Race Relations and Law Enforcement

From here:

By Jason L. Riley

Editorial Board Member, Wall Street Journal

Jason L. Riley is an editorial board member and a senior editorial page writer at the Wall Street Journal, where he writes on politics, economics, education, immigration, and race. He is also a FOX News contributor and appears regularly on Special Report with Bret Baier. Previously, he worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.

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The following is adapted from a speech delivered on January 30, 2015, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.

Thomas Sowell once said that some books you write for pleasure, and others you write out of a sense of duty, because there are things to be said—and other people have better sense than to say them. My new book, Please Stop Helping Us, falls into that latter category. When I started out as a journalist 20 years ago, I had no expectation of focusing on race-related topics. People like Sowell and Shelby Steele and Walter Williams and a few other independent black thinkers, to my mind at least, had already said what needed to be said, had been saying it for decades, and had been saying it more eloquently than I ever could. But over the years, and with some prodding from those guys, it occurred to me that not enough younger blacks were following in their footsteps. It also occurred to me that many public policies aimed at the black underclass were just as wrongheaded as ever. The fight wasn’t over. A new generation of black thinkers needed to explain what’s working and what isn’t, and why, to a new generation of readers. And the result is this book, which I hope will help to bring more light than heat to the discussion of race.

The book is not an autobiography or a memoir, but I do tell a few stories about growing up black and male in the inner city. And one of the stories involves a trip back home to Buffalo, New York, where I was born and raised. I was visiting my older sister shortly after I had begun working at the Wall Street Journal, and I was chatting with her daughter, my niece, who was maybe in the second grade at the time. I was asking her about school, her favorite subjects, that sort of thing, when she stopped me and said, “Uncle Jason, why you talk white?” Then she turned to her little friend who was there and said, “Don’t my uncle sound white? Why he tryin’ to sound so smart?”

She was just teasing, of course. I smiled and they enjoyed a little chuckle at my expense. But what she said stayed with me. I couldn’t help thinking: Here were two young black girls, seven or eight years old, already linking speech patterns to race and intelligence. They already had a rather sophisticated awareness that, as blacks, white-sounding speech was not only to be avoided in their own speech but mocked in the speech of others.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised by this, and I wasn’t. My siblings, along with countless other black friends and relatives, teased me the same way when I was growing up. And other black professionals have told similar stories. What I had forgotten is just how early these attitudes take hold—how soon this counterproductive thinking and behavior begins.

New York City has the largest school system in America. Eighty percent of black kids in New York public schools are performing below grade level. And a big part of the problem is a black subculture that rejects attitudes and behaviors that are conducive to academic success. Black kids read half as many books and watch twice as much television as their white counterparts, for example. In other words, a big part of the problem is a culture that produces little black girls and boys who are already worried about acting and sounding white by the time they are in second grade.

Another big part of the problem is a reluctance to speak honestly about these cultural shortcomings. Many whites fear being called racists. And many black leaders have a vested interest in blaming black problems primarily on white racism, so that is the narrative they push regardless of the reality. Racism has become an all-purpose explanation for bad black outcomes, be they social or economic. If you disagree and are white, you’re a bigot. If you disagree and are black, you’re a sell-out.

The shooting death of a young black man by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last year touched off a national discussion about everything except the aberrant behavior of so many young black men that results in such frequent encounters with police. We talked about racial prejudice, poverty, unemployment, profiling, the tensions between law enforcement and poor black communities, and so forth. Rarely did we hear any discussion of black crime rates.

Homicide is the leading cause of death for young black men in the U.S., and around 90 percent of the perpetrators are also black. Yet for months we’ve had protesters nationwide pretending that our morgues are full of young black men because cops are shooting them. Around 98 percent of black shooting deaths do not involve police. In fact, a cop is six times more likely to be shot by someone black than the opposite. The protestors are pushing a false anti-cop narrative, and everyone from the president on down has played along.

Any candid debate on race and criminal justice in this country would have to start with the fact that blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes. Blacks constitute about 13 percent of the population, yet between 1976 and 2005 they committed more than half of all murders in the U.S. The black arrest rate for most offenses—including robbery, aggravated assault, and property crimes—is typically two to three times their representation in the population. So long as blacks are committing such an outsized amount of crime, young black men will be viewed suspiciously and tensions between police and crime-ridden communities will persist. The U.S. criminal justice system, currently headed by a black attorney general who reports to a black president, is a reflection of this reality, not its cause. If we want to change negative perceptions of young black men, we must change the behavior that is driving those perceptions. But pointing this out has become almost taboo. How can we even begin to address problems if we won’t discuss them honestly?

“High rates of black violence in the late twentieth century are a matter of historical fact, not bigoted imagination,” wrote the late Harvard Law professor William Stuntz. “The trends reached their peak not in the land of Jim Crow but in the more civilized North, and not in the age of segregation but in the decades that saw the rise of civil rights for African Americans—and of African American control of city governments.”

The Left wants to blame these outcomes on racial animus and poverty, but back in the 1940s and ’50s, when racial discrimination was legal and black poverty was much higher than today, the black crime rate was lower. The Left wants to blame these outcomes on “the system,” but blacks have long been part of running that system. Black crime and incarceration rates spiked in the 1970s and ’80s in cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia under black mayors and black police chiefs. Some of the most violent cities in the U.S. today are run by blacks.

Some insist that our jails and prisons are teeming with young black men due primarily to racist drug laws, but the reality is that the drug laws are neither racist nor driving the black incarceration rate. It’s worth remembering that the harsher penalties for crack cocaine offenses that were passed in the 1980s were supported by most of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem, who at the time headed the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. Crack was destroying black communities and many black political leaders wanted dealers to face longer sentences. In other words, black legislators in Washington led the effort to impose tougher drug laws, a fact often forgotten by critics today.

When these laws passed, even their opponents didn’t claim that they were racist. Those charges came later, as the racially disparate impact of the laws became apparent. What’s been lost in the discussion is whether these laws leave law-abiding blacks better off. Do you make life in the ghetto harder or easier by sending thugs home sooner rather than later? Liberal elites would have us deny what black ghetto residents know to be the truth. These communities aren’t dangerous because of racist cops or judges or sentencing guidelines. They’re dangerous mainly due to black criminals preying on black victims.

Nor is the racial disparity in prison inmates explained by the enforcement of drug laws. Blacks are about 37.5 percent of the population in state prisons, which house nearly 90 percent of the nation’s inmates. Remove drug offenders from that population and the percentage of black prisoners only drops to 37 percent. What drives black incarceration rates are violent offenses, not drug offenses. Blacks commit violent crimes at seven to ten times the rate that whites do. The fact that their victims tend to be of the same race suggests that young black men in the ghetto live in danger of being shot by each other, not cops. Nor is this a function of blacks being picked on by cops who are “over-policing” certain neighborhoods. Research has long shown that the rate at which blacks are arrested is nearly identical to the rate at which crime victims identify blacks as their assailants. The police are in these communities because that’s where the 911 calls originate.

If liberals want to help reverse these crime trends, they would do better to focus less on supposed racial animus and more on ghetto attitudes towards school, work, marriage, and child-rearing. As recently as the early 1960s, two out of three black children were raised in two-parent households. Today, more than 70 percent are not, and the number can reach as high as 80 or 90 percent in our inner cities. For decades, studies have shown that the likelihood of teen pregnancy, drug abuse, dropping out of school and other bad social outcomes increases dramatically when fathers aren’t around. One of the most comprehensive studies ever undertaken in this regard concluded that black boys without a father are 68 percent more likely to be incarcerated than those with a father—that overall, the most critical factor affecting the prospect of young males encountering the criminal justice system is the presence of a father in the home. All other factors, including family income, are much less important.

As political scientist James Q. Wilson said, if crime is to a significant degree caused by weak character, if weak character is more likely among children of unmarried mothers, if there are no fathers who will help raise their children, acquire jobs, and protect their neighborhoods, if boys become young men with no preparation for work, if school achievement is regarded as a sign of having sold out—if all these things are true, then the chances of reducing the crime rate among low income blacks anytime soon is slim.

