Archive for April, 2012


 

Islamic Egypt Plans “Farewell Fornication Law” so Husbands can have sex with dead wives and marriage age lowered to 14

 

I told you so, but even I couldn’t predict this.

More of the colossal fallout from Obama’s ”cosmic wager” on Islamic groups taking over Egypt. This is the left’s idea of “freedom.” How they loved this revolution. Media mea culpa? Never. Don’t expect the media to clue America in on another unprecedented Obama failure.

Outrage as Egypt plans ‘farewell intercourse law’ so husbands can have sex with DEAD wives up to six hours after their death Mail Online By Lee Moran 26 April 2012Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives – for up to six hours after their death.

The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.

It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women’s rights of getting education and employment.

Controversial: The 'farewell intercourse' law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliamentControversial: The ‘farewell intercourse’ law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament

Egypt’s National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that ‘marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country’s human development’.

Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker Dr Saad al-Katatni addressing her concerns.

Egyptian journalist Amro Abdul Samea reported in the al-Ahram newspaper that Talawi complained about the legislations which are being introduced under ‘alleged religious interpretations’.

The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.

He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported.

It seems the topic, which has sparked outrage, has now been picked up on by Egypt’s politicians.

Outrage: Egyptian husbands could soon have sex with their dead wives if a new law is approved (file picture)Outrage: Egyptian husbands could soon have sex with their dead wives if a new law is approved (file picture)

TV anchor Jaber al-Qarmouty slammed the notion of letting a husband have sex with his wife after her death under the so-called ‘Farewell Intercourse’ draft law.

He said: ‘This is very serious. Could the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution possibly discuss such issues? Did Abdul Samea see by his own eyes the text of the message sent by Talawi to Katatni?

‘This is unbelievable. It is a catastrophe to give the husband such a right! Has the Islamic trend reached that far? Is there really a draft law in this regard? Are there people thinking in this manner?’

Read the rest

Marijn Nieuwenhuis26 April 2012

The collapse of budget negotiations and the upcoming elections in Holland provide opportunities for the emergence of better answers to the violence done by nationalist antagonisms, imposed through neo-liberal austerity programmes

About the author
Marijn Nieuwenhuis is a Dutch Student at the Politics Department of the University of Warwick

Jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien… But what is important is not the fall itself but the landing…

The Dutch minority coalition has abruptly imploded only a week after the publication of my article on the rise of a contradictory form of nationalist neo-liberalism. Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), decided on the supposedly last day of the seven week closed-door talks to once and for all bury all hopes for a continuation of an ideologically difficult (if not impossible) coalition. The collapse of the talks, which were dedicated to resolving the country’s public debt deficit and meant to brutally cut the public sector (by 14 to 16 billion euro) for the sake of reviving the troubled Dutch economy, exposes the challenge of combining a nationalistic populist agenda with a neo-liberal one. The inherent contradiction proved in the end simply too large to be bridged. Dark clouds are now taking shape on the horizon of a country which some 400 years ago introduced modern capitalism to the world. One would think that it would know by now that capitalism is prone to crises.

The implosion of the neoliberal nationalist coalition means that the Netherlands is very unlikely any time soon to reduce its budget deficit from its current 4.7 percent to the three percent of GDP required by the EU Stability Pact. The leader of the PVV showed little sign of regret for his walkout and instead seemed close to welcoming the implosion as a national victory against “the dictators in Brussels” http://archive.wikiwix.com/opendemocracy/?url=http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=742223%26vId=&title=%u201Cthe%20dictatorsin%20Brussels%u201D” rel=”nofollow”>↑  . Brussels in turn responded   by blaming Wilders for ‘lying’ and ‘only caring about election results’ – a sentiment largely shared by both representatives of the Christian Democrats (CDA) and the Economic Liberals (VVD). One wonders however what the coalition partners were expecting when they originally formed their dubious pact with the party that relentlessly acts upon and praises itself for its populism.

Blaming populism

It is uncertain if we will ever fully understand why Wilders decided either to take part in or, after seven weeks, to walk out of the budget talks. Some argue that the PVV is internally fragmented after a long row of incidents that have come along to challenge its integrity. Dissident members http://archive.wikiwix.com/opendemocracy/?url=http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/dutch-news/brinkman-dissent-brewing-in-freedom-party_220191.html&title=Dissidentmembers” rel=”nofollow”>↑  have been critical of the lack of democracy within the Party’s ranks and only a few days ago a local branch of the PVV (Limburg) was held responsible for the collapse of the alliance http://archive.wikiwix.com/opendemocracy/?url=http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/04/limburg_coalition_collapses_ov.php&title=collapse%20of%20thealliance” rel=”nofollow”>↑  in a provincial government (in Limburg). It is doubtful that the PVV will play an influential role in the formation of a new coalition after the new elections held probably later this year. Its former rightwing partners are said to have finally lost confidence in the antagonistic agenda of Wilders and other parties are unlikely ever to want to cooperate with the PVV. Political isolation will however not make the Party disappear.

The latest polls   (held the day after the collapse) show that Wilders’ anti-EU rhetoric and his hypocritical last-minute walkout from the budget negotiations did not have a negative effect on support for his Party, which in fact consolidated to around 13 to 14 percent of total votes. The position of the PVV is difficult to challenge given its antagonistic nature which feeds on an anti-immigrant sentiment, a radical EU scepticism and (when it has the time) Islamophobia. It is most successful in the position of political isolation from which it antagonistically and reactively bolsters strength and popular support. It will take some radical implosion of the party from within to bring about its demise. Meanwhile, what it has achieved with these abrupt coalition talks is the indefinite postponement of a neo-liberal austerity programme.

Neo-liberal scaremongering and the need for political alternatives

The failure of the talks has led to a series of doom scenarios. The former Parliamentary Leader of the VVD, Jozias Van Aartsen, warned last Sunday that the Netherlands can now officially be categorised as one of Europe’s problem countries – a sentiment shared and confirmed by academic economists of several Dutch universities who have warned that the Netherlands will soon join France and Austria in losing their AAA status.

