11/27/16

Leading Pro-Palestine Communist Trains Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters

By: Trevor Loudon | New Zeal

protesters-fight-against-dakota-access-pipeline

A seasoned Communist Party USA activist has been lending her revolutionary expertise to the often violent “peaceful protesters” seeking to permanently shut down the nearly completed and highly strategic Dakota Access Pipeline.

Communists from all over the world have converged on the DAP site, near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, over the last several months to support tribal people from several states as they seek to further weaken an already struggling US economy.

Judith LeBlanc

Judith LeBlanc, Massachusetts raised, but a member of the Caddo tribe from Oklahoma, has been working with the protesters from the very beginning. This has been through her leadership role in the militant dominated Native Organizers Alliance.

The Native Organizers Alliance has been supporting tribal leaders as they develop strategies to counter the powerful economic elites behind the Dakota Access Pipeline…

Judith LeBlanc, director of the Native Organizers Alliance, has been working to support native leaders as they develop strategies to continue to challenge these powerful forces. In mid-September she helped lead a four-day training at Standing Rock with tribal officials, native-led non-profits, and local community and political leaders on power mapping, strategic campaign planning, and direct action.

Judith LeBlanc, far left

Says LeBlanc:

For me, it’s a blessing in a moment like today to be the director of a national network of native groups, leaders, and organizers who are supporting grassroots native community organizing, the Native Organizers Alliance. As my Mom always said, “It is not enough to be right.” If you believe you are right, then get organized.

Earlier this month, Judith LeBlanc and three other “native women leaders”: Eryn Wise of the International Indigenous Youth Council, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe) and member of the 2016 Democratic Platform Committee Deborah Parker (Tulalip Tribes) staged a sit-in at the headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, then led the crowd of about 1,000 people down the streets of Washington, even passing by the newly opened Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

LeBlanc has been a Communist Party USA leader since the 1970s. She has held several leadership positions in the party and has worked in leadership positions in the peace movement.

She has also spoken several times before the United Nations, mainly in support of the Palestinian cause, which she has championed for several decades.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat kisses the hand of an unidentified member of a delegation of representatives of international communist organizations that visited him at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday Oct. 13, 2002. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Judith LeBlanc, Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, 2002

Palestinian Ambassador to UN Riyad Mansour and Judith Le Blanc, 2010

The Dakota Access Pipeline protesters are being guided by serious communists and terrorist sympathizers.

Labor for Palestine, another communist controlled group, has been active in the North Dakota protests.

Labor for Palestine at Standing Rock

When the protesters turn to violence or sabotage, as they almost certainly will, there is a fair chance that the inspiration will come through the Palestinian connection.

Law enforcement needs to get on top of this situation quickly before someone is killed, or a serious act of sabotage or terrorism is committed.

Trevor Loudon is the producer of a new documentary exposing Marxists and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers in the US government: The Enemies Within.

Watch the trailer here:

To order this important documentary, please go here.

07/11/15

Pope Offers the Masses the Opium of Marxism

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Bolivian President Evo Morales presents Pope Francis with a crucifix incorporating the hammer and sickle symbol during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz. Photo: Juan Carlos Usnayo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

To my Catholic friends, while I am loathe to criticize that which they hold dear, there comes a time when silence is the wrong answer. When Pope Francis first surfaced, I thought he had the potential to be a great Pope. But with the potential of greatness, also comes the opportunity of infamy. Pope Francis is a Marxist and embodies many, many principles that I stand against, not only as a Constitutional Conservative, but as a Christian. This last week just solidified my uneasiness concerning this Pope.

The Bolivian President, Evo Morales (who Trevor Loudon and I have long contended is a Marxist), presented the Pontiff with a crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to a hammer and sickle, which the Pope returned after a brief examination. What is under contention is what the Pope said when presented with the gift. His comments were pretty much drowned out by a flurry of camera clicks. While some have claimed he expressed irritation, muttering the words “eso no está bien” (“this is not right”), Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Pope more likely said “no sabía eso” (“I didn’t know that”) in bemusement at the origins of the present. Which would make sense as NewsBusters and the Wall Street Journal noted, President Morales also “draped a medallion over [the pope’s] neck that bore the hammer and sickle.”

Communism has murdered well over one hundred million people in the last century alone. Many, many of those were Christians. As Ann Barnhardt put it, “Our Blessed Lord and Savior shown crucified on a hammer and sickle is, by all metrics, worse than Our Lord shown crucified on a swastika.” This constitutes blasphemy for me – Pope or not.

