbooks.
Liberals are not interested in empowering women, except to work for them or vote for them. There is no philosophical commitment here to equality for women, only a sales pitch for liberalism.
Friends of the Poor
We know liberals are against poverty, right? Otherwise why all that talk of making the rich pay their fair share. But if you actually look at socialist countries, the poor aren’t exactly coming out ahead. What’s the problem?
The problem is that liberals are not into enriching the poor, but removing what they consider the upper class, and turning over control of the economy to themselves. But a centrally planned economy leads to more poverty, not less. Take away the ability to go up the economic ladder, and how can poverty end?
It can’t. But ending poverty was never the idea. Wealth redistribution is a neat catchphrase, but the reality is that the rich and the middle class are purged to make way for a new rich and middle class composed of party members. Their brand of equality is not about helping the poor, but putting themselves in charge and imposing an artificial standard of fairness in order to build a perfect society. Before Communism came to Russia, the poor begged on the street. After Communism, begging was illegal and the poor were deported to labor camps as parasites. Because once society is made equal, anyone who’s still unequal must be an exploiter or a parasite.
You can’t end poverty, except through opportunity, and that’s the one thing their social system doesn’t offer. It’s why America under Obama is poorer than ever. Jobs aren’t created by confiscating wealth, but by encouraging free enterprise. But when the goal isn’t to create jobs, but to create a static society where everyone knows their place, then their way is best. All totalitarian movements are at their heart, reactionary. Even if they’re cloaked in red t-shirts and rock concerts. And reactionary movements are often spearheaded by an upper class trying to deny social mobility to the working class. And when you take a magnifying glass to liberalism, that’s exactly what it looks like.
Of course this isn’t an original observation. Orwell’s Oceania in 1984 worked on the same exact principle. Orwell was warning about the rise of a totalitarian left with no regard for human rights. But it’s already here.
Pro-Peace
The left is peaceful in the same way that active volcanoes are gentle, and tsuanmis are a good way to cool off after a long summer day.
Look around the world at the left of center regimes, and you come away with a horror show of constant conflicts. (The left explains this as the result of vast conspiracies by reactionary forces against the freedom loving peoples of the world and their friendly dictators.) And then count how many liberals wear t-shirts with King or Gandhi on them, and how many wear t-shirts with Che on them.
If you read the official talking points, you would have no idea that America fought most of its wars in the 20th century under Democratic Presidents. Or that the enthusiastic revolutionaries of the USSR and China between them accounted for more dead, than would have been produced by a nuclear war.
But being pro-peace is yet another talking point. The left is not pro-peace, it’s against wars being fought by their political opponents. Take a measure of how much coverage anti-war protests received under Bush, and how much coverage they receive under Obama. The war hasn’t gone away, even the protests haven’t entirely gone away (mostly by the same Marxist-Trotskyist groups that were running them all along) but the coverage has gone down the rabbit hole.
Then let’s take a walk back to WW2, when American liberals went from being anti-war when Hitler invaded Poland, to being pro-war when he invaded the Soviet Union. The Trotskyists of the era remained anti-war and the Communist party in the United States helped the authorities deal with them. Because suddenly war was in their interest.
The liberal position on war is that they are against it, unless they are for it. And then when it’s over, they are against it, because it didn’t accomplish all their goals. Liberals were against WW2, before they were for it, but then they were against it, once those GI’s weren’t wearing down German tanks anymore, but blocking Soviet tanks from “liberating” the rest of Europe. Liberals were for Israel, when England was against Israel, but they were against Israel, when Arab tanks forwarded from the Soviet Union were being blown up by the damned Israelis.
An easy way to sketch out the liberal position on a war, is to check the political ideology of the government fighting it and how it accords with their own politics, the political ideology of the enemy they are fighting against, and the effect on any left wing regimes. Add all that up and you get the liberal position on the war. The further left you go, the higher the bar goes.
Liberals will support wars by liberal governments against developed countries they consider reactionary. They will generally oppose all wars by conservative governments. They will generally oppose wars by liberal governments against undeveloped countries, sometimes even when those countries are reactionary, unless the government conducting the war is far to the left.
There are ideological complications and rivalries in the mix. There’s also the human factor. Some American liberals did support the American invasion of Afghanistan initially, but the left never did. A handful of liberals actually thought the American program was within their own ideology, but they were primarily British, and were quickly ostracized for it. On the other hand, George Galloway, who openly supported Saddam, is still considered a hero of the people. Because as bad as Saddam was, the general agreement is that America was worse, because it represents capitalism and people with jobs. Which are not things the left likes.
And there you have it. The left’s commitment to peace. Or rather a commitment to anti-war rallies, when the war in question doesn’t seem to be in their interest, and isn’t being waged to protect a left-wing country, or a group that the left is allied with.
Patriotic
Every now and then liberals like to claim that they’re patriotic. Usually around an election. Of course they’re not patriotic in the “wear a flag on your lapel” kind of way. They’re more patriotic in the “point out everything wrong with your country and then threaten to move to Canada if you don’t win the election” way. Which is fine. America has seen patriots like that before. They used to wear green coats and moved to Canada, right around the time the last British troops left New York on Evacuation Day.
Occasionally when in power liberals will actually try to brand their opponents as traitors or unpatriotic, but like a dog trying to talk, it never sounds right. Mostly they have to defend themselves against charges of being unpatriotic, particularly when they’ve been caught attending a church whose rousing hymn is “God Damn America”.
It’s a challenge being patriotic, when you don’t believe in American Exceptionalism, or even the value of the Nation-State. When you think that the world would run better if everyone just listened to what the UN tells them to do. When you think that its history is the story of how rich Europeans murdered all the natives and built smokestacks over their graves in order to plunder South America of its fruit—being patriotic really requires contortionism that would put any circus acrobat to shame.
That’s probably why liberals don’t do the patriotism thing very well. It’s hard to spit in someone’s face one day and then hug them the next. For liberal politicians, patriotism is one of those unfortunate election season things they try to get through as quickly as possible. And hope no one asks them if they believe in the Constitution.
When they’re forced to, they will say something vague about America’s heritage of tolerance, and imply that the WW2 GIs were fighting for socialism, civilian trials for terrorists and opposition to tort reform. They’re most comfortable around the Civil War and WW2. Anything outside that comfort zone makes them itchy. They will pose next to Old Glory when they have to, if they have a relative who fought in a war, they will bring him up. If he’s not dead, they will drag him out. If he is dead, they will dig him up. But just don’t ask them any questions about the application of their vaunted patriotism. Or why if they’re so patriotic, they can’t actually get behind their country in wartime.
Of course they will answer that true patriotism means undermining your country in wartime. Which means that Benedict Arnold was the original patriot.
Take away these 5 and what do you have left? Nothing but a political ideology that seeks power and will use any rhetoric and trick to get it. And that is the real face of modern day liberalism.
The 5 Biggest Lies about Liberalism
By Daniel Greenfield, CFP, Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Multiculturalism
If you haven’t seen the billboards yet, liberals love multiculturalism, they embrace all races and religions because they believe in diversity. True? Nope.
Liberals follow the left’s paradigm of waging class warfare. Their interest in minorities extends only to enlisting some disenfranchised groups in their class warfare. Contrary to all the multicultural billboards, liberals are primarily interested in unsuccessful minorities, because they can frighten them, exploit them and farm them as voting blocks. Successful minorities such as Asians, Indians and Jews are wanted only as window dressing. And get the short end of the stick when a real issue comes up.
Multiculturalism is really only class warfare disguised as opposition to bigotry. Take away all the historical revisionism about the Democratic party’s ugly civil rights history and the empty slogans about diversity, and what you have left is naked political opportunism. The Democratic party trafficked in racism when it suited them (and still does) and dons the halo of tolerance when it suits them now. The left was equally at home working both sides of the street, and the views of great socialists from Jack London to Karl Marx on race, differed little from those of the Nazi party.
Multiculturalism isn’t a philosophy, it’s a political organization tactic to bring the groups they consider part of the working class under one umbrella. It’s the same old class warfare organizational tactics applied to race and ethnicity. The goal of these tactics is not empowerment, but to create a voting bloc of people who have been convinced that they’re doomed to helplessness, without the leadership of the left “fighting” on their behalf.
Liberals can still be and often are bigots. Their bigotry is just informed by political necessity. As a bonus, having the “diversity” brand allows them to describe the opposition as bigots, without ever being called out for their own bigotry.
Feminism
We all know of course that liberals are the biggest feminists out there, except when they’re running against a woman. Or when a woman accuses their candidate of rape or sexual harassment.
Like multiculturalism, owning the feminist brand has been convenient. And it was easy enough to manage once feminism became a wholly owned product of academia, funded by liberal groups like the Ford Foundation. This brand of feminism has as much to do with equal rights for women, as African Studies have to do with equal rights for African-Americans. They’re basically little more than ways to repackage the agenda politics of the far left in identity colors. That way socialism can be dressed up as a civil rights agenda, and opposition to it becomes racism or sexism.
That leads us to the absurd spectacle of academic feminists declaring that successful female candidates who don’t share their politics are not feminists, but male candidates who do, are. Dig down to their real definition of feminism, and it turns out to be liberalism.
None of this has anything to do with women, just as multiculturalism has nothing to do with race. Take away the disguises, and you end up with the same old ideology marketed to target groups as a political organizing tactic. It’s no different than selling cereal, except the cereal is red and comes with a few dozen textbooks.
Liberals are not interested in empowering women, except to work for them or vote for them. There is no philosophical commitment here to equality for women, only a sales pitch for liberalism.
Friends of the Poor
We know liberals are against poverty, right? Otherwise why all that talk of making the rich pay their fair share. But if you actually look at socialist countries, the poor aren’t exactly coming out ahead. What’s the problem?
The problem is that liberals are not into enriching the poor, but removing what they consider the upper class, and turning over control of the economy to themselves. But a centrally planned economy leads to more poverty, not less. Take away the ability to go up the economic ladder, and how can poverty end?
It can’t. But ending poverty was never the idea. Wealth redistribution is a neat catchphrase, but the reality is that the rich and the middle class are purged to make way for a new rich and middle class composed of party members. Their brand of equality is not about helping the poor, but putting themselves in charge and imposing an artificial standard of fairness in order to build a perfect society. Before Communism came to Russia, the poor begged on the street. After Communism, begging was illegal and the poor were deported to labor camps as parasites. Because once society is made equal, anyone who’s still unequal must be an exploiter or a parasite.
You can’t end poverty, except through opportunity, and that’s the one thing their social system doesn’t offer. It’s why America under Obama is poorer than ever. Jobs aren’t created by confiscating wealth, but by encouraging free enterprise. But when the goal isn’t to create jobs, but to create a static society where everyone knows their place, then their way is best. All totalitarian movements are at their heart, reactionary. Even if they’re cloaked in red t-shirts and rock concerts. And reactionary movements are often spearheaded by an upper class trying to deny social mobility to the working class. And when you take a magnifying glass to liberalism, that’s exactly what it looks like.
Of course this isn’t an original observation. Orwell’s Oceania in 1984 worked on the same exact principle. Orwell was warning about the rise of a totalitarian left with no regard for human rights. But it’s already here.
Pro-Peace
The left is peaceful in the same way that active volcanoes are gentle, and tsuanmis are a good way to cool off after a long summer day.
Look around the world at the left of center regimes, and you come away with a horror show of constant conflicts. (The left explains this as the result of vast conspiracies by reactionary forces against the freedom loving peoples of the world and their friendly dictators.) And then count how many liberals wear t-shirts with King or Gandhi on them, and how many wear t-shirts with Che on them.
