Orwell in the Classroom: University Spends Money to Stifle Speech              



The program may seem “crazy” to many, but don’t you dare call it that. Because this is just one of many words and phrases that Orwellian social engineers at the University of Michigan deem are, well, not at all doubleplusgood. It’s part of a sensitivity-oriented “Inclusive Language Campaign” (ILC) at the public institution — funded to the tune of $16,000. Writes The College Fix:

Words declared unacceptable through the campaign include “crazy,” “insane,” “retarded,” “gay,” “tranny,” “gypped,” “illegal alien,” “fag,” “ghetto” and “raghead.” Phrases such as “I want to die” and “that test raped me” are also verboten.

University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told The College Fix in an email the campaign aims to “address campus climate by helping individuals understand that their words can impact someone and to encourage individuals to commit to creating a positive campus community.”

Students have been asked to sign a pledge to “use inclusive language” and to help their peers “understand the importance of using inclusive language,” according to campaign materials.

Though only in existence for one semester, the Inclusive Language Campaign has maintained a strong presence throughout the university. Students roaming the campus frequently encounter posters of all sizes reminding them: “YOUR WORDS MATTER,” and asking questions such as: “If you knew that I grew up in poverty, would you still call things ‘ghetto’ and ‘ratchet’?”

The ILC’s Facebook page also provides Halloween tips on “how to create costumes [sic] not stereotypes.”
Yet the ILC has method to its madness (or would that be “mentally challengedness”?). A few of the explanations offered for the speech code are:

• “I want to die” “is offensive toward people who have attempted suicide” (and, presumably, those who’ve succeeded).
• “That’s so gay” “perpetuates homophobia.”
• “That’s retarded” “perpetuates ableism.”
• “Tranny” “perpetuates transphobia.”

This is all very sensitive, but a few things remain unanswered. If your car breaks down, can you explain that the tranny went? If you’re from the U.K. and crave a cigarette, can you say, “Slap me a fag, man”? And if this is stifled, is it insensitivity to others’ cultural language norms? If you throw a Paris-themed party, can you report that the atmosphere was festive and gay? Can you use the term “ratchet” if you need to describe, as Dictionary.com defines it, “a toothed bar with which a pawl engages”? Can you characterize someone as an illegal alien if he lacks a visa and really is from another planet?
Social-media users were having their fun, too. The top comment under the College Fix article is by a Dave Daly, who writes of the University of Michigan (U of A), “Parents who paid tuition to this institution got gypped.”
Yet the issue is no joke. Although Fitzgerald said the ILC guidelines are “educational, not regulatory,” they reflect a modern academia that strongly advocates free speech — as long as that speech is free from truth.
For instance, Campus Reform reported just this Tuesday that “school administrators and campus police at Blinn College threatened to kick a student off campus for trying to sign up her peers for a new conservative club,” and lied to her in the process, even though she was in a “designated free speech zone.” The site also tells us that in 2009, the U of M “threatened to evict a conservative student newspaper[,] and last week, a sign promoting an upcoming lecture by syndicated conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg went missing from the university’s campus quad.” Moreover, late last year at the U of M, conservative Muslim student columnist Omar Mahmood was suspended from his newspaper for creating a “hostile environment” after writing a piece of satire. And these individuals simply join the long list of speakers (such as pundit Ann Coulter) and students who have been suppressed, boycotted, shouted down, and even attacked for having the “wrong” opinions.
Even some liberals are sounding the alarm. After Democrat Jonathan Chait wrote about Mahmood’s case and accused the “language police” of “perverting liberalism,” a left-wing Purdue University Ph.D. student named Fredrik deBoer offered his own testimonials (hat tip: the College Fix). He writes:

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 19 year old white woman — smart, well-meaning, passionate — literally run crying from a classroom because she was so ruthlessly brow-beaten for using the word “disabled.” Not repeatedly. Not with malice. Not because of privilege. She used the word once and was excoriated for it. She never came back.

… I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 20 year old black man, a track athlete who tried to fit organizing meetings around classes and his ridiculous practice schedule (for which he received a scholarship worth a quarter of tuition), be told not to return to those meetings because he said he thought there were such a thing as innate gender differences. He wasn’t a homophobe, or transphobic, or a misogynist.… But those were the terms deployed against him, those and worse. So that was it; he was gone.