I also disagree that the Pope is being manipulated for ideological reasons. I think he knows full well what he is doing. We seem to have a knee-jerk response now when a leader does something unspeakable, unforgivable or outright evil – he/she didn’t know what they were doing… they were incompetent… or they were being manipulated. Knock it off! These people are not stupid; they are not rubes or babes in the woods who are so easily misled. (That’s not to say that they weren’t misled in very early life, ref. Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” That is to say, if you can indoctrinate someone in his early youth, you won’t need to sway him later: he’s already in your groove, and his decisions and choices will reflect that, not some imagined confusion of the moment.)

As for the Bolivian government insisting there was no political motive behind the gift and the Communications Minister, Marianela Paco, saying that Morales had thought the “Pope of the poor” would appreciate the gesture… bull crap. It’s the melding of politics and religion into a nightmarish agenda that is apocalyptic in scope and intent.

José Ignacio Munilla, bishop of the Spanish city of San Sebastián, tweeted a picture of the encounter, with the words: “The height of pride is to manipulate God in the service of atheist ideologies.” That is exactly right – on all counts, concerning all parties involved. It’s hard to overstate how important that observation is.

The Pope, after arriving in Bolivia, stopped to pray at the death site of Luis Espinal, a Jesuit murdered by Bolivian paramilitary forces in 1980. Espinal is being painted in press reports as a reformer who stood against the military dictatorship in Bolivia. Pope Francis also reportedly received a medal, bearing a hammer and sickle from Morales that was issued in memory of Espinal’s death.

From PopeWatch:

Father Albo showed a reporter a published photo of a crucified Christ attached to a homemade hammer and sickle, instead of a cross, that Father Espinal kept by his bed.

“He was of the left. This is certain. But he never belonged to any party or pretended to be part of one,” said Father Albo, who said he hopes to present a replica of the hammer and sickle crucifix to the pope.

Father Espinal “gave a lot of importance to the dialogue between Marxists and Christians,” he explained. “It was not pro-Soviet … (it was) the need for the church to be close to the popular sectors. Some understand this, others don’t. To me it is very clear.”

It was said that the Pope wasn’t offended by Morales’ gift. “You can dispute the significance and use of the symbol now, but the origin is from Espinal and the sense of it was about an open dialogue, not about a specific ideology,” Lombardi said. Nope, it was all about ideology. This Argentinian Pope has been roundly criticized by many Marxists for not protecting Leftist priests during the military dictatorship in his country. Since becoming Pope, he has made major strides in bringing Liberation Theology to the fore in the Vatican. Thus, his campaigning for massive social and political change. This is Christianized Marxism. The irony of that term has to be savored. Kind of like “therapeutic cancer.”

Although Liberation Theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s–1960s. It is purported that Liberation Theology arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty seen as having been caused by social injustice in that region. But its roots are solidly Marxist. The term was coined in 1971 by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement’s most famous books, A Theology of Liberation.

Latin American Liberation Theology met opposition from others in the US, who accused it of using “Marxist concepts” and that lead to admonishment by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. The Vatican disliked certain forms of Latin American Liberation Theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin; and for identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the same privileged class that had long been oppressing indigenous populations.

Pope Francis used his trip to Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to highlight problems faced by indigenous communities and to warn against “all totalitarian, ideological or sectarian schemes.” That sounds very good. However, it started to go off the rails when he urged the downtrodden to change the world economic order, denouncing a “new colonialism” by agencies that impose austerity programs and calling for the poor to have the “sacred rights” of labor, lodging and land. That’s sheer Marxism. And exactly what does he mean by ‘austerity programs?’ You mean the over taxing of the general populace in order that elitists can keep up their glutinous spending sprees? Or do you mean austerity as in cutting spending, sticking to a budget and reducing debts? It certainly makes a difference on how the term is being used here.

His speech was preceded by lengthy remarks from the Left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales, who wore a jacket adorned with the face of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Che was executed in Bolivia in 1967 by CIA-backed Bolivian troops. That certainly set the stage for Pope Francis and his speech.