If you read the official talking points, you would have no idea that America fought most of its wars in the 20th century under Democratic Presidents. Or that the enthusiastic revolutionaries of the USSR and China between them accounted for more dead, than would have been produced by a nuclear war.
But being pro-peace is yet another talking point. The left is not pro-peace, it’s against wars being fought by their political opponents. Take a measure of how much coverage anti-war protests received under Bush, and how much coverage they receive under Obama. The war hasn’t gone away, even the protests haven’t entirely gone away (mostly by the same Marxist-Trotskyist groups that were running them all along) but the coverage has gone down the rabbit hole.
Then let’s take a walk back to WW2, when American liberals went from being anti-war when Hitler invaded Poland, to being pro-war when he invaded the Soviet Union. The Trotskyists of the era remained anti-war and the Communist party in the United States helped the authorities deal with them. Because suddenly war was in their interest.
The liberal position on war is that they are against it, unless they are for it. And then when it’s over, they are against it, because it didn’t accomplish all their goals. Liberals were against WW2, before they were for it, but then they were against it, once those GI’s weren’t wearing down German tanks anymore, but blocking Soviet tanks from “liberating” the rest of Europe. Liberals were for Israel, when England was against Israel, but they were against Israel, when Arab tanks forwarded from the Soviet Union were being blown up by the damned Israelis.
An easy way to sketch out the liberal position on a war, is to check the political ideology of the government fighting it and how it accords with their own politics, the political ideology of the enemy they are fighting against, and the effect on any left wing regimes. Add all that up and you get the liberal position on the war. The further left you go, the higher the bar goes.
Liberals will support wars by liberal governments against developed countries they consider reactionary. They will generally oppose all wars by conservative governments. They will generally oppose wars by liberal governments against undeveloped countries, sometimes even when those countries are reactionary, unless the government conducting the war is far to the left.
There are ideological complications and rivalries in the mix. There’s also the human factor. Some American liberals did support the American invasion of Afghanistan initially, but the left never did. A handful of liberals actually thought the American program was within their own ideology, but they were primarily British, and were quickly ostracized for it. On the other hand, George Galloway, who openly supported Saddam, is still considered a hero of the people. Because as bad as Saddam was, the general agreement is that America was worse, because it represents capitalism and people with jobs. Which are not things the left likes.
And there you have it. The left’s commitment to peace. Or rather a commitment to anti-war rallies, when the war in question doesn’t seem to be in their interest, and isn’t being waged to protect a left-wing country, or a group that the left is allied with.
Patriotic
Every now and then liberals like to claim that they’re patriotic. Usually around an election. Of course they’re not patriotic in the “wear a flag on your lapel” kind of way. They’re more patriotic in the “point out everything wrong with your country and then threaten to move to Canada if you don’t win the election” way. Which is fine. America has seen patriots like that before. They used to wear green coats and moved to Canada, right around the time the last British troops left New York on Evacuation Day.
Occasionally when in power liberals will actually try to brand their opponents as traitors or unpatriotic, but like a dog trying to talk, it never sounds right. Mostly they have to defend themselves against charges of being unpatriotic, particularly when they’ve been caught attending a church whose rousing hymn is “God Damn America”.
It’s a challenge being patriotic, when you don’t believe in American Exceptionalism, or even the value of the Nation-State. When you think that the world would run better if everyone just listened to what the UN tells them to do. When you think that its history is the story of how rich Europeans murdered all the natives and built smokestacks over their graves in order to plunder South America of its fruit—being patriotic really requires contortionism that would put any circus acrobat to shame.
That’s probably why liberals don’t do the patriotism thing very well. It’s hard to spit in someone’s face one day and then hug them the next. For liberal politicians, patriotism is one of those unfortunate election season things they try to get through as quickly as possible. And hope no one asks them if they believe in the Constitution.
When they’re forced to, they will say something vague about America’s heritage of tolerance, and imply that the WW2 GIs were fighting for socialism, civilian trials for terrorists and opposition to tort reform. They’re most comfortable around the Civil War and WW2. Anything outside that comfort zone makes them itchy. They will pose next to Old Glory when they have to, if they have a relative who fought in a war, they will bring him up. If he’s not dead, they will drag him out. If he is dead, they will dig him up. But just don’t ask them any questions about the application of their vaunted patriotism. Or why if they’re so patriotic, they can’t actually get behind their country in wartime.
Of course they will answer that true patriotism means undermining your country in wartime. Which means that Benedict Arnold was the original patriot.
Take away these 5 and what do you have left? Nothing but a political ideology that seeks power and will use any rhetoric and trick to get it. And that is the real face of modern day liberalism.
The Age of Reagan and the Tyranny of the Elite
It has been 30 years since Americans last came together to throw out a tyrannical government who, with Marxist lies and unabridged arrogance, stole our treasure
A Tea Party Tribute: The Age of Reagan and the Tyranny of the Elite
By Fred Dardick, CFP, Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Sometimes there comes a time when a free people of a free nation must stand together and choose their fate. Sometimes it comes through war, sometimes famine, sometimes from of a fleet of planes marked by the rising sun crossing the horizon.
For our generation, in this great nation, it will come with a vote this November.
The enemy never changes, for it is always the tyranny of the elite, those few whose arrogance and thirst for power necessitate revolt by the masses so that the many may retake control of their lives to build a better future for themselves and their families, free from government interference.
It is no different this time than it has been for many others before us, and the choice we face could not be clearer.
We will choose to stand by our forefathers and put our trust in the American individual, we whose rights are guaranteed not by man, but by our creator.
Will we reaffirm our commitment to government of the people, by the people, for the people and remain united against those few elite whose thirst for influence and power will not be satiated until they control not only our banks, our healthcare, and our industries, but our very lives as well?
It has been 30 years since Americans last came together to throw out a tyrannical government who, with Marxist lies and unabridged arrogance, stole our treasure with sky high tax rates and laws written for a utopian society that did not exist.
Millions lost their homes, their savings and their sense of self-worth. Poverty swept the nation and hopelessness reigned. They said this was the price for progress, that this was our destiny.
But then there came a man, a great communicator, who could put into words what many felt, but lacked the vocabulary to express. He said we were an honorable people with an honorable past. He said we were a great nation, the best the world had ever known, and our future was filled with promise.
Ronald Reagan said we need not live in fear.
He knew where the problem lay, not with the people of a blessed nation, but a government grown bloated and corrupt, ruled by few, consuming everything and returning nothing, but poor trinkets and empty words.
Liberals would have us believe history provides no path to follow, no solution to our problems, but it does. We know what can happen when a principled leader pushes aside government to propel the individual. Letting people keep their wealth with promise of reward without end should they work hard and follow their dreams.
We live in this time, the Age of Reagan, an age of enlightenment that has lasted uninterrupted for three decades. It has accompanied the greatest increase in personal wealth the world has ever known with most rising out of poverty than any other time in human history.
While we have no great leader to guide us, only reminders of a gone, but not forgotten man, we must act this November to continue Reagan’s legacy against those who would dismantle it for their own selfish gain.
The Tyranny of the Elite
We cannot allow the Washington elite, the few who use economic tyranny to steal our wealth only to leave us with a debt we can never repay, remain in power. It is the road to serfdom, and for those who would scoff that this cannot happen in America, I say to you it already has.
It took decades to end the welfare cycle that impoverished millions and destroyed so many lives, and yet in only a few short years in power, liberals have once again brought this plague back to our shores.
Record numbers of Americans now rely on food stamps, public housing and welfare in order to meet their most basic needs, and their numbers grow with each passing day.
Poverty and unemployment have reached heights not known for a generation. If economic prosperity is not soon returned to our nation, many of our fellow citizens will remain forever cut off from the American dream, as will their descendants, for all their lives.
It has happened before and it can happen again.
Either this nation will stand together and affirm that our rights come from our creator, and not those privileged few who inhabit the halls of power, or some day we too will be forced down the path to servitude, slaves to a government and debt that we did not want and did not ask for.
This November we face not simply the choice between conservative or liberal, but freedom or servitude. Will we allow those who care nothing for our dreams, our guns, or our religion determine our future and squander America’s prosperity, or will we stand together to send a message that it is our country, not theirs.
That our wealth and our lives are ours to do with what we choose, free from the tyranny of the elite.
A Tea Party Tribute: The Age of Reagan and the Tyranny of the Elite
By Fred Dardick, CFP, Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Sometimes there comes a time when a free people of a free nation must stand together and choose their fate. Sometimes it comes through war, sometimes famine, sometimes from of a fleet of planes marked by the rising sun crossing the horizon.
For our generation, in this great nation, it will come with a vote this November.
The enemy never changes, for it is always the tyranny of the elite, those few whose arrogance and thirst for power necessitate revolt by the masses so that the many may retake control of their lives to build a better future for themselves and their families, free from government interference.
It is no different this time than it has been for many others before us, and the choice we face could not be clearer.
We will choose to stand by our forefathers and put our trust in the American individual, we whose rights are guaranteed not by man, but by our creator.
Will we reaffirm our commitment to government of the people, by the people, for the people and remain united against those few elite whose thirst for influence and power will not be satiated until they control not only our banks, our healthcare, and our industries, but our very lives as well?
It has been 30 years since Americans last came together to throw out a tyrannical government who, with Marxist lies and unabridged arrogance, stole our treasure with sky high tax rates and laws written for a utopian society that did not exist.
Millions lost their homes, their savings and their sense of self-worth. Poverty swept the nation and hopelessness reigned. They said this was the price for progress, that this was our destiny.
But then there came a man, a great communicator, who could put into words what many felt, but lacked the vocabulary to express. He said we were an honorable people with an honorable past. He said we were a great nation, the best the world had ever known, and our future was filled with promise.
Ronald Reagan said we need not live in fear.
He knew where the problem lay, not with the people of a blessed nation, but a government grown bloated and corrupt, ruled by few, consuming everything and returning nothing, but poor trinkets and empty words.
Liberals would have us believe history provides no path to follow, no solution to our problems, but it does. We know what can happen when a principled leader pushes aside government to propel the individual. Letting people keep their wealth with promise of reward without end should they work hard and follow their dreams.
We live in this time, the Age of Reagan, an age of enlightenment that has lasted uninterrupted for three decades. It has accompanied the greatest increase in personal wealth the world has ever known with most rising out of poverty than any other time in human history.
While we have no great leader to guide us, only reminders of a gone, but not forgotten man, we must act this November to continue Reagan’s legacy against those who would dismantle it for their own selfish gain.
The Tyranny of the Elite
We cannot allow the Washington elite, the few who use economic tyranny to steal our wealth only to leave us with a debt we can never repay, remain in power. It is the road to serfdom, and for those who would scoff that this cannot happen in America, I say to you it already has.
It took decades to end the welfare cycle that impoverished millions and destroyed so many lives, and yet in only a few short years in power, liberals have once again brought this plague back to our shores.
Record numbers of Americans now rely on food stamps, public housing and welfare in order to meet their most basic needs, and their numbers grow with each passing day.
Poverty and unemployment have reached heights not known for a generation. If economic prosperity is not soon returned to our nation, many of our fellow citizens will remain forever cut off from the American dream, as will their descendants, for all their lives.
It has happened before and it can happen again.
Either this nation will stand together and affirm that our rights come from our creator, and not those privileged few who inhabit the halls of power, or some day we too will be forced down the path to servitude, slaves to a government and debt that we did not want and did not ask for.
This November we face not simply the choice between conservative or liberal, but freedom or servitude. Will we allow those who care nothing for our dreams, our guns, or our religion determine our future and squander America’s prosperity, or will we stand together to send a message that it is our country, not theirs.
That our wealth and our lives are ours to do with what we choose, free from the tyranny of the elite.
