The challenge of democracy – Can Obama deliver on his promise to Africa?

Ade Sawyerr © London July 2009
On Friday 10th July 2009 and Saturday 11th July 2009, the whole world had its eyes trained on Ghana. Everyone wanted to hear what this son of Africa who had become leader of the whole world was going to say to help solve some of the chronic problems facing the continent.
Obama exceeded all my expectations and gave a speech that only he could give; he had an excellent grasp of the issues and it was clear that although he was critical of our African leaders, there was an implied promise that he would help to make things better. He also excelled in trying to go beyond the leaders to talk to the youth.
This was clearly a speech that had been written for the leaders as well as for the masses but in the event, we are told that weather conditions did not permit him to address the masses, though some believe that it was more for security considerations; so he had to ask the leaders to take the message to the youth. I was disappointed in the choice of the venue. I had expected that what I still call the Black Star Square should have been used so that there would have been more opportunity for the youth to hear him speak. The lighting was poor and the video feed was atrocious, Ghana could have spent a little bit more money to have got that right. This was an occasion when we should have been truly in the spotlight so to speak, but we failed.
This is the same country that could spend money to buy 250 cars to celebrate 50th anniversary of our independence and yet could not invest in getting the whole world to listen to the clear message of promise from Obama.

There was also little publicity in the western world about the trip. The Ghana government should have made some song and dance about the choice of Ghana and profited directly by signalling to all in the world that as Obama put it….”the 21st century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but by what happens in Accra as well.” I had expected that the government of Ghana, the Ministry of Trade and Tourism and the Ministry of Information and the Ghanaian Missions abroad would have advertised the trip widely to provide more interest. I hope that Ghana can still profit from the visit since I certainly know that Obama and America intend to benefit directly.
For America, this was an exercise to show to the world the new order, a new benign way of leading the multi-polar world through alliances and pacts with the Russian, their old adversary in the Cold War that did a lot of collateral damage to Africa, and economic leadership by standing together with the G8 nations to make the world a better place economically.
But America intends to benefit from this trip in other ways, particularly in the area of security and the leaders in Africa need to decide whether America has changed from its old bad ways of fomenting discord on the continent in pursuit of its interests.
We have to critically analyse this new moment of promise to determine for ourselves, as we are encouraged by Obama to do, the issues that serve our interests better. Can we trust America on all this?
The western press was not disappointed because there was a lot in Obama’s message that enabled them to write about the doom and gloom of Africa. The headlines ran ‘Obama admonishes African Leaders’ Africans must help themselves’ ‘colonial past need not be a barrier’. So the news reported was not about the major progress that had been made in Africa and the promise of the moment, it was not about Obama rewarding Ghana for its deepening and maturing democracy, but it was about all the negative issues that Obama sought to dispel in this new engagement with the continent. This new engagement with the continent that will not be shaped by America telling us what we must that do – this did us a lot of harm in the past – but by being allowed to develop our own brand of democracy that will be consistent with our culture and with our heritage.
Obama informed us that he expects Africa to do better, and in each of the four themes that he chose to speak on, democracy, opportunity, disease and conflict he recognised it was not entirely our fault but there it time to move on the build on what we have.
I agree with all that Obama said. I agree that development is directly linked to good governance and there are no excuses for the way our leaders have let down their nation. This is what Obama said on the theme of democracy; it rings true everywhere and resonates with all.
“First, we must support strong and sustainable democratic governments. As I said in Cairo, each nation gives life to democracy in its own way, and in line with its own traditions. But history offers a clear verdict: governments that respect the will of their own people are more prosperous, more stable and more successful than governments that do not. This is about more than holding elections; it’s also about what happens between them. Repression takes many forms, and too many nations are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end”
Can we trust Obama and America on this? Will they accept the will of the people of Gaza for voting in Hamas, will they accept that the current Iranian government really listened to the will of the people in one of the few countries in the Middle East that even allows its people to vote at elections? Will it intervene in Honduras to restore the deposed President?
African governments have a lot to learn from the experience of Ghana. It was the same country that showed so much promise at independence only to have America and Britain intervene and usher in a raft of military dictators. The CIA and MI5 actually interfered so that we would be ruled by military dictators.
Obama should have acknowledged that without the CIA inspired military coup d’état in Ghana, our democracy would have been deepened and we may have been better developed now!
So the challenge of democracy in my opinion is also about how western governments learn not to dictate that we must follow one brand of democracy and only one brand and that they must dictate which brand suits us best. In 1966, Ghana paid a price for being caught up in the Cold War, not very different from the bond of 1844 that partitioned Africa.
We hope that with the promise of democracy Obama would protect us from the malicious interference from western powers. Because behind every coup d’état that we have had in Africa there has been a western influence, support or even direct involvement and in most cases it is because the west does not agree with the terms of democracy in that country.
So Africa will keep the promise of democracy and we hope that Obama will also assure us that the west will keep its grubby hands away from Africa.
But can the West keep their promise? I doubt it! WHY! Because in the same speech that Obama put the responsibility for upholding democracy on Africans themselves, he talked about a much maligned, and rightly so, policy of joining Africa in helping to promote the security of America. This is what Obama said ….
“America has a responsibility to advance this vision, not just with words, but with support that strengthens African capacity. When there is genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems – they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response. That is why we stand ready to partner through diplomacy, technical assistance, and logistical support, and will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable. And let me be clear: our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world.”

