Islamaphobia (video)

Alexa Popular Pages

[ed.  In my travels I came across this "what's hot" page which gives a run down of the most popular searches online. There are plenty of these sort of things and this is just one example. I thought it was quite interesting and indicitive that a) Britney Spears came in third while b) "fiscal cliff" and lunar eclipse came in at 14th and 19th respectively and c) that there was none of the, perhaps, shadier aspects of the internet such as porn  (never mind the even still shadier aspects which are supposed to be everywhere). Which leads me to conclude that pages like this are either a) sanitised, b) completely made up (both a and b would render the whole idea obsolete)  or that c) that porn, in all its varieties, is nowhere near as popular as the hysteria would have you believe. What do you think?]

The Truth about Gang Rape in the U.K.

by Bruce Bawer
28th November, 2012

First of all, let me make it clear that I’m no fan of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Born in Uganda, she’s a British Muslim columnist who contributes regularly to the left-wing Independent, supports the Liberal Democrats, and has a habit of saying unpleasant things about white men. Her opinions on the issues of the day are, by and large, pretty much what you’d expect them to be given her religious, professional, and political affiliations. (Example: she complained on Question Time that Osama bin Laden hadn’t been given a proper burial.)
Still, I had to give her a cheer – not two or three cheers, mind you, but one – for an article that ran in the Daily Mail on Thursday.  It was occasioned by a new report from the British government’s Office of the Children’s Commission (OCC) summarizing the results of an investigation into the sexual abuse of young girls by gangs and groups. The report, noted Alibhai-Brown in her Daily Mail piece, “concludes that agencies that should have helped” many of these abused girls either “didn’t hear their stories or look after them as they should have.” Yet the OCC itself, Alibhai-Brown charged, was burdened by its own version of the same hear-no-evil affliction: as she put it, the authors of the report, headed up by Deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz, “try hard to side-step some difficult facts and even warn the rest of us from going where they have chosen not to tread.”
Alibhai-Brown illustrates her point by zeroing in on this sentence by Berelowitz & co.: “Perpetrators come from all ethnic groups, and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe.” In response to which Alibhai-Brown offers this comment: “Yes, we know they come from all backgrounds. But that rather cutting second line is directed at people like me who believe that in some British cities – especially in the North of England – circles of sexual hell for young girls are run by gangs of Muslim men (most of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage) who mostly prey on white girls….To generalise their crimes, and lump them in with all the other abusers across the country, is to deny what the victims of these men and their families are saying about the abuse that has gone on.”
Indeed. Of course, the OCC’s statement about perpetrators coming “from all ethnic groups” is yet another example of the handy PC dodge whereby the link between Islam and pretty much any of its more horrific aspects can be swept away by means of a simple rhetorical formula.  For example: “Honor killings occur in a wide range of religions.” Or: “Female genital mutilation is not an exclusively Islamic phenomenon.” Or: “The practice of forced marriages is not restricted to Muslim families.” All true – and all cynically designed to avoid the uncomfortable statistical reality, and to protect the speaker from being accused of racism or Islamophobia. (It’s no surprise that ITV’s brief online account of the OCC report actually made that insipid truism its headline: “Report: Child exploiters ‘come from all ethnic groups.’”)
“The report,” notes Alibhai-Brown, “points out that 28 per cent of the victims they found were of black and Asian background. But it doesn’t state what it should have: that some of the worst long-term abuse is carried out by mainly British Pakistani men targeting lost young white girls, often from troubled or poor families….The children are neglected and hungry for love. The men offer treats, car rides and kebabs, then drugs and alcohol; and then they corrupt them.” Alibhai-Brown argues that while authorities fear “that the racial aspects of child sex gangs will be hijacked by groups such as the English Defence League,” it is important to “confront some of the values that drive such men to prey on white females” and to look squarely at “some Asian cultural assumptions that make the paedophiles feel no guilt or shame about what they do.”
Exactly which “values” and “Asian cultural assumptions”  is Alibhai-Brown talking about? Alas, she doesn’t say. That’s where her article ends: with a gutsy-sounding call to face up to “values” and “Asian cultural assumptions” that, it appears, she would prefer not to identify at the present juncture.
What to say about this? Well, first of all, anyone who is genuinely interested in facing up to the truth of these matters needs to stop talking, as Alibhai-Brown does incessantly in her article, about race. This is not about race but about religion – not about black and white but about Muslim and infidel. Alibhai-Brown wants to be seen as bravely pulling back a curtain on an ugly reality, but her repeated reference to dark-hued men and “white girls,” and her use of that cowardly, dishonest (and, alas, ubiquitous) British euphemism “Asian” is nothing more than a way of skirting the truth – namely, that the “cultural assumptions” at work here aren’t “Asian” – aren’t Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mongolian, or Thai – but Islamic. As she and most of her readers well know, countless Muslim boys are brought up to view infidel females as little more than whores whose “immodest” attire makes them legitimate targets for physical assault. Most Westerners who are seriously concerned about these matters have long since learned that the Koran itself condones such conduct, and that in cases of rape it is the victims, not the perpetrators, who are considered the guilty parties. These repulsive facts have been widely known in Europe for many years now.
For heaven’s sake, as long ago as September 6, 2001 – I’ve cited this article before, and I’ll cite it again – the social anthropologist Unni Wikan told the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet that it didn’t surprise her that 65 percent of rapists in Oslo were “non-Western men” (that’s the Norwegian version of “Asian”), because, as she explained, “many immigrants” (that’s another euphemism – she’s not talking about immigrants from Canada) “think that Norwegian women are sending them signals that they want sexual contact.” Wikan, while serving up a rather pro forma-ish acknowledgment that rape is “never acceptable,” went on to make it sound, well, pretty darn acceptable. Noting that “rapists in most Muslim countries are hardly punished” and that most people in those places “feel that women are responsible for the rape,” she argued that “it’s reasonable for immigrants to bring such attitudes with them when they move here.” Their misunderstandings, in short, are “understandable.” By contrast, the naivete of many Norwegian women about Muslim views on rape is not understandable but, contrarily, “startling”; those women, Wikan insisted, “must realize that we live in a multicultural society, and adapt themselves to it.”
Wikan’s position – she actually declared that Western women raped by Muslim men are partially responsible for their own fate – may have been reprehensible, but in retrospect, at least, one has to admire her frankness about the Islam-rape nexus. But then, that Dagbladet article appeared before 9/11 – a full five days before. Since that fateful day, the willingness of Westerners in the public eye to connect these particular dots has declined significantly. Back in 2007, for instance, the London Times reported that a number of “Asian” men in Britain were forcing their attentions upon perhaps hundreds of “white girls as young as twelve,” but that the police weren’t doing anything about it because they feared “upsetting race relations.” “Asian,” “white,” “race”: how stubbornly determined the Times was to avoid the topic of Islam! Then, in 2010, as Alibhai-Brown herself points out, a police report noted that “gangs of Asian males” were “exploiting young white females,” one of whom told the Daily Mail at the time that most of these gangsters “are Asians of Pakistani origin. But very few of the authorities will say this.” And in this context, needless to say, virtually none of them would breathe the word Muslim.
So it goes, year after year. All that changes is the incidence of these crimes, which continues to climb along with the population of European Muslims. And year by year the government reports keep coming – providing a pleasant illusion that something is actually being done, even as they persist in delicately sidestepping the one little detail that explains everything.

