Those of us who have been in the conservative movement for a while know it to be a movement of extraordinary people. Many have given years, decades of their lives, fighting on for no other reason that it is the right thing to do — even when spirits are low and resources are slim or nonexistent. I have been honored to personally know some of these people and we lost one of the really good ones, unfortunately but fittingly, this past Easter Sunday.
Susan Fries Falknor, activist, editor, published poet, committed Christian, and wife of fellow commentator, Richard Falknor, passed on following a brief illness. Although I know she is in a better place, it never diminishes the sense of loss. She will be sorely missed.
I came to know both Rich and Susan through their leadership of the Maryland Center Right Coalition, which brought a small, very lucky group of Marylanders together for regular presentations by state and local luminaries as well as nationally known conservatives. We enjoyed freewheeling discussions on issues of the day with these people. The meetings went for hours and we were always reluctant to leave.
Today I count Rich and Susan among my good friends. Rich worked on Capitol Hill for many years and his learned perspective is always apparent in his blog posts at Blue Ridge Forum, an excellent site you should get to know. In her typically quiet, unassuming way, Susan worked in the background, editing and otherwise polishing Rich’s great work.
A writer in her own right, Susan served as a researcher and editor at the American Enterprise Institute, the Urban Institute, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the Population Reference Bureau and others. She was also president of Friends of Bluemont, an organization dedicated to preservation of this historic Virginia town formerly known as Snickersville.
Susan was usually quiet, working in the background, while Rich took the lead in articulating their views and concerns on issues of the day. But perhaps because she was usually quiet, her strong encouragements to me always had a profound effect.
While readers of this site may not have heard of her, she had a similar impact on others she met. Gates of Vienna writes:
Susan was a behind-the-scenes worker on behalf of liberty in America, so she didn’t boast: you had to know what questions to ask. [She] certainly picked a beautiful feast day on which to take leave of this world. I’m in awe of her choice, but a little envious if truth be told. I hope her going was easy, at least for her. It never is for those who are left behind — and Susan’s goodbyes must have been numerous indeed.
The world of words and the world of conservative activism is now less for her passing, yet richer for her time with us.
William Shakespeare was a man who knew something about a good turn of phrase, so I send my friend away with his words;
I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good friends.
To my friend Rich, I join him in his mourning. To Susan I say Godspeed and God Bless you! And I am sure she is now hearing our Lord tell her: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
For those able, there will be a service for Susan this Saturday at 10 am Eastern at the Bluemont United Methodist Church, 33843 Snickersville Turnpike, Bluemont, Virginia.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — On Thursday, Dangerous Documentaries—a project of the Capital Research Center—will release America Under Siege: Civil War 2017, a new documentary exposing the radical left-wing groups responsible for recent demonstrations against President-elect Donald Trump. The film is the first episode in a five-part “America Under Siege” documentary web-series to be released over the course of 2017. Each episode will profile the influence of radical Marxists on various segments of American society. The first episode will be available for free on YouTube, DangerousDocumentaries.com, and CapitalResearch.org.
While 700,000 protesters are converging on Washington D.C. for Inauguration Day—in addition to anti-Trump rallies planned in dozens of cities across the country—the political groups behind the protests remain shrouded in mystery. As Fox News Channel first reported, Civil War 2017 uncovers an extensive network of neo-Marxist operatives coordinating highly disruptive and potentially violent protests from coast to coast. Working with Dangerous Documentaries, director Judd Saul and conservative commentator Trevor Loudon have compiled a team of researchers and undercover operatives to probe the roots of the anti-Trump movement, highlighting the ultimate goals and ulterior motives. Mr. Loudon, a regular contributor to Glenn Beck’s online programming, is the foremost expert on the left-wing organizers of mass protests.
Mr. Saul is a film producer, director, and political activist. He has produced many projects for Discovery and HDNet, while directing and producing three feature-length documentaries. UnFair: Exposing the IRS premiered in more than 670 theaters nationwide in 2014 to wide acclaim from conservative audiences. His 2008 documentary, FRAG, won several festival awards and changed the professional gaming industry. Most recently, Mr. Saul directed the hard-hitting political documentary Enemies Within, which has sold over 10,000 DVDs in just three months.
The “America Under Siege” web-series is the first project from new production company Dangerous Documentaries. Based in Washington, D.C., Dangerous Documentaries is a project of the Capital Research Center and operates on a unique nonprofit model with the mission of creating liberty-minded films. While the “America Under Siege” web-series will be released for free online, future projects from Dangerous Documentaries will employ a more traditional theatrical, video-on-demand, and streaming release model.
“We’re a non-profit and that informs our operations, but we believe that making films for conservatives and libertarians is currently a major missed business opportunity by the film industry,” said Dangerous Documentaries founder Joseph Klein. “We intend to demonstrate that quality content for this audience can be highly profitable, and hope to encourage more investment targeting this market by doing so.”
To schedule an interview, contact Cooper Nye at [email protected] or (202) 838-6102.
It costs 12 times as much to resettle refugees as it does to assist them in place. Almost all refugees would prefer to return home than be resettled to a third country.
On the first day of the new year, Islamic terrorists claimed another 39 victims, including Americans, in an attack at a popular nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey. The Christmas truck attack in Berlin recalls the similar July attack in Nice, France. The suspect, Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri, was killed in a shootout with Italian police on December 23.
Amri had been denied asylum in Germany due to his terror risk, but was not deported because Tunisia would not accept him since he lacked a passport. Amri carried six different aliases from three nations and had been monitored by German authorities. He was not a “lone jihadist” but part of an ISIS cell, and traveled covertly, like some of the Paris killers, with the refugee flow from the Mediterranean.