Many on the Left sincerely want to help the black underclass. The problem is that liberals believe bigger government is the best way to help. But having looked at the track record of government policies aimed at helping the black underclass, I’m skeptical.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s commencement speech at Howard University. Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act a year earlier and would sign the Voting Rights Act two months later. And he used the speech to talk about what the government should do next on behalf of blacks. These two laws marked merely the end of the beginning, he said:

That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society—to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. . . . But freedom is not enough. . . . You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. . . . The next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights [is] . . . not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

But what if Johnson was mistaken? What if there are limits to what government can do beyond removing barriers to freedom? What if the best that we can hope for from our elected officials are policies that promote equal opportunity? What if public policy makers risk creating more problems and barriers to progress when the goal is equal outcomes?

The civil rights struggles of the mid-20th century exemplified liberalism at its best. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed racial discrimination in employment and education and ensured the ability of blacks to register and vote. All Americans can be proud of these accomplishments. But what about the social policy and thinking that arose from the ruins of Jim Crow? Good intentions aside, which efforts have facilitated black advancement, and which efforts have impeded it?

In 1988, right around the 25th anniversary of the Great Society, Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer published a book called the The Limits of Social Policy. Glazer analyzed Great Society programs from the perspective of someone who believed that government action was the best way to improve the lot of blacks. But his assessment humbled him. He concluded that in many ways, the Great Society programs were causing just as many problems as they were solving—that good intentions aren’t enough.

Unlike Nathan Glazer, many policy makers today are still riding high on good intentions. They don’t seem particularly interested in reconsidering what has been tried, even though 50 years into the war on poverty the result isn’t pretty. While gains have been made, significant racial disparities remain in some areas and black retrogression has occurred in others. The black-white poverty gap has widened over the past decade and the black poverty rate is no longer falling. The black-white disparity in incarceration rates today is larger than it was in 1960. And the black unemployment rate has, on average, been double the white rate for five decades.

Confronted with these statistics, liberals continue to push for more of the same solutions. Last year, President Obama announced yet another federal initiative aimed at helping blacks—an increase in preschool education, even though studies (including those released by his own administration) have shown no significant impacts in education from such programs. He said that he wants to increase reading proficiency and graduation rates for minority students, yet he opposes school voucher programs that are doing both. He continues to call for job-training programs of the sort that study after study has shown to be ineffective.

Fred Siegel, an expert on urban public policy, has written extensively about the liberal flight from evidence and empiricism that began in the 1960s. The Left, wracked by guilt over America’s diabolical treatment of blacks, decided to hold them to different standards of behavior. Blacks, Siegel writes, were invited to enter the larger society on their own terms. Schools, which had helped poor whites, ceased incorporating poor blacks from the South into the mainstream culture. Discipline as a prerequisite for adult success was displaced by the authentic self-expression of the ill-educated. Blacks were not culturally deprived but simply differently-abled—more spontaneous and expressive and so forth. Liberals tried to improve conditions for blacks without passing judgment on antisocial black culture. And this sort of thinking continues to this day. Walter Williams once wrote that he’s glad he grew up in the 1940s and ’50s, before it became fashionable for white people to like black people. He received a more honest assessment of his strengths and weaknesses, he says, than black kids today are likely to receive from white teachers and employers who are more interested in being politically correct.

After George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, President Obama explained the black response to the verdict this way. Blacks understand, he said, that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to that history. In other words, Obama was doing exactly what the Left has been conditioning blacks to do since the 1960s, which is to blame black pathology on the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

This is a dodge. That legacy is not holding down blacks half as much as the legacy of efforts to help. Underprivileged blacks have become playthings for intellectuals and politicians who care more about revelling in their good intentions or winning votes than advocating behaviors and attitudes that have allowed other groups to get ahead. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement has become an industry that does little more than monetize white guilt. Martin Luther King and his contemporaries demanded black self-improvement despite the abundant and overt racism of their day. King’s self-styled successors, living in an era when public policy bends over backwards to accommodate blacks, insist that blacks cannot be held responsible for their plight so long as someone, somewhere in white America, is still prejudiced.

The more fundamental problem with these well-meaning liberal efforts is that they have succeeded, tragically, in convincing blacks to see themselves first and foremost as victims. Today there is no greater impediment to black advancement than the self-pitying mindset that permeates black culture. White liberals think they are helping blacks by romanticizing bad behavior. And black liberals are all too happy to hustle guilty whites.

Blacks ultimately must help themselves. They must develop the same attitudes and behaviors and habits that other groups had to develop to rise in America. And to the extent that a social policy, however well-intentioned, interferes with this self-development, it does more harm than good.

This concept of self-help and self-development is something that black leaders once understood quite well, and at a time when blacks faced infinitely more obstacles than they face today. Asked by whites in 1865 what to do for freed blacks, Frederick Douglass responded: “I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! . . . If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength . . . let them fall! . . . And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!” Douglass was essentially saying, give blacks equal opportunity and then leave them alone.

Booker T. Washington, another late 19th century black leader who had been born a slave, once said that it is important and right that all privileges of the law be granted to blacks, but it is vastly more important that they be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.

Douglass and Washington didn’t play down the need for the government to secure equal rights for blacks, and both were optimistic that blacks would get equal rights eventually, although neither man lived to see that day. But both men also understood the limits of government benevolence. Blacks would have to ready themselves to meet the challenge of being in a position to take advantage of opportunities once equal rights had been secured. The history of 1960s liberal social policies is largely a history of ignoring this wisdom.

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Pope says Copts in Libya were murdered “for sole reason of being Christian,” blames arms traffickers

From Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch:

Maybe Pope Francis said something about the people who actually did kill these Christians, and why they did it, in some other part of his homily that isn’t reported here, but I couldn’t find any such reference in any news account. The jihad murderers who murdered these Christians declared: “And we will conquer Rome by Allah’s permission, the promise of our prophet, peace be upon him.”

In response, the Pope decries the evil in the heart of man, which is unarguably the root cause of all this, and apparently says nothing about Islamic jihadists or the doctrines of jihad that gave rise to these murders, but instead excoriates…arms traffickers. So apparently if we just had more restrictions on the sale of weaponry, there would be no jihad — since after all, as the Pope has explained, “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” A little gun control, and all will be well.

The idolatry of the papacy that afflicts the contemporary Roman Catholic Church has made these fatuous delusions into semi-official church policy. Then liberal bishops who don’t care about the Pope go along with the liberal zeitgeist, because that’s their true religion. Bishops in the United States routinely obfuscate and deny the root causes of Muslim persecution of Christians, and work to prevent any honest discussion of these issues in their churches and church organizations. They are abdicating their responsibility to tell the truth, make their people aware of what is happening, and prepare them for what is coming. Catholic publications (such as the hopeless Aleteia) tag along, spreading the fog of falsehood and deception and secure that in doing so, they’re obeying the Holy Father.

Another problem here is the prevailing tendency within the Church to confuse charity with niceness. Far too many people think they’re being charitable when they’re ignoring or glossing over unpleasant truths. But in reality it is never charitable, or worthwhile in any way, to deny the truth. Looking around at all the strictly enforced head-in-the-sand action, one could reasonably get the impression that “Islam is a Religion of Peace” is a new dogma of the Catholic Church, to be believed upon pain of excommunication. (As for me, as their old friend Martin L. once said, “Here I stand. I can do no other.”) This cult of flaccid niceness and denial is leading to a persecution of the Church on a scale never seen before, as Christians who were kept in ignorance and complacency by their leaders are led to the slaughter.

What if Islamic State jihadis do enter Rome and the Vatican? Is that so far-fetched, given that they’re in Libya now? And if they enter the Pope’s apartments, will he explain to them how they are misunderstanding Islam as they are leading him away to be beheaded?

“Pope celebrates Mass for the 21 Copts killed in Libya, ‘for sole reason of being Christian,’” Asia News, February 17, 2015 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Vatican City (AsiaNews) – “We offer this Mass for our 21 Coptic brothers, whose throats were slit for the sole reason of being Christian”. This is how Pope Francis began his homily at Mass this morning at Casa Santa Marta.

“Let us pray – he continued – for them; that the Lord welcome them as martyrs, for their families, for my brother Tawadros, who is suffering greatly.” A thought, the latter, which already yesterday afternoon had pushed Francis to call the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Tawadros II, to express its deep sympathy for the pain of the Coptic Church for this barbaric murder.

Continuing his reflection, the Pope returned to condemn the arms trade, “of death”. Francis was inspired by the biblical passage on the Great Flood to say that “man is capable of destroying all that God has done.” The Pope noted with regret that man, “seems to be more powerful than God”, because he is capable of destroying the good things that God has made.

Pope Francis pointed out that in the first chapters of the Bible we find many examples – Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel – in which man reveals his wickedness. “An evil that lurks in the depths of the heart”.

