June 26, 2013, 10:20 AM —
Manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group is on track with its goal
to a create a "million robot army", and already has 20,000 robotic
machines in its factories, said the company's CEO Terry Gou on
Wednesday.
Workers' wages in China are rising, and so the company's research in
robots and automation has to catch up, Gou said, while speaking at the
company's annual shareholder's meeting in Taipei. "We have over 1
million workers. In the future we will add 1 million robotic workers,"
he said. "Our [human] workers will then become technicians and
engineers."
Foxconn is the world's largest contract electronics maker and counts
Apple, Microsoft and Sony as some of its clients. Many of its largest
factories are in China, where the company employs 1.2 million people,
but rising are threatening to reduce company profits.
To offset labor costs and improve its manufacturing, Foxconn has already spent three years on developing robots,
Gou said. These machines are specifically developed to assemble
electronics such as mobile phones, but it will take some time for
Foxconn to fully develop the technology, he added.
"It's a middle to long-term goal," Gou said. But already 20,000 robot
arms and robotic tools are in use at the company's factories.
Robotics have long been used to manufacture cars and large
electronics. But currently, human workers are still the best choice to
put together small consumer gadgets, many of which contain complicated
wiring and small sockets that are best handled with human hands,
according to experts.
In addition, Foxconn's CEO said the company is prepared to expand its
manufacturing in the U.S., but the move will depend on "economic
factors." The company already has factories in Indianapolis and Houston,
and employs thousands of workers in the country, according to Gou.
Last December, Foxconn customer Apple said it would manufacture one
of its Mac lines in the U.S. by the end of next year. Soon after,
Foxconn said it was considering growing its existing manufacturing base in the country.
The Taiwanese company is also exploring building factories in
Indonesia, a country with significantly lower labor costs than the U.S.
or China. One possible plan is for Foxconn to build electronics for the local market, which is home to 240 million people.
"Indonesia has great potential and its a great market for my
company," Gou said. "Definitely we will put a lot of investment in
Indonesia."
The company, however, is waiting for the nation's government to
improve the regulations for its tech sector. Standards over electronics
safety are so low that anyone can get away with selling shoddy mobile
phones, said a Foxconn official in December.
"The direction is right, but we need to take time," Gou added. "We think in one or two years this will happen."
Brian Jones Business Insider
June 29, 2013
Amid anti-government demonstrations planned for this weekend, roughly
200 combat-capable U.S. Marines in southern Europe have been put on an
alert status should they need to protect the U.S. Embassy or American
citizens in Egypt, CNN is reporting.
The Marines were told to be ready to deploy within an hour, and would
be flown in via MV-22 Osprey, the Marine Corps’ rapid deployment
aircraft.
A state department spokesman told CNN that the move is
precautionary, and that the U.S. fully expects the Egyptian security
forces to be able to protect the American diplomatic facilities.
The move comes less than a year after a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by Islamic extremists who killed four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens.
The Obama administration has faced harsh, largely partisan, criticism for what some have deemed as a failure to respond to the attack in Libya.
Documentary film maker, Kevin Booth talks about the drug war and the
effects that the pharmaceutical industry is having on society especially
the detrimental consequences to children.
How did the once modest medical specialty of child psychiatry become
the aggressive “pediatric psychopharmacology” that finds ADHD, pediatric
conduct disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant
disorder, mood disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, mixed manias,
social phobia, anxiety, sleep disorders, borderline disorders, assorted
“spectrum” disorders, irritability, aggression, pervasive development
disorders, personality disorders, and even schizophrenia under every
rock? And how did this branch of psychiatry come to find the answer to
the “psychopathologies” in the name of the discipline itself: pediatric
psychopharmacology? Just good marketing. Pharma is wooing the pediatric
patient because that’s where the money is. Just like country and western
songs about finding love where you can when there is no love to be
found at home. Pharma has stopped finding “love” in the form of the new
blockbuster drugs that catapulted it through the 1990s and 2000s.
According to the Wall Street Journal, new drugs made Pharma only $4.3
billion in 2010 compared with $11.8 billion in 2005—a two-thirds drop.2
Doctors have a “growing fear of prescribing new drugs with unknown side effects,”3explains
the Journal, and the government is cracking down on illegal marketing.
But also, private and government insurers are less willing to “cough up
money for an expensive new drug—particularly when a cheap and reliable
generic is available.4
It’s gotten so bad, AstraZeneca, whose controversial Seroquel® still
makes $5.3 billion a year though it is no longer new, now conducts
“payer excellence academies” to teach sales reps to sell insurers and
state healthcare systems on its latest drugs.5No
wonder Pharma is finding “love” by prescribing drugs to the nation’s
youngest (and oldest) patients, who are often behavior problems to their
caregivers, who make few of their own drug decisions, and who are often
on government health plans.
“Children are known to be compliant patients and that makes them a
highly desirable market for drugs,” says former Pharma rep Gwen Olsen,
author of Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher.6 “Children
are forced by school personnel to take their drugs, they are forced by
their parents to take their drugs, and they are forced by their doctors
to take their drugs. So, children are the ideal patient-type because
they represent refilled prescription compliance and ‘longevity.’ In
other words, they will be lifelong patients and repeat customers for
Pharma.”
Just as it used to be said in obstetric circles, “Once a cesarean,
always a cesarean,” it’s also true that “once a pediatric psychiatric
patient, always a pediatric psychiatric patient.” Few, indeed, are kids
who start out diagnosed and treated for ADHD, bipolar disorder, and
other “psychopathologies” who end up on no drugs, psychologically fine,
and ready to run for class president. Even if they outgrow their
original diagnoses—a big “if” with a mental health history that follows
them—the side effects from years of psychoactive drugs and their
physical health on mental, social, and emotional development take their
toll. Even children on allergy and asthma drugs, which are promoted for
kids as young as age one, are now known to develop psychiatric side
effects according to emerging research.7
Kids who start out with psychiatric diagnoses are not only
lifers—they are expensive lifers usually shuttled into government
programs that will pay for psychiatric drug “cocktails” that can
approach $2,000 a month. What private insurer would pay $323 for an
atypical antipsychotic like Zyprexa®, Geodon®, or Risperdal®, when a “typical” antipsychotic costs only about $40?8
Not all medical professionals agree with the slapdash cocktails.
Panelists at the 2010 American Psychiatric Association (APA) meeting
assailed Pharma for such “seat of the pants” drug combinations and
called the industry nothing but a “marketing organization.”9In
a symposium about comparative drug effectiveness, a Canadian doctor
castigated the FDA’s Jing Zhang, who had served as a panelist at the
symposium, for his agency’s approval of drugs for “competitive reasons”
rather than for patient health or effectiveness.10Research
presented at the 2010 APA meeting also questioned the psychiatric
cocktails. When twenty-four patients on combinations of Seroquel,
Zyprexa, and other antipsychotics were reduced to only one drug, there
was no worsening of symptoms or increased hospitalizations (except in
one case), and patients’ waist circumferences and triglycerides improved
(a large waist circumference and high levels of triglycerides [fat] in
the blood heighten one’s risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular
diseases).11The drug cocktails were not working and were making patients worse by creating new medical problems.