All this followed on the heels of November’s Ohio State knife attack by Somali Muslim refugee Abdul Artan. These attacks typify the kinds recommended in ISIS literature, and ISIS claims credit for most of them. With Berlin, Brussels, Orlando, and so many other horrific attacks this year, San Bernardino and Paris almost seem like old news.
Although we view these events with horror and growing alarm, the outgoing Obama administration is literally importing terrorists through our nation’s refugee programs. Because private contractors are paid by the head to resettle refugees and other needy populations, the resettlement program has built-in incentives for uncontrolled growth. This harmonizes with the Left’s open borders agenda, which seeks to swell the rolls of new Democrat voters while weakening the influence of traditional (read conservative) America.
Big business shares this agenda in seeking cheap, subsidized labor. The resulting bipartisan alliance has long subsidized a resettlement industry that is expensive, secretive, duplicitous, and unconcerned about the Americans who pay for it with hard-earned tax dollars. The refugee resettlement program must be abolished in its current form before it puts us on the path toward today’s turbulent France and Germany.
The Real Risk of Increasing Terrorism
The most important risk the current refugee program creates is terrorism. Since 9/11 there have been 580 convictions for terrorism in the United States. At least 40 of these were refugees. Just this year, in addition to the knife attacks by Abdul Artan and Ali Mohamound, four other refugees have committed or attempted to commit acts of terrorism.
Since March 2014 there have been 111 ISIS-related arrests and 60 convictions. There have been nine indictments and six convictions of ISIS supporters in the metropolitan DC area alone. ISIS openly encourages “lone jihadi” attacks, and the State Department now admits ISIS is trying to penetrate the U.S. refugee flow. Some 250 U.S. Muslims from 19 states have either joined or attempted to join ISIS overseas. Many have since returned with little or no oversight.
Let’s be clear: these are not Mennonite terrorists. They are not Episcopalian suicide bombers. Virtually all 580 convictions since 9/11 were Muslim immigrants or American Muslim converts, and the Somali community consistently supplies such malefactors. Yet the Department of Homeland Security has provided tours of airport facilities to groups of Somalis, including explanations of airport inner workings, security protocols, and databases. DHS redacted some of this information as too sensitive to share with the public.
The Refugee Program Is Home to Major Fraud
Virginia knife attacker Ali Mohamound was carrying multiple identities when arrested. The Ohio State terrorist and his family lived in Pakistan for seven years before being resettled to the United States. Why were they not simply resettled in Pakistan? Afghani refugee Ahmad Rahami, the terrorist bomber of New York and New Jersey, originally entered the United States through the asylum program, but then traveled back to Afghanistan, where he apparently became radicalized. How can someone who is supposedly fleeing his home country for his life go back for a visit?
Virtually all U.S. Somalis originally arrived as refugees or asylum seekers or are their children. Many now take months-long trips back to Somalia, contradicting their purported reason for seeking asylum: fleeing Somalia for their lives. Minneapolis actually grants rent relief because Somalis complained about the cost of overdue rent upon their return. The home country visits so many “refugees” make undercut the program’s integrity.
The entire refugee resettlement program has systematic fraud, creating both national security risks and undue fiscal burdens. Refugee advocates claim the vetting process for Syrians is airtight, but U.S. security officials say exactly the opposite. An internal Immigrations, Customs, and Enforcement memo states, “[The] refugee program is particularly vulnerable to fraud due to loose evidentiary requirements where at times the testimony of an applicant alone is sufficient for approval.” The memo goes on to say that “the immigration system is a constant target for exploitation” by terrorists. An Immigration and Naturalization Services assistant commissioner said 95 percent of refugee and asylee applications are fraudulent.
The Obama administration has knowingly and routinely allowed illegal aliens falsely claiming asylum to remain in the United States. A September 2016 DHS Inspector General report found that 1,982 aliens from countries known for immigration fraud or terror-links who were scheduled for deportation were instead granted citizenship using false identities because fingerprint records were missing.
The United Nations selects almost all refugees, and the United States takes more refugees than all other resettlement nations combined. Yet many of the tens of thousands of unvettable Syrians who are accepted don’t meet the refugee definition.
Syrian Christians are facing genocide, and certainly do meet the definition, but represent less than 1 percent of those Syrians resettled so far. Syrian Muslims are more than 98 percent of the total. In the interest of diplomacy we are also resettling populations other countries refuse to take. Most recently, the Obama administration offered to accept 2,465 asylum seekers now being detained by Australia which that country refuses to accept because of their possible ties to terrorism. In response to congressional inquiries, the administration has declared information about this agreement classified.
Heavy Costs for Taxpayers Besides Terrorism Risks
Refugee resettlement is administered by three agencies: the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), and the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). It has grown and metastasized over the years.
In fiscal year 2016, the program cost $2.4 billion, an increase of 205.4 percent since FY 2009. At the last minute Obama boosted ORR’s request to $3.9 billion for FY 2017 to handle the unprecedented flow of minors now being apprehended at the Southwest border. That’s 14,128 in the past two months alone and a 106 percent increase for the year.
Congress provided a pro-rata share of $500 million of this request in the short-term continuing resolution passed on December 9. It cannot be expended until the new Health and Human Services secretary has been installed. He can withhold some or all of those funds, if he chooses.
The table above shows the numbers resettled by category, a total of 195,231 individuals in FY 2015. This represents 20 percent of all immigrants allowed into the United States annually. The numbers will be significantly higher this year if nothing is done.