Fitch Ratings in fact have already considered downgrading the Dutch credit status http://archive.wikiwix.com/opendemocracy/?url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9212241/Fitch-doubts-Dutch-AAA-as-property-slump-reaches-coma.html&title=downgrading%20theDutch%20credit%20status” rel=”nofollow”>↑ which could significantly increase the interest rate and lead to higher yields on government bonds. The President of the Dutch Central Bank warned: “If we would lose our AAA rating, it could lead to 100 basis points extra interest rate on our government debt and to 4 billion euros [sic] of extra interest costs annually”.Citibank has announced that it has removed the country from its ‘elite club’ (leaving only Germany as a true AAA ‘core country’ in the EU). The financial situation of the Netherlands possibly could further deteriorate if the EU decides to pursue its threat to place sanctions on the country for not reaching its 3 percent budget deficit margin. Having posed as among the harshest supporters of austerity in their attitude to problems in Greece, Italy and Spain, things indeed look very different now for the Netherlands. The fact that the country is (or was) one of the four remaining AAA-rated countries in the euro-zone and a founding member of the EU could also have significant ripple effects on the political and financial stability of an already crippled neo-liberal European Union project. More austerity would however automatically translate into greater support for national populism.

However, the tension between the urgency to soothe the financial markets and the resistance to radical austerity measures characterises and lays bare the contradiction inherent in the principles of (neo) liberal democracy which the EU continues to spoon-feed to its member states. Wilders and his party seem to have come to understand that a popular and reactionary negative is required to prevent the downward spiral of their popularity which has been largely the result of their participation in a neo-liberal austerity programme. The eventual consequence of the budget talks collapse was consequentially presented as a reactionary struggle between the nation and an evil European Union which threatened to dictate and overrule the sovereignty of the Dutch state. Similarities with the equally popular French far-right politician, Marine Le Pen, can be easily drawn. ‘No against the EU, the Euro and of course no against Islam’. The more the effects of neo-liberalism become tangible, the greater the risk of a nationalist backlash. Nationalist populism feeds on the discontent and social-economic inequalities which neo-liberalism all too gladly offers it.

The political middle-ground seems more and more difficult to trot and a more progressive alternative which seriously challenges the fundamentals of economic liberalism and its resultant right-wing populism becomes increasingly urgent. The growing popularity of socialist alternatives in France   and the Netherlands   are hopeful (yet admittedly dim) signs that an alternative is in the making. Events such as the collapse of budget negotiations and the upcoming elections provide opportunities for the conceptualization and pursuit of viable answers to the violence done by nationalist antagonisms, imposed through neo-liberal austerity programmes.

Sheriff Joe releasing more on Obama
‘I have no intention of resigning’


Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio finds himself under increasing attack as he prepares to release new findings in his investigation of President Obama’s eligibility for the state’s 2012 election ballot.

“I have no intention of resigning,” said Arpaio, who is running for his sixth term as sheriff of Maricopa County. “They forget I have a four-decades long career in federal law enforcement that includes having been a special agent for the FBI and having worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency in the United States, as well as in Argentina, Turkey and Mexico.”

WND previously reported the intensity of attacks on Arpaio at both a state and national level.

Already, Arpaio has announced that his volunteer law enforcement investigation has found probable cause that Obama’s long-form birth certificate and his Selective Service registration form are forgeries. Arpaio and his team made the announcement at a March 1 press conference.

A second press conference is expected in the next few weeks to announce more findings Arpaio suggests will be explosive.

Support Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s continuing investigation of Obama’s fraudulent birth certificate. He may represent our last chance to see justice done. 

Last week, Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts wrote a piece in which she reminded Arpaio of his pledge 20 years ago when he first ran as a candidate for Maricopa County sheriff to serve only one term and turn the office into an appointed post. Arpaio has said that his campaign pledge was a mistake, because if he reported to a political official, he would have been fired 20 years ago and not had the liberty to “do what I felt was right for the people that I serve.”

WND has previously reported that political operative Randy Parraz, a self-described “organizer,” has been running a determined campaign to oust Arpaio from office.

Parraz, together with a small group of activists operating under Parraz’s “newly formed organization, Citizens for a Better Arizona, have unsuccessfully tried to disrupt meetings of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to demand the oversight group vote to request Arpaio’s resignation.

Arpaio, an elected sheriff, cannot be removed from office by a vote of the county board.

But the ineffectiveness of Parraz’s own political actions against Arpaio has not stopped him from expressing frustration that the Obama administration is taking so long to press Arpaio in federal court.

“We’re not sitting back waiting on the federal government on this,” Parraz recently told TPM. “They move at a pace that’s not conductive to the situation.”

Meanwhile, establishment media have portrayed Arpaio as politically isolated and likely to face federal criminal and civil charges by the Justice Department in Federal District Court.

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At the same time, media have downplayed Democratic Party scandals such as Fast and Furious, resignations from the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office and the possibility the U.S. Supreme Court could uphold the constitutionality of the Arizona legislature’s bill to ensure its citizens are protected from civil and criminal offenses caused by illegal immigrants the federal government is unwilling to police.

A massive corruption scandal in Maricopa County

As WND reported, new impetus was given to the anti-Arpaio campaign by the recent disbarment of Maricopa County attorney Andrew Thomas in a complicated corruption case.

Establishment media have largely ignored, however, the fact that Thomas and Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Aubuchon were disbarred for filing criminal charges against Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe and two members of the Board of Supervisors, which oversees Arpaio’s office, Mary Rose Wilcox and Don Stapley. Both are determined Arpaio foes.

The corruption charges against Wilcox and Stapley were never adjudicated after a Pima County judge dismissed the case due to prosecutorial misconduct.

Still, the evidence of government corruption in Maricopa County abounds.

WND reported that as many as 11 Maricopa County employees have been terminated in recent months for allegedly accepting bribes in a court tower construction scandal – one of the Thomas investigations that was terminated by the counter-attack on Thomas that resulted in the disbarment decision.