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 33 year old Hispanic man, an Iraq war veteran who had served three tours and had become an outspoken critic of our presence there, be lectured about patriarchy by an affluent 22 year old white liberal arts college student, because he had said that other vets have to “man up” and speak out about the war. Because apparently we have to pretend that we don’t know how metaphorical language works or else we’re bad people. I watched his eyes glaze over as this woman with $300 shoes berated him.

There are people you’re allowed to offend, however. For example, Brown University columnist Peter Makhlouf recently characterized the ROTC as comprising “criminals.” Yet even though this made students participating in such programs feel unwelcome, he has not suffered Mahmood’s fate and been suspended. And what of “white privilege”? The concept stigmatizes white people as not only unfairly advantaging themselves but also being too oblivious to their privilege to even have a serious opinion on the matter and is offensive to millions; academia not only tolerates the term, however, but even teaches courses on the concept.
This gets at the larger problem with laws and rules based on offensiveness. Much like the notion your “gender” can be whatever you desire, it’s a denial and rejection of objective reality in favor of subjectivity. But most everyone is offended by something, and most everything offends someone. Since not everything can be prohibited, however, we must still discriminate when determining who will be shown “sensitivity.” And without reference to an objective standard, this can only be done based on subjective judgments themselves. But whose will they be?
Those with the power.
Thus, while the sensitivity movement is billed as an agent of fairness, it’s quite the opposite. It’s akin to trading the rules of baseball — equally applied to everyone — for the capricious determinations of an all-powerful umpire imposing his own feelings-derived biases. Following this path, one could see how a society of thieves, or one where bandits hold the reins of power, would stigmatize both honest people and the term “theft.” Why, they might even conjure up a euphemism such as, oh, let’s say, “redistributive justice.”
And with this dislocation from reason and perspective on speech prevailing in academia, perhaps it’s no wonder that some Americans were willing to sign a 2013 petition to repeal the First Amendment.

China in the Classroom: How the Reds Are Reaching American Students’ Minds

The university was prohibited by an arm of the Chinese Ministry of Education from hiring a professor who would discuss Tibet. So, instead, a classical Chinese poetry chairman who wouldn’t dare broach the topic was retained. Of course, this type of state control of teaching isn’t unusual in superficially Marxist and un-officially fascist China, where censorship is a ship-of-state staple.
Except that this didn’t happen in China, but the United States.
And the targeted institution was Stanford University.

How could this happen? It’s the result of a little-known exercise of Chinese soft power, via entities known as “Confucius Institutes.” Billed as being “dedicated to promoting the understanding of Chinese language and culture, and to fostering friendly relations between China and the world,” as a Webster University website reports, the institutes are a perfect fit with American “multiculturalist” education, in which all cultures are, ostensibly, deemed equal. But Confucius Institutes definitely have the goal of ensuring that one culture will be presented as more equal than others.
These entities are run by Confucius Institute Headquarters, known as Hanban, which is essentially an arm of the Chinese Ministry of Education. And the faculty teaching its programs are made in China, exported to the United States in what critics complain is “an exception to the tradition that a university judges who is fit to teach its students,” wrote the Chicago Tribune in December.
Reporting on the topic last week, Campus Reform’s Kaitlyn Schallhorn put the matter in no uncertain terms, citing foreign policy experts and writing, “China has infiltrated American colleges and universities” and is “stifling freedom of debate and creating a base for ‘industrial espionage.’” And how? Follow the money. As Schallhorn tells us:

When American higher education institutions partner with Confucius Institutes … the Institutes will provide the school with an initial $1 million on top of additional funding anywhere between $100,000 to $200,000 per year, according to a report obtained exclusively by Campus Reform from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

“Universities are always on the lookout for money and this money they have gotten comes at a very high price in terms of their integrity and in terms of their academic freedom,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at Heritage and author of the report, told Campus Reform in an interview.

