Garrett on Welfare and Crime

There were a lot of great speeches at the ACT Party conference in the weekend, but for straight up, kick 'em in the nuts, plain unvarnished truth, ACT Justice spokesman David Garrett is always hard to beat.

Here's some excepts from David's speech;

Welfare Dependency: A Principal Driver Of Crime?


ACT believes that the best decisions are made at the dinner table, not the Cabinet table...

The state does however, have one very important role - to keep people safe from criminals. This should be the number one priority for any Government...


The 2008 election rid us of a government of apologists. In 2002 Labour changed the law so that rapists and violent thugs could be released on parole after just one third of their sentence. Labour thought that if we were nice to them, they might just be nice back.

I am an ACT member because, unlike Labour, we are not a party of idiots. ACT is the natural home for those who believe in common sense law and order policies. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that tough action is the only language violent criminals understand. Over 92 percent of the population demonstrated that they knew this in 1999, when they voted for tougher sentences in a referendum. The other eight percent, however, took charge for the following nine years.

Recent statements indicate they have learnt nothing while in Opposition. On Tuesday, Labour MP David Parker spoke in Parliament about ‘the day when Graeme Burton re-enters society’. Well even Graeme Burton, someone who has killed two men and tried to murder several others, knows he will never be let back into society. That is, it seems, unless David Parker and his mates are let back into power.

It was also under Labour that Burton received his $12,000 state of the art titanium leg, courtesy of the taxpayer. Governments are supposed to keep us safe, not reward murderers. I am pleased to be in a room full of good people who realise this.

Back in 1997, the UK Labour Party had the slogan ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. There is one particular cause of crime I want to address right now, and that’s welfare support for those who are of undeserving of it. They are relatively few, but they have an impact far beyond their numbers.

Many people say poverty and crime are linked. This is both completely contrary to the evidence, and an insult to the temporarily unemployed and working poor, who make an honest living and are trying hard to climb the ladder.

There are a good number of people who have it ingrained in them that this country owes them a living. It is after all, a country that, through welfare, has provided their parents with a living and is now doing the same for their own children. Last Monday I ran into Principal Youth Court judge Andrew Becroft in Christchurch. The previous evening he had given a speech in which he spoke of a ‘lost generation’ of children, the product of a broken system.

It’s a system that has given birth to killers like Bailey Junior Kurariki, done for manslaughter at the age of 12. Despite extensive efforts to rehabilitate him, he has reoffended again and again on parole. Kurariki and his ilk grew up with two terrible role models; their parents – when they are there - and the welfare I have heard beneficiaries refer to dole day as ‘pay day’...

Judge Becroft has said that the number of violent offenders the Youth Court deals with has doubled between 1995 and 2007. By definition then, the system that has produced that result must be broken. Governments are responsible for the welfare system that’s gifted us a lost generation, high in crime and bereft of values. I’m glad this government is making a positive impact where it must – in law and order...

‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ has been a mere slogan for far too long. It’s time to face up to the fact that ‘the causes of the crime’ are not just the obvious ones identified at the National Party’s Drivers of Crime conference last year. It’s time to face up to the fact that in its present form, the welfare state has - in considerable part - facilitated the development of a ‘crime is OK’ culture among some. Three strikes is a major shift in our criminal law.

It would not have happened without us. Reforming the welfare state is a much greater challenge, but in my view one that needs to happen if we really are to tackle the causes of crime. It will certainly never happen without ACT leading the charge.

Go David. You da man!

Glenn Beck on the Rarity of Freedom

Beck in top form. He points out that freedom is an exception in history - not the norm, and is very easily lost.

In the second clip Glenn Beck points out that if freedom falls in America, it falls everywhere.

He then quotes a "guy from New Zealand" to back up his point.

Beck's guest, Judge Napolitano is great.

"Pwease Mr Pwesident"

Bit of humor. Glenn Beck and Pat Gray, Mimic the letters Obama reads each night

Fascist China Cracks Down on "Naked" Officials

From the Communist Party of China website

China keeps a watchful eye on officials with family members living abroad
The Chinese government is strengthening its effort to monitor officials whose wife and children live abroad, as such officials are prone to abuse power.

The term "naked official" has been selected as one of China's top ten buzzwords of 2009 by Chinese linguists. It refers to the officials whose family members have moved overseas, while they themselves work in the country alone usually with the other country's visa in hand.

The "naked official" phenomenon has attracted great attention in China, as there have been many cases where such officials have been found to be corrupt.

Pang Jiayu, former vice chairman of the provincial committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in northwestern Shaanxi, had his wife and son emigrate to Canada in 2002, six years before he was sentenced to prison for 12 years for bribery and dereliction of duty.

Zhou Jinhuo, former director of the Industry and Commerce Bureau of east China's Fujian Province, tried to flee overseas in June 2006 when he found himself being investigated by anti-corruption agencies. His wife had emigrated to the United States previously.

"It is reasonable to cast suspicion over the uprightness and honesty of officials who have arranged their family relatives to live abroad," said Zhong Li, a lawyer of Beijing Maxpro Law Firm.

Prof. Huang Zongliang of Peking University has recently expressed that an effective way to curb corruption was to create a personal assets reporting system for officials.

Prof. Gong Weibin with the Chinese Academy of Governance, proposed that officials whose family relatives lived overseas should report the reasons why their family members went overseas, their financial sources and places where their family members live or work, so to better protect national interests and prevent cadres from corruption.

A communique, issued by the fifth plenary session of the 17th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) this January, stipulates that officials should report their properties and investments as well as employment of their spouse and children, and authorities should particularly monitor those officials who had family members living overseas.

The Shenzhen municipal government issued a regulation in November 2009, stipulating that "naked officials" were prohibited from serving as leading officials in major Party and governmental departments.

As the "two sessions", or annual sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top advisory body, are approaching, online surveys show that corruption remains the No. 1 concern among Chinese people.

Andrew Breitbart at CPAC

Andrew Breitbart deservedly received The Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award at CPAC 2010.

Obama Caught Blatantly Lying About ACORN

Watch the body language...

Martial Law USA?

Obama File 97 Obama and the Weissbourds - Was There a Frank Marshall Davis Connection?

Obama file 96 here

Barack Obama has received the help of socialists and communists at every step of his political career - right back to his boyhood days in Hawaii, where he was mentored by the communist poet, Frank Marshall Davis.