Still, media have not noted that a grand jury brought more than 100 charges against Stapley for a wide variety of alleged criminal activity, including failing to file financial disclosures to accepting expensive gifts such as three-week Hawaiian vacations and ski trips for him and his family.

Now, Arpaio’s opponents in Arizona are pressing for a federal criminal grand jury to press charges against him for his involvement with Thomas in trying to root out corruption in Maricopa County.

Even if no criminal trial results, Arpaio’s opponents hope to have him under federal criminal indictment at the same time the U.S. Department of Justice presses a civil case against him in the federal courts, alleging he has systematically implemented a policy of violating the federal civil rights of Hispanics.

Fast and Furious

Dennis Burke

In July 2011, Dennis Burke, a prominent Democratic Party operative in Arizona, resigned as U.S. Attorney, just as the House Oversight Committee and an internal Justice Department internal investigation began focusing on the role Arizona played in Fast and Furious.

Before taking the job of U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Burke had served as chief of staff to Janet Napolitano when she was the governor of Arizona. He then was a senior advisor to Napolitano when she moved to Washington to become Homeland Security Secretary in 2009 under the in-coming Obama administration.

When Burke resigned, Politico reported any aspirations he might have to follow Napolitano’s footsteps as a tough-on-crime Democrat by becoming Arizona attorney general and then running for governor were dashed.

At the time he resigned, Burke was considered a possible Democratic Party candidate for the seat being vacated by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., or as a candidate for governor in 2014.

The next resignation was by Patrick J. Cunningham, the head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, who had announced he would take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify before Congress regarding the Department of Justice’s scandalous gun-running operation “Fast and Furious.”

In Arizona, Cunningham was widely regarded as Burke’s “No. 1 Guy,” as noted by reporter David Codrea of the Gun Rights Examiner.

Consistently, Arizona’s two Republican senators, Kyl and John McCain, have refused to come to Arpaio’s defense.

In March, WND reported Kyle and McCain had given their approval to the Obama administration nomination as U.S. attorney in Arizona of John Leonardo, a former Arizona judge with a history of judicial rulings adverse to Arpaio.

Leonardo, who retired last month as Pima County Superior Court judge, threw out an indictment in 2010 against Maricopa County Supervisor Wilcox, a Democrat and an outspoken critic of Arpaio.

In that case, State of Arizona v. Mary Rose Wilcox, Leonardo asserted that Arpaio had “misused the power of his office to target members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for criminal investigations.”

Support Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s continuing investigation of Obama’s fraudulent birth certificate. He may represent our last chance to see justice done. 

Radical outside agitator plots against Arpaio

Parraz, born in California in 1967, has an elite education, having received his B.A. degree from the University of California Berkeley, a Masters from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a Juris Doctorate from the University of California Berkeley.

In 1994, while yet a graduate student at the Kennedy School, Parraz was recruited to work as a community organizer in Dallas, Texas, by the Industrial Areas Foundation, or IAF, a Saul Alinsky-oriented organization based in Chicago.

According to the National Latino Congress website, it was in Dallas, working for the IAF, that “Parraz learned the fundamentals of the Saul Alinsky model of church-based community organizing.”

In 2002, the national AFL-CIO transplanted Parraz into Arizona to serve as the union’s Arizona state director, a position he held until 2004.

Parraz left the AFL-CIO to accept a two-year fellowship with Echoing Green, a global organization promoting “social entrepreneurs.”

During this two-year fellowship, Parraz and his associate, Scott Sherman, pursued their idea of establishing a “Transformative Action Institute” by presenting their model for progressive social change to what the National Latino Congress estimated was more than 1,000 students. They offered classes at UC Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, New York University, UCLA, UC Irvine, and California State University Fullerton.

In 2007, Parraz returned to Arizona to work as a “residential organizer” for the Laborer’s International union of North America, better known as LiUNA, where by 2009, he received total compensation in excess of $125,000 a year, according to the organization’s official records.

Senater Pearce

After the Arizona legislature passed SB 1070, widely regarded as the toughest state law passed at that time to oppose illegal immigration, Parraz founded the East Valley Patriots for American Values, the EVPAV, to focus on the recall of Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce, a long-time Republican state senator and the legislator considered the architect of SB 1070.

Parraz evolved the EVPAV into the Citizens for a Better Arizona, a 501(c)4 organization that dedicated its efforts to the Pearce recall, despite the tax-favored status of the organization requiring it to pursue a “nonpartisan” purpose.

In a recall election held Nov. 4, 2011, in which Democrats were allowed to vote, Pearce lost to his only remaining opponent – Republican challenger Jerry Lewis, a political moderate but, like Pearce, a Mormon.

This week Arizona is prepared to go before the U.S. Supreme Court to defend the constitutionality of SB 1070.

The Parraz-engineered defeat of Pearce has been portrayed in establishment media as evidence that Arpaio is being isolated as his “world crumbles” and “his closest allies have fallen.”

4:05 am - April 27, 2012 — Updated: 4:05 am - April 27, 2012
 Lake Dardanelle State Park will host the Aquatic Conservation Experience Camp for children 10 to 13 May 11-12.

Throughout the two days, participants will develop an understanding and appreciation for the unique aquatic environment at Lake Dardanelle through outdoor adventure and activities.

Friday, May 11, events will begin at 5 p.m. and introduce ACE campers to the inner workings of the park aquariums through a behind-the-scenes tour. Many activities will be included to explore the diverse aquatic environment at Lake Dardanelle and ways to conserve the resource. After dinner and activities, participants will retire to the visitor center to “sleep with the fish.”

Saturday, May 12, will begin with kayaking. Fun, games, a unique aquatic obstacle course and a slide show and awards ceremony at 2 p.m. also are planned.

The cost is $65 per camper and includes meals and activities. Space is limited. Call (479) 967-5516 or visit www.ArkansasStateParks.com or www.AdventureStateParks.com for information.