Secession: It's constitutional

by Walter Williams
28th November, 2012

For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission, or simply parting company? In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.
Since Barack Obama’s re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitioners for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let’s look at the secession issue.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, “No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”
Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”
The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil – evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”
There’s more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.
The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”

The Dangers of A Constitutional Convention

A constitutional Convention (Con-Con) should never be called for.   The call for a Con-Con has been on the march throughout this country recently and in previous years; it is dangerous.  You can not control or limit the scope of a Con -Con.  With a Constitutional Convention you can change the Constitution or have a completely new one.  This is something that the Obama Administration will try to call for in the near future.

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CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 

Amendments Convention; Convention of the States; and/or Article V Convention

A GRIDLOCK OF FACT AND FICTION

A constitutional Convention (Con-Con) is just that, regardless the various softened names it has recently been given. The call for a Con-Con is on the march throughout this country; it is armed and it is dangerous.

Its arms: Fabrications, confusing language, legal ‘terms of art’, and outright lies by advocates manipulating the current fast-paced movement by legislators.

Its danger: In today’s economic climate states are broke, legislators are frantic, panicking and grasping at straws. They’ve been lulled and seduced into believing every deceitful lie they’ve been told, and are now rushing to get the resolutions passed so they can “fix” the problem.   

Their solution? An “Article V Amendment Convention (Con-Con) to add a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. . . or is it their solution?

