Why Moslems and communist would see eye to eye.
People wondered why a middle class American would become a hard line jihad Islamic fighter. There was something about what he said that twigged something at the back of my mind. It was not until I was half way to taking my daughter to school that the bubble burst, Communism. The light of realisation was that modern Islam is just another form of communism. Going back to the 40s and 50s with the high of the cold war era, many Americans were persuaded that Communism was the answer to what they saw was the corrupt soft decadence of American life. Communism tried to present itself as having a moral idealism that America did not. The glory of a world united under communism fed into many idealist young impressionable American. The fight for equality of the social classes turned many young American against what they saw as the corrupt inequality between the rich and the poor. Many Communist even saw in Jesus as some early communist, today Moslems try and persuade people that everyone from Adam to King Kong was a Moslem.
Ecc 1: 9-10 The thing that hath been, it [is that] which shall be; and that which is done [is] that which shall be done: and [there is] no new [thing] under the sun. Is there [any] thing whereof it may be said, See, this [is] new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
Islam presents itself as having clear rules or guidelines upon which to be a Moslem. I suspect you could be an atheist and still follow these same guidelines. Communist presented their follows very similar A-Z principles upon which to live. Islam tries to regulate on how to eat, live, speak, clothe, and interact and what to do with their time. Whilst Communism did presented an idiology that was devoid of God , Islam on the other hand presents an idology with a god. I appreciate there are differences as well, But the similarities are quite remarkable.
Is it by any chance that Russia and China have such close connections with many Moslem countries? Could it be that their ideology is closer than many would like to believe?
Like Max and Mao they have their little book but this time it is called the Koran. Communist worshiped the writings of Mao and others so Islam worships the Koran. Burn the Koran and Moslems will go on the rampage. Burn a Bible and Christians will not bat a eyelid, because we don’t worship the Bible. Try discussing Mao, Lenin or Marx with a communist and you will quickly realise that they have exchanged God for human leadership. They elevated them onto pedestals and bowed before their precepts. Today Islam lifts Muhammad onto that same pedestal. Idol worship is a strange creature and man will worship many things without realising an idol for what it is. Stand on its toes and you will quickly realise how much of an idol it is.
Communist persecuted Christians because Christianity was the one power they could not stop. It was constantly the one antidote to man real need. Islam is just the same, it must persecute and subdue what refuses to be shaped into its image. Christianity across the globe is predominantly being persecuted by both these ideologies. The only reason Islam is making any head way is because modern western Christianity has no power. Even the argument that some Muslims use that America is out to get them and they are only defending themselves, was the same arguments that Communist used during the cold war period.
They have their brotherhood united against the great satan America. The spirits that promoted communist have simply changed the name to Islam. Just like Communism the lie that they will take over the world is once again pushed. However communist were at least semi united in their goals, Islam is not. If Islam ever took over the world tomorrow the day after it would start to cut each others throats. Communism almost lasted fifty years, modern Islam has barely lasted half that time. The uprising in the Middle East is not against western democracy but against Moslem governments. It will not matter who gets in because the same corruption that motivated the first overturned tyrants will simple become the newest tyrants. Shiites and Sunnis are bitter enemies and so a world united under Islam will never unite. Communism tried to promote itself as having the moral superiority with clear guidelines on how to do it, but its rejection of the one true God meant that its death knell was already sounding, and Islam will fare no better. The more the radical message of islam is seen the more islam itself will be exposed. Sadly I fear that many moderate Moslems will be caught up a battle they never intended to fight.
The Western democracies are not perfect and they may have many faults, Moslems may even have valid issue with what they see as the immoralities which are openly flouted in the west. But true democracy works because they were established on biblical principles. Take the bible out and it is unlikely they would have been a democracy anywhere. Communism shouted their morality from the housetops, but in reality they were quite immoral. They boasted of equality but their leaders came to suppress of their own people, whilst they came to live in a decadence that even the west could only dream about. Much of the present sex trade starts from those nations which were once ruled by communism and moves its way down to the east. Where women are bought and sold like cattle. Moslems may shout their morality but evidence shows otherwise. They say that the slave trade is just as real in Moslems countries as it is in the west. Anything from cheap labour to the sex trade, and sadly slavery is alive and well in the 21 century.
In the end man will be forced to bow the knee to Jesus not a communist Jesus or even a Moslem Jesus. We will either bow our knees to Jesus as the shepherd of our souls now or men will bow their knees to King Jesus as ruler and righteous judge. But we are all destined to confess him LORD and be judged by him. Today we can confess him as saviour, but ignore him your saviour and he will one day become your judge.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Full transcript: David Cameron's Speech on immigration to party members
“For too long, immigration has been too high.”
A year ago, we were in the middle of a general election campaign. And there was one message I heard loud and clear on the doorstep: we want things to be different. People said they wanted a government that didn't just do what was good for the headline or good for their party but good for the long term and good for our country. That's what we're engaged in.
Clearly, cutting public spending isn't popular, but it's right to bring sense to our public finances. People said they wanted a government that actually trusted them to use their own common sense. That's the kind of government we want to be – giving neighbourhoods and individuals a whole range of new powers . . . scrapping so much of the bureaucracy that drove us mad.
People said they were sick of seeing those who did the right thing get punished and the wrong thing rewarded. Again, that's what we're acting on. In welfare we're ending the system that took money from hard-working taxpayers and gave it to people who refused to work. These are the differences we are trying to make – listening to people, doing the hard and necessary work of changing our country for the better.
But there was something else we heard on the doorstep – and it was this: "We are concerned about the levels of immigration in our country . . . but we are fed up of hearing politicians talk tough but do nothing." Here, again, we are determined to be different.
Now, immigration is a hugely emotive subject . . . and it's a debate too often in the past shaped by assertions rather than substantive arguments. We've all heard them. The assertion that mass immigration is an unalloyed good and that controlling it is economic madness . . . the view that Britain is a soft touch and immigrants are out to take whatever they can get. I believe the role of politicians is to cut through the extremes of this debate and approach the subject sensibly and reasonably.
The last government, in contrast, actually helped to inflame the debate. On the one hand, there were Labour ministers who closed down discussion, giving the impression that concerns about immigration were somehow racist. On the other, there were ministers hell-bent on burnishing their hard-line credentials by talking tough . . . but doing nothing to bring the numbers down.
This approach had damaging consequences in terms of controlling immigration . . . but also in terms of public debate. It created the space for extremist parties to flourish, as they could tell people that mainstream politicians weren't listening to their concerns or doing anything about them. I remember when immigration wasn't a central political issue in our country – and I want that to be the case again. I want us to starve extremist parties of the oxygen of public anxiety they thrive on and extinguish them once and for all.
Above all, I want to get the policy right: good immigration, not mass immigration. That's why I believe it's time for a new approach – one which opens up debate, not closes it down; where politicians don't just talk, but actually act.
Let's start with being open. The British people are fair-minded – and I want them to feel they can be honest about what they think about this subject. Here's what I think. Our country has benefited immeasurably from immigration. Go into any hospital and you'll find people from Uganda, India and Pakistan who are caring for our sick and vulnerable. Go into schools and universities and you'll find teachers from all over the world, inspiring our young people. Go to almost any high street in the country and you'll find entrepreneurs from overseas who are not just adding to the local economy but playing a part in local life. Charities, financial services, fashion, food, music – all these sectors are what they are because of immigration. So yes, immigrants make a huge contribution to Britain. We recognise that – and we welcome it.
But I'm also clear about something else: for too long, immigration has been too high. Between 1997 and 2009, 2.2 million more people came to live in this country than left to live abroad. That's the largest influx of people Britain has ever had . . . and it has placed real pressures on communities up and down the country. Not just pressures on schools, housing and healthcare – though those have been serious . . . but social pressures, too. Because real communities aren't just collections of public service users living in the same space.
Real communities are bound by common experiences . . . forged by friendship and conversation . . . knitted together by all the rituals of the neighbourhood, from the school run to the chat down the pub. And these bonds can take time. So real integration takes time.
That's why, when there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighbourhoods . . . perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there . . . on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate . . . that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods.
This has been the experience for many people in our country – and I believe it is untruthful and unfair not to speak about it and address it.
So, taking all this into account, I believe controlling immigration and bringing it down is of vital importance to the future of our country. That's why during the election campaign, Conservatives made a clear commitment to the British people . . . that we would aim to reduce net migration to the levels we saw in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now we are in government, we are on track to meet that aim. We are controlling legal immigration – having introduced a cap on non-EU economic migrants. We are clamping down on illegal immigration. And we are getting to grips with the asylum system, too. The UK Border Agency is now close to clearing the backlog of almost half a million asylum cases. Our action is working.
But some myths have crept in – about what we're doing and the impact our policies will have. There are those who say that whatever measures we put in place, we can't control immigration significantly. And there are those who accept we can control immigration, but argue that the way we propose to do it will damage our economy and universities. Today I want to take those myths head-on.
Immigration from Europe
Let me begin by addressing those who say we can't control immigration. They have three planks to their argument. First, they say legal immigration is impossible to control because we're a member of the European Union. Second, they argue that illegal immigration can't be controlled either because it's impossible to properly police. And third, they say that immigration will always be high because immigrant workers do jobs that British people won't do.
Each part of that argument is wrong. Take this question of Europe. Yes, our borders are open to people from other member states in the European Union. But actually, this counts for a small proportion of overall net migration to the UK. In the year up to June 2010, net migration to our country from EU nationals was just 27,000.
That's not to say migration from Europe has been insignificant. Since 2004, when many large eastern European countries joined the EU, more than one million people from those countries have come to live and work in the UK – a huge number. We said back then that transitional controls should have been put in place to restrict the numbers coming over. And now we're in government, if and when new countries join the European Union, transitional controls will be put in place.
But this remains the fact: when it comes to immigration to our country, it's the numbers from outside the EU that really matter. In the year up to June 2010, net migration from nationals of countries outside the EU to the UK totalled 198,000. This is the figure we can more easily control and should control.
Last week, our new immigration cap for people coming here to work from outside the EU came into force. It means for the next twelve months, we will not allow employers to recruit more than 20,700 skilled workers from outside Europe. And we've already shown a cap can work. Last July, we placed interim limits on the number of visas we would give for skilled workers – and this kept the numbers down to under 20,000.
Of course employment is just one of the routes of entry and settlement into this country. Every year tens of thousands of people marry into Britain or join their families here. Now many of these are genuine, loving relationships. But we also know there are abuses of the system.
For a start there are forced marriages taking place in our country, and overseas as a means of gaining entry to the UK. This is the practice where some young British girls are bullied and threatened into marrying someone they don't want to. I've got no time for those who say this is a culturally relative issue – it is wrong, full stop, and we've got to stamp it out.
Then there are just the straightforward sham marriages. Last summer, we ordered the UK Border Agency to clamp down on these and they've had significant success, making 155 arrests. And there was also the shocking case of a vicar who was jailed for staging over 300 sham marriages.
But as well as abuse of the system, there are other problems with the family route. We know, for instance, that some marriages take place when the spouse is very young, and has little or no grasp of English. Again we cannot allow cultural sensitivity to stop us from acting. That's why last November we introduced a requirement for all those applying for a marriage visa to demonstrate a minimum standard of English . . . and we will defend the age limit of 21 for spouses coming to the UK.
So however sensitive or difficult a subject it may be, we are tightening up the family route. But by far the biggest route for non-EU entrants into this country has been the student visa route. Immigration by students has almost trebled in the past decade. Last year, some 303,000 visas were issued overseas for study in the UK.
But this isn't the end of the story. Because a lot of those students bring people with them to this country . . . husbands, wives, children. Indeed, last year, 32,000 visas were issued to the dependents of students. Again, many of these applications are for legitimate students doing legitimate courses with legitimate dependents coming over with them. But we know that some of these student applications are bogus, and in turn their dependents are bogus.
Consider this: a sample of 231 visa applications for the dependents of students found that only twenty-five percent of them were genuine dependents. The others? Some were clearly gaming the system and had no genuine or loving relationship with the student. Others we just couldn't be sure about.
The whole system was out of control – and we're now getting to grips with it. We're targeting bogus colleges that offer sham courses. We're making sure that anyone studying a degree-level course has a proper grasp of the English language. We're saying that only postgraduate students can bring dependents.
And we're making sure that if people come over here to study, they should be studying not working . . . and that when they've finished their studies, they go home unless they are offered a graduate-level skilled job, with a minimum salary.
Taken together, we estimate that these proposals will cut the number of student visas issued by around 80,000 a year. So across all the main routes of entry to Britain – work, family, education – we are taking action, simultaneously. And the key word here is 'simultaneously'.
As the Home Secretary has said, controlling immigration by clamping down on one route alone is "like squeezing a balloon . . . Push down work visas and the number of student visas will shoot up. Clamp down on student visas and family visas will spring up."
For years, people have been playing the system, exploiting the easiest routes of entry to the UK. Now, because of what we're doing, this country finally has consistent controls right across the immigration system.
But as I said in a speech in opposition, what matters most is not who comes into the country but who stays. Of course there are fair and legitimate reasons for people who arrive here temporarily to stay here permanently. But the figures clearly suggest that many gain temporary entry into the UK with no plans to leave. More than a fifth of students who entered Britain in 2004 were still here five years later – and many were supposed to be coming to study short courses.
But the most significant route to permanent settlement is the economic migration route. Last year, 84,000 people who initially came on a work visa got the right to settle here. I want Britain to continue to attract the best workers. But it cannot be right that people coming to fill short-term skills gaps can stay long-term.
As the Cross-Party Balanced Migration Group has argued, it is essential we break that link between temporary visas and permanent settlement.
They are right – that's what this government is determined to do . . . and we will consult on how best to proceed on this in the coming months.
So this is the progress we are making on cutting legal immigration and clamping down on the abuse of legitimate entry routes. And we are cracking down on illegal immigration, too. This is a question of fairness – yes, to the British people . . . but also to those who have been shipped over here against their will, kept as slaves and forced to work horrendous hours.
So as part of our National Crime Agency, we are establishing a proper border policing command which will crack down on people smuggling. And because of better technology and closer working with the French, we have managed to cut the number of people identified trying to cross the Channel illegally by two thirds last year.
At the same time as stopping illegal immigrants coming to Britain, we are doing something about those who are already here. Two nationwide campaigns targeting illegal migrants have resulted in 1400 arrests, 330 prosecutions and 260 removals. And in the six months to the end of February, we collected some £3.6m in fines from employers of illegal workers.
What's more, we're closing the loophole that has allowed people who have worked here illegally to get unemployment benefits. Estimates suggest that as many as 155,000 illegal workers might be able to do this . . . with some eligible to claim over £5,000 in employment seekers allowance – each year.
That's wrong – and we're stopping it. We're making sure that only people who have the right to work here can claim benefits. And we also recently announced that anyone who owes money to the NHS will be refused entry to the UK until they have paid back their debts.
So across border control, health policy, benefits policy . . . we are taking decisive action to close the gaps that for too long have allowed people to come here illegally and to stay here illegally.
So we can control both legal and illegal immigration. What is required is political will and the drive to make sure this agenda runs right across government.
But the third argument put forward by those who say we can't control immigration is that immigration is not just a problem of supply but of demand. Put simply, immigration will always be high because British people won't do the jobs migrant workers do.
I can see why this argument is made. Since 1997, the number of people in work in our economy has gone up by some 2.5 million. And of this increase, around 75% was accounted for by foreign-born workers . . . many of whom were employed to clean offices, serve in restaurants or work on building sites. At the same time we have had persistently, eye-wateringly high numbers of British born people stuck on welfare.
But let's be clear about what our conclusions should be from this. This is not a case of 'immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs'. The fact is – except perhaps in the very short-term – there are not a fixed number of jobs in our economy. If one hundred migrant workers come into the country, they don't simply displace job opportunities for a hundred British citizens. Of course they take up vacancies that are available, but they also come and create wealth and new jobs.
The real issue is this: migrants are filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work. That's where the blame lies – at the door of our woeful welfare system, and the last government who comprehensively failed to reform it.
So immigration and welfare reform are two sides of the same coin. Put simply, we will never control immigration properly unless we tackle welfare dependency. That's another powerful reason why this government is undertaking the biggest shake-up of the welfare system for generations . . . making sure that work will always pay . . . and ending the option of living a life on the dole when a life in work is possible.
Take all these actions together, and I believe we are proving that we can control immigration.
But there's another group of people I want to take on. The ones who accept we can control immigration, but have doubts about what our reforms will mean. The first thing they say is: these policies will deny British business of the talent they need to succeed. That's plain wrong. Nothing – nothing – is more important to this government than growing our economy, creating jobs and prosperity across our country.
That's why far from simply salami-slicing numbers coming here with no thought to the impact that will have on business, we have thought incredibly carefully about how we can select and attract the world's brightest to our shores.
This was something the last government comprehensively failed to do. Yes, they introduced a points-based system for immigration, where people were admitted to our country according to the levels of skills they had . . . but only after being repeatedly called to do so by the Conservative party.
Yet once they put this in place, they failed to properly control it and effectively manage it. For example, tier one visas were supposed to be reserved for only the highest skilled migrants. But the evidence shows almost a third of people who came over on one of these visas were not employed in highly skilled jobs. Some were found stacking shelves in supermarkets or driving taxis – and that's if they were employed at all.
Tier two visas were supposed to be reserved for skilled jobs such as engineers. But again, these visas were abused and misused. In one case, an applicant applied as an "elite chef" for a fried chicken shop. The main qualifying criterion was the rate of pay. So in this case, his sister, who owned the shop decided to pay him exactly the amount that allowed him to qualify. There was nothing the authorities could do and he was allowed in.
So it has fallen to this government to sort out the system – and we are completely changing the way it works so it is truly geared to the needs of our economy. We are reforming tier one, to make sure that it is genuinely a route only for the best. As part of that package of reform, we are introducing a new route for people of exceptional talent – like scientists, academics and artists. And we are introducing a new entrepreneur visa, to roll out the red carpet for anyone who has a great business idea and serious investment.
We are also reforming tier two visas. Business leaders have told us that as a country, we should prioritise skilled tier two, workers with a job offer rather than highly-skilled tier one workers without a job offer. So that's what we're doing.
For the coming year, even as we have reduced the number of economic migrants overall by seven thousand, we have actually increased the number of tier two visas available. And we have also raised the skills level so it is only open to graduate-level occupations – and excludes other jobs like careworkers and cooks. What's more, we have exempted what are called 'intra-company transfers' from the limit while raising standards at the same time . . . so firms can still move their employees around the world, but not to fill permanent jobs that could be done by UK workers.
So I completely reject the idea that our new immigration rules will damage our economy.
The second thing some say is that our policies on student visas will damage our universities. Again, let me make clear: this government will do nothing to harm Britain's status as a magnet for the world's best students. That's why with us, if you're good at your subject, can speak English and have been offered a place on a course at a trusted institution – you will be able to get a visa to study here.
Put another way, Britain's universities are free to market themselves globally saying: "You can come and study here at some of the finest institutions anywhere in the world – and you can stay and work in a graduate job after you leave."
That makes our country a hugely attractive destination for genuine students who genuinely want to study abroad. What we don't want is for this to be a hugely attractive destination for people who only want a passage to Britain. So we are cracking down on the abuses of the system.