Frank Marshall Davis, who was not a native of Hawaii, began his radical career in Chicago.

In 1985 Obama left New York for Chicago to work as a "community organizer".

There is evidence that Obama was supported in his Chicago career, by people with ties to Frank Marshall Davis.

Chicago journalist Vernon Jarrett who was the father-in-law of senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, promoted Obama's career through his newspaper columns. In the late 1940s he worked with Davis on the publicity committee of a communist controlled organization-the Citizen's Committee to Aid Packing House Workers.

Earl Durham worked with Frank Marshall Davis in the Chicago Communist Party run Abraham Lincoln School for Social Sciences.

In the mid 1990s Earl Durham and Obama helped establish the radical dominated Community Organizing and Family Issues organization.

This post looks at a third possible connection between the Frank Marshall Davis networks of the 1940s and the Obama movement of today.

Also teaching at Abraham Lincoln School for Social Sciences with Davis and Durham, was a woman named Bernice Targ.

I believe that Bernice Targ may be Bernice Targ Weissbourd, a well known Chicago activist and philanthropist. Born in 1923, she is certainly of the right age group and political inclination.

In March 2009 Bernice Targ Weissbourd attended an 85th birthday tribute dinner for retired radical physician Quentin Young.

According to the event program;

Quentin began his activist life in the 1930s, as a teen, fighting fascism with his friend Bernice Weissbourd.

Quentin Young was a member of the Young Communist League in those days, so it is very likely that Bernice Targ was also a comrade.

After WW2 Quentin Young was an activist doctor and according to the House Un-American Activities Committee, was also a member of the Bethune Club of the Communist Party USA.

In the early 1970s, many Chicago communists left the party and linked up with ex Students for a Democratic Society militants to create the Gramscian socialist, New American Movement (NAM).

Quentin Young and his wife Ruth both supported NAM. When NAM and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and NAM combined to form Democratic Socialists of America in 1982, Quentin Young joined the new organization.

Young went on to meet, treat and mentor over many years, an ambitious young Chicago lawyer/activist named Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, Bernice Targ had married a young chemist-turned lawyer named Bernard Weissbourd.

As a chemist, Bernard Weissbourd had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic Bomb and had contributed towards the discovery of Plutonium.

After the War, Bernard Weissbourd studied law and practiced as a lawyer for several years before becoming one of America's leading commercial property developers.

Despite his business success, Bernard Weissbourd was a man of the left. During the Civil Rights era he held meetings of the radical Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in his backyard.

In 1983, Bernard Weissbourd served on the transition team of Chicago's DSA/Communist Party backed Mayor Harold Washington - alongside Quentin Young.

This was the year Obama first moved to Chicago, where he states that he was inspired by the victory of Mayor Washington.

In 1992, Quentin Young, Ruth Young and Bernice Weissbourd were all members of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights - probably the most successful Communist Party USA front ever. Earl Durham was also close to the organization in the late 1980s.

By that time the Committee was dominated by Democratic Socialists of America activists and members of the Committees of Correspondence, who had split from the Communist Party in 1991.

Besides Quentin Young, several leaders of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights including Timuel Black, Saul Mendelson and Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf joined the Democratic Socialists of America and later became friends and supporters of Barack Obama.

In 2005 several of Obama's friends, colleagues and mentors including Earl Durham, Bernice Weissbourd, Quentin Young, Timuel Black, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Doctor Michael Pfegler, Alice Palmer, Abner Mikva and Leon Despres gathered together in the Chicago Area Friends of the Students Non Violent Coordinating Committee, to commemorate the Civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Clearly, Bernice Targ Weissbourd knows Earl Durham well. Did she know him at the Communist Party's Abraham Lincoln School, with Frank Marshall Davis?

The direct Weissbourd/Obama connection comes through Bernard and Bernice's son, Chicago lawyer/businessman/activist Robert M. Weissbourd.

Like his wealthy parents, Robert Weissbourd has not let his commercial success dim his "social conscience".

Robert Weissbourd founded RW Ventures, LLC in 2000. He had previously served for ten years in executive positions at Shorebank Corporation, where he worked "to strengthen Chicago neighborhoods by investing in entrepreneurs, real estate and community organizations, and to help market institutions understand the benefits of returning to the inner city".

Before joining Shorebank, Weissbourd was a partner at Hartunian, Futterman & Howard, specializing in "federal constitutional and class action litigation, school desegregation and representation of government and non-profit agencies

In 1981, Robert Weissbourd helped found the Chicago based Crossroads Fund, with socialists including Jean Hardisty and Rona Stamm.

Crossroads is a major funder of the Chicago left and has been supported by a veritable who's who of Windy City radicals from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to the current US president.

In the late 1980s, Weissbourd was a board member of the Progressive Chicago Area Network (PROCAN) , alongside several prominent Democratic Socialists of America members, including current Illinois Congressman Danny K. Davis, Roberta Lynch and Dr Ron Sable, and DSA honoree and Obama's Hyde Park next-door-neighbor, Jackie Grimshaw.


Later Grimshaw and Weissbourd were both board members of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago based Environmental group.

Over A Two-Year Period In The U.S. Senate, Barack Obama Requested $3.2 Million in earmarks for the Center For Neighborhood Technology. Executives and board members of the Center For Neighborhood Technology later contributed $20,688 to Obama's campaigns.

During the presidential campaign, Robert Weissbourd served as Chair of Obama for America's Urban and Metropolitan Policy Committee. Also involved with this committee was Harry C. Boyte, a veteran of the New American Movement and Democratic Socialists of America.

In 2009, Weissbourd also served on the Obama Transition Department of Housing and Urban Development Agency Review Team.

According to RBO, Robert Weissbourd was not only an Obama bundler committed to raising a minimum of $50,000, but he also contributed significant funds to Obama’s campaigns from his own bank account: $3600 in 2007 to Obama for America and $29,373 to the Obama Victory Fund (thereby achieving Mega-Donor Status in 2008); $5000 in 2005 to help launch Obama’s Hopefund Inc., with another $5000 in 2006 and $9113 in 2003-2004 to Obama for Illinois for Obama’s U.S. senatorial campaign

That Barack Obama worked closely with Chicago communists and socialists, is beyond doubt.

That some of these activists were directly linked to Obama's Hawaiian boyhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis is also becoming increasingly clear.

This raises several questions.

Did Obama come to Chicago, because Davis' old friends could help him?