Farms Too Tough for the Kids

  • “I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision…I enjoyed the life to the full.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

The plan to break down the American can-do spirit and replace it with the notion we can only achieve as a collective overseen by the government is focusing more and more on the youth of America. When I was growing up, I used to hate our visits to Alabama for so many reasons but mostly because it was a harder life. My grandparents owned a nice-sized farm that had cows, chickens, pigs a couple of horses and an array of crops. They didn’t have running water or central air and heat. Plus, you had to work. If you think the mule or horse does all the work with hand plows, you make the same mistake I made.

Man, holding that thing up and keeping it straight and in the ground is a physical challenge. I was squeamish when it came to milking cows and feeding slop to hogs. And I dreaded nothing more than having to use the outhouse. In short, it was a tough trip except for all the fun of riding the horse, picking fresh fruit from trees, and running free in the fresh open air. The older I got the more I appreciated that farm and my grandparents. They survived without government help. They lived off the land and raised a large family. I marvel at how they pulled that off in a time and place that offered brutal realities.

There is something spiritual about succeeding against all the odds because you gave it all you had day in and day out.

These days there is an attempt to kill off that kind of euphoria and replace it with a cerebral sense of accomplishment that can only be measured in the context of the collective or the collective good. You don’t score the touchdown, the team does, and while it sounds great in the post game interview, the fact is the person that scores the winning touchdown reaches a higher plain of joy than his teammates. Of course, it’s even deeper than that. In a strange way, we are making it so there is no joy in the winning touchdown from the player to the team to the fans.

To accomplish this innate desire to win, American traditions of can-do must be stamped out as early as possible. It means the creation of spiritual and economic eunuchs.

Can’t Keep Them Down on the Farm

The Department of Labor is antithetical to its own title and will make things worse by making sure children under the age of 18 can no longer work “in storing, marketing transportation of farm product raw materials.” The rules don’t just stop at prohibiting 18 year olds from working in silos, grain storage bins or manure pits, they stop younger kids from participating in farm life. Moreover, the new rules would eliminate 4-H and other agricultural education programs and replace them with government run programs. Heck, children will not be able to do chores or use wheelbarrows, flashlights, or screwdrivers.

The rules are an obvious power grab in the face of America’s heartland tradition and actual trends. Kids are getting physically hurt less on the farm these days. According to statistics from the National Agriculture Statistics Service, youth injuries decreased from 13.5 per 1,000 farms in 2001 to 7.2 per 1,000 farms in 2009. I understand you can’t keep them down on the farm, but these new rules impact 50,000 kids and the fabric of the American ethic. The idea that this administration would continue to lure young voters by offering the kind comfort that seems conscientious isn’t surprising.

Keeping people on welfare, food stamps, housing allowance, free cell phones, and those crazy checks is viewed as being kind but at some point it’s cruel. There is an old saying about teaching a man to fish, which can be applied to teaching a boy to farm. Giving people all the basics and them some makes them eunuchs and not introducing hard work to children makes them lazy, unprepared, and dependent. Maybe that’s the game plan after all?

Wind credit stalls despite support
By: Alex Guillen
April 24, 2012 08:18 PM EDT
Congress is taking the wind out of turbine sales.

And that’s despite support from President Barack Obama, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a substantial roster of House Republicans who see extending the wind tax credit as an electoral imperative.

Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) is so frustrated he’s thought about trying to go over House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp’s head to get legislation moving.

The credit doesn’t expire until the end of this year, but turbine makers are already feeling pain because developers can’t afford to lay bets that Congress will sort it out later.

The bottom line: It takes a long time to get projects up and running, and, amid tight budgets, subsidy scandals and election-year politics, there’s no guarantee that this tax break will catch a tailwind in time to avoid a crippling interruption in production.

On one level, the wind credit is just another casualty of the ongoing tussle between conservative budget hawks who want to rein in government spending and business-minded Republicans who support subsidizing industrial innovation. But what makes this tax break unusual is the damage that’s already being done — and the possibility that inaction could devastate an industry that Congress has propped up for two decades.

“It’s a horrible way to do business,” Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) said. “But that’s the way the place works.”

Months of pushing, lobbying and counting votes has led nowhere, even though the credit is backed by Democrats and a long list of Republicans, including moderates such as Rep. Charlie Bass of New Hampshire and wind-state conservatives such as Rep. Steve King of Iowa and Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.

The production tax credit is not permanent and must be renewed periodically, unlike some provisions for the oil and gas industry. It was created in 1992 to provide incentives for the wind industry, which at the time was relatively tiny, but within the last decade, wind power has picked up speed at an almost exponential rate.

The U.S. had about 1.4 gigawatts of wind energy in 1997, the first year for which the American Wind Energy Association has records. That number has since ballooned to about 47 gigawatts.

It now costs the government more than $1 billion a year to hand out 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of wind power — and enough is enough, says Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.).

“We’ve been subsidizing some of these industries with tax credits for multiple decades, and every time they get to the end of the line, they get within a year, they say, ‘If you just give me’ — fill in the blank — ‘one more year, four more years, that’s all I want. Just a little more time,’” said Pompeo, who is leading a charge against the PTC and other energy subsidies.

“What history would demonstrate is they would continue to come back to the federal trough and ask for more time yet again at the end,” he added.

On the other hand, if the credit runs out on schedule, it would crater new installations and — even more important in a political atmosphere where all policy is measured in terms of employment — slice the industry’s roughly 75,000 jobs in half, according to trade group projections.

It has happened before: The PTC has expired three times since 1992, most recently in 2004, and was revived each time by Congress. 2004 saw a 77 percent drop in new installed wind power.

Elizabeth Salerno, AWEA’s data guru, says no plans exist for new wind projects in 2013.

Projects could be announced later, she said, but the time it takes to construct the massive turbines means that it’s essentially now or never — as indicated by an AWEA chart that shows the time it takes to construct and deliver the massive turbines so they can be installed by Dec. 31.

“The window of when the turbine order needs to be placed in order for it to get delivered on time for a 2013 completion is closing,” Salerno said. “If you get a PTC extension in December, the damage is done.”

While that means a drop-off in new wind power, many on the Hill are even more concerned with another implication: layoffs.