We could all hear muttering in the house……the only part of his speech that did not go down well with his listeners. Obama reverted to type. The America concerned with its own security whose interests are above all other nations and to think that this proposal was coming from the same person who during his campaign emphasised that terrorism had been imported to Iraq because the Americans went there in the first place. Will this not import terrorism to Africa?
The same Obama who has charged us with a responsibility is suggesting now that they want an African Command in Africa but not as a foothold? What do they want an African command in Africa for?
President Obama should be reminded that, there was a time that an African High Command was proposed but was scuppered by the Americans. He must be reminded that at the start of the Congo crisis Ghana raised an army to help resolve the conflict, but the Americas scuppered it. He should be reminded that when Nkrumah proposed an Africa High Command to solve regional problems, it was America that turned round to suggest that Nkrumah had raised the army to fight against his neighbours and not to keep peace. If Ghanaians as he rightly pointed out in the speech are out in Bosnia, Lebanon and all sorts of places in the world keeping peace, why do we need Americans to come and do it on our continent? This bit is not palatable and America should rethink the neo imperialist move into Africa. Because everywhere the Americans go turns in a terrorist trap and we do not want that part of America on our continent.
Obama went on to remind us of the promise of democracy that needs to be won. This is what Obama said…..
“And a young preacher named Martin Luther King traveled here, to Accra, to watch the Union Jack come down and the Ghanaian flag go up. This was before the march on Washington or the success of the civil rights movement in my country. Dr. King was asked how he felt while watching the birth of a nation. And he said: “It renews my conviction in the ultimate triumph of justice.”
Now, that triumph must be won once more, and it must be won by you”
We can only win back that triumph not through arms and African Command, we can only win that through democracy and Obama should help in the achievement of that global democracy that was stunted when Ghana and Africa were caught up in the Cold War. It is about African Unity. It is about support to deal with the ills of colonisation and neo-colonisation in a more productive way.
It is about helping us forge institutions across the whole continent that will help transform our individual countries, it is about building infrastructure in governance that can be replicated in each state in Africa, it about helping us forge economic unions that will be able to bargain on a stronger footing to reject that bit of bad aid this is sometimes forced on our leaders because individually they are in a weak bargaining position whereas if the negotiated as a block they will be stronger and more strategic.
Obama has talked a good talk, he has provided a lot of useful advice to us, we believe that he is sincere, we believe that he will help, but we ask that he allows us to continue with our brand of democracy, he must keep the military out because like the military everywhere, they initially go in to protect and they end up brutalising the people as has happened in Ireland, in Iraq and will continue to happen.
I would suggest to President Obama that however he tries to sell the African Command it will still reek with imperialism!
President Obama, you stopped short of preaching to us, we liked all we heard and will make our leaders more accountable in this march of democracy, but we are asking that you support us with this African union project that was conceived long before the African Command became necessary. We are asking you to provide support for the African Union.
If you seriously want to help us with our democracy then you must help us with forging our African Union since you already know that the best solutions for the problems in Africa must come from Africans.
Then we can assure you that with the promise of this moment in Ghana, the young of Africa will rise up to the challenge of democracy. We assure you that just like all the good things on this earth has come from Africa, just as MLK drew his inspiration from this independent Ghana, our young will draw their inspiration from this moment when a son of Africa returned to the soil as the President of America.
Ade Sawyerr is in partner Equinox Consulting, a management consultancy that provides consultancy, training and research that focuses on formulating strategies for black and ethnic minority, disadvantaged and socially excluded communities. He also comments on political, economic and social, and development issues. He can be contacted by email onjwasawyerr@gmail.com or throughhttp://www.equinoxconsulting.net/