Did Obama seek these networks out, fall into them by accident, or did he arrive with a list of introductions?

When was Obama first marked out for high office? Was it only in 2004? Was it early in his Chicago days? Even earlier in the piece?

Are the answers to these questions important to you?

Obama file 98 here

"Thank You, Soldiers"

Talk about bringing tears to my eyes.

A music teacher at Tussing Elementary in Colonial Heights, Virginia, wrote this song, "Thank You, Soldiers," and had all the third graders sing.



America does patriotism so well.

Thanks Maria.

Colonel Alan West at CPAC

Colonel Alan West at CPAC.

This guy brings tears to my eyes.

Imagine if we had even a dozen Alan Wests in the US Congress.

From the Horse's Mouth - Obama and ACORN

Glenn Beck at CPAC

MUST SEE video of Glenn Beck delivering the keynote speech at the weekends' CPAC 2010 conference, to standing ovations.













Go Glenn!

Hat Tip Frontpage News

Dump MMP

Peter Shirtcliffe and Graeme Hunt of Put MMP to the Vote, want to dump the corrupt and socialistic (my words) Mixed Member Parliament voting system.

So do I.

From their latest press release.

The government’s referendum process on the voting system risks entrenching MMP forever, according to the anti-MMP lobby, Put MMP to the Vote.

Lobby co-leaders Graeme Hunt and Peter Shirtcliffe say the process is drawn out, convoluted and far short of the robust electoral referendum promised by National in the run-up to the 2008 general election.

“If people vote to change the voting system in 2011, the second, binding referendum should be held within 12 months to give Parliament chance to introduce the new voting system in time for the 2014 general election,” Graeme Hunt said.

“The process chosen by the government, as it stands, could frustrate the will of the people to give MMP the coup de grace it rightly deserves.

“And as for the government’s promised review of MMP, whatever happens in the referendum, don’t hold your breath. The 2002 parliamentary select committee review was a farce of the first order. The review promised by Justice Minister Simon Power would be no different.”

Peter Shirtcliffe said the referendum process was muddled and designed more as a “tick-the-box” exercise by a government which for now was in love with MMP rather than a process to give New Zealanders the best electoral system...

Shirtcliffe suggested that people should be allowed to vote preferentially on the alternatives to MMP to ensure that there was a strongly favoured alternative attracting an absolute majority of support.

Hunt and Shirtcliffe said turnouts at MMP elections had been considerably lower than in first-past-the-post elections, reflecting widespread public disdain for MMP.

While the West Sleeps

From the Communist Party of Australia website

Cuba and Russia ratified last week their historic ties of friendship and cooperation during a meeting between Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parilla and his Russian Federation counterpart Sergey Lavrov at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Havana.

”I believe that all this work has enriched and strengthened our relations, converting them into a truly strategic association,” Lavrov affirmed after signing three documents with his host.

A political consultation plan between the two Foreign Ministries covering the 2010-2011 period establishes the proposal to fortify the excellent existing political links between the two governments via periodic interchanges on general, regional and multilateral issues.

The Joint Statement on the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the victory over fascism underlines its significance and contains the parties’ intention to contribute to the consolidation of the ideals of peace, greater understanding and friendship among the peoples.

The third document is the Joint Statement on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the re-establishing of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Cuba, confirming a will to celebrate that important date.

The two foreign ministers discussed aspects of the current state of links between their countries, economic relations, education, culture and tourism, among others.

Lavrov confirmed Russia’s total condemnation of the US blockade of the island and stated that “Russia and Cuba share many things, such as our adherence to common ideals, international law and legality, to the UN and to joint efforts to resolve all kinds of problems.

“We share a very strong human warmth between the Russian and Cuban peoples and this warmth gives our relations a solid foundation,” he emphasised.

Meet the Communist Party USA's "Men of Faith"

The Communist Party USA is out to recruit the religious.

Not content with workers, "people of color", youth, greenies, gays and the generally disgruntled, the reds are coming after Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims.

The Communist Party USA has re-founded its Religion Commission as it seeks to bring more churches and "people of faith" into the "progressive" fold.

In the struggles of the day, the CPUSA always seeks the broadest possible unity of the working class and all its allies. This necessarily includes seeking unity of people of varying religious and philosophical outlooks.

Religious faith and religious institutions remain powerful influences in the United States today. They cannot be ignored in building an all-people's coalition for progress, not only on account of their numerical and ideological strength but also because of the positive contributions and insights that religious traditions can bring to progressive struggle...

Our Party has, of course, long been clear about its support of freedom of conscience and of religion, both in the present and under socialism. And we welcome people of religious faith as members and leaders without discrimination. We believe, however, that it is time for the Party to move beyond simple tolerance to an active embrace of the progressive aspects of religious traditions and their incorporation in our vision both of present struggles and of a socialist and communist future

Of course, the communists don't seek to learn from the religious. They seek to "guide" them.

It must be a task of Communists who are active in faith communities to bring to people an awareness of the progressive values and potential inherent in their traditions and to lead them to turn that awareness into action that will challenge both the members and leaders of their religious communities and the larger society.

The party has a fine record of working with "Christians".

Our Party has a history of working with religious activists and communities of faith. Many of our members are people who are active in religious communities, or have connections with faith-based groups... The Rev. Arnold Johnson, a Methodist minister, joined the Communist Party while he was in jail during the Harlan County, Kentucky coal miners' strike, and he went on to be an outstanding leader of the Party. Paul Robeson never lost touch with his roots in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. His work combined an appreciation of scientific socialism with the spiritual dimensions of the Black Church. Robeson's funeral was held at the AME Church where his brother was the pastor. Among his pallbearers was Gil Green, a longtime leader of the CPUSA. Because of his public role, he was not in a position to publicly acknowledge his Party membership. But Robeson was a leader and Party supporter, and both a Communist and a Christian for all of his adult life, and in the best senses of both.

The party doesn't mind if you worship Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, just as long as you care about "social justice".

We must take a conscious and welcoming approach to recruiting people of faith into our Party. To that end we are working on a pamphlet which will introduce our Party and its program to progressive religious people, and invite them to join. The strong progressive traditions within many faith communities in the US offer a promising basis for mobilizing not just individuals but substantial communities and institutions of faith in support of social and economic justice. Therefore the Commission should also serve as a means of assisting the work of religious comrades within their respective religious bodies and organizations.

The Communist Party USA has asked two righteous party members to minister to their religious flock.