“What’s happening right now, when I meet with the PTC people, the wind people, they are already ratcheting down,” said Reichert, who is leading a House effort to save the credit. “They’ve used all their money, they’ve built all the things they can build, and now they’re starting to lay people off, preparing for no money for the rest of the year.”

For example, Iberdrola Renewables laid off 25 people from its Portland, Oregon, office in January, pinning the layoffs in part on not knowing whether the tax credit will be extended.

Turbine manufacturer Vestas, the second-largest turbine producer in the U.S., said earlier this year it will decide by the fourth quarter whether to lay off 1,600 U.S. workers unless the PTC is extended.

“While the industry waits on Congress to act, it’s damaging to the economy, it’s damaging to people who earn a living in wind, and it makes it less likely that states across the country who have renewable energy standards like mine can meet those standards over time,” Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran said.

Nationally, wind provides about 2.9 percent of grid electricity. In Moran’s home state, however, wind makes up 8.3 percent, and in South Dakota wind provided 22.3 percent of electricity last year, according to the AWEA’s 2011 annual market report.

Waiting for a tax extenders package, when the measure’s cost might seem more manageable amid other tax provisions, is also a gamble. Congress often takes up expiring provisions at the end of each year, but it failed to do so in 2011 while lawmakers engaged in partisan bickering over the payroll tax cut and Keystone XL pipeline.

Whether Congress takes up such issues later this year is anyone’s guess, particularly after an election that could see one chamber’s control switch parties.

“It should have been done months ago,” Moran said. “It’s better to do it now than it would be to do it in December. It’s better to do it in December than not to do it.”

Efforts to attach the credit to other potential vehicles — the initial payroll tax cut extension and transportation packages, for example — have fallen flat, blocked by Republicans or crowded out by other issues.

Even with various Republicans on board with extending the PTC, some Democrats still point their fingers squarely at GOP dogma.

“There is, within Republican ranks, hostility toward federal assistance for renewables,” said Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee. “They think we’re picking winners and losers. Trouble is if we don’t help, all of the hardware is going to come from China: solar, wind turbines.”

“I’m hopeful, but I have a question in my mind because they’ve opposed renewable fuels,” said Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee. “It should be different. But you never know what they’re thinking.”

Pompeo says the industry will do fine on its own.

“The program has been around an awfully long time and it’s time to let that industry stand on its own two feet. And I’m confident that they’ll do it,” he said. “There’s great, creative engineers and innovators in the alternative energy field, and I’m confident they’ll be successful.”

Reichert — a Republican who sometimes breaks with his party on energy issues, including voting for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in 2009 — said he too has found resistance from the right.

“I do get some pushback from the far, far right, who think that [wind is] only 1 percent of our total energy,” he said. “But as Steve [King] was saying, it’s 20 percent of the energy in his state, so there’s potential there.”

Reichert, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, has been working with Camp to find a vehicle for the PTC extension before the end of the year. That would be an exception to the rule that tax issues are typically handled all at once, he acknowledged.

“This is one that I think there’s an emergent need to handle now,” Reichert said. “So that’s been our mantra and we’re going to continue to push that.”

As for approaching leadership directly, Reichert said he’s not ready to make that move — though he didn’t rule it out.

“I’m not going to go over Camp’s head quite yet,” he said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:32 a.m. on April 24, 2012.

© 2012 POLITICO LLC

What is the Senate Thinking?

 

April 29 marks the third year in which the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget — a staggering dereliction of duty, particularly given the country’s near-$16 trillion debt. But that’s not the Senate’s only blockbuster failure under the leadership of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). From spending to jobs to energy policy, the Senate has totally dropped the ball, leaving one to wonder, “What’s the Senate thinking?”

But it’s not just a matter of a simple failure or benign neglect, like forgetting to take out the trash. The way some in the Senate are behaving is equivalent to buying a dog but then deliberately choosing not to feed it. These men and women sought elective office, won a seat in the Senate and now have the power to take action to confront America’s problems. But under the leadership of Majority Leader Reid, they’re making the choice not to do so.

When it comes to the Senate’s failure to pass a budget, the facts are bleak. From 2012 to 2022, federal spending per household is projected to rise to $34,602 — a 15 percent increase. Without entitlement reform, that spending is swelling to a crippling level, exceeding 40 percent of the economy by 2050. Despite all this, the Senate is sitting on its hands and not pursuing the significant reforms that are necessary — and opting not to pass a budget for three years is emblematic of their reckless inaction.

Last week, in fact, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), whose primary responsibility is to marshal bipartisan support of a budget resolution, declined to take on the task, remarking that it would be too difficult in an election year. Last year was not an election year, and they didn’t bother to do it then, either.

Meanwhile, as America continues to wrestle with staggering unemployment and weak job creation, Senate Democrats yesterday blocked an effort to help workers, employers and the U.S. economy.

Republican lawmakers moved to halt the National Labor Relation Board’s (NLRB) latest effort to give unions the upper hand in organizing work places. Earlier this year, the NLRB enacted a rule that speeds up union elections, making it easier for unions to grow their ranks by unionizing more workplaces while depriving workers of a truly informed choice in the matter.

Normally when unions try to organize workers in a business, they plan their efforts before they request an election. Once the employer receives an election request, they have a limited amount of time to inform their workers of why unionization might not be right for them. Under the NLRB’s new rule, employers will have even less time to make their case, all to the detriment of their employees. Heritage’s James Sherk explainsthe rest of the story that the workers won’t hear:

Employers, not union organizers, will explain that unions often do not achieve their promised wage increases, but they always take up to 2 percent of workers’ wages in dues. Employers will also point out patterns of union corruption and clauses in union constitutions that levy stiff fines against workers who stray from union rules. Employers are free to tell workers what the union organizers do not.

Because Senate Democrats blocked the effort to put a stop to the NLRB’s rule, workers will be more likely to be pushed into unions. And make no mistake, the economic consequences won’t be good. Unions reduce profitability, meaning that unionized companies invest less and create fewer new jobs than nonunion companies. Overall, that’s bad news for workers, companies and the U.S. economy.