But pediatric psychopharmacology is a billion-dollar business that
sustains Pharma, Pharma investors on Wall Street, doctors, researchers,
medical centers, clinical research organizations, medical journals,
Pharma’s PR and ghostwriting firms, pharmacy benefits managers, and the
FDA itself—which judges its value on how many drugs it approves. The
only losers are kids given a probable life sentence of expensive and
dangerous drugs, the families of these children, and the taxpayers and
insured persons who pay for the drugs.
The father of pediatric psychopharmacology, Harvard child
psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, is often called Joseph “Risperdal”
Biederman, because he is credited with ballooning the diagnosis of
bipolar disorder in children by as much as fortyfold.12In
2008, Biederman, a prolific author who has written five hundred
scientific articles and seventy book chapters, was investigated by
Congress for allegedly accepting Pharma money he didn’t disclose, and he
agreed to suspend his industry-related activities.13After
a three-year investigation, Harvard “threw the book” at Biederman and
two other professors: they were required to “refrain from all paid
industry-sponsored outside activities for one year and comply with a
two-year monitoring period afterward, during which they must obtain
approval from the Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
before engaging in any paid activities.” What a deterrent. They also
face a “delay of consideration for promotion or advancement.”
When it comes to grandiosity, Biederman seems a lot like
the three-year- old who ran out in traffic. He not only served as the
head of the Johnson & Johnson Center for the Study of Pediatric
Psychopathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, whose stated goal was
to “move forward the commercial goals of J. & J.”—the facility was
his idea! 15 According to court-obtained documents, Biederman approached J. & J. with the money-making scheme. 16Biederman
also promised the drug maker that upcoming studies of its popular child
antipsychotic Risperdal would “support the safety and effectiveness of
risperidone [Risperdal] in this age group.” 17
The Johnson & Johnson Center for the Study of
Pediatric Psychopathology netted a cool $700,000 in one year of
operation, according to published reports, but a spokesman for Harvard
Medical School said Harvard isn’t involved with Johnson & Johnson
Center, even though the hospital where it operates, Massachusetts
General, is a Harvard teaching hospital. “Harvard Medical School does
not ‘own’ any of its teaching hospitals,” he told Bloomberg News. “While
we are affiliated with them through academic appointments, all teaching
hospitals are individually governed.” 18
play-to-pay. Massachusetts General Hospital received $287
million in federal grants in 2005 which included grants to Biederman and
a colleague, on top of their Pharma sinecures.
(No wonder Harvard keeps Biederman on.) Biederman also
received $14,000 from Eli Lilly the same year he got a grant from the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study Lilly’s ADHD drug,
Strattera ®. Why does the government fund researchers already
funded by Pharma? Not only do these researchers not need our tax
dollars; working for Pharma is an overt conflict of interest that
contaminates scientific results.
Another master at playing both the Pharma and government
sides of the street is psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, former head of
psychiatry at Emory University and also investigated by Congress for
unreported Pharma money.
Nemeroff’s NIH grant was terminated after the probe, something that is rarely done with a government grant. 19
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, when
Nemeroff was later under consideration to be the head of psychiatry at
the University of Miami, the director of the National Institute of
Mental Health (part of the NIH), Thomas Insel, MD, assured the medical
school dean that if Nemeroff were hired, NIH money would follow, his
prior problems notwithstanding. What’s a little congressional
investigation? The reason for the largesse, according to the Chronicle,
was that Nemeroff had gotten Insel a job at Emory when Insel lost his
NIH position in 1994. Nor does the cronyism and revolving door stop
there. Nemeroff serves on two NIH peer-review advisory panels that
decide who else receives grant money, says the Chronicle, and Insel is
personally involved with revising the National Institute of Mental
Health’s “conflict of interest” rules. 20
Insel is also known for advancing Pharma’s “SSRI
deficiency/suicide hypothesis,” in which a decrease in antidepressant
sales was—according to Pharma—resulting in suicides because people
weren’t getting their drugs. “[The National Institute of Mental Health
is] “looking at whether the decrease in SSRI [antidepressant]
utilization might be associated with an increase in suicidality rather
than a drop in suicide, and my expectation is that we may see an
increase,” Insel told Psychiatric News, lamenting “the focus on risk and
a neglect of benefit.” 21
Antipsychotics for Everyone
When the atypical antipsychotics Zyprexa, Geodon, Risperdal, Abilify ®,
and Seroquel, for use in stabilizing schizophrenia, came into being in
the 1990s, they were like the credit default swaps and collateralized
debt obligations of the pharmaceutical world. No one knew exactly how
they worked, how long they would work, or what the final effects of
their wide use would be (as with many withdrawn drugs, FDA gives
approval on the basis of information from short-term trials). But they
could make a lot of quick money easily compared with old-fashioned
products; they had government’s backing, and everyone was doing it!
Drug reps especially swarmed state agencies with many
mentally disabled patients, including children. For example, Texas’s
Medicaid program spent $557,256 for two months of pediatric Geodon
prescriptions in 2005, according to court documents, and Geodon was not
even approved for children at the time .22Eighty-five percent of the state’s Risperdal prescriptions were paid by the state government, court documents also show. 23And Florida’s Medicaid program spent $935,584 for one year of Geodon. 24One
hundred and eighteen prescriptions for Geodon were written in one day,
according to the Tacoma News Tribune, at Western State mental hospital
in Washington State. Asked why Pfizer reps made almost two hundred
visits to the facility in four years, Pfizer spokesman Bryant Haskins
told the Tribune, “That’s where our customers are. ”25
Mental institution psychiatrists were not the only ones
targeted. United States Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrists
said in a survey that they were contacted an average of fourteen times
per year by Pharma reps and were invited to attend company-continuing
medical education seminars. 26And court
documents unsealed in South Carolina in 2009 show that Eli Lilly sales
reps even used golf bets to push their atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa;
one doctor agreed to start new patients on Zyprexa “for each time a
sales representative parred.” 27
But as state outlays for atypical antipsychotics grew
twelvefold between 2000 and 2007, some states and whistle-blowers began
bringing Pharma to court. In 2007, Bristol-Myers Squibb settled a
federal suit for $515 million, brought by whistle-blowers in
Massachusetts and Florida, which charged that the company marketed the
antipsychotic Abilify for unapproved uses in children and the elderly,
bilking taxpayers in the process .28 And the next
year, Alaska won a precedent-setting $15 million settlement from Eli
Lilly in a suit to recoup medical costs generated by Medicaid patients
who developed diabetes while taking Zyprexa. Atypical antipsychotics are
known to cause weight gain and glycemic changes that can lead to
diabetes. 29Soon Idaho, Washington,
Montana, Connecticut, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico,
New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia,
Arkansas, and Texas took Pharma to court for the “prescribathon,” which
hit the poor, the mentally ill, children, and the elderly the hardest. 30
Of course, as with credit default swaps and collateralized
debt obligations (or the cases of Bernie Madoff or BP’s Deepwater
Horizon or Enron), there were voices of dissent about the atypical
revolution if people chose to listen. A National Institute of Mental
Health study of children ages eight to nineteen with psychotic symptoms
found Risperdal and Zyprexa were no more effective than the older
antipsychotic Moban, but it caused such obesity that a safety panel
ordered the children off the drugs. 31 In just
eight weeks, children gained an average of thirteen pounds on Zyprexa,
nine pounds on Risperdal, and less than one pound on Moban.