TEHRAN, IRAN: The NYTimes reported here on Thur:

(…) there were signs of an intensified crackdown: The government worked on many fronts to shield the outside world’s view of the unrest, banning coverage of the demonstrations, arresting journalists, threatening bloggers and trying to block Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, which have become vital outlets for information about the rising confrontation here.

The senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, where there have also been tense demonstrations, went so far as to say protesters could be executed under Islamic law.

As nations around the world urged Iran’s leadership to exercise restraint, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition presidential candidate who the government said finished second, and one of Iran’s chief reformers, Mohammad Khatami, issued a joint letter urging an end to violence and arrests.

“We ask you to take all the necessary measures to put an end to today’s worrying situation, to stop the violent actions against people and to free those arrested,” they wrote in a letter on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site.

Mr. Moussavi also sought to continue the momentum of public protest, calling for a day of mourning on Thursday for at least seven people killed in the demonstrations.

The crisis — the gravest since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 — erupted after Iran’s Interior Ministry declared that the moderate Mr. Moussavi was defeated by the conservative incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Friday’s election by 63 percent to 34 percent. Mr. Moussavi, the demonstrators who represent a cross section of Iranian society and part of the clerical establishment have called the official results a fraud.

With the nation’s ruling class apparently divided by the results, the hard-liners in charge sought to portray the unrest as the work of outsiders. The powerful Revolutionary Guard said it had taken action against “deviant news sites” financed by American and Canadian companies.

The Foreign Ministry, meantime, summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents American interests in Tehran, in protest of what it called “meddling” by the United States into its affairs because of statements by American officials on Iran’s elections. It also summoned the Canadian chargé d’affaires over the same accusations. Several other European ambassadors were summoned Tuesday.

America and Iran broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 revolution.

(…)

“It is a very complicated situation,” said Abbass Abdi, a political scientist in Tehran. “People feel humiliated because they came and voted in large numbers. On the other hand, it is very difficult for the establishment to admit fraud because its legitimacy would go under question.

“There is no legal solution to this dilemma and, we need a solution that neither side would lose face.”

Apple [aapl]  chart by Market Club

Markets

It has been a while since my last post, it was difficult to write about what I saw coming down the pike without sounding sadly without any credible case. Now there is enough out there for the public to be willing to consider the drastic change in life styles and mind sets that will be needed to survive without becoming just a barely better economy than Mexico.

The fast pace in which the corruption of values and ethical standards from a critical mass of our Financial and Political leaders will require a strong public willing and ready to learn about the subject of economics and finance it is our responsibility if we do not pull ourselves by the bootstraps no one else will we the Joe Public types not Mr. Politician nor Mr. CEO

“Roughly once year the IMF, US Secretary and sometimes finance ministers of G7 countries get a phone call from the finance minister of a large emerging-market economy: …the country is rapidly running out of foreign reserves, lost access to capital markets, and that perhaps even lost confidence of its citizens. Without a large rescue loan, he country will be forced to devalue its currency and.”  This is how Mr. Roubini starts the introduction of his book “Bailout or bail-ins” co-authored with Brad Setser.

Eerily familiar, what sounds like corrupt dictators of a struggling African or Central American nation?

FT.com/ reports:  AIG paid more than $40m in controversial retention bonuses to staff at its troubled financial unit in December, three months ahead of schedule, according to the resignation letter of an executive at the insurance group.

News of the decision to pay bonuses of $165m to staff at AIG sparked political outrage and protests in the US Congress, after the insurer was bailed out with $173bn of public money last year. Before the publication of the letter, momentum on draconian legislation to claw back bonuses had begun to slow.

Jake DeSantis, a manager in AIG’s Financial Products unit, said AIG “accelerated by three months [the payment of] more than a quarter” of the $165m of retention bonuses due to the division’s employees.

The President of the USA will arrive in Europe for a summit hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, while “

European Union politician on Wednesday slammed U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as “a way to hell.”