Legislators know and admit that most officials in all branches of government pay no attention to the Constitution. In fact, today we could say the U.S. Government and Congress have trampled the Constitution, ignoring the Bill of Rights at every turn.

How, then, can any state legislator convince him/her self that a balanced budget amendment would be treated any differently?

We discover that “the fix” is being promulgated – again – by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a non-partisan membership organization boasting a membership of over 2,000 conservative state legislators. To set the fix, a 43 page handbook, titled: “Proposing Constitutional Amendments by a Convention of the States” was provided to their mostly-republican members, along with model legislation to carry back to their states. http://www.alec.org/docs/ArticleVHandbook.pdf 

Reading the Handbook is like watching mainstream news: disinformation, spin and lies at every turn. However it gives us an understanding as to how the legislators are being harangued, goaded and shamed into taking this action. From the Handbook: (emphasis on this and following quotes are ours)

“…despite recurrent hopeful talk about how Congress might adopt a BBA [balanced budget amendment] or other corrective amendments on its own, history suggests reformers cannot depend on that. The states must do the job, as our Founders expected them to do.” p 7

“… thus far the states have never exercised their corresponding power to correct federal abuses. As a result, the constitutional design has become unbalanced.” p 7

“Move fast. America is in serious trouble; don’t be sidetracked by alarmism or by hope that Congress may propose an amendment limiting its own power. History shows this is unlikely.“ p 21

“If we could address one or more of the leading Founders today, we might tell them what has happened to American federalism—that the states are increasingly mere administrative subdivisions for the convenience of Washington, D.C. After we related the situation, those Founders doubtless would ask, ‘Well, have you ever called a convention of the states under Article V?’

“And when we admitted we never had, they might well respond, “In short, you refused to use the very tools we gave you to avoid this situation. The sad state of American federalism is clearly your own fault.” Thus, the responsibility for reclaiming constitutional government is very much ours.”p23

State legislators believe that they will have complete control over the process, electing delegates and managing the Convention. Here’s why they believe it:

“Ron Natelson [author of the Handbook] encourages legislators to promote the right amendments, use the right amount of specificity, and keep the process within the states’ control.” p iv

“The convention is a deliberative body whose members answer to the state legislatures they represent.” p 9

“Retain state control over the convention. (author emphasis) State legislators applying for a convention must send a clear message to Congress that this procedure is within the control of the states. Congress’ obligations are to count the applications, call the convention of the states’ behalf, and choose a mode of ratification. Those are the prerogatives of the state legislatures and of the convention delegates responsible to the state legislatures.” 

FACT: There is no provision in Article V. empowering state legislators to choose the delegates to a Constitutional Convention or  to “limit” the scope of a Con-Con. There are no rules, no regulations nor instructions.

Some of the resolutions we’ve seen are calling for a Con-Con. However, many legislators who’ve taken the bait, insist that they are “not applying for a constitutional convention; it’s an Article V Amendment Convention”.

“. … also corrects common myths about the procedure … the foremost of which is that the convention authorized by Article V is a “constitutional convention”. p 6

“Other acceptable names for a convention for proposing amendments are amendments convention, convention of the states, and Article V convention. (For reasons explained in section II it is inaccurate and misleading to call a convention for proposing amendments a “constitutional convention“) p 7

Natelson states that the amendment convention is not an assembly with…

“… wide authority, such as one charged with drafting or adopting a Constitution. Thus, it is simply incorrect to refer to a convention for proposing amendments as a ‘Constitutional Convention’. They are different creatures entirely”4

The source to which his 4th footnote refers is the book Natelson himself wrote! He quotes himself. Maybe Natelson is the only constitutional expert who conjured up this notion. 

Fact:  There has never been a convention “charged with drafting or adopting a Constitution”; for over 200 years every amendment to the Constitution originated in Congress, then sent to the states for ratification.

Section V. consists of two pages attempting to prove The Myth of a Runaway Convention. None of it holds water because it can’t be proven. In bold letters, he writes:

“The runaway convention scenario was conjured up in the 19th century to dissuade state lawmakers from bypassing Congress through the state application and convention process.”  [conjured: 'cause to appear as if by magic']

“Advocates of the runaway scenario . . . argue that the 1787 Constitutional Convention disregarded its instructions. Unfortunately for their position, the widespread claim that the 1787 Constitutional Convention disregarded its instructions is substantially false (see Appendix C).” p 18

When we go to Appendix C. the Q. & A. section, we find this:

Q 23. Isn’t it true that the 1787 Constitutional Convention was a “runaway” – that Congress convened it under the Articles of Confederation only to propose amendments to the Articles, but it ended up drafting an entirely new Constitution?

