Subversives for Obama

FRIDAY, 26TH SEPTEMBER 2008

There are two American election campaigns currently running. The first, in the mainstream media, accepts Barack Obama at face value, no questions asked, while it viciously turns over Sarah Palin and her family whom it subjects to lies, smears and character assassination. The second, being conducted in the blogosphere and (with one or two notable exceptions such as the Wall Street Journal) not alluded to at all by the mainstream media, is the site of verbal warfare between Camp Obama and bloggers who are practising journalism as it used to be practised – going behind the propaganda to dig out information and asking questions about it. The blogosphere is not only rebutting the Palin lies but also piling up the most disturbing revelations about Obama’s background and associations -- compounded by the troubling manner in which Camp Obama responds to these discoveries.

A few months ago, a claim was made by former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton that Obama had been funded through Harvard law school by Khalid Al-Mansour, a ‘mentor’ to the founders of the Black Panther party and advisor to ‘one of the world’s richest men,’ Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal. It was Prince Alwaleed whose $10 million check to help rebuild Manhattan after 9/11 was refused by New York mayor Rudy Guiliani because the Saudi prince hinted publicly that America’s pro-Israel policies were to blame for the attacks.

According to this story by Kenneth Timmerman, Camp Obama denied this claim -- and referred to a story on Politico.com in which reporter Ben Smith wrote that ‘a spokesman for Sutton’s family, Kevin Wardally’ said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made those comments. But when contacted, Sutton’s family not only denied that Sutton had misspoken but also said they had never even heard of Kevin Wardally – who appears to work for a Harlem political consulting firm.

So the claim that Obama was funded through Harvard by a radical Black Muslim activist with ties to the Saudis remains on the table.

Some of the most troubling questions, however, arise from Obama’s relationship with the unreprentant former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. Obama has been at pains to play down this relationship, dismissing Ayers as just ‘a guy who lives in my neighborhood,’ and ‘not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis.’ But thanks to the exemplary and important journalism of Stanley Kurtz, it is becoming ever clearer that such claims are deeply disingenuous and conceal a significant and long-lasting working relationship with a man who has never renounced his terrorist past. This relationship centred upon a fund called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), which although founded by former ambassador Walter Annenberg to improve Chicago’s schools, funnelled some $100 million into the hands of radical activists. The CAC was the brainchild of Ayers – and for four years in the 1990s, Obama was chairman of the board.

In the Wall Street Journal, Kurtz writes that documents in the CAC archives make it clear that William Ayers and Barack Obama were partners in the CAC.

In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the ‘Collaborative,’ which shaped education policy... The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda...

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto. In works like ‘City Kids, City Teachers’ and ‘Teaching the Personal and the Political,’ Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. ..

The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.

Kurtz has also been trying to discover just who appointed Obama to the CAC board.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's ‘recruitment’ to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

Here, Kurtz adds that Obama has sought to obscure the role Ayers played in choosing Obama to lead the CAC -- and also details how the CAC tried to obstruct Kurtz’s inquiries by blocking his access to the records. And here Camp Obama responds to these claims, along with Kurtz’s demolition of that response.

Nor is the relationship with Ayers the only radical question-mark over Obama’s associations. Indeed, Obama appears to be the front-man for a vast network of the most subversive radicals in the USA – an alphabet soup from the FBI menu, a veritable Rolodex of the American counter-culture. WorldNetDaily reveals:

The official campaign website of Sen. Barack Obama has completely scrubbed a series of user-generated blog postings on the candidate's site by a former top communist activist who is an associate of former Weathermen terrorist leader William Ayers. The move has raised questions regarding Obama's relationship with the deleted blogger, Mike Klonsky, who runs an education organization that was founded by Ayers and that received a substantial grant from a group directed by Obama.

Small wonder Camp Obama is sensitive to the association. Klonsky, a professor of education and leader of the New Communist movement, was national secretary of the radical group Students for a Democratic Society. In 1969, he was one of five SDS members arrested at the organization’s Chicago national headquarters for assaulting a police officer, interfering with a firefighter, and inciting mob action. As Global Labor and Politics has reported, Klonsky went on to form

a pro-Chinese sect called the October League that later became the Beijing-recognized Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). As chairman of the party, Klonsky travelled to Beijing itself in 1977 and, literally, toasted the Chinese Stalinist leadership who, in turn, ‘hailed the formation of the CP(ML) as “reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people,” effectively recognizing the group as the all-but-official US Maoist party.’ (Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, 228).