“Kids at school were making fun of me,” said study
participant Brandon Constantineau, who put on thirty-five pounds on
Risperdal. 32
Other studies, like one on Risperdal in the British
medical journal Lancet and one on Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Risperdal in
Alzheimer’s patients reported in the New England Journal of Medicine,
also found that atypicals work no better than placebos .33One
study in the British Medical Journal found that Seroquel not only did
not relieve agitation in Alzheimer’s patients, but that it “was [also]
associated with significantly greater cognitive decline” than placebos. 34As with Risperdal, the drug made patients worse.
“The problem with these drugs [is] that we know that they
are being used extensively off-label in nursing homes to sedate elderly
patients with dementia and other types of disorders,” testified FDA drug
reviewer David Graham, MD, during a congressional hearing .35Graham
is credited with exposing the dangers of Vioxx and other risky drugs
approved by the FDA. “But the fact is, is that it increases mortality
perhaps by 100 percent. It doubles mortality,” said Graham. “So I did a
back-of-the-envelope calculation on this, and you have probably got
15,000 elderly people in nursing homes dying each year from the
off-label use of antipsychotic medications. . . . With every pill that
gets dispensed in a nursing home, the drug company is laughing all the
way to the bank.” 36
Just like Wall Street and banking lobbyist and cronies
“advised” the government on how to write the credit default and
derivative rules under which they would be regulated, Pharma helps
states regulate—and buy—its brand- name drugs. An Eli Lilly–backed
company named Comprehensive Neuroscience has “helped” twenty-four states
to use Zyprexa “properly,” reports the New York Times. 37“Doctors
who veer from guidelines on dosage strengths and combinations of
medications for Medicaid patients are sent ‘Dear Doctor’ letters
pointing out that their prescribing patterns fall outside the norm,” it
reports. Doctors are also notified if patients “are renewing
prescriptions,” lest they have “setbacks in their condition.” One such
program sends registered nurses to the homes of patients who are on
expensive brand drugs to ensure “compliance”; that is, to make sure
patients have not stopped taking the drugs.
Some states say they have saved money under Pharma’s
guidance, but Wisconsin found that once it “placed restrictions on
Zyprexa and three other antipsychotic drugs” and scrapped the
Lilly-funded program, it lowered its antipsychotic bill by $4 million. 38
And then there’s the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, a
“decision tree” developed by Pharma and Johnson & Johnson’s Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation in 1995 to “help” the state buy its drugs. The
algorithm rules required doctors to treat patients—surprise!—with the
newest, most expensive drugs first, which ballooned Risperdal sales as
well as other atypical antipsychotics. 39
But in 2008, the Texas attorney general’s office charged
Risperdal maker Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Johnson & Johnson’s
antipsychotic drug unit, with fraud. 40Janssen
defrauded the state of millions, said a civil suit, “with [its]
sophisticated and fraudulent marketing scheme,” to “secure a spot for
the drug, Risperdal, on the state’s Medicaid preferred drug list and on
controversial medical protocols that determine which drugs are given to
adults and children in state custody.” In addition to lavishing trips,
perks, and kickbacks on Texas’s mental health officials to win drug
sales, and disguising marketing as scientific research, the attorney
general’s office charged that Janssen “paid third-party contractors and
nonprofit groups to promote Risperdal . . . to give state mental health
officials and lawmakers the perception that the drug had widespread
support.” 41
Such faux grassroots support from phony front groups has
been cited in other lawsuits against Pharma. Whistle-blowers charge that
Pfizer funded the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to serve
as a “Trojan horse” to sell Geodon in a complaint that led to
forty-three states receiving givebacks and the largest criminal fine
ever imposed in US history—$2.3 billion in 2009. 42
The National Alliance on Mental Illness calls itself a
“nonprofit, grassroots, self-help, support and advocacy organization of
consumers, families, and friends of people with severe mental
illnesses,” 43but it has been
investigated by Congress for undisclosed Pharma money and is considered
by some to be a front organization. The Geodon complaint even cites
jailed physician Richard Borison, who also worked with Seroquel and
Neurontin, in the corruption. 44
Of course, to lock in taxpayer funding of psychoactive
drugs, especially for children, it takes more than “helping” state
officials at the point of purchase (and sending zealous drug reps to
state facilities where the “patients are”). Pharma also finances
continuing medical education (CME) courses that reward credits doctors
need to retain their state licenses. A CME course called Individualizing
ADHD Pharmacotherapy with Disruptive Behavioral Disorders taught by the
Johnson & Johnson–funded Robert L. Findling, MD, refers to
Risperdal thirteen times. 45Another CME
course that promoted Seroquel was “taught” by AstraZeneca staff and Dr.
Nemeroff but was scrapped after the Accreditation Council for Continuing
Medical Education found it “lacked sufficient information about
possible adverse effects of treatment with atypical antipsychotic drugs;
and failed to emphasize sufficiently the efficacy of alternative
treatments.” 46 The course was called Atypical Antipsychotics in Major Depressive Disorder: When Current Treatments Are Not Enough.
Pharma doctors also spread confidence about the drugs by
publishing in medical journals like a Johnson & Johnson–subsidized
article that upheld the “long-term safety and effectiveness of
risperidone [Risperdal] for severe disruptive behaviors in children” in
the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry. Despite thirty-one recorded child deaths, the drug was found
to be safe, according to the article, on the basis of a one-year study.
47
CHAPTER 2. FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH RISPERDAL . . . AND SEROQUEL AND ZYPREXA AND GEODON
1. Martha Rosenberg, “Phillip Sinaikin, M.D.,
‘Psychiatryland’ Author, Explains How Psychiatry Is Broken,” Huffington
Post, July 1, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha- rosenberg/phillip-sinaikin-psychiatryland_b_884863.html.
2. Jeanne Whalen, “Hurdles Multiply for Latest Drugs, Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2011.
3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid.; Duff Wilson, “For $520 Million, AstraZeneca Will Settle Case over Marketing of
a Drug,” New York Times, April 26, 2010. 6. Gwen Olsen, “Drugging Our Children to Death,” Health News Digest, June 29, 2009,
10. Martha Rosenberg, “No Free Pens but Pharma Influence Still Felt at Psychi- atric Meeting,” AlterNet, June 2, 2010, http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/06/02/ no-free-pens-but-pharma-influence-still-felt-at-psychiatric-meeting/.