Perhaps the ultimate example of what the Senate is all about emerged yesterday when Majority Leader Reid said he would not help in the House Republicans’ effort to force President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which could bring up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the United States (as well as jobs, economic growth and tax revenue). “Personally I think Keystone is a program that we’re not going — that I am not going to help in any way I can,” Reid said. “The president feels that way. I do, too.”

Under Reid’s leadership, that’s the name of the game in the U.S. Senate. Regardless of the country’s exploding debt, soaring energy prices or 12.7 million unemployed workers, Reid and his like-minded colleagues are flat out refusing to do the job they were hired to do, all in accord with the president’s agenda. So if you’re wondering what the Senate’s thinking, now you know. Unfortunately, the country’s best interests aren’t what they have in mind.

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Islamic Apartheid Conference Under Attack

Posted By Robert Spencer On April 20, 2012 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 42 Comments

 

Leftist and Islamic supremacist thugs are planning to protest the Islamic Apartheid Conference that the David Horowitz Freedom Center is sponsoring at Temple University Monday. Hosted by Students for Intellectual Freedom, the Conference will feature Pamela Geller, Nonie Darwish, Simon Deng and me. In reporting on the coming protests, however, thePhiladelphia City Paper noted only that “two of America’s most high-profile anti-Muslim bigots” will be speaking – Geller and me – and doesn’t mention Darwish or Deng even once. The omission was telling, revealing the hypocrisy of the protests as a whole.

Nonie Darwish is an ex-Muslim who grew up learning hatred for Infidels in a Muslim school in Gaza. Simon Deng is a South Sudanese Christian who was held as a slave by Muslim captors for several years. Both of them know Islamic apartheid firsthand, and have been its victims. The Leftists at the City Paper therefore could do nothing but omit them from their story attacking the Conference, for to include them would in itself have been to reveal the reality of what they’re denying: Islamic apartheid.

The City Paper’s story focuses on Pamela Geller, retailing hard-Left talking points against her consisting entirely of distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsehoods about things she has said and positions she has taken. Its objection to the Conference appears to be that Geller, and apparently therefore also the Conference as a whole, is “anti-Muslim.”

The irony is thick: organizing the protests are Occupy Temple, the International Socialist Organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and other hard-Left community and student organizations, none of which have ever raised the slightest objection to Temple’s Israeli Apartheid Week. Nor would any of them characterize the very idea of Israeli Apartheid Week as anti-Semitic, although anti-Semitism is rife at such events (and our event will not actually be “anti-Muslim” at all). The chief difference, however, between Israeli Apartheid Week and our Islamic Apartheid Conference is simply that there really is Islamic apartheid, but there is no Israeli apartheid.

In Israel, Arab citizens are represented in Knesset and enjoy full legal equality. The very idea of “Israeli Apartheid”  is an attempt to stigmatize, and ultimately destroy, Israel’s efforts to defend itself. Islamic Apartheid, however, is a very different matter. Is it “anti-Muslim” to point out that Islamic law mandates institutionalized discrimination against women? Muslim women are the first victims of Islamic law’s denial of basic rights for women; is it “anti-Muslim” to speak out for them and say that as human beings they deserve better?

Women are greatly burdened in many Muslim countries. Across the Islamic world, they endure restrictions on their movements, their marital options, their professional opportunities, and more. In Kuwait and elsewhere, women cannot vote or hold office. According to Amnesty International, in Saudi Arabia “women…who walk unaccompanied, or are in the company of a man who is neither their husband nor a close relative, are at risk of arrest on suspicion of prostitution or other ‘moral’ offences.”

The oppression of women in Muslim lands is not an accident. The proposition that, as the Qur’an says, “men have a status above women” (2:228) is all-pervasive in the Islamic world. Aisha, the most beloved of the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s many wives, admonished women in no uncertain terms to submit: “O womenfolk, if you knew the rights that your husbands have over you, every one of you would wipe the dust from her husband’s feet with her face.”

The oppression of women sanctioned by the teachings of Islam, and often by its holy book, manifests itself in innumerable ways. Among its most notorious are female genital mutilation, which an Islamic legal manual approved by Cairo’s prestigious al-Azhar University states is required “for both men and women.” Then there is wife-beating, sanctioned by nothing less than the Qur’an itself, which tells men to “beat” women from whom they “fear disobedience” (4:34). The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. Dominating their women by violence is a prerogative Muslim men cling to tenaciously. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.

There is much more, including the phenomenon of honor killing. It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring” (‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

Nor are women the only victims of Islamic apartheid: gays suffer in Muslim countries as well. The Iranian government has put to death an estimated 4,000 homosexuals since 1980. According to Scott Long, director of the Human Rights Watch Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program, Iranians who are suspected of being gay commonly face torture. Hossein Alizadeh of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission said Iran gays live with “constant fear of execution and persecution and also social stigma associated with homosexuality.”

This is true not only in Iran, but in all too many areas of the Islamic world. The Qur’an characterizes those who “practice your lusts on men in preference to women” as “transgressing beyond bounds” (7:81). A hadith pronounces “the curse of Allah” upon those who engage in homosexual activity. A contemporary Muslim writer, Shaykh Abdul-Azeez Al-Fawzaan, called homosexuality “one of the most sinful acts known to humankind” and said that it was “evidence of perverted instincts, total collapse of shame and honor, and extreme filthiness of character and soul.”

Legal views on punishment vary. Among the Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence (madhahib), the Hanafi school mandates a severe beating for the first offense, and the death penalty for a repeat offender. The Shafi’i school calls for 100 lashes for an unmarried homosexual, death by stoning for a married one. The Hanbali school requires stoning across the board. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, directed his followers to “kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him” (‘Umdat al-Salik, p17.3).

In many areas these words are still heeded. The Islamic Penal Law Against Homosexuals in Iran calls for the death penalty for sodomy and one hundred lashes for lesbianism for the first three offenses, with death for the fourth offense. Homosexuality is a capital offense not only in Iran, but also in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania. In Malaysia, it can draw a twenty-year prison sentence, and is illegal also in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan, among others.