In recent years there has also grown up a thriving industry of bogus colleges, providing bogus qualifications as cover for bogus visas. Of the 744 private colleges on the UK Border Agency sponsor register in January, only 131 had attained highly trusted sponsor status.
Yet, as of mid-January this year, the 613 private colleges who are not "highly trusted" have been able to sponsor 280,000 students between them. The potential for abuse is clearly enormous.
Indeed, we have been looking into the practice of some so-called colleges. In one case, students were sent off to so-called work placements in locations up to 280 miles away from the college where they were supposed to be studying on a regular basis.
In another, students were found working in 20 different locations and undertaking no study time whatsoever. In yet another case, there were two lecturers for 940 students.
Want to know how ridiculous things have got? An Indian organisation which helps people get student visas has put up a massive billboard in that country. It's got a picture of London bus and the words "get a free ride to the UK" emblazoned across it.
Clearly, we cannot – and should not – put up with any of this. That's why we're getting to grips with the abuse and that's why I reject the idea that our policy will damage our universities.
It really is simple: if you're a genuine academic institution – you have nothing to worry about. But if you're not, you do – and I make no apology for that.
What I have set out today is a sober, comprehensive and effective plan to cut immigration, and cut it substantially. Sober because we come to this debate clear-headed about not only the benefits of immigration . . . but also its impact on our public services, communities and society. Comprehensive because we are leaving no stone unturned, taking action across all routes of entry to our country. And effective – because we are doing all this in a way that strengthens our economy and enhances the status of our universities.
This time last year, we said we would listen to people's concerns and get immigration under control. Today I can confidently say that we are getting there.
If we take the steps set out today, and deal with all the different avenues of migration, legal and illegal, then levels of immigration can return to where they were in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when immigration was not a front rank political issue. And I believe that will mean net migration to this country will be in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we have seen over the last decade.
Yes, Britain will always be open to the best and brightest from around the world and those fleeing persecution. But with us, our borders will be under control and immigration will be at levels our country can manage. No ifs. No buts. That's a promise we made to the British people. And it's a promise we are keeping.
A year ago, we were in the middle of a general election campaign. And there was one message I heard loud and clear on the doorstep: we want things to be different. People said they wanted a government that didn't just do what was good for the headline or good for their party but good for the long term and good for our country. That's what we're engaged in.
Clearly, cutting public spending isn't popular, but it's right to bring sense to our public finances. People said they wanted a government that actually trusted them to use their own common sense. That's the kind of government we want to be – giving neighbourhoods and individuals a whole range of new powers . . . scrapping so much of the bureaucracy that drove us mad.
People said they were sick of seeing those who did the right thing get punished and the wrong thing rewarded. Again, that's what we're acting on. In welfare we're ending the system that took money from hard-working taxpayers and gave it to people who refused to work. These are the differences we are trying to make – listening to people, doing the hard and necessary work of changing our country for the better.
But there was something else we heard on the doorstep – and it was this: "We are concerned about the levels of immigration in our country . . . but we are fed up of hearing politicians talk tough but do nothing." Here, again, we are determined to be different.
Now, immigration is a hugely emotive subject . . . and it's a debate too often in the past shaped by assertions rather than substantive arguments. We've all heard them. The assertion that mass immigration is an unalloyed good and that controlling it is economic madness . . . the view that Britain is a soft touch and immigrants are out to take whatever they can get. I believe the role of politicians is to cut through the extremes of this debate and approach the subject sensibly and reasonably.
The last government, in contrast, actually helped to inflame the debate. On the one hand, there were Labour ministers who closed down discussion, giving the impression that concerns about immigration were somehow racist. On the other, there were ministers hell-bent on burnishing their hard-line credentials by talking tough . . . but doing nothing to bring the numbers down.
This approach had damaging consequences in terms of controlling immigration . . . but also in terms of public debate. It created the space for extremist parties to flourish, as they could tell people that mainstream politicians weren't listening to their concerns or doing anything about them. I remember when immigration wasn't a central political issue in our country – and I want that to be the case again. I want us to starve extremist parties of the oxygen of public anxiety they thrive on and extinguish them once and for all.
Above all, I want to get the policy right: good immigration, not mass immigration. That's why I believe it's time for a new approach – one which opens up debate, not closes it down; where politicians don't just talk, but actually act.
Let's start with being open. The British people are fair-minded – and I want them to feel they can be honest about what they think about this subject. Here's what I think. Our country has benefited immeasurably from immigration. Go into any hospital and you'll find people from Uganda, India and Pakistan who are caring for our sick and vulnerable. Go into schools and universities and you'll find teachers from all over the world, inspiring our young people. Go to almost any high street in the country and you'll find entrepreneurs from overseas who are not just adding to the local economy but playing a part in local life. Charities, financial services, fashion, food, music – all these sectors are what they are because of immigration. So yes, immigrants make a huge contribution to Britain. We recognise that – and we welcome it.
But I'm also clear about something else: for too long, immigration has been too high. Between 1997 and 2009, 2.2 million more people came to live in this country than left to live abroad. That's the largest influx of people Britain has ever had . . . and it has placed real pressures on communities up and down the country. Not just pressures on schools, housing and healthcare – though those have been serious . . . but social pressures, too. Because real communities aren't just collections of public service users living in the same space.
Real communities are bound by common experiences . . . forged by friendship and conversation . . . knitted together by all the rituals of the neighbourhood, from the school run to the chat down the pub. And these bonds can take time. So real integration takes time.
That's why, when there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighbourhoods . . . perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there . . . on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate . . . that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods.
This has been the experience for many people in our country – and I believe it is untruthful and unfair not to speak about it and address it.
So, taking all this into account, I believe controlling immigration and bringing it down is of vital importance to the future of our country. That's why during the election campaign, Conservatives made a clear commitment to the British people . . . that we would aim to reduce net migration to the levels we saw in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now we are in government, we are on track to meet that aim. We are controlling legal immigration – having introduced a cap on non-EU economic migrants. We are clamping down on illegal immigration. And we are getting to grips with the asylum system, too. The UK Border Agency is now close to clearing the backlog of almost half a million asylum cases. Our action is working.
But some myths have crept in – about what we're doing and the impact our policies will have. There are those who say that whatever measures we put in place, we can't control immigration significantly. And there are those who accept we can control immigration, but argue that the way we propose to do it will damage our economy and universities. Today I want to take those myths head-on.
Immigration from Europe
Let me begin by addressing those who say we can't control immigration. They have three planks to their argument. First, they say legal immigration is impossible to control because we're a member of the European Union. Second, they argue that illegal immigration can't be controlled either because it's impossible to properly police. And third, they say that immigration will always be high because immigrant workers do jobs that British people won't do.
Each part of that argument is wrong. Take this question of Europe. Yes, our borders are open to people from other member states in the European Union. But actually, this counts for a small proportion of overall net migration to the UK. In the year up to June 2010, net migration to our country from EU nationals was just 27,000.
That's not to say migration from Europe has been insignificant. Since 2004, when many large eastern European countries joined the EU, more than one million people from those countries have come to live and work in the UK – a huge number. We said back then that transitional controls should have been put in place to restrict the numbers coming over. And now we're in government, if and when new countries join the European Union, transitional controls will be put in place.
But this remains the fact: when it comes to immigration to our country, it's the numbers from outside the EU that really matter. In the year up to June 2010, net migration from nationals of countries outside the EU to the UK totalled 198,000. This is the figure we can more easily control and should control.
Last week, our new immigration cap for people coming here to work from outside the EU came into force. It means for the next twelve months, we will not allow employers to recruit more than 20,700 skilled workers from outside Europe. And we've already shown a cap can work. Last July, we placed interim limits on the number of visas we would give for skilled workers – and this kept the numbers down to under 20,000.
Of course employment is just one of the routes of entry and settlement into this country. Every year tens of thousands of people marry into Britain or join their families here. Now many of these are genuine, loving relationships. But we also know there are abuses of the system.
For a start there are forced marriages taking place in our country, and overseas as a means of gaining entry to the UK. This is the practice where some young British girls are bullied and threatened into marrying someone they don't want to. I've got no time for those who say this is a culturally relative issue – it is wrong, full stop, and we've got to stamp it out.
Then there are just the straightforward sham marriages. Last summer, we ordered the UK Border Agency to clamp down on these and they've had significant success, making 155 arrests. And there was also the shocking case of a vicar who was jailed for staging over 300 sham marriages.
But as well as abuse of the system, there are other problems with the family route. We know, for instance, that some marriages take place when the spouse is very young, and has little or no grasp of English. Again we cannot allow cultural sensitivity to stop us from acting. That's why last November we introduced a requirement for all those applying for a marriage visa to demonstrate a minimum standard of English . . . and we will defend the age limit of 21 for spouses coming to the UK.
So however sensitive or difficult a subject it may be, we are tightening up the family route. But by far the biggest route for non-EU entrants into this country has been the student visa route. Immigration by students has almost trebled in the past decade. Last year, some 303,000 visas were issued overseas for study in the UK.
But this isn't the end of the story. Because a lot of those students bring people with them to this country . . . husbands, wives, children. Indeed, last year, 32,000 visas were issued to the dependents of students. Again, many of these applications are for legitimate students doing legitimate courses with legitimate dependents coming over with them. But we know that some of these student applications are bogus, and in turn their dependents are bogus.
Consider this: a sample of 231 visa applications for the dependents of students found that only twenty-five percent of them were genuine dependents. The others? Some were clearly gaming the system and had no genuine or loving relationship with the student. Others we just couldn't be sure about.
The whole system was out of control – and we're now getting to grips with it. We're targeting bogus colleges that offer sham courses. We're making sure that anyone studying a degree-level course has a proper grasp of the English language. We're saying that only postgraduate students can bring dependents.
And we're making sure that if people come over here to study, they should be studying not working . . . and that when they've finished their studies, they go home unless they are offered a graduate-level skilled job, with a minimum salary.
Taken together, we estimate that these proposals will cut the number of student visas issued by around 80,000 a year. So across all the main routes of entry to Britain – work, family, education – we are taking action, simultaneously. And the key word here is 'simultaneously'.
As the Home Secretary has said, controlling immigration by clamping down on one route alone is "like squeezing a balloon . . . Push down work visas and the number of student visas will shoot up. Clamp down on student visas and family visas will spring up."
For years, people have been playing the system, exploiting the easiest routes of entry to the UK. Now, because of what we're doing, this country finally has consistent controls right across the immigration system.
But as I said in a speech in opposition, what matters most is not who comes into the country but who stays. Of course there are fair and legitimate reasons for people who arrive here temporarily to stay here permanently. But the figures clearly suggest that many gain temporary entry into the UK with no plans to leave. More than a fifth of students who entered Britain in 2004 were still here five years later – and many were supposed to be coming to study short courses.
But the most significant route to permanent settlement is the economic migration route. Last year, 84,000 people who initially came on a work visa got the right to settle here. I want Britain to continue to attract the best workers. But it cannot be right that people coming to fill short-term skills gaps can stay long-term.
As the Cross-Party Balanced Migration Group has argued, it is essential we break that link between temporary visas and permanent settlement.
They are right – that's what this government is determined to do . . . and we will consult on how best to proceed on this in the coming months.
So this is the progress we are making on cutting legal immigration and clamping down on the abuse of legitimate entry routes. And we are cracking down on illegal immigration, too. This is a question of fairness – yes, to the British people . . . but also to those who have been shipped over here against their will, kept as slaves and forced to work horrendous hours.
So as part of our National Crime Agency, we are establishing a proper border policing command which will crack down on people smuggling. And because of better technology and closer working with the French, we have managed to cut the number of people identified trying to cross the Channel illegally by two thirds last year.
At the same time as stopping illegal immigrants coming to Britain, we are doing something about those who are already here. Two nationwide campaigns targeting illegal migrants have resulted in 1400 arrests, 330 prosecutions and 260 removals. And in the six months to the end of February, we collected some £3.6m in fines from employers of illegal workers.
What's more, we're closing the loophole that has allowed people who have worked here illegally to get unemployment benefits. Estimates suggest that as many as 155,000 illegal workers might be able to do this . . . with some eligible to claim over £5,000 in employment seekers allowance – each year.
That's wrong – and we're stopping it. We're making sure that only people who have the right to work here can claim benefits. And we also recently announced that anyone who owes money to the NHS will be refused entry to the UK until they have paid back their debts.
So across border control, health policy, benefits policy . . . we are taking decisive action to close the gaps that for too long have allowed people to come here illegally and to stay here illegally.
So we can control both legal and illegal immigration. What is required is political will and the drive to make sure this agenda runs right across government.
But the third argument put forward by those who say we can't control immigration is that immigration is not just a problem of supply but of demand. Put simply, immigration will always be high because British people won't do the jobs migrant workers do.
I can see why this argument is made. Since 1997, the number of people in work in our economy has gone up by some 2.5 million. And of this increase, around 75% was accounted for by foreign-born workers . . . many of whom were employed to clean offices, serve in restaurants or work on building sites. At the same time we have had persistently, eye-wateringly high numbers of British born people stuck on welfare.
But let's be clear about what our conclusions should be from this. This is not a case of 'immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs'. The fact is – except perhaps in the very short-term – there are not a fixed number of jobs in our economy. If one hundred migrant workers come into the country, they don't simply displace job opportunities for a hundred British citizens. Of course they take up vacancies that are available, but they also come and create wealth and new jobs.
The real issue is this: migrants are filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work. That's where the blame lies – at the door of our woeful welfare system, and the last government who comprehensively failed to reform it.
So immigration and welfare reform are two sides of the same coin. Put simply, we will never control immigration properly unless we tackle welfare dependency. That's another powerful reason why this government is undertaking the biggest shake-up of the welfare system for generations . . . making sure that work will always pay . . . and ending the option of living a life on the dole when a life in work is possible.
Take all these actions together, and I believe we are proving that we can control immigration.
But there's another group of people I want to take on. The ones who accept we can control immigration, but have doubts about what our reforms will mean. The first thing they say is: these policies will deny British business of the talent they need to succeed. That's plain wrong. Nothing – nothing – is more important to this government than growing our economy, creating jobs and prosperity across our country.
That's why far from simply salami-slicing numbers coming here with no thought to the impact that will have on business, we have thought incredibly carefully about how we can select and attract the world's brightest to our shores.
This was something the last government comprehensively failed to do. Yes, they introduced a points-based system for immigration, where people were admitted to our country according to the levels of skills they had . . . but only after being repeatedly called to do so by the Conservative party.
Yet once they put this in place, they failed to properly control it and effectively manage it. For example, tier one visas were supposed to be reserved for only the highest skilled migrants. But the evidence shows almost a third of people who came over on one of these visas were not employed in highly skilled jobs. Some were found stacking shelves in supermarkets or driving taxis – and that's if they were employed at all.
Tier two visas were supposed to be reserved for skilled jobs such as engineers. But again, these visas were abused and misused. In one case, an applicant applied as an "elite chef" for a fried chicken shop. The main qualifying criterion was the rate of pay. So in this case, his sister, who owned the shop decided to pay him exactly the amount that allowed him to qualify. There was nothing the authorities could do and he was allowed in.
So it has fallen to this government to sort out the system – and we are completely changing the way it works so it is truly geared to the needs of our economy. We are reforming tier one, to make sure that it is genuinely a route only for the best. As part of that package of reform, we are introducing a new route for people of exceptional talent – like scientists, academics and artists. And we are introducing a new entrepreneur visa, to roll out the red carpet for anyone who has a great business idea and serious investment.
We are also reforming tier two visas. Business leaders have told us that as a country, we should prioritise skilled tier two, workers with a job offer rather than highly-skilled tier one workers without a job offer. So that's what we're doing.
For the coming year, even as we have reduced the number of economic migrants overall by seven thousand, we have actually increased the number of tier two visas available. And we have also raised the skills level so it is only open to graduate-level occupations – and excludes other jobs like careworkers and cooks. What's more, we have exempted what are called 'intra-company transfers' from the limit while raising standards at the same time . . . so firms can still move their employees around the world, but not to fill permanent jobs that could be done by UK workers.
So I completely reject the idea that our new immigration rules will damage our economy.
The second thing some say is that our policies on student visas will damage our universities. Again, let me make clear: this government will do nothing to harm Britain's status as a magnet for the world's best students. That's why with us, if you're good at your subject, can speak English and have been offered a place on a course at a trusted institution – you will be able to get a visa to study here.
Put another way, Britain's universities are free to market themselves globally saying: "You can come and study here at some of the finest institutions anywhere in the world – and you can stay and work in a graduate job after you leave."
That makes our country a hugely attractive destination for genuine students who genuinely want to study abroad. What we don't want is for this to be a hugely attractive destination for people who only want a passage to Britain. So we are cracking down on the abuses of the system.
In recent years there has also grown up a thriving industry of bogus colleges, providing bogus qualifications as cover for bogus visas. Of the 744 private colleges on the UK Border Agency sponsor register in January, only 131 had attained highly trusted sponsor status.
Yet, as of mid-January this year, the 613 private colleges who are not "highly trusted" have been able to sponsor 280,000 students between them. The potential for abuse is clearly enormous.
Indeed, we have been looking into the practice of some so-called colleges. In one case, students were sent off to so-called work placements in locations up to 280 miles away from the college where they were supposed to be studying on a regular basis.
In another, students were found working in 20 different locations and undertaking no study time whatsoever. In yet another case, there were two lecturers for 940 students.
Want to know how ridiculous things have got? An Indian organisation which helps people get student visas has put up a massive billboard in that country. It's got a picture of London bus and the words "get a free ride to the UK" emblazoned across it.
Clearly, we cannot – and should not – put up with any of this. That's why we're getting to grips with the abuse and that's why I reject the idea that our policy will damage our universities.
It really is simple: if you're a genuine academic institution – you have nothing to worry about. But if you're not, you do – and I make no apology for that.
What I have set out today is a sober, comprehensive and effective plan to cut immigration, and cut it substantially. Sober because we come to this debate clear-headed about not only the benefits of immigration . . . but also its impact on our public services, communities and society. Comprehensive because we are leaving no stone unturned, taking action across all routes of entry to our country. And effective – because we are doing all this in a way that strengthens our economy and enhances the status of our universities.
This time last year, we said we would listen to people's concerns and get immigration under control. Today I can confidently say that we are getting there.
If we take the steps set out today, and deal with all the different avenues of migration, legal and illegal, then levels of immigration can return to where they were in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when immigration was not a front rank political issue. And I believe that will mean net migration to this country will be in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we have seen over the last decade.
Yes, Britain will always be open to the best and brightest from around the world and those fleeing persecution. But with us, our borders will be under control and immigration will be at levels our country can manage. No ifs. No buts. That's a promise we made to the British people. And it's a promise we are keeping.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Muslim woman in Georgia sent the pig's foot to King, and another threat letter to Greg Ball
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Muslim woman in Georgia sent the pig's foot to King, and another threat letter to Greg Ball
First, let's note this report from The Patch (via Weasel Zippers), which reveals something most disturbing discovered a day or so ago:
A suspicious package containing a letter and a stuffed animal bearing the Star of David was opened at state Sen. Greg Ball’s Albany office Tuesday afternoon.
The letter begins with “Asa Lamu Laikum Dead Man Walking,” (the first part of which some sources translate as “peace be upon you” in Arabic) refers to Ball (R, C – Patterson) as a “crazy, Christian cracker” who lacks political correctness, citing Friday’s hearing on homeland security, veterans and military affairs. The letter, whose signer identifies him or herself as a messenger of Allah and a defender of Islam, calls the hearing a “declaration of war against Muslims.”