11. “Evaluating Antipsychotic Polypharmacy Regimens for
Patients with Chronic Mental Illness,” poster from Maimonides Medical
Center in Brooklyn, American Psychiatric Associa- tion 2010 meeting, New
Orleans.
12. Gardiner Harris, “Research Center Tied to Drug Company,” New York Times, November 24, 2008.
13. Gardiner Harris and Benedict Carey, “Researchers Fail
to Reveal Full Drug Pay,” New York Times, June 8, 2008; “Private Money,
Public Disclosure,” Science, July 2009.
14. Xi Yu, “Three Professors Face Sanctions Following
Harvard Medical School Inquiry Investigation by Medical School and
Massachusetts General Hospital Punishes Psychiatrists Accused by
Senator,” Harvard Crimson, July 2, 2011.
15. Harris, “Research Center Tied to Drug Company.”
16. Gardiner Harris, “Drug Maker Told Studies Would Aid It, Papers Say,” New York Times, March 19, 2009.
17. Ibid.
18. Rob Waters and Julie Ziegler, “Harvard Teaching
Hospital Reviewing J&J Ties to Psychiatry Unit,” Bloomberg, November
25, 2008.
19. Martha Rosenberg, “Why You Should Care about the
University of Miami NIH Scandal, CounterPunch, June 22, 2010; Bradley F.
Marple and Matthew W. Ryan, “Facing Conflicts: The Battle between
Medicine and Industry,” ENT Today, April 2009, http://www. enttoday.org/details/article/497837/Facing_Conflicts_The_Battle_between_Medicine_and_ Industry.html.
20. Ibid.
21. Jim Rosack, “New Data Show Declines in Antidepressant Prescribing,” Psychiatric News 40, no. 17 (September 2, 2005): 1.
22. United States District Court, District of
Massachusetts Civil Action No. 08 CA 11318 DPW, Second Amended Complaint
for False Claims Act Violations 31 U.S.C. § 3729, ET SEQ., March 13,
2009.
23. Jim Edwards, “J&J and Risperdal: New Claims of Kickbacks and Fraudulent Mar- keting,” BNET, December 17, 2008, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42840276/ j038j-and-risperdal-new-claims-of-kickbacks-and-fraudulent-marketing/ (accessed January 30, 2012).
24. United States District Court, District of Massachusetts Civil Action No. 08 CA 11318 DPW.
25. M. Alexander Otto, “Drugs Might Breed Violence,” News Tribune (Tacoma, WA), May 28, 2007.
26. Michael Sernyak and Robert Rosenheck, “Experience of
VA Psychiatrists with Phar- maceutical Detailing of Antipsychotic
Medications,” Psychiatric Services 58 (October 2007): 1292–96.
28. “$515 Million California Claims Drug Giant Bribed Docs to Prescribe,” Associated Press, March 23, 2011.
29. Alex Berenson, “Lilly Settles Alaska Suit over
Zyprexa,” New York Times, March 26, 2008; Sanjay Gupta et al., “Atypical
Antipsychotics and Glucose Dysregulation: A Series of 4 Cases,” Primary
Care Companion, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 3, no. 2 (2001): 61–65,
http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC181163/.
30. Martha Rosenberg, “States Taking Pharma to Court for Risky Antipsychotic-Pre- scribing Spree,” AlterNet, October 19, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/health/103543.
President Barack Obama’s
three-country visit to Africa stopped in Johannesburg, South Africa and
was met by more than 1,000 protesters in nearby Pretoria.
Credit: Getty Images
The protest was put together by “No You
Can’t” or “Nobama.” Organizers managed to bring anti-Obama and
anti-America protesters from labor unions, climate activists and the
South African Communist party.
Mdbuyiseni
Ndlozi, the national coordinator of the “No Obama” told reporters, “I
think it’s very clear at the moment that the Nobel Peace Prize givers
made a mistake.”
Ndlozi went on to accuse the president
of failing to keep his campaign promises as well as continuing wars he
promised to end; starting more wars (though without saying which ones);
and continuing U.S. aggression and human rights violations (no specifics
here either).
South Africa’s Communist party was also
participating in the Pretoria protest. One member, Solly Mapaila told
reporters that his group was marching because “We don’t share similar
values with President Obama and the USA — which represent injustice,
aggression, imperialism and an atrocious system of capitalism.”
Yousef Omar of eNews Channel Africa filed this report from the Pretoria protest:
In addition to the street protests in
Pretoria, the Association of Young Communists plan on making their
voices heard Saturday when Obama receives an honorary degree from the
University of Johannesburg in Soweto. EWN.com reports:
South African Students
Congress and the Young Communist League will be protesting UJ’s “poor
and undemocratic” decision to award Obama an honorary doctorate.
The president’s Africa trip wraps up with a visit to Tanzania on Sunday.
Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) took
to the House floor on Friday and delivered his second memorable — and
scathing — 1-minute critique of President Barack Obama this month. See
his first one, here.
The rhetorical theme of his most recent remarks was: What would tyranny look like in the United States of America?
Rep. Jim Bridenstine (YouTube)
“Mr. Speaker, the president decided to
raise energy prices on all Americans, which adversely affects the poor
the most and he didn’t ask Congress,” Bridenstine began.
“The president decided to unilaterally
reduce our strategic nuclear deterrent when more countries than ever
have nuclear weapons, no treaty that would require consent of the
Senate,” he said. “The president has decided which health insurance
plans the people are allowed to have. The president didn’t ask congress
or the people for that matter. The list goes on.”
He added: “In America, we are either moving more towards liberty or more towards tyranny.”
Bridenstine then took aim at the Obama administration as a whole, criticizing each branch of the federal government.
“Well I think, we should ask ourselves
what tyranny would look like in the United States of America,” he
continued. “An executive branch that picks and chooses which laws it
wants to enforce. A judicial branch that would allow to do so on grounds
of the executive branch did not defend the laws in the court. The
legislative branch would have very limited power because they turned it
all over the president and the people would feel like they had no
representation.”
He concluded by circling back to
answer his own question. “The president told us he was going to
fundamentally transform America, and I think that is exactly what he is
doing. I yield back.”
Bridenstine later uploaded the video
of his remarks to YouTube. The video is titled, “What would tyranny look
like in America? Look around.”
“Mr.
Speaker, the President’s Justice Department sold weapons to
narco-terrorists south of our border who killed one of our finest.
The President’s State Department lied about Benghazi with false information provided by the White House.
The
President’s Attorney General authorized spying on a Fox News journalist
and his family for reporting on a North Korean nuclear test.
The
President’s Justice Department confiscated phone records of the
Associated Press because they reported on a thwarted terrorist attack.
The President’s Treasury Department uses the IRS to target political opposition.
The
President’s Health and Human Services Secretary pressures the insurance
companies, she is supposed to regulate, to promote ObamaCare, which is
the same law she uses to force citizens to pay for abortion inducing
drugs that are against their religious liberties.