The Pope noted some people would urge him not to be so negative, but – he continued – “this is the truth. We are also capable of destroying fraternity: Cain and Abel in the first pages of the Bible. They destroy fraternity. This is where wars begin. Jealousy, envy, so much greed for power, to have more power. Yes, this sounds negative, but it is realistic. You only have to pick up a newspaper, any newspaper – left-wing, center, right-ring … whatever. And you will see that more than 90% of the news is news of destruction. More than 90%. We see this every day”.

Pope Francis then asked the question: “What is happening in man’s heart?”. He said Jesus reminds us that “from within, out of the heart of man, comes evil.” Our “weak heart is wounded”. He observed that man always “desires autonomy”: “I do what I want and if I want to do something, I will! So, if I want to make war, I will!

“Why are we like this? Because we are capable of destruction, that’s the problem. There are wars, arms trafficking … ‘But, we are businessmen!’ Yes, but of what? Of death? And there are countries that sell weapons, are at war with one side but also selling weapons to them, so that the war continues. A capacity for destruction. It’s not coming from our neighbors: it’s coming from us! ‘Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’. Everyone has this seed within, this possibility, but we also have the Holy Spirit who saves us! We must choose, in the little things”.

Pope Francis went on to warn against using gossip or slander against our neighbor: “Even in parishes and associations”, “jealousy” and “envy” can push people to go to their pastor to speak ill of others. He warned: “This is evil and we all have this ability to destroy”. As Lent begins, the Church “invites us to reflect on this”. Pointing to today’s Gospel where Jesus rebukes the disciples who are arguing among themselves about having forgotten to bring bread. The Lord tells them to “watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod”. He gives the example of two people: Herod who “is bad, a murderer, and the Pharisees who are hypocrites.” In doing so, Jesus reminds them of when he broke the five loaves and urges them to think of the Salvation, of what God has done for all of us. Pope Francis went on to note that “they did not understand, because their hearts were hardened by this passion, by this evil need to argue among each other and see who was guilty of having forgotten the bread”.

Pope Francis said we have to take the Lord’s message “seriously”. “There is nothing strange in this, these are not the words of a Martian”, “man is able to do so much good”, he continued citing the example of Mother Teresa, “a woman of our time”. All of us, he said, “are capable of doing good, but we are also all capable of destruction; destruction great and small and even within our own family. [We are capable of destroying] our children”, not allowing them to grow “in freedom, not helping them to mature; cancelling out our children”. We are capable of this and this means that we need to constantly “meditate, pray, discuss things with each other, so as not to fall into this evil that destroys everything”:

“And we have the strength, Jesus reminds us. Remember. He says to us today: ‘Remember. Remember Me, I shed my blood for you; remember Me, I have saved you, I have saved you all; Remember Me, I have the strength to accompany you on the journey of life, not on the path of evil, but on the path of goodness, of doing good to others; not the path of destruction, but the path that builds: builds a family, builds a city, builds a culture, builds a home and much, much more”.

The Pope concluded: “We ask the Lord, today, before the beginning of Lent for this grace: to always choose the right path with his help and not be misled by temptations down the wrong path.”

In related news:

papal protection

The current Poope is not only an Idolatrous cretin, but also a muslim-enabling criminal himself.

Islam can be easily studied and known in its entirety, by anyone. It will never change!

So, when Western people won’t educate them *selves* about islam because our culture defers all thinking to those “authorities” we PAY to do our thinking and research for us, while they secretly know full-well that the salesmen in charge will always sell us all out, they ARE CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT INFANTILE DELINQUENT TRAITORS TO RATIONALITY AND CIVILIZATION!

It should never be allowed by backwards people to be considered “illegal” to accuse these criminals (muslims) of their crimes, allegedly because the painful truth might offend them or hurt their feelings, and so “make” them commit even more crimes!

No problem was ever solved by ignoring it, and nobody is doing even these muslims any favours, by indulging their historic lies that islam is a “religion” (at all, much less one “of peace”) or a “race” (much less one of poor oppressed “People Of Colour”)!

Pretending there is NOT a Muslim problem but only a white racist problem accepting diversity, is criminally negligent TREASON.

Re:

“What if Islamic State jihadis do enter Rome and the Vatican? Is that so far-fetched, given that they’re in Libya now? And if they enter the Pope’s apartments, will he explain to them how they are misunderstanding Islam as they are leading him away to be beheaded?”

ONE CAN ONLY HOPE (“pray”) FOR THAT VERY RESULT TO OCCUR – SOON!

Scary Evolving Police-State Spy Tech

Of course, NONE of this stuff is necessary to stop the real threat (the muslims).

Simply identifying the muslims as the real threat would be enough stop them all right in their tracks.

So the obvious reason this isn’t being done, is because the banksters’ nascent corporate global world government dictatorship sees the real threat – not as the muslims, but as US.

WE CIVILIANS ARE THE ‘REAL‘ THREAT, TO THEM!

Creepy, Calculating and Controlling:

All the Ways Big Brother Is Watching You

By John W. Whitehead
February 16, 2015

“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984

None of us are perfect. All of us bend the rules occasionally. Even before the age of overcriminalization, when the most upstanding citizen could be counted on to break at least three laws a day without knowing it, most of us have knowingly flouted the law from time to time.

Indeed, there was a time when most Americans thought nothing of driving a few miles over the speed limit, pausing (rather than coming to a full stop) at a red light when making a right-hand turn if no one was around, jaywalking across the street, and letting their kid play hookie from school once in a while. Of course, that was before the era of speed cameras that ticket you for going even a mile over the posted limit, red light cameras that fine you for making safe “rolling stop” right-hand turns on red, surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition software mounted on street corners, and school truancy laws that fine parents for “unexcused” absences.

My, how times have changed.

Today, there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home. That’s because technology—specifically the technology employed by the government against the American citizenry—has upped the stakes dramatically so that there’s little we do that is not known by the government.

In such an environment, you’re either a paragon of virtue, or you’re a criminal.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re all criminals. This is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, probation officer, Big Brother and Father Knows Best all rolled into one.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. As I point out in my book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, this doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

For example, police have been using Stingray devices mounted on their cruisers to intercept cell phone calls and text messages without court-issued search warrants. Thwarting efforts to learn how and when these devices are being used against an unsuspecting populace, the FBI is insisting that any inquiries about the use of the technology be routed to the agency“in order to allow sufficient time for the FBI to intervene to protect the equipment/technology and information from disclosure and potential compromise.”

Doppler radar devices, which can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, are already being employed by the police to deliver arrest warrants and are being challenged in court. One case in particular, United States v Denson, examines how the Fourth Amendment interacts with the government’s use of radar technology to peer inside a suspect’s home. As Judge Neil Gorsuch recognizes in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling in the case, “New technologies bring with them not only new opportunities for law enforcement to catch criminals but also new risks for abuse and new ways to invade constitutional rights.”

License plate readers, yet another law enforcement spying device made possible through funding by the Department of Homeland Security, can record up to 1800 license plates per minute. However, it seems these surveillance cameras can also photograph those inside a moving car. Recent reports indicate that the Drug Enforcement Administration has been using the cameras in conjunction with facial recognition software to build a “vehicle surveillance database” of the nation’s cars, drivers and passengers.

Sidewalk and “public space” cameras, sold to gullible communities as a sure-fire means of fighting crime, is yet another DHS program that is blanketing small and large towns alike with government-funded and monitoredsurveillance cameras. It’s all part of a public-private partnership that gives government officials access to all manner of surveillance cameras, on sidewalks, on buildings, on buses, even those installed on private property.

Couple these surveillance cameras with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology and you have the makings of “pre-crime” cameras, which scan your mannerisms, compare you to pre-set parameters for “normal” behavior, and alert the police if you trigger any computerized alarms as being “suspicious.”

Capitalizing on a series of notorious abductions of college-aged students, several states are pushing to expand their biometric and DNA databases by requiring that anyone accused of a misdemeanor have their DNA collected and catalogued. However, technology is already available that allows the government to collect biometrics such as fingerprints from a distance, without a person’s cooperation or knowledge. One system can actually scan and identify a fingerprint from nearly 20 feet away.