According to this report on MSNBC.com, the hearing, which was aimed at assessing New York’s readiness for terrorist attacks, featured speakers who “argued that Islam is a threat to the U.S.” and spoke of terrorist training camps.
A statement released by Ball’s office Tuesday afternoon did not mention any other items in the package, but other news outlets reported the arrival of hazardous materials teams at the office.
Ball is looking forward to the next hearing, which is slated for May 17 in Albany.
Now, guess who sent both that and the threat letter with a pig's foot to Rep. King (via Newsbusters):
A Muslim woman has admitted to mailing a bloody pig’s foot and a threatening letter to Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), as well as another bizarre package to a New York state senator.
The woman, Jameela Barnette, of Marietta, Ga., says she sent the package to King earlier this month to voice her dismay with the hearing he held last month on what he calls the “radicalization” of American Muslims.
“I thought the letters explain themselves,” she told the New York Post, speaking not only of the anti-Semitic note to King, but the one she says she sent to state Sen. Greg Ball, a Republican who has held his own hearings on Muslims and hosted King at the most recent hearing last week.
Just after the package to King was intercepted at a Maryland mail facility earlier this month, a congressional source told POLITICO the accompanying letter was “a rambling type” of message that referred to the congressman as a “Jew,” though he is Catholic.
King told POLITICO on Thursday that Barnette “obviously has problems” and “appears to be a disturbed person who seems to be getting carried away with herself.”
He wouldn’t speculate about what might come next, saying only: “I’ll let the police know how serious this is.” Capitol Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They said earlier this month that the investigation was ongoing.
The package sent to Ball included a Curious George stuffed animal with two Stars of David taped to it and a note that said, “FINAL DESTINATION: AUSCHWITZ.” Barnette told The Journal News that she sent the monkey because “I knew the Jews were behind the hearings. A monkey is a representation of who the Jews are.” The “Curious George” series of children’s books were written by Holocaust survivors.
If this woman did indeed send packages, not only will CAIR have to eat their own words victimology, but this shows how some Muslims are not faithful to their restrictions against pork, if that's what it takes to assault infidels.
Muslim woman in Georgia sent the pig's foot to King, and another threat letter to Greg Ball
First, let's note this report from The Patch (via Weasel Zippers), which reveals something most disturbing discovered a day or so ago:
A suspicious package containing a letter and a stuffed animal bearing the Star of David was opened at state Sen. Greg Ball’s Albany office Tuesday afternoon.
The letter begins with “Asa Lamu Laikum Dead Man Walking,” (the first part of which some sources translate as “peace be upon you” in Arabic) refers to Ball (R, C – Patterson) as a “crazy, Christian cracker” who lacks political correctness, citing Friday’s hearing on homeland security, veterans and military affairs. The letter, whose signer identifies him or herself as a messenger of Allah and a defender of Islam, calls the hearing a “declaration of war against Muslims.”
According to this report on MSNBC.com, the hearing, which was aimed at assessing New York’s readiness for terrorist attacks, featured speakers who “argued that Islam is a threat to the U.S.” and spoke of terrorist training camps.
A statement released by Ball’s office Tuesday afternoon did not mention any other items in the package, but other news outlets reported the arrival of hazardous materials teams at the office.
Ball is looking forward to the next hearing, which is slated for May 17 in Albany.
Now, guess who sent both that and the threat letter with a pig's foot to Rep. King (via Newsbusters):
A Muslim woman has admitted to mailing a bloody pig’s foot and a threatening letter to Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), as well as another bizarre package to a New York state senator.
The woman, Jameela Barnette, of Marietta, Ga., says she sent the package to King earlier this month to voice her dismay with the hearing he held last month on what he calls the “radicalization” of American Muslims.
“I thought the letters explain themselves,” she told the New York Post, speaking not only of the anti-Semitic note to King, but the one she says she sent to state Sen. Greg Ball, a Republican who has held his own hearings on Muslims and hosted King at the most recent hearing last week.
Just after the package to King was intercepted at a Maryland mail facility earlier this month, a congressional source told POLITICO the accompanying letter was “a rambling type” of message that referred to the congressman as a “Jew,” though he is Catholic.
King told POLITICO on Thursday that Barnette “obviously has problems” and “appears to be a disturbed person who seems to be getting carried away with herself.”
He wouldn’t speculate about what might come next, saying only: “I’ll let the police know how serious this is.” Capitol Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They said earlier this month that the investigation was ongoing.
The package sent to Ball included a Curious George stuffed animal with two Stars of David taped to it and a note that said, “FINAL DESTINATION: AUSCHWITZ.” Barnette told The Journal News that she sent the monkey because “I knew the Jews were behind the hearings. A monkey is a representation of who the Jews are.” The “Curious George” series of children’s books were written by Holocaust survivors.
If this woman did indeed send packages, not only will CAIR have to eat their own words victimology, but this shows how some Muslims are not faithful to their restrictions against pork, if that's what it takes to assault infidels.
This is Why Islam is So hypocritical- 555 yr old Hindu Temple Destroyed
Thursday, April 14, 2011
This is Why Islam is So hypocritical- 555 yr old Hindu Temple Destroyed
Israeli Muslim or Christians are allowed to build in Israel ( ISLAM allows NO other faith in MECCA) if they are citizens and get a permit-- But Non Islamic Faiths get their places of worship Burned Destroyed or just flat out can not build.
Humanity has to allow Mosques which are political outpost- because the Quran contains Government and Laws that ALL followers MUST work toward implementing on Society AND MUST IMPLEMENT when they are majority.---- Yet ISLAM HAS NO TOLERENCE OR HUMAN RIGHT OR FREEDOM OR RESPECT as per the QURAN for US>
How DO THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS? History Recent and Past show Islam DESTROYS THEN BUILDS MOSQUES and we have them doing that a t the 9-11 Site.... श्री राम नवमी का हार्दिक अà¤िनन्दन
जय श्री राम
Mohammedan fanatics burned sacred Hindu scripture “Srimad Bhagavad Gita” after destroying 555 yrs old Hindu temple complex in Islamic Republic of Bangladesh.
Srimad Bhagavad Gita burned, Srivas Angan destructed and partially grabbed by Islamists in Bangladesh.
In the series attack upon the Hindu Temples in Bangladesh in recent months, aiming to frighten the minority Hindus there and to grab the Hindu temple properties within a so called secular regime of Awami League Govt. headed by Sheikh Hasina, latest feed back came to us about a total resentment of the retaliating Hindus in the nefarious design of burning of “Srimad Bhagavad Gita” in the temple complex of Srivas Angan in the vicinity of Beani Bazar of Sylhet district. Before this culpable act the Islamist perpetrators destroyed the ancestral deities of this ....
“Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayana”, “Lord Shiva” and “Radha Madhav Ji” of Achray Sribas Swami, a great Sanskrit scholar ever and the champion companion of Sree Sree Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), a great spiritual leader in India for his Bhakti Movement.
The ancestral complex Srinivas Acharya is considered as a heritage monument and famous Tirth Kshetra (pilgrimage resort) for Hindus comprising with very old “Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayan Mandir”, “Pancha Tattva Mandir”, and “Siva Mandir” was destroyed by the local Mohammedan land grabbers and perpetrators.
On 02.04.11, morning at about 10.00 am in broad day light, local influential perpetrators and land grabbers backed by ruling parties burned at least ten copies of Shrimad Bhagwad Gita with many religious books in front of local people after rampaging the whole pilgrimage complex to ensure a Islamic capture over a Hindu rights upon a temple property(Devottar sampatti). The fanatic Mohammedans successfully tried to destroy the relics of famous library building of Srinivas Swami where a good collection of Hindu classic literatures and scriptures were the main attraction for the erudite students of the Master Srivas, across eastern India. It is believed that Srivas Swami started here an indigenous block print method (printing press) to copy old Sanskrit Texts. For a very unfortunate fate of the Hindus in Bangladesh all these historical and religious monuments have almost been perished into the Islamic aggression and the Government negligence.
After the traumatic burning of Shrimad Bhagwad Gita and other religious books and the rampant rampage of deities and temple properties, the area of incident of Khasa Pandit Para, Beani Bazar, Sylhet (the old historic SRIHATTA), tension raised a level of retaliation and the aggrieved Hindu locals lodged a FIR in Biyani Bazar Police Station vide no. 03/02-04-2011, u/s 143/448/294/323/379/380/506. It has come to know that one Janab Dipu Sheikh and his gang have been operating to encroach the entire five bigha (1.65 acre) of this temple property. The Muslim attackers tried to murder Shri Siddha Gour Das Brahmachari the monk-in-charge of the temple premises and throw away all the broken duties into a nearby pond after rampaging abruptly. The perpetrators also snatched away the donation box of the main temple. Janab Dipu Sheikh maintains his political connection with Awami League and Jamat e Islami – Bangladesh, both hand in hand. Dipu has open criminal connection with Islamist to run his persecution program upon minority Hindu women, Hindu shopkeepers, general Hindu minorities and Hindu land grabbing. One Sabul Ali of Dipu’s gagne physically assaulted Siddha Gour Das Brahmachari and attempted to murder this monk-in-charge. The political affiliation vested in Dipu’s group made them a terror to the Hindu locals.
In a protest the Math Mandir O Devottar Sampatti Raksha Samiti (MMDSRS) of 79 Swamibag Road, Dhaka -1100, held an urgent press conference on 12th April 2011 at 11 am in the Dhaka Reporters’ unit, VIP Lounge, Segun Bagicha, Dhaka to draw the attention of all concerned to protect the growing torture upon Bangladeshi Hindus along with their temples, landed properties, business, women folk and even animals possessed by them.
In a very anguished PRESS statement by MMDSRS, its convener Satya Ranjan Barai conveyed that the paramount cry of the Bangladeshi Minority Hindus do not touch even any civil society of Bangladesh, which denotes its fake secularist attitude to the damn apathy to a Hindu persecution and ethnic cleansing. Prominent Hindu activists present there demanded immediate arrest and punishments of the Muslim perpetrators caused a hell and burning of Srimad Bhagavad Gita in Srivas Angan.
In the press note MMDSRS accused the present Enemy Property Act and its Amendments, which fueled all the Muslims to grab all Hindu properties as Muslims consider Hindus as enemies. And this is the stand point of a so called liberal Govt in Bangladesh.
In the press statement, convener of MMDSRS pointed out in the recent past, the 200 yrs old Radha Govinda Jiu Temple at 222 Lal Mohan Saha Street, Sutrapur, Dhaka is under the Islamic scanner to grab it. Land Mafia Hazi Islam Uddin, Hazi Afjal Hossian and local Awami League President of 77 no ward, Hazi Abul Hossian Abul clubbed together to occupy the temple forcefully. Their men have been threatening the temple authorities as Hindus must close all Muth (resident of monastic orders) and Mandirs (temple) to ease the land grabbing by these Muslim Land mafias in BD. (vide GD no. 1841 dt 28-03-2011 of Ramna Model P.S.).
In another incident, Abul Hossain Abul threatened the opposition Hindus, ” If you people do not leave your temples and religious institutions, we will not allow any kaffir Hindus to stay here peacefully. Any kind of Hindu protest will be stopped with a severe communal riot” with in very office of Addl. Police Superintendent, City SB, Dhaka. No authority could resist a venomous Abul Hossian for a while. (vide GD no. 1556 de 28-03-2011 of Sutrapur P.S.)
In Rampura area of Dhaka, where 220-225 Hindu families reside, one Rajauk Ali encroached 75% land of a Hindu crematorium beside the “Sree Sree Gouranga Maha Pravu Mandir”, Now Rajauk is trying to occupy the lone Hindu temple of this area, for which Hindus are determined to fight Land Grabbing Jehad in Bangladesh. It is also reported that the Awami League MP Jajid Malik has destroyed one temple in Urkiya, 2 km away from Manikganj town to vacate a Hindu possession of Golak Mondal and Sarat Mondal for a proposed hospital there. In the name of so called development, hospitals, cattle houses, slaughter houses, multi storied buildings; the Hindus properties are being snatched, even not giving a minimum price.
Pointing out an overwhelming discrimination to Hindus, it is told that when a Madrasha educated teacher gets his salary in a regular scale, then a Sanskrit scholar gets an honorarium of only Taka 120/- pm. As the Muslims claim their superiority in BD, Hindus there are treated as III class citizen. These Hindus also fought a brave fight and got tremendous torture from Pak platoons at the time of struggle of Free Bangladesh. The Math Mandir O Devottar Sampatti Raksha Samity has a plan to protest and hunger strike all over the Hindu pockets in BD. ISKCON Bangladesh is very much aggrieved as the maximum attacks are held in the Vaisnavite Goudiya Temples.
On behalf of MMDSRS, Pinaki Das, a Hind activist of BD forwarded a mail demanding justice in favour of BD Hindus as : ”WE DEMAND PROPER PUNISHMENT TO OUR GOVERNMENT. PLEASE HELP US AND CREATE PRESSURE TO THEM FOR INITIATING PROPER STEPS.
WE NEED FOREIGN ASSISTANCE FOR DEMANDING JUSTICE AND PLEASE SAVE THE HINDU TEMPLE LANDS WHICH HAVE ALREADY BEEN GRABBED BY THE ISLAMIC PERPETRATORS.”
Well the US ISRAEL..the West are dealing with the same assault---So I dont Know wht Assistance we can be-- Seems we NEED to KEEP SPEAKING THE TRUTH and STOP THE MEDIA COVERUP--of this Global Assault.
ISLAM IS NOT PEACE- IT NEVER WAS....What they do IS STRAIGHT FROM THE QURAN-- MOHAMMED HIMSELF DID THIS----
This is Why Islam is So hypocritical- 555 yr old Hindu Temple Destroyed
Israeli Muslim or Christians are allowed to build in Israel ( ISLAM allows NO other faith in MECCA) if they are citizens and get a permit-- But Non Islamic Faiths get their places of worship Burned Destroyed or just flat out can not build.
Humanity has to allow Mosques which are political outpost- because the Quran contains Government and Laws that ALL followers MUST work toward implementing on Society AND MUST IMPLEMENT when they are majority.---- Yet ISLAM HAS NO TOLERENCE OR HUMAN RIGHT OR FREEDOM OR RESPECT as per the QURAN for US>
How DO THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS? History Recent and Past show Islam DESTROYS THEN BUILDS MOSQUES and we have them doing that a t the 9-11 Site.... श्री राम नवमी का हार्दिक अà¤िनन्दन
जय श्री राम
Mohammedan fanatics burned sacred Hindu scripture “Srimad Bhagavad Gita” after destroying 555 yrs old Hindu temple complex in Islamic Republic of Bangladesh.
Srimad Bhagavad Gita burned, Srivas Angan destructed and partially grabbed by Islamists in Bangladesh.
In the series attack upon the Hindu Temples in Bangladesh in recent months, aiming to frighten the minority Hindus there and to grab the Hindu temple properties within a so called secular regime of Awami League Govt. headed by Sheikh Hasina, latest feed back came to us about a total resentment of the retaliating Hindus in the nefarious design of burning of “Srimad Bhagavad Gita” in the temple complex of Srivas Angan in the vicinity of Beani Bazar of Sylhet district. Before this culpable act the Islamist perpetrators destroyed the ancestral deities of this ....
“Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayana”, “Lord Shiva” and “Radha Madhav Ji” of Achray Sribas Swami, a great Sanskrit scholar ever and the champion companion of Sree Sree Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), a great spiritual leader in India for his Bhakti Movement.
The ancestral complex Srinivas Acharya is considered as a heritage monument and famous Tirth Kshetra (pilgrimage resort) for Hindus comprising with very old “Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayan Mandir”, “Pancha Tattva Mandir”, and “Siva Mandir” was destroyed by the local Mohammedan land grabbers and perpetrators.
On 02.04.11, morning at about 10.00 am in broad day light, local influential perpetrators and land grabbers backed by ruling parties burned at least ten copies of Shrimad Bhagwad Gita with many religious books in front of local people after rampaging the whole pilgrimage complex to ensure a Islamic capture over a Hindu rights upon a temple property(Devottar sampatti). The fanatic Mohammedans successfully tried to destroy the relics of famous library building of Srinivas Swami where a good collection of Hindu classic literatures and scriptures were the main attraction for the erudite students of the Master Srivas, across eastern India. It is believed that Srivas Swami started here an indigenous block print method (printing press) to copy old Sanskrit Texts. For a very unfortunate fate of the Hindus in Bangladesh all these historical and religious monuments have almost been perished into the Islamic aggression and the Government negligence.
After the traumatic burning of Shrimad Bhagwad Gita and other religious books and the rampant rampage of deities and temple properties, the area of incident of Khasa Pandit Para, Beani Bazar, Sylhet (the old historic SRIHATTA), tension raised a level of retaliation and the aggrieved Hindu locals lodged a FIR in Biyani Bazar Police Station vide no. 03/02-04-2011, u/s 143/448/294/323/379/380/506. It has come to know that one Janab Dipu Sheikh and his gang have been operating to encroach the entire five bigha (1.65 acre) of this temple property. The Muslim attackers tried to murder Shri Siddha Gour Das Brahmachari the monk-in-charge of the temple premises and throw away all the broken duties into a nearby pond after rampaging abruptly. The perpetrators also snatched away the donation box of the main temple. Janab Dipu Sheikh maintains his political connection with Awami League and Jamat e Islami – Bangladesh, both hand in hand. Dipu has open criminal connection with Islamist to run his persecution program upon minority Hindu women, Hindu shopkeepers, general Hindu minorities and Hindu land grabbing. One Sabul Ali of Dipu’s gagne physically assaulted Siddha Gour Das Brahmachari and attempted to murder this monk-in-charge. The political affiliation vested in Dipu’s group made them a terror to the Hindu locals.
In a protest the Math Mandir O Devottar Sampatti Raksha Samiti (MMDSRS) of 79 Swamibag Road, Dhaka -1100, held an urgent press conference on 12th April 2011 at 11 am in the Dhaka Reporters’ unit, VIP Lounge, Segun Bagicha, Dhaka to draw the attention of all concerned to protect the growing torture upon Bangladeshi Hindus along with their temples, landed properties, business, women folk and even animals possessed by them.
In a very anguished PRESS statement by MMDSRS, its convener Satya Ranjan Barai conveyed that the paramount cry of the Bangladeshi Minority Hindus do not touch even any civil society of Bangladesh, which denotes its fake secularist attitude to the damn apathy to a Hindu persecution and ethnic cleansing. Prominent Hindu activists present there demanded immediate arrest and punishments of the Muslim perpetrators caused a hell and burning of Srimad Bhagavad Gita in Srivas Angan.
In the press note MMDSRS accused the present Enemy Property Act and its Amendments, which fueled all the Muslims to grab all Hindu properties as Muslims consider Hindus as enemies. And this is the stand point of a so called liberal Govt in Bangladesh.
In the press statement, convener of MMDSRS pointed out in the recent past, the 200 yrs old Radha Govinda Jiu Temple at 222 Lal Mohan Saha Street, Sutrapur, Dhaka is under the Islamic scanner to grab it. Land Mafia Hazi Islam Uddin, Hazi Afjal Hossian and local Awami League President of 77 no ward, Hazi Abul Hossian Abul clubbed together to occupy the temple forcefully. Their men have been threatening the temple authorities as Hindus must close all Muth (resident of monastic orders) and Mandirs (temple) to ease the land grabbing by these Muslim Land mafias in BD. (vide GD no. 1841 dt 28-03-2011 of Ramna Model P.S.).