A. The truth is quite to the contrary: Most delegates had full authority to recommend a new Constitution. 22

Here we find an interesting twist. First, the question is true. It was a runaway convention. The answer is an outright lie.

Secondly, he sent his readers in a circle. He makes a false statement on page 18, refers to Appendix(C), Appendix (C) refers to footnote ’22′ which once again refers to his own book as the source of information. One reader called it incestuous.  

The advocates are offering false assurances that a convention can be limited to a single subject and that it will not, CAN NOT become a runaway convention. The truth is, they have no way of enforcing such a claim. There is no historical evidence to prove it because since the drafting and ratification of the Constitution there has never, ever been a Constitutional Convention called. All 27 amendments have been proposed by Congress and ratified by the states. Why? Because the dangers of a repeat of the 1787 Conference of States are too well known.

The Continental Congress, as well as the respective states of the attending delegates to that conference, gave strict instructions that they were only to “amend the Articles of Confederation”.

In a 40′ x 40′ room, fifty-five men debated in secret (locked doors and windows nailed shut) from May thru September, the muggiest months of the year in sweltering Philadelphia. When all delegates were present they commenced to form a committee of the whole, took a vote, and it was done. George Washington rapped his gavel and pronounced the Articles of Confederation “hereby resolved” (or words to that effect one would imagine). The free-for-all began.

And it could happen again, just like that! The irony here is that Ron Natelson, the author of the Handbook, who’s convinced hundreds of state legislators that there is no risk, that they can control the convention, choose the delegates and fix the economy by calling for a Con-Con – this same Ron Natelson has admitted in writing that:

* “Of course, abuses of the Article V amendment processes are possible.”

What? Abuses such as throwing off the shackles of their instructions to amend the U.S. Constitution? Bringing forth a new constitution already mapped?  Yes. He went on to say that  ”the possibility must be viewed against the clear and present danger to individual rights and freedom of doing nothing.” In other words, go for it and let’s see what happens!

* From Natelson’s book, “Amending the Constitution by Convention: A Complete View of the Founders’ Plan”, p 2. Quoted in a “Position on an Article V Federal Constitutional Amendment Convention”, by the Institute of Principled Policy. A worthy read. principledpolicy.com

The very first paragraph in the Handbook’s “Executive Summary states:

“The balanced budget amendment is overwhelmingly supported by the American people. Polls over the last several months by CNN, Fox News, and Mason-Dixon show that nearly three-fourths of Americans favor a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution”

Why are we not surprised by that statement? Mainstream news channels have been helping this along, first discussing the deteriorating economy, and then whipping viewers into a frenzied belief that “a balanced budget amendment” will heal it all. Many of the Tea Partys are also backing the plan.  

State legislators who’ve bought into this trap of “moving fast” to sponsor the resolution should be aware of the following disclaimer in the Handbook. You’ll find it in small, fine print at the very bottom of the “About ALEC” section on the first page of the Handbook. Caveat emptor!

“Nothing in this Handbook should be construed as legal advice; seek competent counsel in your own state.”

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Now let us lay some facts on the table

Under article V,  the founders established two methods for future generations to add amendments to the Constitution.

Under method 1: Two-thirds of both houses of Congress can propose an amendment, and then three-fourths of the states ratify it… or not.

Under method 2: Two-thirds (34) of the states call for a federal constitutional convention, and then three-fourths of the states ratify whatever amendments are proposed by the convention.

Notice that ratification by states does not specify state legislatures!  When they see the statement below, in the Handbook and in nearly every piece produced by the advocates of a con-con they automatically think state legislators. Like this one:

“Proposing amendments through a convention, as in Congress, is still only a method of proposing amendments. No amendment is effective unless ratified by three-fourths of the states (now 38 of 50).” p 9

That is one of the most dangerous lie’s-by-omission the promoters are telling state legislators (and the people), who naively believe that they would be able to quash any bad amendment(s), or even a substitute Constitution. They would simply refuse to ratify; so no harm can come even if it became uncontrollable.  The truth is:

Article V authorizes Congress to decide on the mode of ratification: either by State Legislatures or by Ratifying Conventions, thus circumventing the legislatures of the states. (In 1933 the 21st Amendment – lifting the prohibition on alcohol – was ratified by conventions.)