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, told the European Parliament that President Barack Obama’s massive stimulus package and banking bailout “will undermine the stability of the global financial market.”  Reported by Fox News

Will the strongest currencies dominate what may become the UN of finance and will that nation be China? Just consider:

China’s central bank yesterday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.

In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies”. Reported by FT.com

But no matter what we will make it through, believe that work hard like you mean it, have a good day no matter what

RedSerpent

Concerned Americans are in a state of grief. We all hoped for justice for the Holy Land Foundation from a trial by jury. But Americans are getting meaner and more absurd by the second, confused by Zionist media propaganda and bigotry. Goethe said, “There is no evil greater than wilful ignorance,” clearing up the question of whether they are stupid or evil. People don’t want to know.

And if they did know, so what. We’d just have a lot more depressed people in America.

Muslims blew it since 9/11 with all their interfaith dinners and “progressivism” and “isolating extremists” to make heir new Jewish friends happy and get rid of the Muslims who mention Palestine. You make friends with the devil it doesn’t mean the devil is going to protect you. Muslims make the mistake of thinking that just because Jews got to know you, therefore they wouldn’t hurt you. They would. Their friendship with you is entirely manipulative. I’m not talking about individuals I’m talking about these interfaith events. Muslims have been so busy trying to “understand” their Jewish Zionist neighbors that they allowed the Jewish leaders to step up its war on Islam.

And they are not done yet. Just last week another US citizen of Arab descent was kidnapped in Dubai by the US.

You would think that Americans are getting tired of all this detaining and torturing business but they are not! Not even the general public is ready to call it a day. We are dealing with psychopathic killers and that includes most Amercans. Because even if they didn’t themselves do the crime, they justified it in their minds and enabled it.

There is a very clear way to get rid of the Zionists and it probably at this point won’t work through education. Rather, we need to counter-manipulate. Steer the stupid meanness of Americans towards a more appropriate target. If they want to call you a terrorist, call them a traitor. Give it back to them. Bigots hate Muslims and Jews equally but there is a lot more money to be made by seizing the assets of Jewish billionares than by waging wars abroad.

Muslims need to wake up and realize that there is a war here, and just because you were proven innocent doesn’t mean they are not going to lock you up for life, and in any case devalue everything you’ve worked so hard to become.

Muslims need to abandon the left-wing protest agenda and start agitating on the basis of the Constitution, something all Americans even stupid ones say they agree with. Muslim Americans have not been demanding equal protection under the law aggressively enough.

The Muslims that were suing the David Project should never have dropped their lawsuit. They could have saved so many lives by using the lawsuit to continue getting more evidence of conspiracy with Steven Emerson and friends. But all they wanted to do was finish building their mosque. This is empty Islam. True, they were running out of money. They have millons of dollars in debts from even that partial lawsuit.

But Jews have found a way to make money from political persecution (real or imagined) while Muslims have not realized the great benefits of rallying around the “we are threatened” cause in order to turn money into more money.

There are so many things we can do that are proactive and I hope this wake up call will help Muslims get focused.

They have to give up the nepotism. They have to just understand that they are innocent and get over the hurt about “How could those people do this to us for no good reason?” The reason the Jews want to destroy Muslims is because Muslims could replace their social status group quite easily. We are more educated, more emotionally stable, and we outnumber them. All we need now is the self esteem and some personal, business, and political connections with people outside our immediate social network.

It’s important that the Muslim Students’ Association be funded, strengthened and guided by knowledgable elders. The students are the most potentially powerful group of Muslims in America because they have so many chapters and are all electronically linked. Only the Jews have networks like that. The fake Save Darfur story was marketed top-down through synagogues and student groups. Muslims could use a similar marketing strategy to promote something good and truthful and bring peace to America.

If we don’t take the steering wheel away from these madman, they will crash our world and it will be our fault because we were the only ones awake at the time.

Buoyed by a groundswell of global good feeling after the election of Barack Obama, current and former U.S. diplomats see a new chance to advance American interests if the next president keeps his promises to devote more resources to the diplomatic corps and foreign aid.

By Nicholas Kralev  
The Washington Times

In e-mails to The Washington Times, diplomats from four continents said good will toward the United States has increased dramatically since Mr. Obama’s election and is already making a difference in their daily work.

John K. Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association, the diplomats’ union, said it was crucial to bolster the resources devoted to diplomacy to sustain the positive new feelings.