In 1991, Klonsky co-founded the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago – and his co-founder was one William Ayers.

As Trevor Loudon continues to document, Klonsky and his Weather Underground friends Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are part of a far more extensive -- and organised – network of Subversives for Obama. In his latest post, Loudon concludes:

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are involved in an organisation uniting three Marxist parties, a host of ‘60s radicals and terrorists and a new generation of militant activists. That organisation has spawned a spin-off organisation specifically designed to put Barack Obama in the White House and to bring about massive social change across the US.

Barack Obama appears to sit on a nexus between Marxist revolutionary activists, unrepentant former terrorists, Black Power racists, Chicago mobsters – oh, and a Saudi who is trying to buy up America. If you were to turn up at US immigration control with a background of such associates, it’s a fair bet they wouldn’t let you off the air-bridge. Yet this man may well become President of the US! If any other candidate had had merely a fleeting relationship with William Ayers, his candidacy would have been terminated before it was even articulated -- let alone what we now know about Obama’s key role in Ayers’s CAC and its funding of radical groups; let alone the fact that Obama had been mentored during his formative years by a Communist Party plant; let alone his work for organisations modelled on the seditious philosophy of Saul Alinsky; let alone his two-decade membership of a Black Power church; let alone his relationship with fraudster Tony Rezko.

And yet despite all of this, virtually no-one in the mainstream media is asking any questions. Has there ever been a more staggering, surreal and scary race to the White House?

America Beyond the Point of No Return

By Doug Patton
September 23, 2008
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw

A half century ago, Russian-born writer Ayn Rand warned about the creeping socialism she saw in America even then. In her thousand-page tome, "Atlas Shrugged," Rand told the story of John Galt, a shadowy figure who is so fed up with high taxes, burdensome regulations and interference from government, he secretly recruits the best and brightest of American capitalism - the captains of industry - to withdraw from society to the mountains of Colorado, leaving the growing welfare state without any visible means of support.

Imagine what Ayn Rand would say about the federal government coughing up quantities of cash even career bureaucrats didn't talk about in the 1950s; all to bail out quasi-government entities whose overseers were complicit in the failures of those very institutions.

Republicans and Democrats alike share the blame for this mess. It was largely created out of a misguided need (mostly by Democrats) to feel as though America was actually doing something to help the poor own their own homes. This may be a worthwhile goal, but when people who have absolutely no hope of paying back loans are approved to buy a home, one has to ask, "Who is going to pick up the tab for all this?" Answer: You are, to the tune of at least a trillion dollars, a sum most of us cannot even fathom.

Over the last decade, Democrats like U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-CN, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, have insisted that these ridiculous loans be made. Former Attorney General Janet Reno, carrying out the wishes of her boss, threatened legal action against any institution that discriminated or "redlined." I was very disappointed to hear John McCain say on CBS's "60 Minutes" that he admired New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and would consider him to head up the Securities and Exchange Commission. As Bill Clinton's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Cuomo was up to his eyeballs pushing the sub-prime mortgages that started these dominoes tipping in the first place.

And where were Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the 1990s when Clinton and his cronies were building this house of cards? The GOP held the House and the Senate during most of Clinton's tenure. After 2000, they also held the White House. Why did this situation continue?

The rule in Washington seems to be this: If you squander your money and fail to provide for yourself, the government will take care of you. If you save, invest wisely and prepare for your retirement, you will be penalized in order to pay for those who did not. A perfect example was the tax increase passed by Clinton and the Democrats who still controlled Congress during the first two years of his administration. Seniors who had saved and invested for retirement, and who made more than $34,000 ($44,000 per couple) received a tax increase under that plan.

The frightening thing about the trillion dollar bailout is that everyone seems so willing to go along with it. It is as though we have finally accepted the idea that government is the one entity that has the resources to pull off such a plan. Well, guess what. Government doesn't have a nickel. Government is in the hole to the tune of ten trillion dollars. (Put that number in your pipe and fathom it!) But government has two things no one else has. Government has the power to print money and the power to raise taxes.

