College Bans Violent National Anthem

First it banned the words, now the whole song

Proposes key revisions to Obama administration’s latest National Strategy on Counterterrorism

American Muslim leaders provide analysis to strengthen US efforts against militant Islamist terror

AILC Coalition Signatories:

Golam Akhter, Bangladesh-USA Human Rights Coalition Inc., Washington, DC

Bahman Batmanghelidj, Founding Member, Alliance for Democracy in Iran, Virginia, USA

Khurshed Chowdhury, Ph.D., Maryland, USA

Manda Zand Ervin, President, Alliance of Iranian Women, Maryland, USA

Tarek Fatah, Founder, Muslim Canadian Congress, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Farid Ghadry, President, Reform Party of Syria, Washington, DC

Jamal Hasan, Council for Democracy and Tolerance, Baltimore, MD

Farzana Hassan, Ed.D., Past President, Muslim Canadian Congress, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Phoenix, AZ

Hasan Mahmud, Member, Advisory Board, World Muslim Congress, Dallas, TX

Kamal Nawash, President, Free Muslims Coalition, Washington, DC

C. Holland Taylor, Chairman & CEO, LibForAll Foundation, Winston-Salem, NC

Jalal Zuberi, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA

China Exploits Cuban Oil Drilling

Currently, most of the eastern portion of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico—which borders the water where the Chinese, Indians, and Russians would be operating off Cuba—is closed to drilling.

The Battle For Brooklyn: Eminent Domain Abuse Gone Wild

The Battle For Brooklyn: Eminent Domain Abuse Gone Wild

Should the government be able to take citizen's property through eminent domain?

The Battle For Brooklyn, a documentary about one man's fight to stop a private developer from using eminent domain to take his home, recently opened in select theaters in New York City after a successful film-festival run.

In 2003, billionaire real estate developer and New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner decided to move the team to Brooklyn, with the intention of building an arena, an affordable housing project, and bringing desperately needed jobs to the borough of Brooklyn. Ratner's friend and fellow billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, enthusiastically put the weight of top-down government planning behind the project. That included using the city government's extensive powers of eminent domain, despite the fact eminent domain is supposed to be used only in cases where development is for public uses such as schools and roads. And despite the fact that the construction of what became known as the "Atlantic Yards" project would displace many thriving businesses and homes.

Graphic designer Daniel Goldstein fought for nearly seven years to keep his home out of the hands of Ratner's company, Forest City Ratner. Goldstein's quixotic struggle is the centerpiece of The Battle For Brooklyn.

Reason.tv sat down with co-directors Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley to discuss eminent domain abuse and political perceptions of their film. Galinsky and Hawley insist their film is not a polemic, but rather an all-too-common story of a single person fighting an injustice against figures whose power and influence drawf his own.

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher. About 4.40 minutes.

Will Uncle Sam Be Pushed off a Cliff?

Strongest Earthquake Ever in D.C.: Magnitude 5.8-9

The largest damaging earthquake (magnitude 4.8) in the seismic zone occurred in 1875.

Vacationer-in-Chief misses putt while in vacation.

NATIONAL CATHEDRAL DAMAGED IN QUAKE

It was the strongest earthquake to hit Virginia since at least 1897 (for which earthquake magnitudes are estimated) and apparently the strongest quake to hit east of the Mississippi River since a 5.9 quake struck in Indiana in 1983, according to a site hosted by Michigan Technological University.

The strongest earthquake recorded on the East Coast hit Charlestown, S.C., in 1886 with an estimated magnitude of 6.8, resulting in more than 60 deaths and extensive damage.

High Schoolers Start Business: 6 Years Later, Sold for $100 Million

This 21-Year-Old Just Sold Her Startup For $100 Million

These 10 Pre-Teen Entrepreneurs Make Millions More Than Their Parents

New national debt data: It's growing about $3 million a minute, even during Obama's vacation

That means the debt that our federal government owes a whole lot of somebodies including China has increased $4,247,000,000,000 in just 945 days. That's the fastest increase under any president ever.

Communist Statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Outsourced to Chinese Sculptor

King memorial made in China

However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei's rendering.

More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.

However, Ed Dwight, a sculptor in Denver, said Dr King would be "turning over in his grave" if he knew his likeness had been conceived by someone living under a Communist regime.
"He would rise up from his grave and walk into their offices and go, 'How dare you?'"