“The expectation of the Foreign Service is that President-elect Obama will follow through on his campaign pledges by asking Congress for additional funding for diplomacy and development assistance,” Mr. Naland said. “Those funds are needed because, without adequate numbers of properly resourced and well-trained diplomats and development professionals, no amount of personal diplomacy by the president, vice president or secretary of state will single-handedly restore our nation’s role as the world’s leader in global affairs.”

The Bush administration, initially bolstered by foreign support after Sept. 11, lost overseas backing after it invaded Iraq. The U.S. image also has suffered from the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and because of security measures that have made it difficult for foreigners to visit the United States.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama made a number of promises to boost diplomacy.

In March, he said he would “invest in our civilian capacity to operate alongside our troops in post-conflict zones and on humanitarian and stabilization missions. Instead of shuttering consulates in tough corners of the world, it’s time to grow our Foreign Service and to expand [the U.S. Agency for International Development].”

Mr. Naland said the U.S. “foreign affairs agencies are hobbled by a human-capital crisis.” He cited a report last month by the American Academy of Diplomacy – a body including all living former secretaries of state – that recommended that staffing be increased by 43 percent at the State Department and by 62 percent at USAID.

The current shortages make it difficult for diplomats to take time off for training, he said. At the same time, more training is necessary given the expanded duties assigned to diplomats in recent years, from nation-building to lobbying for free trade.

“Try something completely new and different, learn a complicated language in 15 minutes, parachute in and instantly hit the ground running, get to know everyone immediately, get everyone to do everything perfectly,” was how one Foreign Service officer in Iraq described the expectations for U.S. diplomats today.

Read the rest:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/
14/diplomats-see-boon-of-good-will-since-obama-win/

Is it better now that the capitalist media “diversified” into showing more Black women’s bare legs instead of majority White women’s legs? So that Black girls too could become bullimic. In a way, one should realize that all of us are victimized by racial stereotypes and social behaviors in the media. Whites who never did anything to anyone grow up hating themselves for being white trash, blue-eyed devils, Nazis, blonde bimbos, slavers, the stereotypical heartless oppressor, etc leading to drug use and suicides. Media paints white people as to blame for all evil, especially white Christianity, which is responsible for the Crusades, and of course anti-semitism. White people cannot socially form groups in the way that all other ethnic groups are allowed to form groups. This has led to widespread homosexuality.

The only good person is a secular person who shops a great deal, according to the media. The bankers want all ethnic groups to hate themselves, to get self-destructively neurotic, and so be easy to manipulate against one another. The Jewish TV encourages white Christians to feel ashamed of their own culture and to intermarry with other ethnic groups, so that the Jewish elite will be the only ones with some kind of “lineage.”

Stereotypes aside, I think there are some real reasons for concern in Black America. I don’t really understand why it always seems to be white teachers and black students, almost like some kind of missionary system financed by the government. Don’t black people ever go into education? Maybe it’s just Boston, because we have so many upper class colleges, and so many of the graduates go on to try and “help the poor.”

I am very concerned about something I am noticing in the public school and that is autism. It seems to affect all races but I was alarmed to hear so many black mothers wondering if or being told that their child is autistic. The school has an entire wing dedicated to autistic children, while other autistic children are in the normal classroom with a support worker.

I can’t think of any reason for why black children would be experiencing high rates of autism except

- mothers not breastfeeding
- over-vaccination at young age
- false autism diagnoses due to some behavior problems caused by other factors

Both white women I know whose children are autistic were taking anti-psychotic medication during pregnancy.

The Pakistani child I know who is autistic comes from a family that seems to be very sensitive to vaccinations.

I am kind of worried about the nonchalance with which African American women return to work within days of giving birth. I also worry about the immigrant community’s over-reliance on bottle feeding. The ethnic group most likely to practice full time breastfeeding, natural birth, avoidance of vaccines and antibiotics, and “attachment parenting” is the Jewish.

All the white women I grew up as kids with as close friends are pushing forty and still no marriage or children. One of them got herself impregnate by two (different) black men but is raising her kids in a white lesbian couple.

By contrast, more black women seem to get pregnant young and think about career later. This seems to be connected to more grandmother and mother support within the family to raise the child of the unmarried woman. White women are expected to be economically self-sufficient and if they were to raise a child living with their parents it would be shameful.