In another incident, Abul Hossain Abul threatened the opposition Hindus, ” If you people do not leave your temples and religious institutions, we will not allow any kaffir Hindus to stay here peacefully. Any kind of Hindu protest will be stopped with a severe communal riot” with in very office of Addl. Police Superintendent, City SB, Dhaka. No authority could resist a venomous Abul Hossian for a while. (vide GD no. 1556 de 28-03-2011 of Sutrapur P.S.)
In Rampura area of Dhaka, where 220-225 Hindu families reside, one Rajauk Ali encroached 75% land of a Hindu crematorium beside the “Sree Sree Gouranga Maha Pravu Mandir”, Now Rajauk is trying to occupy the lone Hindu temple of this area, for which Hindus are determined to fight Land Grabbing Jehad in Bangladesh. It is also reported that the Awami League MP Jajid Malik has destroyed one temple in Urkiya, 2 km away from Manikganj town to vacate a Hindu possession of Golak Mondal and Sarat Mondal for a proposed hospital there. In the name of so called development, hospitals, cattle houses, slaughter houses, multi storied buildings; the Hindus properties are being snatched, even not giving a minimum price.
Pointing out an overwhelming discrimination to Hindus, it is told that when a Madrasha educated teacher gets his salary in a regular scale, then a Sanskrit scholar gets an honorarium of only Taka 120/- pm. As the Muslims claim their superiority in BD, Hindus there are treated as III class citizen. These Hindus also fought a brave fight and got tremendous torture from Pak platoons at the time of struggle of Free Bangladesh. The Math Mandir O Devottar Sampatti Raksha Samity has a plan to protest and hunger strike all over the Hindu pockets in BD. ISKCON Bangladesh is very much aggrieved as the maximum attacks are held in the Vaisnavite Goudiya Temples.
On behalf of MMDSRS, Pinaki Das, a Hind activist of BD forwarded a mail demanding justice in favour of BD Hindus as : ”WE DEMAND PROPER PUNISHMENT TO OUR GOVERNMENT. PLEASE HELP US AND CREATE PRESSURE TO THEM FOR INITIATING PROPER STEPS.
WE NEED FOREIGN ASSISTANCE FOR DEMANDING JUSTICE AND PLEASE SAVE THE HINDU TEMPLE LANDS WHICH HAVE ALREADY BEEN GRABBED BY THE ISLAMIC PERPETRATORS.”
Well the US ISRAEL..the West are dealing with the same assault---So I dont Know wht Assistance we can be-- Seems we NEED to KEEP SPEAKING THE TRUTH and STOP THE MEDIA COVERUP--of this Global Assault.
ISLAM IS NOT PEACE- IT NEVER WAS....What they do IS STRAIGHT FROM THE QURAN-- MOHAMMED HIMSELF DID THIS----
CNN Report: Taxing the rich just won't do it
At the current spending levels, there is simply not enough 'rich money' out there to fill the massive hole that Obama and the Democrats have dug. The big surprise here is that this report is coming from the Clinton News Network. The embed function is disabled but click on the pic to see the report over at Youtube.
Higher taxes won't reduce the debt by one red cent. Why? As a matter of historical fact, each $1 in higher taxes results in $1.17 of new spending. Show me where, since WWII that the debt has come down even once no matter the tax increases:
MORE
Higher taxes won't reduce the debt by one red cent. Why? As a matter of historical fact, each $1 in higher taxes results in $1.17 of new spending. Show me where, since WWII that the debt has come down even once no matter the tax increases:
MORE
Biofuel pushes millions of people towards poverty
Biofuel pushes millions of people towards poverty
By Vladimir Shabanov
Pravda
April 14, 2011
The growing production of bioethanol increases the shortage of food. Corn, sugar, other types of farm crops are required for the production of the biofuel. In addition, the growth of sowing for the green fuel reduces the square of lands designated for food cultures, which leads to smaller harvest and higher prices on food.
FAO's food prices index gained 2.2 percent in February, which marked the highest point since the analysis of the prices in 1990. The index embraces the fluctuations of prices on 55 sorts of food products.
FAO's crops prices index in March (includes wheat, rice and corn) increased by 3.7 percent. The prices on corn doubled last year, whereas wheat gained 65 percent.
READ MORE . . .
By Vladimir Shabanov
Pravda
April 14, 2011
The growing production of bioethanol increases the shortage of food. Corn, sugar, other types of farm crops are required for the production of the biofuel. In addition, the growth of sowing for the green fuel reduces the square of lands designated for food cultures, which leads to smaller harvest and higher prices on food.
FAO's food prices index gained 2.2 percent in February, which marked the highest point since the analysis of the prices in 1990. The index embraces the fluctuations of prices on 55 sorts of food products.
FAO's crops prices index in March (includes wheat, rice and corn) increased by 3.7 percent. The prices on corn doubled last year, whereas wheat gained 65 percent.
READ MORE . . .
Priceless: Jesse Jackson Hit With Discrimination Complaint
The complaint alleges Jesse Jackson ridiculed a gay employee of the Rainbow Push Coalition.
(NBC Chicago) — A former employee of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. at the Rainbow Push Coalition has filed a bombshell wrongful termination and discrimination complaint against the civil rights leader with the City of Chicago’s Commission on Human Rights.
The complaint, filed sometime last year by Tommy R. Bennett, a regular on the Tom Joyner Radio show and member of Barack Obama’s LGBT Leadership Council, includes shocking details about Jackson’s behavior toward the openly gay staffer including a suggestion that the civil rights leader may have propositioned him.
Jackson has denied the allegations in a legal response that was filed in July 2010 and resurfaced when the Windy City Times published a story Tuesday.
(NBC Chicago) — A former employee of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. at the Rainbow Push Coalition has filed a bombshell wrongful termination and discrimination complaint against the civil rights leader with the City of Chicago’s Commission on Human Rights.
The complaint, filed sometime last year by Tommy R. Bennett, a regular on the Tom Joyner Radio show and member of Barack Obama’s LGBT Leadership Council, includes shocking details about Jackson’s behavior toward the openly gay staffer including a suggestion that the civil rights leader may have propositioned him.
Jackson has denied the allegations in a legal response that was filed in July 2010 and resurfaced when the Windy City Times published a story Tuesday.
Feds' request: Let us take on jail that bans all books except the Bible
By Warren Richey
Novel interpretation of First Ammendment by government lawyers spurred on by ACLU
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (TCSM) The US Justice Department is asking a federal judge in South Carolina to allow it to intervene in a lawsuit against a sheriff who allegedly forbids prisoners in his jail from receiving books, magazines, or printed materials other than copies of the King James version of the Bible.
Berkeley County Sheriff H. Wayne DeWitt denies that restrictions imposed at the county lockup in Moncks Corner, S.C., rise to the level of a constitutional violation or violate US law.
He maintains that any actions taken at the jail are justified to preserve health and safety, and to further the pursuit of "legitimate penological objectives."
Justice Department lawyers disagree.
"The only book, magazine, newspaper, or religious publication that [jail officials] consistently permit prisoners to possess is the Bible," the Justice Department says in its complaint. "These practices discriminate against non-Christian prisoners in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause."
The First Amendment's establishment clause forbids the government from favoring one religion over any other. The amendment also bars the government from interfering in private acts of worship.
A Jewish prisoner seeking a Torah said he was told by jail officials that the prison only provides Bibles. Two Muslim prisoners seeking copies of the Koran were told the same thing, according to the complaint.
Jail officials reportedly told the prisoners that they could possess copies of the Torah or Koran in the jail, but only if a family member personally delivered the book to the jailhouse staff.
"The freedom to practice one's faith is among our most cherished rights, and the Justice Department is committed to defending that right," Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a statement.
The Justice Department complaint says the jail's practices violate the First Amendment and the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Government lawyers are asking the federal judge in the case to declare the jail's policies illegal and unconstitutional. They are also asking the judge to order the sheriff and his staff to "permit detainees and prisoners in their custody to have outside reading material."
NO LIBRARY FOR PRISONERS
There are roughly 190 prisoners in the Berkeley County Detention Center. The jail does not have a library or other means of access to a range of reading material for inmates, the complaint says.
The original lawsuit was filed in October by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Prison Legal News, a monthly journal covering prison law issues. PLN is distributed to inmates across the country.
The ACLU suit says that since 2008 the jail has blocked delivery of copies of PLN and books discussing prisoner rights.
David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, praised the Justice Department for taking action against the jail.
"The fact that the Justice Department has chosen to intervene in this case should send a clear signal to jail officials that systematically denying detainees access to books, magazines, and newspapers is unconstitutional," he said. "The policy in place at the Berkeley County Detention Center is nothing short of censorship, and there is no justification for shutting detainees off from the outside world in such a draconian way."
Novel interpretation of First Ammendment by government lawyers spurred on by ACLU
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (TCSM) The US Justice Department is asking a federal judge in South Carolina to allow it to intervene in a lawsuit against a sheriff who allegedly forbids prisoners in his jail from receiving books, magazines, or printed materials other than copies of the King James version of the Bible.
Berkeley County Sheriff H. Wayne DeWitt denies that restrictions imposed at the county lockup in Moncks Corner, S.C., rise to the level of a constitutional violation or violate US law.
He maintains that any actions taken at the jail are justified to preserve health and safety, and to further the pursuit of "legitimate penological objectives."
Justice Department lawyers disagree.
"The only book, magazine, newspaper, or religious publication that [jail officials] consistently permit prisoners to possess is the Bible," the Justice Department says in its complaint. "These practices discriminate against non-Christian prisoners in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause."
The First Amendment's establishment clause forbids the government from favoring one religion over any other. The amendment also bars the government from interfering in private acts of worship.
A Jewish prisoner seeking a Torah said he was told by jail officials that the prison only provides Bibles. Two Muslim prisoners seeking copies of the Koran were told the same thing, according to the complaint.
Jail officials reportedly told the prisoners that they could possess copies of the Torah or Koran in the jail, but only if a family member personally delivered the book to the jailhouse staff.
"The freedom to practice one's faith is among our most cherished rights, and the Justice Department is committed to defending that right," Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a statement.
The Justice Department complaint says the jail's practices violate the First Amendment and the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Government lawyers are asking the federal judge in the case to declare the jail's policies illegal and unconstitutional. They are also asking the judge to order the sheriff and his staff to "permit detainees and prisoners in their custody to have outside reading material."
NO LIBRARY FOR PRISONERS
There are roughly 190 prisoners in the Berkeley County Detention Center. The jail does not have a library or other means of access to a range of reading material for inmates, the complaint says.
The original lawsuit was filed in October by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Prison Legal News, a monthly journal covering prison law issues. PLN is distributed to inmates across the country.
The ACLU suit says that since 2008 the jail has blocked delivery of copies of PLN and books discussing prisoner rights.
David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, praised the Justice Department for taking action against the jail.
"The fact that the Justice Department has chosen to intervene in this case should send a clear signal to jail officials that systematically denying detainees access to books, magazines, and newspapers is unconstitutional," he said. "The policy in place at the Berkeley County Detention Center is nothing short of censorship, and there is no justification for shutting detainees off from the outside world in such a draconian way."
Did Obama and Holder Scuttle Terror Finance Prosecutions?
(PJM Exclusive) Did Obama and Holder Scuttle Terror Finance Prosecutions?
High-level source concedes DOJ let off CAIR co-founders and others for political reasons.
During the House Homeland Security hearing last month on the topic of radicalization in the American Muslim community, one exchange between L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) concerned the relationship between the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Hamas terrorist front the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sheriff Baca told the congressman:
We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that is a quote “criminal organization,” prosecute them. Hold them accountable and bring them to trial.
But according to a high-ranking source within the Department of Justice, who spoke exclusively to Pajamas Media on the condition of anonymity, Sheriff Baca, a long-time supporter of CAIR, was probably already in on the joke.
The joke is that a number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade.
But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.
Included in those indictments was at least one of the co-founders of CAIR, based on “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” a March 31 DOJ legal memo from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. A second DOJ official familiar with the investigation independently confirmed these details. Omar Ahmad is one of CAIR’s co-founders and its chairman emeritus. He was personally named, along with CAIR itself, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial in 2007 and 2008. During the trial FBI Agent Lara Burns testified that both Omar Ahmad and current CAIR executive director Nihad Awad were caught on FBI wiretaps attending a 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders in Philadelphia.
Dean Boyd, public affairs representative for the DOJ National Security Division, declined to provide me a copy of the March 31, 2010, memo dropping the Omar Ahmad prosecution. Directing me to submit a FOIA request, Boyd did say that “as a general rule, internal DOJ deliberation memos spelling out arguments for or against potential prosecution of any particular suspect are not public.”
Pajamas Media will be filing a FOIA request for all the related documents in this case.
According to my source, the chief reason outlined in the DOJ memo declining to prosecute CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad was the issue of potential jury nullification. The first Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007 ended in a hung jury. When the case was retried in 2008, all five defendants, former executives of the Holy Land Foundation, were convicted on all 108 counts.
But, according to our DOJ source, possible jury nullification was hardly the primary issue in the DOJ’s scuttling of the terror finance prosecutions. “This was a political decision from the get-go,” the source said.
It was always the plan to initially go after the [Holy Land Foundation] leaders first and then go after the rest of the accomplices in a second round of prosecutions. From a purely legal point of view, the case was solid. Jim Jacks [the U.S. attorney in Dallas who prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation executives] and his team were ready to go. There’s a mountain of evidence against all of these groups that was never introduced during the Holy Land trial and it is damning. We’ve got them on wiretaps. That’s exactly why many of these leaders and groups were named unindicted co-conspirators in the first round of prosecutions.
But from a political perspective there was absolutely no way that they could move forward. That’s why this decision came from the top down. These individuals who were going to be prosecuted are still the administration’s interfaith allies. Not only would these Muslim groups and their friends in the media be screaming “Islamophobia” at the top of their lungs and that this is a war against Islam, but the administration would look like absolute fools. It’s kind of hard to prosecute someone on material support for terrorism when you have pictures of them getting handed awards from DOJ and FBI leaders for their supposed counter-terror efforts. How would Holder explain that when we’re carting off these prominent Islamic leaders in handcuffs for their role in a terror finance conspiracy we’ve been investigating for years? This is how bad the problem is. Why are we continuing to have anything to do with these groups knowing what we know?
“By closing down these prosecutions,” the source added, “the evidence we’ve collected over the past decade that implicates most of the major Islamic organizations will never see the light of day.”
The FBI still has boxes and boxes of stuff that has never even been translated — just like what happened in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But it’s already been made public that they have copies of money transfers sent by NAIT [the North American Islamic Trust, which holds the property titles of many of the mosques in America -- Ed.] directly to known Hamas entities and Hamas leaders. Those came out during the [Holy Land Foundation] trial. But what if we won the case against NAIT and its leaders and the U.S. government finds itself the landlord to hundreds of mosques across the country? How well do you think that would that play in the Muslim community?
The actions by the DOJ to crush these prosecutions are just another schizophrenic episode in the U.S. government’s ongoing relationship with Islamic organizations, especially CAIR. After CAIR was named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, the FBI was forced to cut ties with the group. In an April 2009 letter to Sen. Jon Kyl, FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers said that “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”
And a February 2010 letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to four congressmen who inquired about the termination of the relationship between the FBI and CAIR — just weeks before the DOJ officially ceased further prosecutions, including of CAIR co-founders — elaborated on the evidence about CAIR that had emerged from the Holy Land trial. Yet, according to my DOJ source, CAIR leaders continue to be regularly received by top DOJ and FBI officials despite the official ban and these statements made to members of Congress.
And just last November, a significant July 2009 memorandum order by Judge Jorge Solis, who supervised the initial Holy Land Foundation trial, was unsealed under direction of the Court of Appeals. It provides the court’s reasons for refusing to remove CAIR and two other prominent Islamic groups, the Islamic Society of North America and NAIT, from the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the case. Judge Solis concluded that “the four pieces of evidence the government relies on, as discussed below, do create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas” (p. 7), specifically naming Omar Ahmad’s part in the conspiracy (p. 6) and adding later that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and with Hamas” (p. 15).
As I reported here at Pajamas Media, FBI Director Robert Mueller reiterated these reasons for cutting ties with CAIR before a recent House Judiciary Committee meeting — just two days before The Daily Caller reported that White House officials had publicly praised CAIR.
Adding to the hypocrisy, after the Obama administration scuttled the next round of prosecutions in the Hamas terror financing investigation last March, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the prosecutors and FBI investigators in the Holy Land Foundation case the AG’s Award for Distinguished Service last October for their work in the case.
I asked my DOJ source why they decided to come forward now. The source said:
This is a national security issue. We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina. Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers. And until Congress starts grilling the people inside DOJ and the FBI who are giving these groups cover, that is not going to change. My biggest fear is that Americans are going to die and it will be the very Muslim leaders we are working with who will be directly or indirectly responsible.
But if the U.S. government publicly acknowledges the terror ties of these groups why do they continue to deal with them?
We tried to do what we could during the Bush administration. After 9/11, we had to do something and [the Holy Land Foundation] was the biggest target. If the mistrial hadn’t have happened, we probably would have gone through the second round of prosecutions before the change in administrations.
To say things are different under Obama and Holder would be an understatement. Many of the people I work with at Justice now see CAIR not just as political allies, but ideological allies. They believe they are fighting the same revolution. It’s scary. And Congress and the American people need to know this is going on.
It remains to be seen how Congress, the American people, and the establishment media — who always seem eager to rise to the defense of CAIR and the other terror-tied Islamic groups — will proceed.
Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
High-level source concedes DOJ let off CAIR co-founders and others for political reasons.
During the House Homeland Security hearing last month on the topic of radicalization in the American Muslim community, one exchange between L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) concerned the relationship between the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Hamas terrorist front the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sheriff Baca told the congressman:
We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that is a quote “criminal organization,” prosecute them. Hold them accountable and bring them to trial.
But according to a high-ranking source within the Department of Justice, who spoke exclusively to Pajamas Media on the condition of anonymity, Sheriff Baca, a long-time supporter of CAIR, was probably already in on the joke.
The joke is that a number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade.
But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.
Included in those indictments was at least one of the co-founders of CAIR, based on “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” a March 31 DOJ legal memo from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. A second DOJ official familiar with the investigation independently confirmed these details. Omar Ahmad is one of CAIR’s co-founders and its chairman emeritus. He was personally named, along with CAIR itself, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial in 2007 and 2008. During the trial FBI Agent Lara Burns testified that both Omar Ahmad and current CAIR executive director Nihad Awad were caught on FBI wiretaps attending a 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders in Philadelphia.
Dean Boyd, public affairs representative for the DOJ National Security Division, declined to provide me a copy of the March 31, 2010, memo dropping the Omar Ahmad prosecution. Directing me to submit a FOIA request, Boyd did say that “as a general rule, internal DOJ deliberation memos spelling out arguments for or against potential prosecution of any particular suspect are not public.”
Pajamas Media will be filing a FOIA request for all the related documents in this case.