UFOs eyed nukes, ex-Air Force personnel say - CNN
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/27/ufos-showed-interest-in-nukes-ex-air-force-personnel-say/
Seven former U.S. Air Force personnel gathered in Washington Monday to recount UFO sightings over nuclear weapons facilities in decades past – accounts that a UFO researcher says show extraterrestrial beings are interested in the world’s nuclear arms race and may be sending humans a message.
At a news conference at the National Press Club, the six former officers and one ex-enlisted man recalled either personal sightings or reports from subordinates and others of UFOs hovering over nuclear missile silos or nuclear weapons storage areas in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.
Three of the former Air Force officers – though they hadn’t seen the UFOs themselves - told reporters that UFOs hovering over silos around Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base in 1967 appeared to have temporarily deactivated some of the nuclear missiles.
Much of the testimony already has appeared in books, websites and elsewhere. But UFO researcher and author Robert Hastings, who organized the news conference, said the time has come for the U.S. government to acknowledge the UFO visits.
“I believe - these gentlemen believe - that this planet is being visited by beings from another world, who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II,” said Hastings, who added that more than 120 former military personnel have told him about UFOs visiting nuclear sites.
“Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion … is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire – that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment,” he said.
Former Air Force Capt. Robert Salas – who has written a book about the Montana incidents – said he was underground when a UFO hovered over his missile silo in March 1967, and therefore couldn’t see it. He said one of his guards above ground told him a red, glowing object about 30 feet in diameter was hovering just above the front gate of the facility, in an isolated area far from Malmstrom.
“And just as I [called my commander], our missiles began going into what’s called a no-go condition, or unlaunchable. Essentially, they were disabled while this object was still hovering over out site,” Salas said.
Salas and others said the military urged them at the time not to talk about the incidents.
Retired Col. Charles Halt recalled seeing UFOs over the woods near Royal Air Force Stations Bentwaters and Woodbridge in eastern England in December 1980. He and security personnel were investigating reports of strange lights just outside one of the bases.
“All through the forest was a bright glowing object,” he said Monday. “The best way I can describe it, it looked like an eye – with bright red, with a dark center. It appeared to be winking. It was shedding something like molten metal, was dripping off it.
“It silently moved through the trees, avoiding any contact, it bobbed up and down, and at one point it actually approached us. We tried to get closer. It receded out into the field, beyond the forest, and silently exploded into five white objects – gone. So we went out into the field looking for any evidence, because something had been apparently falling off it – and we find nothing,” he said.
He recalled subsequently seeing other objects in the sky, including one that stopped about 3,000 feet overhead and “sent down a concentrated beam at our feet.” No one was harmed.
“The best way I can equate it is sort of a laser beam. We stood there in awe. Was this a warning? Was this an attempt to communicate? Was this a weapon? Or just a probe?” he said.
At about the same time, he was hearing radio reports from base personnel that beams from some of the objects were “falling into or near the weapons storage area.”
In a staff meeting later, a general decided “it happened off base, so it’s a British affair,” Halt recalled. “In other words, they were loathe to get involved.”
The Air Force investigated UFOs from 1948 to 1969 under a program eventually called Project Blue Book. The service, on its website, says the project concluded that “no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.” It also says there has been "no evidence that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' are extraterrestrial vehicles."
Salas said the UFO phenomenon “is real, not imaginary.”
“There is current excessive secrecy in our government surrounding this phenomenon,” he said.
A reporter asked how many of the former military personnel subscribed to Hastings’ theory that the message of extraterrestrials is that humans should get rid of nuclear weapons, and how many of them believed that we should get rid of nukes. Of the seven, it appeared that only Salas raised his hand.
Aliens Are Monitoring Our Nukes, Worry Ex-Air Force Officers
Published September 23, 2010
FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/23/aliens-monitoring-nukes-worry-ex-air-force-officers/
Captain Robert Salas was on duty in Montana in 1967 when a UFO shut down the nuclear missiles on his base. And he's hardly the only one to make such a claim.
On Monday, six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about similar events at the National Press Club, all centering around unidentified flying objects and nuclear missiles. They plan to urge the government to publicly confirm the incidents, stating that they were ordered never to discuss the events.
"We're talking about unidentified flying objects, as simple as that," Salas told FoxNews.com. "They're often known as UFOs, you could call them that," he added. Salas, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch officer, will host the event along with researcher Robert Hastings, author of "UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites.
According to the pair, witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby.
"I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site," Salas said, regarding the March 16, 1967, event at Malmstrom AFB in Montana. "The missiles shut down, 10 Minuteman missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later," he said.
Are they evidence of unknown military action from a foreign country, or are these extraterrestrial visitors? Salas thinks the answer is clear -- and finds it curious that they're so interested in our nuclear arsenal.
"There's a strong interest [in our missiles] by these objects, wherever they come from. I personally think they're not from planet Earth."
Another participant, retired Col. Charles Halt, observed a disc-shaped object directing beams of light down into the RAF Bentwaters airbase in England and heard on the radio that they landed in the nuclear weapons storage area. Both men claim the Air Force warned them never to disclose details of the events.
"The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it," Salas said. Col. Halt adds, "I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted -- both then and now -- to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation."
The group plans to distribute declassified U.S. government documents at the event that they claim will substantiate the reality of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites extending back to 1948. The press conference will also address present-day concerns about the abuse of government secrecy as well as the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons.
"This is only the tip of the iceberg, these stories," Salas told FoxNews.com.
Monday, September 27, 2010
President Barack Obama Coddles International Outlaws At the United Nations
Obama misses another opportunity to take on radical Islamists and to give Iran an ultimatum
President Barack Obama Coddles International Outlaws At the United Nations
By Joseph A. Klein Sunday, September 26, 2010
President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that “Normal practices of diplomacy . . . are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws.”
Rather than listen to FDR’s advice, President Barack Obama squandered yet another opportunity to confront today’s international outlaws during his annual visit to the United Nations.
Instead, Obama delivered meaningless platitudes to the United Nations General Assembly during his speech on September 23, 2010 - just like he did last year. He talked in generalities - ignoring the elephants in the room of Islamic-inspired terrorism, Iran’s clear and present danger to world peace and security, and the human rights abuses by the countries running the United Nations Human Rights Council that Obama decided the United States should legitimize by joining.
President Obama’s September 23rd speech to the General Assembly was his second UN speech of the week. It followed his pledge the day before, during the United Nations sponsored summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to meet commitments to the United Nations for more development aid to fight poverty, disease, sub-standard education, infant and maternal mortality and gender inequality. In other words, Obama is willing transfer many more billions of dollars of wealth from hard-working American taxpayers to developing countries, much of it through the same United Nations that was culpable in the oil-for-food scandal that enriched Saddam Hussein and his buddies. Obama also pledged in his MDG speech to lead efforts to revamp the global development process in order to make it more accountable. However, he offered nothing that the Bush Administration had not already tried.
When President Obama returned to address the General Assembly again the next day during the official opening of this year’s General Assembly session, he renewed his naive and dangerous calls for “a world without nuclear weapons” that he championed at the UN last year.
Obama touched very lightly and in broad general terms during his September 23rd speech on the continuing global threat of terrorism, which he inexplicably lumped together with unrelated issues such as the “financial crisis on Wall Street.” He referred to the “men, women and children…murdered by extremists from Casablanca to London; from Jalalabad to Jakarta,” but left out the one crucial ingredient common to all of these massacres - the murderers were radical Islamists who committed their crimes against humanity in the name of Allah.
By carefully avoiding any association of radical Islamic ideology with most of the acts of terrorism occurring around the world today, President Obama missed an opportunity to use his global platform to confront the source of this evil while the world was watching.
Obama did solemnly exhort his General Assembly audience to “not stand idly by when dissidents everywhere are imprisoned and protestors are beaten. Because part of the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others.” Too bad that he has not followed his own advice.
Obama has remained on the sidelines while dissidents in Iran were beaten, thrown into jail, tortured and, in some cases, killed. The courageous opponents of the ruthless rulers of Iran’s Islamic theocracy were waiting for the leader of the free world to speak out on their behalf from the world’s stage. Protestors were shouting on behalf of democracy in Iran right across the street from UN headquarters. But Obama offered them no hope. He gave the Iranian regime a free pass on its abysmal human rights record.
Obama also missed the opportunity to target the dysfunctional UN Human Rights Council for criticism. Recall that the rationale for his administration’s decision to join this misnamed UN circus of human rights abusers was to obtain the leverage to reform it from within. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Instead, the UN Human Rights Council continues to go after Israel while ignoring genocides and wars against humanity around the globe. And the Council - with American acquiescence - continues to pass resolutions declaring ‘defamation of religions’ (i.e., criticism of Islam) to be a violation of international law.
With regard to Iran, Obama told the General Assembly that “the door remains open to diplomacy,” while repeating toothless warnings of consequences if Iran does not accept his “extended hand” and “confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.” Nobody is taking Obama’s warnings seriously, least of all the Iranian regime. A year after he issued similar warnings from the UN podium and months after watered-down sanctions were approved by the UN Security Council, Iran is much closer to achieving its nuclear arms ambitions.
A few hours after Obama’s invitation to Iran to walk through the open door of diplomacy, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed the door shut in Obama’s face. Ahmadinejad used his General Assembly speech to burnish his credentials on the streets of the Muslim world as the strongest friend of the Islamic cause who has succeeded in humiliating the ‘Great Satan.’
In his General Assembly speech this year, Ahmadinejad managed to outdo himself in irresponsible, hateful rhetoric. Discussing the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, he claimed that “the majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree” with the view that “some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.”
In other words, Ahmadinejad turned the United States and Israel into the aggressors even when it came to instigating the 9/11 attacks. Islamists, he theorized, were being unfairly blamed for attacks carried out by the Americans and their Zionist allies.
Instead of boycotting Ahmadinijad’s speech from the get-go, the U.S. delegation sat silently in their seats listening to Ahmadinijad’s rants against capitalism and Western imperialism. Only when the Iranian dictator began spinning his 9/11 conspiracy theories did they and some other delegations decide to walk out. But the damage was done. And Obama waited a whole day before meekly criticizing Ahmadinijad’s 9/11 remarks.
After he got through blaming the United States government and Israel for 9/11, Ahmadinejad turned his attention to the controversy over his country’s nuclear program. He blasted the United States and its allies for trying to block what he claimed was Iran’s peaceful search for alternative sources of energy.
“They have equated nuclear energy with the nuclear bomb, and have distanced this energy from the reach of most of nations by establishing monopolies,” said Ahmadinejad. “While at the same time, they have continued to maintain, expand and upgrade their own nuclear arsenals… not only the nuclear disarmament has not been realized but also nuclear bombs have been proliferated in some regions, including by the occupying and intimidating Zionist regime.”
The Holocaust -denier then tried to best Obama’s call for a nuclear-free world:
“I would like here to propose that the year 2011 be proclaimed the year of nuclear disarmament and ‘Nuclear Energy for all, Nuclear Weapons for None.’”
Obama should have anticipated this bit of grand-standing by pointing out in his own speech that, unless Iran is stopped immediately in its tracks, they may well achieve the capability to build nuclear bombs whenever they wish by 2011. He should have insisted, as President George Bush had done from the very same General Assembly podium, that in order for the United Nations to stay relevant it must confront international outlaws like Iran’s regime. But Obama shrunk from this task.
How many times does our President need the door to be slammed in his face before getting the message that Iran is ruled by thugs who intend, at all costs, to develop the nuclear bomb capability which they will use to threaten Israel and to impose Iran’s power over the region?