Mr. Speaker, the
President’s dishonesty, incompetence, vengefulness, and lack of moral
compass lead many to suggest he is not fit to lead. The only problem is
that his Vice President is equally unfit and even more embarrassing.”
-Congressman Jim Bridenstine
U.S. Drone Strikes Are Causing Child Casualties: Video and ReportDuring
my recent trip to Pakistan as part of our upcoming documentary film,
Drones Exposed, I was struck most by the stories told to me by children
who had experienced a U.S. drone strike firsthand. The impact of
America's drone war in the likes of Pakistan and Yemen will linger on,
especially for the loved ones of the 178 children killed in those
countries by U.S. drone strikes.
War Costs' latest video (with
accompanying report) brings attention to the children who have died as a
result of drone strikes. The video names some of the children who
perished in these strikes, and points out the obfuscation tactics of
American officials who will not own up to the significant amount of
civilian casualties that have occurred due to this legally- and
morally-dubious policy. Login with Facebook to see what your friends are readingEnable Social Readingi During
my recent trip to Pakistan as part of our upcoming documentary film,
Drones Exposed, I was struck most by the stories told to me by children
who had experienced a U.S. drone strike firsthand. The impact of
America's drone war in the likes of Pakistan and Yemen will linger on,
especially for the loved ones of the 178 children killed in those
countries by U.S. drone strikes.
War Costs' latest video (with
accompanying report) brings attention to the children who have died as a
result of drone strikes. The video names some of the children who
perished in these strikes, and points out the obfuscation tactics of
American officials who will not own up to the significant amount of
civilian casualties that have occurred due to this legally- and
morally-dubious policy.
In addition to the video, War Costs
offers this report detailing the effects of drone strikes on children.
The findings come mainly from the diligent investigative reporting of
TBIJ and the groundbreaking reports on the impact of drone strikes by
Stanford and New York University researchers (Living Under Drones:
Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in
Pakistan) and researchers at Columbia University (The Civilian Impact of
Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions)
In an effort
to compel answers about why these innocent civilians have died without
acknowledgement or explanation from the U.S. government, War Costs is
calling on the U.S. House of Representatives to debate and pass Rep.
Dennis Kucinich's bill that calls for more transparency regarding U.S.
drone strike policy.
An inside look at his pre-war decision making reveals how the public was misled and the constitution ignored.
We have all seen in the news the terrible conflict in Libya, but we are not all aware of the true story.
We have heard a very one sided argument presented to us from our media. We have heard many lies, which appear to be covering the truth from us so we cannot make a clear, fair judgment for ourselves.
This
film has been created to show the people of the world another side of
the story. The side from the Libyan people them selves.
We have been led to believe the majority of Libyans wanted an over- throw of their govnment, but this is far from the truth.
INCONSISTENT EXPLANATIONS
On March 28, 2011, Obama gave a televised address about Libya. It included this passage about his actions:
Confronted
by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered
warships into the Mediterranean. European allies declared their
willingness to commit resources to stop the killing. The Libyan
opposition, and the Arab League, appealed to the world to save lives in
Libya. At my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the
United Nations Security Council to pass an historic Resolution that
authorized a No0Fly Zone to stop the regime's attacks from the air, and
further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan
people.
In his telling, (a) America led the effort to
establish the No-Fly Zone; and (b) the No-Fly Zone would stop the
Libyan regime's attacks from the air.
Compare these assertions to the inside account reported by Lewis (which was vetted by the White House prior to publication):
If you were president just then and you turned your television to
some cable news channel you would have seen many Republican senators
screaming at you to invade Libya and many Democratic congressmen
hollering at you that you had no business putting American lives at risk
in Libya. If you flipped over to the networks on March 7 you might have
caught ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper saying to your press
secretary, Jay Carney, "More than a thousand people have died, according
to the United Nations. How many more people have to die before the
United States decides, O.K., we're going to take this one step of a
no-fly zone?"
By March 13, Qaddafi appeared to be roughly two
weeks from getting to Benghazi. On that day the French announced they
were planning to introduce a resolution in the United Nations to use
U.N. forces to secure the skies over Libya in order to prevent Libyan
planes from flying. A "no-fly zone" this was called, and it forced
Obama's hand. The president had to decide whether to support the
no-fly-zone resolution or not. At 4:10 p.m. on
March 15 the White House held a meeting to discuss the issue. "Here is
what we knew," recalls Obama, by which he means here is what I knew. "We
knew that Qaddafi was moving on Benghazi, and that his history was such
that he could carry out a threat to kill tens of thousands of people.
We knew we didn't have a lot of time--somewhere between two days and two
weeks. We knew they were moving faster than we originally anticipated.
We knew that Europe was proposing a no-fly zone."
That much had
been in the news. One crucial piece of information had not. "We knew
that a no-fly zone would not save the people of Benghazi," says Obama.
"The no-fly zone was an expression of concern that didn't really do
anything." European leaders wanted to create a no-fly zone to stop
Qaddafi, but Qaddafi wasn't flying. His army was racing across the North
African desert in jeeps and tanks. Obama had to have wondered just how
aware of this were these foreign leaders supposedly interested in the
fate of these Libyan civilians. He didn't know if they knew that a
no-fly zone was pointless, but if they'd talked to any military leader
for five minutes they would have. And that was not all. "The last thing
we knew," he adds, "is that if you announced a no-fly zone and if it
appeared feckless, there would be additional pressure for us to go
further. As enthusiastic as France and Britain were about the no-fly
zone, there was a danger that if we participated the U.S. would own the
operation. Because we had the capacity."
To summarize,
(a) America did not lead the effort to establish a no-fly zone -- it
reluctantly signed on to the idea after its hand was forced by the
French; (b) the no-fly zone wouldn't stop the regime's attacks because
they weren't coming from the air. It was, rather, a preamble to
escalation.
Due to the nature of the Libya conflict, these
misrepresentations weren't nearly as consequential as, say, the way
George W. Bush spoke out about weapons of mass destruction before the
Iraq war. It is nevertheless an example of the president deliberately
misleading the American people in order to facilitate false impressions
about foreign military actions that he finds convenient.
ZERO REGARD FOR CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL It's long been established that Obama failed to secure a congressional declaration of war, as the constitution and Senator Obama's understanding of it dictated; and that he violated the War Powers Resolution. It is nevertheless worth revisiting the subject given these new details about his thought process:
Obama
insists that he still had not made up his mind what to do when he
returned to the Situation Room -- that he was still considering doing
nothing at all. A million people in Benghazi were waiting to find out
whether they would live or die, and he honestly did not know. There were
things the Pentagon might have said to deter him, for instance. "If
somebody had said to me that we could not take out their air defense
without putting our fliers at risk in a significant way; if the level of
risk for our military personnel had been ratcheted up--that might have
changed my decision," says Obama. "Or if I did not feel Sarkozy or
Cameron were far enough out there to follow through. Or if I did not
think we could get a U.N resolution passed." Once again he polled the
people in the room for their views. Of the principals only Susan Rice
(enthusiastically) and Hillary Clinton (who would have settled for a
no-fly zone) had the view that any sort of intervention made sense. "How
are we going to explain to the American people why we're in Libya,"
asked William Daley, according to one of those present. "And Daley had a
point: who gives a shit about Libya?"