U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a letter of June 22, 1983, confirms the dangers, stating:

“I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the convention would obey. After a convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the convention if we don’t like its agenda. The meeting in 1787 ignored the limit placed by the confederation Congress “for the sole and express purpose“.”

From Corpus Jurus Secundum 16 C.J.S 9, a compilation of State Supreme Court findings, we read:

“The members of a Constitutional Convention are the direct representatives of the people (1) and, as such, they may exercise all sovereign powers that are vested in the people of the state. (2) They derive their powers, not from the legislature, but from the people: (3) and, hence, their power may not in any respect be limited or restrained by the legislature. Under this view, it is a Legislative Body of the Highest Order (4) and may not only frame, but may also enact and promulgate, Constitution. (5)”

James Madison himself, father of the Constitution, warned against convening a second constitutional convention. When he learned that New York and Virginia were actively calling for an Article V convention in 1788, just months after ratification of the Constitution, he was horrified. He counseled:

“If a General Convention were to take place for the avowed and sole purpose of revising the Constitution, it would naturally consider itself as having a greater latitude than the Congress…. It would consequently give greater agitation to the public mind; an election into it would be courted by the most violent partisans on both sides … [and] would no doubt contain individuals of insidious views, who, under the mask of seeking alterations popular in some parts … might have the dangerous opportunity of sapping the very foundations of the fabric….

“Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention, which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a second, meeting in the present temper in America.” [From a letter by James Madison to G.L. Turberville, November 2, 1788.]

A note of caution: While it does take 34 states to call for a Con-Con, all of them must be for the same purpose. The calls already made are calling for a balanced budge amendment. This new tack the promoters are taking doesn’t use the same language. They’re calling for an amendment forcing Congress to stay within its budget, Although it sounds different, it IS the same purpose: a balanced budget. Any new calls can be aggregated into the former standing calls.

We wonder if it has occurred to those legislatures that the Congress could easily comply with that amendment simply by expanding its budget. And, once again, since they ignore the Constitution and its amendments, why would they adhere to a new one?

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WHO or WHAT IS BEHIND THIS CURRENT MARCH TO FACILITATE AMERICA’S DOOM?

A BRIEF HISTORY: The proponents of a Con-Con have been at it for nearly fifty years now: In 1964 the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations funded and orchestrated – via the CSDI (Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions) – the drafting of a new constitution for America. This model constitution, drawing upon the efforts of more than 100 people, took ten years to write. The 40th draft was published in a book titled “The Emerging Constitution”, by Rexford G. Tugwell (Harper & Row, 1974). The project produced the proposed “Constitution for the NewStates of America“.

“In the event you would be inclined to dismiss the relevance of the proposed new constitution, bear in mind that it is the product of a tax-exempt think-tank which took ten years, $25,000,000.00 and the collaboration of over one-hundred like-minded individuals. . . It would be folly to believe this investment is intended to be merely an exercise in political theory. The frightening reality is, the planners are serious in their efforts to impose a new constitution upon the people of America as we enter the 21st Century.”   — Col. Arch Roberts, Committee to Restore the Constitution

One year following publication of Tugwell’s plan – 1975 – Nelson Rockefeller, then president of the U.S. Senate, engineered the introduction of HCR 28 calling for an unlimited Con-Con to be held in the Bicentennial year, 1976. With this time line, we can clearly see they meant business and certainly wasting no time to get it done.

“ Visible collusion of the U.S. Congress with world government organizations created a backlash which doomed the grandiose Fourth of July Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. . . . Arrogance was the seed of its undoing.” Col. Arch Roberts.

Abandoning plan one, the conspirators moved directly to the state legislatures and, operating behind a screen of ‘conservative’ organizations, began lobbying the states. Although ALEC’s hired lawyer, John Armor, was the foremost lobbyist to state legislators in the decades-long effort to win the required number of state calls via the “balanced budget amendment” resolution. ALEC wasn’t alone.

Some -not all - of the other players were the National Taxpayers’ Union (NTU), Republican National Committee (RNC), Committee on the Constitutional System (CCS), former Secretary of the Treasury, C. Douglas Dillon, and former Counsel to the President, Lloyd N. Cutler. By 1983, 32 of the 34 states needed had passed con-con resolutions.  They were stopped in their tracks by an unsung hero from Chicago, Doug Kelly, who spent the rest of his life covering our backs.