As former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton remarked,
“So how you can seriously believe that you can negotiate a meaningful elimination of their nuclear weapons program with people with that kind of psychology and believe they would carry through with it, Obama can’t explain. It’s another demonstration that his policy of dealing with Iran and North Korea is that it’s not just naïve, but it’s also dangerous. The fact it is almost certain ̶ Iran is going to get nuclear weapons ̶ really shows that diplomacy has failed, and the sanctions efforts have failed.”
After his General Assembly speech, President Obama attended the UN Secretary General’s annual lunch for world leaders and gave a toast. In his toast, he said:
“Mr. Secretary-General, I especially want to thank you for your dedication to pursuing peace, expanding security, protecting human rights, and advancing democracy and development. And standing here, I’m reminded of something President Franklin Roosevelt said shortly before the United Nations was founded. He said, ‘Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it.’
Over the last two years, our nations have come together in that spirit…But as we all know our work is far from over, and in the months and years ahead the challenges we face will require the work of all nations and all peoples. That’s how real change happens.”
Not everyone in the room was feeling Obama’s love. Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim used his toast to praise Iran for having accepted Brazil’s joint proposal with Turkey to restart negotiations on the nuclear issue. “We offered solutions together will Turkey on the nuclear issue, and I hope they are taken,” he said during his toast while Obama listened in silence.
It’s too bad, as I mentioned at the outset of this article, that President Obama did not pick the more appropriate of FDR’s warnings to repeat to the world: “Normal practices of diplomacy . . . are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws.”
Obama misses another opportunity to take on radical Islamists and to give Iran an ultimatum
President Barack Obama Coddles International Outlaws At the United Nations
By Joseph A. Klein Sunday, September 26, 2010
President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that “Normal practices of diplomacy . . . are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws.”
Rather than listen to FDR’s advice, President Barack Obama squandered yet another opportunity to confront today’s international outlaws during his annual visit to the United Nations.
Instead, Obama delivered meaningless platitudes to the United Nations General Assembly during his speech on September 23, 2010 - just like he did last year. He talked in generalities - ignoring the elephants in the room of Islamic-inspired terrorism, Iran’s clear and present danger to world peace and security, and the human rights abuses by the countries running the United Nations Human Rights Council that Obama decided the United States should legitimize by joining.
President Obama’s September 23rd speech to the General Assembly was his second UN speech of the week. It followed his pledge the day before, during the United Nations sponsored summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to meet commitments to the United Nations for more development aid to fight poverty, disease, sub-standard education, infant and maternal mortality and gender inequality. In other words, Obama is willing transfer many more billions of dollars of wealth from hard-working American taxpayers to developing countries, much of it through the same United Nations that was culpable in the oil-for-food scandal that enriched Saddam Hussein and his buddies. Obama also pledged in his MDG speech to lead efforts to revamp the global development process in order to make it more accountable. However, he offered nothing that the Bush Administration had not already tried.
When President Obama returned to address the General Assembly again the next day during the official opening of this year’s General Assembly session, he renewed his naive and dangerous calls for “a world without nuclear weapons” that he championed at the UN last year.
Obama touched very lightly and in broad general terms during his September 23rd speech on the continuing global threat of terrorism, which he inexplicably lumped together with unrelated issues such as the “financial crisis on Wall Street.” He referred to the “men, women and children…murdered by extremists from Casablanca to London; from Jalalabad to Jakarta,” but left out the one crucial ingredient common to all of these massacres - the murderers were radical Islamists who committed their crimes against humanity in the name of Allah.
By carefully avoiding any association of radical Islamic ideology with most of the acts of terrorism occurring around the world today, President Obama missed an opportunity to use his global platform to confront the source of this evil while the world was watching.
Obama did solemnly exhort his General Assembly audience to “not stand idly by when dissidents everywhere are imprisoned and protestors are beaten. Because part of the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others.” Too bad that he has not followed his own advice.
Obama has remained on the sidelines while dissidents in Iran were beaten, thrown into jail, tortured and, in some cases, killed. The courageous opponents of the ruthless rulers of Iran’s Islamic theocracy were waiting for the leader of the free world to speak out on their behalf from the world’s stage. Protestors were shouting on behalf of democracy in Iran right across the street from UN headquarters. But Obama offered them no hope. He gave the Iranian regime a free pass on its abysmal human rights record.
Obama also missed the opportunity to target the dysfunctional UN Human Rights Council for criticism. Recall that the rationale for his administration’s decision to join this misnamed UN circus of human rights abusers was to obtain the leverage to reform it from within. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Instead, the UN Human Rights Council continues to go after Israel while ignoring genocides and wars against humanity around the globe. And the Council - with American acquiescence - continues to pass resolutions declaring ‘defamation of religions’ (i.e., criticism of Islam) to be a violation of international law.
With regard to Iran, Obama told the General Assembly that “the door remains open to diplomacy,” while repeating toothless warnings of consequences if Iran does not accept his “extended hand” and “confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.” Nobody is taking Obama’s warnings seriously, least of all the Iranian regime. A year after he issued similar warnings from the UN podium and months after watered-down sanctions were approved by the UN Security Council, Iran is much closer to achieving its nuclear arms ambitions.
A few hours after Obama’s invitation to Iran to walk through the open door of diplomacy, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed the door shut in Obama’s face. Ahmadinejad used his General Assembly speech to burnish his credentials on the streets of the Muslim world as the strongest friend of the Islamic cause who has succeeded in humiliating the ‘Great Satan.’
In his General Assembly speech this year, Ahmadinejad managed to outdo himself in irresponsible, hateful rhetoric. Discussing the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, he claimed that “the majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree” with the view that “some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.”
In other words, Ahmadinejad turned the United States and Israel into the aggressors even when it came to instigating the 9/11 attacks. Islamists, he theorized, were being unfairly blamed for attacks carried out by the Americans and their Zionist allies.
Instead of boycotting Ahmadinijad’s speech from the get-go, the U.S. delegation sat silently in their seats listening to Ahmadinijad’s rants against capitalism and Western imperialism. Only when the Iranian dictator began spinning his 9/11 conspiracy theories did they and some other delegations decide to walk out. But the damage was done. And Obama waited a whole day before meekly criticizing Ahmadinijad’s 9/11 remarks.
After he got through blaming the United States government and Israel for 9/11, Ahmadinejad turned his attention to the controversy over his country’s nuclear program. He blasted the United States and its allies for trying to block what he claimed was Iran’s peaceful search for alternative sources of energy.
“They have equated nuclear energy with the nuclear bomb, and have distanced this energy from the reach of most of nations by establishing monopolies,” said Ahmadinejad. “While at the same time, they have continued to maintain, expand and upgrade their own nuclear arsenals… not only the nuclear disarmament has not been realized but also nuclear bombs have been proliferated in some regions, including by the occupying and intimidating Zionist regime.”
The Holocaust -denier then tried to best Obama’s call for a nuclear-free world:
“I would like here to propose that the year 2011 be proclaimed the year of nuclear disarmament and ‘Nuclear Energy for all, Nuclear Weapons for None.’”
Obama should have anticipated this bit of grand-standing by pointing out in his own speech that, unless Iran is stopped immediately in its tracks, they may well achieve the capability to build nuclear bombs whenever they wish by 2011. He should have insisted, as President George Bush had done from the very same General Assembly podium, that in order for the United Nations to stay relevant it must confront international outlaws like Iran’s regime. But Obama shrunk from this task.
How many times does our President need the door to be slammed in his face before getting the message that Iran is ruled by thugs who intend, at all costs, to develop the nuclear bomb capability which they will use to threaten Israel and to impose Iran’s power over the region?
As former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton remarked,
“So how you can seriously believe that you can negotiate a meaningful elimination of their nuclear weapons program with people with that kind of psychology and believe they would carry through with it, Obama can’t explain. It’s another demonstration that his policy of dealing with Iran and North Korea is that it’s not just naïve, but it’s also dangerous. The fact it is almost certain ̶ Iran is going to get nuclear weapons ̶ really shows that diplomacy has failed, and the sanctions efforts have failed.”
After his General Assembly speech, President Obama attended the UN Secretary General’s annual lunch for world leaders and gave a toast. In his toast, he said:
“Mr. Secretary-General, I especially want to thank you for your dedication to pursuing peace, expanding security, protecting human rights, and advancing democracy and development. And standing here, I’m reminded of something President Franklin Roosevelt said shortly before the United Nations was founded. He said, ‘Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it.’
Over the last two years, our nations have come together in that spirit…But as we all know our work is far from over, and in the months and years ahead the challenges we face will require the work of all nations and all peoples. That’s how real change happens.”
Not everyone in the room was feeling Obama’s love. Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim used his toast to praise Iran for having accepted Brazil’s joint proposal with Turkey to restart negotiations on the nuclear issue. “We offered solutions together will Turkey on the nuclear issue, and I hope they are taken,” he said during his toast while Obama listened in silence.
It’s too bad, as I mentioned at the outset of this article, that President Obama did not pick the more appropriate of FDR’s warnings to repeat to the world: “Normal practices of diplomacy . . . are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws.”
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Timothy of Baghdad’s Lost Christian Empire
The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -- and How It Died
Timothy of Baghdad’s Lost Christian Empire
By Jim O'Neill Sunday, September 26, 2010
“In terms of the number and splendor of its churches and monasteries, its vast scholarship and dazzling spirituality, Iraq was through the late Middle Ages at least as much a cultural and spiritual heartland of Christianity as was France or Germany, or indeed Ireland.”
Philip Jenkins from “The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died”
Centuries before Islam was a gleam in Muhammad’s eye, much of the Middle East was part of a vast Christian empire. In fact, this Christian empire continued for centuries after the Muslims took over the region.
As Philip Jenkins points out in “The Lost History of Christianity,” like Christian Egypt, the conquered Middle Eastern lands were “still effectively a Christian society under a Muslim military elite.” It wasn’t until the 1300s that the axe finally fell—more about that in a bit. (Link)
First, let’s take a look at the lost empire. In 780 AD (a little over a hundred years after the Muslims conquered Baghdad), Timothy became patriarch of the Nestorian Church of the East—a Christian branch that held sway over an area that ran from the Mediterranean Sea in the west, to China and the Pacific Ocean in the east. (Link)
Timothy ruled over churches near the Caspian Sea in the North, down to Yemen in the south. The Nestorian rabban, or priests (closely aligned to the Hebrew word “rabbi,” obviously), looked to Baghdad, in present day Iraq, as the seat of the Church, although Jerusalem was considered to be their spiritual home. (Link)
The Nestorian empire was vast, and quite diverse. They included a group in India who claimed direct lineage from a mission started by the apostle St. Thomas. Around 1275, (shortly before the axe fell), two rabban from China traveled west to visit the seat of the empire in Iraq. (Link)
After arriving in Iraq, one of them, Markos, was elected patriarch of the church in 1281 (Yaballaha III). The other Chinese rabban, Bar Sauma, traveled on to Europe, where he was given Communion by the Pope in Rome (Nicholas IV), held his own mass in that city, and “the king of England himself (Edward I) took Communion from his hands.” (Link)
So what became of the Nestorian Christians?
So what became of the Nestorian Christians? Until a year ago, when I ran across some information written by Robert Spencer, I had never heard of them—and I’m pretty well versed in world history. (Link)
They seem to have been erased from the earth, and largely scrubbed from the history books. What happened, and what’s up?
What happened—is Islam. What’s up—is the control of the media and academia by anti-Christian forces, who downplay, ridicule, twist, and erase, the role of Christianity in current affairs, and world history. (Link)
(I ask, politely, that liberals please stifle any impulse to send me an email holding forth on some perversion of Christianity, as “proof” of the left’s open-mindedness. TIA). (Yes, that includes any mention of “social justice,” or “collective salvation”). (Link)
Up until the 14th century, violent suppression by Muslims of dhimmi, or non-Muslims, under their rule, had been limited to what Jenkins refers to as “surges” or “booms.”
