Justplainbill's Weblog

September 3, 2015

An Israeli-Iran Nuclear War, by John Bosma [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, China, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Iran, Islam, Military, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, Russia, Treason — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 5:58 pm

Joseph R. John
To jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Today at 6:01 AM

The below listed article from American Thinker was forwarded from the Honorable Orson Swindle, III, Lt Col/USMC (Ret) (Vietnam POW), Senior Advisor to the Board of Directors of the Combat Veterans For Congress PAC, and is a current member of the Board of Directors of Citizens Against Government Waste.

The Honorable Orson Swindle served as a Commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission from December 18, 1997 through June 30, 2005. From 1981 to 1989 Mr. Swindle served in President Ronald Reagan Administration where he directed financial assistance programs to economically-distressed rural and municipal areas of the country. As Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development he managed the Department of Commerce’s national economic development initiatives directing seven offices across the country. His impressive biology is listed on the Leadership page of the Combat Veterans For Congress Web site.

His comment in forwarding the below listed article are as follows: “Look at what our liberal, self-serving Democrats in Congress and this incredible Fraud in the White House have done to our Country!!! Does it concern you?”

We encourage the wide distribution of the below listed article so the American people can fully comprehend how Obama continues to intentionally destabilize the Middle East while enabling Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, and how he is putting the US’ 70 year traditional Sunni allies, Israel, and the United States in the cross hairs of Iran’s newly developed nuclear weapons systems.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: ORSON SWINDLE
Date: Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 3:37 PM
Subject: Articles: Thinking About the Unthinkable: An Israel-Iran Nuclear War
To: Orson Swindle

American Thinker

Down Arrow

August 23, 2015

Thinking About the Unthinkable: An Israel-Iran Nuclear War

By John Bosma

The signing of a Munich-class agreement with Iran that hands it more than it ever hoped to pull off represents a shocking, craven American capitulation to an apocalyptic crazy state: a North Korea with oil. Nothing in Western history remotely approaches it, not even Neville Chamberlain’s storied appeasement of another anti-Semitic negotiating partner.

But it also augurs the possibility of a nuclear war coming far sooner than one could have imagined under conventional wisdom worst-case scenarios. Following the US’s betrayal of Israel and its de facto detente with Iran, we cannot expect Israel to copy longstanding US doctrines of no-first-nuclear-use and preferences for conventional-weapons-only war plans. After all, both were premised (especially after the USSR’s 1991 collapse) on decades of US nuclear and conventional supremacy. If there ever were an unassailable case for a small, frighteningly vulnerable nation to pre-emptively use nuclear weapons to shock, economically paralyze, and decapitate am enemy sworn to its destruction, Israel has arrived at that circumstance.

Why? Because Israel has no choice, given the radical new alignment against it that now includes the US, given reported Obama threats in 2014 to shoot down Israeli attack planes, his disclosure of Israel’s nuclear secrets and its Central Asian strike-force recovery bases, and above all his agreement to help Iran protect its enrichment facilities from terrorists and cyber warfare – i.e., from the very special-operations and cyber forces that Israel would use in desperate attempts to halt Iran’s bomb. Thus Israel is being forced, more rapidly and irreversibly than we appreciate, into a bet-the-nation decision where it has only one forceful, game-changing choice — early nuclear pre-emption – to wrest back control of its survival and to dictate the aftermath of such a survival strike.

Would this involve many nuclear weapons? No – probably fewer than 10-15, although their yields must be sufficiently large to maximize ground shock. Would it produce Iranian civilian casualties? Yes but not as many as one might suppose, as it would avoid cities. Most casualties would be radiological, like Chernobyl, rather than thermal and blast casualties. Would it spur a larger catalytic nuclear war? No. Would it subsequently impel Russia, China and new proliferators to normalize nuclear weapons in their own war planning? Or would the massive global panic over the first nuclear use in anger in 70 years, one that would draw saturation media coverage, panic their publics into urgent demands for ballistic missile self-defense systems? Probably the latter.

The Iranian elite’s ideology and controlling political psychology is inherently preferential towards nukes and direct population targeting as a way to implement Shi’ite messianism and end-times extremism. Iran is a newly nuclear apocalyptic Shi’ite regime that ranks as the most blatantly genocidal government since the Khmer Rouge’s Sorbonne-educated leaders took over Cambodia in April, 1975. Senior Iranian officials have periodically tied nuclear war to the return of the Twelfth Imam or Mahdi, which Iran’s previous president anticipated within several years. This reflects not just the triumphalist enthusiasm of a new arriviste nuclear power that just won more at the table than it dared to dream. It also reflects a self-amplifying, autarchic end-days theology that is immune to both reality testing and to Western liberal/progressive tenets about prim and proper nuclear behavior.

Admittedly, Iranian leaders have lately resorted to envisioning Israel’s collapse in more restrained terms through Palestinian demographic takeover of the Israeli state and asymmetric warfare. Still there remains a lurid history of Iranian officials urging the elimination of Israel and its people, of allocating their nukes to Israeli territory to maximize Jewish fatalities, of Iranian officials leading crowds in chants of “Death to Israel!” Iran’s government also released a video game allowing players to target various kinds of Iranian ballistic missiles against Israeli cities – this as part of intensive propaganda drumming up hatred of Jews. A more recent video game envisions a massive Iranian ground army marching to liberate Jerusalem. In all, Iran’s official stoking of genocidal Jew hatred is far beyond what Hitler’s government dared to advocate before the 1939 outbreak of World War 2.

The deliberate American silence over Iran’s genocidal intentionality sends an unmistakable signal to Israel that the US no longer recognizes a primordial, civilizational moral obligation to protect it from the most explicit threats imaginable. It is truly on its own, with the US in an all-but-overt alliance with its worst enemy. The shock to Israel’s leaders of this abrupt American lurch into tacitly accepting this Iranian intentionality cannot be understated. Iran is violating the core tenets of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a US initiative after the Tokyo and Nuremberg war-crimes trials to codify genocide as a crime against humanity. Now the US is silent.

But this shift is also recent. Every US government prior to President Obama would have foresworn nuclear talks with such a psychopathic regime or would have walked out in a rage upon such utterances. Yet Iran’s genocidal threats have had no discernible effect on Obama’s canine eagerness for a deal. It’s as if 75 years ago a US president had cheerfully engaged in peace talks with Hitler and his SS entourage despite learning the details of the Nazis’ secret Wannsee Conference where Hitler signed off on the Final Solution for the Jews. But whereas Hitler had the sense in that era to keep that conclave secret, Iran’s Wannsee intentionality toward Israel and world Jewry has for years been flamboyantly rude-and-crude and in-your-face. That this Iranian advocacy of a second Holocaust drew no objection from the US negotiators of this deal should make moral pariahs out of every one of them – including our president and Secretary of State.

These two factors alone, especially the abrupt evaporation of the US’s ultimate existential bargain with Israel through Obama’s de facto alliance with the mullahs, would drive Israel to the one attack option it can unilaterally use without running short of munitions and experiencing the massive US coercion embedded in that dependence. But there are other reasons why early Israeli nuclear pre-emption is not only justified but almost mandatory.

First, it is too late to stop Iran’s bomb-making momentum with conventional weapons or sanctions. That nation’s science and technology base is robust and improving. It has learned to domestically produce high-performance gas centrifuges whose uranium gas output is such that smaller numbers of them are needed for breakout. The US spent decades and many billions at labs like Oak Ridge National Laboratory on composites, software-controlled magnetic bearings, gas flow separations, thermal controls and ultra-precision manufacturing for these thin-wall, very-high-speed devices. Yet Iran has come up the centrifuge learning curve with surprising speed. Its metallurgists are familiar with a novel aluminum forging method that may yield nanophase aluminum shells so strong that they approach the centrifugal strength usually associated with more demanding composite-shell gas centrifuges. Also, Iran’s bomb engineering and physics can tap the sophisticated bomb designs and re-entry vehicle (RV) skills of North Korea, which is reducing the weight and mass of its H-bombs to fit on ballistic missiles and whose collaboration with Iran reportedly included Iranian technicians at North Korean bomb tests.

Other technology sources in the Nuclear Bombs R Us cartel for wannabe proliferators set up by rogue nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan of Pakistan include China, Russia and Pakistan. Worst of all, under the US-Iran deal, Iran’s ballistic missiles can improve their reliability, accuracy, throw-weight and their post-boost RV-release thrusters.

Second, Iran’s underground nuclear targets are likely harder than American and Israeli hard-target munition (HTM) developers have assumed. Why? Because Iranian engineers have perfected the world’s toughest concrete, developing mixtures using geopolymers, quartz powders (called fume) and metal and ceramic fibers. The result is hardness levels reportedly up to 50,000-60,000 psi in experimental samples. This means that even shallow “cut and cover” hard targets like the Natanz centrifuge enrichment plant, an armored complex in an excavated pit that is then covered, can resist destruction by the US’s most lethal hard-target bomb: the 30,000-lb “Massive Ordnance Penetrator.” Only the B-2 and the B-52 can carry the MOP. Yet while the MOP can penetrate ~200 ft into 5000-psi targets, it only reaches 25 feet into 10,000-psi concrete – and Iranian cement for new or up-armored underground bunkers has likely progressed well beyond that.

US and Israeli HTM alternatives include staged-warhead penetrators and – high on the wish list – novel energetic chemistries with orders-of-magnitude more power than current HTMs. Tactical HTMs with up to four sequential warheads use precursor warheads to blast an initial opening for larger follow-through charges to destroy tanks, fortifications and bridge piers. But these impact at slow speeds compared to what’s needed to kill deep hard targets. The latter need super hard casings (probably single-crystal metals) and packaging to keep their sequenced charges intact during violent impacts of thousands of feet/second (fps). One benchmark is the Department of Energy’s Sandia lab’s success years ago in firing a simulated hard-target RV into rock at 4400 fps. Similarly, reactive-material (RM) munitions and next-generation HEDM (high-energy-density material) explosives and energetic chemistries with orders-of-magnitude more power look promising for the future. But these require years of iterative fly-redesign-fly testing to assure they’ll survive impact with their deep targets.

Bottom line: with even the US’s best non-nuclear HTMs marginal against Iran’s critical deep targets, Israel’s HTMs probably wouldn’t do the job either, being lower in kinetic energy on target. Alternatives like using HTMs to destroy entrances to such targets and ventilation shafts may work – but unless Iranian military power and recovery are set back months or years, this damage would be repaired or worked round. Moreover, nuclear facilities tunneled into mountains would be almost impossible to destroy with conventional weapons.

Still, the brains behind Iran’s nuclear bomb, missile and WMD is concentrated in soft targets like the Iranian universities run by the IRGC (Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps), custodian of the bomb program). These can be hit by conventional weapons under a Peenemunde targeting strategy to kill as many weapon scientists and technicians as possible. (This recalls Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s directive for British bombers to target the residential housing on the small Baltic island where Hitler had sited his V-2 rocket program.) Alternatively, conventional or nuclear EMP (electromagnetic pulse) or HPM (high-power microwave) weapons could destroy for months all the computers and communications that support university-hosted bomb work. This would keep these scientists and surrounding urban populations alive.

Third, Obama’s decision to provide Iran “training courses and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to prevent, protect and respond to nuclear security threats, including sabotage, to nuclear facilities and systems as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems” is the clearest indicator that this accord is aimed squarely at Israel. Why? It eliminates the sole option Israel has left now that it lacks the US-supplied conventional HTMs to destroy unexpectedly hard deep targets, forcing it at best into a slow-motion conventional weapons-only campaign. This would expose it to brutal political and military blowback by Iran and its Chinese, Russian and European suppliers – and by an enraged American president. In essence, it appears that the Obama regime has under the accord deliberately stripped Israel of every option except nuclear pre-emption – which Obama, in typically liberal-progressive fashion, assumes would never happen. Ergo, Israel would be forced to accommodate Iranian military supremacy.

Fourth, what may drive an early Israeli nuclear attack are two considerations: (a) Russian S-300 ATBM/SAMs (anti-tactical ballistic missile/surface-to-air missile) in Iranian hands; and (b) Hezbollah’s thousands of missiles. Russia’s agreement to supply Iran four batteries of its fearsome S-300 by late August for defending priority targets would make it very difficult for Israel to mount the complex precision bombing strategies needed for tough targets. The S-300, the world’s best, can knock down high-speed aircraft from near ground level to almost 100,000 feet. It can also engage some ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s arsenal of more than 60,000 rockets (by some estimates) is a much greater threat to Israel, especially its air force, than is appreciated. Hizballah has retrofitted an unknown fraction of these missiles, whose range now covers almost all of Israel, with GPS and precision guidance, allowing them to hit critical targets. Unfortunately, Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling interceptors were designed on the assumption that most incoming missiles would be inaccurate and so the interceptors could be saved only for those approaching critical targets. The result? Hizballah rocket campaigns targeting Israeli airbases and other military targets could quickly run Israel out of interceptors. Iran could easily order such a campaign to throw Israel off balance as it focuses on the deadly US-abetted nuclear threat from Iran.

An Israeli nuclear pre-emption is thus eminently thinkable. Every other option has been stripped away by Obama’s decision, concealed from Israel, Congress and our allies until it was too late to challenge, to let Iranian bomb-making R&D run free and to harden Iran’s bomb-making infrastructure against Israel – while imposing lethal restrictions on Israeli countermeasures and forswearing any US and allied military attacks, such as B-2’s and B-52’s dropping MOP bombs.

The die is now cast. Nuclear pre-emption becomes attractive to a nation in extremis, where Israel is now:

…Israel needs to impart a powerful, disorganizing shock to the Iranian regime that accomplishes realistic military objectives: digging out its expensive underground enrichment plants, destroying its Arak plutonium reactor and maybe Bushehr in the bargain, killing its bomb and missile professionals, scientists and technicians, IRGC bases, its oil production sites, oil export terminals and the leaders of the regime where they can be found.

…its initial strike must move very fast and be conclusive within 1-2 hours, like the Israeli air attack opening the 1967 Six-Day War. The goal is to so stun the regime that Israel controls the first and subsequent phases of the war and its ending. This means that Israel must hit enough critical targets with maximum shock – and be willing to revisit or expand its targets – so as to control blowback and retaliation from Iran’s allies. In essence, this involves a very fast-paced Israeli redesign of the Middle East in the course of a nuclear war for survival.

…what is poorly appreciated is that nuclear weapons from 10 to 300 kilotons (KT) – depending on accuracy – can destroy deep hard targets to 200+ meters depth by ground coupling if they penetrate merely 3 meters into the ground (Effects of Nuclear Earth Penetrators and Other Weapons: National Research Council / National Academy Press, 2005, pp. 30-51). Israel could lower bomb yields or achieve deeper target kills by its reported tests of two-plane nuclear attacks in which the first plane drops a conventional HTM like a GBU-28 to open up a channel; the second plane drops its tactical nuclear bomb into that ‘soft’ channel for greater depth before bursting. This unavoidably would produce fallout on cities downwind. Fortunately, the same medical countermeasures used for radiological accidents (Chernobyl accidents, etc.) – potassium iodide pills (available domestically from http://www.ki4u.com) – can be airdropped for use by exposed urbanites.

…the more important objective, however, is decapitation and economic paralysis by EMP and HPM effects that destroy all electronic, electrical and electromechanical devices on Iranian territory. While a high-altitude nuclear burst would affect most of Iran’s territory, it may not be necessary if smaller, lower-altitude weapons are used.

…A small number of nuclear weapons (10-15?) may suffice: one each for known underground hard targets, with one held in reserve pending bomb-damage assessments; several low-yield bombs for above-ground bomb-related depots; and low-yield neutron weapons to hit IRGC and regime targets while avoiding blast and fallout. Reactors can be hit with conventional HPM pulse weapons to burn out electrical, electronic and electromechanical systems for later reactor destruction by Special Forces. A targeting priority (using antipersonnel conventionals) would be university-hosted bomb/missile scientists.

…Israeli F-15s and F-16s provide the most accurate delivery for the initial phase – assuming that the S-300 batteries can be decoyed, jammed or destroyed (where Israeli air force experience is unmatched). The small stock of Jericho-2 ballistic missiles probably would be held in reserve. They can’t be used against buried targets unless their re-entry vehicles (RVs) are fitted with penetrator casings and decelerators like ribbon parachutes (used to slow down US test RVs for shallow-water recovery at Pacific atolls) to avoid disintegrating on impact. (Both methods require flight-testing, which is detectable.) Israel’s Dolphin subs in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean can launch nuclear or (probably) conventional cruise missiles with cluster munitions for IRGC targets.

The final issue is how Israeli and US leaders would operate in these conditions. An Israeli decision to go nuclear would be the most tightly held decision in history, given the prospect of out-of-control blowback by our current president if that was leaked. Still, Israel sees itself being driven into a Second Holocaust corner, possibly within weeks as the S-300s begin deploying around Iran’s nuclear targets. Once it decides nukes are its only way out, it would simulate and map out all possible event chains and surprises once it launches. Unavoidably, it would also have to decide what to do if it learns the US is feeding its pre-launch mobilization information to Iran, using its electronic listening posts and missile-defense radars in the region. It may have to jam or destroy those US sites.

For the US, however, this no-warning nuclear war would land like a thunderbolt on an unprepared White House that would likely panic and lash out as Obama’s loudly touted “legacy” goes up in smoke. The characteristic signatures of nuclear bursts would be captured and geolocated by US satellite. The commander of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs would call the White House on the famous red phone. (As one of the few civilians who sat through a red phone alert at NORAD in July 1982, after a Soviet missile sub launched two test missiles off the Kamchatka Peninsula, I can testify it is a frightening experience for which nothing prepares you.) Given the psychology of our current president and his emotional investment in his Iran deal, what might follow could challenge the military chain of command with orders that previously were unthinkable.

Now retired, John Bosma draws on a 40-year background in nuclear war-gaming and strategic arms control (SALT 1 and 2, Soviet arms-racing and SALT violations, US force upgrades) at Boeing Aerospace (1977-1980); congressional staff and White House experience (1981-1983) in organizing the “Star Wars” ballistic missile defense (BMD) program and proposing its “defense-enforced strategic reductions” arms-control model adopted by the Reagan State Department; military space journalism (1984-1987); and technology scouting in conventional strategic warfare, rapid (1-2 hours) posture change in space, novel BMD engagement geometries with miniature air-launched interceptors, counter-WMD/terrorism, naval BMD and undersea warfare. Clients included DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Missile Defense Agency, the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, the Navy and the He follows Israeli forces and BMD and has studied Iran’s nuclear R&D programs. All of his work is open-source

August 17, 2015

Another “I toldya so” on Hillary, thanks go to Butch [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, China, Econonics, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Iran, Islam, Media Check, Military, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Politicians, Treason — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:27 pm

http://www.redstate.com/2015/08/16/real-email-question-hillary-clinton-sell-us-intelligence/

The real email question: Did Hillary Clinton sell US secrets?

By: streiff (Diary) | August 16th, 2015 at 03:00 PM | 35

While the media is focusing your attention on the shiny object that is her email server, the real story is not being told. The circumstantial evidence indicates that Hillary Clinton, or members of her inner circle with her connivance, purloined highly classified US intelligence and either sold it, traded it, or used it for personal gain. This is not a conspiracy theory and it is not hyperbole. Stick with me for a moment.
The smokescreen

Via the AP:

On Monday, the inspector general for the 17 spy agencies that make up what is known as the intelligence community told Congress that two of 40 emails in a random sample of the 30,000 emails Clinton gave the State Department for review contained information deemed “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” one of the government’s highest levels of classification.

The AP story, along with much of the rest of the media is trying to give two impressions:

First, the Clinton abstracted classifed information and included it in her emails, again AP

Clinton did not transmit the sensitive information herself, they said, and nothing in the emails she received makes clear reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing.

Second, that there is all kinds of confusion about security classification

Nothing in the message is “lifted” from classified documents, the officials said, though they differed on where the information in it was sourced. Some said it improperly points back to highly classified material, while others countered that it was a classic case of what the government calls “parallel reporting” — different people knowing the same thing through different means.

We’ve all seen this behavior before with Clinton and her confederates in the media. Rose Law Firm records? Cattle futures? Whitewater? First it is “nothing to see here, move on.” Next it is “it is all so complicated, how could a somewhat addled old lady possibly keep it straight?”
This is bulls***

According to the Intelligence Community IG this is what was found in the documents David Kendall turned over on the famous “thumb drive” :
clinton ig snip

Focus your attention on the last line. Now let’s see what this means let’s go to John Schindler of 20committee.com writing at The Daily Beast:

• TOP SECRET, as the name implies, is the highest official classification level in the U.S. government, defined as information whose unauthorized release “could cause exceptionally grave damage to national security or foreign relations.”

• SI refers to Special Intelligence, meaning it is information derived from intercepted communications, which is the business of the National Security Agency, America’s single biggest source of intelligence. They’re the guys who eavesdrop on phone calls, map who’s calling whom, and comb through emails. SI is a subset of what the intelligence community calls Sensitive Compartmented Information, or SCI. And these materials always require special handling and protection. They are to be kept in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, which is a special hardened room that is safe from both physical and electronic intrusion.

• TK refers to Talent Keyhole, which is an intelligence community caveat indicating that the classified material was obtained via satellite.

• NOFORN, as the name implies, means that the materials can only be shown to Americans, not to foreigners.

If you are interested in the permutations of security classifications at the TS level, this is a good primer.

The focus here is TK. This document the IC IG is talking about is satellite imagery. That is all it could have been. The Keyhole-series satellite is a recon satellite that produces imagery. It doesn’t produce anything else. What the IG found is not a passing reference to classified information or something State produced independently.
How did it get there?

The information we are talking about had to have originated on a highly secure network, one that was certified to handle SCIF-level information. (See page 43 for details) At some point it migrated from a SCIF to a highly secure network to Clinton’s email to her server. To get the document from the secure channel to the non-secure channel requires conscious effort. IT CANNOT HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT. This is evidenced by the fact that it appears someone stripped classifications from documents:

The claims come after the Clinton campaign stuck to the argument that the Democratic presidential candidate, while secretary of state, never dealt with emails that were “marked” classified at the time.

“Hillary only used her personal account for unclassified email. No information in her emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them,” campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement to supporters Wednesday.

But a State Department official told Fox News that the intelligence community inspector general, who raised the most recent concerns about Clinton’s emails, made clear that at least one of those messages contained information that only could have come from the intelligence community.

“If so, they would have had to come in with all the appropriate classification markings,” the official said.

The official questioned whether someone, then, tampered with that message. “[S]omewhere between the point they came into the building and the time they reached HRC’s server, someone would have had to strip the classification markings from that information before it was transmitted to HRC’s personal email.”

This seems to be true because the Clinton campaign is pushing the “retroactive classification” story line and the IC IG implies that the images have been properly marked for their report which implies they were not properly marked when recovered.
Say what?