From the president's point
of view there was a certain benefit in the indifference of the American
public to whatever was happening in Libya. It enabled him to do, at
least for a moment, pretty much whatever he wanted to do. Libya was the
hole in the White House lawn.
Obama made his decision: push for
the U.N resolution and effectively invade another Arab country. Of the
choice not to intervene he says, "That's not who we are," by which he
means that's not who I am. The decision was extraordinarily personal.
"No one in the Cabinet was for it," says one witness. "There was no
constituency for doing what he did." Then Obama went upstairs to the
Oval Office to call European heads of state and, as he puts it, "call
their bluff." Cameron first, then Sarkozy. It was three a.m. in Paris
when he reached the French president, but Sarkozy insisted he was still
awake. ("I'm a young man!") In formal and stilted tones the European
leaders committed to taking over after the initial bombing. The next
morning Obama called Medvedev to make sure that the Russians would not
block his U.N. resolution. There was no obvious reason why Russia should
want to see Qaddafi murder a city of Libyans, but in the president's
foreign dealings the Russians play the role that Republicans currently
more or less play in his domestic affairs. The Russians' view of the
world tends to be zero-sum: if an American president is for it, they
are, by definition, against it. Obama thought that he had made more
progress with the Russians than he had with the Republicans; Medvedev
had come to trust him, he felt, and believed him when he said the United
States had no intention of moving into Libya for the long term. A
senior American official at the United Nations thought that perhaps the
Russians let Obama have his resolution only because they thought it
would end in disaster for the United States.
And it could have.
All that exists for any president are the odds. On March 17 the U.N.
gave Obama his resolution. The next day he flew to Brazil and was there
on the 19th, when the bombing began. A group of Democrats in Congress
issued a statement demanding Obama withdraw from Libya; Ohio Democratic
congressman Dennis Kucinich asked if Obama had just committed an
impeachable offense. All sorts of people who had been hounding the
president for his inaction now flipped and questioned the wisdom of
action. A few days earlier Newt Gingrich, busy running for president,
had said, "We don't need the United Nations. All we have to say is that
we think slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we're
intervening." Four days after the bombing began, Gingrich went on the
Today show to say he wouldn't have intervened and was quoted on Politico
as saying, "It is impossible to make sense of the standard of
intervention in Libya except opportunism and news media publicity." The
tone of the news coverage shifted dramatically, too. One day it was "Why
aren't you doing anything?" The next it was "What have you gotten us
into?" As one White House staffer puts it, "All the people who had been
demanding intervention went nuts after we intervened and said it was
outrageous. That's because the controversy machine is bigger than the
reality machine."
Put more succinctly, going to war in
Libya was a close call; there are things various folks could have said
to deter him; he ran the decision through executive branch and
international channels; most people told him not to do it; but if
Congress came into the picture at all, it wasn't enough to merit mention
in the retelling, and certainly not enough to follow the constitution
and put the prospective war to a vote. The people's representatives were
excluded.
The imperial presidency is so well entrenched that a journalist like
Michael Lewis needn't really question circumventing Congress to feel as
though he's including all the crucial parts of the story about going to
war.
That remains a scandal.
And it is telling that Michael
Lewis, one of America's finest journalists, didn't even ask Obama about
failing to put the decision about Libya before Congress. He didn't ask
despite the plain language of the Constitution, Obama's prior statements
indicating he fully understood his legal obligations, and the fact that
various members of Congress complained about his unilateral action. The
imperial presidency is so well entrenched that a journalist like Lewis
needn't really question those things to feel as though he's including
all the crucial parts of the story about going to war.
That is quite a precedent Obama has set. And Mitt Romney is ready to exploit it if he wins. As he put it: "I can assure you if I'm president, the Iranians will have no question
but that I will be willing to take military action if necessary to
prevent them from becoming a nuclear threat to the world. I don't
believe at this stage, therefore, if I'm president that we need to have a
war powers approval or special authorization for military force. The
president has that capacity now."
This article was written by Michael Snyder and posted with his permission.
If the economy is getting better, then why does poverty in America
continue to grow so rapidly? Yes, the stock market has been hitting
all-time highs recently, but also the number of Americans living in
poverty has now reached a level not seen since the 1960s. Yes,
corporate profits are at levels never seen before, but so is the number
of Americans on food stamps. Yes, housing prices have started to
rebound a little bit (especially in wealthy areas), but there are also
more than a million public school students in America that are homeless.
That is the first time that has ever happened in U.S. history. So
should we measure our economic progress by the false stock market bubble
that has been inflated by Ben Bernanke’s reckless money printing, or
should we measure our economic progress by how the poor and the middle
class are doing? Because if we look at how average Americans are doing
these days, then there is not much to be excited about. In fact,
poverty continues to experience explosive growth in the United States
and the middle class continues to shrink. Sadly, the truth is that
things are not getting better for most Americans. With each passing
year the level of economic suffering in this country continues to go up,
and we haven’t even reached the next major wave of the economic
collapse yet. When that strikes, the level of economic pain in this
nation is going to be off the charts.
The following are 21 statistics about the explosive growth of poverty in America that everyone should know…
1 – According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately one out of
every six Americans is now living in poverty. The number of Americans
living in poverty is now at a level not seen since the 1960s.
2-When you add in the number of low income Americans it is even more
sobering. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million
Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.
3 – Today, approximately 20 percent of all children in the United
States are living in poverty. Incredibly, a higher percentage of
children is living in poverty in America today than was the case back in
1975.
4 – It may be hard to believe, but approximately 57 percent of all
children in the United States are currently living in homes that are
either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
5 – Poverty is the worst in our inner cities. At this point, 29.2
percent of all African-American households with children are dealing
with food insecurity.
6 – According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
7 – The number of children living on $2.00 a day or less in the
United States has grown to 2.8 million. That number has increased by
130 percent since 1996.
8 – For the first time ever, more than a million public school
students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57
percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
9 – Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the
wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the
last recession began.
10 – One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars each year.
11 – At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the U.S. lives in a home without a father.
12 – Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
13 – Today, there are approximately 20.2 million Americans that spend
more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46
percent increase from 2001.
14 – About 40 percent of all unemployed workers in America have been out of work for at least half a year.
15 – At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.
16 – There has been an explosion in the number of “working poor”
Americans in recent years. Today, about one out of every four workers
in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty
level.
17 – Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at
least one welfare program run by the federal government. And that does
not even include Social Security or Medicare.
18 – An all-time record 47.79 million Americans are now on food
stamps. Back when Barack Obama first took office, that number was only
sitting at about 32 million.