Then the Pope gave a magnanimous and historic speech asking for forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church in its treatment of Native Americans during what he called the “so-called conquest of America.” This is highly offensive and revisionist – it is skewed history. It’s true that American Indians were slaughtered by evil men and eventually, after a length of time, the colonists took over America. It is also true that Indians slaughtered many of the settlers and in horrific ways. Conquest and war are facts of history by the way, something Europe and the Vatican are very familiar with. It is a human condition that is ongoing and never ending as populations replace each other and wars rage on. He’s apologizing as though the Catholic Church had set out to do those things… it didn’t. Men did those things in the name of governments and in the name of the church. Apologizing for the deeds of men who acted on their own volition, but in your name, is to presume responsibility and control of actions over which the church had neither. The colonists did not set out to ‘conquer’ America either. They fled persecution in Europe and wanted to build new lives for themselves. Conflict came with Native Americans and the rest is history. Yes, evil was done, but that evil was not the totality of the story or our history and it certainly was not one-sided. It is also not something we need to ‘apologize’ for.

Then Pope Francis uttered my favorite quote – he quoted a fourth century bishop and called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil,” and said poor countries should not be reduced to being providers of raw material and cheap labor for developed countries. Actually, when I heard the original quote, it said ‘capitalism’ not ‘money.’ While seeking unlimited riches can be a sin, it is not always so and not all wealthy people are guilty of this sin. It is also true that poor countries should not be treated as merely sources of materials and labor, however, those countries also benefit from that part of the economy. Countries are free to prosper and if more lived under free capitalistic governments where free trade was the norm and people were allowed to innovate and work for themselves, then there would be far fewer impoverished countries. But first, you’d have to get rid of the Marxists and dictators. Kind of a conundrum.

For dessert, the Pope repeated some of his encyclical on climate change. That’s Marxism on a global scale and smacks of fascism as well. It’s a twofer. Climate change is a seductive lie wrapped in a green package, but it is rotten from the inside out.

The Pope closes with what sounds to me like the echoes of Barack Obama and communism:

“Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change,” the pope said, decrying a system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.“

“This system is by now intolerable: farm workers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable The Earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable,” he said in an hour-long speech that was interrupted by applause and cheering dozens of times.

And the useful idiots cheered on even when they knew in their heart of hearts that all of the above is nothing more than a call to follow those that would rule over us, using Mother Earth as a handy excuse and targeting for blame the engines of free enterprise, using language meant to equate it with greed, while overlooking the primary source of real greed: corrupt totalitarian governments, born of Marxism.

Pope Francis was not finished by any means concerning ‘colonialism’:

“No actual or established power has the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty. Whenever they do so, we see the rise of new forms of colonialism which seriously prejudice the possibility of peace and justice,” he said.

“The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor,” he said.

Last week, Francis called on European authorities to keep human dignity at the centre of debate for a solution to the economic crisis in Greece.

He defended labor unions and praised poor people who had formed cooperatives to create jobs where previously “there were only crumbs of an idolatrous economy”.

The Pope even went so far as to praise Bolivia’s social reforms to spread wealth under Morales. That’s wealth redistribution and again, Marxism. But that is only scratching the surface on this Pope – there is oh, so much more to be concerned about when it comes to Pope Francis.

My friend and colleague (and someone I truly admire) Cliff Kincaid has done excellent research into Pope Francis and his doings. Americans need to take note who has the ear of this Pope:

Top Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that when Pope Francis visits the United States in September, he will directly challenge the “American idea” of God-given rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.

The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication America, is “a society in thrall” to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the “urgent core of Francis’ message” will be to challenge this “American idea” by “proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”

In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.

Sachs takes aim at the phrase from America’s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These rights sound good, Sachs writes, but they’re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us. Global government, he suggests, must make us live our lives according to international standards of development.

Sachs is putting forth that the UN should be in charge of all national and individual rights. That we have to sacrifice our individual rights for the greater, collective good. What hive mentality. He’s also for massive global taxation, population control and one world government. “We will need, in the end, to put real resources in support of our hopes,” he wrote. “A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin. Even a very small tax, less than that which is needed to correct humanity’s climate-deforming overuse of fossil fuels, would finance a greatly enhanced supply of global public goods.” The bill he wants to stick the US with is $845 billion.

The Pope has not only aligned himself with Sachs, but with the UN’s Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who told a Catholic Caritas International conference in Rome on May 12th that climate change is “the defining challenge of our time,” and that the solution lies in recognizing that “humankind is part of nature, not separate or above.” The pope’s encyclical on climate change is supposed to help mobilize the governments of the world in this crusade. This spells slavery for the world and an all-powerful tyrannical elite who will ruthlessly rule us through Marxist politics and a one world religion.