Now we have a situation where a person or persons downloaded highly classified images in a SCIF environment, or scanned hard copies of documents in a SCIF (cleared persons can bring electronic devices into a SCIF and there are dozens of scanner apps for smartphones and tablets. Clinton and her clique would undoubtedly be cleared.), ported those electronic files over to a non-secure computer and emailed them to someone using Hillary Clinton’s server. These particular images were emailed by or to Hillary Clinton.
If you want to stop now just remember this:

The information the IC IG is talking about a) could not have accidentally ended up in Clinton’s email, b) it was altered to remove security classifications, and c) there has to be a reason someone selected this information, from among the wealth of top secret information Clinton had access to, to steal.
Why would anyone do that?

Now that we’ve dismissed the idea that the classified material was classified post facto, or it was mentioned in passing and accidentally ended up in Hillary’s email, the question becomes one of a) why anyone would remove highly classified material from a secure environment, b) strip the security markings on highly classified satellite imagery and c) send it via un-secure email. These answers go to motive and state of mind. They wanted to sanitize the imagery as much as possible so no casual observer could tell it was classified (which asks another why? question which we will get to) and it was sent via un-secure email because the intended recipient did not have SCIF access.

What we know for certain is that Clinton could not have been contemplating saving this information for use in her memoirs because her memoirs would require State and Intelligence review and someone would have identified the imagery as TS//TK.
The beginning of a trail…

We know that Hillary Clinton relied to some degree on intelligence briefings sent to her by her loyalist and vicious attack poodle, Sid Blumenthal. This arrangement came to light when Blumethal’s AOL account (I am not making that up) was accessed by a Romanian hacker nicknamed ‘Guccifer.’ Via Politico:

Sidney Blumenthal did not write or know the source of any of the Libya intelligence he passed on to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the top Clinton ally told investigators on the House Select Committee on Benghazi Tuesday in a closed-door deposition.

Blumenthal, subpoenaed by the committee, also did not verify any of the intelligence he forwarded to the nation’s top diplomat. Instead, Blumenthal was copying and pasting memos from Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA operative who was looking into a Libya-related business venture, and sending them to Clinton, two people familiar with his testimony told POLITICO.

“One of the folks providing her the largest volume of information was simply and merely a conduit of someone who … may have had business interest in Libya,” said panel ChairmanRep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) 80% (R-S.C.) at the end of a nearly nine-hour interview. “We have a CIA, so why would you not rely on your own vetted source intelligence agency? In this case, there was no vetting, no analysis of credibility whatsoever.”

And:

In her early months in office, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in contact with unofficial adviser Sidney Blumenthal more often and on a wider range of topics than was previously known, a set of about 3,000 Clinton emails released Tuesday night by the State Department revealed.

While Blumenthal’s role as a provider of off-the-books intelligence reports on Libya has stirred controversy, the newly disclosed emails show he also acted as an intermediary with officials involved in the Northern Ireland peace process and shared advice with Clinton on issues from Iran to British politics to how to blame China for the breakdown of global climate talks.

Blumenthal claims he didn’t actually know anything, that he was only an intermediary passing information from a former CIA official, Iraq War critic (I know, those are redundant terms) and would-be political player named Tyler Drumheller.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had access to the world’s top intelligence agencies and their resources, but at the most turbulent moment of her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat, she received a stream of intelligence on Libya and the Benghazi attack by a former CIA official working outside the government, sources said.
…
Since his retirement, Drumheller has also contributed to various Democratic politicians, according to records maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2005, he contributed a combined $800 to the Senate campaigns of former Sens. Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu, and donated $500 to Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-New Jersey, in 2011, the Center for Responsive Politics said.
And…

We know at least two Clinton cronies followed her to State: Cheryl Mills (Chief of Staff) and sweet Huma Abedin (Deputy Chief of Staff). They also had Clinton foundation email addresses. Both Mills and Abedin held the status of ‘special employees’ which allowed them to hold other jobs while working at State. Mills was on the board of NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus, general counsel for NYU, and on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation. Abedin worked for an investment consultancy called Teneo Holdings and was also on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation. We don’t know their security access but it would be safe to say they saw everything Hillary did.
What happened to the imagery?

Either Clinton sent top secret material via her private email to herself to archive for grins or the Clinton server was only a way station on its way somewhere else. Simply keeping the images for some future use doesn’t make sense to me as it is a high risk-low payoff action. The more likely scenario is that something was done with the images, something that benefited one or more Clintons.

A logical route would be Clinton gets info from Blumenthal who gets info from Drumheller. Clinton sends info to Blumenthal who sends info to Drumheller.

But if Blumenthal, or someone like him, handled the outgoing classified information did they also act as a bag man, collecting money for the imagery?

What did Drumheller, or someone like him, get for his efforts if he received the imagery? Was he merely a bit player at the fringe of Democrat politics who was releasing his inner Walter Mitty by sending bulls*** intel analyses to Hillary? Maybe in hopes of become Director of Central Intelligence after her coronation? Did he get paid by Clinton? Or was the operation a quid pro quo where he received classified materials that he could sell to others and curry favor and impress others to gain access to other political players? Did someone in Abu Dhabi get the images? Or did they end up at Teneo Holdings to help bolster some investment decision? One of these answers is better than the others.
…or it could have been run of the mill Clinton corruption

Alternatively, once could ask were these images and other information used to sweeten the pot for various kleptocrats and dictators who paid extortionate amounts of money for speeches by Bill Clinton? Suppose a Third World dictator… let’s imagine in Central Asia… paid Bill Clinton… let’s just throw a number out there… $500,000 for a speech. Suppose as part of the deal that Clinton client also received satellite imagery or signal intercepts that increased their life expectancy. Is there any evidence of this? No. But neither is there any proof it didn’t happen. As we learned during the administration of GHW Bush, it is not the quality of the evidence that requires an investigation, rather it is the seriousness of the allegation.
Searching for a fall guy

Clinton’s story is “I didn’t know squat.” That is as plausible as Obama’s Justice Department wants to make it. But either someone gave her the images and she sent them or they had log in access to her email and sent them for her. Her only real defense, given her access to classified material and a Keyhole satellite image would have been instantly recognizable, is that someone used her email to send it.

But how did they get into Hillary’s email? Did Hillary handle the images? I don’t think she had the technical chops — and is way too smart — to scan/download satellite imagery, strip the security classification, and email them. Did Cheryl Mills, an attorney, do this? Lawyers do stupid stuff all the time but usually it has the patina of cleverness attached. That leaves Huma.

With no security classification, Sid Blumenthal has plausible deniablity. He can say he got the images (this is assuming that at some point he did receive them) but assumed they were unclassified.

This makes one logical fall guy Tyler Drumheller. Drumheller would instantly recognize the Keyhole imagery so stripping the security classification wouldn’t muddy the water much for him if it ever went to court. But anyone he gave/showed the imagery to would not necessarily know the source which could provide some degree of cover. Unfortunately, we will never know Mr. Drumheller’s true role in this as he died of pancreatic cancer on August 2, 2015.

July 31, 2015

Still Blind to the Costs of Illegal Immigration, by Bruce S. Thornton [c]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Econonics, Foreign Affairs, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 8:55 pm

Still Blind to the Costs of Illegal Immigration
July 31, 2015 11:12 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
What really explains Trump’s rapid climb to the top of the polls.

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FPM

Photo via FPM

Donald Trump’s blunt and clumsy comments about illegal immigration sparked the usual firestorm of criticism from the well heeled of both parties. Particularly vocal were those Republicans who think that an amorphous, make-believe category comprising “Hispanics” or “Latinos” will vote Republican if only Republican meanies like Trump would stop insulting them by complaining about illegal aliens. As usual, willful ignorance or blindness about the costs of illegal immigration underwrites these dubious ideas.

Trump’s comments about crimes committed by illegal aliens, for example, were attacked by the usual denial and obfuscation. Various statistics, some mixing illegal and legal immigrants, were touted as showing illegal criminal activity was proportionately less than that of the native-born. But as Brietbart reported, while illegal aliens are 3.5% of the population, based on federal sentencing data they represent 12% of murder convictions. Add state crime data, and according to an analysis at American Thinker illegals commit 10 times more murders than do citizens.

Murder obviously gets the most attention, especially after a five-time deported illegal alien felon in San Francisco gunned down Kate Steinle in broad daylight. Yet the champions of the “path to citizenship” typically ignore the less spectacular disorderly behavior of the sort rife in regions with large concentrations of illegal aliens like the San Joaquin Valley. Driving under the influence or while intoxicated, driving without insurance, perpetrating hit-and-run accidents, discarding garbage and trash along roads, disregarding laws and codes covering construction, animal control, restaurants, and sanitation, breaking into homes and cars, stealing copper wire from farm pumps––all these quality of life infractions have increased as more illegal aliens have settled in the Valley.

In other words, the “broken windows” theory of policing that many conservatives are criticizing New York mayor Bill di Blasio for attacking––the idea that cracking down on minor quality of life crimes creates a sense of enforced public order that deters more serious crimes––is nowhere to be found in many parts of the rural San Joaquin Valley. The social costs of this breakdown in civic order, of course, are born by those––law-abiding Americans of whatever ethnicity–– tied by tradition or necessity to these Valley towns. And the economic costs are paid by every state and federal taxpayer whose billions of dollars––$20 billion a year in some estimates–– fund the costs of unpaid emergency room visits, criminal prosecution and incarceration, highway mayhem, illegal welfare benefits, schools crowded with the English deficient, and fraudulent social security disability payments.

Nor is it true, as the race industry hacks claim, that such criticism merely reflects bigotry or racism against the oppressed brown “other.” The Mexican-American legal immigrants of the sort I grew up with in the 50s and 60s suffer today just as much from this influx of peoples from cultures with very different mores and attitudes towards law, relationships to legal authority, and civic obligations. Yes, America in the past took in many other ethnic groups and nationalities with similar differences that often caused social problems. But back then, immigrants were faced with a brutal trade-off: change your cultural habits, learn and obey American law, political principles, and social customs, and speak English. If not, go back home, or pay a price for your refusal. No one had a right to come to America and then demand that Americans adjust their culture and mores to those of the newcomer.

That old mechanism of assimilation has been broken. The triumph of multiculturalism and its evil twin “diversity” have taught many immigrants, legal and illegal alike, that they should not have to assimilate, that their culture is just as good or even superior to America’s, and that political and civic institutions must adapt to their culture and language. Organized lobbies like La Raza and LULAC institutionalize such separatism, demanding all the privileges and boons of living in a liberal democracy ruled by law, at the same time they counsel their clients to resist endorsing and practicing the very culture that underwrites their freedom. Rather than a privilege to be earned, American citizenship and its advantages are considered justified reparations for all the historical sins Americans have inflicted on their southern neighbors. Add a porous border with Mexico continually refreshing the old country’s culture with new arrivals, and the obstacles to transforming illegal immigrants into Americans make the “path to citizenship” rhetoric a pipe dream.

Of course, there are millions of illegal immigrants who don’t commit crimes other than the first one of crossing the border. They don’t illegally receive welfare benefits––though their children born here can and do. No doubt many would become good citizens, and want their children and grandchildren to become more American. The problem is that no one touting “comprehensive immigration reform” can lay out for us a specific program for sorting out the potential good Americans from the murderers, welfare cheats, and thugs. It’s so much easier politically just to confuse illegal with legal immigration, indulge Emma Lazarus “nation of immigrants” sentiments, and scold critics that they are keeping Republicans from winning millions of voters.

Trump’s rapid climb to the top of the polls, at least for now, reflects a widespread anger with establishment Republicans who refuse to tell the truth about the costs of illegal immigration. Trump’s fans are sick of their reasonable complaints being dismissed as the bigotry or stupidity of “crazies,” as John McCain called them, or as the bitter tantrums of the narrow-minded fearful of change. They are very much like the New Yorkers of the 70s, who finally had enough of bums, punks, criminals, hookers, welfare freeloaders, and all the other detritus that made New York the dystopia of Taxi Driver and Death Wish.

Those New Yorkers got Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a police force empowered to restore civic order by enforcing the law. Those today fed up with the costs of illegal immigration disorder and violence, or the virtual nullification of federal law wrought by “sanctuary cities,” get insulted and ignored by their own party. Is it any surprise that they are supporting a politician who, for all his political opportunism, takes their anger seriously and promises to do something about it?

[Secession and The Heartland Plan. Review the intermediate argument for secession elsewhere on this blog.]

GOP sells U.S.A. to U.N. [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Econonics, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Media Check, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Politicians, Treason, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:14 pm

Joseph R. John
To jrjassoc@earthlink.net
Today at 4:59 AM

Almost $200 Million Donated to Congressmen to Vote for Unconstitutional TPP/TPA & Eliminate US Sovereignty in Favor of International Tribunals

By Capt Joseph R. John, July 29, 2015

Please watch the two below listed very short videos, by clicking on the link, you will fully understand just how Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader McConnell have betrayed what American citizens voted for in 2014. By ramming the SECRET 800 page Fast Track Trade Promotional (TPP) Bill and the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) Bill thru Congress, that nearly 4 weeks after it was signed into law, American citizens are still not being permitted to read it.

TPP and TPA violate the US Constitution and eliminates US Sovereignty in favor of International Tribunals. The Republican leadership ignored the demands of millions of Americans who have been demanding that Congress to reduce illegal immigration by a substantial majority of 3 to 1 in a national opinion poll, and are treating American citizens as if they have no right to know what law they have passed—hiding the fact that it violates the US Constitution. Even though the Republican Congress controls the power of the purse, Obama has not lost a single major policy battle since Cong Boehner became Speaker of the House in 2010; in fact, Obama is delighted with Boehner’s Speakership. On July 3rd, when Obama signed the Unconstitutional SECRET TPP/TPA bills into law, Boehner and McConnell were nowhere to be found, they were hiding during the signing ceremony, that law is a thorn in the side of every American voter who worked tirelessly to give the US House a conservative majority.

Both Democrat and Republican Congressmen received of over $200 million in payments from the International Chamber of Commerce to vote for the TPA Bill (the US Chamber of Commerce is no longer a US Chamber, most members are now anti-American foreign corporations who control the Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader with financial payoffs). If the TPA Bill hadn’t passed, the provisions in the SECRET TPP Bill stated it would not have become effective. Millions of dollars in payments that were paid to members of Congress by the International Chamber of Commerce as outlined in the below listed article, bribed Congressmen.

Speaker Boehner received $5.3 million, Cong Ryan received $2.4 million, and it was reported that McConnell received $9 million to ram TTP thru Congress for Obama. Their complicity and close cooperation with Obama, Pelosi, and Reid is what guaranteed the payoffs of millions of dollars to them; there support for TPP/TPA will result in permit Obama to bring in millions of non-Christian Illegal Aliens from 50 countries (including Mexico) to enter and work in the US. Millions of Illegal Aliens added to the 20 million Illegal aliens already here, will destabilizing the US unemployed work force of 104 million Americans, and strike another blow to the Free Enterprise System.

Millions of Illegal Aliens from 50 countries will be able unfairly compete with 104 million unemployed Americans and 46 million Americans on Food Stamps, because 5 or 6 illegals co-habituating in the same apartment, will be able to work at a much lower wages than Americans can afford to do. Unlimited entry of foreign workers into the US, with no background investigations, to determine if they have terrorist ties, will continue to violate Federal Immigration Laws (ISIS Radical Islamic Terrorists have let it be known that they plan to enter the US using the TPP as cover).

The FBI recently informed Congress that over 200 Muslim immigrants, who were put on a fast track for US Citizenship by Obama, are now fighting with ISIS killing Christians in Iraq. Because the SECRET TPP passed, the massive pending entry of illegal aliens will effectively eliminate US Immigration controls, because a percentage of the millions of foreigners whose backgrounds will not be reviewed for terrorist ties, will pose a very serious terrorist threat to the National Security of the United States, the SECRET TPP/TPA Law is not only leaving the porous Southern Border wide open, but has effectively eliminating “all” US Borders.

Congressional sources reported that Boehner has withheld millions of dollars of campaign support for conservatives Congressmen who voted in favor of their constituents conscious and refused to support TPP. In some cases, Congressmen lost assignments, or were ridiculed, mocked, and relentlessly pressured because they wouldn’t vote for the SECRET Unconstitutional TPP Bill, or the TPA Bill——-very few Congressmen who voted for the TPP Bill even read it’s 800 pages.

We object to the way that Speaker Boehner and Cong Ryan met out punishment against some of the endorsed and elected Combat Veterans For Congress who didn’t toe the line, but instead, voted against the unconstitutional 800 page SECRET TPP/TPA Bills. They voted against it because it violated the Constitutional authority of Congress, violated US Sovereignty of the United States in favor of International Tribunals, opposed it because no American citizen has ever been allowed to read what is in the SECRET TPP Law, and they opposed Cong Paul Ryan’s steady stream of misinformation about what he was alleging was in the Unconstitutional SECRET TPP bill and the TPA Bill.

The following Combat Veterans For Congress refused to support that Unconstitutional and SECRET TPP Bill:

Cong Duncan D. Hunter, Maj-USMCR (R-CA-50)

Cong Steve Pearce, Capt-USAF (R-NM-2)

Cong Paul Cook, Col-USMC (R-CA-8)

Cong Chris Gibson, Col-USA (R-NY-20)

Cong Scott Perry, Col/PA-ARNG (R-PA-4)

Cong Steve Russell, LTC-USA (Ret) (Ranger) (R-OK-5)

Cong James Bridenstine, Lcdr-USNR (R-OK-1)

The new TPP Law is not and has never has been about “Free Trade”, the nation already had “Free Trade” without the need for the 800 page SECRET TPP Bill, and the 196 page TPA Bill that the a plurality of members of Congress never read before they voted for them. The American voters should ask their Congressmen on this Congressional recess why the TTIP and the TISA portions of both Bills are still being cloaked in SECRECY, even after they were signed into law on July 3rd. The US Government is a Republic, not a dictatorship run by 5 individuals (Obama, Boehner, McConnell, Pelosi, and Reid). In 2016, the American voters should elect new members of Congress who then elect leaders of congress who will protect and defend the US Constitution from the repeated assault by the Caucus of Progressives, Leftist, Marxists, and Communist members of Congress.

Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell not only betrayed the American voters for millions of dollars in payoffs, but they fully funded Obamacare, funded the amnesty for 5 million Illegal aliens Obama planned to give alimony to, funded the federal Common Core curriculum pushing it into American schools thru the 50 State Education Departments, continue to refuse to enact legislation to close the wide open southern border, have never opposed Obama’s use of tax payers dollars to cover the cost of the UN Resettlement Program for hundreds of thousands of Muslims while excluding the resettlement of over 300,000 Christians fleeing ISIS genocide in the Greek Catholic Refugee Program, have struck a secret deal with Pelosi & Reid to give Congress special exemptions from Obamacare, and have not used the power of the purse to prevent Obama from degrading the strength of the US Armed Forces to levels below the level of strength they had prior to WWI. The Congressional leadership has failed to oppose Obama’s devastating “Changes” in America’s family values and the US Armed Forces; the American voters should insist that their Congressmen make “Change” in the leadership of Congress, and elect leaders who will oppose the devastating Socialist “Changes” Obama has been making in the Republic.

The Congressional leaders allowed Obama to reverse the Constitution safeguards, put in place by the Founding Fathers, the require a 2/3 vote of Congress, in order to pass the Iranian International Nuclear Weapons Treaty. Instead they reversed that process and are now requiring a 2/3 vote of Congress, in order to be able to defeat the flawed Iranian International Nuclear Weapons Treaty (while permitting Obama to call the International Treaty an Agreement). The American voters should ask their Congressmen on this Congressional recess why they allowed the Constitutional safeguards to be reversed by the Congressional leaders.

Copyright 2015, Capt. Joseph R. John. All Rights Reserved. This material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author. It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without permission from the author.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Former FBI/ Reagan Administration Alumnus

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” -Isaiah 6:8

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Almost $200 Million Donated to Representatives to Pass TPA

June 16, 2015 Paola Casale

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Many think our government is for sale. However, by taking a look at the facts below provided by the Open Secrets, it is easy to understand where they are coming from. Looking back at Friday the 12th, the House voted on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), the controversial bill that gives power to the executive branch to negotiate treaties. TPA limit’s Congress’ ability to better a trade deal by subjecting members of Congress to 90 days of reviewing the trade agreement, prohibiting any amendments on the implementing legislation, and giving them an up or down vote. TPA passed with a mere 219-211 vote with only 218 needed to pass. The real shocker comes from the amount of money each Representative received for a yes vote. In total, $197,869,145 was given to Representatives for a yes vote where as $23,065,231 was given in opposition.

John Boehner (R-OH) received $5.3 million for a “yea” vote and was the highest paid legislator.
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) received $2.4 million for his “yea” vote.
Paul Ryan (R-WI) received $2.4 million for a “yea” vote and came in at the third highest paid legislator.
Pat Tiberi (R-OH) follows Paul Ryan, coming in the fourth spot having received $1.6 million for his “yea” vote.

The fifth highest paid legislator is somewhat of a “hero” in comparison to others. Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD) received $1.6 million for a yes vote and only $282,710 for a no vote. Despite of his high contribution from those in favor of TPA, he still voted a solid nay. However 28 Democrats joined Boehner to vote for TPA and were financially rewarded by the Chamber of Commerce.

House Democrats to call before Fast Track Vote

We also have real Democratic and Republican hero stories.

Joe Crowley (D-NY) was offered 1.3 million for a “yea” vote and only $72,550 for a “nay” vote and he still voted against TPA.
Patrick Murphy (D-FL) was offered 1.1 million for a “yea” vote and only $213,360 for a “nay” vote and still voted against it.
Richard Neal D(MA) was offered $1.1 million for a “yea” vote and a mere $47,625 for a “nay” vote and still voted against it.

Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) was offered $541,746 for a “yea” vote and no money at all for a “nay” vote and he still voted “nay!”
Andy Harris (R-MD) was offered $254,803 for a “yea” vote and no money at all for a “nay” vote and he still voted “nay”.
Thomas Massie (R-KY) was offered $250,328 for a “yea” vote and no money at all for a “nay” vote and he still voted “nay.”
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was offered $180,832 for a “yea” vote and no money at all for a “nay vote” and he still voted “nay.”

Where did this kind of money come from? Those in favor of TPA were Security Brokers and Investment Companies who donated a whopping $11.3 million dollars for a “yea” vote. Or big banking companies who donated $10.1 million dollars. In other words, Wall Street hashed out millions and millions of dollars to push for the passage of TPA.

Those numbers are absolutely staggering. Corporations are taking control of what policies are approved or blocked in the U.S. We cannot sit around while corporations decide what is “good” for America or not! This is a democracy, not a plutocracy! Contact your representatives and let them know that you do not want them to vote in favor of TPA!