Alternatives may yet see the light of day in Congress. Perhaps in this hour of crisis, our representatives will see that the private sector could probably pull itself out of this with some very favorable tax policy. At least try repealing the capital gains tax to see if private firms wouldn't consider buying up these companies.

Or better yet, how about the Fair Tax, so that the billions in offshore accounts can come flooding back into the economy without fear of being sacked by the feds?

Those who for years have predicted America's slide into the cesspool of collectivism have been vindicated by the taxpayer-financed bailout of the mortgage and insurance industry. In essence and in fact, the United States government has nationalized these industries. Hugo Chavez no doubt is amused.

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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.

You've got mail: "Am dvrcng u"

Last week defenders of Islamic law received a publicity blow when a Malaysian court evoked Sharia law to allow a man to divorce his wife by text message.

Yes, text message. As in: "Am dvrcng u".

The decision was, quite rightly, condemned by women's rights groups in Malaysia, who say to condone such frivolity with Islamic law highlights the way it is inherently bias towards men and leaves women with the short end of the stick.

Under Sharia law, a man can divorce a woman simply by announcing his intentions. This is followed by a three month "cooling off" period before the divorce can be finalized, to create an opportunity for resolution. However, if a woman wants a divorce, she must go before a court to seek a divorce, and she must prove her husband has an inadequacy - usually impotency or extended absence. If not, she has no right to divorce him.

Sharia law has its roots in the 7th century Koran, and in personal examples set by Prophet Mohammed. Islamists who see themselves defending the faith have ignored calls to change this legal system to reflect the improvement in women's status in the modern world, saying that God's word stands the test of time.

The irony of this text message ruling is that it subverts both liberals' desire for more modern interpretations of the Koran (you don't get much more modern in the Islamic world than divorce by text message) and Islamists' own goal to uphold the seriousness of marriage.

The issue of text-messaged divorces has been a long-standing topic of debate among feminists and a new, tech-savvy generation of Islamists both here and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

Many Islamic countries, including Malaysia have had long-standing amendments to family law, requiring divorces be brought before a court. But as in many countries, Sharia courts and their rulings have steadily encroached onto state legal systems.

Norhayati Kaprawi, a program director at Sisters in Islam, a Malaysian NGO, said this latest divorce ruling represents a worrying erosion of women's rights in her country, coinciding with the rise of an Islamist political party that won almost a third of the vote in recent parliamentary elections.

"Court rulings like this over text messages, and earlier ones facilitating polygamous marriages, send a pretty clear message to men that they can treat women disrespectfully and get away with it," said Kaprawi.

Dr Abdul Hamid Othman, the government's adviser on religious affairs, was quoted by the New Straits Times daily newspaper defending the text message approach as "another form of writing."

But for Karprawi and thousands of women like her, a text-message is belittling.

"Whilst many women and men court each by text message in Malaysia, ending a marriage requires a lot more careful deliberation than a few taps on a mobile phone."

Flight 93 memorial design remains contentious

SOMERSET, Pa.—The father of a Flight 93 victim told two groups working together on a memorial to the victims aboard the hijacked airliner that the memorial's crescent-shaped design "does not properly honor our people."
Tom Burnett Sr. of Northfield, Minn., objects because a crescent is commonly used as a symbol of Islam and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were carried out by Muslims who hijacked four airliners. Two crashed into the World Trade Center in New York; a third into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.; Flight 93 crashed in rural Somerset County before reaching the hijackers' intended target.

"I've continued to voice my concerns because it does not properly honor our people, those Flight 93 heroes," Burnett said Saturday at a meeting of the commission advising the National Park Service on the design.

The meeting just miles from the crash site also included members of the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force. The task force represents relatives of the 40 passengers and crew who died when their struggle with four hijackers caused the plane to nosedive into a field about 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Burnett said he wants an investigation into how architect Paul Murdoch came up with the design, the centerpiece of which is a crescent of trees that overlooks the crash site. Parks Service officials say the design isn't a crescent but a circle of embrace broken by the crash site.