Radar guns have long been the speed cop’s best friend, allowing him to hide out by the side of the road, identify speeding cars, and then radio ahead to a police car, which does the dirty work of pulling the driver over and issuing a ticket. Never mind that what this cop is really doing is using an electronic device to search your car without a search warrant, violating the Fourth Amendment and probable cause. Yet because it’s a cash cow for police and the governments they report to, it’s a practice that is not only allowed but encouraged. Indeed, developers are hard at work on a radar gun that can actually show if you or someone in your car is texting. No word yet on whether the technology will also be able to detect the contents of that text message.

It’s a sure bet that anything the government welcomes (and funds) too enthusiastically is bound to be a Trojan horse full of nasty surprises. Case in point: police body cameras. Hailed as the easy fix solution to police abuses, these body cameras—made possible byfunding from the Department of Justice—will turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras. Of course, if you try to request access to that footage, you’ll find yourself being led a merry and costly chasethrough miles of red tape, bureaucratic footmen and unhelpful courts.

The “internet of things” refers to the growing number of “smart” appliances and electronic devices now connected to the internet and capable of interacting with each other and being controlled remotely. These range from thermostats and coffee makers to cars and TVs. Of course, there’s a price to pay for such easy control and access. That price amounts to relinquishing ultimate control of and access to your home to the government and its corporate partners. For example, whileSamsung’s Smart TVs are capable of “listening” to what you say, thereby allow users to control the TV using voice commands, it also records everything you say and relays it to a third party.

Then again, the government doesn’t really need to spy on you using your smart TV when the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your cellphone and record your conversations. The FBI can also do the same thing to laptop computers without the owner knowing any better.

Government surveillance of social media such as Twitter and Facebook is on the rise. Americans have become so accustomed to the government overstepping its limits that most don’t even seem all that bothered anymore about the fact that the government is spying on our emails and listening in on our phone calls.

Drones, which will begin to take to the skies en masse this year, will be the converging point for all of the weapons and technology already available to law enforcement agencies. This means drones that can listen in on your phone calls, see through the walls of your home, scan your biometrics, photograph you and track your movements, and even corral you with sophisticated weaponry.

And then there’s the Internet and cell phone kill switch, which enables the government to shut down Internet and cell phone communications without Americans being given any warning. It’s a practice that has been used before in the U.S., albeit in a limited fashion. In 2005, cell service was disabled in four major New York tunnels (reportedly to avert potential bomb detonations via cell phone). In 2009, those attending President Obama’s inauguration had their cell signals blocked (again, same rationale). And in 2011, San Francisco commuters had their cell phone signals shut down (this time, to thwart any possible protests over a police shooting of a homeless man).

It’s a given that the government’s tactics are always more advanced than we know, so there’s no knowing what new technologies are already being deployed against without our knowledge. Certainly, by the time we learn about a particular method of surveillance or new technological gadget, it’s a sure bet that the government has been using it covertly for years already. And if other governments are using a particular technology, you can bet that our government used it first. For instance, back in 2011, it was reported that the government of Tunisia was not only monitoring the emails of its citizens but was actually altering the contents of those emails in order to thwart dissidents. How much do you want to bet that government agents have already employed such tactics in the U.S.?

Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government officials deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

Unfortunately, privacy as we once knew it is dead.

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers. This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.

Thus, to be an individual today, to not conform, to have even a shred of privacy, and to live beyond the reach of the government’s roaming eyes and technological spies, one must not only be a rebel but rebel.

Even when you rebel and take your stand, there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you. You are rendered an outlaw. This is the message in almost every dystopian work of fiction, from classic writers such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury to more contemporary voices such as Margaret Atwood, Lois Lowry and Suzanne Collins.

How do you survive in the American police state?

We’re running out of options. As Philip K. Dick, the visionary who gave us Minority Report and Blade Runner, advised:

“If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.”

WC: 2099

This commentary is also
available at www.rutherford.org.

Netherlands Mayor Tells Jihadis to Fuck Off

Dutch mayor slams Muslims who refuse to integrate

In the wake of the Paris bloodshed, Rotterdam’s mayor had harsh words for Muslims who live in the West but fail to adopt Western values. “If you don’t like freedom, for heaven’s sake pack your bags and leave,” he declared during a TV appearance. “If you do not like it here because some humorists you don’t like are making a newspaper, may I then say you can fuck off. … Vanish from the Netherlands if you cannot find your place here.” A member of Geert Wilders’ party? No, the mayor is Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Labour politician and a Muslim. He later repeated his comments at a mosque service.

Aboutaleb is new to international headlines, but he has been pushing such themes for years. “If you think this society is depraved, then go,” he said last fall, addressing those who seek to join the Syrian jihad. “Hand over your passport and risk getting bombed.” As for what drives these individuals, he rejected the stale socioeconomic excuses and correctly zeroed in on “the idea of living in a country where the word of God rules.” Equally noteworthy, while Washington was busy blaming the Muhammad-ridiculing Innocence of Muslims video for the Benghazi disaster, Aboutaleb urged Muslims to “try and see the funny side. … You can always make your own film on YouTube as a response.” Keep at it, Mr. Mayor. Your voice is needed.

Leftist Gangsters HAVE ALWAYS Supported Islam

From here:

The Left and Islam Apologetics

By Stephen Schwartz

^{Originally published under the title, “Famous Communists and Islam.”}

Leftist sympathy for despotic Islamic forces challenging the West dates back to Papa Bear.

For some time, an argument has been made that the liberal left, in refusing to examine the problems of Islam, has betrayed its Enlightenment roots. That is, while secular, feminist, and protective of free speech in dealing with its Western peers, the liberal left has been accused of abandoning its heritage in its quest for political correctness regarding Muslims.

In truth, however, the left has a distinguished background of courting Islam as a weapon against Western capitalism. Its most representative figures from the past did so frankly, as the following rehearsal of their statements demonstrates.

Karl Marx supported the Ottoman empire, then accused of atrocities against Christians and non-Turkish Muslims. In 1853, as the Crimean War pitting Russia against Turkey began, Marx wrote,

It is not to be denied that Turkey, the weak state, has shown more true courage, as well as more wise statesmanship, than either of her powerful allies [Britain and France] . . . we may justly attribute the delays and hesitation shown in the manoeuvres of Omer Pasha [Latas] to the paralyzing and temporizing influence of Lord Redcliffe and M. [Edmond] de la Cour, [British and French ambassadors to Turkey] over the Divan [the Ottoman court]. At the moment when [Omer Pasha Latas] was opening the campaign, they procured orders to be sent to him to delay the beginning of hostilities. . . . If there be a general war, it will not be the fault of Turkey, but next to Russia, of France and England. They might have prevented it infallibly, but they did not.

Omer Pasha Latas was a brutal and corrupt Ottoman functionary hated especially by Balkan Muslims.

Thus was a pattern established: defend Muslim autocrats, blame the West.

Lenin was so excited by the defeat of Russia by Japan in 1904, the failed Russian revolution of 1905, the 1906 constitutional revolution in Persia, and the 1908 Young Turk revolution in the Ottoman empire, that he wrote,

In Persia, Russian counter revolution played and continues to play what amounts to a decisive role, while in Turkey the revolution was at once confronted with a counter-revolutionary coalition of the powers, Russia at their head. True, the general tone of the European press and of the diplomatic statements would appear to contradict this. If we are to believe these statements and the semi-official press, there is universal ‘sympathy’ with regenerated Turkey, a universal desire to see her constitutional regime strengthened and developed, general praise for the ‘moderation’ of the bourgeois Young Turks. All these fine words, however, are typical of the base bourgeois hypocrisy of Europe’s ‘present-day’ reactionary governments and present-day reactionary bourgeoisie.

Once again: Muslims as manipulated victims, the West at fault, and repudiation of Western sympathy for modernization of Muslim societies.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Muslims under Russian rule were granted a special status. The Communist International held the 1920 Baku Congress of Peoples of the East in which Muslim delegates called for struggle against the West with Russian support. There, a Bolshevik intellectual, Karl Radek, declared,

We appeal, comrades, to the warlike feelings which once inspired the peoples of the East when these peoples, led by their great conquerors, advanced upon Europe. We know, comrades, that our enemies will say that we are appealing to the memory of Genghis Khan and to the memory of the great conquering Caliphs of Islam . . . when the capitalists of Europe say that a new wave of barbarism threatens . . . we answer them: Long live the Red East, which together with the workers of Europe will create a new civilization under the banner of Communism!

These declarations shouldn’t surprise us. When anti-imperialism is the concept and purpose that defines a movement, it will naturally find allies in radical Islam, which presents itself precisely as a creation of colonial oppression.