Since FY 2009, approximately 1 million migrants have arrived through these programs. Program costs average about $10,000 per head in the first year, and refugee welfare use is off the charts, even after five years (see table below). In fact, refugees resettled in the 1980s still receive welfare at rates well in excess of Americans and other immigrants.
The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated the annual cost of resettling Muslim refugees during the first five years at $12,874 per head. Muslim refugees use welfare at higher rates than average. I have estimated a somewhat lower average of $11,574 per head for the entire group. Cumulatively for the years 2009 through 2015, this cohort alone has cost U.S. taxpayers a staggering $48 billion. Since 1980, 3 million have been resettled.
Migrants Create a Heavy Toll on Communities
State and local costs are significant. When the Refugee Act was first passed, the federal government promised to cover 36 months of states’ share of food stamps, Medicaid, Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA), and Refugee Medical Assistance (RMA) for refugees—a huge subsidy. Today it covers no state costs. Refugees rely heavily on local assistance, and school budgets, costs for translation, and other services have exploded. Following is a sampling of problems in many U.S. communities:
Lynn, MA: 49 languages spoken, some in unknown dialects
Lynn, MA: 200 percent increase in vaccinations, straining public health budgets; foreign student K-12 admissions doubled
Manchester, NH: 82 languages spoken in high school, among lowest school ratings in NH
Minneapolis, MN: Somalis are a heavy ISIS recruitment target
Minnesota: more than one-half of the Somali population is in poverty
Rochester, NY: refugees and inner-city minorities clash
Nationwide: 20 to 49 percent of refugees test positive for latent tuberculosis (TB)
Nebraska: 82 percent of active TB cases are among foreign-born
Major Conflicts of Interest Among Refugee Resettlers
Nine private contractors, called “Voluntary Agencies” or VOLAGs, resettle refugees with the assistance of 320 “affiliates.” VOLAGs are supposed to consult communities before resettling refugees, but almost never do. They secretly resettle refugees and leave communities to deal with the resulting problems. They regularly withhold information from community leaders and concerned citizens and ignore local complaints.
Refugee resettlement has big effects for small communities throughout the United States, which is a major reason for growing resistance to the program. In one example, a federal agent contacted me in November to describe numerous problems in northern Michigan. He said citizens and public officials from Traverse City and elsewhere expressed concerns over the indiscriminate “dumping” of refugees and illegal aliens in small towns, including the Upper Peninsula, under cover of darkness, without any prior coordination with appropriate public officials (i.e. mayors, town councils, etc.).
Refugees are often employed in the resettlement industry, giving refugees a stake its growth. Many VOLAG leaders who receive federal resettlement grants are former directors of the agencies that administer those grants, and vice versa. Like a revolving door, they cycle in and out of government. For example, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Assistant Secretary Ann Richard is a former vice president for one of the nine VOLAGs. She helped found the International Crisis Group, a leftist organization funded by George Soros.
VOLAGs receive a total of about $1 billion per year from taxpayers and are paid by the head, receiving anywhere from $2,025 to more than $5,000 per refugee. The Government Accountability Office has noted that this creates a strong incentive for VOLAGs to constantly resettle more refugees, regardless of whether it is in the interest of the refugee or the target community.
David M. Robinson, who would later lead PRM, said of the refugee industry: “The solution its members offer to every refugee crisis is simplistic and the same: increase the number of admissions to the United States without regard to budgets or competing foreign policy considerations. On the other hand, it is politically well connected, includes major party donors at the local and national levels, and owns the moral high ground on an extremely emotional issue.”
VOLAGs have not faced any kind of meaningful oversight since the program was established in 1980. None have ever faced a public financial audit despite many calls to do so. The program is biased toward continual growth, and security concerns must be addressed.
Prioritizing Refugees Above American Citizens
The Refugee Act of 1980 dictates benefits that refugees must receive. They go to the front of the line for welfare and public housing, jumping ahead of all Americans, including veterans and the disabled. VOLAGs provide:
Housing
Essential furnishings
Food, food allowance
Seasonal clothing
Pocket money
Assistance in applying for public benefits, Social Security cards, language translation, employment services, non-employment services, Medicaid
Assistance with health screenings and medical care
Assistance with registering children in school
Transportation to job interviews and job training
Home visits
Additionally, ORR and other agencies provide numerous special grants available only to refugees. This is supposedly to enable refugees to rapidly become economically self-sufficient. However, ORR’s definition of “economic self-sufficiency” allows refugees to continue to receive every kind of welfare except cash assistance from food stamps or RCA. Refugees thus have a strong incentive to seek U.S. resettlement to obtain benefits.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage told me that elderly autistic residents of Portland, Maine are swelling the rolls of the homeless as their primary caretakers, usually their parents, die, or become unable to care for them, because public housing is taken by refugees.
What Americans and Our Leaders Should Do
The resettlement program is dangerous, expensive, and unfair to Americans. Its structure encourages endless growth, systemic corruption, cronyism, secrecy, and duplicity. The refugee program must be put on hold. Members of Congress have called for a moratorium, and such legislation is circulating. H.R. 3314, the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act, has 86 co-sponsors.
On his first day in office, Trump can pause the entire program by simply resetting the annual refugee targets.
But legislation isn’t needed. On his first day in office, Trump can pause the entire program by simply resetting the annual refugee targets to whatever number has already been reached this fiscal year. The 1980 Refugee Act gives him authority to do this, and subsequent court decisions have declared Congress’s refugee resettlement oversight authority as advisory only.