Tim Yeager is is a member of Grace Church in Oak Park, Illinois, where he serves as assistant organist. Tim is the Chair of the Peace & Justice Committee of the Diocese of Chicago and has served in the national leadership of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.

He is concerned that the Church finds and uses its prophetic voice to advocate for a more just and peaceful socioeconomic order, and feels that there has never been a greater need for all people of good will to join together in the struggle against poverty, violence and fear.

Tim is a long time Communist Party USA member and works as Financial Secretary/Treasurer of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers, United Auto Workers, Local Union 2320, which represents nearly 4,000 lawyers, support staff, social workers and other employees working in legal and human services agencies across the country.

As a committed Christian, Tim is very concerned about the Middle East, so he moved two resolutions at a November 2009 Diocesan meeting in Chicago;

Resolved, that the 172nd Convention of the Diocese of Chicago call upon the President of the United States and Congress to press the State of Israel to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip thereby permitting free and uninhibited access for all humanitarian assistance, a return to normalized trade, and the lifting of the ban on building and educational materials.

Further Resolved, that this 172nd Convention commend President Obama for his efforts to negotiate peace with justice between Israel and Palestine, and urge that he continue these efforts as a high priority

Tim serves as the Communist Party USA Religion Commission Chairperson.


The Rev. Pierre L. Williams received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, and his Master of Divinity Degree from Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. After being awarded the Master of Divinity degree, he also completed pastoral residency at Johns-Hopkins Hospital located in Baltimore, Maryland. He currently serves as Staff Chaplain at Harbor Hospital, Baltimore. He is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Pierre Williams, as have we all, has been tempted. He has succumbed.

Many years ago, in his wayward youth, Pierre L. Williams, 52, of Baltimore, Maryland, pled guilty to defrauding the United States Department of Education by using false social security numbers in order to secure $29,500 in guaranteed student loans. Pierre pled guilty to one count of Student Assistance Fraud and was sentenced to Caesar's punishment, on February 8, 2000.

Pierre was pursuing a master's degree in divinity at the Wesley Theological Seminary at the time of the offense and in the fall of 1995, submitting an application for financial aid using his true social security number. Because he had previously defaulted on his college student loans in the 1980's, his financial aid application was denied. For the following academic year, he submitted a second financial aid application using a false social security number.

The Office of Financial Assistance at Wesley Theological Seminary approved this application and processed the loans, In subsequent applications, Pierre used two other social security numbers, both false, to secure additional loans. When officials at Wesley learned of the discrepancies and confronted the defendant, he initially denied having committed the fraud, but he eventually admitted his guilt in statements made to federal investigators and administrators at Wesley.

Pierre has sought atonement for his lapse through good works. He is an active and contributing member of Baltimore United for Peace and Justice and the Phillip Berrigan Memorial Chapter of Veterans for Peace.

In 2008, Pierre joined his party comrade Tim Wheeler in campaigning in South Carolina for his Christian brother Barack Obama.

Pierre serves as Secretary of the Communist Party USA Religion Commission.

Some cynics may feel that the Communist Party USA is merely exploiting religion as a means of furthering its revolutionary agenda.

I ask the hard hearted among my readers to cast such dark thoughts aside and accept that our communist brothers are as committed today, to religious freedom, tolerance and the exercise of conscience, as they have been in the past.

Colonel Allen West on Islam

LTC (R) Allen West is standing for the US Congress in Florida's 22nd District.

He seems to be one of the few candidates who understands the threats to America and the West and is willing and able to articulate it.

“You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at Lepanto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? You want to ask…the Germanic and Austrian knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened at Constantinople and why today it is called Istanbul because they lost that fight in 1453?

You need to get into the Koran…and understand their precepts. This is not a perversion. They are doing exactly what this book says.”

And Col. West reminds us of what should be self-evident, contra the willfully blind, delusional apologetics embraced by our current political and military leadership:

“Until you get principled leadership in the United States of America that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is, and then understand their goals and objectives—which (are) on any jihadist website—and then come up with the right (and) proper objectives to not only secure our Republic but secure Western civilization.”

I so hope this guy gets elected.

Hat Tip Atlas Shrugged

Mohsen al Attar - Anti Israel Propagandist?

In previous posts I've revealed that Auckland University lecturer in Islamic Law is;

1. A Marxist


2. A believer in education as a "political intervention"


3. A supporter of the Cuban style single party state.

This post looks at Mohsen al Attar's attitude towards Israel.

First up is Mohsen al Attar writing to a US online newspaper the Albion Monitor in 2003.

A recent attack on Israel, dubbed the "Passover massacre" is a grim reminder of the partiality that subsists in the American media with regards to the Israeli occupation.

When did we last hear a sincere discussion about the thirty-five years of brutal military occupation imposed on the Palestinians by our staunchest ally? What about the systematic targeting of Palestinian children by Israeli snipers, the calculated seizures of Arab land and resources, the 3.7 million refugees agonizingly waiting to go home, and the 15,000 political prisoners rotting in Israeli jails without so much as a charge being filed?

Instead, we are methodically bombarded and utterly swindled by the media's signature sound bytes: "Terrorism must be stopped ," "Arafat is responsible, " "They seek the destruction of Israel," and so on.

The Passover massacre harks back to an incident three weeks ago. The Israeli military marched into occupied territories and slaughtered 55 Palestinians. If this wasn't enough, they wounded 300 others, and detained 800 youths -- all in less than 24 hours. It was not labeled "Bloody Friday," nor was it glorified on every news channel. Sharon was not ordered to curtail terror, nor was it even suggested that he be held responsible for the acts of every malevolent soldier. In customary fashion, it was brushed aside as retaliation to Palestinian terror, and justified because Arafat and his minions are hell-bent on destroying Israel.

We will not forget the past, nor will we allow them to taint the present with the vile fairy tales they have created. We will read, we will write, we will speak, and we will educate. And in the end, no matter how many promiscuous definitions of "terror" they conjure up, they will not succeed in absolving the Israeli government of the horrendous crimes it commits.

Next up is from the Irish Times of December 31, 2008. Mohsen al Attar is described as;

a staff member at the faculty of law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He teaches and researches in the areas of law and society, international trade law and class struggle.

Comrade al Attar discusses Israeli retaliation against Hamas attacks. It's a piece of not so subtle propaganda that essentially justifies Hamas terrorism, compares that organization to the Irish Republican Army and invokes the name of Martin Luther King.