Stephen Schwartz, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is executive director of theCenter for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, DC.

Diversity

(HT to Sheik Yer’Mami, over at Winds of Jihad)!

Liberals may secretly know and admit that there is really only one human “race,” albeit many different breeds.

I know it’s a difficult concept for them to accept, but there’s really only two “cultures” or “creeds” among them all:

Civilization (where people agree to not attack thereby innocent others first) and Crime (where they pretend they have a false right to do anything they want TO others, as long as they pretend they’re doing it FOR them – for their own good).

And pretending the different breeds automatically think differently, or are entitled, through tradition (habit) to inherit a crime-creed like islam, is the very definition of that “racism” meme the leftist criminals always slander the civilized people with.

😉

LIBERAL IDOLATERS DIVIDE THE WORLD INTO TWO IDEAL IDEAS: OPPRESSED minorities, AND majority OPPRESSORS; the oppressed can do no wrong, because their crimes will always be viewed as reactions against oppression (regardless of actual cause and effect) and the oppressors – which includes all Western society – can never do anything right, and their attempts to do so will always be seen as cringing, less than optimal repayments covering their crimes!

And, although Blacks and Whites are on exact, equal par worldwide, liberal racists will support them as “minorities” here in the West, until, that is, they have succeeded in their obvious plans to import enough non Whites here to supplant us all; but by then, it will be far too late.

;-(

…….

As Nikola Bijeliti put it:

When our leaders talk about “diversity,” they always mean “fewer White people.”

When they say “Diversity is our greatest strength,” they mean “White people are our greatest weakness.”
Diversity means chasing down every last White person.

Diversity is a codeword for White genocide.
Anti-racist is a codeword for anti-White.

Have you ever noticed that all of the “Director of Diversity” positions in colleges and corporations are staffed by black women or some other victim group?

Apparently white people can’t know anything about diversity.

…….

Multiculturalism is being promoted in every White country on the earth, and ONLY in White countries.
The purpose of multiculturalism is to turn every White country into a non-White country. Under international law, that constitutes genocide. Any White person who opposes this is called a racist.
But White people are now coming to realize two things:
That multiculturalism is a codeword for White genocide.
That anti-racist is a codeword for anti-White.

Jihad Vs Crusades – An Easy Comparison

The Real History of the Crusades

A series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics? Think again.

By Thomas F. Madden, From Christianity Today, way back on May 6, 2005

Image: Jean Colombe / Wikimedia Commons

Siege of Tyre (1187)

With the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.

As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word crusade in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact that the Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn’t the present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren’t the Crusades really to blame?

Osama bin Laden certainly thinks so. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as the root cause of the present conflict. In a speech at Georgetown University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East. (Why Islamist terrorists should be upset about the killing of Jews was not explained.) Clinton took a beating on the nation’s editorial pages for wanting so much to blame the United States that he was willing to reach back to the Middle Ages. Yet no one disputed the ex-president’s fundamental premise.

Well, almost no one. Many historians had been trying to set the record straight on the Crusades long before Clinton discovered them. They are not revisionists, like the American historians who manufactured the Enola Gay exhibit, but mainstream scholars offering the fruit of several decades of very careful, very serious scholarship. For them, this is a “teaching moment,” an opportunity to explain the Crusades while people are actually listening. It won’t last long, so here goes.

The threat of Islam

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

Understand the crusaders

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne’er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders’ expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.

During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.

What really happened?

Urban II gave the Crusaders two goals, both of which would remain central to the eastern Crusades for centuries. The first was to rescue the Christians of the East. As his successor, Pope Innocent III, later wrote:

How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbor as himself when, knowing that his Christian brothers in faith and in name are held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, he does not devote himself to the task of freeing them? … Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?

“Crusading,” Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was understood as an “an act of love”—in this case, the love of one’s neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, “You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.'”

The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ. The word crusade is modern. Medieval Crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims, performing acts of righteousness on their way to the Holy Sepulcher. The Crusade indulgence they received was canonically related to the pilgrimage indulgence. This goal was frequently described in feudal terms. When calling the Fifth Crusade in 1215, Innocent III wrote:

Consider most dear sons, consider carefully that if any temporal king was thrown out of his domain and perhaps captured, would he not, when he was restored to his pristine liberty and the time had come for dispensing justice look on his vassals as unfaithful and traitors … unless they had committed not only their property but also their persons to the task of freeing him? … And similarly will not Jesus Christ, the king of kings and lord of lords, whose servant you cannot deny being, who joined your soul to your body, who redeemed you with the Precious Blood … condemn you for the vice of ingratitude and the crime of infidelity if you neglect to help Him?

The re-conquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was not colonialism but an act of restoration and an open declaration of one’s love of God. Medieval men knew, of course, that God had the power to restore Jerusalem Himself—indeed, he had the power to restore the whole world to his rule. Yet as St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached, His refusal to do so was a blessing to His people:

   Again I say, consider the Almighty’s goodness and pay heed to His plans of mercy. He puts Himself under obligation to        you, or rather feigns to do so, that He can help you to satisfy your obligations toward Himself. … I call blessed the                generation that can seize an opportunity of such rich indulgence as this.

It is often assumed that the central goal of the Crusades was forced conversion of the Muslim world. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the perspective of medieval Christians, Muslims were the enemies of Christ and his Church. It was the Crusaders’ task to defeat and defend against them. That was all. Muslims who lived in Crusader-won territories were generally allowed to retain their property and livelihood, and always their religion. Indeed, throughout the history of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Muslim inhabitants far outnumbered the Catholics. It was not until the 13th century that the Franciscans began conversion efforts among Muslims. But these were mostly unsuccessful and finally abandoned. In any case, such efforts were by peaceful persuasion, not the threat of violence.

All apologies

The Crusades were wars, so it would be a mistake to characterize them as nothing but piety and good intentions. Like all warfare, the violence was brutal (although not as brutal as modern wars). There were mishaps, blunders, and crimes. These are usually well-remembered today. During the early days of the First Crusade in 1095, a ragtag band of Crusaders led by Count Emicho of Leiningen made its way down the Rhine, robbing and murdering all the Jews they could find. Without success, the local bishops attempted to stop the carnage. In the eyes of these warriors, the Jews, like the Muslims, were the enemies of Christ. Plundering and killing them, then, was no vice. Indeed, they believed it was a righteous deed, since the Jews’ money could be used to fund the Crusade to Jerusalem. But they were wrong, and the Church strongly condemned the anti-Jewish attacks.

Fifty years later, when the Second Crusade was gearing up, St. Bernard frequently preached that the Jews were not to be persecuted:

Ask anyone who knows the Sacred Scriptures what he finds foretold of the Jews in the Psalm. “Not for their destruction do I pray,” it says. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered … Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity, but “they only wait for the time of their deliverance.”

Nevertheless, a fellow Cistercian monk named Radulf stirred up people against the Rhineland Jews, despite numerous letters from Bernard demanding that he stop. At last Bernard was forced to travel to Germany himself, where he caught up with Radulf, sent him back to his convent, and ended the massacres.

It is often said that the roots of the Holocaust can be seen in these medieval pogroms. That may be. But if so, those roots are far deeper and more widespread than the Crusades. Jews perished during the Crusades, but the purpose of the Crusades was not to kill Jews. Quite the contrary: Popes, bishops, and preachers made it clear that the Jews of Europe were to be left unmolested. In a modern war, we call tragic deaths like these “collateral damage.” Even with smart technologies, the United States has killed far more innocents in our wars than the Crusaders ever could. But no one would seriously argue that the purpose of American wars is to kill women and children.

The failure of the Crusades

By any reckoning, the First Crusade was a long shot. There was no leader, no chain of command, no supply lines, no detailed strategy. It was simply thousands of warriors marching deep into enemy territory, committed to a common cause. Many of them died, either in battle or through disease or starvation. It was a rough campaign, one that seemed always on the brink of disaster. Yet it was miraculously successful. By 1098, the Crusaders had restored Nicaea and Antioch to Christian rule. In July 1099, they conquered Jerusalem and began to build a Christian state in Palestine. The joy in Europe was unbridled. It seemed that the tide of history, which had lifted the Muslims to such heights, was now turning.

But it was not. When we think about the Middle Ages, it is easy to view Europe in light of what it became rather than what it was. The colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom. The Crusades are interesting largely because they were an attempt to counter that trend. But in five centuries of crusading, it was only the First Crusade that significantly rolled back the military progress of Islam. It was downhill from there.