Sachs is not alone in his ideas. A short time ago, former President Shimon Peres met with the Pope at the Vatican and proposed that the Pope head up a UN for religions. I kid you not.

Via The Jerusalem Post:

But the main topic of conversation was Peres’s idea to create a UN-like organization he called “the United Religions.”

Peres said the Argentina-born pontiff was the only world figure respected enough to bring an end to the wars raging in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

“In the past, most of the wars in the world were motivated by the idea of nationhood,” Peres said. “But today, wars are incited using religion as an excuse.”

Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi confirmed to reporters that Peres had pitched his idea for “the United Religions” but said Francis did not commit to it.

“The pope listened, showing his interest, attention, and encouragement,” Lombardi said, adding that the pope pointed to the Pontifical Councils for Interreligious Dialogue and for Justice and Peace as existing agencies “suitable” for supporting interfaith peace initiatives.

The meeting in September was the third one inside of four months. In an interview in the Catholic Magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Peres also called for the Pope to lead the inter-religious organization in order to curb terrorism: “What we need is an organization of United Religions… as the best way to combat terrorists who kill in the name of faith.” I literally cannot believe what I am hearing. This could well be the birth of a one world religion. This looks suspiciously like a move to reclaim the lost glory of the Church, harking back to those centuries when it held sway ’round the world, commanding fealty from kings and nobility. This “progressive” innovation is really a reactionary repackaging of the most sweeping colonialism in history. With one tongue they “condemn” colonialism, while with the other tongue they offer global subservience as the “solution” to the demon du jour.

From Karl Marx:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The Pope is offering the masses the opium of Marxism in his stances. The question is, will the world follow him down this path? So many these days just want someone to give them everything and take care of them… they hunger for a leader who will absolve them of their sins and promise them forgiveness and welcome them with open arms. Will people, in the name of peace, usher in a one world order and willingly give up their freedoms? I’m afraid history says they will, but I know Americans, Christians and others will not be assimilated so easily by Marxist musings and flowery articulation. Pontification will only carry you so far – if you follow this pied piper, you will find yourself in the loving embrace of the UN – that Democracy of Dictators – and all that entails.

07/4/15

Vapid Musings At Vox And Why The American Revolution Was NOT A Mistake

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Over the years I have seen many idiotic pieces of what pass for journalistic regurgitation and moronic self-indulgence… the piece over at Vox entitled: 3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake, by Dylan Matthews, is in a class all by its lonesome. It begs for a brutal fisking and on this Independence Day in 2015, far from the revolutionary battlefield (but perhaps getting closer by the day and hour), I will oblige this vapid moonbat in honor of our Independence. Hard won for us all, benefiting even the likes of this troll.

Now, granted… this wannabe hipster is no brain trust. In fact, he looks stoned and addled:

Dylan Matthews of Vox

Dylan Matthews has been writing since the age of 14 in 2004. He went to Harvard as well. Then he went on to write for the Washington Post. He also writes for Salon and The New Republic. In other words, he’s a radical Leftist and a Marxist. Duh. Dylan Matthews was an identified member of JournoList – an email group of approximately 400 “Progressive” and socialist journalists, academics and “new media” activists. The group was shut down in 2010 after being exposed from within. Yep, no bias there. Right.

Our young Marxist starts off his diatribe with a picture of George Washington, where he wittily captions it: George Washington crosses the Delaware, makes the world a worse place in the process. Only if you detest freedom and living in the greatest nation to ever grace the planet, which of course he does.

After besmirching our first and greatest president and someone that Matthews will NEVER be, a man of courage and character, he goes on to opine that on this July 4th, he is flying to the UK. The symbolism of it all is not lost on this raving moonbat. Matthews then proclaims that “American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake” (never mind the years from 1776 to 1783 when Independence was actually attained) and that we should be grieving that we left the Brits instead of staying indentured to the British Empire. Does this guy even read history? Evidently not, because he knows nothing of the American Revolution or the Independence our forebears fought, bled and died for, all so we could be free. Free to practice our religion as we see fit… free to speak out without fear of persecution… free from crushing taxes and free to craft our own laws and conduct business as a free nation would. The pseudo-intellectuality of this cretin is nauseating.

His first premise is that abolition would have come faster without Independence:

Abolition in most of the British Empire occurred in 1834, following the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act. That left out India, but slavery was banned there too in 1843. In England itself, slavery was illegal at least going back to 1772. That’s decades earlier than the United States.