Trump has stated his desire to halt resettlement from nations of terrorism concern. It would be wiser to pause the entire program.
It costs 12 times as much to resettle refugees as to assist them in place. Almost all refugeeswould prefer to return home than be resettled to a third country. President-Elect Trump’s idea to create “safe zones” in or near countries of conflict is a much more compassionate and cost-effective method of dealing with the refugee crisis. Trump’s State Department should encourage the Gulf States to participate in resettlement, since they currently offer little help.
The VOLAG system needs to be abolished. Asylum and other alternative forms of resettlement should operate case-by-case. Resettlement should be returned to the private act of charity it was before 1980. That structure would be naturally self-limiting, and those financing resettlement would have a much stronger incentive to see that their charitable dollars were not wasted on frauds or potential terrorists. Refugees should be required to become truly economically self-sufficient.
With such restrictions, other nations would have to confront and resolve conflicts they now offload onto America. The U.S. government role should be limited to security: helping create safe zones, identifying other countries that might help more, designating those populations suitable for resettlement, setting numerical limits, and vetting all refugees, asylum seekers, and others seeking U.S. entry. With new leadership, policies and management, Trump’s administration can reinvent the resettlement program to serve America’s interests again.
Self-identified communist professor claims controversial tweet was ‘satire.’
“The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.” – Noel Ignatiev, Communist and father of “White Privilege”
“White supremacy makes it so that white people can’t see the world they have created.” –Lee Bebout of Arizona State University, teaches course “U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness”
“White Genocide” was trending on Twitter yesterday after self-identified communist professor George Ciccariello-Maher of Drexel University in Philadelphia tweeted, “All I want for Christmas is White Genocide.” But what most of the media has missed is the direct correlation between Ciccariello’s anti-white sentiment and his communist ideology.
The academically-promoted concepts of “White Privilege” and “Critical Race Theory” can be traced back to anti-white Marxists who have successfully influenced a generation of students that white people are racist oppressors.
Consider that hard-core communist Noel Ignatiev (formerly Ignatin) is the father of the concept of “white privilege,” and has been open about his desire for the abolishment of white people.
A must-read article about the communist roots of the Black Lives Matter movement by James Simpson at the Capital Research Center explains:
“The ‘White Skin Privilege’ idea was created in 1967 by Noel Ignatiev, an acolyte of Derrick Bell and professor at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. (Du Bois was a black leader who helped found the NAACP and joined the Communist Party in 1961.) Ignatiev was a member of the Communist Party USA’s most radical wing, the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party from 1958–66. The Provisional Organizing Committee was the intellectual forerunner to Freedom Road.”
While the Islamic State claims responsibility for triple bombings in Brussels this morning that have left at least 34 dead and scores injured, our political class hands out generic “thoughts and prayers” for the victims.
Neither thoughts nor prayers, muttered after-the-fact, are sufficient to defend America. By allowing unsecured borders, encouraging mass migration and aggressive “refugee” resettlement and by severely limiting law enforcement actions against illegals, our leaders are failing to protect us. They have abandoned their primary role of defending our people and, instead, are rolling out the welcome mat to people whose stated goal is world domination.
A screenwriter could concoct no better example than our lame-duck president. As the body count was still being tallied, the ostensible leader of the free world was cuddling with the leader of a long-standing state-sponsor of terrorism, Raul Castro.
After a number of years of noted absence, the Center for Security Policy returned to CPAC this year. On Thursday, March 3, the Center presented a “Countering Global Jihad” panel. The panel was moderated by CSP President, Frank Gaffney, and included CSP Vice President Jim Hanson; Danish historian, journalist and author, Lars Hedegaard; British activist and politician, Paul Weston; four-star Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, Jr. (Ret.); and Middle East expert and former CIA case officer, Clare Lopez.
Jim Hanson
CSP VP Jim Hanson outlined a new CSP initiative, the Counterjihad Campaign (www.counterjihad.com). Its purpose is to provide Americans with the facts and the wherewithal to push back in the face of the Red-Green Axis: the leftist/Islamist effort to smear and intimidate Americans who dare to stand up to them.
Hanson related his experience as a second generation immigrant whose family believes in the American values of hard work and patriotism. His family immigrated legally, and enthusiastically assimilated to pursue the American dream. Hanson says that today, “The problem is that we are dealing with a large cohort [of Muslims] who do not, and will not [assimilate]… They’re proudly saying ‘not only will we not assimilate, but we are going to, in some ways, take over your culture.’”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, always seeming to hover in the shadows whenever honest citizens and organizations try to stand up for this country, is at it again. In addition to the usual suspects – which includes pretty much anyone who disagrees with the American radical Left – SPLC has been increasingly attacking people and groups who express concern about Islamic terrorism –adding them to SPLC’s infamous “Hate Watch” list.
This now includes the Washington, DC think tank, Center for Security Policy. Widely respected in defense circles, the Center has been warning us for years about the subversive tactics being employed by the Muslim Brotherhood and its proxies to destroy our nation from within. Its veteran analysts from the defense and intelligence community seek to warn the country of the existential threat we now face from Muslim terrorists.
People all over the world have witnessed the terrorists’ handiwork, and America is now undeniably in the cross hairs. Any organization purporting to defend civil rights would not blame, much less attack, Americans for being alarmed, and would be hard pressed to explain its criticism of the Center for Security Policy.
This is a report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism
The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. Its agitation has provoked police killings and other violence, lawlessness and unrest in minority communities throughout the U.S. If allowed to continue, that agitation could devolve into anarchy and civil war. The BLM crowd appears to be spoiling for just such an outcome.