In light of all this and much more, it is ironic in the extreme that Leftist groups that profess a concern for “justice” would be trying to impede our Islamic Apartheid Conference. In doing so, they are running interference for a radically oppressive and intolerant ideology – as has been the Left’s modus operandi for decades.

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Posted By Joseph Puder On April 23, 2012 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | German Nobel Laureate Gunther Grass, a former Waffen S.S. soldier in Hitler’s army, published a poem earlier this month which criticized Israel for “aggressive warmongeringagainst Iran” and identified the Jewish State as a “threat to world peace…”

Yom Ha’Shoah/Holocaust Memorial Day is a widely recognized day of commemoration throughout Europe. Holocaust memorials and museums abound; in Germany and other countries that willingly cooperated with Nazi Germany in the murder of the Jews.  Yet, throughout Western and Northern Europe today, Jews feel like an endangered species.  Residual anti-Semitism, largely borne of envy and age old prejudices shared at many “kitchen tables” is still prevalent in today’s Europe.  This, coupled with the influx of Muslims who have been taught that the Jews are the “enemies of Allah,” gives renewed vigor and legitimization to anti-Semitism.

During the pre-Holocaust age, Jews in Europe were characterized as Communists and Capitalists, misers and free-spenders.  Jews were targeted as an ethno-religious group as well as individuals.  In the godless Europe where Christianity is largely dead, it is politically incorrect to target individual Jews or Judaism however, it has become more acceptable to target the Jewish State for hate.  And, since Jews are automatically identified with Israel they are once again a target for hate and violence.  Last month saw the murder of a rabbi and three young children in Toulouse, France and, while Europe was “shocked,” the appeasement of the Arab-Muslim world continues as well as Israel bashing by the European media, academia, and most governments of the EU.

The trouble with the much of the “civilized” world is that it loves “dead Jews.”  “Cultured” Europeans murdered six-million Jewish people, including 1.5 million children, during the Holocaust, whose only crime was to be born to Jewish parents.  This same “cultured” world viciously attacks today’s proud living Jews and supports those engaged in hateful de-legitimization campaigns.  The “cultured” world loves Jews as victims not as victors.

On November 2, 2003 the Israel Insider reported the results of a European Commission poll – nearly 60% of European citizens believe that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace – more so than Iran, North Korea or Afghanistan.  The report prompted Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, to comment that “These shocking results defy logic and [are] a racist flight of fancy that only shows that anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within European society,”

For several decades following Israel’s rebirth, many wanted to forget the dead Jews of the Holocaust, looking upon them as those who went like “sheep to the slaughter.” The Sabras (native born Israelis) were ashamed of the perceived weakness of their kinsmen.  Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first Prime Minister, along with his generation of Labor Zionists, sought to create a new man in the old homeland.

In Israel’s patriotic decades of the 1940s, 1950s, and up to 1967, little was said or taught about the Holocaust. In homes or in the youth movements, this most tragic event in Jewish history was barely discussed.  Holocaust survivors were reluctant to tell their stories, nor were they encourage d to do so.  A number of events led to the incorporation of the European Shoah into Israel’s living history.  First of these was the Eichmann Trial in 1961. The testimonies revealed to the young Israelis the incredible machinations of the Nazis, and the helplessness of the Jews.  Hated and persecuted by their gentile neighbors, without weapons or means to defend themselves the public learned that the Jews of Europe marched to their death with dignity, in spite of the brutality of the Nazi murderers and their helpers.

In 1965 the Knesset debated whether or not Israel should establish diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).  Many survivors and their children protested, as did Menahem Begin and the Herut Party (he was elected Prime Minister in 1977).  Earlier in the 1950’s Begin and the Herut party had protested against taking reparations from Germany.  Begin’s fiery speeches declared that “Our honor and the honor of our dead brothers and sisters will not be bought off by the murderer’s money.”

The great awakening of the Israeli public and, parenthetically, sympathy with the Holocaust victims and survivors occurred in the aftermath of the July 4, 1976 rescue mission of Israeli hostages at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport. As the public learned of the involvement of German terrorists and that their guns were used to separate Jew from gentile, and of Jewish parents seeking to protect their children, the scenes evoked identification with those men and women who marched to their death in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, and scores of other death camps in Poland and Germany, as well as Ukrainian villages where German murder squads hauled Jews from their home and marched them to a forest to dig ditches, then shot and buried them in mass graves.

So why do the Europeans, the likes of Gunther Grass hate the live Jews of Israel? Robin Shepard, the British born author of A State Beyond the Palesuggested in Ed West’s review in The Telegraph (June 14, 2010) that Europe should be berated for “dishonoring the memory of the Holocaust, for making common cause with tyranny, for lacking a moral compass, for hypocrisy, wickedness and appeasement. It is accused of succumbing to an obsession, of giving in to irrationalism and anti-intellectualism, of hatred, scorn and contempt.”

Europeans see Israel as the aggressor, and view its treatment of Palestinians as tantamount to genocide, and claim it is a “racist” state akin to apartheid South Africa, with no right to exist.

Shepard argues that Israel has the legal right to exist in accordance with the British Mandate, as agreed upon under the League of Nations, as well as UN Resolution 181, which offered both parties a two-state solution in 1947.  The Palestinian-Arabs rejected the offer and attacked the Jewish state along with the Arab armies of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

The “racist” argument is based on the fact that Israel is a home to the Jewish people. But, Shepard argues: “Just as France has a right to exist as a state for French people, China for Chinese people, Egypt for Egyptian people and so on.” In fact: “Just as dozens of states define themselves as Christian or Muslim (including the 56 states of the Organization of Islamic Conference), so Israel has a right to define itself as Jewish.”

Shepard maintains that anti-Zionism is largely re-shaped anti-Semitism.  And it is also the third stage of an “old European disease.”  The second stage, following religious anti-Semitism, was racial anti-Semitism (practiced by the Nazis). The present-day ideological anti-Semitism, similar to what was present during the Middle Ages, gives the Jew an option to join (instead of the church) the anti-Zionist bandwagon.