This alone is enough to make the case against the revolution. Decades less slavery is a massive humanitarian gain that almost certainly dominates whatever gains came to the colonists from independence.

There’s a gaping fallacy in the above and unless Matthews is just stone stupid (which could well be the case), it is dishonest. In 1772, the US colonies were still under British rule. He claims that slavery was illegal for the Brits dating back to that year, but it didn’t end slavery here in the US. That was under the control of the British. And the infamous British slave trade was not ended until 1807. It’s also a fact that in the West Indies, where slaves were freed in 1834, they were forced to continue working for their former masters for four to six years without compensation after they were set ‘free.’ Chattel slavery was replaced by serfdom. When they were freed, they did not own the houses they lived in, their livestock or their farms. They had to start paying rent. They were still forced to work for the very masters who set them free and follow their orders or starve. So, claiming that slavery was eradicated by the Brits long before the US did is somewhat specious. Saying that slavery ended at that time was akin to saying what ‘is’ is. Very little changed in the beginning.

Contrary to his gender-studies/racism-fusion rant, the revolution did not give more power to the “white male minority” as its primary motive. He purports that from the very beginning the whole country was about repression. We were fleeing repression. The people who settled this country, for the most part, came here to escape religious and political persecution in England and Europe. His argument has no foundation and is entirely speculative, written as though to answer an academic “how does the American Revolution make you feel?” question. Do you honestly believe that women, Indians and blacks would have been any better off under British rule in the colonies? Not a chance. The British didn’t care about women’s rights or the plight of the Indians or the civil rights of African Americans. They were for power for the King, the nobility and whatever benefited the monarchy. Their “rights” were granted at the whim of the monarch, not from God nor even seen as natural human rights. The British nobility reveled in servants and to this day they still do… they’re just paid a wage now and appear to be free. His arguments on emancipation are even more ridiculous.

As for Matthews claiming that the majority of African Americans fought for the Crown, once again, history is a bitch. Prior to the revolution, many free African Americans supported the anti-British cause, most famously Crispus Attucks, believed to be the first person killed at the Boston Massacre. At the time of the American Revolution, some blacks had already been enlisted as Minutemen. Both free and enslaved Africans had served in local militias, especially in the North, defending their villages against attacks by Native Americans. In March of 1775, the Continental Congress assigned units of the Massachusetts militia as Minutemen. They were under orders to become activated if the British troops in Boston took the offensive.

In April of 1775, at Lexington and Concord, blacks responded to the call and fought with Patriot forces. The Battle of Bunker Hill also had African-American soldiers fighting along with white Patriots. Many African Americans, both enslaved and free, wanted to join with the Patriots. They believed that they would either achieve freedom or expand their civil rights. In addition to the role of soldier, blacks also served as guides, messengers and spies.

American states had to meet quotas of troops for the new Continental Army and New England regiments recruited black slaves by promising freedom to those who served in the Continental Army. During the course of the war, about one fifth of the northern army was black. At the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, Baron Closen, a German officer in the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment, estimated the American army to be about one quarter black.

You cannot secure freedom for a minority of any kind if there is no freedom to be had for anyone. The patriots of the American Revolution knew this and fought to the death for it.

However, in the spirit of identifying actual causes of oppression, since that seems to be his “hot button” issue, let’s remember that, indeed, there was a faction in this country that labored long and hard to preserve the subservience of the blacks long after their official emancipation. That faction was the Democrat party and its adjuncts, such as the KKK. The Democrats hated that the Republican party — expressly founded to secure the rights and equality of blacks — was beginning to gain traction, to the point that they mounted a massive subterfuge to blame the plight of blacks on the very people who had worked to free them, culminating in the infamous words of Lyndon B. Johnson: “I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” So, Dylan, if you wonder why the Black Man is still struggling in America, check your Dem privilege, you simpering fop.

The Revolutionary War was fought over the right to bear arms and against taxes and tariffs, plus a long list of grievances. Please see below – the Declaration of Independence gives lie to his ill-informed assertions:

…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Next, Matthews claims that independence was bad for Native Americans:

Starting with the Proclamation of 1763, the British colonial government placed firm limits on westward settlement in the United States. It wasn’t motivated by an altruistic desire to keep American Indians from being subjugated or anything; it just wanted to avoid border conflicts.