A MASSACRE is under way. According to reports from UN agencies and local hospitals, nearly 310 Palestinians were killed over the weekend and nearly 600 injured in a series of assaults by the Israeli military against the Gaza strip. To put these figures in perspective, the Bali bombing, so virulently condemned across the globe - and rightfully so - resulted in roughly 200 deaths and an equal number of injuries.

Interestingly, officials from London to Washington have called on both sides to exercise restraint. Restraint is, of course, a relative concept. Israel can claim, as it does, that it has shown restraint in its handling of the mortar and rocket attacks against Sderot (rockets, the Guardian reports, that have killed 18 people over eight years).

Palestinians, conversely, argue that they have shown restraint towards the assassinations Israel has carried out against elected leaders. They also assert that they have shown restraint with regards to the three-year blockade Israel has imposed on Gaza.

In the latter instance, Palestinians appear to be on firm ground. Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on the occupied territories, recently published a report on the coffin-like conditions of life in Gaza. Electricity, water, pharmaceuticals and other basic essentials are constantly in scarce supply.

Notably, the Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem has calculated that despite its much-publicised withdrawal from Gaza, Israel has mounted an impressive record of engagement, with nearly 1,000 Palestinians killed in 2008 alone.

These acts of restraint are intended to punish the Palestinian people for their electoral choice and to force them to do what Israel has been incapable of achieving on its own: dislodge Hamas.

But what is Hamas and does it, as Israel's public relations campaign affirms, bear responsibility for the killings? Hamas is branded, ad nauseam, as a terrorist organisation. This label is warranted. Not unlike the IRA once did, Hamas maintains a military wing that has carried out reprehensible attacks against Israeli civilians. Each such attack is justifiably met with a wave of international condemnation and has increased global ire against the party.

Hostility towards Hamas, however, does not end there. A much-ballyhooed fact is Hamas's self-professed Islamic roots. For starters, its name represents an acronym for Islamic resistance movement and its communiqués are peppered with references, often misquoted and misunderstood but present nevertheless, to the Koran.

Israel has capitalised on popular apprehension of Islam by constantly drawing links to the sectarian nature of the party (a perplexing irony when one considers that Israel prides itself on being a Jewish state). In fact, numerous unsuccessful - and often quite comical - attempts have been made by Israel to link Hamas to al-Qaeda in the hopes of generating further sympathy for its cause.

There is of course more to the story - and to Hamas - than this. Not unlike the IRA once again, Hamas is a grassroots resistance movement. It has a strong political wing, so strong in fact that it unseated Fatah in the last round of elections. It also has an even stronger social wing which provides food, schooling and medical services in an environment where official services have collapsed.

All of this begs the question: what is Hamas resisting? Israel prefers to decontextualise the struggle. Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has suggested that in assessing the latest events "we could start in 1948 but if we want to limit ourselves to the current situation, I would begin with the pull-out of 2005". Palmor is essentially seeking to erase 41 years of occupation from the debate.

By so doing, emphasis can be placed on the immediate actions of Hamas - such as the firing of rockets - and not on the historic actions of Israel - that is, the occupation.

This is, as many will recognise, a doomed strategy. Try in vain - and they all have - but invading forces will never be regarded as victims. The British were not the victims in India, nor were the Soviets in Afghanistan, nor are the Americans in Iraq, and neither are the Israelis in Palestine. Each one of these nations chose to breach the sovereignty of another and, in so doing, acquired the much-detested title of invader.

Under conditions of invasion and occupation, calls for mutual restraint ring hollow for only one side is in a position to exercise it. Rather than repeat the politically correct refrain, the international community should adopt a new strategy. Indeed, to stand idly by while Israel commits gross violations of international law does a great disservice to all parties.

The Palestinians suffer (as did the Lebanese in 2006 when Israel launched a similar offensive for ostensibly similar reasons); the Israelis suffer as their pariah status intensifies; and the world suffers as, in the words of Dr Martin Luther King, injustice anywhere corrupts justice everywhere.

By condemning the actions of supposed enemies but excusing those very acts when executed by allies, the West squanders any moral capital it claims to possess.

Justice knows no borders and injustice knows no friend.

In this instance, the only alternative is to call Israel on the criminality of its actions and of its occupation and to stand in solidarity with justice, if not with the Palestinians.

For a profile of Mohsen al Attar, go here.

I is a Beeeeeeeeeeeelieeeeeeeeeeeevuhhhhh!!!!!!

Twenty years I went to a Young Nats gathering at the Ashley River. Nick Smith was there. River was damn' near dry with all the hot weather we used to have then.

Nick struck me as a nice bloke. Sincere and balanced. Never would have guessed he'd turn into a crazy climate change "beeelieeeevuh".

“I can assure you that the government has investigated the evidence on the science of climate change from a number of different sources and I can appreciate that there are many different perspectives on the matter. However, the government is convinced that climate change is a serious and legitimate issue and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides the most reliable information on climate change science. In its most recent assessment, the IPCC states that the evidence for climate change is unequivocal, that humankind’s emissions are very likely the cause of these changes and that, unless action is taken to reduce emissions, dangerous changes in the climate system will result.”

Hon. Nick Smith, Minister for Climate Change Issues, in response to submissions on New Zealand’s 2020 Emissions Target, 2009.

Sad, very sad.

Hat Tip Muriel Newman

Pat Condell on Geert Wilders and Death of Dutch Free Speech

This guy is always good value.

Ronald Reagan on Socialised Healthcare

Ronald Reagan was right.

South Africa 2010? You'd Have to be Crazy

A lot of Kiwis are planning to go follow our national soccer team, the All Whites to this years World Cup in South Africa.

My advice - don't go.

A Short Message From John C. Drew

Here's a short blast from the former Marxist, John C. Drew, who claims that Obama was a convinced Marxist in college.

John C. Drew on Obama's Marxism

Long interview with former student Marxist John C. Drew, on his meeting at Occidental College with fellow Marxist Barack Obama.



Very credible.

Obama's College Marxism

Newsmax has an interesting report from Ron Kessler on Barack Obama's college Marxism.

As a college student, Barack Obama expressed Marxist views, including the need for a new socialist U.S. government, according to a student who says he shared the future president’s opinion at the time...

Dr. John C. Drew, a grant writing consultant in Laguna Niguel, Calif., tells Newsmax he met Obama in 1980 when Obama was a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Drew had just graduated from Occidental and was attending graduate school at Cornell University.