When the Crusader County of Edessa fell to the Turks and Kurds in 1144, there was an enormous groundswell of support for a new Crusade in Europe. It was led by two kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, and preached by St. Bernard himself. It failed miserably. Most of the Crusaders were killed along the way. Those who made it to Jerusalem only made things worse by attacking Muslim Damascus, which formerly had been a strong ally of the Christians. In the wake of such a disaster, Christians across Europe were forced to accept not only the continued growth of Muslim power but the certainty that God was punishing the West for its sins. Lay piety movements sprouted up throughout Europe, all rooted in the desire to purify Christian society so that it might be worthy of victory in the East.

Crusading in the late twelfth century, therefore, became a total war effort. Every person, no matter how weak or poor, was called to help. Warriors were asked to sacrifice their wealth and, if need be, their lives for the defense of the Christian East. On the home front, all Christians were called to support the Crusades through prayer, fasting, and alms. Yet still the Muslims grew in strength. Saladin, the great unifier, had forged the Muslim Near East into a single entity, all the while preaching jihad against the Christians. In 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, his forces wiped out the combined armies of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem and captured the precious relic of the True Cross. Defenseless, the Christian cities began surrendering one by one, culminating in the surrender of Jerusalem on October 2. Only a tiny handful of ports held out.

The response was the Third Crusade. It was led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the German Empire, King Philip II Augustus of France, and King Richard I Lionheart of England. By any measure it was a grand affair, although not quite as grand as the Christians had hoped. The aged Frederick drowned while crossing a river on horseback, so his army returned home before reaching the Holy Land. Philip and Richard came by boat, but their incessant bickering only added to an already divisive situation on the ground in Palestine. After recapturing Acre, the king of France went home, where he busied himself carving up Richard’s French holdings. The Crusade, therefore, fell into Richard’s lap. A skilled warrior, gifted leader, and superb tactician, Richard led the Christian forces to victory after victory, eventually reconquering the entire coast. But Jerusalem was not on the coast, and after two abortive attempts to secure supply lines to the Holy City, Richard at last gave up. Promising to return one day, he struck a truce with Saladin that ensured peace in the region and free access to Jerusalem for unarmed pilgrims. But it was a bitter pill to swallow. The desire to restore Jerusalem to Christian rule and regain the True Cross remained intense throughout Europe.

The Crusades of the 13th century were larger, better funded, and better organized. But they too failed. The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) ran aground when it was seduced into a web of Byzantine politics, which the Westerners never fully understood. They had made a detour to Constantinople to support an imperial claimant who promised great rewards and support for the Holy Land. Yet once he was on the throne of the Caesars, their benefactor found that he could not pay what he had promised. Thus betrayed by their Greek friends, in 1204 the Crusaders attacked, captured, and brutally sacked Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world. Pope Innocent III, who had previously excommunicated the entire Crusade, strongly denounced the Crusaders. But there was little else he could do. The tragic events of 1204 closed an iron door between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, a door that even today Pope John Paul II has been unable to reopen. It is a terrible irony that the Crusades, which were a direct result of the Catholic desire to rescue the Orthodox people, drove the two further—and perhaps irrevocably—apart.

The remainder of the 13th century’s Crusades did little better. The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) managed briefly to capture Damietta in Egypt, but the Muslims eventually defeated the army and reoccupied the city. St. Louis IX of France led two Crusades in his life. The first also captured Damietta, but Louis was quickly outwitted by the Egyptians and forced to abandon the city. Although Louis was in the Holy Land for several years, spending freely on defensive works, he never achieved his fondest wish: to free Jerusalem. He was a much older man in 1270 when he led another Crusade to Tunis, where he died of a disease that ravaged the camp. After St. Louis’s death, the ruthless Muslim leaders, Baybars and Kalavun, waged a brutal jihad against the Christians in Palestine. By 1291, the Muslim forces had succeeded in killing or ejecting the last of the Crusaders, thus erasing the Crusader kingdom from the map. Despite numerous attempts and many more plans, Christian forces were never again able to gain a foothold in the region until the 19th century.

Europe’s fight for its life

One might think that three centuries of Christian defeats would have soured Europeans on the idea of Crusade. Not at all. In one sense, they had little alternative. Muslim kingdoms were becoming more, not less, powerful in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The Ottoman Turks conquered not only their fellow Muslims, thus further unifying Islam, but also continued to press westward, capturing Constantinople and plunging deep into Europe itself. By the 15th century, the Crusades were no longer errands of mercy for a distant people but desperate attempts of one of the last remnants of Christendom to survive. Europeans began to ponder the real possibility that Islam would finally achieve its aim of conquering the entire Christian world. One of the great best-sellers of the time, Sebastian Brant’s The Ship of Fools, gave voice to this sentiment in a chapter titled “Of the Decline of the Faith”:

Our faith was strong in th’ Orient,
It ruled in all of Asia,
In Moorish lands and Africa.
But now for us these lands are gone
‘Twould even grieve the hardest stone …
Four sisters of our Church you find,
They’re of the patriarchic kind:
Constantinople, Alexandria,
Jerusalem, Antiochia.
But they’ve been forfeited and sacked
And soon the head will be attacked.

Of course, that is not what happened. But it very nearly did. In 1480, Sultan Mehmed II captured Otranto as a beachhead for his invasion of Italy. Rome was evacuated. Yet the sultan died shortly thereafter, and his plan died with him. In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to Vienna. If not for a run of freak rainstorms that delayed his progress and forced him to leave behind much of his artillery, it is virtually certain that the Turks would have taken the city. Germany, then, would have been at their mercy.

Yet, even while these close shaves were taking place, something else was brewing in Europe—something unprecedented in human history. The Renaissance, born from a strange mixture of Roman values, medieval piety, and a unique respect for commerce and entrepreneurialism, had led to other movements like humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Exploration. Even while fighting for its life, Europe was preparing to expand on a global scale. The Protestant Reformation, which rejected the papacy and the doctrine of indulgence, made Crusades unthinkable for many Europeans, thus leaving the fighting to the Catholics. In 1571, a Holy League, which was itself a Crusade, defeated the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto. Yet military victories like that remained rare. The Muslim threat was neutralized economically. As Europe grew in wealth and power, the once awesome and sophisticated Turks began to seem backward and pathetic—no longer worth a Crusade. The “Sick Man of Europe” limped along until the 20th century, when he finally expired, leaving behind the present mess of the modern Middle East.

From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades. Religion, after all, is nothing to fight wars over. But we should be mindful that our medieval ancestors would have been equally disgusted by our infinitely more destructive wars fought in the name of political ideologies. And yet, both the medieval and the modern soldier fight ultimately for their own world and all that makes it up. Both are willing to suffer enormous sacrifice, provided that it is in the service of something they hold dear, something greater than themselves. Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.

Thomas F. Madden is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University. He is the author of numerous works, including The New Concise History of the Crusades, and co-author, with Donald Queller, of The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. This article originally appeared in the April 2002 issue of Crisis and was first reprinted at Christianity Today with permission.

Related Synopsis HERE

 

Recent similar posts:

http://sheikyermami.com/the-future-must-not-belong-to-those-who-slander-christians-by-harping-on-the-crusades/

http://sheikyermami.com/why-the-crusades-began/

http://sheikyermami.com/thanks-to-the-crusades-we-are-still-a-free-people-today/

How & Why Obama Destroys the Middle Class

FOIA request reveals ‘shadow’ work permit system not authorized by law adding millions to labor force

By Thomas Lifson

In a stunning report based on data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, The Center for Immigration Studies has revealed that the Obama administration has been flooding the United States with work permits not authorized by law for millions of people.

Government data reveal that about 5.5 million new work permits were issued to aliens from 2009 to 2014, above and beyond the number of new green card and temporary worker admissions in those years. This is a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the limits set by Congress that inevitably impacts opportunities for U.S. workers, damages the integrity of the immigration system, and encourages illegal immigration.

On the one hand, the Obama administration drives down wages, particularly for the lower end of the education spectrum, while on the other hand it blames capitalism and Republicans for the rise in income inequality.  It is a hypocritical con game of the highest order.  Marxist Hegelians call it “heightening the contradictions.”  It is not a new game; in fact, it is one that communist agitators have used for a century and a half.  But it has never, as far as I know, been played by a United States president before.Ryan Lovelace notes in NRO’s The Corner:

The remarkable number of work permits granted by the federal government to law-breaking aliens better explains how all net jobs growth since 2007 has gone to immigrants.