Nevertheless, BLM appears to be exercising considerable leverage over the Democratic Party, in part by pressuring and intimidating Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (VT) into embracing their cause. The movement could also assist President Obama’s exploitation of racial divisions in society beyond his final term in office.
This report examines in detail, for the first time, how communist groups have manipulated the cause of Black Lives Matter, and how money from liberal foundations has made it all possible.
Leftist Origins
Exploiting blacks to promote Marxist revolution is an old tactic. The late Larry Grathwohl, former FBI informant in the Weather Underground, understood from personal experience how white communists exploited blacks and other minority groups. He said that Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn regarded Barack Obama, whose political career they sponsored, as a tool—a puppet—to use against white America. Obama’s legacy at home will certainly include more racial division.
BLM launched in 2013 with a Twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Trayvon Martin killing. Radical Left activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi claim credit for the slogan and hashtag. Following the Michael Brown shooting in August 2014, Dream Defenders, an organization led by Working Families Party (ACORN) activist and Occupy Wall Street anarchist Nelini Stamp, popularized the phrase “Hands Up–Don’t Shoot!” which has since become BLM’s widely recognized slogan.
Garza, Cullors and Tometi all work for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), one of the four largest radical Left organizations in the country. The others are the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). Nelini Stamp’s ACORN—now rebranded under a variety of different names—works with all four organizations, and Dream Defenders is backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others.
FRSO is a hereditary descendant of the New Communist Movement, which was inspired by Mao and the many communist revolutions throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s. FRSO split into two separate groups in 1999, FRSO/Fight Back and FRSO/OSCL (Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organizaci?n Socialista del Camino para la Libertad). Black Lives Matter and its founders are allied with the latter group. Future references to FRSO in this article refer to FRSO/OSCL.
FRSO is comprised of dozens of groups. The radical Left model is based on alliances of many organizations that are working on separate issues but dedicated ultimately to the same thing: overthrowing our society in order to replace it with a hardcore socialist (read communist) one.
The goal is to present the appearance of a formidable mass of organizations. Some are large, but many are little more than a website or Facebook page. When necessary, they can all come together to promote the cause du jour. The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others were mere pretexts for socialist agitation. The real enemy is “the system.” This is why the BLM crowd denies the facts of those cases. As Stamp has said, “we are actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us.”
BLM is one of many projects undertaken by the FRSO. Except for the website, blacklivesmatter.com, there is no actual organization. The website implicitly acknowledges this, describing #BlackLivesMatter as “an online forum intended to build connections between Black people and our allies to fight anti-Black racism, to spark dialogue among Black people, and to facilitate the types of connections necessary to encourage social action and engagement.”
FRSO membership is disproportionately represented by blacks, gays and women, and self-consciously emphasizes those issues. Garza, who penned a “Herstory” of BLM, is a “queer,” black veteran activist involved in numerous FRSO organizations. Her resumé includes:
Cullors describes herself as a “working class, queer, black woman.” She claims the country killed her father, a drug addict. At a 2015 Netroots Nation conference, Cullors led chants shouting, “If I die in police custody, burn everything down… rise the fuck up! That is the only way motherfuckers like you will listen!” Cullors founded and directs Dignity and Power Now (DPN), which claims to seek “dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families, and communities.”
Cullors was trained by Eric Mann, a former Weather Underground leader who exhorts followers to become “anti-racist, anti-imperialist” activists. Mann runs another FRSO front, the Labor/Community Strategy Center. Like most professional leftists, he makes good money—over $225,000 annually—living in “the system” he advocates destroying.
Tometi is the daughter of illegal aliens from Nigeria. While in college, she worked for the ACLU defending illegal aliens against “vigilantes” opposed to illegal immigration. She is currently the executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI).
The Funding
FRSO/BLM organizations are generously supported by a universe of wealthy foundations. Some, like those employing BLM founders Garza and Tometi, receive money directly. Others, like Cullors’ DPN, are financed by organizations designed specifically to underwrite the activities of others. Amounts reflect donations received over approximately the past decade.
NDWA (Garza)—2013 revenues were $5.5 million. The NDWA board includes two members of CASA de Maryland, the Illegals’ version of ACORN. CASA also received a grant from NDWA in 2013, as did the radical Left Institute for Policy Studies. NDWA receives funding from the following foundations:
POWER (Garza)—2013 revenues were $456,676, including $92,173 in government grants. POWER evolved from the now defunct communist groupSTORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement). Obama’s former “Green Jobs Czar” the self-described communist, Van Jones, served on STORM’s board.
RTTC (Garza)—2013 revenues were $248,190. RTTC is a nationwide network of activist organizations that resists the gentrification of inner cities because it displaces “low-income people, people of color, marginalized LGBTQ communities, and youths of color…”
SOUL (Garza)—Despite its small size (2013 revenues at $110,304), SOUL claims to have trained 679 organizers in 2013.
BAJI (Tometi)—2013 revenues were $321,570. This modest organization only lists two full-time staff, yet receives support from many recognizable foundations.
Cullors’ DPN is underwritten by Community Partners, a Los Angeles based non-profit with a $24 million budget (including $4 million in government grants) that fiscally sponsors non-profits. It is not an FRSO organization.
Advancement Project (AP)—an FRSO group that funds a variety of radical causes. AP sees America as a racist, oppressive nation and, according to Discover the Networks, “works to organize ‘communities of color’ into politically cohesive units while disseminating its leftist worldviews and values as broadly as possible by way of a sophisticated communications department.” Its 2013 revenues were $11.3 million.