According to my source, the chief reason outlined in the DOJ memo declining to prosecute CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad was the issue of potential jury nullification. The first Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007 ended in a hung jury. When the case was retried in 2008, all five defendants, former executives of the Holy Land Foundation, were convicted on all 108 counts.
But, according to our DOJ source, possible jury nullification was hardly the primary issue in the DOJ’s scuttling of the terror finance prosecutions. “This was a political decision from the get-go,” the source said.
It was always the plan to initially go after the [Holy Land Foundation] leaders first and then go after the rest of the accomplices in a second round of prosecutions. From a purely legal point of view, the case was solid. Jim Jacks [the U.S. attorney in Dallas who prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation executives] and his team were ready to go. There’s a mountain of evidence against all of these groups that was never introduced during the Holy Land trial and it is damning. We’ve got them on wiretaps. That’s exactly why many of these leaders and groups were named unindicted co-conspirators in the first round of prosecutions.
But from a political perspective there was absolutely no way that they could move forward. That’s why this decision came from the top down. These individuals who were going to be prosecuted are still the administration’s interfaith allies. Not only would these Muslim groups and their friends in the media be screaming “Islamophobia” at the top of their lungs and that this is a war against Islam, but the administration would look like absolute fools. It’s kind of hard to prosecute someone on material support for terrorism when you have pictures of them getting handed awards from DOJ and FBI leaders for their supposed counter-terror efforts. How would Holder explain that when we’re carting off these prominent Islamic leaders in handcuffs for their role in a terror finance conspiracy we’ve been investigating for years? This is how bad the problem is. Why are we continuing to have anything to do with these groups knowing what we know?
“By closing down these prosecutions,” the source added, “the evidence we’ve collected over the past decade that implicates most of the major Islamic organizations will never see the light of day.”
The FBI still has boxes and boxes of stuff that has never even been translated — just like what happened in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But it’s already been made public that they have copies of money transfers sent by NAIT [the North American Islamic Trust, which holds the property titles of many of the mosques in America -- Ed.] directly to known Hamas entities and Hamas leaders. Those came out during the [Holy Land Foundation] trial. But what if we won the case against NAIT and its leaders and the U.S. government finds itself the landlord to hundreds of mosques across the country? How well do you think that would that play in the Muslim community?
The actions by the DOJ to crush these prosecutions are just another schizophrenic episode in the U.S. government’s ongoing relationship with Islamic organizations, especially CAIR. After CAIR was named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, the FBI was forced to cut ties with the group. In an April 2009 letter to Sen. Jon Kyl, FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers said that “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”
And a February 2010 letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to four congressmen who inquired about the termination of the relationship between the FBI and CAIR — just weeks before the DOJ officially ceased further prosecutions, including of CAIR co-founders — elaborated on the evidence about CAIR that had emerged from the Holy Land trial. Yet, according to my DOJ source, CAIR leaders continue to be regularly received by top DOJ and FBI officials despite the official ban and these statements made to members of Congress.
And just last November, a significant July 2009 memorandum order by Judge Jorge Solis, who supervised the initial Holy Land Foundation trial, was unsealed under direction of the Court of Appeals. It provides the court’s reasons for refusing to remove CAIR and two other prominent Islamic groups, the Islamic Society of North America and NAIT, from the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the case. Judge Solis concluded that “the four pieces of evidence the government relies on, as discussed below, do create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas” (p. 7), specifically naming Omar Ahmad’s part in the conspiracy (p. 6) and adding later that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and with Hamas” (p. 15).
As I reported here at Pajamas Media, FBI Director Robert Mueller reiterated these reasons for cutting ties with CAIR before a recent House Judiciary Committee meeting — just two days before The Daily Caller reported that White House officials had publicly praised CAIR.
Adding to the hypocrisy, after the Obama administration scuttled the next round of prosecutions in the Hamas terror financing investigation last March, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the prosecutors and FBI investigators in the Holy Land Foundation case the AG’s Award for Distinguished Service last October for their work in the case.
I asked my DOJ source why they decided to come forward now. The source said:
This is a national security issue. We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina. Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers. And until Congress starts grilling the people inside DOJ and the FBI who are giving these groups cover, that is not going to change. My biggest fear is that Americans are going to die and it will be the very Muslim leaders we are working with who will be directly or indirectly responsible.
But if the U.S. government publicly acknowledges the terror ties of these groups why do they continue to deal with them?
We tried to do what we could during the Bush administration. After 9/11, we had to do something and [the Holy Land Foundation] was the biggest target. If the mistrial hadn’t have happened, we probably would have gone through the second round of prosecutions before the change in administrations.
To say things are different under Obama and Holder would be an understatement. Many of the people I work with at Justice now see CAIR not just as political allies, but ideological allies. They believe they are fighting the same revolution. It’s scary. And Congress and the American people need to know this is going on.
It remains to be seen how Congress, the American people, and the establishment media — who always seem eager to rise to the defense of CAIR and the other terror-tied Islamic groups — will proceed.
Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
The Presidential Divider
Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.
The immediate political goal was to inoculate the White House from criticism that it is not serious about the fiscal crisis, after ignoring its own deficit commission last year and tossing off a $3.73 trillion budget in February that increased spending amid a record deficit of $1.65 trillion. Mr. Obama was chased to George Washington University yesterday because Mr. Ryan and the Republicans outflanked him on fiscal discipline and are now setting the national political agenda.
Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan's plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. "Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," he said, supposedly pitting "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society." The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.
Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which "starts," he said, "by being honest about what's causing our deficit." The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.
***
The great political challenge of the moment is how to update the 20th-century entitlement state so that it is affordable. With incremental change, Mr. Ryan is trying maintain a social safety net and the economic growth necessary to finance it. Mr. Obama presented what some might call the false choice of merely preserving the government we have with no realistic plan for doing so, aside from proposing $4 trillion in phantom deficit reduction over a gimmicky 12-year budget window that makes that reduction seem larger than it would be over the normal 10-year window.
Mr. Obama said that the typical political proposal to rationalize Medicare's gargantuan liabilities is that it is "just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse." His own plan is to double down on the program's price controls and central planning. All Medicare decisions will be turned over to and routed through an unelected commission created by ObamaCare—which will supposedly ferret out "unnecessary spending." Is that the same as "waste and abuse"?
Fifteen members will serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If per capita costs grow by more than GDP plus 0.5%, this board would get more power, including an automatic budget sequester to enforce its rulings. So 15 sages sitting in a room with the power of the purse will evidently find ways to control Medicare spending that no one has ever thought of before and that supposedly won't harm seniors' care, even as the largest cohort of the baby boom generation retires and starts to collect benefits.
Mr. Obama really went off on Mr. Ryan's plan to increase health-care competition and give consumers more control, barely stopping short of calling it murderous. It's hardly beyond criticism or debate, but the Ryan plan is neither Big Rock Candy Mountain nor some radical departure from American norms.
Mr. Obama came out for further cuts in the defense budget, but where? His plan is to ask Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen "to find additional savings," whatever those might be, after a "fundamental review." These mystery cuts would follow two separate, recent rounds of deep cuts that were supposed to stave off further Pentagon triage amid several wars and escalating national security threats.
Mr. Obama rallied the left with a summons for major tax increases on "the rich." Every U.S. fiscal trouble, he claimed, flows from the Bush tax cuts "for the wealthiest 2%," conveniently passing over what he euphemistically called his own "series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs." Apparently he means the $814 billion stimulus that failed and a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement in ObamaCare that harmed job creation.
Under the Obama tax plan, the Bush rates would be repealed for the top brackets. Yet the "cost" of extending all the Bush rates in 2011 over 10 years was about $3.7 trillion. Some $3 trillion of that was for everything but the top brackets—and Mr. Obama says he wants to extend those rates forever. According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans—most of whom are far from wealthy—were taxed at 100%, it wouldn't cover Mr. Obama's deficit for this year.
Mr. Obama sought more tax-hike cover under his deficit commission, seeming to embrace its proposal to limit tax deductions and other loopholes. But the commission wanted to do so in order to lower rates for a more efficient and competitive code with a broader base. Mr. Obama wants to pocket the tax increase and devote the revenues to deficit reduction and therefore more spending. So that's three significant tax increases—via higher top brackets, the tax hikes in ObamaCare and fewer tax deductions.
Lastly, Mr. Obama came out for a debt "failsafe," which will require the White House and Congress to hash out a deal if by 2014 projected debt is not declining as a share of the economy. But under his plan any deal must exclude Social Security, Medicare or low-income programs. So that means more tax increases or else "making government smarter, leaner and more effective." Which, now that he mentioned it, sounds a lot like cutting "waste and abuse."
Mr. Obama ludicrously claimed that Mr. Ryan favors "a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history." Nothing is likelier to bring that future about than the President's political indifference in the midst of a fiscal crisis.
The immediate political goal was to inoculate the White House from criticism that it is not serious about the fiscal crisis, after ignoring its own deficit commission last year and tossing off a $3.73 trillion budget in February that increased spending amid a record deficit of $1.65 trillion. Mr. Obama was chased to George Washington University yesterday because Mr. Ryan and the Republicans outflanked him on fiscal discipline and are now setting the national political agenda.
Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan's plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. "Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," he said, supposedly pitting "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society." The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.
Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which "starts," he said, "by being honest about what's causing our deficit." The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.
***
The great political challenge of the moment is how to update the 20th-century entitlement state so that it is affordable. With incremental change, Mr. Ryan is trying maintain a social safety net and the economic growth necessary to finance it. Mr. Obama presented what some might call the false choice of merely preserving the government we have with no realistic plan for doing so, aside from proposing $4 trillion in phantom deficit reduction over a gimmicky 12-year budget window that makes that reduction seem larger than it would be over the normal 10-year window.
Mr. Obama said that the typical political proposal to rationalize Medicare's gargantuan liabilities is that it is "just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse." His own plan is to double down on the program's price controls and central planning. All Medicare decisions will be turned over to and routed through an unelected commission created by ObamaCare—which will supposedly ferret out "unnecessary spending." Is that the same as "waste and abuse"?
Fifteen members will serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If per capita costs grow by more than GDP plus 0.5%, this board would get more power, including an automatic budget sequester to enforce its rulings. So 15 sages sitting in a room with the power of the purse will evidently find ways to control Medicare spending that no one has ever thought of before and that supposedly won't harm seniors' care, even as the largest cohort of the baby boom generation retires and starts to collect benefits.
Mr. Obama really went off on Mr. Ryan's plan to increase health-care competition and give consumers more control, barely stopping short of calling it murderous. It's hardly beyond criticism or debate, but the Ryan plan is neither Big Rock Candy Mountain nor some radical departure from American norms.
Mr. Obama came out for further cuts in the defense budget, but where? His plan is to ask Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen "to find additional savings," whatever those might be, after a "fundamental review." These mystery cuts would follow two separate, recent rounds of deep cuts that were supposed to stave off further Pentagon triage amid several wars and escalating national security threats.
Mr. Obama rallied the left with a summons for major tax increases on "the rich." Every U.S. fiscal trouble, he claimed, flows from the Bush tax cuts "for the wealthiest 2%," conveniently passing over what he euphemistically called his own "series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs." Apparently he means the $814 billion stimulus that failed and a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement in ObamaCare that harmed job creation.
Under the Obama tax plan, the Bush rates would be repealed for the top brackets. Yet the "cost" of extending all the Bush rates in 2011 over 10 years was about $3.7 trillion. Some $3 trillion of that was for everything but the top brackets—and Mr. Obama says he wants to extend those rates forever. According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans—most of whom are far from wealthy—were taxed at 100%, it wouldn't cover Mr. Obama's deficit for this year.
Mr. Obama sought more tax-hike cover under his deficit commission, seeming to embrace its proposal to limit tax deductions and other loopholes. But the commission wanted to do so in order to lower rates for a more efficient and competitive code with a broader base. Mr. Obama wants to pocket the tax increase and devote the revenues to deficit reduction and therefore more spending. So that's three significant tax increases—via higher top brackets, the tax hikes in ObamaCare and fewer tax deductions.
Lastly, Mr. Obama came out for a debt "failsafe," which will require the White House and Congress to hash out a deal if by 2014 projected debt is not declining as a share of the economy. But under his plan any deal must exclude Social Security, Medicare or low-income programs. So that means more tax increases or else "making government smarter, leaner and more effective." Which, now that he mentioned it, sounds a lot like cutting "waste and abuse."
Mr. Obama ludicrously claimed that Mr. Ryan favors "a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history." Nothing is likelier to bring that future about than the President's political indifference in the midst of a fiscal crisis.
The Myth of 'Herbert Hoover Economics'
To convey their disdain for the ongoing Republican pressure to reduce federal spending -- pressure that led to the recent agreement with President Obama for $38 billion in cuts in the current fiscal year -- critics have been reaching back eight decades for what they seem to regard as the ultimate in fiscal put-downs.
"Watching the debate in Washington," write Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift in a recent column, "it's like Herbert Hoover versus John Maynard Keynes, and sadly Hoover is winning." Hoover, they explain, "was curiously passive" in the face of the Great Depression and "he responded with a renewed focus on balancing the budget."
Populist Jim Hightower blasts Republicans for enabling Hoover to make "what looks to be a full comeback to power," complete with a return to Hoover's economic prescription: "Insist on reducing the size and spending of governments. . . . 'The deficit is the devil,' cry the New Hooverites, as they wildly slash spending and try to kill federal programs."
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asserts that "one of the most basic principles of economics is that when an economy is anemic, governments should use deficit spending as a fiscal stimulus." A lawmaker who "believes that the response to a weak economy is to slash spending," he says, "is embracing the approach that Herbert Hoover discredited 80 years ago." Last month, Kristof's colleague Paul Krugman scorned House Speaker John Boehner "for declaring that since families were suffering, the government should tighten its own belt." That, Krugman snorted, is "Herbert Hoover economics."
If there is one thing most people have learned about Herbert Hoover, it is that his timid response to the financial crisis of 1929 brought on the Great Depression. Instead of slashing federal spending and clinging to laissez-faire economics, the received wisdom goes, Hoover should have done just the opposite: plowed more money into the economy, relying on deficit spending to stimulate growth.
The only thing wrong with that narrative is that federal spending under Hoover didn't plummet. It went through the roof.
Hoover was sworn in as the 31st president of the United States on March 4, 1929. By the time his term ended four years later, federal outlays had climbed more than 50 percent in dollar terms; they had almost doubled when measured in purchasing power; and they had tripled as a fraction of national income. "If stimulus is the solution to high unemployment," remarks Santa Clara University economist and law professor David Friedman, "the Great Depression should have ended almost before it began."
Following the Wall Street crash of 1929, the Hoover administration went into spending overdrive. Real federal expenditures climbed by 4.7 percent between 1928 and 1929, but over the next three years they rose, respectively, 8 percent, 17.2 percent, and 15.7 percent. Exclude military outlays, and spending under Hoover exploded by a phenomenal 259 percent. Looking back at the federal government's growth during the 1920s, economist Randall Holcombe points out that in percentage terms, expenditures grew more in the four Hoover years than they would during the first seven years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency.
FDR is remembered today, of course, for the vast expansions of the New Deal. But as the Democratic standard-bearer in 1932, he lacerated Hoover as a big-spending Republican.
"For three long years," Roosevelt said in accepting his party's nomination, "I have been going up and down this country preaching that government . . . costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching."
Stop that preaching he didn't. He accused Hoover of presiding over "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all our history . . . an administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission." He slammed the Republican's record of "reckless and extravagant" spending, and of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible." He mocked those who thought "a huge expenditure of public funds" was the best way to grow the economy of succumbing "to the illusions of economic magic." His running mate, Texas Congressman John Nance Garner, even warned that Hoover was "leading the country down the path of socialism."
For his own part, said FDR, "I ask you very simply to assign to me the task of reducing the annual operating expenses of your national government." Indeed, he promised to enforce "absolute loyalty to the Democratic platform and especially to its economy plank." That plank called for "an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by . . . not less than 25 per cent."
In its zeal to cut today's multi-trillion-dollar budgets, the GOP is certainly fair game for critics. But those critics might want to think twice before blasting contemporary Republicans for their Hooverian impulses. Herbert Hoover can be fairly faulted for many things, but rolling back the federal budget isn't one of them.
"Watching the debate in Washington," write Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift in a recent column, "it's like Herbert Hoover versus John Maynard Keynes, and sadly Hoover is winning." Hoover, they explain, "was curiously passive" in the face of the Great Depression and "he responded with a renewed focus on balancing the budget."
Populist Jim Hightower blasts Republicans for enabling Hoover to make "what looks to be a full comeback to power," complete with a return to Hoover's economic prescription: "Insist on reducing the size and spending of governments. . . . 'The deficit is the devil,' cry the New Hooverites, as they wildly slash spending and try to kill federal programs."
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asserts that "one of the most basic principles of economics is that when an economy is anemic, governments should use deficit spending as a fiscal stimulus." A lawmaker who "believes that the response to a weak economy is to slash spending," he says, "is embracing the approach that Herbert Hoover discredited 80 years ago." Last month, Kristof's colleague Paul Krugman scorned House Speaker John Boehner "for declaring that since families were suffering, the government should tighten its own belt." That, Krugman snorted, is "Herbert Hoover economics."
If there is one thing most people have learned about Herbert Hoover, it is that his timid response to the financial crisis of 1929 brought on the Great Depression. Instead of slashing federal spending and clinging to laissez-faire economics, the received wisdom goes, Hoover should have done just the opposite: plowed more money into the economy, relying on deficit spending to stimulate growth.
The only thing wrong with that narrative is that federal spending under Hoover didn't plummet. It went through the roof.
Hoover was sworn in as the 31st president of the United States on March 4, 1929. By the time his term ended four years later, federal outlays had climbed more than 50 percent in dollar terms; they had almost doubled when measured in purchasing power; and they had tripled as a fraction of national income. "If stimulus is the solution to high unemployment," remarks Santa Clara University economist and law professor David Friedman, "the Great Depression should have ended almost before it began."
Following the Wall Street crash of 1929, the Hoover administration went into spending overdrive. Real federal expenditures climbed by 4.7 percent between 1928 and 1929, but over the next three years they rose, respectively, 8 percent, 17.2 percent, and 15.7 percent. Exclude military outlays, and spending under Hoover exploded by a phenomenal 259 percent. Looking back at the federal government's growth during the 1920s, economist Randall Holcombe points out that in percentage terms, expenditures grew more in the four Hoover years than they would during the first seven years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency.
FDR is remembered today, of course, for the vast expansions of the New Deal. But as the Democratic standard-bearer in 1932, he lacerated Hoover as a big-spending Republican.
"For three long years," Roosevelt said in accepting his party's nomination, "I have been going up and down this country preaching that government . . . costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching."
Stop that preaching he didn't. He accused Hoover of presiding over "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all our history . . . an administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission." He slammed the Republican's record of "reckless and extravagant" spending, and of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible." He mocked those who thought "a huge expenditure of public funds" was the best way to grow the economy of succumbing "to the illusions of economic magic." His running mate, Texas Congressman John Nance Garner, even warned that Hoover was "leading the country down the path of socialism."
For his own part, said FDR, "I ask you very simply to assign to me the task of reducing the annual operating expenses of your national government." Indeed, he promised to enforce "absolute loyalty to the Democratic platform and especially to its economy plank." That plank called for "an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by . . . not less than 25 per cent."