But all the same, the policy enraged American settlers, who were appalled that the British would seem to side with Indians over white men. “The British government remained willing to conceive of Native Americans as subjects of the crown, similar to colonists,” Ethan Schmidt writes in Native Americans in the American Revolution. “American colonists … refused to see Indians as fellow subjects. Instead, they viewed them as obstacles in the way of their dreams of land ownership and trading wealth.” This view is reflected in the Declaration of Independence, which attacks King George III for backing “merciless Indian Savages.”

Nice skewed version of history you’ve got there son. I know you’ll be shocked, but he gets it wrong yet again. The Proclamation of 1763 does not mean what he is claiming it does. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7th, 1763, by King George III, following Great Britain’s acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. The Royal Proclamation continues to be of legal importance to First Nations in Canada and is significant for the variation of indigenous status in the United States. It eventually ensured that British culture and laws were applied in Upper Canada after 1791, which was done to attract British settlers to the province. Last time I looked, we were not Canada. This was the Brits’ way of trying to manage North America and had nothing to do with Native Americans. The colonists objected to being slaughtered by the Indians, I’m sure. Racism did exist, but it would have been no less under British rule, I assure you. Border conflicts and battles would still have been the norm until the Brits had had enough and quelled them.

And lastly, Matthews claims America would have a better system of government if we’d stuck with Britain.

I’ve heard this argument many times… that any government is better than our Constitutional Republic – especially the parliamentary system. That’s an ill conceived joke. I’m sure whatever history that Matthews was taught was biased and left huge holes in reality and how things truly unfolded here in the States. Matthews is a big government guy – an outspoken Progressive. The people don’t know what is best for them and never have according to him – you know, as in a dictatorship. They would be far better off, in his warped view, if our elite betters simply decided everything for us. This is how we have gotten to where we are today, via Obama. In fact, Matthews during his brief adult life, at the tender age of 25, has never known anything else than an Obama Administration. He’s in for quite a culture shock when a true conservative, such as Ted Cruz, is elected.

RedState points out that Ben Domenech, in The Transom, points out the best critique of this nonsense comes from Mark Twain, who did not graduate from Harvard and would rip Matthews to shreds:

“For in a republic, who is “the Country”? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then, is “the country?” Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit? Is it the school-superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn’t.”

“In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country — hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

When drafting the Constitution, the founders ensured that the executive, judicial and legislative branches had co-equal power, with checks and balances to ensure that neither branch produced a dictatorship. I’m sure that is much to Matthews’ dismay. I wonder in Matthews’ lack of study, if he ever considered the history of 20th-century parliamentary systems, especially one in particular — the Weimar Republic. Matthews supports a parliamentary system in opposition to our Republic, claiming it is a bulwark against a dictatorship. Seriously? And this is because he likes unchecked big government power. You can’t make this stuff up:

In the US, activists wanting to put a price on carbon emissions spent years trying to put together a coalition to make it happen, mobilizing sympathetic businesses and philanthropists and attempting to make bipartisan coalition — and they still failed to pass cap and trade, after millions of dollars and man hours. In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax. So there was a carbon tax. Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that’s literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than presidential systems.

Yeah, screw that whole ‘freedom’ thing. Big government gets it done faster and eliminates the riffraff factor. This guy is the very definition of a useful idiot.

Krystal Heath had this to say about the greatness of America over at Louder with Crowder – 15 reasons why the American Revolution was the best thing that ever happened to the world:

1. It established a haven for religious freedom. Oppressed men, women, and children from all around the globe flocked to our shores to worship the god they pleased in the manner they desired to… and no one was going to stop them, kill them, or force them to convert.

2. It created a democratic republic. For the first time in modern history, the average citizen had a voice in his own government. And it’s worked out pretty well for us.

3. It recognized that mankind is endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator. Government doesn’t give us our rights, our very existence does. Yes, America, we were the ones who put that in writing and created a standard for human rights unparalleled by any other governmental system.

4. It ended tyranny. No more would a people be governed by a single man, woman, or family. Three separate yet equal branches of government were established to ensure justice and domestic tranquility.

5. It brought with it a Bill of Rights. America today is the most free nation on earth because we have the right to say what we will, assemble where we will, defend ourselves as we will, and so on – these liberties are often threatened, yet they remain our own.

6. It gave us some of the greatest governing charters in the world. From the Mayflower Compact to the Declaration of Independence, the United States from its inception created a blueprint which other nations have aspired to duplicate.