Movement Strategy Center (MSC)—also facilitates funding, development and advancement of FRSO organizations. Its 2013 revenues were $7.5 million, including $156,032 in government grants.
The Return of Van Jones
Mainstream funders have helped fund BLM as well. For example, United Way has partnered with A&E and iHeartMedia to create Shining the Light Advisors, a committee of “nationally known experts and leaders in racial and social justice,” to oversee grant disbursements. These “advisors” include such radicals as Van Jones, Advancement Project co-director Judith Browne Dianis, and Rinku Sen, president of the Applied Research Center (ARC).
BLM’s mission includes a kitchen sink of favored radical Left causes, including support of poverty elimination programs, prison deinstitutionalization, illegal immigration and gay rights. Highlighting FRSO’s orientation toward gay blacks, it describes how “Black, queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence.”
Its wide network of affiliates and partner organizations like CPUSA and ACORN allows BLM to turn out large crowds. Many participate simply to protest, commit violence, loot or all three.
FRSO was prominent at the Ferguson protests and videoed the event. It has even created a Black Lives Matter button. Following are more FRSO organizations involved with BLM. (Funding estimates provided when known).
Causa Justa/Just Cause—A Black/Latino solidarity organization allied with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, RTTC and others. Its 2013 revenues were $1.6 million, including $689,484 in government grants.
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ)—“a national alliance of US-based grassroots organizing (GRO) groups organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people and communities of color.”
Hands Up United—Works for “liberation of oppressed Black, Brown, and poor people through education, art, civil disobedience, advocacy, and agriculture.”
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) is a “national network of groups and individuals organizing White people for racial justice.” SURJ quotes Garza saying that “We need you defecting from White supremacy and changing the narrative of White supremacy by breaking White silence.”
Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE)—Its 2013 revenues were $2.8 million. Led by Anthony Thigpenn, a former Black Panther and board member of the Apollo Alliance. Apollo is the secretive alliance of labor, environment and other Left activists that formulated Obama’s trillion dollar “stimulus” plan. Board member Van Jones described Apollo “as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive Left causes.” It is now a project of theBlue Green Alliance.
BLM groups have also joined with CPUSA,CCDS, DSA, SEIU, Color of Change and many others. Anarchist and top OWS organizer Lisa Fithian, who orchestrated the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization riots, trained Ferguson protesters. Fithian says “Create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.”
Fithian echoes Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven—creators of the infamousCloward/Piven Crisis Strategy—who spent decades attempting to provoke ghetto blacks to riot, because “Poor people can advance only when ‘the rest of society is afraid of them.’” Rasheen Aldridge, seen above meeting President Obama, was a leader of the Ferguson protests. He has participated in numerous CPUSA events in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Another prominent CPUSA member active in BLM protests is Michael McPhearson, who leads the Don’t Shoot Coalition.
Carl Davidson and Pat Fry, co-chairs of CCDS, exploited the revolutionary atmosphere of the Ferguson riots to create an eight-point plan for “Left Unity” demanding “a common aspiration for socialism.”
CCDS photo of BLM protesters
Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) is Missouri’s rebranded ACORN group. It created an illustrative chart offering a snapshot of the Left’s grievance agenda. Capitalism is always the problem. Socialism is always the solution.
Interestingly, MORE doesn’t believe in socialism when it is footing the bill. MORE promised to pay Ferguson protesters $5,000/month to hang out and cause trouble. But just as ACORN stiffed its employees while preaching socialist generosity, MORE stiffed the protesters.
Islamist organizations have also jumped on the BLM bandwagon, reminding us of the unholy alliance that exists between them and the radical Left. In September 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood front-group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) joined BLM activists in storming California Governor Jerry Brown’s office. CAIR also participated in the Ferguson protests. Meanwhile ISIS is recruiting American blacks for its cause.
Intellectual Genealogy of Black Lives Matter
“We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth… We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”—Vladimir Lenin
That quote from the Soviet Union’s first leader captures the entire essence of the Left’s strategy. No matter what the issue, no matter what the facts, the Left advances a relentless, hate-filled narrative that America is irredeemably evil and must be destroyed as soon as possible. The BLM movement is only the latest but perhaps most dangerous variant on this divisive theme.
Communists use language and psychology as weapons. Their constant vilification is a form of psychological terror. It puts America and Americans on trial. The verdict is always guilty. Facts don’t matter because the Left does not want to resolve the problems they complain about. They use those problems to agitate and provoke, hoping conflict becomes unavoidable—thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their hatred is tactical.
Obama’s favorite Harvard professor Derrick Bell devised Critical Race Theory, which exemplifies Lenin’s strategy as applied to race. According to Discover the Networks:
“Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation’s legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid … members of “oppressed” racial groups are entitled—in fact obligated—to determine for themselves which laws and traditions have merit and are worth observing…”
Bell’s theory is in turn an innovation of Critical Theory—developed by philosophers of the communist Frankfurt School. The school was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. Its Jewish communist scholars fled Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s, relocating to Columbia Teachers College in New York. Critical Theory—which discredits all aspects of Western society—rapidly infected the minds of newly-minted college professors, who then spread its poison throughout the university system. We know it today as political correctness.
White Privilege
The “racist” narrative was turbocharged with the concept of “White Privilege,” the notion that whites—the dominant group in capitalist America—are irretrievably racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, fill-in-the-blank-ophobic, imperialistic oppressors who exploit everyone. Whites are the only true evil in the world andshould be exterminated.