July 30, 2015

The Truth About Western “Colonialism”, by Bruce S. Thornton [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Business, Econonics, Education, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Islam, Media Check, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 5:58 pm

The Truth About Western “Colonialism”
July 29, 2015 10:35 am / 12 Comments / victorhanson
How the misuse of a term legitimizes the jihadist myth of Western guilt.

by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas
Photo via Front Page Magazine

Photo via Front Page Magazine

Language is the first casualty of wars over foreign policy. To paraphrase Thucydides, during ideological conflict, words have to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which is now given them.

One word that has been central to our foreign policy for over a century is “colonialism.” Rather than describing a historical phenomenon––with all the complexity, mixture of good and evil, and conflicting motives found on every page of history––“colonialism” is now an ideological artifact that functions as a crude epithet. As a result, our foreign policy decisions are deformed by self-loathing and guilt eagerly exploited by our adversaries.

The great scholar of Soviet terror, Robert Conquest, noted this linguistic corruption decades ago. Historical terms like “imperialism” and “colonialism,” Conquest wrote, now refer to “a malign force with no program but the subjugation and exploitation of innocent people.” As such, these terms are verbal “mind-blockers and thought-extinguishers,” which serve “mainly to confuse, and of course to replace, the complex and needed process of understanding with the simple and unneeded process of inflammation.” Particularly in the Middle East, “colonialism” has been used to obscure the factual history that accounts for that region’s chronic dysfunctions, and has legitimized policies doomed to fail because they are founded on distortions of that history.

The simplistic discrediting of colonialism and its evil twin imperialism became prominent in the early twentieth century. In 1902 J.A. Hobson’s influential Imperialism: A Study reduced colonialism to a malign economic phenomenon, the instrument of capitalism’s “economic parasites,” as Hobson called them, who sought resources, markets, and profits abroad. In 1917, Vladimir Lenin, faced with the failure of classical Marxism’s historical predictions of the proletarian revolution, in 1917 built on Hobson’s ideas in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Now the indigenous colonized peoples would perform the historical role of destroying capitalism that the European proletariat had failed to fulfill.

These ideas influenced the anti-colonial movements after World War II. John-Paul Sartre, in his introduction to Franz Fanon’s anti-colonial screed The Wretched of the Earth, wrote, “Natives of the underdeveloped countries unite!” substituting the Third World for classic Marxism’s “workers of the world.” This leftist idealization of the colonial Third World and its demonization of the capitalist West have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the discrediting of Marxism, and have become received wisdom both in academe and popular culture. It has underwritten the reflexive guilt of the West, the idea that “every Westerner is presumed guilty until proven innocent,” as French philosopher Pascal Bruckner writes, for the West contains an “essential evil that must be atoned for,” colonialism and imperialism.

This leftist interpretation of words like colonialism and imperialism transforms them into ideologically loaded terms that ultimately distort the tragic truths of history. They imply that Europe’s explorations and conquests constituted a new order of evil. In reality, the movements of peoples in search of resources, as well as the destruction of those already in possession of them, is the perennial dynamic of history.

Whether it was the Romans in Gaul, the Arabs throughout the Mediterranean and Southern Asia, the Huns in Eastern Europe, the Mongols in China, the Turks in the Middle East and the Balkans, the Bantu in southern Africa, the Khmer in East Asia, the Aztecs in Mexico, the Iroquois in the Northeast, or the Sioux throughout the Great Plains, human history has been stained by man’s continual use of brutal violence to acquire land and resources and destroy or replace those possessing them. Scholars may find subtle nuances of evil in the European version of this ubiquitous aggression, but for the victims such fine discriminations are irrelevant.

Yet this ideologically loaded and historically challenged use of words like “colonial” and “colonialist” remains rife in analyses of the century-long disorder in the Middle East. Both Islamists and Arab nationalists, with sympathy from the Western left, have blamed the European “colonialists” for the lack of development, political thuggery, and endemic violence whose roots lie mainly in tribal culture, illiberal shari’a law, and sectarian conflicts.

Moreover, it is blatant hypocrisy for Arab Muslims to complain about imperialism and colonialism. As Middle East historian Efraim Karsh documents in Islamic Imperialism, “The Arab conquerors acted in a typically imperialist fashion from the start, subjugating indigenous populations, colonizing their lands, and expropriating their wealth, resources, and labor.” Indeed, if one wants to find a culture defined by imperialist ambitions, Islam fits the bill much better than do Europeans and Americans, latecomers to the great game of imperial domination that Muslims successfully played for a thousand years.

“From the first Arab-Islamic empire of the mid-seventh century to the Ottomans, the last great Muslim empire,” Karsh writes, “the story of Islam has been the story of the rise and fall of universal empires and, no less important, of imperialist dreams.”

A recent example of this confusion caused by careless language can be found in commentary about the on-going dissolution of Iraq caused by sectarian and ethnic conflicts. There is a growing consensus that the creation of new nations in the region after World War I sowed the seeds of the current disorder. Ignoring those ethnic and sectarian differences, the British fashioned the nation of Iraq out of three Ottoman provinces that had roughly concentrated Kurds, Sunni, and Shi’a in individual provinces.

There is much of value to be learned from this history, but even intelligent commentators obscure that value with misleading words like “colonial.” Wall Street Journal writer Jaroslav Trofimov, for example, recently writing about the creation of the Middle Eastern nations, described France and England as “colonial powers.” Similarly, columnist Charles Krauthammer on the same topic used the phrase “colonial borders.” In both instances, the adjectives are historically misleading.

France and England, of course, were “colonial powers,” but their colonies were not in the Middle East. The region had for centuries been under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. Thus Western “colonialism” was not responsible for the region’s dysfunctions. Rather, it was the incompetent policies and imperialist fantasies of the Ottoman leadership during the century before World War I, which culminated in the disastrous decision to enter the war on the side of Germany, that bear much of the responsibility for the chaos that followed the defeat of the Central Powers.

Another important factor was the questionable desire of the British to create an Arab national homeland in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and to gratify the imperial pretensions of their ally the Hashemite clan, who shrewdly convinced the British that their self-serving and marginal actions during the war had been important in fighting the Turks.

Obviously, the European powers wanted to influence these new nations in order to protect their geopolitical and economic interests, but they had no desire to colonize them. Idealists may decry that interference, or see it as unjust, but it is not “colonialism” rightly understood.

No more accurate is Krauthammer’s use of “colonial borders” to describe the region’s nations. Like all combatants in a great struggle, in anticipation of the defeat of the Central Powers, the British and French began planning the settlement of the region in 1916 in a meeting that produced the Sykes-Picot agreement later that year. But there is nothing unexceptional or untoward in this. In February 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met in Yalta to negotiate their spheres of influence in Germany and Eastern Europe after the war. It would be strange if the Entente powers had notlaid out their plans for the territories of the defeated enemy.

Thus as part of the peace treaties and conferences after World War I, the French and British were given, under the authority of negotiated treaties and the supervision of the League of Nations, the “mandates” over the former Ottoman territories lying between Egypt and Turkey. In 1924 the goal of the mandates was spelled out in Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant: “Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.”

Thus the nations created in the old Ottoman territory were sanctioned by international law as the legitimate prerogative of the victorious Entente powers. There was nothing “colonial” about the borders of the new nations.

One can legitimately challenge the true motives of the mandatory powers, doubt their sincerity in protesting their concern for the region’s peoples, or criticize their borders for serving European interests rather than those of the peoples living there. But whatever their designs, colonizing was not one of them. Indeed, by 1924 colonialism had long been coming into question for many in the West, and at the time of the post-war settlement the reigning ideal was not colonialism, but ethnic self-determination as embodied in the nation-state, as Woodrow Wilson had called for in February 1918: “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent.” The Anglo-French Declaration issued a few days before the war ended on November 11, 1918 agreed, stating that their aims in the former Ottoman territories were “the establishment of National Governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations.”

Again, one can question the wisdom of trying to create Western nation-states and political orders in a region still intensely tribal, with a religion in which the secular nation is an alien import. That incompatibility continues to be an ongoing problem nearly a century later, as we watch the failure of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the hopes of the Arab Spring dashed in the violence and disorder of the Arab Winter.

But whatever the sins of the Europeans in the Middle East, colonialism is not one of them. The misuse of the term may sound trivial, but it legitimizes the jihadist narrative of Western guilt and justified Muslim payback through terrorist violence, now perfumed as “anticolonial resistance.” It reinforces what Middle East scholar J.B. Kelly called the “preemptive cringe,” the willingness of the West to blame itself for the region’s problems, as President Obama did in his 2009 Cairo speech when he condemned the “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.”

This apologetic stance has characterized our foreign policy and emboldened our enemies for half a century. Today the region is in more danger of collapse into widespread violence and more of a threat to our national interests than at any time in the last fifty years. Perhaps we should start crafting our foreign policy on the foundations of historical truth and precise language.

July 16, 2015

Martial Law in the U.S., by Robert Richardson [nc]

Filed under: crime control, Econonics, Education, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, gun control, handguns, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Iran, Islam, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Military, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism, self-defense, Treason, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 3:46 pm

Martial Law in the United States: How Likely is it, and What will happen under Martial law?
Filed under Man-made Disasters, Preparedness, Threats
Posted by: Robert Richardson

The march towards martial law is something that is often ignored by the general public, often labeled as Quackery or something belonging on conspiracy websites. But what’s happening in this country is exactly what our founders warned us about, and martial law is something they took very, very seriously.
What is martial law?

If you’re looking for a definition, then Martial Law basically means using state or national military force to enforce the will of the government on the people.

Under a declaration of martial law, Constitutional freedoms and liberties are suspended, and civilians are no longer entitled to their civil rights. It basically allows the government, or a tyrannical politician, to shred the Constitution and impose its will through military force.
History of Martial Law in the United States of America

“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
Winston Churchill

In one way or another there have always been tyrants who have used the power of government to suppress and control the public. But if we are looking for specific examples of Martial Law being used inside the United States, we don’t have to look very hard or far to find them.

Using the strictest definition of the term, we can see the roots of martial law in America take hold during the lead up to the Revolutionary war. Although there were many reasons for the war, including resistance to taxes imposed by the British parliament, the main catalyst was England’s decision to use military troops to enforce everyday law throughout the colonies.
The beginning of the end? The Civil War Ushers in a Strong Central Government through Martial Law Enforcement

Civil War Soldiers

Flash forward a hundred years, and many of the most egregious examples of martial law can be found throughout the civil war. While today’s history books largely ignore the real reasons for the war, or the many atrocities committed by President Lincoln, the facts of what really happened cannot be disputed.

The reason we have lost so many of our liberties can be tied directly to the civil war.

On September 15, 1863, President Lincoln imposed Congressionally-authorized martial law. While history contends the war was fought to end slavery, the truth is, Lincoln by his own admission never really cared about freeing slaves. In fact, Lincoln never intended to abolish slavery, his main interest was centralizing government power and using the federal government to exert complete control over all citizens. The abolishment of slavery was only a byproduct of the war; it actually took the 13th amendment to end slavery, since Lincoln actually only freed Southern slaves, not slaves in states loyal to the Union.

During the Civil War, Lincoln continually violated the Constitution, in some cases suspending the entire Constitution that he swore to uphold.

He suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus without the consent of congress.
He shutdown newspapers whose writers displayed any dissent to Union policy or spoke out against him.
He raised troops without the consent of Congress.
He closed courts by force.
He even imprisoned citizens, newspaper owners and elected officials without cause and without a trail.

Our founders were very wary of using the military to enforce public policy, and concerns about this type of abuse date back to, and largely influenced, the creation of the Constitution. The founders continually warned about using military force to uphold law and order; unfortunately, most Americans are rather ignorant of history and are even more ignorant to what our actual founders intended when they created the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
What will happen under Martial law?

Military Style SWAT Team Raid

The actual words martial law will probably never be used.

The first thing you will likely see is a declaration of a “State of Emergency”. This may be done nationally, in cases of war or a large-scale terrorist attacks; or it may happen locally, as witnessed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

In August of 2005, New Orleans was declared a disaster area and a state of emergency was declared by the governor. This allowed state officials to order evacuations and forcefully remove residents from their homes, suspend certain laws, confiscate firearms, and suspend the sale of items like liquor, firearms and ammunition.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans police, the U.S. Marshalls office, and the Louisiana National Guard forcibly confiscated over 1,000 legal firearms from law-abiding citizens.

Depending on the reasons behind the declaration you may also see:

The suspension of the Constitution, probably starting with the first and second amendment.
Confiscation of firearms; it has happened and it will happen again.
Suspension of Habeas corpus: Imprisonment without due process and without a trail.
Travel Restrictions, including road closures and possibly even quarantine zones.
Mandatory Curfews and Mandatory Identification.
Automatic search and seizures without warrant.

When can Martial Law be enacted?

Military Force

When Martial Law can be enacted is a pretty touchy subject, largely because our founders never intended the federal government or a standing army be permitted to take such actions. Unfortunately, most people accept these unconstitutional activities, and are more than willing to give up their essential liberties in exchange for peace of mind and not having to think for themselves.

This is something Benjamin Franklin warned about when he famously wrote,
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

How likely is martial law in the United States?

Let’s face it, this country is a ticking time bomb. From widespread social unrest, crime and violence to a growing national debt which includes an entire subset of our population that depends on government assistance to exist, the writing is on the wall: Trouble is Coming.

Riots in the Streets of America

In my opinion, we are already under a form of martial law. The founders never intended standing armies policing the citizens of the United States; sadly that is exactly what we have.

Drones, armored vehicles with high power weapons, tanks, and battlefield helicopters are no longer something that you see on some foreign battlefield; it’s now standard operating procedure at police stations throughout the country. Our federal government has poured billions of dollars into militarizing and taking over our country’s local police forces, in what can only be described as a domestic military force or standing army meant to enforce federal law.

President Bush Expands Martial Law Authority

George Bush Signing Bill

On September 29, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122). The law expanded the President’s authority to declare Martial Law under revisions to the Insurrection Act, and actually allowed the President to take charge of National Guard troops without state governor authorization.

While certain aspects of the bill were rolled back in 2008, President Obama used the 2012 NDAA to further strengthen the Executive offices ability to declare Martial Law, and added provisions that would allow military troops to detain U.S. citizens without a trial.

President Obama Forms National Police Task Force; Uses Social unrest as Justification.

Obama Signing Bill

In March of 2015, the Obama administration put together a task force that outlined rules for our nation’s police.

In his Task Force on 21st century policing report, he outlined the formation of a National Policing Practices and Accountability Division within the federal government. The report went on to describe how the Department of Homeland Security could be used to “ensure that community policing tactics in state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies are incorporated into their role in homeland security.”

Increasing number of Joint Police/Military Drills are using American Citizens as Theoretical Threats.

Military Style Police Force

From the Jade Helm Military drills that classified Texas and Utah as hostile zones, to National Guard troops in California using crisis actors to portray “right-wing” U.S. citizens in their training exercises, there is a growing number of military style drills that are portraying American citizens as the perceived threat.

Back in 2012, an army report about the future use of the military as a police force within the United States looked at theoretical situations where the U.S. Army could be used against Tea Party “insurrectionists” who take over U.S. cities. During that same time period, the Department of Homeland Security released a report titled, “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States,” where they outlined who the federal government sees as the largest terrorist threat in the country – that threat was U.S. citizens with extreme “right-wing” views.

The United Stated of America that our Founders created is gone; it’s been replaced by a system that has grown so powerful that most people don’t even realize they’ve become enslaved by that very system.

So how likely is Martial Law in the United States? Well, it’s already here; unfortunately, most people will choose to ignore the reality of the situation.

July 13, 2015

Penalize Sanctuary Cities, by Capt John, USN, USNA [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, crime control, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, Treason — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:51 pm

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Cong Duncan D. Hunter will Re-Introduces His Bill Penalizing Sactuary Cities, Counties, and States For Violating Federal Immigration Laws
People
Joseph R. John
To jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Today at 3:52 AM

In previous Congresses, Congressman Duncan D. Hunter, Maj-USMCR (R-CA-52), an endorsed Combat Veteran For Congress, repeatedly tried, without success, to get the Republican leadership in the House to support his legislation penalizing safe harbor sanctuary cities, counties, and states for violating Federal Immigration Laws. The below listed Breitbart News article, explains Cong Hunter’s proposed legislation, and provides information on the murder of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco, by Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, a convicted criminal illegal alien who had 7 previous felony convictions, and had been deported from the United States 5 times.

The Obama administration, inept members of Congress on both sides of the isle, and the left of center liberal media establishment have been covering up the thousands of crimes committed by convicted criminal illegal aliens against American citizens in 300 + safe harbor sanctuary cities, counties, and states. Sanctuary policies are providing protection for Mexican drug cartels smuggling narcotics, violent criminal gangs from below the wide open southern border like MS-13, Mexican human smugglers, and convicted criminal illegal aliens whose presence in the USA has been harmful and dangerous to American citizens. Those foreign criminal illegal aliens migrate to, and operate in safe harbor sanctuary cities, counties, and states; they are, for the most part, immune from deportation by ICE and from arrest from local & state law enforcement officers. Local, county, state, and federal politicians who protect criminal illegal aliens, who have been injuring and killing American citizens every day throughout the nation, only view the victims of vicious crimes as “collateral damage” that are acceptable to them, because it would be politically incorrect to condemn them publically.

Congressman Hunter said in an interview that he will re-draft and re-introduce his bill penalizing sanctuary cities, counties, and states on Tuesday or Wednesday; the bill will amend the Immigration and Nationality Act. The bill will restrict funding to the estimated 300+ safe harbor sanctuary cities, counties, and states that have laws, policies, or procedure in place, that violate Federal Immigration Laws, and are preventing state and local law enforcement officers from gathering information, regarding the citizenship and immigration status of lawful or unlawful criminals and illegal immigrants.

Cong Hunter’s legislation would make cities, counties, and states with sanctuary policies, laws, or procedures that violate Federal Immigration Laws, ineligible to receive funding from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP). The SCAAP reimburses cities, counties, and states for their cost of holding illegal aliens and convicted criminal illegal aliens. Once the bill being redrafted by Cong Hunter is finalized, it may also terminate other federal funding programs for cities, counties, and states that violate Federal Immigration Laws.

The Center for Immigration Studies published the below listed map revealing the counties, cities, and states where officials are defying U.S. Federal Immigration Laws

cis-sanctuary-map

The above listed map reveals safe harbor sanctuary cities, counties, and states that ignore Federal Immigration Laws, and actively prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting illegal aliens, without ICE’s need to seek criminal warrants or convictions from federal, state, or local courts. Although Federal Law requires the Department of Justice to cooperate with ICE when Federal Immigration Laws are violated, for the past 6 and ½ years, the Department of Justice has never sued or taken any measures, including denying federal funds to any city, county, or state, when they violate Federal Immigration Laws. On the contrary, instead of taking action against over 300+ safe harbor sanctuary cities, counties, and states that violate Federal Immigrations Laws, the Obama administration has made it very difficult on cities, counties, and states who choose to obey Federal Immigration Laws and support ICE Agents in detaining and deporting Illegal Immigrants from the United States.

Different jurisdictions use different means to protect illegal aliens from lawful detention and deportation, in violation of Federal Immigration Laws. North Dakota is perhaps the most extreme in violating Federal Immigration Laws. North Dakota State policies forbid the state from honoring any ICE detainer, meaning that should local officers detain a suspected criminal illegal immigrant murderer or rapist, the local officers will not cooperate with Immigration or ICE officials, making deportation well-nigh impossible (Author Bryan Griffith & Marguerite Telford).

Cong Hunter said in a statement to Breitbart News, “States and cities that refuse to enforce Federal Immigration Laws, directly undermine enforcement efforts — and as recent events have shown —they present a real danger to citizens. If a state or one of its cities wants to call itself a sanctuary and deliberately ignores the law, then Congress shouldn’t hesitate to withhold federal funding until there is compliance,” Cong Hunter continued. “One program that most certainly should cease reimbursement is SCAAP, which is intended to mitigate the costs of incarceration, and extend to salaries and overtime. We should also look to other programs too, but there should be wide support for a response, such as this proposal, that exercises a Constitutional prerogative of Congress in order to uphold the law.”

Since he was first elected to Congress, Cong Hunter’s policies have mirrored those of President Reagan’s “Peace Through Strength” policies on national defense, he has tried to get the administration to fo0llow a “Don’t Tread On Me” foreign policy, and Cong Hunter has repeatedly voted to rein in the out-of-control federal spending by Congress. Cong Hunter stated, “I will continue to work hard for the values we share—-a strong national defense, a secure border, and limited government. While there will be lively debate in Congress over the direction we take on a variety of issues—if we stay true to our values, then together, we can build a bright future for our children and grandchildren.”

The true dangers inherent in the continued violation of Federal Immigrations Laws by Obama and Congress members of both parties, who refuse to close the wide open southern border, can’t be over emphasized. For the last 6 1/2 years, not only has Obama and the leaders in Congress failed to protect American citizens from murder and violent crimes by convicted criminal illegal aliens, they are responsible for allowing Radical Islamic ISIS Terrorist enter the United States. Obama’s fast track to US citizenship for UN Islamic Refugees, is so dysfunctional, that over 200 of those new Islamic refugees American citizens have joined ISIS, and are now killing Christians in Iraq.

The FBI has warned all Americans citizens, that ISIS is planning to kill thousands of Americans in multiple coordinated terrorist attacks. No other country in the world, including Mexico, has provided the freedoms for illegal aliens, that safe haven sanctuary cities, counties and states provide to illegal aliens in the US. No other country in the world would protect illegal criminal aliens from federal and local law enforcement officers, while they continue to commit crimes in their country, including murder.

We encourage you to share the above information with Americans citizens who are opposed to the over 300 safe harbot sancturay cities, counties, and states that violate Federal Immigration Laws, and by doing so, also violate the US Constitution. We also encourage you to contact your Congressmen and Senators and ask them to support Cong Hunter’s bill. Ever member of Congress who supports safe haven sanctuary policies and opposed Cong Hunter’s legislation should be voted out of office in the 2016 election.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Brietbart News

Cong Duncan D. Hunter will again introduce legislation targeting sanctuary cities,

Hunter’s bill would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to restrict funding to any state or locality that has in place a law, policy or procedure in contravention of federal immigration law, preventing “state or local law enforcement officials from gathering information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

The legislation would make those cities with sanctuary policies or laws in place ineligible for State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) funding. SCAAP reimburses states and localities for the cost of holding illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.

“States and cities that refuse to enforce federal immigration laws directly undermine enforcement efforts and — as recent events have shown — present a real danger to citizens,” Hunter said in a statement to Breitbart News.

“If a state or one of its cities wants to call itself a sanctuary and deliberately ignore the law, then Congress shouldn’t hesitate to withhold federal funding until there’s compliance,” he continued. “One program that most certainly should cease reimbursement is SCAAP, which is intended to mitigate the costs of incarceration, and extend to salaries and overtime. And we should look to other programs too, but there should be wide support for a response, such as this proposal, that exercises a constitutional prerogative of Congress in order to uphold the law.”