 

And this price is being paid across America — and beyond. As Gonzalez relates in his report, “In the United States, there are some 97 [Confucius Institute] units at universities and close to 400 ‘Confucius classrooms’ in K–12 schools.” Moreover, “The latest statistics from Hanban show that by the end of 2014, 476 Confucius Institutes and 851 Confucius Classrooms have [sic] opened across 127 countries and regions,” the Shanghai Daily tells us.
Critics could point out that this red carpet rolled out for Red Chinese propagandists is much as if the Cold War United States had invited Soviet agents to openly teach in American schools. (While such individuals were causing mischief on our shores, they found it necessary in their more traditional time to masquerade as something they weren’t.)

But much as with the self-avowed communists who can now openly work in our government — such as Barack Obama’s ex-green-jobs “czar” Van Jones — the mask is off. And the results are plain. Writes the Tribune, “Critics … say that [Confucius Institute] classes avoid controversial subjects such as the Tiananmen Square massacre and Falun Gong, a religious sect outlawed in China. Some schools that host the programs have canceled visits from the Dalai Lama under pressure from Beijing.” Schallhorn adds, “‘[China’s] government is intent on portraying a version of itself that is harmonious and happy,’ Gonzalez told Campus Reform. ‘None of the bad things that happen in China, in the PRC, [that] are because of its government are ever portrayed.’”

These Chinese “educational” efforts mirror Beijing’s censorship of American entertainment, where, as The New American reported in December, the regime’s powerful State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (S.A.R.F.T) uses an economic carrot-and-stick approach to try to ensure that our movies present a sanitized version of China.
As for the sanitization in American academia, Gonzalez provides an outline of Confucius Institute trespasses in his report, writing:

• Hanban/Confucius Institutes misrepresent themselves when they stress the link to the PRC’s Education Ministry. Hanban reports directly to political apparatchiks in the Politburo, not to educators in the Ministry (who are, as likely as not, members of the Chinese Communist Party in any case).

• The agreements between universities and Hanban that establish the Confucius Institutes include nondisclosure clauses that make the entire enterprise opaque.

• The Confucius Institutes have been set up as bases of industrial espionage and to pursue Chinese students and other Chinese nationals who stray from the party line here in the United States.

• By adhering to Chinese law and barring the hiring of people whose activities are illegal in China — for example, adherents of the Falun Gong religion — the Confucius Institutes break U.S. labor and employment laws.

In fact, Gonzalez believes that the Confucius Institutes could pose a threat to U.S. national security. As Schallhorn writes, “‘I can tell you that anybody from any communist government, I don’t care which communist government — Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China — that is overseas is going to be asked by the government to come conduct espionage activity,’ Gonzalez said.” She also reports that Steven Mosher, a social scientist and expert on China, warned that the “Institutes employ ‘a number of individuals’ who ‘have backgrounds in Chinese security agencies.’”
Yet there has been some push-back. The University of Chicago severed its relationship with Hanban, as has Penn State, the Toronto School District in Canada, and Stockholm University in Sweden. The American Association of University Professors has issued a statement urging other academic institutions to follow suit, writing, “Allowing any third-party control of academic matters is inconsistent with principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities.” And in December, a House panel chaired by New Jersey Republican congressman Chris Smith investigated Hanban. The panel heard testimony from academicians such as University of Chicago professor emeritus Marshall Sahlins, who warned, reported the Chicago Tribune, “A Confucius Institute on campus is the foreign branch of a political power structure that stretches back to China and to the highest levels of its government.”
So many Americans may wonder, with much of our manufacturing having already been shipped overseas and with outsourcing the order of the day, must our education also be made in China?

Radical Atheist Kills Three Muslims in North Carolina            

          don’t deny your right to believe whatever you’d like; but I have the right to point out it’s ignorant and dangerous for as long as your baseless superstitions keep killing people.”
Craig Stephen Hicks may or may not embrace “baseless superstitions,” as he characterized religious faith in the above statement at the top of his Facebook page. The 46-year-old Chapel Hill resident nonetheless killed three people Tuesday in an act that may be what authorities call a “hate crime” or simply a dispute over noise and parking at his condominium complex.