The sheer numbers found by the CIS are spectacular:

Approximately 1.8 million new work permits were issued to aliens with temporary visas or those who entered under the Visa Waiver Program. Of these, about 1.2 million (67 percent) had a visa status for which employment is not authorized by law. For example, more than 470,000 work permits were issued to aliens on tourist visas and 532,000 were issued to foreign students. More than 156,000 were issued to dependents of students and guestworkers, all in categories not authorized for employment by law.

In addition, 963,000 new work permits were issued to aliens who have been granted permanent status or have a status that will lead to a green card. These are primarily refugees (418,000), fiancés of U.S. citizens (164,000), and approved asylum applicants (174,000).

About 982,000 new work permits were issued in this time period to illegal aliens or aliens unqualified for admission. Of these, 957,000 were aliens who crossed the border illegally (Entered Without Inspection). Inexplicably, 1,200 new work permits were issued to aliens who were denied asylum, were suspected of using fraudulent documents, were stowaways, or were refused at a port of entry.

A huge number of work permits, 1.7 million, were issued to aliens whose status was unknown, not recorded by the adjudicator, or not disclosed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that processes the applications. This should be a concern; work permits are gateway documents to driver’s licenses and other benefits, and if the government agency issuing them does not know or will not disclose how the bearer arrived in the country how can others rely on the authenticity of an individual’s identity? It is equally disconcerting if the government does know and chooses not to disclose it.

You can count on the so-called “civil rights” leaders like Sharpton to completely ignore the impact of millions of job entrants on the wages available to African-Americans.  And you probably won’t be seeing much on the subject on NBC Nightly News, either.

TREASON? – THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

By Karen Schoen

Fellow Americans:

 

It’s Venezuela, All Over Again….

 

Did you ever wonder why, when your favorite legislator gets into office…

 

 

Nothing Changes?!

 

There are so many reasons. Basically it is because CIVICS was

REMOVED from Schools, ON PURPOSE!

 

                 Why? An educated populace requires more from their Government.

Keeping you ignorant is the goal of American education. But if you are ignorant of how government works, is your Legislators?  Are they?  Sadly they are. 

 

My opponent, Brad Drake (R), now Representative – thinks America is a Democracy.

Several Florida legislators think that if the Federal government says JUMP, they must. After all, the Feds make the Law of the land. Or do they?
 
They could not be more wrong. We live in a Representative Constitutional Republic… where Delegates are elected by the people to represent the people and all people protected by the same law – the constitution. 

 

 

 

STATE GOVERNMENTS CREATED

 

The people created the State Government.  The separate and sovereign STATES got together, and signed a CONTRACT…called The Constitution.

 

Every state agreed to live under the same Rule of Law –

 

 

The Constitution. 

 

The states never agreed to give up their Sovereignty.

 

What went on in their state they would govern. States could have different laws…but individuals could move freely among the variety of states – until they found one with the laws they agreed with.

 

They agreed to let the Federal Government control 4, and only 4 – Categories: 

National Security, Money, Naturalization, Commerce. 

 

They broke these categories into 18 SPECIFIC TASKS or AREAS. AND THAT WAS IT! 

 

They defined all other categories and tasks as belonging to the PEOPLE in their respective STATES.  The people gave their permission. The People are the creators and the Government is the created. 

 

This Federal Government only had power in DC, not in the individual states.

 

“ The Government of United States� is one of limited powers. It can exercise authority oveer no subjects, except those which have been delegated to it.”  (Mayor of New Orleans v United States, 10Pet. 662,736).

 

It is not only impossible, illogical but also unconstitutional – for the Created to Rule the Creator. 

So where did it go WRONG?

 

 

MONEY, POWER, CONTROL

 

 

BY LYING TO THE PUBLIC!!

 
At the turn of the century around the early 1900’s, the Power Brokers, the men of theses families: (Vanderbilt’s, Rockefeller’s, Roosevelt, Carnegie, Bush, to name a few) that made a fortune creating and innovating new products for America realized:

 

IF they wanted to keep their fortunes, and grow their fortunes beyond imagination, they must work together to ELIMINATE COMPETITION.

 

Using their success for EVIL, they began to strip away and separate Government from the people.

 

Remember:  Communication at that time was primarily by

Paper, Word of mouth, and the Telegraph.

 

 

          

 

NO CELLPHONES, COMPUTERS, TV, SATELLITES! – Hard to Imagine!

 

They used money to buy the government, bribe the people, get corrupt politicians to look the other way – and began to create AGENCIES (unconstitutional, per Article 4 Section 4) that would answer ONLY TO THEM, while making rules to SUPPRESS THE PEOPLE.
 
Lincoln said:  “Whatever is in school today will be in government tomorrow.” 

 

School was the answer.  Our founders knew and educated populace was the only thing to control tyranny.  Educated people would never let lies and deception cloud their decisions. By omitting civics and historical information, the people would gradually become IGNORANT.

 

How did they keep the people ignorant?  That was easy.  Don’t tell the people, they wont know and won’t remember their Rights. Common Core and the deliberate dumbing of the Nation is just a new name for an old ideology.

 

By 1965, they completed their task of changing one of the best Educational Systems from FACT to VALUE…and America was on the path to gradual decline.  In the 1960’s America ALWAYS scored in the top 10 worldwide.  Today we can barely scrape above 25th place.  2014 we are 28th.

 

Today people, when asked – are willing to give up their Bill of Rights and suspend the constitution. REALLY? You don’t believe me?

CHECK IT OUT:

 

VIDEO: AMERICANS WANT OBAMA TO REPEAL THE BILL OF RIGHTS Respondents blithely agree that liberties should be completely eviscerated in the name of fighting ISIS

 

UN SEEKS TO CRIMINALIZE FREE SPEECH, CITING “HUMAN RIGHTS” The dictator-dominated global body is waging a full-blown assault on free-speech rights

 

Judge Napolitano on How Government is Violating Natural Rights

 

Constitutional Crisis :The government is taking away our constitutional rights at every turn. Will the constitution even be relevant anymore? Will we turn into a dictatorship or Monarchy by the end of this decade.

 

16 Ways the Supreme Court Built the Police State and Destroyed Your Rights

 

They did not stop there. Their plan was HUGE IN SCOPE. 

 

The PLAN intended to encompass every aspect of American Society. 

 

After all, you can’t have individuals running around saying, “I can do what I want, I can invent, create, and innovate.”  What if they created something better? 

 
ENTER…THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
 
First the facts�
The Constitution is a Trust Indenture.

 

(Indenture of trust is a document containing the terms and conditions governing a trustee’s conduct and the trust beneficiaries’ rights.) 

 

“There is no such thing as power of inherent Sovereignty in the government of the United States. In this country, sovereignty resides in the People, and Congress can exercise no power which they have not, by their constitution entrusted to it. All else is withheld.” Julliard v Greenman 110 U.S. 421

 

 GOVERNMENTS…ARE BUT TRUSTEES

“ governments are but trustees acting under derived authority and have no power to delegate what is NOT DELIGATED to them.  But the people, as the original fountain might take away what they have delegated and entrust to whom they please. �The sovereignty in every state residdes in the people of the state and my alter and change their form of government at their own pleasure.” Luther v Borden, 48 US 1, 12L.Ed. 581
 

DELEGATES…CANNOT DELEGATE!

A Delegate (your representative or senator) CANNOT delegate: an agent cannot delegate his functions to a subagent without the knowledge or consent of the principal; the person to whom an office or duty is delegated can not lawfully devolve the duty on another, unless he be expressly authorized to do so” 9 Coke, 77; Broom, Max. 840; 2 Kent, Comm. 633; 2 Steph com 119
 
“A delegated power cannot be again delegated.” 2Inst; Black’s, 2d. 347: 2 Bouv. Inst. n. 1300

“A Deputy cannot have or appoint a deputy.”  Story, Ag. S.13; 9 Coke, 77; 2 Bouv. Inst. n. 1936
 

 

CORPORATE “UNITED STATES” CREATED…

In 1871, a corporation called UNITED STATES, INC was set up � WITHOUT AUTHORITY.  There iis NO AUTHORITY for any federal CORPORATE department of: TREASURY, FBI, HOMELAND SECURITY, SECRET SERVICE OR IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, BORDER PATROL, OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL, INTERNAL REVENUE, FEDERAL RESERVE, US DISTRICT COURT OF TEXAS OR ANY OTHER STATE. 
Or UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YOUK, UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT, or any Department of Energy, Education, Interior, Agriculture, Natural Resources as NOTHING  belongs to the Federal government. EVERYTHING belongs to the individual soverign people through their respective states.
 