White women are often shoved out of the family home as a burden to the family years before marriage. It does not appear that this type of (lack of) parenting exists in the black community, even in single parent homes.

Early pregnancy while single does lead to poverty though. So there ought to be some way of campaigning to women about saving themselves. That doesn’t mean don’t have sex. It just means get married to a guy with a job! Have some self-respect! And if you are really smart, then make him pay all your bills and refuse to get a job, even if it means you have to live in one room and share one bed.

Muslims need to develop the same kind of urgency that Jews feel about procreating themselves. We need to have as many children as possible and raise them to be the best kind of people out there. The world is trying to holocaust us.

When innovation is what’s desperately needed, having less experience becomes an ADVANTAGE!  We’re sliding downward from a recession that those with vested interests have been lying about the same way they lied to get us into war.  How many more clues do you NEED?!  Would 4,000 or more soldiers dying on Wall Street help make this any clearer?

I think it’s really important people should know about this because Al-Safa made a FORTUNE at the ICNA-MAS convention that I just attended in Hartford, CT. They had two booths running 12 hours a day serving hot dogs and chicken nuggets to 10,000 Muslims. Did they realize Al-Safa is a Jewish-owned marketing company? If they are going to sell Jewish hot dogs then just sell the high quality kosher hot dogs. Better yet use an actual Muslim company if possible inshallah.

I have spoken to the Al-Safa halal certifying agency personally about the animal feed and slaughterhouse. I was doing some articles for a halal food magazine that used to exist, Halalpak. Al-Safa is a Jewish marketing company that creates the packaging and advertisements and supplies Muslim grocery stores. The certifying agency is connected to a nearby local masjid. They do not certify any other brands of meat, nor did they coordinate with any national organizations regarding the halal status. The slaughterhouse is in Canada. You’d have to call to get the exact wage they are paying, if they would tell you, but that is what I heard from someone who went there and checked the place out and talked to the slaughtermen, African American and immigrant laborers who work strenuous, long hours doing hand slaughter.

Technically it’s halal, but very low quality meat that primarily benefits the Jewish owned marketing company. The cows are factory farmed and fed corn plus protein supplements made of chicken, according to the certifying agency’s word on the telephone. The slaughterhouse also slaughters non-halal meat. In my extensive interviews with a cattle rancher, I learned that corn-fed cows must be given mass doses of antibiotics to survive as this is not their natural diet. Humans receive a huge health hazard when they eat meat from a cow that took antibiotics because their body then develops a resistance to antibiotics. Furthermore the fecal matter from cows that took antibiotics contain deadly strains of e coli bacteria.

Muslims in America need to learn from the Australian Muslims and start employing cattle ranchers to raise grass fed cows that will supply pure meat that is safe for our children to eat. We can earn the respect of our non-Muslim neighbors if we can provide meat that is guaranteed free of mad cow disease, which is caused by feeding diseased meat products to cows. Most Kosher meat is also not guaranteed free of mad cow disease.

There is a phone number for the certification company on the Al-Safa package. You can call them and confirm everything I have said. I am telling the truth on this matter.

Al Safa Halal
P.O. Box 1076
Falls Station
Niagara Falls, NY
14303

Canadian Mailing Address:

Al Safa Halal
P.O. Box 24178
Cambridge, ON
N1R 8E6

Canadian Head Office:

260 Holiday Inn Drive
Suite 786
Cambridge, ON
Canada

info@alsafahalal.com 1 (800) 268-8174

AL SAFA guarantees that every single chicken is – hand slaughtered by a Muslim. You are welcome to visit at any time to personally witness our Zabiha and meet our slaughtermen.

1-800-268-8174

Did you know that pretty much every dairy cow is fed pork products to make the milk taste more fatty? That includes high end products like Land o Lakes, according to the cattle rancher I interviewed. The safest bet is to buy organic.

Al-Safa’s certifying agency guy, sorry I forgot his name, was really mad at me for telling people what he told me on the phone. So he may be more hesitant to talk about the protein supplements because it’s certainly not a traditional Islamic practice to feed chicken protein drinks to chickens and cows.

I tried for about a year to find an imam who would make a fatwa against feeding animal byproducts to cows, but according to the hadith you are technically allowed to eat a cow that ate garbage, including the milk of a pig, as long as the meat itself is not obviously stinking. You can however easily tell the difference between pure meat and meat-fed meat by the smell. I can barely eat meat anymore after studying the halal meat system in the US. It is not safe at all.