Burnett was one of more than a dozen people, mostly family
members of the victims, who sometimes wept as they spoke for and against the design.
Park Service officials and the vast majority of family members who like the design say it was fairly and impartially selected out of 1,100 submitted in a national contest. Burnett, who served on a jury that judged the designs, said concerns he raised about the apparent Muslim symbolism were ignored and continue to be downplayed.

But others said Burnett and conservative blogger Alec Rawls, whose Web site highlights the alleged Muslim symbolism, are defeating their own purpose by drawing undue attention to the hijackers. Others spoke out against personal attacks on Joanne Handley, the NPS superintendent who oversees the project and supports its design.

Calvin Wilson of Herndon, Va., said attacks questioning Handley's patriotism are a form of terrorism. Wilson's brother, LeRoy Homer, was the co-pilot who died aboard Flight 93.

"None of us should have to defend ourselves as Americans," Wilson said, near tears. "The fact that we have Americans acting like terrorists is even more disturbing."

The planned memorial also includes a metal tower from which 40 wind chimes will hang. Burnett and Rawls said the tower is similar to a minaret on a mosque, and that the top of it is crescent shaped, too. Both crescents at the crash site point to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, they said.

"This is a terrorist memorial mosque," Rawls said of the planned memorial.

David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer whose command of "Let's roll" signaled the passenger revolt, said he has researched the design and found no fault in it. He addressed Burnett personally at the meeting.

"Our sons Beamer and Burnett and 38 others on that fateful morning were united," Beamer said. "So I'm sad today to find us on opposite sides."

The planning groups are in the midst of raising about $22 million for the first phase of the memorial. They hope to open it by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Christine Fraser, of Elizabeth, N.J., whose sister Colleen died that day, said she wants the Park Service to press on with the design.

"We can see the conspiracy in anything if we look hard enough," she said. "How dare anybody think I would want to build a memorial to crazy people who hate us."

"You must be nicer to Muslims," UN tells Britain

Britain was told yesterday by a United Nations committee to take firm action to combat 'negative public attitudes' towards Muslims.

The nine-member human rights committee also criticised some of the UK's antiterror measures.

The body, which is composed of legal experts, said it was concerned ' negative public attitudes towards Muslim members of society' continued to develop in Britain.

The Government 'should take energetic measures to eliminate this phenomenon and ensure that authors of such acts of discrimination on the basis of religion are adequately deterred and sanctioned'.


The committee expressed concern over the Government's plans to extend pre-trial detention of terrorist suspects from 28 to 42 days. Suspects should be brought to court 'within a reasonable period of time, or released'.


Those suspected of being involved in terrorism and subject to control orders and curfews limiting their movements should be 'promptly charged with a criminal offence' and their lawyers given access to the evidence against them, it added.

The committee also called on the Irish Republic to open up its largely Roman Catholic primary school system to secular-education. It said Dublin 'should take measures to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies so that they do not have to resort to illegal or unsafe abortions'.

The committee made its comments in response to reports from the UK and Ireland on how they were carrying out their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The committee has members from Britain, Ireland, Australia, Benin, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Mauritius and Sweden. They are expected to be independent of their governments.

Are We Getting Dumber As Technology Gets Smarter?

Recently, a leading UK business website revealed that they now have to spend over 25% of their online search marketing budget to cater for misspelt words, hinting towards a worrying trend in today's society and suggesting we may have become too reliant upon technology, while our language skills suffer as a result.

With over 50% of English school leavers failing to grasp even the most basic levels of spelling and grammar there is an argument for closer monitoring on the country's education system and how technology is impacting upon the country's young minds.

Perhaps the finest example of how the English language is being "dumbed down" can be seen through the ever popular SMS messaging service where there is a tendency to use abbreviated or phonetically spelt words to increase the speed of communication. This development is also evident in instant messaging conversations, with users of MSN or Yahoo! Messenger shortening their words using "expressions" and emoticons to communicate their message. With over 70% of Europe's online population using instant messaging (IM), this issue is not going to go away; speed, it seems, is more important in today's society, than the quality of the message itself.

As our children use the internet more - as opposed to libraries for their source of knowledge, they are recycling information found through search engines and new authority sites such as Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia which is free for anyone to add content to.