Hicks’ ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, said the self-described “gun-toting” atheist exhibited “no compassion at all” for other people, and, writes the AP, “A woman who lives near the scene described Hicks as short-tempered. ‘Anytime that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry,’ Samantha Maness said of Hicks. ‘He was very angry, anytime I saw him.’” And on Tuesday, it appears, the North Carolina man exploded, shooting to death Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21; and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19. All three victims were Muslim.
Hicks’ current wife, Karen Hicks, said the murders were “related to long-standing parking disputes my husband had with various neighbors…, had nothing [to] do with religion or the victims' faith” and that her husband “champions the rights of others,” reports the AP.
Nevertheless, the murdered sisters’ father, psychiatrist Mohammad Abu-Salha, insists the act was a “hate crime.” The AP quotes him as saying, “The media here bombards the American citizen with Islamic, Islamic, Islamic terrorism and makes people here scared of us and hate us and want us out. So if somebody has any conflict with you, and they already hate you, you get a bullet in the head.”
And while many others also blame anti-Muslim rhetoric — with some social-media users posting crime information with the hashtag “#MuslimLivesMatter” — this analysis perhaps ignores Hicks’ ideological/philosophical profile.
Hicks’ Facebook page is thoroughly devoted to opposition to religion in general. In fact, above the statement of his cited at this article’s opening, he expresses the sentiment “Of course I want religion to go away.” Below it he wrote, “ANTI-THEISM: The conscientious objection to religion” and “Atheism 411.” “Anti-theism” is the term apparently coined by late writer Christopher Hitchens — who penned the book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything — and refers to not just disbelief in God but active opposition to faith (usually accompanied by hostility). Hicks’ Facebook page also bears the logo of “Atheists for Equality” in the upper-left-hand corner, and the Independent tells us, “TV programmes liked by Hicks include The Atheist Experience, Criminal Minds and Friends, while he describes himself as a fan of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.”
This brings us to what some might call the Hate Crime Delusion. It’s hard to imagine any crime, at least one deserving the designation, that’s an act of love. Yet not all criminals are prosecuted for hatred. And it seems the always “very angry” Hicks was certainly filled with hate. Yet should he be prosecuted for a “hate crime,” it won’t simply be because he hated. It will be because he hated the wrong people.

It’s absolutely possible that ever-hostile Hicks, who had “no compassion at all” for others, was a misanthrope; in other words, a hater of humans. And while this group certainly enjoys legal protection relative to cows, horses, or aardvarks (despite PETA’s best efforts), it doesn’t qualify as a “protected class” under hate-crime law. For that the group must be a subset of humans — the right subset.
In North Carolina this means, a state government website tells us, a class defined by “race, color, religion, nationality, or country of origin” but not, as yet, by “sexual orientation, gender or disability.” And if you’re a crime victim and you make the protected-class cut, your victimizer will suffer, as the state puts it, “penalty enhancement.” If you don’t, you’ll have to settle for your victimizer getting an unenhanced penalty.

What this means for Mr. Hicks is unclear. If it’s determined he committed his murders not because he hated Muslims in particular but “religious” people in general, will he suffer enhancement? Or are religionists too generic? For sure, enhancement won’t be deemed necessary if he’s an equal-opportunity hater, a mere human-despising reverse speciesist. (The same is true for unprotected subsets. Killing people because they’re Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, gluttons, smokers, or Phillies fans also isn’t considered enhancement-worthy.)

Then, even if it was friction over parking that finally set Hicks off, is it possible he might have been more amicably disposed toward the victims if they’d been fellow atheists? Could this have had a subconscious effect? Since the government has appointed itself arbiter of not only the acceptability of thoughts but also their existence, it has its work cut out for it. And perhaps science can help. It has already developed a primitive mind-reading device, and maybe future innovations will take all the guesswork out of who needs a good enhancin’.

Of course, some deny that hate-crime laws are an effort at thought control. Others ask: If two crimes are committed and are identical in terms of the acts themselves, but one is deemed to warrant more punishment, what could the extra punishment be for other than the thoughts expressed through the act? Many citizens still consider this un-American and believe we should punish behavior, not beliefs. They might point out that, traditionally, intention was considered during prosecution only insofar as it was a mitigating factor (e.g., self-defense, jealous rage), not an aggravating one.
Some critics might conclude that hate-crime law itself is driven by prejudice, by a desire to punish certain people and thoughts — while offering special protection to other people — based on a politically correct code of values. After all, hate (wrath) is just one of the Seven Deadly Sins, which also include sloth, gluttony, pride, envy, lust, and greed. Is it possible our focus on wrath is a tad gratuitous? Note, the Bible tells us that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” and most crimes are driven by greed.