The “White Skin Privilege” idea was created in 1967 by Noel Ignatiev, an acolyte of Bell and professor at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute (Du Bois was a Communist black leader who helped found the NAACP). Ignatiev was a member of CPUSA’s most radical wing, the Maoist/Stalinist Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (POC). POC was the intellectual forerunner to FRSO.
Writing under the alias Noel Ignatin, Ignatiev co-authored an SDS pamphlet with fellow radical Ted Allen, titled White Blindspot. In 1992 he co-founded Race Traitor: Journal of the New Abolitionism. Its first issue coined the slogan, “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” Its stated objective was to “abolish the white race.” More specifically, the New Abolitionist newsletter stated:
“The way to abolish the white race is to challenge, disrupt and eventually overturn the institutions and behavior patterns that reproduce the privileges of whiteness, including the schools, job and housing markets, and the criminal justice system. The abolitionists do not limit themselves to socially acceptable means of protest, but reject in advance no means of attaining their goal (emphasis added).”
But do not be confused; “White” does not mean white. “White” in radical construction means anyone of any race, creed, nationality, color, sex, or sexual preference who embraces capitalism, free markets, limited government and American traditional culture and values. By definition, these beliefs are irredeemably evil and anyone who aligns with them is “white” in spirit and thus equally guilty of “white crimes.” Ignatiev still teaches, now at the Massachusetts College of Art.
The Black Lives Matter movement carries this narrative to unprecedented heights, claiming that only whites can be racists. And while justifying violence to achieve “social justice,” the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one. Many members of the black community would be shocked to learn that the intellectual godfathers of this movement are mostly white Communists, “queers” and leftist Democrats, intent on making blacks into cannon fodder for the revolution.
James Simpson is an economist, former White House budget analyst, businessman and investigative journalist. Follow Jim onTwitter & Facebook.Veteran researcherTrevor Loudon and Matthew Vadum (Senior Editor, Capital Research Center) contributed materially to this report.
Bill Gertz at the Washington Free Beacon has written a fascinating piece on the CIA being fooled by scores of double agents who pledged their loyalty to the agency, but instead reported back to the communists during the Cold War right on up into the present day. As I have said for years… the Cold War never ended, it shifted. Now Benjamin B. Fischer, the CIA’s former chief historian, analyst and operations officer, is verifying what I have long said. That is cold comfort, I assure you.
The duping of the CIA included at least 100 fake recruits in East Germany, Cuba and Russia. For decades, these double agents supplied false intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers that ranged all the way to the presidency. And it’s still happening. Fischer writes, “During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency bucked the law of averages by recruiting double agents on an industrial scale; it was hoodwinked not a few but many times.” Is anyone surprised by this? Trevor Loudon and I have both said for years that the agencies and our governmental leaders couldn’t pass a background check to clean a toilet. It was true then and it is true today. These double agents weren’t thoroughly vetted. They were hurriedly turned and because of sloppiness, we invited the enemy into the midst of our intelligence agencies. It’s mind boggling. In an article last week, Fischer stated, “The result was a massive but largely ignored intelligence failure.” How’s that for national security? Feeling warm and fuzzy yet?
Fischer wrote in the International Journal of Intelligence that this wreaked havoc within the agency. I’ll bet. What’s worse is that the CIA dismissed the infiltration by communists and the disinformation as insignificant. No one, including congressional oversight committees, pushed for reform in the agency when this was uncovered either. Their vetting processes still suck and they aren’t listening to the likes of Fischer. The man was a career CIA officer. He joined in 1973 and worked in the Soviet affairs division during the Cold War. He sued the CIA in 1996, charging he was mistreated for criticizing the agency for mishandling the 1994 case of CIA officer Aldrich Ames, a counterintelligence official, who was unmasked as a long time KGB plant. It was a case of blaming the messenger instead of the spy. This was during the Clinton Administration, so it does not come as a surprise.
From Bill Gertz:
Critics have charged the agency with harboring an aversion to counterintelligence — the practice of countering foreign spies and the vetting of the legitimacy of both agents and career officers. Beginning in the 1970s, many in the CIA criticized counter-spying, which often involved questioning the loyalties of intelligence personnel, as “sickthink.”
The agency’s ability to discern false agents turned deadly in 2009 when a Jordanian recruit pretending to work for [the] CIA killed a group of seven CIA officers and contractors in a suicide bombing at a camp in Afghanistan.
Double agents are foreign nationals recruited by a spy service that are secretly loyal to another spy agency. They are used to feed[ing] false disinformation for intelligence and policy purposes and to extract secrets while pretending to be loyal agents.
Double agents are different than foreign penetration agents, or moles, who spy from within agencies while posing as career intelligence officers.
Lord only knows how many moles we have within our agencies.
Predictably, the first major double agent failure was in Cuba. The Cubans are notorious for using a variety of traps for agents from honey traps to straight up blackmail. Cuban intelligence officer Florentino Aspillaga revealed a massive failure when he defected to the CIA in 1987. No less than four dozen recruits over 40 years had been secretly working for communist Cuba while on the dole of the CIA. They easily supplied disinformation to the CIA, endangering agents and scuttled operations left and right. This is the same government – Castro’s government – that Obama just reinstated relations with. Now, instead of being made fools by the communists, we just crawl into bed with them. It’s the other definition of coming in from the cold. Then came the revelation on Cuban state television which confirmed the existence of 27 fake CIA agents. You would think that would have set off alarms in the agency and caused them to adjust their vetting procedures. But you’d be wrong. Instead, the intelligence failure was covered up by congressional intelligence committees. You see, the enemies within go way back. We willingly let the enemy in our doors and let them set up shop in our intelligence agencies and abroad. Is it any wonder we now have a Marxist in power who colludes with communist dictators and tyrants, as well as Islamists?