19 – The number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.
20 – According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food
stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas,
Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa,
Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire,
New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota,
Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”
21 – Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on
food stamps. Today, close to one out of every six Americans is on food
stamps. Even more shocking is the fact that more than one out of every
four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp
program.
On Thursday Representative John Barrow (D-GA-12th District) blasted
Obama’s proposed $100 Million African vacation. He called upon the
obvious stating that the money could be put to better use and urged
Barack Obama to lead by example.
When President Obama goes to sub-Saharan Africa this
month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be
taking any chances.Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be
dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed
medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an
emergency.
Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including
14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass
to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay.
Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the
president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane
gets too close.
The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government
tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal
planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the
preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the
document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect
the U.S. commander in chief on trips abroad.
Republican Representative George Holding recently pointed out the
hypocrisy of taking a trip that had the equivalent value of 1350 weeks
of White House tours. Fox News reported:
“For the cost of this trip to Africa, you could have
1,350 weeks of White House tours,” Rep. George Holding, a North Carolina
Republican, said last week. “It is no secret that we need to rein in
government spending, and the Obama administration has regularly and
repeatedly shown a lack of judgment for when and where to make cuts. …
The American people have had enough of the frivolous and careless
spending.”
Unfortunately the Obama family really doesn’t seem to care. As we reported last week, First Lady Michelle Obama took a trip to Ireland that was very unnecessary. Steven Ahle also reported that the government is cutting aid to women and children in favor of funding unnecessary programs. This is the reality of this administration and the current leadership of America.
These people have no sense of fiscal responsibility and no sense of priorities.
Attempting to rationalize with irrational people is very much the
equivalent of this administration trying to negotiate peace with
terrorists. I applaud John Barrow for having the courage to call out
Obama from the other side of the aisle, but I am not sure it will help.
Nonetheless, when people cross party lines to attempt to do what is
right then we need to, at the very least, acknowledge them for trying.
Not many politicians have the courage to do that.
My hunch is that Barack Obama, being the petty man that he is, will not get John Barrow a souvenir after these comments.
I bet he doesn’t even get a postcard.
This is plain nuts. Why would anyone do this unless they want to set
the scene for a repeat of former events or they are plain ignorant of
history?? What is wrong with this picture? The picture is of five
nuclear carriers. Just like Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor, December 7,
1941. This picture was taken the other day in Norfolk. The Obama
Administration ordered 5 nuclear carriers into harbor for “routine” (?)
inspections. Heads of the Navy were flabbergasted by the directive.
NORFOLK, VA. (February 8, 2013). The first time since WWII that five
U.S. aircraft carriers were docked together. USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
(CVN 69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS
Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) are all in
port at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., the world’s largest naval station.
Sources stated that this breached a long standing military protocol in
the Navy meant to avoid massive enemy strike on major US forces. (U.S.
Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Ryan J.
Courtade/Released) Watch out America! Idiots and Traitors are in charge!
If
there was any further proof needed that the Egyptian government has no
interest in protecting Coptic Christians from assault from Muslims, and
may be aiding and abetting such attacks, the evidence
is in. A just-released video appears to show Egyptian police standing
and watching while a murderous attack was launched April 7 on Coptic
Christians at a Cathedral, as they mourned other Coptic Christians who
were previously killed by Muslims. The first attack took place on April 4
in Khosous; four Copts were murdered and a nursery and church were
burned.
Not only did the Muslim police stand and watch; one police officer
apparently aided a Muslim gunman take aim at the mourners exiting the
church. Two Copts died, and 84 were injured, including 11 Coptic Police
officers. The video shows Muslims using guns, machetes, throwing stones,
and possibly hurling Molotov cocktails at the mourners exiting St.
Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in the Abbassia District of Cairo.
And just guess who were the ones arrested? Four Copts. You read that correctly.
Andrew Johnston, advocacy director for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said:
Two Copts were killed during the attack on the Cathedral; four more
died in Khosous, yet not one of their attackers has been arrested. These
arrests come at a time when the Coptic community in Egypt is still
coming to terms with an unprecedented attack on the headquarters of the
Coptic Orthodox Church and the violence in Khosous. Such discrepancies
in the discharge of justice contribute to impunity, and can only foster
more sectarianism.
The Egyptian National Council for Human Rights lamely protested:
There is a general feeling among citizens about the absence of law
and the prestige of the state. Such a feeling could push the citizens to
the violence and sectarianism without fearing from any deterrence … The
recent incident proved the shrinking of the role of the state to
control the actions of the individuals especially those people who think
that they talk on the behalf of God. There is a need for implementing
the law strictly to treat such incidents.
The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America is a documentary film about the perceived threat of radical Islam in the United States.
The filmmakers contend that radical Islamists are engaging in a
"multifaceted strategy to overcome the western world," waging a
"cultural jihad" to "infiltrate and undermine our society from within"
The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America is a controversial
documentary film made by Wayne Kopping on the subject of radical Islam
in present day United States.
The MD featured in the film conveys his own personality, what you see is
what you get. This film might be the most important for educating those who are unaware that there really are cultures that are not
compatible with Western democracy. The point of the film is that
Islam itself is not "truly" the way the jihadis portray it.
Whether he is correct or not about the history of Islam, the crucial
point is that we have consensus that Jihad is a problem. People like
Chomsky and Normand Finkelstein can flirt with murderers all they want
to, but the rest of the body politic needs to pay attention to the facts
before they cast their votes on the advise of such blind propagandists.
It's ironic that the 2 biggest problems in Western liberalism also
happen to be eligible for aliyah, and the biggest victim of their
misguided activism is Israel, with the United States suffering less only
due to her power and physical barrier from the heart of global
spheres of influence.
Raphael Shore, producer of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the
West, and founder of the Clarion Fund is the producer of The Third
Jihad. The film was directed and edited by Wayne Kopping, who was also
the Director, Editor, and Co-Writer of Obsession.Co-Directing and
Co-Producing the film was Erik Werth, an Emmy-nominated television
producer at Dateline NBC and former advisor to senior government
officials.
The overriding theme of the film is the issue of homegrown jihad and its
threat to national security. 72 minutes long, the film explores the
alleged existence of an ongoing 'Cultural Jihad' in America.
Interviewees
Persons interviewed in the film include: former Secretary of Homeland
Security Tom Ridge, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, resident fellow
at the American Enterprise Institute Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Director of the
American Center for Democracy Rachel Ehrenfeld, founder and president of
the Alliance of Iranian Women Manda Zand Ervin, former Jammaa Islameia
terrorist Dr. Tawfik Hamid, British columnist and author Melanie
Phillips, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Easter Studies
at Princeton University Bernard Lewis, former CIA operative Wayne
Simmons, Police Commissioner of New York City Raymond Kelly, founder of
the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser,
Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Walid
Phares, head of Masjid Al Islam mosque in Washington, DC Imam Abdul Alim
Musa, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, former CIA Intelligence Expert
Clare Lopez, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs John Miller
(journalist) , President of the National Ten Point Leadership Foundation
Rev. Eugene Rivers, journalist and author Mark Steyn, and former CIA
Director during the Clinton Administration Jim Woolsey.