7. It gave mankind a haven for pursuing happiness. Life in America is good. The US has more self-made millionaires and billionaires proportionally than anywhere else in the world. And by global standards, America’s middle class is really, really rich. Our standard of living is second to none. Period.

8. It created a land of opportunity. Success or failure in America is dependent on an individual’s own work ethic. We rise and fall on our own. If you can dream it, you can do it.

9. It birthed a land of virtue and ideals. Like it or not, the United States was founded on Biblical principles. Those principles embedded in our framework a standard of decency and decorum rarely found elsewhere.

10. It brought unparalleled innovation and technology to the world. Who built the first automobile? Who invented the airplane? Who put a man on the moon? Who created your iPhone? ‘Merica.

11. It gave the world the best in entertainment. Maybe Pride and Prejudice and British soap operas are your thing. But in case you haven’t noticed, all the best shows are Made in the USA.

12. It brought baseball and football to mankind. Our basketball and hockey teams are pretty epic, too.

13. It set the standard for modern, civilized societies. Travel the world. You’ll find America has the best cities, the best stores, and the greatest communities on the globe.

14. It made cultural diversity a reality. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” Unlike any other country on the planet, the USA is a nation of immigrants. People from all backgrounds and faiths live here together, united.

15. It’s about freedom. America is synonymous with liberty. And without the Revolution, that wouldn’t have been possible.

Britain kept their monarchy, how’s that working for them? They have one of the world’s highest violent crime rates. They’re overrun with Islamists and terrorists. Their violent crime has gotten so bad, in spite of their having banned guns decades ago, now they are looking at banning knives. And tell me how their people are anything but indentured servants with the failed economy they have? How does having a ruling family, who is answerable to just about no one, trump a Constitutional Republic? Even if you’ve only watched “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson, you are light years more enlightened than this moron. This liberal writer at Vox is an over-educated, biased asshat, in addition to being stupid and ignorant. If he likes Britain so much, why, by all means, go… please. I’ll take up a collection to buy you a ticket. Just don’t come back.

02/13/15

Media’s Lack of Curiosity About Killer of Muslims in North Carolina

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Was the brutal murder of three Muslims in North Carolina this week a case of “random violence,” or were the three targeted because of their Muslim faith? And why, of all the murders committed across the country this week, did these three grab so much national media attention? The FBI has now joined the investigation.

Perhaps the lessons learned from Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January of 2011 could inform the answers to these questions, and serve as a reminder of the dangers of biased reporting on murder cases. But, unfortunately, the mainstream media continue to perpetuate a confusing double standard when it comes to reporting on the deaths of innocents.

Why, for example, did the deaths of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina gain traction at The Washington Post, Reuters, and many other media outlets which speculated that it was a possible hate crime, while this black teen murdering a white classmate and taking a selfie with the corpse didn’t receive anywhere near the same treatment? And what about the murders occurring in Chicago every day? Don’t those deserve headlines, and candlelight vigils too?

“However, I do think it’s fair to say that attributing political motives to individual killings is much more of a phenomenon on the left than on the right,” argues Mark Hemingway for The Weekly Standard in a column regarding the recent execution-style shootings of Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

The alleged shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, liked the “Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Freedom from Religion Foundation, Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy,’ Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gay Marriage groups and similar progressive pages” on Facebook, notes Hemingway. Maddow didn’t mention any of that on her show when talking about the incident.

Hicks displayed a habit of posting snarky pictures with slogans like, “Democrats aren’t perfect but at least they haven’t been shoving poor Jesus up my c—ch and Ronald Reagan down my throat.” Another picture he promoted reads, “So Rick Santorum thinks that when people get educated they stop believing in God? Best advertisement for Atheism I’ve ever heard.”

And Hicks commented on Ground Zero: “Seems an overwhelming majority of Christians in this country feel that the Muslims are using the Ground Zero Mosque plans to’mark their conquest’ [sic] Bunch of hypocrites, everywhere I’ve been in this country there are churches marking the Christian conquest of this country from the Native Americans. Funny thing is the Christians did that while defying our Constitution, and got away with it!!”

“It was logical for some people to hear about the shootings and wonder if recent news involving the Islamic State—including the deaths of a Jordanian pilot and an American hostage—could lead to some sort of reprisal against Muslims, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” reported the Post regarding the three deaths on February 11.

In 2011 the SPLC’s Richard Cohen blamed the shooting of Rep. Giffords on Sarah Palin’s political rhetoric, citing the work of staffer Potok. The Discovery Channel plans to air a documentary, “Hate in America,” this month with the SPLC as a partner helping “examine the current realities of intolerance in America.”