The UN-Authorized Corporations are all Ultra Vires: An act performed without any authority to act on subject. This is prohibited!  People ex rel. Barrett v Bank of Peoria, 295 ILL. App543 15 N. E.2d 333,335. 

 

Act is ultra vires when corporation is without authority to perform it under any circumstances or for any purpose. Ultra vires act of municipality is one which is beyond powers conferred upon it by law. Charles v Town of Jeanerette, Inc, LA. App., 234 So 2d 94,798.” Blacks Law Dictionary 6th edition page 1522.
 
Licenses, permits, fees are excise taxes. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary 1843 Edition, volume 2 page 53.
 

STATUTES…FROM THE UN

Statutes in place due to the United Nations Programs ARE NOT AUTHORIZED.  “judges who become involved in enforcement of mere statutes (civil or criminal) act as mere “clerks” of the involved agency. K.C. Davis, ADMIN. LAW, Ch1 (CTP. West’s 1965 Ed.)
 
An officer who acts in violation of the Constitution ceases to represent the government.”   Brookfield Const. Co v. Stewart, 284F Supp. 94
 

 

ATTORNEYS…PART OF JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Attorneys are part of the Judicial System.  This past week on the Factor, O’Rielly made the statement, “Attornies are part of the judicial system.”  Remember that.

 

Article II Section 3 of the Florida Constitution: The Powers of the State Government shall be divided into Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches.

No person belonging to one branch shall exercise any powers appertaining to either of the other branches…unless expressly provided herein. 

 

IN OTHER WORDS, if you are an attorney, you work for the judicial branch. YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE to be a legislator. Currently there are over 40 unconstitutional legislators in the Florida government making unconstutional laws which CAN NOT be enforced.
 
These attorneys act under the “Color of Law. � Mere >semblance of a Legal Right.

An action done under the colour of law is unenforceable.
 
The ABA has REWRITTEN THE CONSTITUTION… and because you never had a meaningful CIVICS class, you are Doomed before you start!  They call it case law.  They will always find a case to refer to with a decision made by an unconstitutional justice to mak esure the outcome is in their favor. Obamacare is a prime example. Whistleblowers have reported blackmail, bribery, murder, fraud, lies and fear to get their way.
 

 CAPITALISTS…ARE THE ENEMY!

Agenda 21 calls for the Nationalization of Industry, calling Capitalists the ENEMY.  The ABA re wrote the laws on Public Private Partnership in order to pretend they are constitutional.

 

What better way to take over an industry than to have ABA attornies become legislators and change the law. Public-Private Partnerships (PPP, or 3P’s) once unconstitutional as per Florida State Constitution:  Article 7 – Section 10: 

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?Mode=Constitution&Submenu=3&Tab=statutes#A7S10
 
SECTION 10.Pledging credit. Neither the state nor any county, school district, municipality, special district, or agency of any of them, shall become a joint owner with, or stockholder of, or give, lend or use its taxing power or credit to aid any corporation, association, partnership or person;

 

are now OK. Public-Private Partnership Concessions for Highway Projects, Charter Schools, Ports and more. It does not matter what they think.  “If a law is unconstitutional it is void,”  Marbry v Madison 1807.  Unconstuitutional laws can not be enforced.

 

 

STATUTES…FROM THE UN?…NECESSARY FOR PPP’S!

 

The United Nations calls for Public Private Partnerships as the gradual way to nationalize industry.  Johannesberg Accord aka Johannesberg Implementation Plan, pages 108-109.

 

ABA writes statutes making it necessary to have PPP. 

 

ABA legislators pass the UNCONSTITUTIONAL STATUTES, Like 334.30 or HB 87.

 

Government sets BONDS so high, only the large Corporate donors can apply.

 

Many projects become “no bid” contracts from ” We Milk It Forever Contracting.” .

 

Taxpayer money is given to Corporations, many International Corporations and… you wonder why there are no jobs. 

 

These Corporations in FL control the TOLLS. In the end – the TAXPAYER pays and pays and pays.  Not all PPP’s are bad and cheat taxpayers…but that doesn’t matter because – PPP’s ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

 

Why?  When the government owns an industry, regulations are often political to favor one company (a donor) over another.  This eliminates competition so we may never get the best product.  The industry then gets favors from government like permits, moving up to the front of the line, contracts, subsidies like in solar.  Then the legislators often manipulate the market with rumors of inspections, investigation, audits, slandar etc. all so bet on the success or failure of those industries and become billionaires at our expense. 

 

How?  Because the ABA writes statutes to protect them.  Who is your attorney working for?

 
Read the links below.

The LINKS as found on their web sites below, the American Bar Association (ABA) ties Sustainable Developments to UN Agenda 21.

 

The goal of Agenda 21/ Sustainable Development is to ELIMINATE PRIVATE PROPERTY, as stated in the preamble of UN Habitat:

 

UN Habitat stated: “Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. Social justice, urban renewal and development, the provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole.”

 

 

 

ABA vs. THE US CONSTITUTION & THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

By supporting SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT –  the ABA is working AGAINST the US Constitution and the American People.  http://www.uvm.edu/search_results?q_as=sustainable%20development

 

By writing these laws, the ABA gives teeth and credibility to the Unconstitutional Agencies.

 

The ABA members then get elected to offices, or work as lobbyists then write and draft legislation to FAVOR the unconstitutional agencies, and pass legislations to fund these agencies…

 

Using this phony legislation

favoring their donors and themselves –

which

COSTS THE PEOPLE THEIR...

 

 

Children, Land, Homes, and Businesses…

 

 

 and TONS of Money!!

 

 

NO TREATY OR PROGRAMS…PROHIBITED TO STATES

US Constitution, Article 1 Section 10: prohibits States from making a treaty/or following programs of a foreign entity.  International Law nor TREATIES, or EXECUTIVE ORDERS DO NOT TRUMP the CONSTITUTION.  (This includes the UN) Sustainability programs are based on phony computer models created by unconstitutional statutes by unconstutional agencies.
 
REGIONAL COUNCILS and NGO’s pushing this plan are Unconstitutional, as per the US Constitution Article 4 Section 4 – Guaranteeing every American the RIGHT to Elected officials who make LAWS – NOT Bureaucrats…making REGULATIONS!

THE ABA … REPORTS TO THE UN? WHY??????

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION REPORTS TO HOUSE OF DELEGATES (SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA 21) That the American Bar Association reaffirms its 1991 commitment to sustainable development, and adopts the internationally accepted concept of sustainable development, as recognized at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 and subsequent international conferences: simultaneous achievement of environmental protection, economic development, social development, and peace, for present and future generations.
http://www.acoel.org/file.axd?file=2013%2F12%2FABA+Resolution.pdf

  

 

SURPRISE! YOU WEREN’T LOOKING!

GUESS WHAT??! –

 

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION ADOPTED BY THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES (2003)
http://apps.americanbar.org/intlaw/policy/environment/sustainabledevelopment.pdf
 
AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION PRES. JAMES SILKENAT, TASK FORCE, MISSION STATEMENT:
American Bar Association (ABA) President James Silkenat established the Task Force to review and make recommendations on the involvement of the ABA in implementing sustainable development matters throughout the world.

 

 

  THE FUTURE WE WANT…REALLY?

The Rio+20 Conference adopted a report entitled The Future We Want. 

 

The report is a common vision on how SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ISSUES are managed by United Nations member entities and related organizations. 

The United Nations senior leadership made it abundantly clear that implementation of The Future We Want report is IMPERATIVE, and that ABA lawyers MUST play a strong role in the field.

http://www.americanbar.org/groups/leadership/office_of_the_president/sustainable_development_task_force/about_us.html
 

In summary, you go to school. Instead of learning about the Constitution…Your Rights and Freedoms…American Civics…How Laws work…How to Read and Interpret…How to calculate finances so you can make wise decisions and not be cheated…

 

You learn INSTEAD to follow the LIES about Sustainability, and to meekly comply with the UNITED NATIONS. 

 

 

Thank you, American Bar Association. THANKS A LOT.

NOT!!  

Now you that you know,

WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?

 

In Liberty,

 

Karen Schoen

Neil Rice

Sherry Smart