"The end goal of everything we are talking about is the
re-establishment of the Islamic form of government." Muslim Students
Association West event, Los Angeles, CA,
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has produced a new documentary titled "Jihad in America: the Grand Deception."
This is a documentary worth watching and promoting. Our popular press
and political culture have ignored this threat, and the Obama
administration is actively promoting Islam, both here and abroad. Muslim
activists have established positions of authority within the White
House, FBI, DHS, DoD, and elsewhere within our government. Even Grover
Norquist, director of Americans for Tax Reform, has discredited the
threat from Muslim extremists in our midst.
Many experts have echoed the danger articulated in The Grand Deception. The Center for Security Policy's Frank Gaffney has produced a free online video titled "The Muslim Brotherhood in America: A Course in 10 Parts."
Gaffney is a leading expert on national defense issues, and published
"Sharia: the Threat to America," along with former prosecutor Andrew
McCarthy and others, which details how the Brotherhood has planned to
subvert this country. I reported on this for Right Side News and
Cliff Kincaid held a National Press Club press conference on February 5th to detail how Al Gore's sale of Current TV
to Al Jazeera threatens to provide this anti-American, radical Islamist
television network a propaganda outlet within our borders. Cliff reports
that Al Jazeera appears to be breaking multiple laws in its effort to
expand its influence among American viewers, Obama's Justice Department
knows about it and is apparently doing nothing.
While the mainstream media and leftwing politicians dance on the
graves of 9-11 victims in their celebration of Islam, the Muslim
Brotherhood has made its intentions clear:
The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that
their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and
destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its
miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it
is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other
religions…
The accompanying chart reveals the Brotherhood's network of
associates and affiliates within the U.S. and throughout the world. This
should offer a snapshot of the problems this organization poses.
It is way past time to stop sacrificing our lives and country on the
alter of political correctness and diversity, and call the Muslim
Brotherhood, most other Muslim advocacy organizations and the
politicians of both parties who support them, the direct national
security threat they are.
Tick-Tock CAIR Clock*
132 Days, 18 Hours, 14 Minutes, 6 Seconds
- See more at: http://www.granddeception.com/#sthash.ezbpoqjo.dpuf
U.S Government does nothing to impede expansion of 'Soldiers of Allah' network
WASHINGTON – A radical jihadist group responsible for nearly 50
attacks on American soil is operating 35 terrorist training camps across
the nation, but the U.S. government refuses to include the organization
on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra, known in the U.S. as “Muslims of America,” has
purchased or leased hundreds of acres of property – from New York to
California – in which the leader, Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, boasts of
conducting “the most advanced training courses in Islamic military
warfare.”
In a recruitment video captured from Gilani’s “Soldiers of Allah,” he
states in English: “We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are
dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.”
Though Gilani and his organization is suspected of committing
assassinations and firebombings inside the U.S., and is also suspected
of the beheading murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in
Pakistan, the terrorist camps spread through the country continue to
expand in numbers and population.
A documentary called “Homegrown Jihad: Terrorist Training Camps Around the U.S.” provides
compelling evidence of how “Muslims of America” operates with impunity
inside the U.S. In the video, producers visited some camps, attempted to
visit others and interviewed neighbors and local police officials. It
also include excerpts of the “Muslims of America” recruitment video.
Get “Homegrown Jihad: Terrorist Training Camps Around the U.S.” and
share it with your neighbors, your local police officials and your
representatives in Congress.
The recruitment video shows American converts to Islam being
instructed in the operation of AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers and
machine guns and C4 explosives. It provides instruction in how to kidnap
Americans, kill them and how to conduct sabotage and subversive
operations.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s attacks on American soil range from bombings to
murder to plots to blow up U.S. landmarks. A 2006 Department of Justice
report states Jamaat ul-Fuqra “has more than 35 suspected communes and
more than 3,000 members spread across the United States, all in support
of one goal: the purification of Islam through violence.” In 2005, the
Department of Homeland Security predicted the group would continue to
carry out attacks in the U.S.
“Act like you are his friend. Then kill him,” says Gilani in the
recruitment video, explaining how to handle American “infidels.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was attempting to interview
Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s leader, Gilani, in 2002 when he was kidnapped and
later beheaded. One year later, Iyman Faris, member of both Jamaat
ul-Fuqra and al-Qaida, pleaded guilty in federal court to a plot to blow
up the Brooklyn Bridge.
Gilani was at one time in Pakistani custody for the abduction of
Pearl. Intelligence sources also suggest a link between Jamaat ul Fuqra
and Richard Reid, the infamous “shoe bomber” who attempted to ignite
explosives aboard a Paris-to-Miami passenger flight Dec. 22, 2001.
“What we are witnessing here is kind of a brand-new form of
terrorism,” says FBI Special Agent Jody Weis in the documentary. “These
home-grown terrorists can prove to be as dangerous as any known group,
if not more so,” As WND reported, a
covert visit to a Jamaat ul-Fuqra encampment in upstate New York by the
Northeast Intelligence Network found neighboring residents deeply
concerned about military-style training taking place there but
frustrated by the lack of attention from federal authorities.
Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization, has been
directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The organization
operates communes of primarily black, American-born Muslims throughout
the U.S. The investigation confirmed members commonly use aliases and
intentional spelling variations of their names and routinely deny the
existence of Jamaat ul-Fuqra.
The group openly recruits through various social service
organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in
compounds where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra,
which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority.
U.S. authorities have probed the group for charges ranging from links
to al-Qaida to laundering and funneling money into Pakistan for
terrorist activities. The organization supports various terrorist groups
operating in Pakistan and Kashmir, and Gilani himself is linked
directly to Hamas and Hezbollah.
Gilani’s American headquarters is in Hancock, N.Y., where training is
provided to recruits who are later sent to Pakistan for more jihadist
paramilitary training, according to law enforcement authorities.
A Justice Department report to law enforcement agencies, prepared in
2006, provides a glimpse into how long Jamaat ul-Fuqra or “Muslims of
America” has been operating inside the U.S.: “Over the past two decades,
a terrorist group known as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, or ‘Community of the
Impoverished,’ has been linked to multiple murders, bombings and various
other felonies throughout the United States and Canada.”
Gilani’s “communes” are described by law enforcement as “classically structured terrorist cells.”
Seven of the compounds have been identified as training facilities:
Marion, Alabama; Commerce, Georgia; Macon, Georgia; Talihina, Oklahoma;
York County, South Carolina; Dover, Tennessee and Red House, Virginia.
Other compounds are located in California, Colorado, Texas, Maryland,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, Michigan and West Virginia.
Mdbuyiseni
Ndlozi, the national coordinator of the “No Obama” told reporters, “I
think it’s very clear at the moment that the Nobel Peace Prize givers
made a mistake.”