Drew’s then girlfriend, Caroline Boss — now Grauman-Boss — knew Obama because she shared classes with him at Occidental.

During Christmas break, Drew says he was at Grauman-Boss’ home in Palo Alto when Obama came over with Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, his roommate from Pakistan.

“Barack and Hasan showed up at the house in a BMW, and then we went to a restaurant together,” Drew says. “We had a nice meal, and then we came back to the house and smoked cigarettes and drank and argued politics.”

For the next several hours, they discussed Marxism.

“He was arguing a straightforward Marxist-Leninist class-struggle point of view, which anticipated that there would be a revolution of the working class, led by revolutionaries, who would overthrow the capitalist system and institute a new socialist government that would redistribute the wealth,” says Drew, who says he himself was then a Marxist.

“The idea was basically that wealthy people were exploiting others,” Drew says. “That this was the secret of their wealth, that they weren’t paying others enough for their work, and they were using and taking advantage of other people. He was convinced that a revolution would take place, and it would be a good thing.”

Drew concluded that Obama thought of himself as “part of an intelligent, radical vanguard that was leading the way towards this revolution and towards this new society.”

In contrast, “My more pessimistic Marxist perspective indicated this was not a realistic possibility, that we really hadn’t seen a sort of complete revolution take place anywhere in Western Europe, and that this isn’t what had happened in more socialistic Germany or in France,” Drew says. “He was pretty persistent, that I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Drew’s viewpoint that a revolution was unrealistic “made me very unpopular that evening. It was considered a reactionary and insensitive thing to argue,” says Drew.

Drew saw Obama again at a party Obama and Chandoo gave in June 1981 at the house they shared. Drew went on to become an assistant professor of political science at Williams College.

In 1981, Obama left Occidental to attend Columbia University. During that year, Obama spent “about three weeks” visiting Chandoo and his family in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the account of Obama spokesman Bill Burton during the campaign.

Chandoo is now a financial consultant who was formerly a broker at Oppenheimer & Co. He has contributed to Obama’s campaign and helped raise more than $100,000 for him as a bundler.

“If that’s what John Drew said, that’s what he said,” Chandoo commented. “I can’t remember Obama ever talking like that. It sounds a bit absurd to me, but that’s my opinion. I can’t remember him ever expressing an interest in being a Marxist.”

Much of what is known about Obama’s past has been revealed and defined by Obama himself, largely through his two bestselling books “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”

In that memoir, Obama said that at Occidental, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”

Congratulations Mr Drew - let's hope a few more people from mr Obama's past are willing to come forward with what they know.

Was Barack Obama's Medical Mentor, Quentin Young, an Abortionist?

Retired Chicago physician Quentin Young is the father of the US "single payer" healthcare movement.



Quentin Young, Barack Obama at Young's 80th birthday celebration, 2003

He is also the long time friend/doctor/mentor and political supporter of Barack Obama.

Young, is a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a former Young Communist League activist.

He was even present at the launching of Obama's political career in the Hyde Park Chicago home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn - also patients of Young's.

Quentin Young has explicitly stated that he influenced Barack Obama towards "single payer" - socialized healthcare.

Millions of Catholics, conservative Christians and "pro - lifers" voted for Obama, overlooking his strongly pro - abortion record in the Illinois State Senate.

Abortion has become an issue in the healthcare debate. Opponents of abortion, who did, or still do support Obama, might like to know some more about the pro-abortion views of the President's mentor Quentin Young.

In 1970, Chicago radical activist Mike Soto gave testimony before the "Subcommittee to investigate the administration of the internal security Act..." in the aftermath of Students for a Democratic Society/Weathermen inspired student rioting in Chicago.



When questioned about fellow activist Bernardine Dohrn, Soto said "I have talked to her and she is a violent maniac, because when I talked to her she said 'let's pick up arms, let's blow up this country apart until we take over'"

When questioned about Quentin Young , Soto had this to say - page 224;

He is the movement doctor. He has taken care of me at times...He is also an abortionist doctor, takes care of abortions...

I was given medicine by him without prescription. Shots and things like that...


This testimony was given in 1970, three years before Roe vs Wade made abortion generally available in the United States.

On November 10 1996 about 50 people attended a reception for "abortion providers" at Chicago's Heartland Cafe - owned by former Students for a Democratic Society leader and current Bill Ayers/Bernardine associate, Mike James - an endorser incidentally of the Progressives for Obama website.

Sponsors of the event were Chicago Refuse & Resist!, the Chicago Abortion Fund, Dr. Quentin Young, Chicago NOW, Illinois NOW and DuPage County NOW, Voices for Choice from Downers Grove, Illinois NARAL, the Northwestern University Women's Center, the ACLU, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and the Women's Action Coalition.

One of the speakers to honor abortion providers was Quentin Young, who has a show on NPR. He talked about the days before Roe v. Wade when he worked in the septic abortion ward at Cook County Hospital and saw hundreds of women severely maimed by back-alley butchers.

The Heartland Cafe provided food and two big "thank you" cakes.

How wholesome.

Global Warming Now!

Minnesotans for Global Warming want "climate change" and they want it NOW!



Who could blame them.

Not me, sitting in Christchurch NZ, working through the coolest, wettest summer in years.

Hat Tip RBO

Top Communist Flays the "Tea Party" Movement

The US left hates the "Tea Party" movement - which proves it's the best thing happen to American politics for decades.

Jarvis Tyner, right, SEIU "purple shirter" left, cardboard friend, rear, Oregon 2008.

Vice chair of the Communist Party USA and numero uno Obamaphile, Jarvis Tyner flays the "Tea Partyers" in todays People's World

Here's some choice quotes from Jarvis;

After watching the Nashville convention of the tea party movement, it is clear that they continue to be a racist, red-baiting movement against health care reform, jobs for all, an end to war, and economic and social justice.

They are out to bring down Barack Obama because they see him as a force for progressive change and they are against progressive change. They are a movement to take our country back to the policies of Reagan, Bush or worse.

Jarvis plays the race card;

As the conference showed, they have few people of color in their ranks. That is because, while they say they are "color blind," they are against any measures for racial equality and inclusion.

The opening speaker at the conference was none other than the notorious right wing bigot, former Congressman Tom Tancredo.

Tancredo told the nearly all-white gathering that the reason Obama was elected was because people voted for him "who could not even spell the word ‘vote' or say it in English." Tancredo went on to call for bringing back literacy tests.