Three states rescinded their call on his watch; the dragon slept until 1993 when 12 states simultaneously introduced calls, once again coming from ALEC, John Armor and Republican states. Successfully stopping that volley, we had barely caught our breath when the Conference of States hit in January ’95, a back-door attempt at a con-con.

The model resolutions for the COS came from the National Council of State Legislators (NCSL), the organization that dumbs down liberal (mostly democratic) legislators as ALEC does the conservative (republicans).  ALEC passed a resolution supporting the COS so Republicans joined the fray.

They do seem to be big on dates: The COS was slated to take place in “historical Philadelphia” October 22nd through 25th, 1995 – falling on the October 24th, Fifty-year Anniversary of the UN.  By the Grace of our Heavenly Father, that plan also failed. Now, once again, the con-con resolutions being swiftly introduced in states as this is being written, are “model legislation” again, from ALEC.

WHAT ABOUT ALEC ?

Founded in 1973, ALEC defines itself as a non-partisan membership organization of conservative state legislators, boasting 2,700 members. Its main founder, Paul Weyrich, was one of the most powerful conservative leaders of his era. Weyrich lamented the fact that we have no “shadow cabinets” like those in Europe who have parliamentary government. The only way that will happen is if the process (34 states call for a convention) is successful.

It is possible that ALEC was formed for that purpose above all others. A July 14, 2011, L.A. Times article announced that government watchdog, Common Cause, would issue a challenge to ALEC’s nonprofit status, on the grounds that ALEC “spends most of its resources lobbying, in violation of the rules governing nonprofit organizations. Yes. ALEC does lobby.

Its definition as an organization of state legislators only reveals half its function. It appears that is a mere cover for covert activities behind closed doors. Its major funding is not from membership fees, but large corporations and charitable funds, including the internationalist, one-worlder Bill Gates. Its 2007 budget was $7.8 million, with nearly $3.2m in assets; over 98% of its revenue comes from sources other than legislative dues, primarily from corporations who have ALEC membership, and corporate foundations.

Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. These so-called “model bills” reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. In ALEC’s own words, corporations have “a VOICE and a VOTE” on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in our states.

Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. They fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land, without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, and corporations had pushed the people out the door.

We’ll leave Alec now, with sources for further information to our readers. Conservatives may want to shun these sources since they’re from left-wing sites. Before you rush to judgment, ask yourself, “Who else would expose ALEC?”  No conservative group, for certain. It’s doubtful the reports are false, since the reporters could risk lawsuits by publishing lies. Truth is truth where ever it is found.

See: thenation.com/article/161978/alec-exposed, alecwatch.org,  alecwatch.org/report.html

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WHAT CAN WE DO?

How CAN states safely put Big Government back into its Constitutional Cage?

When talking with state legislators, frustrated at our opposition to ALEC’s planned Con-Con, we hear over and over: “What are we supposed to do then? Nothing?!!”  It’s a fair question. We have two suggestion, one glaringly in our faces:  

BEGIN NOW TO INVOKE THE 10TH AMENDMENT! It’s alive, awaiting our actions. Read it:

“ARTICLE X – The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

To understand this fully, one must read Article 1, Section 8, which lists the only powers Congress has. All other powers belong to the States. Congress has no power to dictate laws pertaining to education, gun rights, health-care, vaccinations, food safety, and the myriad other aspects of our lives. When they pass the bills relating to those subjects, they apply only to territories and possessions of the United States.  (See Clause 18 in Article 1, Section 8 – you’ll have to count them; they are not numbered)

In 1993, when Hillary Clinton was working behind closed doors with the Health Care Interdepartmental Working Group, Walter Zellman had, apparently, at the behest of H. Clinton, posed a question to the Department of Justice as to whether the Federal Government could force the States to adopt a National Health Care Plan. Here’s the DOJ response, in part:

“(b) may the federal government use other actors in the governmental system and the private sector as its agents and give them orders as though they were part of a prefectorial system?

“The short answer is “no”. State governments are independent, although subordinated, sovereignties, not subdivisions of the federal government. Although the federal government may regulate many of their functions directly (as where, for example, it subjects state water districts to the Clean Water Act), it may not require them to exercise their own governmental powers in a manner dictated by federal law. The states may be encouraged bribed or threatened into entering into joint federal state programs of various sorts, from unemployment insurance to Medicaid; but they may not be commanded directly to use their own governmental apparatus in the service of federal policy. There is a modest jurisprudence of the Tenth Amendment that seems to have settled on this proposition. See the DOJ memorandum for a fuller elaboration.”