In its zeal to cut today's multi-trillion-dollar budgets, the GOP is certainly fair game for critics. But those critics might want to think twice before blasting contemporary Republicans for their Hooverian impulses. Herbert Hoover can be fairly faulted for many things, but rolling back the federal budget isn't one of them.
Why Isn't Obama 'Racist' for Ignoring Black Africa?
Suppose President John McCain, as with President Barack Obama, justified military force in Libya to avert "a humanitarian crisis." But then gave no thought of using the military to stop the human slaughter in places like the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and the Congo.
How long would it take before the Congressional Black Caucus and the Rev. Jesse Jackson call him "racist"?
In 1994, President Bill Clinton sent 20,000 troops to Haiti, restoring to power that country's first democratically elected president. Ten years later, when violence threatened to further destabilize Haiti, the Congressional Black Caucus again argued for American military intervention. President George W. Bush refused. He properly understood that a commander in chief should put the military in harm's way for one reason only -- to protect, defend and advance national security.
Black detractors called Bush racist.
Jackson said: "It is clear that the right wing in this country does not support that democracy. (Bush) is, in fact, supporting overthrow of this government in this hemisphere."
"Black Americans," wrote MSNBC.com, "have contended that such a policy smacks of racism. They say the United States is unwilling to risk sending soldiers into the chaotic Caribbean nation, the Western Hemisphere's poorest, because its people are of African descent."
Obama refuses to argue that intervening in Libya is part of the fight in the war against Islamofascism and therefore a matter of national security -- the only defensible rationale. For to say so would concede that President Bush was right. Bush's "freedom agenda" strategy, including the "dumb" war in Iraq, was to fight and win the War on Terror by encouraging the replacement of hostile Arab and Muslim autocracies with democracies.
Obama instead justifies the use of the military in Libya -- a country that poses no imminent threat and from which we get virtually no oil -- on the desire to avert a "humanitarian" crisis. If that's the reason, why stop there?
Ivory Coast, Africa -- Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2011: "The Red Cross reported an ominous development in the increasingly brutal struggle for control (of the Ivory Coast): the massacre of up to 1,000 civilians in a western town. ...
"'We were shocked by the magnitude of the brutality of the event,' said (a Red Cross official). 'Our colleagues found a huge amount of bodies.' ...
"The killings occurred in an area where ethnic and communal tensions over land have been deepened by the recent political crisis, which began when (Laurent) Gbagbo, the incumbent (president, now under arrest), refused to leave office after the international community declared (Alassane) Ouattara the winner in the U.N.-certified election in November."
Zimbabwe -- NPR, March 30, 2011, interview of Zimbabwe-born journalist Peter Godwin, on the 2008 "election" of longtime dictator Robert Mugabe: "They had ... lists of the opposition party office-bearers right down to ... village level. And they basically, they sent their own people out across the country and picked up the opposition members and took them into newly set up torture bases, which ironically were mostly sited in the schools, which also had stopped operating.
"And they tortured tens of thousands of people, basically. And it's quite interesting because they didn't kill thousands of people. They killed hundreds and hundreds of people, possibly more than 1,000, but they tortured vast numbers of people.
"And then they released them back to their communities so that they were like -- they acted like human billboards, that they were advertisements for what happens if you oppose the regime, and they sort of set off these ripples of fear and anxiety back in their home communities. ... It was literally like a torture factory."
Democratic Republic of the Congo -- U.N. Refugee Agency, March 16, 2011: "Marie (not her real name) was first raped three years ago during a raid on her village that left her husband and 10 children dead -- she was about 70 years old at the time.
"In January, the Congolese grandmother was raped again by armed men. ... 'I told them I was a poor old woman and that I was not interested in politics. They then asked me if I preferred to die or be raped. I told them, 'Rape me then,' Marie, struggling with her emotions, recalled of the second incident.
"'There were six of them. When one finished, another took his place. They hit me and broke my knee. Other women were also there in the forest and, after being raped, the men pushed pieces of wood inside them and the women died,' she told UNHCR. 'I was lucky, they did not kill me.'"
The world is full of hellholes, including several in black Africa with mass killings, genocide and civil wars. Why a "humanitarian" intervention in Libya, but not there?
"We don't make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent," said the deputy national security adviser off-camera to reporters before Obama's speech on Libya. "We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region."
Doesn't this make Obama ... racist?
How long would it take before the Congressional Black Caucus and the Rev. Jesse Jackson call him "racist"?
In 1994, President Bill Clinton sent 20,000 troops to Haiti, restoring to power that country's first democratically elected president. Ten years later, when violence threatened to further destabilize Haiti, the Congressional Black Caucus again argued for American military intervention. President George W. Bush refused. He properly understood that a commander in chief should put the military in harm's way for one reason only -- to protect, defend and advance national security.
Black detractors called Bush racist.
Jackson said: "It is clear that the right wing in this country does not support that democracy. (Bush) is, in fact, supporting overthrow of this government in this hemisphere."
"Black Americans," wrote MSNBC.com, "have contended that such a policy smacks of racism. They say the United States is unwilling to risk sending soldiers into the chaotic Caribbean nation, the Western Hemisphere's poorest, because its people are of African descent."
Obama refuses to argue that intervening in Libya is part of the fight in the war against Islamofascism and therefore a matter of national security -- the only defensible rationale. For to say so would concede that President Bush was right. Bush's "freedom agenda" strategy, including the "dumb" war in Iraq, was to fight and win the War on Terror by encouraging the replacement of hostile Arab and Muslim autocracies with democracies.
Obama instead justifies the use of the military in Libya -- a country that poses no imminent threat and from which we get virtually no oil -- on the desire to avert a "humanitarian" crisis. If that's the reason, why stop there?
Ivory Coast, Africa -- Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2011: "The Red Cross reported an ominous development in the increasingly brutal struggle for control (of the Ivory Coast): the massacre of up to 1,000 civilians in a western town. ...
"'We were shocked by the magnitude of the brutality of the event,' said (a Red Cross official). 'Our colleagues found a huge amount of bodies.' ...
"The killings occurred in an area where ethnic and communal tensions over land have been deepened by the recent political crisis, which began when (Laurent) Gbagbo, the incumbent (president, now under arrest), refused to leave office after the international community declared (Alassane) Ouattara the winner in the U.N.-certified election in November."
Zimbabwe -- NPR, March 30, 2011, interview of Zimbabwe-born journalist Peter Godwin, on the 2008 "election" of longtime dictator Robert Mugabe: "They had ... lists of the opposition party office-bearers right down to ... village level. And they basically, they sent their own people out across the country and picked up the opposition members and took them into newly set up torture bases, which ironically were mostly sited in the schools, which also had stopped operating.
"And they tortured tens of thousands of people, basically. And it's quite interesting because they didn't kill thousands of people. They killed hundreds and hundreds of people, possibly more than 1,000, but they tortured vast numbers of people.
"And then they released them back to their communities so that they were like -- they acted like human billboards, that they were advertisements for what happens if you oppose the regime, and they sort of set off these ripples of fear and anxiety back in their home communities. ... It was literally like a torture factory."
Democratic Republic of the Congo -- U.N. Refugee Agency, March 16, 2011: "Marie (not her real name) was first raped three years ago during a raid on her village that left her husband and 10 children dead -- she was about 70 years old at the time.
"In January, the Congolese grandmother was raped again by armed men. ... 'I told them I was a poor old woman and that I was not interested in politics. They then asked me if I preferred to die or be raped. I told them, 'Rape me then,' Marie, struggling with her emotions, recalled of the second incident.
"'There were six of them. When one finished, another took his place. They hit me and broke my knee. Other women were also there in the forest and, after being raped, the men pushed pieces of wood inside them and the women died,' she told UNHCR. 'I was lucky, they did not kill me.'"
The world is full of hellholes, including several in black Africa with mass killings, genocide and civil wars. Why a "humanitarian" intervention in Libya, but not there?
"We don't make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent," said the deputy national security adviser off-camera to reporters before Obama's speech on Libya. "We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region."
Doesn't this make Obama ... racist?
An open letter to President Obama-What do you really expect of Netanyahu and his government?
Candidly Speaking: An open letter to President Obama
By ISI LEIBLER
04/13/2011 23:12
What do you really expect of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government?
Talkbacks (4)
Dear Mr. President, During your recent meeting with American Jewish communal leaders, you reassured them of “America’s unshakable support for Israel’s security, opposition to any effort to delegitimize it or single it out for criticisms, and commitment to achieve a peace that will secure the future for Arabs and Israelis alike.”
Moreover, you reaffirmed your undertaking to keep US military aid at its current high levels.
On the eve of Pessah, when we celebrate our freedom from bondage, permit me to explain why, despite such assurances, most Israelis still harbor profound anxiety about your attitude toward our security.
You appear to have endorsed the Arab narrative, which ignores the fact that it was the Jewish state that suffered aggression from its neighbors preceding the ’67 war. You also seem to disregard the fact that the vast majority of Israelis today – including our prime minister – have no desire to rule over Arabs, and would dearly like to separate from them.
We may debate the amount of land beyond the 1949 armistice lines that Resolution 242 entitles us to retain, but the discussion is over minor percentages. Besides, two prime ministers offered the Palestinians over 90 percent of these territories – and were rebuffed.
TODAY OUR region is undergoing unprecedented upheaval. For years we have been confronting a xenophobic, Islamic Iran, on the eve of achieving nuclear status, which repeatedly declares its intention to wipe us off the face of the world.
Now the entire Arab world is in the throes of revolutionary turmoil. But far from emerging as free societies, new Arab regimes may prove to be even more committed to radical Islam than their corrupt predecessors. We fear that we will again be surrounded by fanatical rejectionist states committed to our destruction.
In this context, Mr. President, Israelis ask: What do you really expect of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government? Bear in mind that unilateral withdrawal from Gaza led to increased missile attacks. And since your election, Israel has made all the concessions. Last year, under enormous pressure from you, Netanyahu took the unprecedented step of imposing a 10-month freeze on settlement construction, even in areas that will unquestionably remain part of Israel. He also committed the government to endorsing a two-state solution – a major policy reversal in his Likud party.
In contrast, beyond making duplicitous statements – concealed from their constituents – endorsing peace, the Palestinian leaders remained utterly intransigent, unwilling to compromise on a single issue, even refusing to negotiate.
In fact, following Al Jazeera disclosures of compromises allegedly reached during negotiations with prime minister Ehud Olmert, the PA leaders blatantly denied having offered any concessions.
Surely this suggests that when negotiating with Olmert, Abbas was either duplicitous or conscious that brainwashing his constituents to hate us had been so effective that any genuine Palestinian accommodation was inconceivable.
The incitement emanating from every level of Palestinian society continues unabated, with Abbas brazenly sanctifying terrorists and providing pensions for the families of those who murder Israeli civilians.
Besides, the PA has been adamant in its refusal to recognize us as a Jewish state. Indeed, whereas 20% of the population of Israel consists of Arab and Muslim citizens, our “moderate peace partner” has proclaimed that a Palestinian state would be judenrein, insisting that he would not tolerate the presence of a single Jew. Mr. President, can you ignore such blatantly racist remarks from a leader you repeatedly refer to as a moderate peace partner? Many of us believe that the principal objective of Abbas, like his Hamas kinsmen, is still the dissolution of Jewish sovereignty; that he is merely employing Yasser Arafat’s tactics of extracting unilateral concessions and attempting to dismantle us in stages.
However, even if we accept your premise that Abbas is genuinely willing to make peace, can you, seriously visualize him having the power to deliver? Besides, you are aware that Hamas is a genocidal organization, committed to killing all Jews. Yet the man you insist is a moderate peace partner unequivocally repeats his desire to merge his PA with these Islamic psychopaths. Is it reasonable to expect us to support the creation of a neighboring state in which a dominant group remains proudly committed to our destruction? AND FINALLY, Mr. President, a word about our right to defend ourselves. If authorities in Cuba or Mexico authorized missile launches targeting American citizens, would you call for restraint? Would you respond by merely bombing empty buildings? Would you apologize if innocent civilians employed as human shields became casualties in the course of efforts to forestall attacks on American citizens? Mr. President, over the 63 years since we achieved independence, despite continuous terrorist attacks and neighbors seeking our destruction, we have succeeded in creating a vibrant democratic state. It is thus unconscionable to apply moral equivalence between our efforts to protect our citizens, and those committing acts of terror.
When you urge your Jewish constituents to press Israel to make further unilateral concessions, it epitomizes the concerns we share about your inability to appreciate the perils we face. It also fuels our fear that you are contemplating further pressure on us to retreat behind the 1949 armistice lines – which would endanger our very existence.
I urge you to reinstate the principles outlined by the Bush administration. I refer to US rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees; recognition of demographic changes in relation to the major settlement blocs, not seeking to impose a return to the 1949 armistice lines; and support for defensible Israeli borders.
I believe I echo the vast majority of my fellow Israelis when I appeal to you to provide us with the confidence to move forward by taking these elements into account and review your current policy.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
By ISI LEIBLER
04/13/2011 23:12
What do you really expect of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government?
Talkbacks (4)
Dear Mr. President, During your recent meeting with American Jewish communal leaders, you reassured them of “America’s unshakable support for Israel’s security, opposition to any effort to delegitimize it or single it out for criticisms, and commitment to achieve a peace that will secure the future for Arabs and Israelis alike.”
Moreover, you reaffirmed your undertaking to keep US military aid at its current high levels.
On the eve of Pessah, when we celebrate our freedom from bondage, permit me to explain why, despite such assurances, most Israelis still harbor profound anxiety about your attitude toward our security.
You appear to have endorsed the Arab narrative, which ignores the fact that it was the Jewish state that suffered aggression from its neighbors preceding the ’67 war. You also seem to disregard the fact that the vast majority of Israelis today – including our prime minister – have no desire to rule over Arabs, and would dearly like to separate from them.
We may debate the amount of land beyond the 1949 armistice lines that Resolution 242 entitles us to retain, but the discussion is over minor percentages. Besides, two prime ministers offered the Palestinians over 90 percent of these territories – and were rebuffed.
TODAY OUR region is undergoing unprecedented upheaval. For years we have been confronting a xenophobic, Islamic Iran, on the eve of achieving nuclear status, which repeatedly declares its intention to wipe us off the face of the world.
Now the entire Arab world is in the throes of revolutionary turmoil. But far from emerging as free societies, new Arab regimes may prove to be even more committed to radical Islam than their corrupt predecessors. We fear that we will again be surrounded by fanatical rejectionist states committed to our destruction.
In this context, Mr. President, Israelis ask: What do you really expect of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government? Bear in mind that unilateral withdrawal from Gaza led to increased missile attacks. And since your election, Israel has made all the concessions. Last year, under enormous pressure from you, Netanyahu took the unprecedented step of imposing a 10-month freeze on settlement construction, even in areas that will unquestionably remain part of Israel. He also committed the government to endorsing a two-state solution – a major policy reversal in his Likud party.
In contrast, beyond making duplicitous statements – concealed from their constituents – endorsing peace, the Palestinian leaders remained utterly intransigent, unwilling to compromise on a single issue, even refusing to negotiate.
In fact, following Al Jazeera disclosures of compromises allegedly reached during negotiations with prime minister Ehud Olmert, the PA leaders blatantly denied having offered any concessions.
Surely this suggests that when negotiating with Olmert, Abbas was either duplicitous or conscious that brainwashing his constituents to hate us had been so effective that any genuine Palestinian accommodation was inconceivable.
The incitement emanating from every level of Palestinian society continues unabated, with Abbas brazenly sanctifying terrorists and providing pensions for the families of those who murder Israeli civilians.
Besides, the PA has been adamant in its refusal to recognize us as a Jewish state. Indeed, whereas 20% of the population of Israel consists of Arab and Muslim citizens, our “moderate peace partner” has proclaimed that a Palestinian state would be judenrein, insisting that he would not tolerate the presence of a single Jew. Mr. President, can you ignore such blatantly racist remarks from a leader you repeatedly refer to as a moderate peace partner? Many of us believe that the principal objective of Abbas, like his Hamas kinsmen, is still the dissolution of Jewish sovereignty; that he is merely employing Yasser Arafat’s tactics of extracting unilateral concessions and attempting to dismantle us in stages.
However, even if we accept your premise that Abbas is genuinely willing to make peace, can you, seriously visualize him having the power to deliver? Besides, you are aware that Hamas is a genocidal organization, committed to killing all Jews. Yet the man you insist is a moderate peace partner unequivocally repeats his desire to merge his PA with these Islamic psychopaths. Is it reasonable to expect us to support the creation of a neighboring state in which a dominant group remains proudly committed to our destruction? AND FINALLY, Mr. President, a word about our right to defend ourselves. If authorities in Cuba or Mexico authorized missile launches targeting American citizens, would you call for restraint? Would you respond by merely bombing empty buildings? Would you apologize if innocent civilians employed as human shields became casualties in the course of efforts to forestall attacks on American citizens? Mr. President, over the 63 years since we achieved independence, despite continuous terrorist attacks and neighbors seeking our destruction, we have succeeded in creating a vibrant democratic state. It is thus unconscionable to apply moral equivalence between our efforts to protect our citizens, and those committing acts of terror.
When you urge your Jewish constituents to press Israel to make further unilateral concessions, it epitomizes the concerns we share about your inability to appreciate the perils we face. It also fuels our fear that you are contemplating further pressure on us to retreat behind the 1949 armistice lines – which would endanger our very existence.
I urge you to reinstate the principles outlined by the Bush administration. I refer to US rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees; recognition of demographic changes in relation to the major settlement blocs, not seeking to impose a return to the 1949 armistice lines; and support for defensible Israeli borders.
I believe I echo the vast majority of my fellow Israelis when I appeal to you to provide us with the confidence to move forward by taking these elements into account and review your current policy.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
A State Sponsored Racist
I’m not sorry enough that I’m a white man in America, apparently.
But thanks to another professor who works for the Colorado university system- this time in Colorado Springs- I can increase my guilt in a seminar lasting from April 13th through the 16th. And because it’s held at the Sheraton in Minneapolis, MN, I can have a mint put on pillow every night as I fall asleep wrapped in guilt.
Thank goodness for the University of Colorado and the Colorado taxpayer.
Yes, the same state university system that brought us Ward Churchill, brings us the 12th Annual White Privilege Conference.
Wow! They’ve had 11 already. Colorado must be proud.
White Privilege, the conference says, is the concept “that the U.S. was started by white people, for white people.”
According to the conference web site, you too might suffer from White Privilege if you exhibit any of the following symptoms:
•assume that most of the people you or your children study in history classes and textbooks will be of the same race, gender, or sexual orientation as you are
•assume that your failures will not be attributed to your race, or your gender
•assume that if you work hard and follow the rules, you will get what you deserve
•go out in public without fear of being harassed or constantly worried about physical safety
•not have to think about your race, or your gender, or your sexual orientation, or disabilities, on a daily basis
U.K.’s Daily Mail tells us that the conference’s founder, Eddie Moore “wanted… to teach people of colour: 'That White supremacy, White privilege, racism and other forms of oppression are designed for your destruction - designed to kill you.’”
Of course he did.
The conference organizer is Dr. Abby Ferber, the Director of Women’s Studies and Co- Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity and Development at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS).
The UCCS says that Dr. Ferber “is widely recognized as a leading scholar of the far right.” She has published several works on white supremacists groups and hate crimes.
Of course she has.
But by “far-right,” she means you, too.