Gunther Grass can be counted on to be “remorseful” over the millions of Jews he and his Nazi comrades helped murder. But like many of his fellow Europeans, Israeli Jews who are able to defend themselves against Nazi-like Arab-Palestinian murderers, and Holocaust deniers like Iran’s Ahmadinejad (who vowed to “wipe Israel off the map”), are an anathema for this delicate German poet.

 

WND EXCLUSIVE

NOT KIDDING: OBAMA HAS NEW ‘ATROCITIES CZAR’

Look what’s on Samantha Power’s to-do list

Published: 4 hours ago

author-imageby AARON KLEINEmail Archive

Aaron Klein is WND’s senior staff reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio. His latest book is the N.Y. Times best-selling, “The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists.”More ↓
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President Obama’s National Security Adviser Samantha Power will head the new White House Atrocities Prevention Board, which is tasked with formulating a response to war crimes, crimes against humanity and mass atrocities.

Power helped to found a global military doctrine called Responsibility to Protect that was also devised by several controversial characters, including Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

Power once suggested investing “literally billions of dollars” in a “mammoth protection force” to intercede in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Notorious left-wing radical Tom Hayden recently wrote Power sees war as an “instrument for achieving her liberal, even radical, values.”

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In his speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday, Obama announced the new Atrocities Prevention Board to be chaired by Power.

The inter-agency group is to meet monthly to determine methods to use in international conflict, including sanctions and civilian as well as military response-team training.

The board’s creation was the culmination of Power’s efforts that last year defined preventing atrocities as a “core national-security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” The official White House statement marked the first time the U.S. government had made such a proclamation.

‘Mammoth protection force’ for Palestinians?

In a 2002 question and answer session with the University of California-Berkeley Institute of International Studies, Power was asked how the U.S. should respond if “one party or another” were “moving toward genocide” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

She replied: “What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in sort of helping the situation. And putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.”

Power was referring to pro-Israel groups using language some would consider anti-Semitic by implying such groups maintain inordinate power in U.S. politics.

She continued, “It may more crucially mean sacrificing – or investing, I think, more than sacrificing – literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israelis’, you know, military but actually in investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support, I think, what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old, you know, Srebrenica kind or the Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence.”

‘Uses war to achieve radical values’

Power was reportedly heavily influential in convincing Obama to launch NATO airstrikes in Libya last year, a key test of Power’s Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

In a posting on the bombings at the Rag Blog, a far-left website that is home to radical 1960s anti-war leaders, some with previous close ties to Obama, Hayden remarked on Power’s use of war.

Hayden was the principal organizer for the 1960s anti-war movement group Students for a Democratic Society, from which the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group splintered.

In an article about Power’s role in the international coalition that bombed Libya, Hayden writes that he had “a long conversation with Power in December 2003.”

“I was struck by the generational factor in her thinking,” relates Hayden. “If she had experienced Vietnam in her early 20s, I felt, she would have joined the radical left, suspicious always of American power.”

Continued Hayden: “But as an Irish internationalist witnessing death and destruction in the former Yugoslavia, she wondered how the United States could be neutral. She strongly favored the American intervention and air war that followed.”

Hayden contended that Power’s Balkans experience led her to become an advocate of American and NATO military intervention in humanitarian crises.

“She began to see war as an instrument for achieving her liberal, even radical, values,” he stated.

Many Rag Blog personalities were the founders of a coalition, Progressives for Obama, that campaigned for the president during the 2008 campaign.

One Rag Blog contributor is Mark Rudd, a founder of the Weather Underground terror group alongside Obama associate William Ayers. The Weathermen, co-founded by Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, sought the overthrow of the U.S. government.

Also writing at Rag Blog is Marxist activist Carl Davidson, a founder of the socialist New Party. WND previously reported evidence Obama was a New Party member.

Davidson, along with Obama associate Marilyn Katz, a Chicago extremist activist, organized a 2002 anti-war rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza that was widely credited with propelling Obama to the national stage.

Founded globalist military doctrine

Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”

The term “war crimes” has at times been indiscriminately used by various U.N.-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, founded by Power, had a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that original founded Responsibility to Protect.

The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “responsibility to protect” while defining its guidelines.

The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Power was Carr’s founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect.

With Power’s center on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Soros funded

The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world’s leading champion of the military doctrine.

Soros’ Open Society Institute is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect.

Several of the doctrine’s main founders sit on boards with Soros.

The committee that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Ashrawi.

Two of the global group’s advisory board members, Ramesh Thakur and Gareth Evans, are the original founders of the doctrine, with the duo even coining the term “responsibility to protect.”

Thakur and Evans sit on multiple boards with Soros.

The Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

Annan once famously stated, “State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are … instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa.”

Soros: Right to ‘penetrate nation-states’ borders’

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled “The People’s Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations.”

In the article, Soros said “true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments.”

“If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified,” Soros wrote. “By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens.

“In particular, the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict.”

More Soros ties

“Responsibility” founders Evans and Thakur served as co-chair, with Gregorian on the advisory board of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented the term “responsibility to protect.”

In his capacity as co-chairman, Evans also played a pivotal role in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to “sovereignty as responsibility.”

Evans presented Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009, United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider the principle.

Thakur is a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which is in partnership with an economic institute founded by Soros.

Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group, a “crisis management organization” for which Evans serves as president-emeritus.

The group has been petitioning for the U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, a process apparently underway with a visit last month by Brotherhood officials to the White House.

Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The crisis group has petitioned for the Algerian government to cease “excessive” military activities against al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government.

Soros’ own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations involved in the current chaos.

‘One World Order’

Doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a “global rebalancing” and “international redistribution” to create a “New World Order.”

In a piece in March 2011 in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, “Toward a new world order,” Thakur wrote, “Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution.”

He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, “Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.”

In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.

“The West’s bullying approach to developing nations won’t work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia,” he wrote.

“A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train,” he added.

Thakur continued: “Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behaviour for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations.”

Thakur contended “the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of ‘superior’ western power.”

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott

 

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