Of course, there is a solution here: Apply enhanced hate-crime punishments to all crime — and then eliminate the hate-crime category. For if the increased punishment serves as a greater deterrent to, let’s say, murder, shouldn’t we want to deter all murder? Barring this, every politician who supports hate-crime law should have to meet monthly with the loved ones of a non-hate-crime murder victim and explain, face-to-face, why his killer deserved less punishment. It just might induce an epiphany in some legislators' craniums.

Austria Threatens to Close Saudi-Backed Interfaith Dialogue Center

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann has expressed public outrage over the refusal of the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue to speak out against the flogging of Raif Badawi, a Saudi human rights activist and blogger who has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for "insulting Islam."
"Saudi Arabia practices a form of Sharia law that is one of the most brutal systems in the world... Does the Austrian Foreign Ministry really want to give such a state the opportunity to build an international propaganda center in Austria?" — Editorial, Die Presse.
"An inter-religious dialogue center that remains silent when it is time to speak out clearly for human rights is not worthy of being called a dialogue center. It is a silence center." — Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann.
"If the center wants to remain only an economic center with a religious fig leaf, then Austria should no longer be a part of it. In any event, Austria will not allow itself to be threatened or blackmailed." — Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann.

The Austrian government has threatened to close a controversial Saudi-sponsored religious dialogue center because of the latter's failure to condemn the flogging of a Saudi human rights activist and blogger.
Saudi Arabia has responded to the threat by issuing a counter-threat to move the permanent headquarters of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] out of the Austrian capital of Vienna.
The dust-up began in mid-January, when Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann expressed public outrage over the refusal of the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue [KAICIID] to speak out against the flogging of Raif Badawi, a Saudi human rights activist and blogger who has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for "insulting Islam."

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann (left) has expressed public outrage over the refusal of the KAICIID to speak out against the flogging of Raif Badawi (right), a Saudi human rights activist and blogger who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for "insulting Islam."

That KAICIID, which is headquartered at the Palais Sturany in the heart of Vienna and has the status of an international organization, is ostensibly dedicated to "serving humanity" by "fostering dialogue" between the world's major religions, in order to "prevent conflict."
The KAICIID says that while it condemns all forms of violence, it has not spoken out specifically about Badawi because it does not want to get involved in the internal affairs of other countries.
The center was inaugurated in November 2012 in an elaborate ceremony attended by more than 650 high-profile guests from around the world, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and the foreign ministers of the center's three founding states, Austria, Spain and Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh, which is financing the KAICIID for the first three years at an annual budget of 10-15 million euros ($11-17 million), has promised that there will be "zero politics, zero influence in the center."
But the primary focus of the King Abdullah Center has been to promote a program called "The Image of the Other," which examines "stereotypes and misconceptions" about Islam in education, the media and the Internet.
The KAICIID has been mired in controversy from the very beginning, largely because of Saudi Arabia's dismal record on human rights. Some critics have charged that the center is an attempt by Riyadh to establish a permanent "propaganda center" in central Europe from which to spread the conservative Wahhabi sect of Islam.
Others say the Saudis deliberately chose Vienna to serve as the headquarters for the new organization because of the city's historic role in preventing Islam from overrunning Christian Europe during the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Battle of Vienna in 1683. The Saudis, they say, are simply fighting a new phase of a very old conflict.
The center-left Green Party, which governs Vienna in a coalition, has said that the KAICIID glorifies a country "where freedom of religion and opinion are foreign words." In a statement, the party advised:

"Austria should not allow itself to be misused in this way, to allow itself to be involved in whitewash by a repressive Saudi regime which is using this center as a fig leaf for its dishonorable human rights situation."