That's Racist: Official White House Stance against Criticism of Barry Hussein Soetoro

Official White House Stance against Criticism of Barry Hussein Soetoro

Ron Paul Calls for Privatizing TSA

‘These Are Not the Most Reputable People’

MEMRI: Egyptians Demonstrating opposite Israeli Embassy in Cairo Sign with Swastika Saying "The Gas Chambers Are Ready"

MEMRI: Footage of Egyptians Demonstrating opposite Israeli Embassy in Cairo Shows Sign with Swastika Saying "The Gas Chambers Are Ready"

#3083 - Footage of Egyptians Demonstrating opposite Israeli Embassy in Cairo Shows Sign with Swastika Saying "The Gas Chambers Are Ready"
Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar) - August 21, 2011 - 01:14

REVEALED: Wall St Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's SECRET Loans...

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Fed Loans

National Black Pro-Life Coalition

Releases Startling New Abortion Awareness Video

Black From Islam: African American Muslim Defectors (Jalila)

Black From Islam: African American Muslim Defectors (Jalila)
A Film by Layla Merritt
Throughout Pro-Black movement of the 1960's and 70's, black Americans converted in droves to Islam. Black From Islam profiles three African American women who were raised in insular, Muslim communities inside America. What they each discovered when they stepped outside led to three fascinating life stories of triumph, tragedy, wisdom, and growth.

BLACK FROM ISLAM: AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSLIM DEFECTORS

Syrian Tribal Leader Ahmad Al-Shlash Threatens to Barbecue the US Ambassador to Syria

"With or Without Salt"

Clip #3036 Broadcast: July 15, 2011

Of the U.S. ambassador, Al-Shlash said:

“That man, sitting in his embassy… I don’t get it. Who does he think he is – Christopher Columbus, exploring the area here? I don’t get it. I would like to convey a message to the security forces and to the entire world. The young people of Deir Al-Zour will not let him set foot in their city. I am talking about my cousins and my tribe. If they let me down, I myself will prevent him from entering Deir Al-Zour. By Allah, over my dead body will he ever enter Deir Al-Zour.

“One of my cousins said: ‘I swear by Allah, we will blow up the ground on which he sets foot. We will turn the road into smoldering coals.’

“Another cousin of mine said to me: ‘We are known for having the best mutton in the world. For the first time, Allah willing, we will be eating American mutton. Whether his flesh is bitter or not, with salt or without salt – we will eat him up.’

“Let me issue a warning. We cannot vouch for this man’s safety if he so much as sets foot on the threshold of Deir Al-Zour.”

ARCHBISHOP: MSNBC, CNN, NEW YORK TIMES ‘UNTRUSTWORTHY’ WHEN IT COMES TO RELIGION

The news outlets CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and Newsweek have come under fire by Philadelphia’s incoming Archbishop, for a lack of “trustworthiness” where matters of religious faith are concerned.

According to Archbishop Charles Chaput, the media do not “provide trustworthy information about religious faith. ” His comments were made Wednesday during an address on religious freedom before some 10,000 pilgrims at the Catholic World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain.

Archbishop Chaput noted that the media gave a lot of coverage to the so-called “Arab Spring,” involving civil unrest in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. “But very little of that coverage has mentioned that the turmoil in Muslim countries has also created a very dangerous situation for Christians and other religious minorities across North Africa and the Middle East,” he said. “In Egypt, angry mobs have attacked Christian churches and monasteries, burning them to the ground and murdering the people inside.”

Archbishop Chaput also criticized the lack of media coverage for widespread anti-Christian violence in Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, and Pakistan.

“Christians face frequent discrimination, slander, beatings and even murder,” the Archbishop added.

The Archbishop seems to have a point. The White House has not made any public statements whatsoever denouncing the persecution of Christians and Jews during the rise of Islamism in the Middle East.

The Archbishop is pointing out how religious warfare is predominant and common across the globe. Islamism is on the rise and the Western democracies, satiated by their relative economic prosperity, or in these days weakened by economic distress, are too flaccid to respond effectively. Either they do not believe it could happen here, or are too weak intellectually to form a response as the West did during the rise of Communism throughout the Cold War.

In the West, "democracy," and calls for `this is what democracy looks like,' has been evoked to erase the Judeo-Christian heritage of those countries from the public arena. Erasing the Judeo-Christian heritage of the West, along with the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment--tolerance and pluralism--has forced Judeo-Christian values out of our nation’s public square and out of this country’s public debates which does not serve democracy, nor the sustenance of this Republic. It does not serve real tolerance or pluralism. What it does do is impose a kind of unofficial state atheism, allied with those forces, such as Islamism, which seek to break the people of this country from their heritage. To put it another way, if we ban Christian Churches, Jewish voices, and their spokespersons from taking an active role in our nation’s civic life, we’re really just enforcing a new kind of state-sponsored intolerance — a religion without God, or something perhaps much more ominous and worse, creeping sharia or stealth jihad, at some point perhaps an imposed state religion, which works in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, et. al.