Tancredo's despicable proposal would bring back what was a vicious method of denying the franchise to Black voters and is now illegal, as a way to prevent the election of an Obama type candidate in the future. Looking at his audience, it wasn't a surprise that his remarks were greeted with cheers and loud applause.

The heartless "right wingers" card;

This was a meeting of people who do not believe that the last presidential election was legitimate. They don't even believe that the president is a U.S. citizen. They are opposed to any government spending to help the massive numbers of unemployed, impoverished, foreclosed and evicted - all victims of the Republican-initiated Wall Street ripoff that brought down the nation's economy.

Concern for the 40,000 people who annually die needlessly because they don't have health insurance is not their cup of tea. The 30 million still uninsured should just perish if their coverage is by a government-run program. "Smaller government" is more important.

Back to the race card;

The conference was an orgy of racist hate aimed mainly against blacks, Latinos, immigrants and the nation's first African American president.

It clear to most observers that most of the tea party participants, as shown by their signs and slogans, are opposed to the president mainly because he is black.

Just like the old southern racist hypocrites that for decades ruled the South and had a big sway in Congress, the tea party movement is using red-baiting and anti-terrorist hysteria to rationalize their support for the most reactionary section of the U.S. capitalist class: the powerful insurance monopolies, the armaments industry, the anti-union labor corporate elite.

The dump on Sarah Palin card;

Sarah Palin, the $100,000 speaker, is making hay on the backs of this movement. She thinks she is presidential timber (2012). I doubt it, but for sure she will come out of this a very rich racist, red-baiting demagogue.

Sarah Palin has jumped in front of this backward march. She is part of the new McCarthyism combined with racist contempt for the first black president.

Her notion that Obama is more like a college professor and what we need is a commander in chief is another version of calling him "uppity."

Palin knows full well when she attacks Obama that she is furthering racial division in the country, which is an especially dangerous game to play during hard economic times. Her racist attacks on immigrants, that they are bringing the country down; her opposition to any government spending to help working families survive the crisis - all of these attacks give encouragement to the racist lunatic fringe.

This movement Palin has jumped in front of is really a movement that hates change and wants to go backward. Their aim is to help the extreme right take back the Congress in November and the presidency in 2012.

It's time to fight back;

Whether they succeed depends on the level of activity of the broad democratic, multiracial, labor and people's coalition that defeated Bush and his right-wing Congress. If they are activated on the issues of jobs, health care and peace the right will suffer another setback.

This fight cannot be won by Obama alone. This fight cannot be won by the Democratic majority in Congress alone.

Without street heat, without real grassroots organizing, we could loss the fight for change and be pushed back to the Bush era or worse. We dare not let that happen.

Consider the Nashville tea party meeting and the elections in New Jersy, Virginia and Massachusetts a wakeup call.

Like Obama did in his State of the Union speech and his confrontation with the Republicans at their caucus, it's time for the anti-racist majority, for the majority that wants health reform, a clean environment, massive job creation, peace, and economic and social justice, to take the offensive.

And they say the right is hateful!

Jarvis Tyner does America a favor here.

He clearly demarcates which side patriots should be on.

Any compromise or acceptance of the Obama agenda will be a victory for the extreme left.

The choices couldn't be clearer.

Rodney Flays the Emissions Trading Scam

While in coalition, ACT and National have major differences over the Emissions Ttrading Scheme.

ACT leader Rodney Hide tells us what he thinks of the Nat's Emissions Trading Scam

No link yet;

We have had our differences with National and we have a sharp difference over the Emissions Trading Scheme.

ACT has always maintained it made no sense to stay committed to Helen Clark’s all-gases, all-sectors trading scheme. The failure at Copenhagen makes the commitment all the more silly.

'Climate-gate' is now the greatest scandal in the history of science. It turns out that the prestigious agencies involved in leading climate change science were breaking official information laws, arbitrarily adjusting raw data, hiding the reasons for those adjustments, then somehow contriving to lose the original unadjusted data so that it could not be independently checked, thereby making
claims that were not remotely justified by the state of the science, and in some cases simply were simply made up.

The so-called scientific agencies responsible for the climate science have ruthlessly suppressed competing theories and contrary data controlling and manipulating the peer review process. Government sponsored climate science has proved to have more in common with the Spanish inquisition than Popperian science.

'Climate-gate', 'Glacier-gate', 'Africa-gate' has left the once vaunted IPCC totally discredited and in ruins.

I have always been a sceptic.

When I started studying environmental science in 1975 many of the same so-called scientists were trying to scare the pants off us all with the coming of a new ice age. That’s because the world had been cooling for 30 years. It then warmed apparently for 23 years. So the same scientists turned global cooling into global warming. When the warming stopped in 1998, and the earth started to cool, the scare switched to climate change. That way the alarmists could never be wrong.

They were right whatever the temperature.

Sadly our own National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) is caught up in the scandal and its scientific credibility shredded. NIWA’s raw data for their official temperature graph shows no warming. But NIWA shifted the bulk of the temperature record pre-1950 downwards and the bulk of the data post-1950 upwards to produce a sharply rising trend. The warming trend is not a consequence of measurement but of manufactured adjustment.
There may well be good reason for the adjustment, so, before Christmas, I asked NIWA to disclose the adjustments and its reasons. NIWA said they would do that, but it has just told the Climate Science Coalition, after having abused it up and down dale, that it does not have the records of the adjustments.

NIWA’s entire argument for warming was a result of adjustments to data which cannot be justified, independently checked or verified.

The entire thing is shonky, but on the basis of shonky science, our government is whacking Fonterra with a $100 million-a-year bill, taxing the average dairy farm $10,000 a year extra, and hiking fuel and power costs to every business and householder in the country.

Even if the science was perfect we would not have an ETS. But the science is now not only settled but has also descended into a farce. The total cost is over a billion dollars a year. That is a billion dollars we do not have and we cannot afford it, and it is for nothing. It’s madness.

Prime Minister John Key is on record endorsing New Zealand being a 'fast follower' on a climate change response, not a leader. Let us put the ETS on hold until the rest of the world catches up. I do not think any other country will be burdened with like New Zealand.

What is with John Key and the Nats?

Why are they burdening NZ with this wealth destroying bureaucratic scam, when only Al Gore, Barack Obama, Nick Smith and room 5 at Karori Normal still believe this "climate change" crap?