The bill is still being drafted and could target additional funding once finalized. Hunter expected to officially introduce it Tuesday or Wednesday.

Hunter’s legislation comes on the heels of the shooting death of Kathryn Steinle by a five-time deported, seven-time convicted felon at a San Francisco pier.

The alleged shooter, Francisco Sanchez, has admitted to shooting the young woman and revealed that he chose the Golden Gate City because of its sanctuary city policies.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has pointed out that although the agency had a detainer on Sanchez from a March arrest, the San Francisco Police Department did not honor it and Sanchez was released.

“ICE places detainers on aliens arrested on criminal charges to ensure dangerous criminals are not released from prisons or jails into our communities,” ICE explained in a statement.

According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, in Fiscal Year 2014 the state of California received $41.6 million in SCAAP funding.

The California Republican has introduced other iterations of the bill in past Congresses.

June 30, 2015

The Black Dilemma, Ian Duncan of The Baltimore Sun [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Business, crime control, Econonics, Education, Elections, gun control, handguns, Historical context, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:28 pm

The Black Dilemma – Baltimore Sun Editorial 5-30-15

The Black Dilemma

Ian Duncan, The Baltimore Sun , May 30, 2015

�The Baltimore Sun� is definitely not known as a Conservative newspaper, so this very well written assessment of the situation in the USA comes as something of a surprise.

The Black Dilemma

“For almost 150 years the United States has been conducting an interesting experiment. The subjects of the experiment: black people and working-class whites.

The hypothesis to be tested: Can a people taken from the jungles of Africa and forced into slavery be fully integrated as citizens in a majority white population?

The whites were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization. The former slaves had been tribal peoples with no written language and virtually no intellectual achievements. Acting on a policy that was not fair to either group, the government released newly freed black people into a white society that saw them as inferiors. America has struggled with racial discord ever since.

Decade after decade the problems persisted but the experimenters never gave up. They insisted that if they could find the right formula the experiment would work, and concocted program after program to get the result they wanted. They created the Freedmans Bureau, passed civil rights laws, tried to build the Great Society, declared War on Poverty, ordered race preferences, built housing projects, and tried midnight basketball.

Their new laws intruded into peoples lives in ways that would have been otherwise unthinkable. They called in National Guard troops to enforce school integration. They outlawed freedom of association. Over the protests of parents, they put white children on buses and sent them to black schools and vice-versa. They tried with money, special programs, relaxed standards, and endless hand wringing to close the achievement gap. To keep white backlash in check they began punishing public and even private statements on race. They hung up Orwellian public banners that commanded whites to Celebrate Diversity! and Say No to Racism. Nothing was off limits if it might salvage the experiment.

Some thought that what W.E.B. DuBois called the Talented Tenth would lead the way for black people. A group of elite, educated blacks would knock down doors of opportunity and show the world what blacks were capable of. There is a Talented Tenth. They are the black Americans who have become entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors and scientists. But ten percent is not enough. For the experiment to work, the ten percent has to be followed by a critical mass of people who can hold middle-class jobs and promote social stability. That is what is missing.

Through the years, too many black people continue to show an inability to function and prosper in a culture unsuited to them. Detroit is bankrupt, the south side of Chicago is a war zone, and the vast majority of black cities all over America are beset by degeneracy and violence. And blacks never take responsibility for their failures. Instead, they lash out in anger and resentment.

Across the generations and across the country, as we have seen in Detroit, Watts, Newark, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and now Ferguson, rioting and looting are just one racial incident away. The white elite would tell us that this doesn’t mean the experiment has failed. We just have to try harder. We need more money, more time, more understanding, more programs, and more opportunities.

But nothing changes no matter how much money is spent, no matter how many laws are passed, no matter how many black geniuses are portrayed on TV, and no matter who is president. Some argue its a problem of culture, as if culture creates peoples behavior instead of the other way around. Others blame white privilege.

But since 1965, when the elites opened Americas doors to the Third World, immigrants from Asia and India people who are not white, not rich, and not connected have quietly succeeded. While the children of these people are winning spelling bees and getting top scores on the SAT, black youths are committing half the country’s violent crime, which includes viciously punching random white people on the street for the thrill of it that has nothing to do with poverty.

The experiment has failed. Not because of white culture, or white privilege, or white racism. The fundamental problem is that American black culture has evolved into an un-fixable and crime ridden mess.
*They do not want to change their culture or society, and expect others to tolerate their violence and amoral behavior. They have become socially incompatible with other races by their own design, not because of the racism of others – but by their own hatred of non-blacks.*

Our leaders don’t seem to understand just how tired their white subjects are with this experiment. *They don’t understand that white people aren’t out to get black people; they are just exhausted with them. They are exhausted by the social pathologies, the violence, the endless complaints, and the blind racial solidarity, the bottomless pit of grievances, the excuses, and the reflexive animosity.* The elites explain everything with racism, and refuse to believe that white frustration could soon reach the boiling point.”—

“You can’t legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government doesn’t first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they don’t have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

Ian Duncan
The Baltimore Sun , May 30, 2015

Flag of Contention, by Cmdr Matt Shipley, USN (SEAL) [c]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, gun control, Historical context, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:47 pm

Flag of Contention
Jun
30

In the wake of the Charleston, South Carolina Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shootings on June 18, 2015, Governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the State capital’s flagpole. Regrettably, even if her call for action is successful, it would do no more to change the reasons behind the hatred that drives one human to kill others than legislation to ban the “N” word would go towards closing the inaccurately named “racial” divide.

Confederate Flag and Black Soldier

Many people look at the behavior of the rioters in Ferguson, Missouri in August, 2014 and in Baltimore, Maryland in April, 2015 and make excuses for them such as, “They are angry and have no other way of expressing their anger.” But, the same people look at the illicit behavior of white supremacists and say, “They are bigots and they have no excuse.” In their sentiments towards the white supremacists, they are absolutely correct, but they need to apply the same standard equally to people of every skin color. Bad behavior is bad behavior no matter who does it or for what reason it is done.

Despite the unequal application of a standard, there is another relevant point one can extract from these observations. When people are unjustly treated and when they have no viable means to address their grievances, they often turn to hatred and violence as an outlet.

The United States has much to atone for in its history and two of the most divisive matters in need of atonement are the treatment of African Americans in our nation, especially after the institution of slavery ended, and Lincoln’s War against the South which is commonly and inaccurately known as the “Civil War”. These two breaches of justice are closely related, but not as most people in America today believe they are.

One of the reasons the Confederate Battle Flag is still a potent symbol over one-hundred and fifty years after the war ended is because that war was an injustice done to the South which has never been appropriately addressed by our national government and is still an open wound. In addition, the oppression of the Southern culture through the national policy of Reconstruction deepened that wound to ensure that it would never properly heal without significant atonement.

Lincoln’s war was an injustice done to the South because, according the Tenth Amendment, every State has always possessed the power of secession, and the Constitution only authorizes Congress to call up troops, not the President.[1]

Lamentably, it was under the policy of Reconstruction that unrighteous southern animosity grew against former African slaves, mainly because the Republican Party used the former slaves as pawns in a political chess game to further their party’s interests by oppressing southern whites, who were mostly Democrats. Additionally, the Republican Party, ex post facto, used slavery as a means to justify the unjust war they perpetrated and the unjustifiable oppression they imposed upon the South after the war.

During Reconstruction, the northern occupiers disenfranchised white southern voters and enabled former slaves to vote and run for office. The northern occupiers also, among many other oppressive actions, confiscated property from southerners and gave some of the property to former slaves. Whether the animosity that grew out of these actions was justified or not, it did not sit well with the southern white population.

The southern whites, who could do little to change the economic and social oppression imposed upon them, turned against blacks as if they were the cause of the calamity. Even to this day, over one-hundred and fifty years later, one can still see the economic scars in the South left by Lincoln’s War and Reconstruction, and one can still feel the hatred of blacks for something for which they are blameless.

For the sole reason of righting wrongs, we should take pause before relegating the Confederate Battle Flag to museums. Regardless of its modern misuse, that flag is a symbol of liberty; it is a symbol of our nation’s Second War of Independence and it should be honored as such by people of every skin color. Without a doubt, slavery was wrong, but, according to Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, his executive order[2] calling up troops on April 15, 1861, and his address to Congress on July 4, 1861, the abolition of slavery was not why he led the northern States to war against the South.[3]

In order to atone for the wrongs against the South, our national government should recognize that the South had a justifiable reason for secession that had nothing to do with slavery, [4] that Lincoln unconstitutionally took our nation to war, [5] that States still have a constitutional right to secede from the union if the national government breaches our national contract,[6] and that what Congress did to the South via Reconstruction was unjust. By taking these steps, white supremacists will no longer be able to perpetuate the myth that the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of oppression and it will take away the genesis of their hatred, whether they choose to recognize it or not.

The overwhelming majority of the men who fought for the Southern cause in the 1860s did not own slaves. Additionally, slavery was a labor practice that denied them job opportunities. It is, therefore, irrational to believe that non-slave owning southerners fought to maintain slavery or were willing to die to maintain the right to oppress black people.

Confederate Soldiers

Accordingly, the people who use the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbol of oppression and hatred do not accurately represent the people who fought under that banner in the 1860s and shame on anyone who uses it as a symbol of hatred. They do not help their cause with misdirected anger and illicit behavior. We, as a nation should stand united with our brothers and sisters of all skin colors, as one human race, and instead fight against the civil government that takes away our liberty with nearly every bill it passes. May the Holy Spirit comfort the survivors and families of the victims of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shootings and may God the Father guide our nation into true reconciliation through His Son, Jesus Christ.

[1] The power to call up troops to suppress an insurrection is an Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 power.

[2] Lincoln called his order a Proclamation, but it was an executive order by another name.

[3] American Founding Principles, A War to End Slavery, November 26, 2012.

[4] American Founding Principles, The Death of a Nation, January 20, 2014.

[5] American Founding Principles, The Case Against Succession, November 2, 2013.

[6] American Founding Principles, Can States Constitutionally Secede from the United States?, November 19, 2012.
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This entry was posted on June 30, 2015, in 10th Amendment, Commentary and tagged cause of the Civil War, Church shooting, Civil War, Confederacy, Confederate Flag, EAME Churgh, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, hate, liberty, Lincoln, national atonement, race relations, racism, racist, reconciliation, Reconstruction, white supremacy. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment
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One thought on “Flag of Contention”

[justplainbill says:
June 30, 2015 at 10:40

Well said. There are several reference works posted on the book list at http://www.justplainbill.wordpress.com that support every word posted here. Just off the top of my head are: Bruce Bartlett’s, “Wrong on Race”, several works on both reconstructions (there were two official reconstructions, and several hidden works on how Woodrow Wilson eliminated all Blacks from supervisory positions in the federal civil service, and how FDR’s National Recovery Act, aka Negro Ruination Act permitted institutional racial discrimination in both management and labor, both organized and unorganized), and of importance almost as much as the fact that they were removed from bookshelves during the Clinton Administration, the same as trying to google Indonesian Adoption Laws, are Freehling’s “Secession Debated; Georgia’s Showdown in 1860″ and his “Nullification; The 1828 South Carolina Crisis”, Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Race”, Richardson’s “The Death of Reconstruction”, Freehling’s “Prelude to Civil War”, MacDonald’s “States’ Rights and the Union, Imperium in Imperio 1776-1876″, Neely’s, “The Union Divided”, and The Kennedys’ “The South Was Right”. Oh, and for all the vilification they receive from the left, de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”, and Calhoun’s, “A Disquisition on Government”.]

June 24, 2015

America: One Nation, Indivisible, by Victor Hanson [c]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, crime control, Historical context, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:19 pm

America: One Nation, Indivisible
June 24, 2015 1:57 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
The Confederate battle flag is far from the only worrisome symbol in America today.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Protesting the Confederate flag in Columbia, S.C. (Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty)
Everyone is weighing in on the horrific murders in Charleston and blaming the mindset of the mass murderer on wider social pathologies. After the airing of the racist crackpot ideas of the unhinged Dylann Roof, calls have gone out to ban the public flying of the battle flag of the Old Confederacy, which has also been incorporated in various forms in four state flags. Perhaps we should step back and eschew symbolism that separates us by race rather than unites us as fellow citizens.
Aside from the specious argument that the flag, along with media like Fox News and talk radio, fuels homicidal maniacs like Roof, there is quite another question: whether implicit state endorsement of Confederate symbolism offers sanction for the old idea of an apartheid nation, and thus sends entirely the wrong message of American separatism rather than unity. While many Southerners object that the flag simply proclaims the battlefield honor of those who were defending their homeland, the Confederacy was so entwined with the idea of preserving slavery that the flag, even today, can evoke racial polarization. For all the Southern patriots who understandably see in the Confederate battle flag the historical resonance of Pickett’s Charge or the resistance to Sherman’s March to the Sea, there are probably just as many who equally understandably consider it a nostalgic icon of white supremacy. In a racially diverse society, it makes sense to phase out state sanction for the battle flag — as South Carolina governor Nikki Haley advocated yesterday, in calling on the state legislature to vote for the removal of the battle flag that has been flying over the grounds of the state capitol.

But perhaps we should not stop there, given increasing ethnic tensions and widening racial fault lines. There are plenty of other overt racialist symbols that separate Americans. One is the prominent use of La Raza, “The Race” — seen most prominently in the National Council of La Raza, an ethnic lobbying organization that has been and is currently a recipient of federal funds. The National Council of La Raza should be free to use any title it wishes, but it should not expect the federal government to subsidize its separatist nomenclature.
The pedigree of the term La Raza is just as incendiary as that of the Confederate battle flag. The Spanish noun raza (cf. Latin radix: “root” or “race”) is akin to the now-discarded German use of Volk, which in the early 20th century came to denote a common German racial identity that transcended linguistic and cultural affinities: To be a real member of the Volk one had to “appear” German, in addition to speaking German and possessing German citizenship.
La Raza is just such a racialist term. It goes beyond a common language and country of origin, and thus transcends the more neutral puebla(“people”: Latin populus) or gente (“people”: Latin gens). Raza was deliberately reintroduced in the 1960s to promote a racially superior identity of indigenous peoples and mestizos born in the Spanish-speaking countries of the New World. That is why the National Council of La Raza once had a close affinity with MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán), the infamous racialist U.S. student group (its ironic motto is “Unity creates strength”), some of whose various past slogans (cf. the Castroite derivative “Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada”) finally became sources of national embarrassment.
La Raza is now a calcified separatist slogan, one full of implications that are unworthy of taxpayer support.
The use of the phrase La Raza reflects its illiberal modern origins. It came into popular currency during the 1930s in Spain, when the Fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco wished to promote a new Iberian identity that went well beyond the commonality of Spanish citizenship and fluency in the Spanish language. Franco expropriated La Raza to promote the racist idea that the Spanish were a superior people by birth. He penned a crackpot novel, Raza, embodying Fascist and racist themes of Spanish genetic and cultural superiority. La Raza appeared on the big screen in the form of a hokey 1942 Spanish-language movie, full of racist themes, anti-Americanism, and fashionable Fascist politics.
But Franco was only channeling another, more famous contemporary Fascist, Benito Mussolini, who had his own Italian version of the term, la Razza. In 1938 Mussolini published his Manifesto della Razza (“The Racial Manifesto”), which defined Italians as a superior Aryan race and excluded Italian Jews, Africans, and other supposedly less pure groups from various positions in the Italian government.
In sum, the word “Raza” has a disturbing recent history, and that is why Spaniards and Italians today have dropped its common usage. Yet that well-known association with racial chauvinism was precisely why the founders of the National Council of La Raza, by their own admission, reawakened the word in the 1960s to focus on what they saw as a particular racial category of Spanish speakers. But La Raza is now a calcified separatist slogan, one full of implications that are unworthy of taxpayer support.

One wonders why in 2015 there is still nomenclature such as “the Congressional Black Caucus,” over half a century after the civil-rights movement sought to promote integration and the idea that Americans should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.. The Caucus ostensibly seeks to ensure the end of exclusion by race from full participation in American society by creating a lobbying group focused entirely on one particular race. The postmodern rationale is either that groups that have suffered past disfranchisement and discrimination should not be subject to current anti-discriminatory protocols, or that they should at least enjoy a compensatory period of exclusion from color-blind values to offset centuries of oppression.
The premise seems to be that African-American House members seek to promote a common “black” agenda that transcends their local, county, or state interests.
Thus the group’s membership is entirely race-based. The Caucus is not open to those members of the House of Representatives who are not African-American, but who might share the Caucus’s racial or political agenda — as the Jewish-American Representative Steven Cohen learned when he was elected to Congress in 2006. The Lebanese-American Ralph Nader was once attacked at a Caucus meeting in clearly racial terms on the understanding that the group was exempt from charges of racism. How far is the racial concept transferable — “the Asian Caucus”? “the Latino Caucus?” “the White Caucus?” “the European-American Caucus”? The premise seems to be that African-American House members seek to promote a common “black” agenda that transcends their local, county, or state interests. If an Asian, white, or Latino voter’s congressional representative is a member of the “Black Caucus,” does that mean that the voter will receive less attention than a black voter — as de facto white caucuses in the Old South most certainly did ignore the interests of their non-white constituents? Is that why conservative African-American legislators who see all their constituents in terms that transcend race tend to avoid joining the Caucus? Could not the “Black Caucus” rebrand itself as the “Civil Rights Caucus” or the “Progressive Caucus”?

Reexamination of the battle flag offers us a teachable moment. Critics made a good point that any state sanction of the secessionist flag inevitably sends the wrong message to millions of Americans, who in their private lives are free to display any symbol they wish. But the current racialist reaction to past racism has become equally indefensible in an increasingly fragile multiracial state. The state should not support any racially separatist symbols, titles, or groups.
We should pause to appreciate that the American democratic experiment in ethnic and racial diversity is nearly unique. Indeed, the very idea of racial diversity and nationhood does not have much of a record of success in history. Few countries have been able to transcend their ethnic origins and sustain a racially pluralistic society. Rome was an exception and pulled it off for nearly 500 years, as the Roman Empire grew to encompass non-Italian peoples from the Euphrates to Scotland before unwinding into tribal chaos. The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires worked for long periods, though they relied on the use of autocratic force and imperial coercion to suppress minorities, in ways antithetical to modern notions of governance.
In more recent times, religious and racial diversity — in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, or contemporary Nigeria — has resulted in chaos and, occasionally, genocide. True, some nations have been able to incorporate different tribes, as in the United Kingdom’s unification of the various peoples of the British Isles, but usually after hundreds of years of fighting and only when there were underlying racial and cultural affinities that could trump tribal differences.
In other words, the United States is history’s exception, not its rule. America is a great, evolving experiment of a constitutional republic in which peoples of all different races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds are equal under the law and see themselves as Americans first and members of tribes second — appearance and religion being incidental rather than essential to the American body politic.
In an America that was originally founded by mostly Northern European immigrants, a Juan Lopez from Oaxaca is freely accepted as a U.S. citizen in a way that a white Bob Jones would never fully be embraced as a citizen of Mexico, a country whose constitution still expressly sets out racially chauvinistic guidelines that govern immigration law. Someone who appears African or European would have a hard time fully integrating as a citizen in Chinese, Korean, or Japanese society, in a way not true of Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese in America. The world assumes that in America a president, attorney general, secretary of state, or Supreme Court justice can be black; but it would be as surprised to find whites as high public officials in Zimbabwe as to find a black as prime minister or foreign minister in Sweden or Germany.
In the last half-century, Americans have increasingly tended to emphasize race and tribe in promoting “diversity,” rather than seeking to strengthen the more tenuous notion of unity with their fellow citizens. We have forgotten that human nature is fond of division and must work at setting aside superficial tribal affinities to unite on the basis of core values and ideas.
Symbols, flags, organizations, and phrases that emphasize racial difference and ethnic pride are no longer just fossilized notions from the 1960s; they are growing fissures in the American mosaic that now threaten to split the country apart — fueling the suspicion of less liberal and more homogeneous nations that the great American experiment will finally unwind as expected.
That would be a great tragedy, but a catastrophe entirely predictable if citizens seek symbolic solidarity with their tribe rather than in the common idea of just being American.

[And, the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, The Italian anti-Defamation League, &c.

Personally, when advertising agencies aim at one ethnic group rather than the entire market segment, in the interest of diversity, and polling companies don’t include ‘American’ as a demographic group, the racism becomes more and more ingrained in the culture to the detriment of ALL!.]

June 19, 2015

Rachel Dolezal is a product of our times, by Sylvia Thompson [nc]

Filed under: Historical context, Racism — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 3:38 pm

Sylvia Thompson column
Rachel Dolezal is a product of our times

Sylvia Thompson
Sylvia Thompson
June 18, 2015

Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who claims she is black, has become the latest bit of strangeness onto which the media can fixate. I am what Ms. Dolezal wants to be, so I will add my take, as a black woman, to the conversation regarding her “preference” to live as a black woman.

Before I begin, let me state that Ms. Dolezal lacks integrity and that is her problem. What she wants to be and how she chooses to look is irrelevant. What she has done is lie and perpetrate fraud to the point of denying her natural parents’ existence. What she is is a product of our leftist, degenerating culture.

It is clear to me that this incident has less to do with playing race games and much more to do with the influence of a rotting culture that turns reality on its head and insists that there is only “subjective truth.” Many media and pundit types have had a field day either mocking or praising the ludicrousness of a white woman selfishly abandoning her family to pretend to be a race that she is not nor ever could or will be. This situation is similar to the mock/praise dichotomy of responses to Bruce Jenner’s sad claim of being a gender that he is not and can never be. But through it all, not many will acknowledge what both these cases represent – a twisted denial of objective truth. Truth established by Almighty God, which is absolute, unchanging, and for all time. Your race is set; your gender is set. In God’s reckoning, that is the end of it.

As a black woman I have no problem with Rachel Dolezal wanting to look black. After all, many black women choose to process the kinks out of their hair and wear extensions. Her turning the tables and choosing to make her hair nappy and wear frizzy braids is not an issue for me. If it’s okay for black women to look “white” to some degree, at least by the head, it should be okay for her to look “black.” Only hypocrites would deny her that choice.

I also do not have a problem with Ms. Dolezal’s desire to identify with the cause of black people. She could have chosen, however, to frizz up her hair and tan her skin as a white woman, and just as effectively identified with the plight of blacks, even by serving as a chapter president of the NAACP. It is historical fact that Moorfield Storey, the first national president of the organization, was Caucasian, as were most of the organization’s founders. There is, of course, the possibility that given the current racist nature of black culture – perpetuated by Barack Obama and the Left – she might have been denied the role because she is white. Be that as it may, an “I am white but I care” tactic would have been far more genuine and noble than the lie that she chose to concoct.