FACT: There is no such thing as a “subordinated sovereign”, although many state legislators believe that.

How does the Federal Government encourage, bribe and/or threaten the states?  By withholding huge chunks of money needed for unfunded mandates, for one. Or for other necessary purposes. States can reject the mandates; however they cannot force big government to send the allocated funds. We so often claim that the U.S. Government has usurped States’ power. It isn’t so. State legislatures acquiesced in every case of so-called lost-power.

Today’s legislatures are reaping the legacy of their forebears’ actions.  It began with the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act of 1972, known as Revenue Sharing. All funds from local to state governments are sent to Washington, then back to the states with strings attached. According to the book, Beware Metro Government, even state income tax revenue is siphoned into D.C.

It would be up to the legislatures to unravel that mess. The good news is, there is a way to begin the process of states reclaiming their power. In 1995, Oklahoma State Rep. Charles Key introduced a bill titled, “State Sovereignty & Federal Tax Fund Act“. It passed unanimously through the House; was sent to the Senate where it was evidently buried amidst the ashes of the bombed Murrah Federal Building.

This Act would establish an escrow account within the state. All taxes collected – including alcohol, tobacco, liquor, employees’ Federal Withholding, road taxes, etc. - would be held. The state keeps all interest on the money, and sends the funds to Washington on a quarterly basis; that is, IF the Federal Government acts only within it’s enumerated powers. If that isn’t happening, the escrow funds would be used for state needs.

It has been said that the CCS (Center for Constitutional Studies) wants to wait to call a Con-Con until the United States is in a 1929 type depression, because only then would the people accept the radical changes they intend to make. That time is close, as we can see.  Rexford Tugwell was a member of the CCS, and the lead author of the Constitution for the NewStates of America.

Check it out. See what America looks like under that NewStates Constitution. There are no “states” by the way. Just ten regions ruled by appointed overseers; no gun rights, free speech, etc. Think it can’t happen here? We would be fools to deny that it could, and most probably will if we don’t all work in tandem to bring these Con-Con calls to a halt, and then work with, support state legislators’ efforts.

It would behoove states’ legislators to begin now to return state power to whom it belongs.

Invoking the 10th Amendment and passing the State Sovereignty & Federal Tax Fund Act simultaneously could be the first, extremely powerful steps, to making that happen.  These steps do not place the U.S. Constitution in harms way, as would a Constitution Convention, a.k.a. Article 5 Amendment Convention. Nothing can be lost, everything gained.

U.N. to Seek Control of the Internet

Nov 26, 2012

Next week the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union will meet in Dubai to figure out how to control the Internet. Representatives from 193 nations will attend the nearly two week long meeting, according to news reports.

"Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations," reports the Wall Street Journal.

"Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day. ...

"Proposals for the new ITU treaty run to more than 200 pages. One idea is to apply the ITU's long-distance telephone rules to the Internet by creating a 'sender-party-pays' rule. International phone calls include a fee from the originating country to the local phone company at the receiving end. Under a sender-pays approach, U.S.-based websites would pay a local network for each visitor from overseas, effectively taxing firms such as Google and Facebook. The idea is technically impractical because unlike phone networks, the Internet doesn't recognize national borders. But authoritarians are pushing the tax, hoping their citizens will be cut off from U.S. websites that decide foreign visitors are too expensive to serve."

Arthur Herman explains "The UN's Internet Grab" here.

And even Google has already come out against the ITU.

"The ITU is the wrong place to make decisions about the future of the Internet," says Google. "Only governments have a voice at the ITU. This includes governments that do not support a free and open Internet. Engineers, companies, and people that build and use the web have no vote."
"The ITU is also secretive. The treaty conference and proposals are confidential," adds Google.

Thanksgiving Terror from Fidel and Che

by Humberto Fontonova
Nov 26, 2012

Furious at failing to start a worldwide nuclear war and incinerating millions of people 50 years ago last month, the bosom chum of “peace candidate” George McGovern tried again 50 years ago this month. In fact, the terror plot to incinerate and entomb thousands of New York holiday shoppers came 50 years ago last week.