"Global Disastrification"

Best "Global Warming" spoof ever.



Somebody needs to send this to John Key.

Obama File 96 Coincidence? Obama, Frank Marshall Davis and the Earl Durham Connection

Obama File 95 here

In this post I highlighted the link between Barack Obama's communist childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis and Chicago journalist Vernon Jarrett, father-in-law of senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.

I cited the link as evidence that the communist networks that touched Obama in both Hawaii and Chicago were connected.

Vernon Jarrett and Frank Marshall Davis worked together in a communist front, the Citizen's Committee to Aid Packinghouse Workers in 1948 Chicago-the same year Davis moved to Hawaii.

More than forty years later Vernon Jarrett followed Obama's career in Chicago and used his newspaper column to promote Obama's successful Senate campaign in 2004.

The question is-did some of Frank Marshall Davis' old Chicago comrades aid Barack Obama's career in Chicago more than four decades on?

This post looks at another link between Frank Marshall Davis and Obama's Chicago network

The Abraham Lincoln School for Social Sciences was a Chicago institution of the 1930s and 1940s, run by the Communist Party USA.

The faculty members included known Party members Frank Marshall Davis, David Englestein, William L. Patterson, Geraldyne Lightfoot, Claude Lightfoot, Ishmael Flory and Earl Durham.

Frank Marshall Davis went off to work for the Hawaiian Communist Party, gradually sinking into obscurity. His former comrade and colleague, Earl Durham rose to the top of the communist ladder and went on to make a major impact on Chicago education and politics.

Earl Durham served in numerous leadership posts in the Communist Party USA. He was elected to the Communist Party National Committee at the Party's 16th National Convention held in New York City on February 9-12, 1957, at which time he was also chosen to serve on the party's 11-member national administrative committee.

At a meeting of the Party National Administrative Committee in May 1957, Durham was named as youth affairs secretary of the party. He was subsequently appointed as one of nine party secretaries, who functioned as "a collective leadership" for the Communist Party USA.

After working studying the psychopharmacology of heroin addiction, Earl Durham made the decision to earn a master's degree at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. On graduation he was hired by the School as a professor, where "he was able to influence many students to consider community organizing as a career".

One former student Ron Sanfield blogged;

I was a graduate student at the U of Chicago in the 1970s, and had Earl Durham for a professor.

Even though it was more than 30 years ago, I can still vividly remember those exciting sessions in his classroom. He challenged us to confront the realities of community organization, and what it REALLY meant. He challenged us to confront our feelings about race, about class, about the gap in America between rhetorical words and deeds.

One day, he told us, "If you really wanted to be doing community organization, you would be 'out there in the streets', not in here in this ivory-tower university" ---
and taught us about Saul Alinsky who had walked those very same streets of Hyde Park and other Chicago neighborhoods.

In the early 1980s Earl Durham worked with the Communist Party and Democratic Socialists of America to elect Chicago's first black mayor, long time communist front activist Harold Washington.

It was Washington's election in 1983 that inspired Barack Obama to move to Chicago. Obama even unsuccessfully wrote away for a job in the Washington administration.

Earl Durham's brother, writer Richard Durham, served as Washington's speechwriter.


While never a confirmed party member , Richard Durham participated in several communist controlled organizations. In the 1950s, Durham worked as the national program director of the communist controlled United Packinghouse Workers of America. At the same time he founded the Chicago's Du Bois Theater Guild, with Vernon Jarrett and Oscar Brown, Jr. , a Communist Party member member and another former official of Frank Marshall Davis' "Citizen's Committee to Aid Packinghouse Workers".

In the ealy 1980s, until Richard's death in 1984, both Durham brothers served on the board of the Black Press Institute, the Chicago propaganda organization run by pro-Soviet Illinois State Senator, Alice Palmer.

In 1995 Alice Palmer launched the political career of her chief-of-staff Barack Obama, at a meeting in the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

In 1989, Earl Durham had served on the board of the Chicago Committee in Solidarity with Southern Africa, along with Alice Palmer another long time Obama friend and supporter Timuel Black.

Later, Timuel Black was a leader of the Communist Party breakaway group Committees of Correspondence.

A 1994 Chicago Committes of Correspondence "Membership, subscription and mailing" in my possession includes the names of Earl Durham, Alice Palmer, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Earl Durham wrote the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which shifted decision-making to the school level and created Chicago's unique Local School Councils.

These reforms created an opening which was heavily exploited by radicals like Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky and the up and coming Barack Obama.

In the mid 1990s Earl Durham and Barack Obama almost certainly crossed paths in a new Chicago organization, Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI). Earl Durham was founding board member of the organization, while Barack Obama served in 1994-95 on the COFI sponsoring committee.

COFI, like many Chicago community groups was a respectable "front" for radical activism.

Some of Obama's radical COFI colleagues included;

*Ken Rolling, signer of a 2008 statement in support of Bill Ayers

* Jackie Grimshaw, Obama's Hyde Park next door neighbour, Democratic Socialists of America honoree board member of the radical DSA controlled Midwest Academy.

* Barbara Engel, served with Bernardine Dorhn in 1991 on a committee of the communist front organization, Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.

*Anne Hallet, signer of a 2008 statement in support of Bill Ayers, active with both Illinois and national ACORN.

*Judy Hertz, involved with Illinois ACORN and the Midwest Academy.

*Elce Redmond, recently close to the Chicago Communist Party and active in the Committees of Correspondence/Democratic Socialists of America dominated Chicago Political Economy Group.

*Mary Scott-Boria, 1998 co-president of the Democratic Socialists of America influenced Progressive Chicago Area Network (PROCAN).

*Ellen Schumer, board member of the Committees of Correspondence/Democratic Socialists of America infiltrated, Obama, Ayers, Dohrn and Earl Durham supported Crossroads Fund.


That Barack Obama has mixed with Alinskyites, communists and socialists for his entire time in Chicago is beyond doubt.

That Barack Obama was mentored in Hawaii from the age of 11 to 18 by communist Frank Marshall Davis, is also well documented.

Vernon Jarrett and Earl Durham were both connected with Frank Marshall Davis.

Both men and their interconnected circles helped, directly or indirectly, Barack Obama's rise through the world of Chicago far left politics.

Would Barack Obama be the leader of the Free World today, had it not been for Frank Marshall Davis, Vernon Jarrett, Earl Durham and their Chicago comrades?

What do you think?

Does it matter?

Obama file 97 here