I recently read an article regarding the Dolezal incident that interestingly addresses the issue of so-called blacks living as Caucasians throughout black American history. It’s called “passing.” It is true that in black history some individuals with a degree of black genetic mix (who looked more like their Caucasian ancestors) chose to live their lives as Caucasians. They did so for the practical reason of avoiding discrimination that they would have suffered had they identified as black. They did not look black, so there was no rational reason to identify as such and subject themselves to the injustice of unjust laws.

I in no way compare those people to Rachel Dolezal. The people who passed back then and those who may be passing today are so genetically Caucasian as to be unidentifiable as anything else, so why shouldn’t they live as Caucasians if they choose to do so? It’s part of their heritage; they have no need to change their hair or their skin tone. They are already there. That is not the case with Ms. Dolezal, however. There is no evidence, according to her parents, of any black genetic mix. It’s all in her mind. Interestingly, on the one hand she sued a traditionally black school (Howard University) for discriminating against her because she, at the time, was “white,” and on the other hand, more recently complained to police that she was racially threatened because she is “black.” There is nothing practical or rational about Ms. Dolezal’s behavior. She should be viewed as a product of our very mixed-up times.

Rachel Dolezal lacks integrity and displays a severe disconnect from reality. Those are grave flaws, no matter a person’s race. I have no sympathy for her behavior, but I suspect that she is unstable and in need of professional and spiritual guidance. I hope she will receive such help when the media notoriety eventually fades. And it will.

Sylvia Thompson is a black conservative writer whose aim is to counter the liberal spin on issues pertaining to race and culture.

Ms. Thompson is a copy editor by trade currently residing in Tennessee. She formerly wrote for the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley California Newsletter and the online conservative blog ChronWatch, also out of California.

She grew up in Southeast Texas during the waning years of Jim Crow-era legalized segregation, and she concludes that race relations in America will never improve, nor will we ever elevate our culture, as long as there are victims to be pandered to and villains to be vilified. America is better served without victims or villains.

© Copyright 2015 by Sylvia Thompson
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sthompson/150618

June 17, 2015

Postcolonial Rot Spreads Beyond Middle East Studies, by Bruce. S. Thornton, [nc]

Filed under: Econonics, Education, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Iran, Islam, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Racism, Religion, Uncategorized, Valerie Jarrett, Yemen — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 5:21 pm

The Postcolonial Rot Spreads Beyond Middle East Studies
June 17, 2015 3:06 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

middle-east-scholarshipsIn theory, Middle East Studies programs are a good idea. One of the biggest impediments to countering modern jihadism has been the lack of historical knowledge about the region and Islam. But even the attention and urgency that followed the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have not led to such knowledge. The result has been policies pursued both by Republicans and Democrats that are doomed to fail, as the current chaos in the region attests.

Rather than enlightening citizens and policy-makers, Middle Eastern Studies programs have darkened our understanding. As Martin Kramer documented in his important 2002 study Ivory Towers on Sand [3], most programs have become purveyors not of knowledge but of ideology. Under the influence of literary critic Edward Said’s historically challenged book Orientalism––“a work,” historian Robert Irwin has written [4], “of malignant charlatanry, in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from willful misrepresentations”­­––Middle East Studies programs, Kramer writes, “came under a take-no-prisoners assault, which rejected the idea of objective standards, disguised the vice of politicization as the virtue of commitment, and replaced proficiency with ideology.” The ideology, of course, comprised the old Marxist narrative of Western colonial and imperial crimes, a Third Worldism that idealizes the dark-skinned, innocent “other” victimized by Western depredations, and the juvenile romance of revolutionary violence.

Yet Said’s baleful influence has not been limited to Middle East Studies programs, one of which has been created at my campus of the California State University, replete with theproblems [5] Kramer catalogues. It has insidiously corrupted much of the humanities and social sciences, operating under the innocuous rubric of “postcolonial” studies, which to the unwary suggests a historical rather than an ideological category. Through General Education courses that serve students across the university, and in departments like English that train primary and secondary school teachers, Saidian postcolonial ideology has been shaping the attitudes and presumed knowledge of Islam and the Middle East far beyond the reach of Middle East Studies programs.

Said’s dubious argument in Orientalism is that the work of Western scholars on the Middle East embodied “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient,” thus creating the intellectual infrastructure for justifying colonialism and imperialism. As such, every European scholar perforce was “a racist, an imperialist, and totally ethnocentric.” For social science and humanities departments committed totally to the multiculturalist melodrama of white racism and oppression of the dark-skinned “other,” Said’s work seemingly provides scholarly bona fides to ideas that are in fact expressive of illiberal grievance politics.

English departments have been particularly vulnerable to Said’s work, for he overlaid his bad history with watered down Foucauldian ideas about the relationship of power to discourse. Thus English professors seduced by the poststructuralist theory ascendant in 1978 when Orientalism was published found in that book a seemingly sophisticated theoretical paradigm that shared both poststructuralism’s disdain for objectivity and truth, and its “hermeneutics of suspicion,” the notion that the apparent meaning of a discourse is a mask for the sinister machinations of power at the expense of the excluded “other.”

More important, postcolonialism is a politically activist theory, bound up as it is in the politics of the Middle East, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now English professors could avoid the legitimate charge that poststructuralism, despite its patina of leftist ideology, was in fact an evasion of politics, a “symbolic politics,” as historian Russell Jacoby put it, “a replacement for, and a diversion from, the gritty politics of the community and the street.” On the contrary, the purveyors of postcolonialism were on the barricades, struggling to liberate Palestinians and other Muslims oppressed by a neo-imperialist America and its puppet Israel. Rather than pampered elitists guaranteed jobs for life, now the professors could fancy themselves freedom fighters and champions of the ex-colonial brown peoples still exploited and oppressed by the capitalist, racist West.

Finally, the dogma of multicultural “diversity” now firmly enshrined in American universities likewise has found Saidian postcolonialism a useful tool for interpreting and teaching literature, one that exposes the Western literary canon’s hidden racism and oppression. Moreover, in a university like Fresno State, half of whose students are minorities, a postcolonial perspective can establish a rapport with minority students who are encouraged to interpret their own experiences through the same lens of unjust exclusion and hurtful distortions of their culture and identity. At the same time white students are schooled in their privilege and guilt, minorities can be comforted by a narrative that privileges them as victims of historical oppression, one masked by the unearned prestige of the classics written by “dead white males.” Now minority students learn that Shakespeare’s Caliban is the true hero the Tempest with whom they should identify, the displaced victim of rapacious colonialists and slavers like Prospero who unjustly define the indigenous peoples as savages and cannibals in order to justify the brutal appropriation of their lands and labor.

Over the thirty years I have taught in the California State University, I have seen this transformation of the English department. Reading lists dominated by contemporary ethnic writers are increasingly displacing the classics of English literature, and even when traditional works are on the list, the books are often taught from the postcolonial perspective. New hires more and more comprise those Ph.D.’s whose specialties lie in ethnic or “world” literature, replacing the Shakespeare scholars and others trained to teach the traditional English and American literary canon. The traditional content of a liberal education––“the best which has been thought and said in the world,” as Matthew Arnold wrote––is disappearing, replaced by multicultural melodramas of Western crime and guilt.

More important for the culture at large, many of these students will go on to earn teaching credentials and staff public schools. They will carry the postcolonial ideology into their own classrooms, influencing yet another generation and reinforcing a received wisdom that will shape their students’ understanding of the important threats to our national security and interests emanating from the Middle East, especially jihadism. And it will encourage ordinary citizens to assent to the demonization of our most valuable regional ally, Israel, currently battling the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement that can more easily gain traction among those who from grade school to university have been exposed to the postcolonial ideology.

The damage done to our foreign policy by Middle East Studies is obvious. The influence of the godfather of such programs, Edward Said, on the social sciences and humanities departments like English is more insidious and subtle. But it is no less dangerous.

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/bruce-thornton/the-postcolonial-rot-spreads-beyond-middle-east-studies/

URLs in this post:

[2] Middle East Forum: http://www.meforum.org/

[3] Ivory Towers on Sand: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/pubs/IvoryTowers.pdf

[4] written: http://www.amazon.com/Lust-Knowing-Orientalists-Their-Enemies/dp/0140289232/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434065002&sr=1-1&keywords=robert+irwin+for+lust+of+knowing

[5] problems: http://www.campus-watch.org/survey.php/id/70

Copyright © 2015 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.

May 20, 2015

The Unconstitutional TPA Bill, by Capt John USN [It’s worse than NAFTA!]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Business, China, Econonics, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Politicians, PRC, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:41 pm

Joseph R. John
To jrjassoc@earthlink.net
May 19 at 3:04 PM

The Republicans in the House and Senate have resurrected Fast Track Authority to give Obama the ability to bypass the checks and balances of congress. In order to pass it, they are trying to say that President Ronald Reagan would approve the UNCONSTITUTIONAL TPA Bill. They are “lying outright” to their fellow Congressmen–please read the below listed article that details what President Ronald Reagan did and based upon what we know of his conservative philosophy, what he would do today.—President Reagan cared about protecting American jobs for hard working men and women.

This TPA Bill will destroy the US Borders forever, and will open the flood gates to millions of Illegal Aliens from Mexico, from 11 Asian countries, and eventually will allow millions more Illegal Aliens to enter the United States thru the UN Resettlement Program (which is preventing Christian refugees from entering the US). Those refugees have been stealthily resettled by Obama in 195 cities across the nation for the last 6 years. To allow the flood gate to open to let foreign alien workers to enter the US, a time when 104 million Americans are unemployed is a crime against middle and low income Americans seeking employment.

I encourage you to take action to prevent the Republican leaders in the House and Senate from working with Pelosi and Reed to pass this Unconstitutional TPA Bill that will allow Obama to force the United States to abide by all UN Treaties. Rhinos go to the other side of the aisle to get votes to p[ass measures, and frustrate the will of their rank and file members. That is what Boehner has done in the past to fund and support Obama’s unconstitutional violation of Federal Immigration Laws—and he is doing it again to ram the Unconstitutional TPA Bill thru Congress.

The TPA Bill will eliminate the Constitutional requirement that 2/3rd of the US Senate must vote to approve and pass any international treaty with a foreign country. Obama is already violating the US Constitution and bypassing the US Senate, while he and Kerry negotiate a treaty with Iran, that was initiated by then Secretary of State Clinton. That Nuclear Weapons Treaty will allow Iran to develop and deploy nuclear weapons on their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Those nuclear tipped missiles will become a threat and a dagger thrust poised to strike the heart of the United States’ homeland.

The TPA Bill will give up the US’ Sovereignty to the Marxists, Socialist, and Communists in control of the UN who have been working with Obama to eliminate the 2nd Amendment rights of all Americans by forcing the Congress to abide by the UN Small Arms Treaty, a treaty that the US Senate has already voted down because it violates the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution, to the disappointment of Obama, Clinton, and Kerry.

Obama is still determined to force the US to abide by the anti 2nd Amendment UN Small Arms Treaty with the support of the block of 70 elected Socialist, Marxists, and Communist members of Congress.

The below listed E-mail will tell you how to easily contact your Senator and Congressmen and demand that they not listen to the outright lies the leaders of the House and Senate are promulgating about what President Reagan would do in regard to the Unconstitutional TPA Bill—please read the below listed article by Charles Benninghoff, Esq..

I first worked for Governor Reagan in his first presidential race against President Gerald Ford that we lost at the Republican Convention in Kansas City, then worked for President Reagan on and off for the next 10 years (a total of 14 remarkable years), and I believe he would never let this Unconstitutional TPA Bill pass under any circumstance. For the Republican leaders in the Senate and House to take President Reagan’s good name in vain, to get Republican members of Congress to pass the Unconstitutional TPA Bill, is further proof that the Republican leaders in control of the House and Senate are once again discrediting themselves in the eyes of hundreds of millions Patriotic Americans who knew and supported President Reagan.

I encourage you to help us protect and defend the US Constitution and the 2nd Amendment that millions of Americans servicemen fought and died to protect. I encourage you to demand that your Congressional representatives vote against the “SECRET” TPA Bill that is thousands of pages long, that no member of Congress has sat down and read in its entirety, and is another thousand page bill that is being jammed down the collective throats of hard working Americans by the Republican and Democrat leaders in Congress.

The TPA Bill will have much worse consequences for our freedom and independence, than the Obamacare Law that Obama and Pelosi jammed down the collective throats of all Americans. If the TPA Bill passes, it will further continue to transform The Free Enterprise System, that over the past 238 years, created the most effective economic engine in the history of mankind, and we will be “CHANGED” into a Socialist/Welfare State.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)/Former FBI/Reagan Administration Alumnus

Fax: (619) 220-0109

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

-Isaiah 6:8

From: jury.activehosted.com@s130.acemserv.com [mailto:jury.activehosted.com@s130.acemserv.com] On Behalf Of Pray For US
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2015 7:57 AM
To: jrjassoc@earthlink.net
Subject: Reagan vs. Obama

Desperate RINOs Claim Reagan Was Just Like Obama

05/19/2015

Dear Fellow Patriot,

Liberal Republicans (RINOs) in Congress are trying to claim that Ronald Reagan used Trade Promotion Authority, also known as fast-track trade powers, and therefore they must now renew Trade Promotion Authority for Obama immediately.

Liberals Republicans just love to invoke Ronald Reagan’s name while hoping that you will not pay any attention to the historical record.

This argument being pushed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Speaker John Boehner shows just how DESPERATE the RINOs are to pass fast-track powers for Obama.

The RINOs may have the votes to pass fast-track for Obama in the House, if they win this argument, and that is why they are promoting it right now.

Send FaxGrams to keep the pressure on House Republicans right now to deny fast-track powers from Obama!

Did Ronald Reagan use Trade Promotion Authority or fast-track powers?

ANSWER: Yes.

Did America lose millions of jobs under crippling trade deficits because of Ronald Reagan’s trade deals as we have seen under the Bushes, Clinton and Obama?

ANSWER: No.

Ronald Reagan was hated by the so-called “free-traders” because he always protected American jobs FIRST in trade agreements — which we know Obama will not do.

As an example, Japan tried to flood the American market with cheap cars in the 1980s. Reagan immediately stepped in and imposed import controls on Japan and he is credited with single-handedly saving the American auto industry.

Without Reagan’s actions, Ford and Chrysler would have gone belly-up at the time and hundreds of thousands of Americans would have lost good-paying jobs.

President Reagan protected American workers through dozens of trade agreements and at the end of his time in office, the free-traders at the Cato Institute wrote, “From the standpoint of free trade, we have seen only a few bright days in the last eight years.”

America has been losing jobs through trade agreements ever since Reagan left office:

The Bush-Clinton North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) cost America 700,000 jobs.
The Obama Korea-US trade Agreement (KORUS) passed in 2012 cost America 65,000 jobs.
Opening communist China up to trade with the US cost America 2.1 million manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2011. The jobs of American workers are now being done by communist workers who are paid about $2,500 per year!

Ronald Reagan did not tolerate Americans losing their jobs because of trade agreements and that is the true conservative position! It is absolutely hypocritical of the RINOs to invoke Ronald Reagan’s name in their efforts to grant Obama fast-track trade powers.

Tell the Republicans in Congress to deny fast-track powers to Obama! Tell the House to vote NO on fast-track for Obama!

We are opposed to Obama’s trade deals and fast-track powers because these deals deliver the exact opposite of what they promise.

Deuteronomy 15:6 states, “For the Lord your God blesses you, as He promised you; and you shall lend unto many nations, but you shall not borrow; and you shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you.”

Obama’s trade deals will put America further into debt to foreign countries and will allow those countries to reign over us by suspending congressional oversight.

Stop Obama from gaining fast-track powers! Tell Congress that Obama is NOT Ronald Reagan!

In 1892, Republican Senator William McKinley who would one day become President said, “Free trade results in giving our money, our manufactures, and our markets to other nations.”

This was the conservative position on trade until Ronald Reagan left office. Reagan protected our currency, our manufacturing jobs and our markets, something that no president has done since and certainly not Obama!

What has changed since Reagan left office? Multinational corporations are now permitted to give American congressional members untold billions of dollars each year, in essence bribing these elected officials to see things their way. And, “their way” does NOT include any concern about what happens to American workers, only what will realize for these international corporate giants the greatest profits!

Send your FaxGrams to deny Obama fast-track powers today!

Then, please tell others about this campaign by sending them this link:

https://PrayFor.US/150518_35264_p4us_pp_Stop_TPA_in_House/

Finally, call your Representative in the House at 202-224-3121 and let them know that you are opposed to Trade Promotion Authority for Obama.

Sincerely,

Charles Benninghoff Signature Image for Email

Charles Benninghoff, Founder
Pray For US
2360 Corporate Circle, Suite 400
Henderson, Nevada 89074-7722
Personal Cell: 949-510-1100

Saints’ Corner
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light to all

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Copyright 2015 by Pray For US | All Rights Reserved
This may not be copied or reproduced in any way
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May 12, 2015

Authority to approve treaties UNCONSTITUTIONAL [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Business, China, Econonics, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Iran, Islam, Japan, Media Check, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Politicians, Treason, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 3:31 pm

Joseph R. John
To
jrjassoc@earthlink.net
May 11 at 4:37 PM
FYI
From: Joseph R. John [mailto:jrjassoc@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2015 2:29 PM
To: ‘Cdr William Ise’62, USN (Ret) (JAGC)
Subject: Republicans Congressional Leaders Giving Obama “Unconstitutional” Authority to By-Pass Congress in Approving Treaties

Bill,
In light of your comments with regard to the subject issue, you should review the below listed legal argument submitted by Dr Dennis Jackson. He states that there is no legal authority to delegate this type of authority because Congress does not have the right or authority to delegate this to a third party and surly not to the executive branch.
Specific mention is made of the Hamilton’s Paper 84 in his sophisticated argument, and he refers to the argument Madison made in Federalist Paper 45. You should share this with attorneys you communicate with and seek their support to ask their Senators not to pass the TPA Bill, because among many other destructive provisions, it eliminates all borders of the United States. We as a nation are in extremis because of the stupidity of the Republican leadership in Congress—this secret bill with thousands of pages no one has even seen is more destructive than Obamacare.

Respectfully,
Joe

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62
Capt USN(Ret)
Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC
2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184
San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109
Cell: (310) 989-8778

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8
From: Dennis Jackson Monday, May 11, 2015 8:11 AM
To: Joseph R. John
Subject: RE: Republicans Congressional Leaders Giving Obama “Unconstitutional” Authority to By-Pass Congress in Approving Treaties

Federalist Paper 45, Madison stated that the “powers.. delegated are few and defined”…

First we need to know what delegated means. Someone with authority allowed a subordinate to exercise the authority that is specifically defined. There is no authority to delegate this authority because congress does not have the right or authority to delegate this to a third party and surly not to the executive. Specific mention to Hamilton’s Paper 84 should be made here. Please see the paper, if you do not have a copy you can find a PDF on line so you can search it.

The Federalist has been used 291 times by the Supreme Court for guidance, it is Prima Facie intent of the Framers in developing the Constitution. The Federalist has also been used over 1500 times by lesser authorities in treatise, legal article and law reviews, it is a far gone conclusion.

The Debates also known as Elliot’s Debates are the foundation for the Federalist and are the notes from Madison who was the Secretary of the Convention. It is Gospel in the legal world. It is also available in PDF form. Until we as free men understand the system as it was intended we will forever be tilting windmills. The illusion created by decades of Marxist Methodology and socialist ideology is rampant. It may be past the breaking point. At the end of the day we are accountable for not informing ourselves. Relying on the officials who populate the halls of congress is about a smart as putting the wolf in the sheep pen to stand guard. We are the sheep dogs, those who know a lie when we hear it. We, as Samuel was commanded, are the watchmen on the wall and the protectors of the Republic.

It is sort of like navigation. The first things you do is fix your position. Without that you don’t know where you have come from or where you are going. It is that simple. The founding documents are the very least of the navigational tools. This is basic seamanship on the waters of history. It is our responsibility to know and be able to fix our position with whom ever we connect with. I have done this and even commented on a Socialist site. The response I got was many positive comments. The lady wrote me and commended my approach even though I identified myself as an NRA Life Patron Member, as Firearms Instructor and a Strict Construction Constitutionalist. There were other things as well but I am trying to be brief.

I have had other encounters and each time I quote Book and Verse of the Constitution , it original intent and the purpose for which it was written I get no takers fro an otherwise ravenous pack. The core issue her is, and there is always a core issue around which all the orbiting sub arguments are anchored to, none of the Socialists really understand the Document. They have been spoon fed the swill they regurgitate. When they get the truth in correct logical form they have no where to go. The truth is a powerful tool when you are able to articulate it. If you get caught in the rhetoric and succumb to the reaction to choke the shit out of some ass hole who desperately deserves it you loose. If you stay the course and don’t succumb and respond with truth and correct logic, as in Aristotelian Logic, they clam right up because that are not trained to combat logic. Its like a shoot out with a bunch of guys wielding clubs, slaughter.

So if you will look at this document that I am sending it will fix a position for you. Not only will it fix the position for the subject that I intended it for, immigration, it will fix the position for the instant cause in your communication. I think that I perhaps have sent this along but I wanted to refresh your memory and illustrate how simple a thing is if we simply educate ourselves. In other terms Jesus fought with the Pharisees for the same reason. They perverted the law with the “traditions of men”. This is the same way our Law, the Constitution, is being cut to pieces. We are fighting the same type of corruption with these critters who have sold their soul to Lucifer. Don’t believe me??? Get a copy of Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals”. He actually dedicated his book to Lucifer. The Biblical prophesies are exactly true and no one is in touch enough to see it. Remember the Jews were in denial right up to and into the gas chambers.
My gratitude to you sir. You are an honorable man and I am glad to see such in this day. I hope you take my words in the spirit in which they were intended. I may be a bit terse but I think candy coating is about as smart as shooting yourself in the foot. A word on how to treat these rascals and old Hindu Proverb:

“If you feed a serpent milk you only increase its venom.”

God Bless and Thank You for Your Service,
Dennis Jackson
________________________________________
From: jrjassoc@earthlink.net
To: jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Subject: Republicans Congressional Leaders Giving Obama “Unconstitutional” Authority to By-Pass Congress in Approving Treaties
Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 00:34:40 -0700
On Tuesday the Republican leadership will encourage the House and Senate to vote to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Initiative; the bill is known as “Trade Promotion Authority” or TPA—no one has even seen thousands of pages of Obama’s Secret Trade Bill —now the Republican leadership is saying “we will have to pass it to see what is in it”. The Republican leaders are planning to give Obama “Carte Blanche” to enter into “Fast-Track Trade Treaties” in “total secrecy” eventually with future countries such as Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, etc., because Obama will be able to add other countries to this agreement, which is UNCONSTITUTIONAL; it “short circuits the legislative process” which requires a two thirds majority vote of the US Senate to approve Treaties. Republican leaders are planning to give Obama unprecedented power to curtail Congressional checks and balances on Treaties, even while they have been watching him for 6 ½ years, violate Federal Immigration Laws, the US Constitution, and Freedom of Religion for members of the US Armed Forces.