One especially savage “boom” was directed toward the Armenian Christians, whose males were ordered to convert to Islam, or suffer “branding, blinding in one eye, and castration.”
These surges and booms were awful enough, but after 1300, widespread intolerence was the order of the day. This intolerence “lingers to the present day, as the vigorous Muslim legalism that emerged in just these years has largely shaped modern fundamentalist movements,” according to Jenkins. (Link)
One of the Muslim scholars of this period has been especially influential—Ibn Taymiyyah. He is “regarded as the spiritual godfather of the Wahhabi movement, and of most modern extremist and jihadi groups.” (Link)
Wahhibism, of course, is the state religion of the USA’s “good buddy,” Saudi Arabia. You know—the country whose ruler our President bows to? (Link)
(Permit me a short aside: In case you aren’t aware of it—Jihadi Muslims, or Islamists, have been playing a “good cop/bad cop” game with the US for decades. The game goes like this: There are two “types” of jihadists—terrorists, and “moderates.” Although their tactics are different, their goal is the same—a global Caliphate. The “moderate” jihadists play off of the terrorists, by saying in effect, “You had better listen to our “moderate” demands, our we can’t be held responsible for what those crazy terrorists will do.” Different tactics—same goal). (Link) (Link)
After the 14th century, Muslim violence went into “remission” for the next few centuries (barring the odd “boom” or “surge”), until around a century ago, when it returned with a vengeance, that continues to this day. (Link)
During the Hamadian massacres of 1894-95, an especially brutal genocide of Turkish Armenian Christians resulted in a number of horrific events—including 3,000 Christians being: burned alive in the cathedral where they had sought sanctuary,” ( a scene reminiscent of the recent burning alive of about fifty Christians [mostly women and children] locked in a church in Kenya. They were killed by Muslim followers of Obama’s Muslim “cousin,” Raila Odinga). (Link)
The Nestorian Christian empire is now nothing but a memory, and a dim one at that. As recently as 1970, 5 to 6 percent of Iraq’s population was still Christian. Today it’s around 1 percent, and “shrinking fast.” (Link)
As Jenkins recounts, “Just between 2003 and 2007, two-thirds of Iraq’s remaining Christians left the country, and the population will certainly sink farther in coming years.” (Link)
The Muslim jihad against Christians is hardly limited to the Middle East
The Muslim jihad against Christians is hardly limited to the Middle East. It is global, and ongoing: Nigeria, Indonesia, Sudan…. Sudan! (Link)
I just had a Eureka! moment. You know how upset Obama’s old pastor, Jeremiah “God D—n America” Wright is, over the injustices of slavery? Well, Muslims have been enslaving Christians for centuries—they’re doing it right now! (Link)
What a golden opportunity to take a real-time stand against the slave trade! I’ll bet Wright will be on the next plane to Africa to stamp this evil out. Go get ‘em tiger! Take the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton with you, as I know they wouldn’t want to miss out on any of the action. But I digress. (Link)
The only non-Muslim geographic areas to go head-to head with Islam over the centuries, and remain non-Muslim, are Europe and India (and the beat goes on). (Link) (Link)
Europe first beat back the Muslims at the battle of Tours in 732, and nine centuries later, beat back a Muslim invasion in the east, at the gates of Vienna. (Link) (Link) (Link)
US President Teddy Roosevelt knew what he was talking about when he wrote, “There are such ‘social values’ today in Europe, America and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do—that is, to beat back the Moslem [sic] invader.” (Link)
Given Islam’s history, why are the liberals, government, and academia not more alarmed? Are they stupid? No, for the most part they aren’t stupid, but they have been cleverly and deeply indoctrinated, and are enmeshed in social and/or business environments that encourage thinking of Islam in a certain “politically correct” way. (Link)
The established media (or more correctly, propaganda outlets), follow the party line, because they are, for the most part, idiots, of the “useful” variety. They have been thoroughly indoctrinated to think and behave in a certain manner, that would do Pavlov proud. (Link)
They, and most of the political elites, actually think that they are doing good, by being cookie-cutter clones of NWO group-think. Many of them see their betrayal of America as “a good thing,” and they are “good people” (or “good dhimmis,” as the case may be). Their puppet-masters are something else again—but that’s the topic for another article. (Link)
Most puzzling to me, is the submission of “liberated” liberal females, to the party line regarding Islam. Their deference is an impressive, if disturbing, sign of the depth of their indoctrination. (Link)
Islam treats women as breed-stock chattel. Talk about a “keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant” attitude! Muslims wrote the book on the subject, or rather, they follow the book written on the subject. (Link) (Link)
Each man gets up to four wives (in reality, the sky’s the limit if you’re very rich), divorces are literally as easy as 1,2,3 (for men only), child brides, sharia-approved wife abuse—well, the list just goes on. One can see the allure for a certain type of guy, (and gal). (Link)
The women’s rights organization NOW, has been curiously quiet about the misogynistic nature of Islam. Actually not so curious, as NOW is really the Far Left’s Women’s Auxiliary, and the Far Left has been working in collusion with Islamists, to destroy Western civilization, for some time. (Link)
(“Hey,hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!” is not just a catchy meme aimed at changing academic curriculums). (Link)
If you doubt the truth of that last bit, about the Far Left and Islam working together to destroy Western civilization, then you are either an idiot (of the “useful” sort, if you prefer), or you’re simply ignorant, and need to educate yourself on the subject.
If some education is in order, then I strongly suggest that you get cracking, because the time left for you to get up to speed, is rapidly running out—if it hasn’t run out already.
Laus Deo.
Timothy of Baghdad’s Lost Christian Empire
By Jim O'Neill Sunday, September 26, 2010
“In terms of the number and splendor of its churches and monasteries, its vast scholarship and dazzling spirituality, Iraq was through the late Middle Ages at least as much a cultural and spiritual heartland of Christianity as was France or Germany, or indeed Ireland.”
Philip Jenkins from “The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died”
Centuries before Islam was a gleam in Muhammad’s eye, much of the Middle East was part of a vast Christian empire. In fact, this Christian empire continued for centuries after the Muslims took over the region.
As Philip Jenkins points out in “The Lost History of Christianity,” like Christian Egypt, the conquered Middle Eastern lands were “still effectively a Christian society under a Muslim military elite.” It wasn’t until the 1300s that the axe finally fell—more about that in a bit. (Link)
First, let’s take a look at the lost empire. In 780 AD (a little over a hundred years after the Muslims conquered Baghdad), Timothy became patriarch of the Nestorian Church of the East—a Christian branch that held sway over an area that ran from the Mediterranean Sea in the west, to China and the Pacific Ocean in the east. (Link)
Timothy ruled over churches near the Caspian Sea in the North, down to Yemen in the south. The Nestorian rabban, or priests (closely aligned to the Hebrew word “rabbi,” obviously), looked to Baghdad, in present day Iraq, as the seat of the Church, although Jerusalem was considered to be their spiritual home. (Link)
The Nestorian empire was vast, and quite diverse. They included a group in India who claimed direct lineage from a mission started by the apostle St. Thomas. Around 1275, (shortly before the axe fell), two rabban from China traveled west to visit the seat of the empire in Iraq. (Link)
After arriving in Iraq, one of them, Markos, was elected patriarch of the church in 1281 (Yaballaha III). The other Chinese rabban, Bar Sauma, traveled on to Europe, where he was given Communion by the Pope in Rome (Nicholas IV), held his own mass in that city, and “the king of England himself (Edward I) took Communion from his hands.” (Link)
So what became of the Nestorian Christians?
So what became of the Nestorian Christians? Until a year ago, when I ran across some information written by Robert Spencer, I had never heard of them—and I’m pretty well versed in world history. (Link)
They seem to have been erased from the earth, and largely scrubbed from the history books. What happened, and what’s up?
What happened—is Islam. What’s up—is the control of the media and academia by anti-Christian forces, who downplay, ridicule, twist, and erase, the role of Christianity in current affairs, and world history. (Link)
(I ask, politely, that liberals please stifle any impulse to send me an email holding forth on some perversion of Christianity, as “proof” of the left’s open-mindedness. TIA). (Yes, that includes any mention of “social justice,” or “collective salvation”). (Link)
Up until the 14th century, violent suppression by Muslims of dhimmi, or non-Muslims, under their rule, had been limited to what Jenkins refers to as “surges” or “booms.”
One especially savage “boom” was directed toward the Armenian Christians, whose males were ordered to convert to Islam, or suffer “branding, blinding in one eye, and castration.”
These surges and booms were awful enough, but after 1300, widespread intolerence was the order of the day. This intolerence “lingers to the present day, as the vigorous Muslim legalism that emerged in just these years has largely shaped modern fundamentalist movements,” according to Jenkins. (Link)
One of the Muslim scholars of this period has been especially influential—Ibn Taymiyyah. He is “regarded as the spiritual godfather of the Wahhabi movement, and of most modern extremist and jihadi groups.” (Link)
Wahhibism, of course, is the state religion of the USA’s “good buddy,” Saudi Arabia. You know—the country whose ruler our President bows to? (Link)
(Permit me a short aside: In case you aren’t aware of it—Jihadi Muslims, or Islamists, have been playing a “good cop/bad cop” game with the US for decades. The game goes like this: There are two “types” of jihadists—terrorists, and “moderates.” Although their tactics are different, their goal is the same—a global Caliphate. The “moderate” jihadists play off of the terrorists, by saying in effect, “You had better listen to our “moderate” demands, our we can’t be held responsible for what those crazy terrorists will do.” Different tactics—same goal). (Link) (Link)
After the 14th century, Muslim violence went into “remission” for the next few centuries (barring the odd “boom” or “surge”), until around a century ago, when it returned with a vengeance, that continues to this day. (Link)
During the Hamadian massacres of 1894-95, an especially brutal genocide of Turkish Armenian Christians resulted in a number of horrific events—including 3,000 Christians being: burned alive in the cathedral where they had sought sanctuary,” ( a scene reminiscent of the recent burning alive of about fifty Christians [mostly women and children] locked in a church in Kenya. They were killed by Muslim followers of Obama’s Muslim “cousin,” Raila Odinga). (Link)
The Nestorian Christian empire is now nothing but a memory, and a dim one at that. As recently as 1970, 5 to 6 percent of Iraq’s population was still Christian. Today it’s around 1 percent, and “shrinking fast.” (Link)
As Jenkins recounts, “Just between 2003 and 2007, two-thirds of Iraq’s remaining Christians left the country, and the population will certainly sink farther in coming years.” (Link)
The Muslim jihad against Christians is hardly limited to the Middle East
The Muslim jihad against Christians is hardly limited to the Middle East. It is global, and ongoing: Nigeria, Indonesia, Sudan…. Sudan! (Link)
I just had a Eureka! moment. You know how upset Obama’s old pastor, Jeremiah “God D—n America” Wright is, over the injustices of slavery? Well, Muslims have been enslaving Christians for centuries—they’re doing it right now! (Link)
What a golden opportunity to take a real-time stand against the slave trade! I’ll bet Wright will be on the next plane to Africa to stamp this evil out. Go get ‘em tiger! Take the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton with you, as I know they wouldn’t want to miss out on any of the action. But I digress. (Link)
The only non-Muslim geographic areas to go head-to head with Islam over the centuries, and remain non-Muslim, are Europe and India (and the beat goes on). (Link) (Link)
Europe first beat back the Muslims at the battle of Tours in 732, and nine centuries later, beat back a Muslim invasion in the east, at the gates of Vienna. (Link) (Link) (Link)
US President Teddy Roosevelt knew what he was talking about when he wrote, “There are such ‘social values’ today in Europe, America and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do—that is, to beat back the Moslem [sic] invader.” (Link)
Given Islam’s history, why are the liberals, government, and academia not more alarmed? Are they stupid? No, for the most part they aren’t stupid, but they have been cleverly and deeply indoctrinated, and are enmeshed in social and/or business environments that encourage thinking of Islam in a certain “politically correct” way. (Link)
The established media (or more correctly, propaganda outlets), follow the party line, because they are, for the most part, idiots, of the “useful” variety. They have been thoroughly indoctrinated to think and behave in a certain manner, that would do Pavlov proud. (Link)
They, and most of the political elites, actually think that they are doing good, by being cookie-cutter clones of NWO group-think. Many of them see their betrayal of America as “a good thing,” and they are “good people” (or “good dhimmis,” as the case may be). Their puppet-masters are something else again—but that’s the topic for another article. (Link)
Most puzzling to me, is the submission of “liberated” liberal females, to the party line regarding Islam. Their deference is an impressive, if disturbing, sign of the depth of their indoctrination. (Link)
Islam treats women as breed-stock chattel. Talk about a “keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant” attitude! Muslims wrote the book on the subject, or rather, they follow the book written on the subject. (Link) (Link)
Each man gets up to four wives (in reality, the sky’s the limit if you’re very rich), divorces are literally as easy as 1,2,3 (for men only), child brides, sharia-approved wife abuse—well, the list just goes on. One can see the allure for a certain type of guy, (and gal). (Link)
The women’s rights organization NOW, has been curiously quiet about the misogynistic nature of Islam. Actually not so curious, as NOW is really the Far Left’s Women’s Auxiliary, and the Far Left has been working in collusion with Islamists, to destroy Western civilization, for some time. (Link)
(“Hey,hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!” is not just a catchy meme aimed at changing academic curriculums). (Link)
If you doubt the truth of that last bit, about the Far Left and Islam working together to destroy Western civilization, then you are either an idiot (of the “useful” sort, if you prefer), or you’re simply ignorant, and need to educate yourself on the subject.