I tried to convince some local halal meat stores to carry natural beef and even put them in touch with the organic cattle rancher, but they refused to carry organic or natural meat because they were afraid people would ask what is wrong with the other meat?

The independently owned halal meat stores buy the cows at the auction. They do not have any controls over the farmers or the feed. My husband visited a number of slaughterhouses and none of them obeyed all the Islamic laws such as not slaughtering animals in front of other animals. One halal company, Purdue, had Amish-raised natural chicken but machine slaughtered. However, the guy pulling the lever would say “Bismillah” each time.

I only talked to one Turkish brother in Brooklyn who was serious about halal. He was importing equipment from Saudi Arabia to do it totally properly. He planned to only use organic raised cows. Unfortunately I don’t live in NY so I don’t know if his luncheon meat ever made it to grocery shelves.

I wrote an article on this subject for the mosque newsletter and the board of directors personally intervened to have my article removed from the newsletter as they felt it would hurt the local businesses. Grrrrrrr!

I heard all kinds of stories during my interviews, from cows with bullets in the head to cows that were half dead on arrival in New Jersey after being trucked across the country without any break for water or food or exercise (which is haram in Islam). Even buying the meat leftovers from Kosher butchers, as they will not eat the part of the cow containing the spinal column.

American Muslims must learn from the Australian and New Zealand Muslims and act on this right away. Halal butchers must make individual contracts with farmers to raise organic and natural grass fed cows. The future of America, not only just the American Muslims, depends on it. The Muslims are centered in the Midwest. So they need to utilize this advantage and create a center for halal slaughter in Chicago. They need to make contracts with the best and most dedicated organic farmers in America and stimulate the demand for responsible agriculture. The halal meat market is huge. The farmers will be happy to grow us some grass fed cows if we are willing to sign a contract guaranteeing them a stable income. They need a contract that says they supply a certain number of cows per week to x slaughterhouse. It’s not a big deal.

Come on Muslims. Wake up.

Brothers and Sisters,

While hateful sentiments are certainly a normal response to US
history, never in the history of the world has hate dispelled hate.
When the Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) began to preach, the most powerful
people tried to stop him and they put the Muslims under torture and
starvation just like today. But when the Muslims grew in power and
came back to Mecca the Prophet (pbuh) decided NOT to destroy Mecca.
This decision resulted in Islam becoming the most powerful nation on
earth. God gives people victory only when they are acting for His
sake. When Ali (pbuh) was about to kill one of the enemies of Islam,
the guy spit in his face. Immediately Ali released him. When asked why
he released the man, he said that when he has spit in Ali’s face, it
made him feel angry. He knew that if he killed a man out of anger he
would burn in hell.

If we want truth and justice to prevail in the land, we have to use
cold objectivity. NOT revenge. The most powerful force is the warrior
free of emotion. Who looks where there is an opening to exploit, and
is awake. America is a house that is burning. It is falling apart. We don’t
have to do much to protest it because there is no more government.
Our country has been hijacked by criminals. There is no one in control.

Our job is to create an alternative government: SELF government. That
is actually boring and tedious work that requires you to talk to your
neighbors. It’s not as fun as being angry and vengeful. But the fact
is America is full of deceived people. Why are they deceived? Because
true Christians and Muslims, including Arabs have not been doing their
job to explain to Americans what is going on, how they are being lied
to, how they are being manipulated. In their sadness and hatred, they
wrap themselves in a shawl of fake helplessness and fake
self-righteousness. Then, when push comes to shove, they start
character assassinating or even murdering each other. What kind of
example is this to wake anyone up from their self-deception? Most
people would prefer to go back to sleep than to deal with fixing this
chaos.

So when we see an opening – Americans looking around, scratching their
heads, trying to figure out the disconnect between FOX News and
reality, wondering why they voted for Bush – this is when and where we
are needed. We have known the truth for years. Here we have a group of
people willing to listen. And what do Muslims and Arabs do, and
leftist peace activists? They behave arrogantly. They turn up their
noses and gossip with each other. To say that they are “following God”
is as absurd as George Bush saying he is following God. They are both
doing the same thing. ALLOWING CRIMINALS TO RUN THIS COUNTRY.