The TPA Bill has many damaging provisions, among them, it will allow millions of foreign workers to be given visas to enter the US at a time when 104 million Americans are unemployed, the TPA will open the way to import dangerous foods products that will negatively affect the health of unsuspecting Americans, according to Congressman Alan Grayson (R-FL-9) it will ship millions of American jobs overseas, it will “force the US” to abide by UN & EPA business destructive unproven climate change regulations, will “force the US” to abide by the UN’s Small Arms Trade Treaty(ATT) which was voted down by the US Senate & violates the 2nd Amendment’s provision that allows American citizens to purchase and sell their small arms, and it will force the US Congress to abide by every UN Treaty, undermining the sovereignty of the United States.

The TPA initially embraces 12 nations including the US, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, Brunei, Darussalam, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore; however there is a provision in the agreement that allows Obama to add other countries in the future, like Cuba, China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, etc.. The TPA is a secret Obama Law, like the secret Obamacare Law, that will allow the free flow of Mexican, South American, and Asian workers to enter the US (not only will the southern border remain wide open, but the US will no longer have any borders “at all”, or any barriers to entry), the millions of new entering foreign workers will willingly work for exceptionally lower wages under substandard conditions. Details in thousands of unread pages of this law have not been read or worked out, yet the Republican leadership is giving Obama “Fast-Track” authority to make any and all decisions in all and every treaty with the initial 12 countries and as many additional countries Obama decides on in the future, without Senate ratification (all future trade treaties will no longer be subject to the Constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority of the US Senate for ratification). Republican leaders are enhancing Obama’s control of foreign policy, while making the Congress irrelevant.

In order to deal with the millions of Americans who will be losing their jobs because of the TPA Bill, under the radar, the Republican leadership of the House and Senate is crafting a bill to go along with TPA, known as the Trade Adjustment Assistance Bill to be passed on the same day the TPA Bill is passed—-it should more appropriately be entitled the “Put all American Workers on Welfare Bill Because of the TPA Bill”. That new Trade Adjustment Assistance Bill specifically targets workers and farmers who lose their livelihood, because of this “Stupid TPA Bill” being promoted by the Republican leadership in Congress, which will result in millions of Americans losing their jobs because of what Obama will authorize in secret “Trade Treaties” with foreign countries, that will be devastating to the labor movement and jobs in the United States.

Once Obama uses his “Fast-Track” authority to agree with UN Regulations, Congress would not be able to modify or amend those TPP provision entered into solely by Obama himself, without Congressional involvement at all, and Obama’s individual decision would have the force of the “law of the land” under the US Constitution. This proposed “living agreement” by Republican leaders in Congress will seriously undercut the re-employment of 104 million unemployed Americans, because as a “living agreement”, it would leave the southern border of the US to be even more porous than it is today, and will allow Obama to change immigration policy “at will” without Congressional approval—those proposed provisions of the TPA are absolutely UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Republican leaders are approving the massive immigration of millions of Illegal Aliens from Mexico and from 12 other countries.

The Republican leadership will surrender its authority to write Federal Immigration Laws by passing TPA, thus enabling Obama to use his pen to simply authorize the importation of millions of non-Christian Asian, Japanese, Malaysian, Brunei, Darussalam, Singapore, and eventually Chinese and Iranian workers. According to the Greek Catholic Relief Agency, for over 6 ½ years, Obama has refused to allow any of the 300,000 Syrian and Assyrian Christian refugees in the Middle East to enter the US, while Canada has been resettling those Syrian and Assyrian Christians. Obama’s has only been allowing the entry of Muslim refugees thru the UN Muslim Refugees Resettlement Program, and has been intentionally excluded Christians. Now the Republican leadership is giving Obama the right to bring in millions of Asian immigrant workers who are also not of the Christian faith.

Obama has been resettling hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees in 195 cities across the nation without elected state and city officials being provided with specific details on who is being resettled in their cities, and without informing them who is going to pay for the health care, resettlement costs, transportation costs, education of refugee children, the welfare costs of refugee families, food stamps, and housing costs for hundreds of thousands of those Muslim refugees being brought into their communities.

Supporters of this aggressive secret Obama initiative include Democratic Progressives in Congress, Democratic Congressman Danny K. Davis who received an award from the Communist Party in 2012, David Cortright who is Obama’s close Chicago associate on the Committee for a Sane Nuclear policy (SANE), Communist Tom Hayden who is a member of “Progressives for Obama”, Democratic Congressmen in the “Hanoi Lobby” who are aggressively supporting normalization of relations with Cuba, Cora Weiss who is a strong supporter of Communism & a member of the Anti-War Movement, Adam Hersh from the liberal Center for American Progress, the left of center liberal media establishment, and the Democratic Progressive Caucus. Those Leftists, Marxists, Progressives, and Communists, have been getting the very aggressive support of the Republican leadership in the House and Senate, who have been working with the Democratic Progressive Caucus in Congress to pass the TPA (the 70 member Caucus includes Socialists, Progressives, Marxists, and Communists members of Congress),
.
The AFL-CIO Unions are on solid footing in their opposition to this “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority”. Responsible and clear thinking Democrats in Congress are against giving Obama “Fast-Track” authority with this labor damaging bill’ it will allow millions of new workers to enter the US, will force the Congress to abide by environmental protection standards that will restrict business development & job growth in the US, will allow currency manipulation, and will allow millions of new Mexican Illegal Alien workers to legally enter & work in the United States. The Republican leaders in Congress should use some degree of “Common Sense” and wait for 19 months, before they give the occupant in the Oval Office any trade promotion authority, and only if that trade authority is very limited. Hopefully the new occupant of the Oval Office, unlike Obama, will be a pro-American president who supports and abides by the provisions of the US Constitution.

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has alerted the American people about the dangers of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) speeding through Congress and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that TPA would help push. Senator S essions said, “The president has circumvented Congress on immigration with serial regularity. But the TPA would yield new power to the executive to alter admissions while subtracting Congressional checks against those actions,” he said in a “critical alert” dispatched by Senator Session’s office. Senator Sessions and several outside groups said Obama could change immigration policies between trading partners “at will” without any Congressional oversight. “The plain language of TPA provides avenues for Obama and trading partners to facilitate the expanded movement of foreign workers into the U.S. — including issuing visitor visas that are used as worker visas,” said Senator Sessions. The bases of that charge is a phrase in TPA calling it a “living agreement.” Sessions said that means that they can be changed after Congress approves them, and also that countries can be added in the future, including China. “It leaves it open for a president to change it without Congressional approval,” warned Jessica M. Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. “Congress should not surrender its authority to write immigration laws to either the executive branch, to trade negotiators, and definitely not to international trade tribunals,” she added.

The Republican Leadership of the House and Senate are planning to give Obama free rein with “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority”, with full the knowledge of Obama’s very dangerous anti-American track record, and his pro-Marxist/Communist initiatives. Even the most casual observer of Obama’s dangerous foreign policy initiatives can’t help but understand that, in the past 6 ½ years, Obama foreign policy decisions have consistently favored the enemies of the Republic like Radical Islamic Terrorists in Libya, Communist China, Communist North Vietnam, Radical Islamic Terrorists in Iran, Radical Islamic Terrorist in the Muslim Brotherhood, Chavez’s Socialist Venezuela, Castro’s Communist Cuba, and Putin’s anti-American Russia—they have all collectively and repeatedly expressed their intent to destroy the Republic as it was created by the Founding Fathers.

A newly elected pro-American Patriotic US President would judiciously apply trade promotion authority negotiations by entering into separate Trade Treaties with 12 Asian and South American countries, while abiding by the provision of the US Constitution that requires a two thirds majority vote of the US Senate to approve each treaty. The American people need to rise up and oppose Obama’s secret TPA Bill by calling their Senate representatives at (202) 224-3121 and by sending FaxGrams to their Senate and Congressional representatives telling them to reject Obama’s “Fast-Track” authority which will permit Obama to enter into and force the Congress to abide by all UN Treaties, and will also permit Obama to enter into future secret treaties with countries such as Cuba, China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, etc. This most recent initiative by Republican leadership in the House and Senate, follows their inept funding of Obamacare, illegal Immigration, and Obama’s wide open southern border policy thru September 2015, is approaching insanity and would be akin to allowing the fox into the chicken coop.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62
Capt USN(Ret)
Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC
2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184
San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

To:
The Honorable Citizens of the United States, the House of Representatives, the Senate and Justices

Dear Souls:

I am delivering this message to inform you of a dire situation within our country. We, the People of the United States have been besieged by those who think so little of us as to consider us their prey. We are scorned, made light of and our system of election has even been accosted by those who would steal by fraud and deceit our very birthright. I cannot say that every person so situated is part of the faction that seeks to unilaterally place themselves above the law, without authority and to the detriment of the People as a whole. As human beings who are lawful citizens of these United States we are entitled to be fairly treated and our elected officials be in obedience to the Law they swore to uphold.

It both saddens and infuriates me to witness the destruction of our country by those who would make themselves our masters. We are not their servants, their slaves or surfs. We not only have the right to be free, we have the duty to demand and to exercise the mechanisms with which to free ourselves and the responsibility to ourselves and our posterity to make it so. But we cannot exercise that right and duty in the darkness of ignorance, we must be informed. We must understand the foundation of our system. To do this we must consult not those who pervert the Great Charter of our system of government but those who conceived and put this government to order. Those who bled and died lost their fortunes and families are the authority; the ones whose souls could not condone servitude are the voices that we must rediscover, not those who pretend and usurp.

I am sorry to say we have criminals in office, not by my word or act but their own. If it be their ignorance then they have this opportunity to correct it, if not they expose themselves for the traitors to the People they are.

CRIMINALS IN OFFICE

The legislature and others in government service or office have erected for themselves an elite status not authorized by the Constitution. As such it cannot be authorized by any law made in pursuance to the Constitution. Harry Reid says it’s the Law of the Land get over it, we say ok the Law of the Land. O’l Harry is quick to use the Law against the mere citizen but not on himself. Let’s examine the Law of the Land and just how these elites have made themselves lords over us.

We now live in a country where the people who make the law do not obey it. There is no authority to treat everyone differently or put one class of people over another. There is no grant of privilege by the Law of the Land to allow those who hold office any more right that the rest. A brief look into the basic law, the Constitution, and its history and intent will show any such notion to be completely without substance either inferred or expressly stated. Neither wealthy politicians of the right or the socialist exhibit any difference in this one idea.

The wealthy claim their elite status is due to their superior acumen in financial and economic affairs, while the socialists claim their elite status is due to their support of the down trodden and disadvantaged. But the common theme of them both is that they should be entitled to a status which is above their fellow. They grant themselves exemption from the same rules they enforce on others because they occupy a public office. The problem is that there is no such grant of authority and the status is one that is created for their sole benefit. In fact the overwhelming evidence is that there is to be no such distinction.
The delegates while debating the Constitution, the Framers, consistently put forth the effort to make sure no aristocratic class was set up or developed through service in government or holding office. In other words, no elite ruling class was intended. In fact the arrangement of and separation of powers and division of delegated authority was intended to prevent the formation of an aristocracy. This they were so intent upon it surfaced in the debates time and again. From Elliott’s Debates, the Notes of Madison during the Convention:
“We should remember that the people never act from reason alone. The rich will take
the advantage of their passions, and make these the instruments for oppressing them.
The result of the contest will be a violent aristocracy, or a more violent despotism.
The schemes of the rich will be favored by the extent of the country. The people in
such distant parts cannot communicate and act in concert. They will be the dupes of
those who have more knowledge and intercourse. The only security against
encroachments will be a select and sagacious body of men, instituted to watch against them on all sides.”

Mr. MASON. “……Should the latter have the power of giving away the people’s money, they might soon forget the source from whence they received it. We might soon have an aristocracy.”

“Mr. BUTLER. There is no right of which the people are more jealous than that of
suffrage. Abridgments of it tend to the same revolution as in Holland, where they
have at length thrown all power into the hands of the senates, who fill up vacancies
themselves, and form a rank aristocracy.”

“Col. MASON ……. His idea of an aristocracy was, that it was the government of the few over the many. An aristocratic body, like the screw in mechanics, working its way by slow degrees, and holding fast whatever it gains, should ever be suspected of an encroaching tendency. The purse-strings should never be put into its hands.”

Madison gives us several methods of creating this aristocracy. The chief of these methods is for the legislature to control the electors or the candidates. This brings us to mind of targeting the conservative groups, like the Tea Party, by the IRS. When we see the lax enforcement of the laws and congress’ lack of energy in pursuing and punishing the offenders we begin to wonder why. Certainly the power of the two major political parties and the apparent cooperation of the main stream republicans to defeat outsiders we are left with at least a question in our minds. But the example represents mischief’s want to exclude those who are not of like mind and further consolidate the power in the hands of the few, the elite.

Mr. MADISON was opposed to the section, as vesting an improper and dangerous
power in the legislature. The qualifications of electors and elected were fundamental
articles in a republican government, and ought to be fixed by the Constitution. If the
legislature could regulate those of either, it can by degrees subvert the Constitution. A
republic may be converted into an aristocracy or oligarchy, as well by limiting the
number capable of being elected as the number authorized to elect. In all cases where
the representatives of the people will have a personal interest distinct from that of
their constituents, there was the same reason for being jealous of them as there was
for relying on them with full confidence, when they had a common interest. This was
one of the former cases. It was as improper as to allow them to fix their own wages, or
their own privileges. It was a power, also, which might be made subservient to the
views of one faction against another. Qualifications founded on artificial distinctions
may be devised by the stronger in order to keep out partizans of a weaker faction.

Madison’s Notes on the Debates

The continued persistence of the IRS in targeting conservative groups and the proposed new “rule change” further exhibit both the use of the bureaucracy to harass a political group. The IRS’ informal attack against conservative groups that are attempting to exert a lawful right, to freely associate on political subjects has been directly challenged by a bureaucratic agency. How convenient for the politicians. They have no control over the creature they have created. It is allowed to run amok, exactly as Madison gave example to, and harass a weaker faction. Never mind that free speech was exactly political speech during the Colonial period. Without any meaningful act of oversight by the legislature we have evidence again of the mindset of this “elite” class to preserve itself and position. If you add the support of the Chamber of Commerce and their explicit stated goal of spending tens of millions on candidates who support immigration reform, the Trans Pacific Partnership and the other “business friendly” agenda of the Chamber, we see a continuation of the same. The votes of the people become less and less meaningful and the “elite” secure their position by any means available, legal or otherwise. Don’t forget there are Democrats who want this Trans Pacific Partnership, just like Democrat legislators Waters and Pelosi voting to bail out the banks on the backs of the American People because they or family members had interests in the banks. Of course they are the “elite” they deserve it…..

The real question is, do the “elite” have some special privilege, secured by the Law of the Land?? Do they have the right, the authority to manipulate the system of elections, the economy and the government in order secure to themselves and their friends privilege that the People as a whole do not??? Of course we must consult the Law of the Land, remember what Harry said, in order to find out. We have seen the intention of the Framers when they were in debate discussing the Constitution. They were of a mind, so the records show, that no “aristocracy” was to be condoned and that they were initiating specific steps to block the formation of an “elite”.

The Framer’s line of reasoning continues into the Federalist Papers. The propensity of the “elite” to grant themselves special exemptions from the laws they wrote was addressed specifically. The writings of John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison have been use over 1500 times to interpret the Constitution by the legislature and the courts. Madison states it best in Federalist 57. Madison places a great amount of emphasis on favoritism in the making and executing laws and makes it perfectly clear that it is the citizen’s duty through his vigilant manly spirit which is the guardian and intolerant force against such abuses of the legislature as well as the proper function of a Republican system:
“I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. “
The Federalist, Paper 57, James Madison
Madison continues on to denounce the practice of elitist abuses in regard to the law and pronounces it the path to tyranny. He states plain language that the true and intended operation of the system “the nature of just and constitutional laws” was the safeguard but availing that it would be the American Spirit and strength as men and women.
“If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America — a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.
If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty.”
Federalist 57
So Madison states the “whole system” was intended to be a bar against favoring any person or group or people, especially an elite legislature of government/ruling class. A debased spirit that tolerates the legislature making laws for others it does not obey. Madison’s explanation is very enlightening. How far have we come to allow this to happen??? Shall we not be ashamed and unworthy of the liberty so hard won by blood, fortune and sorrow that we may be defeated as a debased spirit. Are we so debased of our own right of being that we gladly shackle ourselves to the yoke of oppression???

Nowhere in the Constitution is there any authority granted by the People to the officers, officials and employees of the government to violate any law by virtue of their office. The legislature does not get to pass judgment on itself for the violations of laws, only violations of virtue and ethical infractions. Article I Section 3 Clause 7 granting authority for impeachment only involves the removal from office. The offenders are still liable for criminal acts:

“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office,
and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

Article I Section 3 Clause 7

The Constitution specifically states that the legislators are immune from arrest from and to sessions and are not liable for things said on the floor of their respective assemblies. But that is all the privilege they get. Treason, felonies and Breach of the Peace are expressly stated as charges they are liable for without reservation. Remember the term felonies….

Here is the exact text of the Constitution:
“They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”
Article I Section 6 Clause 2, United States Constitution
The Constitution also states that there are to be:
“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States….”,
Article I Section 9 Clause 8.
The concept has come through a clear line of reasoning form the Debates of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and finally in express terms in the body of the Constitution itself. This is the limit of authorization for the legislature and their very specific and limited immunity. We find no enlargement of privilege that even remotely allows the elected officials the right to violate the laws, either those in existence or even those they create. Such a law is immediately unconstitutional and without authority to make from the outset. It is an overreach of authority, one they do not have even in the plain language of the document itself. Where no authority is given and it is expressly forbidden any attempt to enact of even solicit such a mere piece of legislation is a violation of the Constitution and the oaths they all took.
Now look at the law that the politicians are violating every day the law they would change to dis- enfranchise you with by creating, with a stoke of a pen, a voting block so large that the People, the rightful citizens, would be overwhelmed and their very right to a meaningful vote be stolen:

Federal Immigration and Nationality Act
8 USC Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(iii)
“Any person who . . . encourages or induces an alien to . . . reside . . .
knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such . . . residence is . . .
in violation of law, shall be punished as provided . . . for each alien in
respect to whom such a violation occurs . . . fined under title 18 . . .
imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”

Section 274 felonies under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, INA
274A(a)(1)(A):
A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local
government) commits a federal felony when she or he:

* assists an alien s/he should reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who
lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him
or her to obtain employment, or

* encourages that alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her to an
employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or

* knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions.
Just how many politicians have spoken at pro “immigration” rallies, how many town and city councils have created “sanctuary cities” or even states, all felons. Now remember representatives and senators may be arrested for felonies without regard to the limited immunity, even while in session.
Not only have these criminals committed felonies for encouraging illegal aliens (Yes they are illegal aliens not illegal immigrants, the crooks use immigrant or immigration to make is seem less lawless.) People who invade our borders are aliens and they are illegal. They have never entered the immigration process. They never intended to enter the path to be lawful citizens. They have intentionally broken the law of the federal government, the state governments and something called the Law of Nations. Calling a lemon and apple does not make it an apple……
The example the whole “immigration” thing is an example of the song and dance these varmints go through to pull the wool over your eyes. They will not be above board and be forthright, they are afraid of what would happen if you Citizens knew the truth. Most are attorneys so ignorance of the law should never be a defense, it isn’t to us. There is no privilege to ignorance to the Constitution. If they took the oath they should know what they are signing on for.
Did I mention that you as a citizen, having knowledge of a Felony being or has been committed you can arrest the perpetrator????? Yep all legal like and in some states you may use force…. Remember there is no immunity for felonies for the legislators. So don’t be shy, they will not when they impose their hypocritical garbage on you. You can get more details at Google on citizen’s arrest. Do it right if you decide to. Don’t forget tell your friends, make it a party. So here is notice to them and to you. Tell the Criminals we don’t want any more criminals in office.
God Bless and Good Hunting,
Publius

May 3, 2015

Oppression of Christians in Military Causing their Exodus, Joseph John, Capt USN [c]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Law Enforcement, Military, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama Foreign Policy, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, self-defense, Treason, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 6:00 pm

Joseph R. John
To jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Today at 5:05 AM

America has a Judeo/Christian ethos; 90% of Americans believe in God and 50% of them go to church and synagogue every week. Christian members of the US military are wondering long and hard about joining and/or making the US Armed Forces a career. This concern by Christians to possibly avoid a US Armed Forces that oppresses Christians appears to fit in with Obama’s Social Experiment On Diversity, in order to minimize Christian influence in the US military. The Social Experiment On Diversity that has been changing the make-up of the US Armed Forces is seriously eroding unit cohesiveness, unit morale, and the “Combat Effectiveness “ of the US military.

Chaplains are having their sermons and even the places where they are allowed to pray controlled and censored to be sure their statements are “Politically Correct” and in keeping with the what the Obama civilian appointees in DOD want them to say. Chaplains have been prevented from reading letters from their Cardinals in the pulpit to their parishioners. Chaplains have been prevented from giving bibles to patients in their hospital rooms. Catholic Chaplins who don’t believe in the use of birth control pills and abortion are prevented from preaching their religious beliefs in the pulpit. Army Ranger Chaplain Joseph Lawton was punished and served with a “Letter of Concern” for referring to solace and comfort he receives in his darkest moments by reading the Psalms of King David in the Old Testament of the Bible, while he was conducting a suicide prevention seminar for Combat Veterans suffering from PTSD.

The Defense in Marriage Act, a Federal Law, has been violated and disobeyed by Obama, and Holder without repealing it. Chaplains who support that Federal Law because of their religious beliefs have been discriminated against. Obama’s civilian DOD appointees have been intolerant toward Chaplains who do not believe in same sex marriage, supposedly in the defense of tolerance, to make them comply, which is not only hypocritical, but is bigoted. So if a Chaplain’s well held religious beliefs don’t allow him to support same sex marriage, he is threatened with career ending punishment which would result in his failure to be promoted, and/or would result in his removal from the US Armed Forces. That treatment of Chaplains and Christians who agree with their Chaplains beliefs have been discriminated against and oppressive by the civilian appointees of the Obama administration at DOD.

Military personnel are prevented from having bibles at their desks in their work place, and military base commanders have been instructed not to allow bibles to be placed in base hotel rooms.