If some education is in order, then I strongly suggest that you get cracking, because the time left for you to get up to speed, is rapidly running out—if it hasn’t run out already.
Laus Deo.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
U.S. Capitol Tour with David Barton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfEdJNn15E&feature=player_embedded
doctorcureton March 11, 2009
Visit http://www.WatchmenPastors.org and click on Briefings for details. To order a DVD of David Barton's 2 hour Capitol Tour, visit http://www.Wallbuilders.com. Encourage your pastor to participate in the Capitol Tour @ Watchmen on the Wall, May 25-27, 2011 in DC. Again, visit http://www.WatchmenPastors.org and click on Briefings for details.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Donald Berwick, Obama's Medicare Czar, Can't Take the Heat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N5bxsnPthc
HumanEvents September 14, 2010
Donald Berwick skirts questions from HUMAN EVENTS editor Jason Mattera
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wake up - He's a communist
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=206569
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OTHER RUSH
Wake up! He's a communist!
Exclusive: Erik Rush warns Americans to extricate government's 'treasonous slime'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 23, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
By Erik Rush
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make no mistake: The political struggle currently ensuing in America has long since ceased to be one of well-intentioned citizens disagreeing over policy. This is a matter of devoted, mainstream, well-informed Americans resisting the subjugation of our nation by communist operatives and their coalition of deceived supporters and committed acolytes.
Even the reader who is new to this column will have observed the increased intensity of political rhetoric over the last two years. Prior to the 2008 election, voices warning against a Barack Hussein Obama presidency may have been background noise to the casual news consumer; after all, every candidate has their detractors.
Over the last 20 months, between the actions and policies of the Obama administration and developments that have taken place as a result of same, the background has become very much foreground. The machinations and designs of the administration have carried more urgency, and their words have become shrill. Likewise, terms like "progressive" and "socialist" have increasingly been replaced with "Marxist," "communist" and "totalitarian" by their opposition.
Obviously, if only a few fringe types were employing such potent terminology, it could be easily dismissed. With hundreds of thousands of Americans mobilized, millions blogging and organizing, an emergent arm of the press dedicating itself to stifling the momentum of this government and even some conservative Hollywood celebrities coming "out of the arsenal" to join their voices with these, however, the gravity of these expressions cannot be ignored.
Like a host of pundits and legions of voters, I was appalled and indignant over the reaction of the political left and Republican elites to Republican Christine O'Donnell's primary win over Mike Castle in the Delaware senatorial race. Leading off the litany of unfounded tripe with which the left assailed Ms. O'Donnell were the tired, nebulous accusations of her being too extreme. Within hours of this, I was treated to the very same indictment of the tea party-backed GOP candidate for the Senate in my state, via a television advertisement.
So is nationalism now more "extreme" than communism? Because nationalism is what we need, and communism is what we're getting.
You want extremism? How about the president appointing yet another anti-capitalist radical in Elizabeth Warren as the non-titular head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while circumventing Senate confirmation, to occupy an office devoid of political regulation? A woman who claims that capitalism doesn't work – which admittedly it tends not to when government regulates business into near-insolvency, overtaxes companies and individuals and makes minimum wage demands that artificially drive up consumer prices.
Thank God that so many Americans are finally realizing that people like Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama have, over time, maneuvered us into a position economically wherein it appears that capitalism doesn't work, so that they might make that very claim!
Or, how about Obama signing executive order No. 13544, which officially adopted the Codex Alimentarius, a policy against which business interests have been fighting for decades? This one – a stealth proviso of Obamacare, by the by – is intended to bring access to all vitamins, minerals and natural health remedies and technologies under government control. This means that Washington can now classify all of these as "controlled" – like prescription drugs.
You mean the communists don't care whether or not the American people want communism? Big shock, huh? Yes, the concepts of liberty, self-determination, and unalienable rights in particular are antithetical to the ideology of these posers.
Back in 2007, I already knew that Barack Obama was a committed Marxist. Yet, only 18 months ago, many tittered merrily when I used the "c-word" – communist – to describe him and his lackeys. Now, although the left still reacts with incredulity and derision when conservatives use it, conservatives are using it, and with each passing week, fewer Americans think of its use as being "extreme."
When what we eat, drink, drive, say, do for a living, how much money we make and where we live is dictated by our government, those who were dedicated liberal voters will grit their teeth because they're too arrogant to ever admit they were wrong. When pockets of the stunned, deluded variety of liberal voters finally put down their bongs and declare "Hey, man – you can't, like, do this to us! We have rights …" – they're going to catch a bullet in the head.
Small consolation this will be to patriotic Americans, since we'll already be dead or in a gulag by then.
To put it succinctly, our government is occupied by malevolent, treasonous slime, and it's going to take years to extricate all of them, even with a majority of Americans dedicated to the wholesale eradication of progressivism – which is an absolute imperative. This societal infection is so profoundly and fundamentally destructive that if I had my way, anyone willing to accept it would be stripped of their citizenship.
That said, I don't always get my way, and conscientious Americans obey the law, even if progressives do not. Hopefully, this will not lead to our undoing. Were it not for the fact that so many Americans now know that which I have outlined here and have reacted accordingly, I shudder to think what the depth of my despair might be.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik Rush is a columnist and author of sociopolitical fare. His latest book is "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession." In 2007, he was the first to give national attention to the story of Sen. Barack Obama's ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, initiating a media feeding frenzy. Erik has appeared on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," CNN, and is a veteran of numerous radio appearances. He is the author of several books; his "Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation" was a 2007 New York Book Festival winner in the "Best Nonfiction" category.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=206569
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OTHER RUSH
Wake up! He's a communist!
Exclusive: Erik Rush warns Americans to extricate government's 'treasonous slime'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 23, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
By Erik Rush
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make no mistake: The political struggle currently ensuing in America has long since ceased to be one of well-intentioned citizens disagreeing over policy. This is a matter of devoted, mainstream, well-informed Americans resisting the subjugation of our nation by communist operatives and their coalition of deceived supporters and committed acolytes.
Even the reader who is new to this column will have observed the increased intensity of political rhetoric over the last two years. Prior to the 2008 election, voices warning against a Barack Hussein Obama presidency may have been background noise to the casual news consumer; after all, every candidate has their detractors.
Over the last 20 months, between the actions and policies of the Obama administration and developments that have taken place as a result of same, the background has become very much foreground. The machinations and designs of the administration have carried more urgency, and their words have become shrill. Likewise, terms like "progressive" and "socialist" have increasingly been replaced with "Marxist," "communist" and "totalitarian" by their opposition.
Obviously, if only a few fringe types were employing such potent terminology, it could be easily dismissed. With hundreds of thousands of Americans mobilized, millions blogging and organizing, an emergent arm of the press dedicating itself to stifling the momentum of this government and even some conservative Hollywood celebrities coming "out of the arsenal" to join their voices with these, however, the gravity of these expressions cannot be ignored.
Like a host of pundits and legions of voters, I was appalled and indignant over the reaction of the political left and Republican elites to Republican Christine O'Donnell's primary win over Mike Castle in the Delaware senatorial race. Leading off the litany of unfounded tripe with which the left assailed Ms. O'Donnell were the tired, nebulous accusations of her being too extreme. Within hours of this, I was treated to the very same indictment of the tea party-backed GOP candidate for the Senate in my state, via a television advertisement.
So is nationalism now more "extreme" than communism? Because nationalism is what we need, and communism is what we're getting.
You want extremism? How about the president appointing yet another anti-capitalist radical in Elizabeth Warren as the non-titular head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while circumventing Senate confirmation, to occupy an office devoid of political regulation? A woman who claims that capitalism doesn't work – which admittedly it tends not to when government regulates business into near-insolvency, overtaxes companies and individuals and makes minimum wage demands that artificially drive up consumer prices.
Thank God that so many Americans are finally realizing that people like Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama have, over time, maneuvered us into a position economically wherein it appears that capitalism doesn't work, so that they might make that very claim!
Or, how about Obama signing executive order No. 13544, which officially adopted the Codex Alimentarius, a policy against which business interests have been fighting for decades? This one – a stealth proviso of Obamacare, by the by – is intended to bring access to all vitamins, minerals and natural health remedies and technologies under government control. This means that Washington can now classify all of these as "controlled" – like prescription drugs.
You mean the communists don't care whether or not the American people want communism? Big shock, huh? Yes, the concepts of liberty, self-determination, and unalienable rights in particular are antithetical to the ideology of these posers.
Back in 2007, I already knew that Barack Obama was a committed Marxist. Yet, only 18 months ago, many tittered merrily when I used the "c-word" – communist – to describe him and his lackeys. Now, although the left still reacts with incredulity and derision when conservatives use it, conservatives are using it, and with each passing week, fewer Americans think of its use as being "extreme."
When what we eat, drink, drive, say, do for a living, how much money we make and where we live is dictated by our government, those who were dedicated liberal voters will grit their teeth because they're too arrogant to ever admit they were wrong. When pockets of the stunned, deluded variety of liberal voters finally put down their bongs and declare "Hey, man – you can't, like, do this to us! We have rights …" – they're going to catch a bullet in the head.
Small consolation this will be to patriotic Americans, since we'll already be dead or in a gulag by then.
To put it succinctly, our government is occupied by malevolent, treasonous slime, and it's going to take years to extricate all of them, even with a majority of Americans dedicated to the wholesale eradication of progressivism – which is an absolute imperative. This societal infection is so profoundly and fundamentally destructive that if I had my way, anyone willing to accept it would be stripped of their citizenship.