Like a lot of left-wing academia delving in radical theories of racial and gender identity, Dr. Ferber seems to loose her grip on reality when it comes to the Tea Party.
Ferber, for example, took up the civility chant right after the Gabby Giffords shooting because, she is, after all “one of the leading scholars of the far right,” and when she says “far-right” she means you too.
Ferber told readers of the HuffPost that the shooting was the result of the “same fundamentalist ideology that has provided the backdrop of previous incidents of domestic, home-grown terrorism, such as the Oklahoma City bombing.”
“Current right-wing fear-mongering about the U.S. moving toward socialism, or tyranny,” she continued “have no empirical grounding. But that doesn't matter -- all that matters is some people have been convinced this is the case.”
And because of that, Tea Partiers- you, me and the rest of us racists- shot Gabrielle Giffords. Ferber argued that “right-wing pundits now ‘must share some portion of moral responsibility for creating a dangerous environment,’" even though the trigger was pulled by a guy who is mentally ill with no political affiliations.
White, male, Christians, it seems, never get blamed for anything in this country, says Ferber. I guess we’re all guilty by insanity though.
“It is time we turn that critical lens,” says Dr. Far Right Wing “on what passes for mainstream America.”
No, Dr. Ferber.
It’s time we called you what you are: A state-sponsored racist.
Of course you are.
But thanks to another professor who works for the Colorado university system- this time in Colorado Springs- I can increase my guilt in a seminar lasting from April 13th through the 16th. And because it’s held at the Sheraton in Minneapolis, MN, I can have a mint put on pillow every night as I fall asleep wrapped in guilt.
Thank goodness for the University of Colorado and the Colorado taxpayer.
Yes, the same state university system that brought us Ward Churchill, brings us the 12th Annual White Privilege Conference.
Wow! They’ve had 11 already. Colorado must be proud.
White Privilege, the conference says, is the concept “that the U.S. was started by white people, for white people.”
According to the conference web site, you too might suffer from White Privilege if you exhibit any of the following symptoms:
•assume that most of the people you or your children study in history classes and textbooks will be of the same race, gender, or sexual orientation as you are
•assume that your failures will not be attributed to your race, or your gender
•assume that if you work hard and follow the rules, you will get what you deserve
•go out in public without fear of being harassed or constantly worried about physical safety
•not have to think about your race, or your gender, or your sexual orientation, or disabilities, on a daily basis
U.K.’s Daily Mail tells us that the conference’s founder, Eddie Moore “wanted… to teach people of colour: 'That White supremacy, White privilege, racism and other forms of oppression are designed for your destruction - designed to kill you.’”
Of course he did.
The conference organizer is Dr. Abby Ferber, the Director of Women’s Studies and Co- Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity and Development at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS).
The UCCS says that Dr. Ferber “is widely recognized as a leading scholar of the far right.” She has published several works on white supremacists groups and hate crimes.
Of course she has.
But by “far-right,” she means you, too.
Like a lot of left-wing academia delving in radical theories of racial and gender identity, Dr. Ferber seems to loose her grip on reality when it comes to the Tea Party.
Ferber, for example, took up the civility chant right after the Gabby Giffords shooting because, she is, after all “one of the leading scholars of the far right,” and when she says “far-right” she means you too.
Ferber told readers of the HuffPost that the shooting was the result of the “same fundamentalist ideology that has provided the backdrop of previous incidents of domestic, home-grown terrorism, such as the Oklahoma City bombing.”
“Current right-wing fear-mongering about the U.S. moving toward socialism, or tyranny,” she continued “have no empirical grounding. But that doesn't matter -- all that matters is some people have been convinced this is the case.”
And because of that, Tea Partiers- you, me and the rest of us racists- shot Gabrielle Giffords. Ferber argued that “right-wing pundits now ‘must share some portion of moral responsibility for creating a dangerous environment,’" even though the trigger was pulled by a guy who is mentally ill with no political affiliations.
White, male, Christians, it seems, never get blamed for anything in this country, says Ferber. I guess we’re all guilty by insanity though.
“It is time we turn that critical lens,” says Dr. Far Right Wing “on what passes for mainstream America.”
No, Dr. Ferber.
It’s time we called you what you are: A state-sponsored racist.
Of course you are.
New Documentary on the Destructive Left
Below is a trailer for a must see new video by Curtis Bowers, Agenda: Grinding America Down. It includes the perspective of many well-known policy experts, including Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, III, Trevor Loudon, Phyllis Schafly, Brannon Howse, M. Stanton Evans, Dr. Robert Chandler, and many others. This documentary DVD is well worth the modest price.
Note: while I was also interviewed for this documentary, I will not receive, nor did I ask for any remuneration. My only interest in promoting this video is seeing the facts contained herein communicated to the public - facts that our media has utterly failed to disclose.
Note: while I was also interviewed for this documentary, I will not receive, nor did I ask for any remuneration. My only interest in promoting this video is seeing the facts contained herein communicated to the public - facts that our media has utterly failed to disclose.
Lancaster County legislator backs birther bill Aimed at presidential hopefuls
If President Barack Obama wants to win Pennsylvania in his bid for a second term in the White House next year, he might be asked to produce his birth certificate.
Two dozen legislators, including one from Lancaster County, want to force presidential hopefuls, including Obama, to cough up proof that they're natural born citizens to get on the state's ballot.
The bill's author, Republican state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe of Butler County, said he drafted the measure in response to persistent questions about Obama's citizenship — even though the president released a copy of his birth certificate, showing he was born in Hawaii, during his first campaign.
"I was shocked that somebody's running for president and there's this question," Metcalfe said. "Why doesn't our process thoroughly ensure we don't have that question?"
Rep. Tom Creighton, a Republican from Rapho Township, is one of 23 cosponsors of the bill, which was introduced in the House on Wednesday. A previous attempt to pass the legislation failed during the last two-year session.
Supporters of the legislation say it's not an attempt to prevent Obama from getting on the 2012 president ballot, but other lawmakers aren't so sure.
"This bill appears to be a shot directed at President Obama and the immigrant community," said Rep. Gordon Denlinger, a Republican from Narvon.
"While adherence to election law is important, I'm not aware that concerns over the eligibility of any elected official exist in state government," said Denlinger. "With the huge budget and jobs creation challenges we face in Harrisburg, I believe our focus should be directed elsewhere."
The U.S. Constitution requires those serving as president to be born in the country, but Metcalfe and supporters of the bill say there's nothing in the state election law that requires they prove it by showing their birth certificates in Harrisburg.
"He has not made public the documentation for Pennsylvania's election officials to actually verify that he is eligible to hold office. He never provided that in his official filing because we don't require it. That's what's more shocking," Metcalfe said.
Metcalfe's legislation would require candidates for president and vice president to turn over "documentation that provides proof that the candidate is a natural born citizen," among other information, to the Department of State. It does not specify what constitutes documentation, but he cited a legitimate birth certificate as the most common form.
Asked whether documentation already made public by the Obama campaign, a "certification of live birth," would suffice under his legislation, Metcalfe said: "I'm not familiar with that certificate and what that certificate's issuance actually claims."
Metcalfe said Obama has not provided enough documentation to satisfy "most people" to put an end to the controversy. In a statement announcing his legislation, though, Metcalfe goes a step further and says he, too, doesn't believe the president has proved his was born in the country.
"It is beyond perplexing and greatly troubling that a political candidate can ascend to the highest levels of government without providing sufficient documentation verifying his or her place of birth or American citizenship," Metcalfe said.
Obama released his birth certificate, a document issued and confirmed by Hawaii's Department of Health, during the 2008 presidential campaign. The record, now widely available on the Internet, states the president was born at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. Newspapers at the time also carried notices announcing his birth there.
The document, though titled a "certification of live birth," is a short form of Hawaii's birth certificate, and contains all the information required by the State Department for proving citizenship.
Still, critics have raised questions about why Obama won't release a longer version of the record, which contains more information about his birth statistics. They believe it is because Obama was born Kenya and is trying to cover it up.
The ongoing controversy is fueled by conspiracy theorists and Obama's critics on the extreme right, though it has crept into pop culture, most recently with Donald Trump's claim that he has hired investigators to search for the president's birth certificate.
Creighton said he signed onto the legislation because it adds teeth to the state elections code.
"A lot of things are overlooked and are not really checked, leaving it up to the competition to do the checking," he said. "This way you have to file and now it becomes a legal document, which would be perjury if you're falsifying information."
He believes the records Obama has already released are sufficient to prove he's a U.S. citizen under the terms of the Metcalfe bill.
"I would say, 'Yes,' " Creighton said.
Two dozen legislators, including one from Lancaster County, want to force presidential hopefuls, including Obama, to cough up proof that they're natural born citizens to get on the state's ballot.
The bill's author, Republican state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe of Butler County, said he drafted the measure in response to persistent questions about Obama's citizenship — even though the president released a copy of his birth certificate, showing he was born in Hawaii, during his first campaign.
"I was shocked that somebody's running for president and there's this question," Metcalfe said. "Why doesn't our process thoroughly ensure we don't have that question?"
Rep. Tom Creighton, a Republican from Rapho Township, is one of 23 cosponsors of the bill, which was introduced in the House on Wednesday. A previous attempt to pass the legislation failed during the last two-year session.
Supporters of the legislation say it's not an attempt to prevent Obama from getting on the 2012 president ballot, but other lawmakers aren't so sure.
"This bill appears to be a shot directed at President Obama and the immigrant community," said Rep. Gordon Denlinger, a Republican from Narvon.
"While adherence to election law is important, I'm not aware that concerns over the eligibility of any elected official exist in state government," said Denlinger. "With the huge budget and jobs creation challenges we face in Harrisburg, I believe our focus should be directed elsewhere."
The U.S. Constitution requires those serving as president to be born in the country, but Metcalfe and supporters of the bill say there's nothing in the state election law that requires they prove it by showing their birth certificates in Harrisburg.
"He has not made public the documentation for Pennsylvania's election officials to actually verify that he is eligible to hold office. He never provided that in his official filing because we don't require it. That's what's more shocking," Metcalfe said.
Metcalfe's legislation would require candidates for president and vice president to turn over "documentation that provides proof that the candidate is a natural born citizen," among other information, to the Department of State. It does not specify what constitutes documentation, but he cited a legitimate birth certificate as the most common form.
Asked whether documentation already made public by the Obama campaign, a "certification of live birth," would suffice under his legislation, Metcalfe said: "I'm not familiar with that certificate and what that certificate's issuance actually claims."
Metcalfe said Obama has not provided enough documentation to satisfy "most people" to put an end to the controversy. In a statement announcing his legislation, though, Metcalfe goes a step further and says he, too, doesn't believe the president has proved his was born in the country.
"It is beyond perplexing and greatly troubling that a political candidate can ascend to the highest levels of government without providing sufficient documentation verifying his or her place of birth or American citizenship," Metcalfe said.
Obama released his birth certificate, a document issued and confirmed by Hawaii's Department of Health, during the 2008 presidential campaign. The record, now widely available on the Internet, states the president was born at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. Newspapers at the time also carried notices announcing his birth there.
The document, though titled a "certification of live birth," is a short form of Hawaii's birth certificate, and contains all the information required by the State Department for proving citizenship.
Still, critics have raised questions about why Obama won't release a longer version of the record, which contains more information about his birth statistics. They believe it is because Obama was born Kenya and is trying to cover it up.
The ongoing controversy is fueled by conspiracy theorists and Obama's critics on the extreme right, though it has crept into pop culture, most recently with Donald Trump's claim that he has hired investigators to search for the president's birth certificate.
Creighton said he signed onto the legislation because it adds teeth to the state elections code.
"A lot of things are overlooked and are not really checked, leaving it up to the competition to do the checking," he said. "This way you have to file and now it becomes a legal document, which would be perjury if you're falsifying information."
He believes the records Obama has already released are sufficient to prove he's a U.S. citizen under the terms of the Metcalfe bill.
"I would say, 'Yes,' " Creighton said.
TWA 800 - Still a Clinton federal government coverup
TWA 800 – still a Clinton federal government cover up.
Posted: April 13, 2011, | Author: radiopatriot | Filed under: American Spirit | Tags: Clinton, FAA, FBI, Jack Cashill, James Kallstrom, NTSB, TWA 800, UAL Captain Alfred C. Haynes
During an email conversation with one of my radio show listeners — retired airline pilot JetDriver2 – the topic of the DC-10 aircraft came up then quickly shifted over to TWA 800 and its mysterious plunge from the sky over Long Island. The conversation went from there. With his permission I have reprinted it here.
***
TWA was acquired by American two months after my retirement in Nov 2000. We never recovered from the July 1996 shoot-down of TWA 800 described by Jack Cashill in his book “First Strike”. This was a massive cover-up (for which I have personal evidence) ordered by Bill Clinton, who also ordered the assassination of Ron Brown described in another Cashill book “Ron Brown’s Body” which I recently read.
Yes TWA 800 was absolutely shot down. The FAA knows it and the FBI knows it. There was explosive residue on the seat cushions and a hole in the reconstructed fuselage. Many pieces of the wreckage were confiscated by the FBI and never seen again, including pieces identified by TWA volunteers working in the hangar at Calverton as showing missile damage.
There is no way that jet fuel fumes in an empty center fuel tank could have blown up that plane. Jet fuel is not volatile and is very difficult to ignite, nor was there enough energy in the residual fuel in the center tank to produce an explosion of that magnitude. There is testimony on this point by scientists.
There is an audiotape of an ANG helicopter pilot who was a former Navy Search and Rescue pilot in Vietnam, and who is also an attorney on Long Island. He was shooting a practice approach in the direction of the TWA 800 explosion. He testified that he saw the missile trail and he saw the explosion – it was an ordnance explosion, not a fuel explosion. This guy is familiar with anti-aircraft missiles and with military ordnance.
Shortly after the crash I had a co-pilot who was in the AF Reserve at McGuire AFB in NJ. He told me he was on Reserve duty the weekend following the crash. One of his colleagues who was an FAA inspector told him that it was a missile, and that the FAA had radar tapes clearly showing that. (These radar tapes disappeared, and audiotapes from the TWA flight recorder were tampered with.) In addition, FBI SAIC James Kallstrom stated in a TV interview that it was a missile
Several weeks later, after Clinton had shut down the criminal investigation and turned the accident investigation over to mechanical failure issues, this USAFR pilot encountered the FAA colleague again at McGuire and asked him what’s up with the investigation and the rejection of the missile theory in Kallstrom’s public statements. The FAA guy became very agitated and denied that he had ever said anything about a missile.
About six months later, I had a co-pilot who had been director of 747 flight engineer training at the time of the accident. He had been called in for a deposition concerning 747 F/E training procedures in connection with lawsuits from families of passengers who were killed (the fuel tank explosion theory rested on a hypothesis that the flight engineer had turned on the pumps in the empty center fuel tank to clear out residual fuel, and that action had initiated the sequence of events that resulted in a fuel tank explosion). When he met with the TWA lawyers to prepare for the deposition, they told him in these words as he related them to me:
“Just answer the questions they ask as carefully and accurately as possible. Don’t be concerned about the focus on mechanical failure or crew procedures. We know it was a missile, and their lawyers know it was a missile. This is just something that must be ruled out.”
This copilot told me that nobody in TWA flight operations senior management believed it was anything other than a missile. TWA was one of the first operators of the B-747, and the aircraft were very well maintained and reliable.
The NTSB and the FAA inspected TWA’s entire 747 fleet and they could find no example of a “frayed electrical connection to a center tank fuel pump producing a short which ignited the fuel fumes” in accordance with the fuel explosion theory.
Bill Clinton is thus responsible for another huge lie which destroyed TWA and left the families of the victims without the truth about what caused the deaths of their loved ones. Of course, the press was led around by the nose to conform to whatever Clinton wanted them to publish. However, Jim Kallstrom’s willingness to go along with this fraud is unforgivable.
As to the DC-10, TWA did not have DC-10s, but we had the L-1011. It was a beautiful airplane and, in my experience, a dream to fly. I do not believe that a 1011 was ever lost due to mechanical failure. Eastern lost one in the Everglades due to pilot error, and Delta lost one in Dallas due to a wind shear that exceeded the capability of the aircraft to recover by the time the pilot reacted with max power. Later procedure changes required application of max power immediately upon sensing wind shear, and both aircraft and tower wind shear sensors were installed.
Wind shear is an abrupt change in wind velocity and/or wind direction at low altitude in the vicinity of an airport. It is usually associated with cold front passage or thunderstorm activity near the airport, which was the case in the Delta accident at DFW.
It can also be caused by strong winds flowing over mountainous terrain features, which can occur at airports like Palm Springs, CA or Kodiak, AK.
A decreasing wind shear can cause a sudden loss of airflow over the wing, drastically reducing the lift produced by the wing. An increasing wind shear can increase airflow over the wing sufficiently that the pilot is required to reduce power to maintain the desired airspeed and vertical approach path while in the landing configuration. This can quickly become a decreasing wind shear with low power and high drag – a very dangerous combination. The introduction of wind shear detection systems, both in the cockpit and at the airport control tower using sensors placed around the perimeter of the airport, have virtually eliminated wind shear accidents.
Pilot wind shear training was significantly improved after this accident, and every pilot on every aircraft type was required to demonstrate the ability to react to and survive a “Delta wind shear” reproduced in the simulator.
One thing finally killed both the DC-10 and the L1011 – these airplanes were designed for long-haul overwater operations on routes which could not support a 747, before two-engine overwater operations were allowed. Boeing initially designed the 767 with a three- pilot crew while the crew complement battle was going on with the Air Line Pilots Association. Pilots believed that three pilots were needed in all large jet aircraft for safety of flight and pilot workload reasons.
After ALPA lost that battle, the flight engineer station was removed from the 767 design and all controls were made accessible for two pilot operation. Then Boeing and TWA, working together with the FAA, established a protocol for Extended Range Twin Engine Operations (ETOPS). It required demonstration and continuous documentation of a significantly higher level of engine reliability, as well as certain other mechanical modifications to the airplane, including installation of an air driven electrical generator (Ram Air Turbine or RAT) deployable in an emergency. ETOPS also required the availability of designated ETOPS alternate airports along the route with acceptable weather conditions during the flight.
Once TWA’s ETOPS program was approved, allowing long-haul overwater operations with 2-man/2 engine aircraft, other airlines followed suit and the L-1011 and the DC-10 were immediately obsolete.
One other problem took TWA’s L-1011s out of service prematurely. Food preparation took place in a forward lower galley, and fluids from the upper galleys also drained down into the lower galley and collected in the bilges of the aircraft. These fluids caused extensive corrosion which extended into the main wing spar which passed through that area. As I recall, the cost of replacing the wing spar was around $10 million per aircraft. So when wing spar corrosion became an issue in a particular aircraft, that aircraft was grounded and permanently taken out of service.
The DC-10’s reputation was not fatally damaged by the AA Flight 191 Chicago accident on May 25, 1979 in which an engine dropped off the wing. This was caused by damage to the engine strut during maintenance at AA’s facility in Tulsa, so the DC-10 fleet was not really hurt by this accident. What hurt the DC-10 was the Sioux City UAL accident (UAL Flight 232, July 19, 1989) in which an uncontained failure of the center engine caused the loss of all three hydraulic systems due to placement of critical components of all three hydraulic systems in the tail area of the aircraft. This could not happen in an L-1011.