Open homosexuality in the US Armed Forces has been approved by Obama’s Executive Orders, in a major “CHANGE” to General George Washington’s 238 year old US Military Regulations. Last year because of the “CHANGE” of General George Washington’s Military Regulations, the US Armed Forces authorized the recruiting of a large influx of gay males and women to join the US military for the first time in US history. Last year 10,400 straight members of the US Armed Forces were sexually assaulted in their barracks and aboard their ships. The Navy has had straight female enlisted women sexually assaulted in their barracks and aboard their ships by lesbian crew members; and nearly 9, 000 female members of the US Armed Forces were sexually assaulted last year.

Gay Rights Political Events and gatherings are now being held on US Military bases and in the Pentagon in violation of US Military Regulations which prohibit political events of any kind. US Military Color guards and military personnel in uniform are now being ordered to march in Gay Rights Parades (a political event) in violation of US Military Regulations, while at the same time, members of the US Armed Forces have been prevented from attending Christian events in their uniforms.

In 2014, at the Iron Mountain VA Hospital in Wisconsin, Chaplain Bob Mueller, relayed an unsettling experience he experienced in a conversation he had with one of Obama’s civilian appointee in the Veterans Administration, when he said “a couple of months ago, an order came down from Washington, DC to all Chaplains in VA Hospitals across the nation, ordering them to cover all icons associated with Christianity in VA Hospitals, like photos of Christ, crosses, and stained glass windows, because there are Christian symbols in stained glass.” Chaplain Mueller was told to “stop talking about Jesus, and to stop reading the scripture out loud.” He said that the Obama administration has issued the same orders “to cover all things associated with Christianity” to all VA Chapels across the country.” Clicking on the below listed link will verify Chaplain Mueller’s report:

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/v/VA-Covers-Religious-Symbols.htm#.VGzFkmdNcVA

The Flag and General Officer, who have always practiced and supported Judeo/Christian ethics, who opposed the hollowing out of the US Armed Forces, and policies that degraded the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US military by the occupant in the Oval Office, have been systematically eliminated over the last 6 years. A total of 195 Flag, General, and Senior Military Officers, who disagreed with Obama’s “Politically Correct” destructive military policies, and his executive Order that changed the US Military into first major military force in the world that openly gay, a new and destructive policy that has negatively affected unit cohesiveness, the morale, and the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces, have been purged by General Dempsey—those that remain have been conditioned not to defend Christianity. Those 195 purged Senior Officers would have opposed the on-going attack on Christians in the US Armed Forces, but they are no longer there to defend the Chaplains and the enlisted Christian personnel. Senior enlisted military personnel who also practiced and supported Judeo/Christian ethics, and disagreed with an openly gay military, tried to utilized their right to complain thru the chain of command, and to express their concerns about the “Social Experiment on Diversity”, have also been purged, and in some cases have been court martialed and dishonorably discharged.

Although the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution guarantees Freedom of Religion, Christian members of the US Armed Forces have had their religious rights systematically violated and oppressed, as previously discussed above and in the below listed article. The suppression of Christianity in the US Armed Forces is triggering an exodus from the US military of many Christians who wanted to make the US military a career when they joined. After their first tour of duty, while witnessing how Chaplains and their Christian religious beliefs were oppressed, they have turned against making the US Armed Forces a career. The elimination of thousands of Christian personnel from the US Armed Forces with their well held religious beliefs and ethics in the ranks, and having them replaced will personnel with a different set of beliefs in keeping with Obama’s beliefs, will change the nature of the US Armed Forces.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WND RADIO

Crackdown on Christians triggers exodus from military

‘They’re starting to wonder, is this going to be a place where I’m welcomed?’

Greg Corombos

Greg Corombos is news director for Radio America.

A leading defender of Christians in the military says the crackdown on the free religious expression of Christians in uniform is increasing despite Pentagon assurances to the contrary, leading active-duty personnel to re-evaluate their careers and young Americans and their parents to reconsider service at all.

Recent discipline for military chaplains dispensing biblical counsel have made national headlines, but a recent piece in the Washington Times suggests enlistment numbers are in danger of dropping as well.

Liberty Institute represents chaplains in two high-profile cases as well as several other personnel reprimanded for their free expression of Christian beliefs. Senior counsel Michael Berry said the American people are paying attention and getting increasingly worried about what’s happening in the military.

“A great deal of Americans of faith, which is still a majority of our country, are looking at the environment and climate within our federal government and military more specifically and seeing case after case, report after report,” Berry said in an interview with WND and Radio America.

He said the growing number of stories is causing committed Christians to ask some uncomfortable questions.

“They’re starting to wonder, ‘Is this going to be a place where I’m welcomed? Is this going to be a place where I’m tolerated? Am I going to be required to keep my faith in the closet, so to speak?’ Or are they going to be allowed, which has always been the practice in our country up until this point, to freely exercise their religion in accordance with their sincerely held beliefs as the Constitution allows?” asked Berry, a military vet who made his own difficult decision to leave the armed forces as he saw religious liberties eroding.

“I was on active duty, and I began to see the writing on the wall,” he said. “I realized this is not the military I grew up in. This is not the military that I was raised to believe in and to support. It’s changing, and I realized it was time for me to make a move.”

And Berry is not the only one thinking long and hard about military service as the right career path.

“I’ve had a lot of mothers and fathers ask me. They say, ‘Mike, I served and my son or daughter wants to follow in my footsteps. But, as proud as I am of my military service, I’m not sure I want my son or daughter to be serving in our military anymore, given what’s going on,’” Berry said. “That’s very scary for our country if that kind of conversation and dialogue is now happening.”

It’s difficult to get solid numbers on the impact religious freedom restrictions are having on recruiting and retention. Berry said the military almost always keep mum about drops in recruiting and retention and it never breaks down the reasons for the declines.

“It doesn’t behoove the military to report that they’re having problems with retention,” he said. “A group like a chaplain’s corps is not going to say, ‘We’re having a hard time attracting new chaplains’ because that doesn’t present them in a very favorable light.”

Liberty Institute is providing counsel for Navy Chaplain Wes Modder, an Assemblies of God minister who was removed from his position after answering questions from personnel who wanted to know what the Bible said about homosexuality and sex outside of marriage.

Another client is Army Ranger Chaplain Joseph Lawhorn, who was served with a letter of concern after a soldier complained about Lawhorn telling a suicide-prevention seminar that in his darkest moments he found comfort and solace in the Psalms of King David while also endorsing many secular resources.

Berry said the protest was baseless and can be seen as opportunistic by any objective analysis.

“[The soldier] didn’t even complain to Chaplain Lawhorn or the chain of command,” he said. “He went and complained to an outside media outlet, who then published the story. That’s what really precipitated that whole incident and led to Chaplain Lawhorn being punished.”

In the Washington Times article, Defense Department spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen is quoted as extolling religious freedom and how it continues to be cherished in the military.

“The Department of Defense respects, places a high value on and supports by policy the rights of members of the military services to observe the tenets of their respective religions or to have no religious beliefs,” said Christensen in the article.

“The mission of the chaplain corps is to provide care and the opportunity for service members, their families and other authorized personnel to exercise their constitutional right to the free exercise of religion,” he said.

But Berry said the impressive rhetoric is not matched by the facts.

“If what the DOD spokesperson is saying is true, then why on earth are chaplains like Chaplain Lawhorn and Chaplain Modder being threatened with career-ending punishment?” he asked. “Simply because they hold religious beliefs that are no longer popular? I would seriously question the DOD’s commitment to religious freedom is that’s allowed to stand without challenge.”

Lawhorn and Modder join other Liberty Institute clients whose careers are in limbo over their expression of personal beliefs. The list includes an Air Force senior master sergeant whose career is in doubt after he voiced support for traditional marriage. A commanding officer in the U.S. Army is fighting back after complaining that heterosexual soldiers are being treated unfairly compared to homosexuals.

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Berry said. “There are dozens of cases beyond what Liberty Institute handles dealing with religious hostility in this country. And like I said, within the military, it’s on the rise.”

While the Defense Department publicly professes great respect for religious freedom, anti-Christian activists are not hiding their agenda. The Washington Times article also features Military Religious Freedom Foundation President Michael Weinstein, who says chaplains who hold to biblical views on sexuality need to keep their mouths shut or find another line of work.

“You can continue to believe that internally, but if you have to act on that, the right thing to do is to get out of the U.S. military, because you have no right to tell a member of the military that they’re inferior because of the way they were born,” Weinstein is quoted as saying.

Berry finds that analysis legally ludicrous.

“Mr. Weinstein could not be more legally wrong,” he said. “The Constitution, federal law and military regulations all forcefully protect the right of service members to hold and to express their sincerely held religious beliefs. The military has a very high legal standard they have to meet if they’re going to try to censor or prohibit the free exercise of a service member’s sincerely held beliefs.”

Crackdown on Christians triggers exodus from military

[Secession, only through secession. And, for those of you who fear the US Military invading those states who secede, there is no US Military without Judeo-Christians serving. Secession. Add this post to the “Intermediate Argument for Secession”. Secession.]

April 15, 2015

Some Jefferson Quotes

Filed under: Business, crime control, Foreign Affairs, gun control, Political Commentary, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 8:32 pm

“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe .”
— Thomas Jefferson

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
— Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property – until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

On Abraham Lincoln and the Inversion of American History, by Boyd D. Cathey, [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Econonics, Education, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism, Treason, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:24 pm

On Abraham Lincoln and the Inversion of American History
By Boyd D. Cathey • April 15, 2015 • 1,700 Words • 15 Comments
• Reply
shutterstock_115238551

Back in 1990 in Richmond, Virginia, as part of the Museum of the Confederacy’s lecture series, the late Professor Ludwell Johnson, author and professor of history at William and Mary College, presented a fascinating lecture titled, “The Lincoln Puzzle: Searching for the Real Honest Abe.” Commenting on the assassination of Lincoln now 150 years ago, here is a portion of Dr. Johnson’s prepared remarks:

[After his death] for many, Lincoln became a symbolic Christ, for some, perhaps, more than symbolic. They could scarcely help themselves, the parallels were so striking. He was the savior of the Union, God’s chosen instrument for bringing the millenium to suffering humanity, born in a log cabin (close enough to a stable), son of a carpenter. . . . He was a railsplitter (close enough to carpentry), a humble man with the human touch, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, called by his followers to supreme greatness, struck down by Satan’s minions on Good Friday.

Said one minister in his Black Friday sermon: ‘It is no blasphemy against the Son of God and the Savior of Men that we declare the fitness of the slaying of the second Father of our Republic on the anniversary of the day on which he was slain. Jesus Christ died for the world, Abraham Lincoln died for his country’. . . . Another spoke of his ‘mighty sacrifice . . . for the sins of his people.’ Yet another proposed that not April 15, but Good Friday be considered the anniversary of Lincoln’s death. ‘We should make it a movable fast and ever keep it beside the cross and grave of our blessed Lord, in whose service for whose gospel he became a victim and a martyr.’

For years after the war the rumor persisted that Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield was empty. Lincoln was also frequently compared to Moses, who led his people to the Promised Land that he was not allowed to enter, and, like Moses after viewing Canaan, was taken by death.

It is right and fitting, then, given the legacy now increasingly laid at Lincoln’s feet, the resultant and seemingly unstoppable growth of the “Behemoth” managerial state that has occurred since his presidency, and the anniversary of his death, to examine again his actual meaning in the context of our history.

Probably too much has been written about Abraham Lincoln. Most school age children know almost nothing about him, except that “he freed the slaves,” which, of course, is patently untrue: he freed not one slave. Yet, his looming presence as a pre-eminent national lodestar, his role as a kind of holy icon after death, and the radical task he accomplished in completely restructuring the original American nation that the Founders created, remain constantly with us. In a real and palpable sense, as the text excerpted from Professor Johnson shows, Lincoln immediately became the founder and canonized “saint” of a “new” nation, in which the ideas of “democracy” and “equality” were enshrined as bedrock principles.

As the late Professor Mel Bradford illustrates abundantly in his signal volume, Original Intentions, with Lincoln and his successors, concepts rejected outright by most of the Founders and eschewed by the Authors of the Constitution, replaced the original understanding of what this nation was supposed to be and represent. The Gettsyburg Address makes clear that Lincoln based the American founding on the Declaration of the Independence (“Four score and seven years ago….”) and on his shaky reading of that war time document.

As such, today the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that are the most heinous, the most grave, in our benighted land are “crimes” against “equality,” whether committed against racial minorities, or against “women,” or against homosexuals who want to force the rest of us to fully accept their lifestyle…and “crimes” against “full democracy,” including voter IDs, and preventing illegals from full participation in all the goodies that the Federal government can dole

This is not to say that there is an unbroken, direct line connecting the “Lincolnian Revolution” of the 1860s with the public and private defecated culture and corrupt and managerial political system that engulf us today. Indeed, the history of the USA since 1865 is filled with vicissitudes and “curves and variations.” It would be unfair perhaps to blame Lincoln directly for these present happenings. Indeed, more than likely, as a 19th century liberal, he would be offended and shocked by much of what besets us today culturally and socially. But Lincoln, like other leaders of 19th century Liberalism, opened the door to future, much more radical change. So, while it is assuredly not correct to hold him responsible for, example, same sex marriage, there is a torturous genealogy that can be traced without injury to the historical narrative.

Of those radical changes that came as a result of the Lincolnian Revolution and that directly affect us today, the cataclysmic effects of the (illegally passed) 14th Amendment must be highlighted. Indeed, one could suggest that it is under the rubric of the 14th Amendment that most all of our present decay and distress has occurred. If there had been no 14th Amendment, would most of the horrendous court decisions we’ve seen have been rendered? Yet, the 14th Amendment grows directly out of the consequences of Southern defeat in 1865, in a War begun by Abraham Lincoln.

Certainly, there are those who would argue that the “Reagan years” or even the 1920s represented respites in this ongoing revolution. Nevertheless, the general and overwhelming propulsive movement, the historical dynamic, has been in just one direction. In sum, the triumph of the Lincolnian Revolution in the American nation was, in fact, the real triumph of the 19th century “Idea of Progress” and the belief in the inevitable and continuing liberation and enhancement materially and intellectually, of human kind.

It is interesting, I think, to focus the great Iliad of the Confederacy in the context of the brutal and vicious universal war between the forces of 19th liberalism and the forces of tradition and counter-revolution. The Confederacy, the old South, played a not unimportant role in that conflict, and, even if most Southerners did not recognize that context at the time, many European traditionalists, Legitimist royalists, and Catholics most certainly did.

In my research over the years, specifically while I studied in Spain and Switzerland, and then taught in Argentina, I was struck by the fact that almost without exception, all 19 th century traditional conservatives, Legitimists, and Catholics not only favored the Confederacy in its crusade against the North, but they did so enthusiastically, to the point that thousands of European traditionalists found their way to cities like New Orleans to volunteer to fight for the Confederate cause. As many as 1,800 former soldiers of the old Bourbon Kingdom of Naples (Two Sicilies) arrived in Louisiana in early 1861 to offer their services to the South after their defeat by the arms of the liberal Kingdom of Piedmont-Savoy. Volunteers from the Carlist Catholic traditionalists in Spain came by way, mostly, of Mexico. According to Catalan historian, David Odalric de Caixal, as many as many as 4,000 Carlists enlisted in Confederate ranks, many in the Louisiana Tigers (see M. Estella, “Un historiador investiga la presencia de carlistas en la Guerra de Secesion,” El Diario de Navarra [Pamplona], December 9, 2011). French Legitimists (the “ultra-royalists” who opposed the “democracy” of the Citizen-King Louis Philippe) also volunteered, mostly notably the Prince Camille Armand de Polignac, a hero of the battle of Mansfield.

The Italian Duchy of Modena, under its duke Francesco V (called by modern writer and historian Sir Harold Acton, “the most reactionary ruler in all of Europe”), actually recognized the Confederacy. And Pope Pius IX offered de facto recognition to the Confederate cause, and his sympathies were quite open, as were the Confederate proclivities of the official publication of the Vatican, “La Civilta Catolica.” The Crown of Thorns that Pius IX wove with his own hands for President Jefferson Davis while Davis was a post-war prisoner in Fortress Monroe remains in a museum in New Orleans, a memorable relic of papal sympathy for the Confederacy.

And who can forget the favor given by and collaboration of the Habsburg emperor of Mexico, Maximilian? It was to his empire that many Confederate soldiers fled after Appomattox and Palmito Ranch. (Recall the John Wayne classic, “The Undefeated,” and other cinematic representations of that relationship?)

The traditionalist press in Europe openly believed that the Confederacy was part of a much greater conflict—a conflict, a universalized war, to halt the advance of the effects of the French Revolution, and to–if possible–reverse the worst aspects that resulted from the opening of that Pandora’s Box. And in particular, they visualized the Confederacy as a co-belligerent in the effort to stop the growth of “democratism” and “egalitarianism.”

Certainly, one can debate if this vision by European traditionalist conservatives was completely valid, or mere fancy. But the reasons supporting it, given our subsequent history, are strong in an ex post facto way.

What we are talking about is, then, the triumph in the 19 th century of a radical transformation in the way our society and our citizens look at history and change. Indeed, the result was the enthronement of the “Idea of Progress” as the norm, such that movement in history always is “progressive” or, better described, “a la Sinistra”–to the Left. And, given this template, does not the ongoing Leftward—”progressive”—movement of both Democrats AND Republicans in the US, as well as both Socialist and establishment “conservative” political groupings in Europe, make sense?

Until this narrative–this sanctified and blessed “progressivist” idealization–is overturned and reversed, we shall continue to be at the mercy of faux-conservatives who continue to lead us into more Revolution, even if by a slightly different route from the hardcore revolutionaries.

Thus, Professor Johnson’s account of the apotheosis of Lincoln and the enshrining of the “Lincoln Myth” go hand-in-hand with the mythologization of Garibaldi in Italy, or of Louis Blanc in France, as symbolic of what happened to an older, pre-Revolutionary civilization…and to the “exceptional” American nation along the way.

In the USA it really began in earnest, as Ludwell Johnson recounts, almost immediately after Lincoln’s death, and it continues full force today.

April 4, 2015

thereligionofpeace.com [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, crime control, Econonics, Education, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Iran, Islam, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Racism, Religion, US Constitution, Valerie Jarrett, Yemen — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:51 pm

TheReligionofPeace.com
Guide to Understanding Islam

What does the
Religion of Peace
Teach About…

Violence

Question:

Does the Quran really contain dozens of verses promoting violence?

Summary Answer:

The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called ‘hypocrites’ and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.

Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.

The context of violent passages is more ambiguous than might be expected of a perfect book from a loving God, however this can work both ways. Most of today’s Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book’s call to arms according to their own moral preconceptions about justifiable violence. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology.

Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. Muhammad’s own martial legacy – and that of his companions – along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Quran have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.

The Quran:

Quran (2:191-193) – “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing…

but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)” (Translation is from the Noble Quran) The historical context of this passage is not defensive warfare, since Muhammad and his Muslims had just relocated to Medina and were not under attack by their Meccan adversaries. In fact, the verses urge offensive warfare, in that Muslims are to drive Meccans out of their own city (which they later did). The use of the word “persecution” by some Muslim translators is thus disingenuous (the actual Muslim words for persecution – “idtihad” – and oppression – a variation of “z-l-m” – do not appear in the verse). The actual Arabic comes from “fitna” which can mean disbelief, or the disorder that results from unbelief or temptation. Taken as a whole, the context makes clear that violence is being authorized until “religion is for Allah” – ie. unbelievers desist in their unbelief.

Quran (2:244) – “Then fight in the cause of Allah, and know that Allah Heareth and knoweth all things.”

Quran (2:216) – “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.” Not only does this verse establish that violence can be virtuous, but it also contradicts the myth that fighting is intended only in self-defense, since the audience was obviously not under attack at the time. From the Hadith, we know that this verse was narrated at a time that Muhammad was actually trying to motivate his people into raiding merchant caravans for loot.

Quran (3:56) – “As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help.”

Quran (3:151) – “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority”. This speaks directly of polytheists, yet it also includes Christians, since they believe in the Trinity (ie. what Muhammad incorrectly believed to be ‘joining companions to Allah’).

Quran (4:74) – “Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.” The martyrs of Islam are unlike the early Christians, who were led meekly to the slaughter. These Muslims are killed in battle as they attempt to inflict death and destruction for the cause of Allah. This is the theological basis for today’s suicide bombers.

Quran (4:76) – “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah…”

Quran (4:89) – “They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks.”

Quran (4:95) – “Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home). Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward ” This passage criticizes “peaceful” Muslims who do not join in the violence, letting them know that they are less worthy in Allah’s eyes. It also demolishes the modern myth that “Jihad” doesn’t mean holy war in the Quran, but rather a spiritual struggle. Not only is this Arabic word used in this passage, but it is clearly not referring to anything spiritual, since the physically disabled are given exemption. (The Hadith reveals the context of the passage to be in response to a blind man’s protest that he is unable to engage in Jihad and this is reflected in other translations of the verse). Allah will allow the disabled into Paradise, but will provide a larger reward to those who are able to kill in his cause.

Quran (4:104) – “And be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they (too) suffer pain as you suffer pain…” Is pursuing an injured and retreating enemy really an act of self-defense?

Quran (5:33) – “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement”

Quran (8:12) – “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them” No reasonable person would interpret this to mean a spiritual struggle.

Quran (8:15) – “O ye who believe! When ye meet those who disbelieve in battle, turn not your backs to them. (16)Whoso on that day turneth his back to them, unless maneuvering for battle or intent to join a company, he truly hath incurred wrath from Allah, and his habitation will be hell, a hapless journey’s end.”

Quran (8:39) – “And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion should be only for Allah” Some translations interpret “fitna” as “persecution”, but the traditional understanding of this word is not supported by the historical context (See notes for 2:193). The Meccans were simply refusing Muhammad access to their city during Haj. Other Muslims were allowed to travel there – just not as an armed group, since Muhammad had declared war on Mecca prior to his eviction. The Meccans were also acting in defense of their religion, since it was Muhammad’s intention to destroy their idols and establish Islam by force (which he later did). Hence the critical part of this verse is to fight until “religion is only for Allah”, meaning that the true justification of violence was the unbelief of the opposition. According to the Sira (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 324) Muhammad further explains that “Allah must have no rivals.”

Quran (8:57) – “If thou comest on them in the war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, that haply they may remember.”

Quran (8:67) – “It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he had made a great slaughter in the land…”

Quran (8:59-60) – “And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip (Allah’s Purpose). Lo! they cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy.”

Quran (8:65) – “O Prophet, exhort the believers to fight…”

Quran (9:5) – “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them.” According to this verse, the best way of staying safe from Muslim violence is to convert to Islam (prayer (salat) and the poor tax (zakat) are among the religion’s Five Pillars). This popular claim that the Quran only inspires violence within the context of self-defense is seriously challenged by this passage as well, since the Muslims to whom it was written were obviously not under attack. Had they been, then there would have been no waiting period (earlier verses make it a duty for Muslims to fight in self-defense, even during the sacred months). The historical context is Mecca after the idolaters were subjugated by Muhammad and posed no threat. Once the Muslims had power, they violently evicted those unbelievers who would not convert.