That said, I don't always get my way, and conscientious Americans obey the law, even if progressives do not. Hopefully, this will not lead to our undoing. Were it not for the fact that so many Americans now know that which I have outlined here and have reacted accordingly, I shudder to think what the depth of my despair might be.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik Rush is a columnist and author of sociopolitical fare. His latest book is "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession." In 2007, he was the first to give national attention to the story of Sen. Barack Obama's ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, initiating a media feeding frenzy. Erik has appeared on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," CNN, and is a veteran of numerous radio appearances. He is the author of several books; his "Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation" was a 2007 New York Book Festival winner in the "Best Nonfiction" category.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Obama Has No Intentions of Enforcing Our Immigration Laws
Obama regime has radically changed the federal immigration enforcement stategy to REDUCE the threat of deportation for millions of illegals
Obama Has No Intentions of Enforcing Our Immigration Laws
By Jerry McConnell - CFP - Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC) posted an article online on September 17, 2010 titled, “Obama Gives Illegals Get Out of Jail Card Free” written by Alan M. Gottlieb, Chairman that shows that “the Obama regime has radically changed the federal immigration enforcement stategy to REDUCE the threat of deportation for millions of illegals.”
The article goes on to explain that Obama has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to dismiss deportation cases for those illegals who haven’t committed “serious crimes.”
To my way of thinking, just crossing the border without legal authority is a “serious crime” and using that criterion they should ALL be deported. But even so, if more tolerance could reduce that violation of our laws to less than a “serious crime,” we know that it will only be a matter of hours, and more likely minutes, before they do commit a “serious crime.”
And as Gottlieb further states, “Obama has turned a blind eye on the surge in violent crimes committed by illegals across the country and is now giving them more rights than law-abiding Americans.”
There is no question that Obama’s prime motive for ordering such a radical order counter to proper law enforcement and protection of our sovereignty laws is as apparent as a bright floodlight: ‘Keep them here until at least after they have voted on November 2, 2010.’ He must think that we Americans are as dumb as most of the actions are that he takes every day. He isn’t fooling anyone but himself and just piling up more and more evidence to be used against him for impeachment.
On the other hand, perhaps he has seen the projections that have surfaced in YouTube.com video that has recently surfaced and is now making the rounds of the Internet landing in my INBOX today, Sep. 18, 2010. If true; I say ‘if’ because nowhere on the film did I see any mention of its author(s), origins or persons responsible for production,
it is a very chilling and nerve-rattling video about 7 minutes in length titled simply, “Demographic problem” with detailed statistics, some with printed sources and all believable. Check it out for yourself and you decide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GOB5gYHOpA
Here are some of the highlights of information provided in the somber and rational presentation. There is no reason not to believe this information.
The video is a presentation of demographics in many parts of the world with emphasis on the incredible spread of Islam-Muslims. The premise given is that in order for a culture to maintain itself for more than 25 years a Fertility Rate of 2.11 children per family is required.
In the major countries of Europe, France, England, Greece, Germany, Italy and Spain the rates range downward from France’s 1.8 to Spain’s 1.1; for the 31 total countries combined the rate is a low 1.38, an unsustainable for survival rate.
The video narrator commented that though the fertility rates are alarmingly low and unsustainable to remain, the population growth is not declining. Why? Immigration. Since 1990 Islamic immigration has accounted for 90 percent of all immigration.
Keep in mind, these people do not have a country of their own; there is no Islam territory. So as they multiply they require additional space; they acquire it by immigrating to multiple countries and the modern Islams have become so numerous as to become a majority in many places and claiming authority with sheer numbers.
The Fertility Rate of Muslims is astonishingly higher than all of the European countries of which France’s 1.8 is highest; at 8.1, the sheer volume of higher Islamic births allows them to take over countries. France is expected to be a Muslim country in less than 40 years.
In Great Britain the Islamic population that grown from 82,000to 26 million in the past 30 years. In the Netherlands, 50 percent of all newborns are Muslims and in just 15 years, fully ONE HALF of the population will be Muslim.
If you’re thinking that Russia will escape this onslaught, forget about it; the video states that there are 23 million Muslims in Russia and in just a few years 40 percent of the Russian Army will be Islamic. Remember how some Muslims in our Army refused to fight their soul-mate Islamics?
Germany states that the population there in 2050 will be a Muslim majority (Germany Federal Statistics Office.)
The video claims that Europe currently has 52 million Muslims living in it. The German government says that number will be doubled in 20 years to 104 million.
Closer to home, the video shows Canada with a Fertility Rate of 1.6 children per family and between the years 2001 to 2006 its population increased by 1.6 million, of which 1.2 million were Islamic immigrants.
The Fertility Rate in the United States, like Canada is 1.6 per family, but if Hispanics are counted in that rate it increases to 2.11. Even so, the total number of Muslims in the United States in 1970 was 100,000, but by 2008 there were 9 million.
About 3 years ago, 24 Muslim organizations met in Chicago (Islamic Strategy Conference) and predicted that in 30 years there will be 50 million Muslims living in the United States,
The Catholic Church has reported that Islam has surpassed their membership numbers. Entire cultures and religions will be wiped out by this unwanted growth. The Quran 4:3 gives Muslim men permission to marry up to four wives and to keep concubines in any number, so their Fertility Rate of 8.1 children is probably the main reason for the tidal wave of Islam immigration all over the world.
In other columns I have warned about the spread of this danger to not only the world, but to our United States. Whether they infiltrate with illegal aliens that transgress our porous borders, primarily through Mexico, or any other means, it is like a spreading cancer which if left untended will escalate more rapidly and widely as their numbers grow.
Obama, Reid and Pelosi are encouraging this spread mostly due to beliefs that these people will overwhelmingly support the liberal Democrat party with their votes. The Islam-Muslims do not have a country of their own, so their method of operation is to move in and swallow the countries of others by sheer numbers.
This is one example of our great and respected Constitution, which protects freedoms that we so cherish, being used against us to our detriment and doom.
The liberal Democrats have abandoned any efforts to maintain our cherished principles and standards and have sold their souls in their quest for votes to remain in power; which will be their undoing, and unfortunately, ours as well.
Obama Has No Intentions of Enforcing Our Immigration Laws
By Jerry McConnell - CFP - Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC) posted an article online on September 17, 2010 titled, “Obama Gives Illegals Get Out of Jail Card Free” written by Alan M. Gottlieb, Chairman that shows that “the Obama regime has radically changed the federal immigration enforcement stategy to REDUCE the threat of deportation for millions of illegals.”
The article goes on to explain that Obama has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to dismiss deportation cases for those illegals who haven’t committed “serious crimes.”
To my way of thinking, just crossing the border without legal authority is a “serious crime” and using that criterion they should ALL be deported. But even so, if more tolerance could reduce that violation of our laws to less than a “serious crime,” we know that it will only be a matter of hours, and more likely minutes, before they do commit a “serious crime.”
And as Gottlieb further states, “Obama has turned a blind eye on the surge in violent crimes committed by illegals across the country and is now giving them more rights than law-abiding Americans.”
There is no question that Obama’s prime motive for ordering such a radical order counter to proper law enforcement and protection of our sovereignty laws is as apparent as a bright floodlight: ‘Keep them here until at least after they have voted on November 2, 2010.’ He must think that we Americans are as dumb as most of the actions are that he takes every day. He isn’t fooling anyone but himself and just piling up more and more evidence to be used against him for impeachment.
On the other hand, perhaps he has seen the projections that have surfaced in YouTube.com video that has recently surfaced and is now making the rounds of the Internet landing in my INBOX today, Sep. 18, 2010. If true; I say ‘if’ because nowhere on the film did I see any mention of its author(s), origins or persons responsible for production,
it is a very chilling and nerve-rattling video about 7 minutes in length titled simply, “Demographic problem” with detailed statistics, some with printed sources and all believable. Check it out for yourself and you decide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GOB5gYHOpA
Here are some of the highlights of information provided in the somber and rational presentation. There is no reason not to believe this information.
The video is a presentation of demographics in many parts of the world with emphasis on the incredible spread of Islam-Muslims. The premise given is that in order for a culture to maintain itself for more than 25 years a Fertility Rate of 2.11 children per family is required.
In the major countries of Europe, France, England, Greece, Germany, Italy and Spain the rates range downward from France’s 1.8 to Spain’s 1.1; for the 31 total countries combined the rate is a low 1.38, an unsustainable for survival rate.
The video narrator commented that though the fertility rates are alarmingly low and unsustainable to remain, the population growth is not declining. Why? Immigration. Since 1990 Islamic immigration has accounted for 90 percent of all immigration.
Keep in mind, these people do not have a country of their own; there is no Islam territory. So as they multiply they require additional space; they acquire it by immigrating to multiple countries and the modern Islams have become so numerous as to become a majority in many places and claiming authority with sheer numbers.
The Fertility Rate of Muslims is astonishingly higher than all of the European countries of which France’s 1.8 is highest; at 8.1, the sheer volume of higher Islamic births allows them to take over countries. France is expected to be a Muslim country in less than 40 years.
In Great Britain the Islamic population that grown from 82,000to 26 million in the past 30 years. In the Netherlands, 50 percent of all newborns are Muslims and in just 15 years, fully ONE HALF of the population will be Muslim.
If you’re thinking that Russia will escape this onslaught, forget about it; the video states that there are 23 million Muslims in Russia and in just a few years 40 percent of the Russian Army will be Islamic. Remember how some Muslims in our Army refused to fight their soul-mate Islamics?
Germany states that the population there in 2050 will be a Muslim majority (Germany Federal Statistics Office.)
The video claims that Europe currently has 52 million Muslims living in it. The German government says that number will be doubled in 20 years to 104 million.
Closer to home, the video shows Canada with a Fertility Rate of 1.6 children per family and between the years 2001 to 2006 its population increased by 1.6 million, of which 1.2 million were Islamic immigrants.
The Fertility Rate in the United States, like Canada is 1.6 per family, but if Hispanics are counted in that rate it increases to 2.11. Even so, the total number of Muslims in the United States in 1970 was 100,000, but by 2008 there were 9 million.
About 3 years ago, 24 Muslim organizations met in Chicago (Islamic Strategy Conference) and predicted that in 30 years there will be 50 million Muslims living in the United States,
The Catholic Church has reported that Islam has surpassed their membership numbers. Entire cultures and religions will be wiped out by this unwanted growth. The Quran 4:3 gives Muslim men permission to marry up to four wives and to keep concubines in any number, so their Fertility Rate of 8.1 children is probably the main reason for the tidal wave of Islam immigration all over the world.
In other columns I have warned about the spread of this danger to not only the world, but to our United States. Whether they infiltrate with illegal aliens that transgress our porous borders, primarily through Mexico, or any other means, it is like a spreading cancer which if left untended will escalate more rapidly and widely as their numbers grow.
Obama, Reid and Pelosi are encouraging this spread mostly due to beliefs that these people will overwhelmingly support the liberal Democrat party with their votes. The Islam-Muslims do not have a country of their own, so their method of operation is to move in and swallow the countries of others by sheer numbers.
This is one example of our great and respected Constitution, which protects freedoms that we so cherish, being used against us to our detriment and doom.
The liberal Democrats have abandoned any efforts to maintain our cherished principles and standards and have sold their souls in their quest for votes to remain in power; which will be their undoing, and unfortunately, ours as well.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Obama Overturns Reagan's Three-Legged Stool
The Observer (Kampala)
Uganda: Obama Overturns Reagan's Three-Legged Stool
Martyn Drakard
8 September 2010
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Book: Conservative Victory. Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda
Author: Sean Hannity
Publisher: Harper Collins 2010
For the past two years, Barack Obama's autobiographies and books about him and wife, Michelle, have been coming thick and fast.