UAL Captain Alfred C. Haynes and a DC-10 check pilot who happened to be on board by the name of Captain Dennis E. Fitch, working together with no flight controls and only manipulation of the throttles on the wing engines as directed by Captain Haynes, managed to get that aircraft on the ground without a total loss of life. This was an incredible feat of airmanship which very few pilots were able to duplicate successfully in a simulator.
At one time I was one of five Executive Vice-Presidents of ALPA. I was present at an ALPA Board of Directors meeting in Miami when Captain Haynes was awarded the annual ALPA air safety award for 1989. He was a very humble guy and an excellent pilot, much like Captain Sully. Some pilots just seem to be born with flying ability, and in my experience, most airline pilots I flew with were outstanding pilots. (I am sorry to say there were a few exceptions.)
Like Captain Sullenberger, airline pilots seem to be able to rise to the occasion and accomplish amazing feats of airmanship when needed.
I could tell you several stories about similar feats by TWA pilots, including a story about a fully loaded B767 taking off at night from Tel Aviv non-stop to JFK when the right engine ingested a flock of birds and exploded just before lift-off.
In this situation, the airplane cannot be safely stopped on the remaining runway and the pilot must continue the take-off on one engine. (We often practiced this in the simulator for the B-767, taking off on runway 31L at JFK. The rate of climb with one engine out at max gross take-off weight –MTOW- was very low. Turns were not permitted until reaching 1000 feet above the surface, but this particular runway pointed directly at the World Trade Center. Not having enough altitude to clear the buildings, we were forced to turn to avoid them, thus sacrificing our rate of climb.
The captain of that aircraft struggled to gain altitude on one engine while trying to get the gear and flaps retracted, flew out over the Mediterranean to get turned around, then came back and landed downwind, way over max landing weight. They destroyed the landing gear and wheels getting stopped, but that crew saved the aircraft and all the passengers. I just hope I could have done as well.
I knew a number of USAir pilots in my work at ALPA. I remember when they were Mohawk and Allegheny, and the huge fight over the merger of the pilot seniority lists. They had a reputation as an ornery bunch, but they were survivors.
By the way – Jack Cashill did a follow-up story on TWA 800 two years ago. He still feels that the truth needs to be exposed on this cover-up. Perhaps you could devote a program to this story with Jack Cashill.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/reopen_the_twa_flight_800_case.html
If you are interested in TWA 800, go to this site:
http://raylahr.entryhost.com/multimedia.php then go to “Expert Eyewitnesses” at the top and click on “Major Fred Meyer (ret)” for the clip of Fritz Meyer’s description of his view of the explosion from the cockpit of his ANG helicopter.
The ANG helicopter pilot referred to above, Major Fred “Fritz” Meyer, provided statements to NTSB investigators concerning his observations of the explosion and crash of TWA 800 in the waters off the southern shore of Long Island in the evening of July 17, 1996. After witnessing a huge fireball “four times the size of the setting sun” settle into the Atlantic Ocean just south of his position on approach to the Suffolk Airport, Major Meyer and his co-pilot, Captain Chris Baur proceeded to the crash site in their Blackhawk helicopter. They found floating debris from the giant 747 and many bodies in the water, but no survivors. A talk given by Major Meyer describing these events was recorded and may be found at this site:http://raylahr.entryhost.com/multimedia.php
Following is a direct link to the recording: http://raylahr.entryhost.com/Videos/web/MajorFredMeyer.html
After listening to Major Fritz Meyer’s description of the downing of TWA 800, you will have no doubt that a B-747 carrying 230 innocent passengers and crew on their way to Paris, France was taken down by a missile fired from the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
Who fired this missile and why they did this is one of the enduring mysteries of modern aviation.
As with Pan Am Flight 103, the loss of a Boeing 747 (in the Pan Am case a loss triggered by a bomb in the luggage compartment which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988) resulted in the demise of a major airline with a long and storied history.
TWA was formed from the merger of Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express in 1930 and formally named Transcontinental and Western Air or TWA. Its name was officially changed to Trans World Airlines following extensive trans-Atlantic military service during World War II. TWA played an important role in the development of the commercial aviation industry in the United States.
TWA undertook the original efforts to create a true cabin class airliner (for which the Ford Tri-Motor, predecessor of the DC-2/DC-3 barely qualified), approaching Donald Douglas with a proposal for what became the DC-1. The one and only DC-1 specimen was delivered to TWA in December 1933. In May 1934 the first DC-2, an improved version of the DC-1 and forerunner of the DC-3, was delivered to TWA. DC-3s entered the fleet shortly thereafter. DC-3s flying over the “Hump” prevented the complete loss of China to Japanese forces in World War II. Truly, WWII could not have been won without the logistics capability provided by the DC-3.
TWA conducted the early research that led to the first pressurized high-altitude passenger aircraft, beginning with the Boeing 307. TWA also pioneered early efforts to develop instrument flying techniques, allowing pilots to fly through the weather without any visual references outside the cockpit. TWA also pioneered in-flight meal service, and logo lights on the vertical tail of the aircraft.
TWA pilot training was considered a world standard, and TWA assisted in the establishment of Saudi Arabian Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, and after the war, the German national airline Lufthansa Airlines. Airlines from around the world sent their pilots to TWA for training.
Those who worked for and flew for TWA were stunned by what happened to TWA Flight 800 on that beautiful summer evening in 1996. We sensed that this could be fatal for TWA, but we believed that our government would spare no effort to find the truth of what happened to TWA Flight 800 and hold those responsible accountable. Unfortunately, the evidence indicates that our government betrayed TWA and its employees, and failed to fulfill its duty to the aviation industry and to the American people.
Whether this was in fact a terrorist attack, as some believe, or a horrible mistake by our navy or a friendly navy, is not yet known.
TWA 800 is an open wound that remains untreated. There is much that has happened in our country about which the truth has been covered up. The cover-up of the loss of TWA 800 has continued now for fifteen years. Perhaps now is the time that the truth about what caused the loss of TWA 800 can finally be discovered and its victims can be properly remembered as victims not of shoddy workmanship by some TWA employees, but as victims of something much more serious – something for which those responsible can be held accountable.
Posted: April 13, 2011, | Author: radiopatriot | Filed under: American Spirit | Tags: Clinton, FAA, FBI, Jack Cashill, James Kallstrom, NTSB, TWA 800, UAL Captain Alfred C. Haynes
During an email conversation with one of my radio show listeners — retired airline pilot JetDriver2 – the topic of the DC-10 aircraft came up then quickly shifted over to TWA 800 and its mysterious plunge from the sky over Long Island. The conversation went from there. With his permission I have reprinted it here.
***
TWA was acquired by American two months after my retirement in Nov 2000. We never recovered from the July 1996 shoot-down of TWA 800 described by Jack Cashill in his book “First Strike”. This was a massive cover-up (for which I have personal evidence) ordered by Bill Clinton, who also ordered the assassination of Ron Brown described in another Cashill book “Ron Brown’s Body” which I recently read.
Yes TWA 800 was absolutely shot down. The FAA knows it and the FBI knows it. There was explosive residue on the seat cushions and a hole in the reconstructed fuselage. Many pieces of the wreckage were confiscated by the FBI and never seen again, including pieces identified by TWA volunteers working in the hangar at Calverton as showing missile damage.
There is no way that jet fuel fumes in an empty center fuel tank could have blown up that plane. Jet fuel is not volatile and is very difficult to ignite, nor was there enough energy in the residual fuel in the center tank to produce an explosion of that magnitude. There is testimony on this point by scientists.
There is an audiotape of an ANG helicopter pilot who was a former Navy Search and Rescue pilot in Vietnam, and who is also an attorney on Long Island. He was shooting a practice approach in the direction of the TWA 800 explosion. He testified that he saw the missile trail and he saw the explosion – it was an ordnance explosion, not a fuel explosion. This guy is familiar with anti-aircraft missiles and with military ordnance.
Shortly after the crash I had a co-pilot who was in the AF Reserve at McGuire AFB in NJ. He told me he was on Reserve duty the weekend following the crash. One of his colleagues who was an FAA inspector told him that it was a missile, and that the FAA had radar tapes clearly showing that. (These radar tapes disappeared, and audiotapes from the TWA flight recorder were tampered with.) In addition, FBI SAIC James Kallstrom stated in a TV interview that it was a missile
Several weeks later, after Clinton had shut down the criminal investigation and turned the accident investigation over to mechanical failure issues, this USAFR pilot encountered the FAA colleague again at McGuire and asked him what’s up with the investigation and the rejection of the missile theory in Kallstrom’s public statements. The FAA guy became very agitated and denied that he had ever said anything about a missile.
About six months later, I had a co-pilot who had been director of 747 flight engineer training at the time of the accident. He had been called in for a deposition concerning 747 F/E training procedures in connection with lawsuits from families of passengers who were killed (the fuel tank explosion theory rested on a hypothesis that the flight engineer had turned on the pumps in the empty center fuel tank to clear out residual fuel, and that action had initiated the sequence of events that resulted in a fuel tank explosion). When he met with the TWA lawyers to prepare for the deposition, they told him in these words as he related them to me:
“Just answer the questions they ask as carefully and accurately as possible. Don’t be concerned about the focus on mechanical failure or crew procedures. We know it was a missile, and their lawyers know it was a missile. This is just something that must be ruled out.”
This copilot told me that nobody in TWA flight operations senior management believed it was anything other than a missile. TWA was one of the first operators of the B-747, and the aircraft were very well maintained and reliable.
The NTSB and the FAA inspected TWA’s entire 747 fleet and they could find no example of a “frayed electrical connection to a center tank fuel pump producing a short which ignited the fuel fumes” in accordance with the fuel explosion theory.
Bill Clinton is thus responsible for another huge lie which destroyed TWA and left the families of the victims without the truth about what caused the deaths of their loved ones. Of course, the press was led around by the nose to conform to whatever Clinton wanted them to publish. However, Jim Kallstrom’s willingness to go along with this fraud is unforgivable.
As to the DC-10, TWA did not have DC-10s, but we had the L-1011. It was a beautiful airplane and, in my experience, a dream to fly. I do not believe that a 1011 was ever lost due to mechanical failure. Eastern lost one in the Everglades due to pilot error, and Delta lost one in Dallas due to a wind shear that exceeded the capability of the aircraft to recover by the time the pilot reacted with max power. Later procedure changes required application of max power immediately upon sensing wind shear, and both aircraft and tower wind shear sensors were installed.
Wind shear is an abrupt change in wind velocity and/or wind direction at low altitude in the vicinity of an airport. It is usually associated with cold front passage or thunderstorm activity near the airport, which was the case in the Delta accident at DFW.
It can also be caused by strong winds flowing over mountainous terrain features, which can occur at airports like Palm Springs, CA or Kodiak, AK.
A decreasing wind shear can cause a sudden loss of airflow over the wing, drastically reducing the lift produced by the wing. An increasing wind shear can increase airflow over the wing sufficiently that the pilot is required to reduce power to maintain the desired airspeed and vertical approach path while in the landing configuration. This can quickly become a decreasing wind shear with low power and high drag – a very dangerous combination. The introduction of wind shear detection systems, both in the cockpit and at the airport control tower using sensors placed around the perimeter of the airport, have virtually eliminated wind shear accidents.
Pilot wind shear training was significantly improved after this accident, and every pilot on every aircraft type was required to demonstrate the ability to react to and survive a “Delta wind shear” reproduced in the simulator.
One thing finally killed both the DC-10 and the L1011 – these airplanes were designed for long-haul overwater operations on routes which could not support a 747, before two-engine overwater operations were allowed. Boeing initially designed the 767 with a three- pilot crew while the crew complement battle was going on with the Air Line Pilots Association. Pilots believed that three pilots were needed in all large jet aircraft for safety of flight and pilot workload reasons.
After ALPA lost that battle, the flight engineer station was removed from the 767 design and all controls were made accessible for two pilot operation. Then Boeing and TWA, working together with the FAA, established a protocol for Extended Range Twin Engine Operations (ETOPS). It required demonstration and continuous documentation of a significantly higher level of engine reliability, as well as certain other mechanical modifications to the airplane, including installation of an air driven electrical generator (Ram Air Turbine or RAT) deployable in an emergency. ETOPS also required the availability of designated ETOPS alternate airports along the route with acceptable weather conditions during the flight.
Once TWA’s ETOPS program was approved, allowing long-haul overwater operations with 2-man/2 engine aircraft, other airlines followed suit and the L-1011 and the DC-10 were immediately obsolete.
One other problem took TWA’s L-1011s out of service prematurely. Food preparation took place in a forward lower galley, and fluids from the upper galleys also drained down into the lower galley and collected in the bilges of the aircraft. These fluids caused extensive corrosion which extended into the main wing spar which passed through that area. As I recall, the cost of replacing the wing spar was around $10 million per aircraft. So when wing spar corrosion became an issue in a particular aircraft, that aircraft was grounded and permanently taken out of service.
The DC-10’s reputation was not fatally damaged by the AA Flight 191 Chicago accident on May 25, 1979 in which an engine dropped off the wing. This was caused by damage to the engine strut during maintenance at AA’s facility in Tulsa, so the DC-10 fleet was not really hurt by this accident. What hurt the DC-10 was the Sioux City UAL accident (UAL Flight 232, July 19, 1989) in which an uncontained failure of the center engine caused the loss of all three hydraulic systems due to placement of critical components of all three hydraulic systems in the tail area of the aircraft. This could not happen in an L-1011.
UAL Captain Alfred C. Haynes and a DC-10 check pilot who happened to be on board by the name of Captain Dennis E. Fitch, working together with no flight controls and only manipulation of the throttles on the wing engines as directed by Captain Haynes, managed to get that aircraft on the ground without a total loss of life. This was an incredible feat of airmanship which very few pilots were able to duplicate successfully in a simulator.
At one time I was one of five Executive Vice-Presidents of ALPA. I was present at an ALPA Board of Directors meeting in Miami when Captain Haynes was awarded the annual ALPA air safety award for 1989. He was a very humble guy and an excellent pilot, much like Captain Sully. Some pilots just seem to be born with flying ability, and in my experience, most airline pilots I flew with were outstanding pilots. (I am sorry to say there were a few exceptions.)
Like Captain Sullenberger, airline pilots seem to be able to rise to the occasion and accomplish amazing feats of airmanship when needed.
I could tell you several stories about similar feats by TWA pilots, including a story about a fully loaded B767 taking off at night from Tel Aviv non-stop to JFK when the right engine ingested a flock of birds and exploded just before lift-off.
In this situation, the airplane cannot be safely stopped on the remaining runway and the pilot must continue the take-off on one engine. (We often practiced this in the simulator for the B-767, taking off on runway 31L at JFK. The rate of climb with one engine out at max gross take-off weight –MTOW- was very low. Turns were not permitted until reaching 1000 feet above the surface, but this particular runway pointed directly at the World Trade Center. Not having enough altitude to clear the buildings, we were forced to turn to avoid them, thus sacrificing our rate of climb.
The captain of that aircraft struggled to gain altitude on one engine while trying to get the gear and flaps retracted, flew out over the Mediterranean to get turned around, then came back and landed downwind, way over max landing weight. They destroyed the landing gear and wheels getting stopped, but that crew saved the aircraft and all the passengers. I just hope I could have done as well.
I knew a number of USAir pilots in my work at ALPA. I remember when they were Mohawk and Allegheny, and the huge fight over the merger of the pilot seniority lists. They had a reputation as an ornery bunch, but they were survivors.
By the way – Jack Cashill did a follow-up story on TWA 800 two years ago. He still feels that the truth needs to be exposed on this cover-up. Perhaps you could devote a program to this story with Jack Cashill.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/reopen_the_twa_flight_800_case.html
If you are interested in TWA 800, go to this site:
http://raylahr.entryhost.com/multimedia.php then go to “Expert Eyewitnesses” at the top and click on “Major Fred Meyer (ret)” for the clip of Fritz Meyer’s description of his view of the explosion from the cockpit of his ANG helicopter.
The ANG helicopter pilot referred to above, Major Fred “Fritz” Meyer, provided statements to NTSB investigators concerning his observations of the explosion and crash of TWA 800 in the waters off the southern shore of Long Island in the evening of July 17, 1996. After witnessing a huge fireball “four times the size of the setting sun” settle into the Atlantic Ocean just south of his position on approach to the Suffolk Airport, Major Meyer and his co-pilot, Captain Chris Baur proceeded to the crash site in their Blackhawk helicopter. They found floating debris from the giant 747 and many bodies in the water, but no survivors. A talk given by Major Meyer describing these events was recorded and may be found at this site:http://raylahr.entryhost.com/multimedia.php
Following is a direct link to the recording: http://raylahr.entryhost.com/Videos/web/MajorFredMeyer.html
After listening to Major Fritz Meyer’s description of the downing of TWA 800, you will have no doubt that a B-747 carrying 230 innocent passengers and crew on their way to Paris, France was taken down by a missile fired from the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
Who fired this missile and why they did this is one of the enduring mysteries of modern aviation.
As with Pan Am Flight 103, the loss of a Boeing 747 (in the Pan Am case a loss triggered by a bomb in the luggage compartment which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988) resulted in the demise of a major airline with a long and storied history.
TWA was formed from the merger of Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express in 1930 and formally named Transcontinental and Western Air or TWA. Its name was officially changed to Trans World Airlines following extensive trans-Atlantic military service during World War II. TWA played an important role in the development of the commercial aviation industry in the United States.
TWA undertook the original efforts to create a true cabin class airliner (for which the Ford Tri-Motor, predecessor of the DC-2/DC-3 barely qualified), approaching Donald Douglas with a proposal for what became the DC-1. The one and only DC-1 specimen was delivered to TWA in December 1933. In May 1934 the first DC-2, an improved version of the DC-1 and forerunner of the DC-3, was delivered to TWA. DC-3s entered the fleet shortly thereafter. DC-3s flying over the “Hump” prevented the complete loss of China to Japanese forces in World War II. Truly, WWII could not have been won without the logistics capability provided by the DC-3.
TWA conducted the early research that led to the first pressurized high-altitude passenger aircraft, beginning with the Boeing 307. TWA also pioneered early efforts to develop instrument flying techniques, allowing pilots to fly through the weather without any visual references outside the cockpit. TWA also pioneered in-flight meal service, and logo lights on the vertical tail of the aircraft.
TWA pilot training was considered a world standard, and TWA assisted in the establishment of Saudi Arabian Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, and after the war, the German national airline Lufthansa Airlines. Airlines from around the world sent their pilots to TWA for training.
Those who worked for and flew for TWA were stunned by what happened to TWA Flight 800 on that beautiful summer evening in 1996. We sensed that this could be fatal for TWA, but we believed that our government would spare no effort to find the truth of what happened to TWA Flight 800 and hold those responsible accountable. Unfortunately, the evidence indicates that our government betrayed TWA and its employees, and failed to fulfill its duty to the aviation industry and to the American people.
Whether this was in fact a terrorist attack, as some believe, or a horrible mistake by our navy or a friendly navy, is not yet known.
TWA 800 is an open wound that remains untreated. There is much that has happened in our country about which the truth has been covered up. The cover-up of the loss of TWA 800 has continued now for fifteen years. Perhaps now is the time that the truth about what caused the loss of TWA 800 can finally be discovered and its victims can be properly remembered as victims not of shoddy workmanship by some TWA employees, but as victims of something much more serious – something for which those responsible can be held accountable.
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