In East Germany, all the recruited CIA agents working there were found to be double agents working secretly for the Ministry of State Security spy service, also known as the Stasi. All. Of. Them. Noodle that for a moment. According to Stasi officers, they failed at placing agents in the CIA. But there wasn’t a single CIA op on their turf that they weren’t able to detect using double agents and counterespionage operations. Fischer said the controlled East German assets “rendered U.S. intelligence deaf, dumb and blind.”
Markus Wolf was an East German spymaster. He wrote in the late 1980’s: “We were in the enviable position of knowing that not a single CIA agent had worked in East Germany without having been turned into a double agent or working for us from the start.” Wolf brashly claimed that, “On our orders they were all delivering carefully selected information and disinformation to the Americans.” He tagged a CIA officer working in West Germany and then dispatched double agents for him to recruit. Nifty.
Evidently this double agent snafu spanned move than 20 years and I contend, it is still occurring. Fischer said that former intelligence officials such as Bobby Ray Inman, who was a CIA director, confirmed the intelligence failure as did former CIA Director Robert Gates. He came right out and said that the CIA was “duped by double agents in Cuba and East Germany.” Wolf had complete control from 1961 to 1989 on the intelligence that the CIA garnered from the communists there. He played us.
And then there was the Russian double agent screw-up. The last one took place after the Soviet Union collapse in 1991. This came to light after the 1994 arrest of CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames, who spied for the Ruskies from the 1980’s until he was caught. He actively assisted the KGB and made fools of the CIA by exposing all Soviet and Eastern European intelligence operations. The Russians passed a mixture of false and accurate data through a series of double agents. Ames’ operation began in 1986 and went on until 1993.
While that was going on, the KGB sent a false defector to the CIA named Aleksandr Zhomov. He easily hoodwinked the CIA into thinking he could give them information on how the KGB had unmasked and arrested almost all CIA recruited agents during the mid-1980’s. We paid this plant an estimated $1 million. The whole front played out by Zhomov was to protect Ames from being discovered.
More from Bill Gertz:
In 1995, the CIA admitted that for eight years since 1986, it produced highly classified intelligence reports derived from “bogus” and “tainted” sources, including 35 reports that were based on data from double agents, and 60 reports compiled using sources that were suspected of being controlled by Moscow.
The false information reached the highest levels of government, including three presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
The CIA’s inspector general urged reprimands for several senior CIA officers and directors William H. Webster, Robert M. Gates, and R. James Woolsey.
The three former directors claimed they should not be blamed for the compromises because they were unaware of them.
Fischer said the CIA defended its recruitment of bogus agents by asserting that even while controlled the doubles provided some good intelligence.
Are you beginning to see why I say you cannot trust the Russians or the Cubans? And you can’t trust those who form alliances with them such as Barack Obama. The CIA has been broken for some time. There are good people there even now. But the bureaucratic policies in place are strangling them and keeping them from doing competent work. To survive as a nation, we must have spies and we must have verifiable and trustworthy intelligence. Otherwise, we become sitting ducks for our enemies. You’d think we would have learned that by now, but some of these people are so stupid, they have reached rock-bottom and have started to dig.
One of the problems for the CIA concerning their Soviet operations was that they could not recruit agents to work for the agency. They had to take walk-ins and volunteers. They compounded this by not vetting them thoroughly. It was a prime opportunity for moles and double agents to infiltrate and they did. It’s bad enough this was taking place during the “Cold War,” but it is still going on. That’s unforgivable.
It gets worse… the CIA knew these agents were fraudulent and they allowed the division in charge of Soviet affairs to cover up the loss of all its bona fide agents. No one was held accountable either. No real inquiry was conducted.
“Mitigating the dismay at the total corruption — moral, intellectual, and political — of the agency is my surprise that a man in Fischer’s position saw the reality so very clearly and so reports it,” said Angelo Codevilla, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of International Relations at Boston University.
Kenneth E. deGraffenreid, a former senior White House intelligence official during the Reagan administration, said Fischer and other former intelligence officials have revealed that large-scale communist intelligence service operations to undermine the CIA show “the story of Soviet-era espionage operations that we’ve understood to this point is probably deeply flawed.” Ya think? Many of us have been screaming this for years. They should read Trevor Loudon, Diana West, Cliff Kincaid and James Simpson’s works.
“What we thought was true from the Cold War spy wars was largely wrong, and that says that the counterintelligence model we had was wrong,” said deGraffenreid. “And therefore because we’ve not corrected that problem we’re in bad shape to deal with the current challenges posed by terrorists and spies from Iran, Russia, China and others.”
Bill Gertz should be applauded for bringing this travesty to light and exposing it. He’s done incredible work here.
Take it from the CIA themselves: “Intelligence officers have a saying that the only thing worse than knowing there is a mole in your organization is finding the mole.” The same goes for leadership. How can we defend our country if we can’t even police our own intelligence agencies? And it goes far beyond them as well. All our government agencies and the federal government itself are infiltrated with communists and Islamists… from NASA, to our universities, to our military, to the seats of power in Congress… the U.S. is facing an existential problematic threat from within. The CIA is not the only one that has been duped here. The whole nation has been by Barack Obama and his comrades.
Donate to NoisyRoom.net
Support American Values...
In Memoriam My beloved husband Garry Hamilton passed on 09/24/22I will love you always...