It's refreshing, then, to come across Sean Hannity, who asks questions and gives answers you might not find anywhere else.
A great philosophical divide has always separated the American people, he says, quoting Ronald Reagan: those who support free-market capitalism and the country's venerated institutions, and the others who think government regulations and control will solve everything that's wrong with the country.
Americans, he goes on, are centre-right politically, and shows that Gallup polls in late 2009 and early 2010 report that twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservative as liberal (left of centre). But the present leftist administration seems set on running down everything the US stands for.
Obama's own past life is interesting. The influence of his mother, described by one critic as a communist "fellow-traveller", and other leftist mentors, on his political thought and his religious skepticism left its mark. And a quick look at his advisors makes you wonder.
Cass Sunstein, his "regulatory czar" thinks that animals, through human agents, should be enabled to bring private lawsuits to ensure anti-cruelty laws are enforced.
Ron Bloom, his "manufacturing czar" says the free-market is "nonsense"; Kevin Jennings, the "safe-schools" advisor and Harry Knox, on his faith-based advisory council, are homosexual activists.
John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology policy recommends compulsory human sterilization; Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services secretary is strongly pro-abortion, as is Dawn Johnson, head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
During his term, Hannity claims, Obama is trying hard to push over-reaching legislation designed to control every aspect of Americans' lives. One of the left's favoured tactics is the Orwellian distortion of language to make unpopular beliefs and policies more palatable.
The present president is trying to overturn the three-legged stool of Reagan: strong defence, strong economy and strong social values, among which is opposition to same-sex unions, and abortion which he likened to slavery.
"How can we survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live and should be done away with?" Reagan asked at a convention in January, 1984.
Conservative Victory, published this year, gives the background of the controversial Health Care Bill, with its trade-offs and last-minute sell-outs. You might not like what he writes or agree with it.
Uganda: Obama Overturns Reagan's Three-Legged Stool
Martyn Drakard
8 September 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Book: Conservative Victory. Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda
Author: Sean Hannity
Publisher: Harper Collins 2010
For the past two years, Barack Obama's autobiographies and books about him and wife, Michelle, have been coming thick and fast.
It's refreshing, then, to come across Sean Hannity, who asks questions and gives answers you might not find anywhere else.
A great philosophical divide has always separated the American people, he says, quoting Ronald Reagan: those who support free-market capitalism and the country's venerated institutions, and the others who think government regulations and control will solve everything that's wrong with the country.
Americans, he goes on, are centre-right politically, and shows that Gallup polls in late 2009 and early 2010 report that twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservative as liberal (left of centre). But the present leftist administration seems set on running down everything the US stands for.
Obama's own past life is interesting. The influence of his mother, described by one critic as a communist "fellow-traveller", and other leftist mentors, on his political thought and his religious skepticism left its mark. And a quick look at his advisors makes you wonder.
Cass Sunstein, his "regulatory czar" thinks that animals, through human agents, should be enabled to bring private lawsuits to ensure anti-cruelty laws are enforced.
Ron Bloom, his "manufacturing czar" says the free-market is "nonsense"; Kevin Jennings, the "safe-schools" advisor and Harry Knox, on his faith-based advisory council, are homosexual activists.
John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology policy recommends compulsory human sterilization; Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services secretary is strongly pro-abortion, as is Dawn Johnson, head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
During his term, Hannity claims, Obama is trying hard to push over-reaching legislation designed to control every aspect of Americans' lives. One of the left's favoured tactics is the Orwellian distortion of language to make unpopular beliefs and policies more palatable.
The present president is trying to overturn the three-legged stool of Reagan: strong defence, strong economy and strong social values, among which is opposition to same-sex unions, and abortion which he likened to slavery.
"How can we survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live and should be done away with?" Reagan asked at a convention in January, 1984.
Conservative Victory, published this year, gives the background of the controversial Health Care Bill, with its trade-offs and last-minute sell-outs. You might not like what he writes or agree with it.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
How Obama Thinks
On The Cover/Top Stories
How Obama Thinks
Dinesh D'Souza, 09.27.10, 12:00 AM ET
Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.
The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.
More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's resources?
The oddities go on and on. Obama's Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.
The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such funds seem to have done little. The unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even more and is determined to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a year or more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal income taxes; the next 9% of income earners pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes; the bottom 40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem unfair--to the rich.
Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.
Recently the London Times reported that the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately complained. The Times, however, obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were "half-hearted." They released him to his home country, where he lives today as a free man.
One more anomaly: A few months ago nasa Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Bolden added that the International Space Station was a model for nasa's future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians and the Chinese. Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Sure, we are for Islamic self-esteem, but what on earth was Obama up to here?
Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is clueless about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution.
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These theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy. The real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.
A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?
It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.
Perhaps, then, Obama shares Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. The President has benefited from that dream; he campaigned as a nonracial candidate, and many Americans voted for him because he represents the color-blind ideal. Even so, King's dream is not Obama's: The President never champions the idea of color-blindness or race-neutrality. This inaction is not merely tactical; the race issue simply isn't what drives Obama.
What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.
So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.
An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country's future.
I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.
Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."
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Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.
Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"
As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."
Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.
While the senior Obama called for Africa to free itself from the neocolonial influence of Europe and specifically Britain, he knew when he came to America in 1959 that the global balance of power was shifting. Even then, he recognized what has become a new tenet of anticolonialist ideology: Today's neocolonial leader is not Europe but America. As the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said--who was one of Obama's teachers at Columbia University--wrote in Culture and Imperialism, "The United States has replaced the earlier great empires and is the dominant outside force."
From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world.
It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.
For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.
Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world's energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to penalize, and therefore reduce, America's carbon consumption. Both as a U.S. Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.
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Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash. That's why Obama retains the right to refuse bailout paybacks--so that he can maintain his control. For Obama, health insurance companies on their own are oppressive racketeers, but once they submitted to federal oversight he was happy to do business with them. He even promised them expanded business as a result of his law forcing every American to buy health insurance.
If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more. The anticolonialist believes that since the rich have prospered at the expense of others, their wealth doesn't really belong to them; therefore whatever can be extracted from them is automatically just. Recall what Obama Sr. said in his 1965 paper: There is no tax rate too high, and even a 100% rate is justified under certain circumstances.
Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.
Finally, nasa. No explanation other than anticolonialism makes sense of Obama's curious mandate to convert a space agency into a Muslim and international outreach. We can see how well our theory works by recalling the moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. "One small step for man," Neil Armstrong said. "One giant leap for mankind."
But that's not how the rest of the world saw it. I was 8 years old at the time and living in my native India. I remember my grandfather telling me about the great race between America and Russia to put a man on the moon. Clearly America had won, and this was one giant leap not for mankind but for the U.S. If Obama shares this view, it's no wonder he wants to blunt nasa's space program, to divert it from a symbol of American greatness into a more modest public relations program.
Clearly the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly sure about his father's influence because those who know Obama well testify to it. His "granny" Sarah Obama (not his real grandmother but one of his grandfather's other wives) told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same things--he has taken everything from his father. The son is realizing everything the father wanted. The dreams of the father are still alive in the son."
In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"
The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."
In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.
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Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.
But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.
Dinesh D'Souza, the president of the King's College in New York City, is the author of the forthcoming book The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing).
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Size of Government and the Choice This Fall
Sunday, September 12, 2010
OPINION SEPTEMBER 13, 2010.
OPINION SEPTEMBER 13, 2010.
The Size of Government and the Choice This Fall
Text By ARTHUR C. BROOKS AND PAUL RYAN
As we move into this election season, Americans are being asked to choose between candidates and political parties. But the true decision we will be making—now and in the years to come—is this: Do we still want our traditional American free enterprise system, or do we prefer a European-style social democracy? This is a choice between free markets and managed capitalism; between limited government and an ever-expanding state; between rewarding entrepreneurs and equalizing economic rewards.
We must decide. Or must we?
In response to what each of us has written in the preceding months, we have heard again and again that the choice we pose is too stark. New York Times columnist David Brooks (no relation) finds our approach too Manichaean, and the Schumpeter columnist in The Economist objected that, "You can have a big state with a well-functioning free market."
Data support the proposition that Americans like generous government programs and don't want to lose them. So while 70% of Americans told pollsters at the Pew Research Center in 2009 they agreed that "people are better off in a free market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time," large majorities favor keeping our social insurance programs intact. This leads conventional thinkers to claim that a welfare state is what we truly want, regardless of whether or not we mouth platitudes about "freedom" and "entrepreneurship."
But these claims miss the point. What we must choose is our aspiration, not whether we want to zero out the state. Nobody wants to privatize the Army or take away Grandma's Social Security check. Even Friedrich Hayek in his famous book, "The Road to Serfdom," reminded us that the state has legitimate—and critical—functions, from rectifying market failures to securing some minimum standard of living.
However, finding the right level of government for Americans is simply impossible unless we decide which ideal we prefer: a free enterprise society with a solid but limited safety net, or a cradle-to-grave, redistributive welfare state. Most Americans believe in assisting those temporarily down on their luck and those who cannot help themselves, as well as a public-private system of pensions for a secure retirement. But a clear majority believes that income redistribution and government care should be the exception and not the rule.
David Gothard
.This is made abundantly clear in surveys such as the one conducted by the Ayers-McHenry polling firm in 2009, which asked a large group of Americans, "Overall, would you prefer larger government with more services and higher taxes, or smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes?" To this question, 21% favored the former, while 69% preferred the latter.
Unfortunately, many political leaders from both parties in recent years have purposively obscured the fundamental choice we must make by focusing on individual spending issues and programs while ignoring the big picture of America's free enterprise culture. In this way, redistribution and statism always win out over limited government and private markets.
Why not lift the safety net a few rungs higher up the income ladder? Go ahead, slap a little tariff on some Chinese goods in the name of protecting a favored industry. More generous pensions for teachers? Hey, it's only a few million tax dollars—and think of the kids, after all.
Individually, these things might sound fine. Multiply them and add them all up, though, and you have a system that most Americans manifestly oppose—one that creates a crushing burden of debt and teaches our children and grandchildren that government is the solution to all our problems. Seventy percent of us want stronger free enterprise, but the other 30% keep moving us closer toward an unacceptably statist America—one acceptable government program at a time.
This process has led to a visceral type of dissatisfaction with the current direction of our country. The president's job approval has fallen almost linearly since he took office (standing today at 45%, according to Gallup; 41%, according to Rasmussen) despite the fact that his policies are precisely what he promised when he handily won the 2008 election. Rasmussen finds that only 29% believe we are headed in the right direction as a nation and two-thirds say they are angry about current policies of the federal government. Majorities believe that "big government" poses the greatest threat to our country, according to Gallup.
Millions of Americans instinctively look to our leaders for a defense of our culture of free enterprise. Instead, we get more and more publicly funded gewgaws and shiny government novelties to distract us. For example, the administration stills touts the success of programs such as "Cash for Clunkers" in handing out borrowed money to citizens while propping up a favored industry. Yet Rasmussen found 54% of Americans opposed the program (only 35% favored it). Plenty of people may have availed themselves of that notorious boondoggle, but a large majority understand we were basically just asking our children (who will have to pay the $3 billion back) to buy us new cars—and that's not right.
More and more Americans are catching on to the scam. Every day, more see that the road to serfdom in America does not involve a knock in the night or a jack-booted thug. It starts with smooth-talking politicians offering seemingly innocuous compromises, and an opportunistic leadership that chooses not to stand up for America's enduring principles of freedom and entrepreneurship.
As this reality dawns, and the implications become clear to millions of Americans, we believe we can see the brightest future in decades. But we must choose it.
Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future" (Basic Books, 2010). Mr. Ryan is a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and the author of "A Roadmap for America's Future" (www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov).
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