The SPLC runs a hate crimes racket, and the media—desperate to promote headlines that fit their pre-existing left-wing narratives about race, inequality and religion—are quick to swallow their propaganda.

“I think it’s perfectly natural to guess that this is anti-Islamic,” Potok told the Post in the interview regarding the triple murder. “Not just because the three victims are Muslim, but because there has been so much terrible news in recent days about extremist Muslims.” Potok also appeared on MSNBC on the morning of February 13 with the news anchor Tamron Hall, and there was no mention of Hicks’ political leanings, which appear to be consistent with their own.

It is ironic that Hicks, himself, may have, at least in part, allowed the SPLC to fuel his own brand of hate—if it was hate, and not a longtime dispute over parking—that caused Hicks to allegedly kill three innocent people.

“We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was…But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers,” wrote Paul Krugman of The New York Times after the Loughner shooting.

“Keith Olbermann had a special edition of his ‘Countdown’ show on MSNBC the night of the shooting, in which he had a series of guests on who all speculated that Loughner was influenced by ‘right-wing extremists’ and that the Right was far more guilty of violent and hateful speech than the Left, creating a climate conducive for this sort of action,” I reported back in 2011.

Have the media learned from their past attempts to politicize violent shootings, or does the marked omission of similar rhetoric regarding the Hicks case simply indicate that the mainstream media hope that the progressive ideology of this alleged killer will not actually be used against them?

If Hicks was a champion of liberal causes such as gay rights and abortion, and one’s ideological background has any bearing on the decision to brutally murder someone, then why isn’t the media likewise exploring in depth Hicks’ motivations—his likes, dislikes, ideology, inspiration, etc.—as they did when they erroneously blamed the right for Loughner’s shooting of Giffords? Instead, the Post published a story on the “particular tensions between Islam and atheism” which allowed atheist groups to denounce and separate themselves from the killer. If Hicks had any deeper motivation rooted in progressivism, you wouldn’t find it there.

On February 11 The Washington Post authors quoted from the SPLC, then linked to Hicks’ Facebook page, and failed to inform their readers of Hicks’ admiration for this group.

And the motivation of the attack remains in dispute, despite the hate crime allegations. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime,” said the victims’ father Mohammed Abu-Salha. His evidence: “This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt.”

More recent news reporting by the Associated Press indicates that when Hicks “talked with them with his gun in his belt,” as the father described, it was likely during a dispute over a visitor’s parking space. According to the AP, a resident of that condo “said Hicks complained about once a month that the two men were parking in a visitor’s space as well as their assigned spot.”

It continued: “He would come over to the door, knock on the door and then have a gun on his hip saying ‘you guys need to not park here,’ said Ahmad, a graduate student in chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill. ‘He did it again after they got married.’”

The victims in the most recent case appear to be the type of Muslims whom many in America would embrace as fellow patriots, rather than as radical fundamentalists who prompt what some term “Islamophobia.” The murdered couple was active in charity efforts. “Barakat had recently posted about providing free dental supplies and food to dozens of homeless people in Durham, something he had done twice in recent months, buying toothpaste, brushes, floss and mouthwash that he put into individual bags for each homeless person,” reported the Post. And his wife had traveled to the Turkish border last year, not to join the Islamic State but to “deliver dental supplies to a Turkish town…”

But then again, Barakat and his wife met while helping to run North Carolina State’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapter. Perhaps they weren’t aware of the origins of that organization. The MSA is a Muslim Brotherhood front group, and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the group that spawned al Qaeda and Hamas. President Obama has embraced the MB at home and abroad, and this is a subject that the media should thoroughly explore, while there is still a chance to diminish their influence. Unfortunately, very few in our media are willing to investigate the MB—or even acknowledge their influence—instead they treat them like some benign, charitable group such as the Kiwanis International.

While it would be convenient for the media, and its allies on the left, to proffer evidence of a violent Muslim backlash when speaking about the culture of hate in a world full of news reports about Islamic State militants beheading their captives, or the Charlie Hebdo murders, not every murder’s newsworthiness should be coldly calculated based on the race, faith, or the known ideology of its participants—or perpetrators. There is an average of about 40 murders a day in this country, most of which we never hear about until the media find one that fits a narrative for them. Or at least they think it does. And then it takes on a life of its own.