Not that you’ll learn of this planned Castroite atrocity—much less how it was foiled in the nick of time by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI-- from any wire service, production company or TV network bestowed a Havana visa or bureau by Castro’s Stalinist regime, which is to say: from the Castro-regime’s U.S. partners-in-propaganda. Regarding U.S. institutions, it’s a toss-up who hates them most: Cuban Stalinists or the U.S. media.
Which brings us to Glenn Beck TV. Unlike, NBC,CBS, NPR, PBS, CNN, ABC, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, etc., Beck’s outfit remains unencumbered by the above-mentioned honor by Castro’s propaganda ministry, and thus free to report the truth about Cuba, Castro and Che Guevara. To wit:
Intrepid terrorists could get maximum bang for their buck on “Black Friday.” A few well-placed bombs and the carnage would easily shame 9/11's. Macy's, for instance, serves tens of thousands of shoppers that one day.
On Nov. 17, 1962, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI cracked a terrorist plot by Castro-Cuban agents that targeted –not only Macy’s—but also Gimbel's, Bloomindales and Manhattan's Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set to go off the following week, the day after Thanksgiving.
A little perspective: the March 2004 Madrid subway blasts, all 10 of the explosions that killed and maimed almost 2000 people, used a grand total of 100 kilos of TNT. Castro and Che’s agents planned to set off five times that explosive power in the three biggest department stores on earth — and on the year’s biggest shopping day, for good measure.
Thousands of New Yorkers-- probably mostly women and children given the date-- were to be incinerated and entombed.
Castro and Che planned their Manhattan holocaust just weeks after Nikita Khrushchev foiled their plans for an even bigger massacre during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “If the missiles had remained,” Che Guevara confided to The London Daily Worker the following month, “we would have used them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City.”
Had those detonators gone off the day after Thanksgiving in 1962, 9/11 might be remembered as the second deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Castro and Che’s Manhattan bomb plot was far from "irrational." They were no suicide bombers -- not by a long shot. Some Cuba-watchers speculate that Castro wanted to blast Manhattan to heat things up again, to rekindle all those thrills he’d experienced the previous weeks during the missile crisis. Given the temper of the times, he knew his Soviet sugar daddies would be implicated too. Then the U.S. might retaliate. Then Castro might get what he'd dreamed about and tried to provoke a few weeks earlier: an intercontinental nuclear exchange.

Millions dead in the United States. Millions dead in the Soviet Union. And almost certainly, millions dead in his own Cuba. But Castro himself would be nowhere near harm’s way. Soviet ambassador to Cuba during the missile crisis, Alexander Alexeyev, reports a fascinating -- if unsurprising -- datum about those days. While Castro was begging, threatening, even trying to trick Khrushchev into launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the U.S. -- while he was ranting and yelling and waving his arms about grabbing his Czech machine gun and "fighting the Yankee invaders to the last man!" -- while frantically involved in all this, a "fearful" (Alexeyev's term) Castro was also making reservations with Alexeyev for a first-class seat in the Soviet Embassy's bomb shelter. Thus he'd emerge into the smoldering rubble and millions of incinerated bodies and realize his lifelong dream: his name stamped in history as the gallant David against the Yankee Goliath.
Castro's agents for his Manhattan Thanksgiving bomb plot were members of the Cuban mission to the United Nations working in concert with members of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, an outfit that became much better known a year later when member Lee Harvey Oswald really racked up some headlines.
Incidentally, at the time of the Manhattan terror plot, the Fair Play For Cuba Committee also included among its members, CBS correspondent Robert Taber (an early version of Dan Rather, who conducted Castro's first network television soft-soaping on Aug. 30, 1957), along with The Nation magazine co-owner Alan Sagner. In 1996 President Clinton appointed Alan Sagner head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Despite his lust to incinerate them, on visit after visit to New York the cities’ Best and Brightest (i.e. those who barely escaped incineration at Fidel Castro’s hand) have welcomed Fidel Castro as the second coming of the Beatles at Shea Stadium. On his 1996 visit for instance, the war-mongering, mass-murdering despot who abolished private property, transplanted Stalin’s penal and judicial system and stole 5,911 businesses worth (at the time) $2 billion from U.S. stockholders—this very gentleman was delighted to find a lavish luncheon thrown in his honor by the Wall Street Journal.

Howard Stern Exposes Obama Supporters 2012 (video)

[ed. It would be hilarious if there wasn't so much at stake. The country is in a lot of trouble folks...]