Cf. Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion, Paul Marshall, Oxford University Press, (2008); http://www.librarything.com/work/7517845/summary/46467036

Cf. Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman, W. W. Norton & Company, (2004); http://www.librarything.com/work/7829/23469307
This is an original contribution to an overlooked connection between violence and the Left, along with an insightful study of terrorists amongst the Islamists.

Cf. The Flight of the Intellectuals: The Controversy Over Islamism and the Press
Paul Berman, Melville House (2010); http://www.librarything.com/work/4897258/60815999
Berman convincingly demonstrates that the Western press is not seriously considering Islamist ideas.

“Selling lemonade is not a crime”: August 20 is Lemonade Freedom Day

Lemonade Freedom web site

Electric Power and Light Company, Ad, Life Magazine, May 1947, 4. Annotated by Robert Sexty.

The lemonade stand is a widely used and recognized symbol of capitalism and in particular entrepreneurship. The selling of lemonade on the streets of New York can be traced back to when a New York youngster sold it to thirsty street car riders over 130 years ago. Its connection to youthful entrepreneurship has endured. Today it is often the first entrepreneurial venture of young people and is frequently mentioned as a summertime activity. The operation of a lemonade stand is clearly established as a learning or teaching tool and translates well into games for children, simulations and classroom exercises in most grades. The lemonade stand as a symbol lends itself to story-telling and is the basis of plot development in many children's story-books. It is featured in newspaper and magazine cartoons, media stories every summer, web sites, books and television programs. The lemonade stand as a symbol of capitalism and entrepreneurship is relevant today and endures despite changes in beverage preferences and children's activities.

Cf. Children and Youth in History

Allen West: I‘m Here to Lead Blacks Off the Democratic Party ’Plantation’

GOP Rep. Allen West believes that the Democratic Party is akin to a modern-day “plantation.”

In an interview on Wednesday night’s “O’Reilly Factor,” he told guest host Laura Ingraham that he is the “modern-day Harriet Tubman“ and that he wants to lead fellow African Americans away from the the ”21st century plantation.”

West made extremely bold statements throughout the interview, apparently undeterred by any negative response he might receive from the Democratic Party or from fellow African Americans. Commenting on anger that was seen at a Congressional Black Caucus (of which West is the only GOP member) town hall meeting in Detroit this week, he said:

“The people on that plantation are upset because they’ve been disregarded, disrespected and their concerns are not cared about…I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman to kind of lead people on the underground railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.”

West went on to dismiss some African American leaders as “nothing more than overseers over that plantation” and he stated his belief that white liberals have relied upon people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to support Democratic policies. These individuals, he claims, have failed to addresses important matters. West also discussed recent flash mobs (as per the Huffington Post):

The freshman Republican said the fact that black leaders have done nothing in response to the recent spate of flash mobs in U.S. cities is proof of their disconnect from the black community. This summer has been marked by flash mobs in several cities, including Philadelphia and Cleveland, and are thought to be fueled by growing discontent among unemployed urban youth.

He also went on to say that Republicans have not done well drawing black voters into the conservative movement. That said, he explained that there is an opportunity for conservatives to reach African Americans by connecting with them on the issues of “individual responsibility and accountability, faith and family, [and] hard work ethic.”

Watch West’s comments, below (his Harriet Tubman statement is at 2:35):

Islamists Object to Truthful and Historical Facts on Islam in Chicago

CAIR-Chicago is objecting to a curriculum used in the Chicago school district.

CAIR-Chicago’s complaint?

The worksheets in question, produced by MindSparks, a California based educational resource company, teaches students that the religion of Islam is oppressive towards women, inherently violent, and played an important role in harboring slavery.

CAIR-Chicago claims verses from the Qur’an used in this curriculum are “taken out of context.” This is a typical response from Muslim Brotherhood front organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). The problem is, anyone who has ever read the Qur’an knows two things:

1) There is very little “context” to its writings.

2) It does contain numerous passages that make clear women hold second-class status to men, that call for violent jihad against “infidels,” and that sanction the taking of slaves in the prosecution of jihad.

Finally, we see what appears to be a factual rendering of the history of Islam. For instance, the curriculum states, accurately, that “slavery was common in Islam.” Various historians and scholars estimate that between 14 and 18 million Africans were enslaved by Muslims from the 7th century to the 12th century.

CAIR-Chicago clearly wants to rewrite history because it obviously doesn’t want Chicago high school students to be exposed to these “inconvenient truths.”

While the high school is not mentioned in the post below, you can contact the Chicago public schools office via email and thank the school for using this curriculum. Encourage them to retain the curriculum and resist the interference of CAIR-Chicago, which is part of the national CAIR organization. Make sure you mention that CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in America’s history and that it has been identified by the Justice Department as linked to the terrorist organization Hamas.

No school district should be paying any attention to CAIR or any of its local affiliates.