If our young are using these portals as the oracles of truth, then any poor grammar or misspelled words found in such sources, such as the word mannequin, will not help the education of the children in the UK and can even have worldwide ramifications.

Also quite concerning is the growth in misspelt or abbreviated words being used in the naming of children. Recent research from Australia revealed an increase in the multiple spellings of names such as Aiden, which were found to be spelt in nine ways, and Amelia and Tahlia in eight ways. Errors such as this can not be easily corrected and parents of this future generation are damming their children to a life with a misspelt name because they wanted an individual looking name, or just couldn't be bothered to get it right.

Generations before us would have had language issues with their predecessors, however the staggering advancement in technology is having such a dramatic and potentially wide scale damaging effect on this generations' ability to communicate. We are creating a situation where the youth of today can communicate amongst themselves, but not with their grandparents.

Bush okays Israel attack on Iran if nuke talks fail

London, July 13: US President George W Bush has given Israel a go-ahead to begin preparations for a military attack on Iran, in case talks over the country’s controversial nuclear programme fail to yield results, a media report has said.
The Bush administration is said to have informed Jerusalem that he would back an Israeli plan to strike Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range aerial weapons if diplomatic talks over Tehran’s nuclear programme broke down, the Sunday Times said quoting a Pentagon official. The American President has given Israel an “amber light” to start preparing for a possible offensive, the official said.

“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” he said.

The US President’s voice of support comes despite his military officials’ opposition to an attack on Iran, given the risks of an aerial strike. However, the US would not deploy American forces for such a strike nor would Israel be able to depend on its military bases in Iraq for logistical support, the official said.

Washington would also not give a “green light” to theattack without unquestionable proof that the Islamic Republic is involved in military preparations of its own, the report said.

Iran last week test launched a series of medium-range ballistic missiles it claimed were capable of striking Israel. The tests prompted a threatening message from Israel Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who said that the Jewish state would not hesitate from taking military action against Tehran.

OIC wants to criminalize Christianity at the U.N.

Since 1999, the OIC has been pushing with the U.N the ‘Defamation of Islam’ campaign. The OIC isn’t a small fry committee trying to be heard in the U.N., but is being pushed by the 57, Muslim nation members in it and reflects the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which is only reflected by Sharia law. That is how they want human rights defined and filtered through, Sharia law.

What is it the OIC exactly wants and is pushing through the U.N.? Its actually quite clear when reading through even a little of this rubbish. On the surface they say they want to cover the defamation of all religions, but amazingly only one religion is mentioned by name as persecuted of sorts, Islam. According to Patrick Goodenough, International Editor, CNSNews.com, the text states they have “deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”

[…]

The way this anti protection of religion and freedom piece of rot reads would only criminalize Christianity and push the execution of more Christians who are already being sentenced to prison and death for reading the wrong material, mentioning a verse to a Muslim or doing practically anything that might engage a real discussion in a Muslim country with a Muslim.

Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com, says it like it is in pointing out that this religious defamation idea is being used as a shield and a sword. “In Islamic countries, blasphemy laws are used as a shield to protect the dominant religion, but even more dangerously, they are used to silence minority religious believers and prevent Muslims from converting to other faiths, which is still a capital crime in many Islamic countries.”

[…]

Lets call this what it is. This aggressive effort of the OIC to slam this through the U.N and get the defamation piece approved by the U.N. itself is nothing but a declaration of War against freedom of speech internationally and Christianity. This is hidden in fancy, protective words, it would only protect MORE persecution, targeting and murder of more Christians and suck out even any soft ray of freedom a Muslim in a country might want to even discuss or compare their faith with any other. This will be brought up later this year at the U.N. again. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will give an expected report on the measure put together by the OIC in Pakistan last year and passed in a vote 108-51.

Lets talk more about the OIC’s special glasses of protection they want to cram down our mentally ill, freedom loving throats. All freedom and religious protection must go through Shari law. Lets see, beatings for wives and women, yes; Execution of gays, yes; crucifixion of robbers, yes; beheadings of Christians who preach the gospel, of course; execution for any convert from Islam to Christianity…..on and on it goes and reads.