The center-right newspaper Die Presse, in an editorial published in October 2011, warned:

"The Austrian government needs to ask itself whether it knows what it is doing: Is it not known that as the state religion of Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism is fiercely opposed to other religions and uses 'intercultural dialogue' as a means for aggressive proselytizing?
"To clarify: Wahhabism is the only officially recognized and allowed religion in Saudi Arabia. Other forms of Islam and other religions are banned and persecuted by the state. Saudi Arabia is the only Islamic state in which there is no church, no synagogue and no other place of worship of any other religion. Shiite Muslims have been systematically discriminated against for decades. Jews are even forbidden to enter the Kingdom.
"Saudi Arabia practices a form of Sharia law that is one of the most brutal systems in the world. Saudi Arabia has at all times rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Women may not drive a car and can be punished by flogging. Corporal punishment, including amputations and executions, are part of everyday life in the country. Just two weeks ago a Sudanese immigrant in Saudi Arabia was publicly beheaded for 'sorcery.' Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries in the world in which the death penalty is enforced even on teenagers.
"Does the Austrian Foreign Ministry really want to give such a state the opportunity to build an international propaganda center in Austria?"

Chancellor Faymann is the most senior Austrian politician to suggest that the KAICIID should be closed. In a January 16 interview with the newspaper Der Standard, Faymann said:

"This center does not fulfill at all the mandate of dialogue and is silent about basic issues of human rights. We will not tolerate this. It is clear to me from today's perspective that we should get out."

In a January 20 interview with public radio Oe1, Faymann said:

"An inter-religious dialogue center that remains silent when it is time to speak out clearly for human rights is not worthy of being called a dialogue center. It is a silence center.
"It cannot possibly be that we have a center in Austria with the title 'inter-religious dialogue' while at the same time someone who actually engages in this is in prison and fearing for his life."

Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, however, is urging restraint. In a 22-page report published on January 27, he argues that closing the KAICIID completely could have a litany of unintended economic, diplomatic and political repercussions, including causing major damage to Vienna's image as a host city for many international organizations.
Kurz is especially concerned that Saudi Arabia might make good on threats, made to the Austrian Ambassador to Riyadh, to relocate the headquarters of OPEC away from Vienna, where it has been based since 1965. Saudi Arabia is OPEC's biggest oil producer and its most influential member.
In any event, the report concludes: "Closing the center would do nothing to improve the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia."
The report, which states that there are "deficiencies in the center's structure, working methods and communication policy," proposes an alternative course of action: the KAICIID should be fundamentally reformed.
The first step in this reform apparently involves the removal of KAICIID's deputy director, former Austrian Justice Minister Claudia Bandion-Ortner, who has been criticized for downplaying Saudi Arabia's human rights record. In an interview with the newsmagazine Profil in October 2014, for example, Bandion-Ortner defended the desert kingdom. "Beheadings do not occur there every Friday," she said. "That is nonsense."
Faymann has agreed — for now — to consider proposals for a "substantive, structural reorganization" of the KAICIID which, at a minimum, would require the center to "make a clear commitment to religious freedom" and a "strong commitment to human rights." If the center cannot be reformed along these lines, however, Faymann says Austria should initiate an "orderly retreat."
Faymann remains skeptical that the KAICIID can be reformed. In a January 28 interview with the Wiener Zeitung, he said:

"For me, I see no basis [for reform] either now or in the future. If this center says it stands for interreligious dialogue, then it must do so. But if it wants to remain only an economic center with a religious fig leaf, then Austria should no longer be a part of it. In any event, Austria will not allow itself to be threatened or blackmailed."

In the meanwhile, Kurz plans to travel to Riyadh during the second half of February to de-escalate the crisis in bilateral relations. It remains unclear whether he will ask Saudi authorities for the release of Raif Badawi.

How to begin a Committee of Safety in your state

Now that you know the history of the Committee of Safety, it’s time to write the bylaws base on the Constitution.

We will pull from the history of America, from our founding fathers and we will keep it short, simple and to the point.

We can all agree that our government is corrupt.  But does that mean our Constitutional Republic is?

The answer is simple…..It is the agents of the government that make bad laws, judges who violate your protected rights and law agents who enforce them.    Want to stop those corrupt agents?

 

HEREAS the Preservation of our Country from Slavery depends under God, on an effectual Execution of the Continental and Provincial Measures for that Purpose:

 

RESOLVED, That there be now appointed for each County in this Colony, a Committee consisting of Five Persons, any Three of whom to be a Quorum, whose Business it shall be, to receive from the Committees of Correspondence in their respective Counties, a State of the Conduct of the Towns and Districts, with Respect to their having executed the Continental and Provincial Plans as aforesaid ; and it shall be the Duty of said Committees to meet on the first Wednesdays of May, July, September, November, January and March, and prepare a Report of the same, to be laid before the Congress at it's then next Session, that any Neglect of such Towns and Districts in executing such Plans, may be speedily and effectually remedied.