Quran (9:14) – “Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people.” Humiliating and hurting non-believers not only has the blessing of Allah, but it is ordered as a means of carrying out his punishment and even “healing” the hearts of Muslims.

Quran (9:20) – “Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah’s way are of much greater worth in Allah’s sight. These are they who are triumphant.” The Arabic word interpreted as “striving” in this verse is the same root as “Jihad”. The context is obviously holy war.

Quran (9:29) – “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” “People of the Book” refers to Christians and Jews. According to this verse, they are to be violently subjugated, with the sole justification being their religious status. Verse 9:33 tells Muslims that Allah has charted them to make Islam “superior over all religions.” This chapter was one of the final “revelations” from Allah and it set in motion the tenacious military expansion, in which Muhammad’s companions managed to conquer two-thirds of the Christian world in the next 100 years. Islam is intended to dominate all other people and faiths.

Quran (9:30) – “And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!”

Quran (9:38-39) – “O ye who believe! what is the matter with you, that, when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling heavily to the earth? Do ye prefer the life of this world to the Hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the Hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place.” This is a warning to those who refuse to fight, that they will be punished with Hell.

Quran (9:41) – “Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! That is best for you if ye but knew.” See also the verse that follows (9:42) – “If there had been immediate gain (in sight), and the journey easy, they would (all) without doubt have followed thee, but the distance was long, (and weighed) on them” This contradicts the myth that Muslims are to fight only in self-defense, since the wording implies that battle will be waged a long distance from home (in another country and on Christian soil, in this case, according to the historians).

Quran (9:73) – “O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination.” Dehumanizing those who reject Islam, by reminding Muslims that unbelievers are merely firewood for Hell, makes it easier to justify slaughter. It also explains why today’s devout Muslims have little regard for those outside the faith.

Quran (9:88) – “But the Messenger, and those who believe with him, strive and fight with their wealth and their persons: for them are (all) good things: and it is they who will prosper.”

Quran (9:111) – “Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Quran: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme.” How does the Quran define a true believer?

Quran (9:123) – “O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness.”

Quran (17:16) – “And when We wish to destroy a town, We send Our commandment to the people of it who lead easy lives, but they transgress therein; thus the word proves true against it, so We destroy it with utter destruction.” Note that the crime is moral transgression, and the punishment is “utter destruction.” (Before ordering the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden first issued Americans an invitation to Islam).

Quran (18:65-81) – This parable lays the theological groundwork for honor killings, in which a family member is murdered because they brought shame to the family, either through apostasy or perceived moral indiscretion. The story (which is not found in any Jewish or Christian source) tells of Moses encountering a man with “special knowledge” who does things which don’t seem to make sense on the surface, but are then justified according to later explanation. One such action is to murder a youth for no apparent reason (74). However, the wise man later explains that it was feared that the boy would “grieve” his parents by “disobedience and ingratitude.” He was killed so that Allah could provide them a ‘better’ son. (Note: This is one reason why honor killing is sanctioned by Sharia. Reliance of the Traveler (Umdat al-Saliq) says that punishment for murder is not applicable when a parent or grandparent kills their offspring (o.1.1-2).)

Quran (21:44) – “We gave the good things of this life to these men and their fathers until the period grew long for them; See they not that We gradually reduce the land (in their control) from its outlying borders? Is it then they who will win?”

Quran (25:52) – “Therefore listen not to the Unbelievers, but strive against them with the utmost strenuousness…” “Strive against” is Jihad – obviously not in the personal context. It’s also significant to point out that this is a Meccan verse.

Quran (33:60-62) – “If the hypocrites, and those in whose hearts is a disease, and the alarmists in the city do not cease, We verily shall urge thee on against them, then they will be your neighbors in it but a little while. Accursed, they will be seized wherever found and slain with a (fierce) slaughter.” This passage sanctions the slaughter (rendered “merciless” and “horrible murder” in other translations) against three groups: Hypocrites (Muslims who refuse to “fight in the way of Allah” (3:167) and hence don’t act as Muslims should), those with “diseased hearts” (which include Jews and Christians 5:51-52), and “alarmists” or “agitators who include those who merely speak out against Islam, according to Muhammad’s biographers. It is worth noting that the victims are to be sought out by Muslims, which is what today’s terrorists do. If this passage is meant merely to apply to the city of Medina, then it is unclear why it is included in Allah’s eternal word to Muslim generations.

Quran (47:3-4) – “Those who disbelieve follow falsehood, while those who believe follow the truth from their Lord… So, when you meet (in fight Jihad in Allah’s Cause), those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly (on them, i.e. take them as captives)… If it had been Allah’s Will, He Himself could certainly have punished them (without you). But (He lets you fight), in order to test you, some with others. But those who are killed in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost.” Those who reject Allah are to be killed in Jihad. The wounded are to be held captive for ransom. The only reason Allah doesn’t do the dirty work himself is to to test the faithfulness of Muslims. Those who kill pass the test.

Quran (47:35) – “Be not weary and faint-hearted, crying for peace, when ye should be uppermost (Shakir: “have the upper hand”) for Allah is with you,”

Quran (48:17) – “There is no blame for the blind, nor is there blame for the lame, nor is there blame for the sick (that they go not forth to war). And whoso obeyeth Allah and His messenger, He will make him enter Gardens underneath which rivers flow; and whoso turneth back, him will He punish with a painful doom.” Contemporary apologists sometimes claim that Jihad means ‘spiritual struggle.’ Is so, then why are the blind, lame and sick exempted? This verse also says that those who do not fight will suffer torment in hell.

Quran (48:29) – “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard (ruthless) against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves” Islam is not about treating everyone equally. There are two very distinct standards that are applied based on religious status. Also the word used for ‘hard’ or ‘ruthless’ in this verse shares the same root as the word translated as ‘painful’ or severe’ in verse 16.

Quran (61:4) – “Surely Allah loves those who fight in His way” Religion of Peace, indeed! The verse explicitly refers to “battle array” meaning that it is speaking of physical conflict. This is followed by (61:9): “He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist.” (See next verse, below). Infidels who resist Islamic rule are to be fought.

Quran (61:10-12) – “O You who believe! Shall I guide you to a commerce that will save you from a painful torment. That you believe in Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad ), and that you strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives, that will be better for you, if you but know! (If you do so) He will forgive you your sins, and admit you into Gardens under which rivers flow, and pleasant dwelling in Gardens of ‘Adn – Eternity [‘Adn (Edn) Paradise], that is indeed the great success.” This verse refers to physical battle in order to make Islam victorious over other religions (see above). It uses the Arabic word, Jihad.

Quran (66:9) – “O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be stern with them. Hell will be their home, a hapless journey’s end.” The root word of “Jihad” is used again here. The context is clearly holy war, and the scope of violence is broadened to include “hypocrites” – those who call themselves Muslims but do not act as such.

Other verses calling Muslims to Jihad can be found here at AnsweringIslam.org

From the Hadith:

Bukhari (52:177) – Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”

Bukhari (52:256) – The Prophet… was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The Prophet replied, “They (i.e. women and children) are from them (i.e. pagans).” In this command, Muhammad establishes that it is permissible to kill non-combatants in the process of killing a perceived enemy. This provides justification for the many Islamic terror bombings.

Bukhari (52:65) – The Prophet said, ‘He who fights that Allah’s Word, Islam, should be superior, fights in Allah’s Cause. Muhammad’s words are the basis for offensive Jihad – spreading Islam by force. This is how it was understood by his companions, and by the terrorists of today.

Bukhari (52:220) – Allah’s Apostle said… ‘I have been made victorious with terror’

Abu Dawud (14:2526) – The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: Three things are the roots of faith: to refrain from (killing) a person who utters, “There is no god but Allah” and not to declare him unbeliever whatever sin he commits, and not to excommunicate him from Islam for his any action; and jihad will be performed continuously since the day Allah sent me as a prophet until the day the last member of my community will fight with the Dajjal (Antichrist)

Abu Dawud (14:2527) – The Prophet said: Striving in the path of Allah (jihad) is incumbent on you along with every ruler, whether he is pious or impious

Muslim (1:33) – the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah

Bukhari (8:387) – Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah’. And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally.”

Muslim (1:30) – “The Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah.”

Bukhari (52:73) – “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Know that Paradise is under the shades of swords’.”

Bukhari (11:626) – [Muhammad said:] “I decided to order a man to lead the prayer and then take a flame to burn all those, who had not left their houses for the prayer, burning them alive inside their homes.”

Muslim (1:149) – “Abu Dharr reported: I said: Messenger of Allah, which of the deeds is the best? He (the Holy Prophet) replied: Belief in Allah and Jihad in His cause…”

Muslim (20:4645) – “…He (the Messenger of Allah) did that and said: There is another act which elevates the position of a man in Paradise to a grade one hundred (higher), and the elevation between one grade and the other is equal to the height of the heaven from the earth. He (Abu Sa’id) said: What is that act? He replied: Jihad in the way of Allah! Jihad in the way of Allah!”

Muslim (20:4696) – “the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: ‘One who died but did not fight in the way of Allah nor did he express any desire (or determination) for Jihad died the death of a hypocrite.'”

Muslim (19:4321-4323) – Three separate hadith in which Muhammad shrugs over the news that innocent children were killed in a raid by his men against unbelievers. His response: “They are of them (meaning the enemy).”

Muslim (19:4294) – “When the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him… He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war… When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them… If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them.”

Bukhari 1:35 “The person who participates in (Holy Battles) in Allah’s cause and nothing compels him do so except belief in Allah and His Apostle, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward, or booty ( if he survives) or will be admitted to Paradise ( if he is killed).”

Tabari 7:97 The morning after the murder of Ashraf, the Prophet declared, “Kill any Jew who falls under your power.” Ashraf was a poet, killed by Muhammad’s men because he insulted Islam. Here, Muhammad widens the scope of his orders to kill. An innocent Jewish businessman was then slain by his Muslim partner, merely for being non-Muslim.

Tabari 9:69 “Killing Unbelievers is a small matter to us” The words of Muhammad, prophet of Islam.

Tabari 17:187 “‘By God, our religion (din) from which we have departed is better and more correct than that which these people follow. Their religion does not stop them from shedding blood, terrifying the roads, and seizing properties.’ And they returned to their former religion.” The words of a group of Christians who had converted to Islam, but realized their error after being shocked by the violence and looting committed in the name of Allah. The price of their decision to return to a religion of peace was that the men were beheaded and the woman and children enslaved by the caliph Ali.

Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 484: – “Allah said, ‘A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives. A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land. Muhammad, you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring. But Allah desires killing them to manifest the religion.’”

Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 990: – Lest anyone think that cutting off someone’s head while screaming ‘Allah Akbar!’ is a modern creation, here is an account of that very practice under Muhammad, who seems to approve.

Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 992: – “Fight everyone in the way of Allah and kill those who disbelieve in Allah.” Muhammad’s instructions to his men prior to a military raid.

Saifur Rahman, The Sealed Nectar p.227-228 – “Embrace Islam… If you two accept Islam, you will remain in command of your country; but if your refuse my Call, you’ve got to remember that all of your possessions are perishable. My horsemen will appropriate your land, and my Prophethood will assume preponderance over your kingship.” One of several letters from Muhammad to rulers of other countries. The significance is that the recipients were not making war or threatening Muslims. Their subsequent defeat and subjugation by Muhammad’s armies was justified merely on the basis of their unbelief.

Additional Notes:

Other than the fact that Muslims haven’t killed every non-Muslim under their domain, there is very little else that they can point to as proof that theirs is a peaceful, tolerant religion. Where Islam is dominant (as in the Middle East and Pakistan) religious minorities suffer brutal persecution with little resistance. Where Islam is in the minority (as in Thailand, the Philippines and Europe) there is the threat of violence if Muslim demands are not met. Either situation seems to provide a justification for religious terrorism, which is persistent and endemic to Islamic fundamentalism.

The reasons are obvious and begin with the Quran. Few verses of Islam’s most sacred text can be construed to fit the contemporary virtues of religious tolerance and universal brotherhood. Those that do are earlier “Meccan” verses which are obviously abrogated by later ones. The example of Muhammad is that Islam is a religion of peace when Muslims do not have the power and numbers on their side. Once they do, then things change.

Many Muslims are peaceful and do not want to believe what the Quran plainly says. They reach subjectively for textual context across different suras to try and mitigate the harsher passages. Even though the Quran itself claims to be clear and complete, Muslim apologists speak of the “risks” of trying to interpret the verses without their “assistance.” Like many religious people, they want the text to fit their pre-established moral framework.

Far from being mere history or theological construct, the violent verses of the Quran have played a key role in very real massacre and genocide. This includes the brutal slaughter of tens of millions of Hindus for five centuries beginning around 1000 AD with Mahmud of Ghazni’s bloody conquest. Both he and the later Tamerlane (Islam’s Genghis Khan) slaughtered an untold number merely for defending their temples from destruction. Buddhism was very nearly wiped off the Indian subcontinent. Judaism and Christianity met the same fate (albeit more slowly) in areas conquered by Muslim armies, including the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe, including today’s Turkey. Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of a proud Persian people is despised by Muslims and barely survives in modern Iran.

So ingrained is violence in the religion that Islam has never really stopped being at war, either with other religions or with itself.

Muhammad was a military leader, laying siege to towns, massacring the men, raping their women, enslaving their children, and taking the property of others as his own. On several occasions he rejected offers of surrender from the besieged inhabitants and even butchered captives. He actually inspired his followers to battle when they did not feel it was right to fight, promising them slaves and booty if they did and threatening them with Hell if they did not. Muhammad allowed his men to rape traumatized women captured in battle, usually on the very day their husbands and family members were slaughtered.

It is important to emphasize that, for the most part, Muslim armies waged aggressive campaigns, and the religion’s most dramatic military conquests were made by the actual companions of Muhammad in the decades following his death. The early Islamic principle of warfare was that the civilian population of a town was to be destroyed (ie. men executed, women and children taken as slaves) if they defended themselves. Although modern apologists often claim that Muslims are only supposed to attack in self-defense, this is an oxymoron that is flatly contradicted by the accounts of Islamic historians and others that go back to the time of Muhammad.

Consider the example of the Qurayza Jews, who were completely obliterated only five years after Muhammad arrived in Medina. Their leader opted to stay neutral when their town was besieged by a Meccan army that was sent to take revenge for Muhammad’s deadly caravan raids. The tribe killed no one from either side and even surrendered peacefully to Muhammad after the Meccans had been turned back. Yet the prophet of Islam had every male member of the Qurayza beheaded, and every woman and child enslaved, even raping one of the captives himself (what Muslim apologists might refer to as “same day marriage”).

One of Islam’s most revered modern scholars, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, openly sanctions offensive Jihad: “In the Jihad which you are seeking, you look for the enemy and invade him. This type of Jihad takes place only when the Islamic state is invading other [countries] in order to spread the word of Islam and to remove obstacles standing in its way.” Elsewhere, he notes: “Islam has the right to take the initiative…this is God’s religion and it is for the whole world. It has the right to destroy all obstacles in the form of institutions and traditions … it attacks institutions and traditions to release human beings from their poisonous influences, which distort human nature and curtail human freedom. Those who say that Islamic Jihad was merely for the defense of the ‘homeland of Islam’ diminish the greatness of the Islamic way of life.”

The widely respected Dictionary of Islam defines Jihad as “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Qur’an and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims…[Quoting from the Hanafi school, Hedaya, 2:140, 141.], “The destruction of the sword is incurred by infidels, although they be not the first aggressors, as appears from various passages in the traditions which are generally received to this effect.”

Dr. Salah al-Sawy, the chief member of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America, stated in 2009 that “the Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihad at this time,” tacitly affirming the legitimacy of violence for the cause of Islamic rule – bound only by the capacity for success. (source)

Muhammad’s failure to leave a clear line of succession resulted in perpetual internal war following his death. Those who knew him best first fought to keep remote tribes from leaving Islam and reverting to their preferred religion (the Ridda or ‘Apostasy wars’). Then, within the closer community, early Meccan converts battled later ones. Hostility developed between those immigrants who had traveled with Muhammad to Mecca and the Ansar at Medina who had helped them settle in. Finally there was a violent struggle within Muhammad’s own family between his favorite wife and favorite daughter – a jagged schism that has left Shias and Sunnis at each others’ throats to this day.

The strangest and most untrue thing that can be said about Islam is that it is a Religion of Peace. If every standard by which the West is judged and condemned (slavery, imperialism, intolerance, misogyny, sexual repression, warfare…) were applied equally to Islam, the verdict would be devastating. Islam never gives up what it conquers, be it religion, culture, language or life. Neither does it make apologies or any real effort at moral progress. It is the least open to dialogue and the most self-absorbed. It is convinced of its own perfection, yet brutally shuns self-examination and represses criticism.

This is what makes the Quran’s verses of violence so dangerous. They are given the weight of divine command. While Muslim terrorists take them as literally as anything else in their holy book, and understand that Islam is incomplete without Jihad, moderates offer little to contradict them – outside of opinion. Indeed, what do they have? Speaking of peace and love may win over the ignorant, but when every twelfth verse of Islam’s holiest book either speaks to Allah’s hatred for non-Muslims or calls for their death, forced conversion, or subjugation, it’s little wonder that sympathy for terrorism runs as deeply as it does in the broader community – even if most Muslims personally prefer not to interpret their religion in this way.

Although scholars like Ibn Khaldun, one of Islam’s most respected philosophers, understood that “the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force”, many other Muslims are either unaware or willfully ignorant of the Quran’s near absence of verses that preach universal non-violence. Their understanding of Islam comes from what they are taught by others. In the West, it is typical for believers to think that their religion must be like Christianity – preaching the New Testament virtues of peace, love, and tolerance – because Muslims are taught that Islam is supposed to be superior in every way. They are somewhat surprised and embarrassed to learn that the evidence of the Quran and the bloody history of Islam are very much in contradiction to this.

Others simply accept the violence. In 1991, a Palestinian couple in America was convicted of stabbing their daughter to death for being too Westernized. A family friend came to their defense, excoriating the jury for not understanding the “culture”, claiming that the father was merely following “the religion” and saying that the couple had to “discipline their daughter or lose respect.” (source). In 2011, unrepentant Palestinian terrorists, responsible for the brutal murders of civilians, women and children explicitly in the name of Allah were treated to a luxurious “holy pilgrimage” to Mecca by the Saudi king – without a single Muslim voice raised in protest.

For their part, Western liberals would do well not to sacrifice critical thinking to the god of political correctness, or look for reasons to bring other religion down to the level of Islam merely to avoid the existential truth that this it is both different and dangerous.

There are just too many Muslims who take the Quran literally… and too many others who couldn’t care less about the violence done in the name of Islam.

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March 10, 2015

1962 all over again, read pp 1, where are the media???

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, China, Foreign Affairs, Global Intel, Historical context, Media Check, naval assault ships, Political Commentary, PRC — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:48 pm

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February 16, 2015

Freedom of Speech, censorship, Islam, how about the 2nd Amendment? [nc]

Filed under: Anti-American Politicians, Econonics, Elections, Islam, Law Enforcement, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama Foreign Policy, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 6:36 pm

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Religion, Europe and Denmark
Shooting at cartoonists, again
Feb 15th 2015, 15:31 by B.C.

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Copenhagen cafe attacked by terrorist

THE terrorist shootings in Denmark are the latest skirmish in Europe’s ongoing contest between freedom of expression and radical Islamists, and as with January’s attacks in Paris, they targeted both the press and the Jewish community. On Saturday afternoon, one person was killed and three police officers wounded when a gunman opened fire on a free-speech debate at a Copenhagen cafe (pictured) hosted by a controversial Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks. Hours later, a Jewish man was killed and another two police were injured near a synagogue. Today, police said they had killed the presumed perpetrator of both attacks after he opened fire on them.

Denmark is where this battle, part physical and part moral, got started a decade ago, after a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad led to riots. This is unsurprising, since the country presents an extreme case of western Europe’s paradoxical religious order. Christianity is historically privileged but practised in a serious way by only a small minority. Islam is numerically small but followed more passionately, at least by a substantial minority of its adherents; Muslims are quite sharply divided over how to interpret their faith. Judaism is even smaller and feels increasingly vulnerable. A substantial share of the population is either completely indifferent, or mildly hostile, to religion in all forms.

Mr Vilks, who escaped yesterday’s assault unhurt, has been involved in the conflict for years. He received multiple death threats after publishing a sketch in 2007 that depicted Muhammad as a donkey. Scandinavia in general has been the object of Islamist ire ever since the start of the so-called Danish cartoons affair in September 2005, when the Copenhagen newspaper Jyllands-Posten carried 12 drawings of Islam’s prophet; they were then republished by a Norwegian newspaper.

The cartoons affair had some dramatic immediate effects. In early 2006, there were protests across the world, with up to 200 people reported killed. This wasn’t a spontaneous outburst of rage, but a well-orchestrated one. A delegation of Muslims from Denmark had toured the heartlands of their faith, drawing attention to the sketches. As boycotts of Danish products were proclaimed in many Islamic countries, the government called it the country’s gravest foreign-policy crisis since 1945. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (later, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC) condemned the drawings and redoubled its efforts to establish the principle that blasphemy should be barred by law. The Economist argued that Western leaders were doing a poor job of defending free speech.

Over the next few years, some mildly reassuring things happened. An alternative voice for Danish Islam emerged, the centre-right politician Naser Khader who condemned the anti-cartoon activists as an unrepresentative minority who were bent on making political capital. One of the most active anti-cartoon campaigners, Ahmed Akkari, had a change of heart and said he had become a believer in free speech. (It’s slightly worrying that he now finds Greenland a more comfortable place to live than Denmark.) Even the OIC, under American pressure, has soft-pedalled its efforts to persuade the UN to criminalise blasphemy.

This weekend’s events, coming hard on the heels of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris, could reignite passions. But one of Denmark’s most passionate free-speech advocates, who happens to be of Muslim heritage himself, is adamant that now would be the worst possible time for politicians to slacken, even by careless use of language, their determination to protect liberty of expression.

Jacob Mchangama, a lawyer and founder of a human-rights think-tank called Justitia, told me it would be a disaster if his country were to grow faint-hearted in its defence of free speech. “There can be no truce in the struggle between secular democracy and extremism,” he says.

Above all, politicians should avoid the trap of saying or implying that violence was really the fault of provocateurs, or that religious insult was to be equated with physical injury. Giving in to that sort of relativism would be letting down those followers of Islam who were brave enough to stand up for free speech, and indulging in a sort of “bigotry of low expectations”, said Mr Mchangama, whose paternal forebears were Muslims from the Comoros Islands. A good point.
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