 

Also, RESOLVED, That it be, and it is hereby strongly recommended, to the Committees of Correspondence in the several Towns and Districts in this Colony, some Time before the first Wednesday in May, July, September, November, January and March aforesaid, to render to any one of the Members of their County Committees aforesaid, a true State of the Conduct of their respective Towns and Districts, with Respect to their having executed each Plan recommended by the Continental and Provincial Congresses ; and to use their utmost Diligence for this important Purpose

 

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sisterthundershow/2015/02/12/how-to-begin-a-committee-of-safety-in-your-state

 

TSA – A brood Of Vipers Striking At Constitutional Rights

Papers Please........Welcome to the "free" America.  You only thought the pedophiles molest your children in the airports.........well here comes VIPR.  TSA's program that will all but destroy personal freedom in America.   Question is will it be enough to cause the 2nd American Revolution?

 

Are you aware that there are TSA “viper” teams?  Yes, in the United States of America there are Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams (“vipr” teams) ready to provide “surface transportation security” in unannounced checkpoints and other search operations.  In our “see something, say something” fear induced culture, the “vipers” are at the ready to strike at your Constitutional rights, in the name of safety and homeland security.

 

The TSA’s “viper” program, known by its creative acronym, wants more of your tax dollars in 2012 and will ask Congress for increased funding, in order to add 12 more viper teams. Big Brother wants to get even bigger, at taxpayer expense.  Now that airline passengers have been conditioned to accept any kind of bodily invasion by the TSA goons, the next step in transforming the United States of Apathy, into a police state, is to modify the behavior of all the homeland’s citizens.  The laws have been put in place to “legally” take unconstitutional actions while the TSA puts forth its own propaganda.

 

At least with TSA airport misconduct, as if there is any solace in that, there are enough civic minded individuals around, with their cellphone video cameras that can capture the bad behavior of TSA operatives.  The threat of posting those videos on YouTube may be the last vestige of a goon deterrent.  With roving “vipers”, it is more likely that individual citizens will be treated with little respect to their personal sovereignty and Constitutional rights, especially for stops in the middle of the night when no one is around.  The “Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response” actions will not be so visible.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sisterthundershow/2015/02/09/tsa-a-brood-of-vipers-striking-at-constitutional-rights

 

 

What every legal American citizen must be mindful of are the 4th, 5th and 6th Constitutional amendments.  In case you’ve forgotten:

 

Amendment IV – The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 

Amendment V – No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

 

Amendment VI – In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

 

The viper has always been a snake.  And this acronym is blatantly appropriate for an out of control burgeoning agency, designed to strike a deadly blow to freedom and liberty.

 

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sisterthundershow/2015/02/09/tsa-a-brood-of-vipers-striking-at-constitutional-rights

 

Who was Crispus Attucks?

Attucks’ occupation made him particularly vulnerable to the presence of the British. As a seaman, he felt the ever-present danger of impressment into the British navy. As a laborer, he felt the competition from British troops, who often took part-time jobs during their off-duty hours and worked for lower wages. Historians definitely place Attucks in Boston in March of 1770. Assuming that the Boston Gazette advertisement did refer to him, he would have been about 47-years old.

 

 A fight between Boston rope makers and three British soldiers on Friday, March 2, 1770 set the stage for a later confrontation. After dusk on Monday, March 5, 1770, a crowd of colonists confronted a sentry who had struck a boy for complaining that an officer was late in paying a barber bill. As anger escalated, a church bell rang, which drew people out of their homes. The British soldiers of the 29th Regiment of Foot were called to duty. In turn, townspeople responded by hurling snowballs and debris at the soldiers. A group of men led by Attucks approached the vicinity of the government building with clubs in hand. Violence soon erupted, and a soldier was struck with a thrown piece of wood. Some accounts named Attucks as the person responsible. Other witnesses stated that Attucks was “leaning upon a stick” when the soldiers opened fire.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sisterthundershow/2015/02/05/who-was-crispus-attucks