The neocons are going to split with the money and after that the
entire country of USA will be bankrupt like Detroit, Michigan. At that
point, Islam will become the dominant force and we will take over the
social services and participate in re-educating the people so that
they can overcome their delusions.

Basically if you want to “do something” about the situation in the
world you can either submit to your lust for revenge and talk about
how much you hate Americans and want them all dead, or you can BE
America. If you are so great, then why are YOU not doing what it takes
to turn this country around? All it takes is 20 people per precinct to
elect whoever you want into office. Why are you sitting on your behind
complaining?

I’m tired of all the arrogant bad-mouthing by Muslims, towards those
of us who are working 18 hours a day to save this country and help the
people shake off the Federal Government. Do you want to help us shake
off the Feds or not? At this stage of history Muslims are marching in
lockstep with the Jews. Don’t you want to do something new? Since this
“attitude” of yours has NOT stopped a single death of one Iraqi in 16
years? Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same
thing over and over and expecting different results.

Now, and this is urgent: if anyone really wants to stop the neocon
rampage that is destroying the world, then join the movement of
Americans who are intensely organizing to stop the neocons. Ron Paul
is running as a Republican but his philosophy does not have anything
to do with Reagan or Bush. He is a Constitutional Libertarian. That
means he wants you to be able to keep your money instead of giving it
to the Federal Government. Given that your biggest sin as a Muslim is
those income taxes you pay that get sent to Israel, you should be the
first in line to make sure you offer yourself as a human shield to
protect Ron Paul’s life and help him totally. He is not a figurehead
that’s going to “make it all better.” All he has promised to do is
give you back your money and let YOU run your life instead of letting
the Federal government do it.

If all you had to do to stop Iraqis and Afghanis and Africans from
dying like flies is that you had to organize your neighborhood and
start talking to people and encouraging them to work together
politically, why not?

The real reason a lot of Arabs and Muslims hate Ron Paul is simply
because they are LAZY. They use their anger as an excuse to become
paralyzed with grief and rage, and therefore they are of no use to
anyone. As long as you just keep having your post traumatic stress
symptoms and inflicting more and more pain on those who love you,
there is no way you are going to stop Israel or America. You will just
turn America into Iraq. And what will that solve? Who is going to
clean up the mess that America made, if you kill America?

No, America will have to work for the next seven generations to clean
up the mess we made and it’s YOUR responsibility to make sure that we
do. Join the movement for Liberty, or at least clean up your own act.

The basic underlying reason that the Liberals are trying to pressure
Muslims not to help Ron Paul, and filling their heads with vacuous
garbage, is because the “peace movement” WANTS to disarm everyone.
They WANT a strong Federal Government that not only takes the guns
away from the American citizens but also takes the guns away from the
citizens of other countries. It makes us more manageable. One of the
basic disagreements that Muslims and Arabs usually have with Liberal
peace activists is the issue of whether or not Muslims and Arabs have
the right to bear arms against their military occupiers. They think
that we should all take the “higher road” of allowing ourselves to be
killed, in order to not be seen as “naughty.”

Only Ron Paul has a long history of defending the American people’s
Constitutional right to bear arms, and that specifically included a
person’s right to own assault weapons. That makes freedom sound like
the real thing, not just the choice between Coke or Pepsi. Peace
activists are at core loyal to the Jews. They fear American freedom as
much as the pro-war people. They want to wrap themselves in a fake
cloak of self-righteousness and feigned helplessness, and just stand
there with a sign that says “Peace.” “Peace! Peace!” is what a bunch
of hippies were shouting while a gangster pounded a friend of mine’s
head on the sidewalk, breaking his teeth. Slogans of peace do not stop
a bully. The bottom line when it comes to the definition of freedom is the
personal right to bear arms and the necessity of protecting this basic
Constitutional liberty.

That is why Muslims need to wake up and join the true citizens of
whatever country they are in, and stop joining the Jews in undermining
the integrity of their own country. Freedom is not about popularity and
self-gratification. As Khomeini taught, “True Revolution is about
self-sacrifice.” The biggest sacrifice Muslims can make without
breaking a single fingernail is sacrificing their egos: start
considering their non-Muslim neighbors as human, and work together on
a local level to make sure America survives even if the federal
administration goes belly up. If there is no more gasoline and the
stores have no more food on the shelves, do we have a plan yet?

Allah knows best.

Umm Yakoub

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Every candidate that is running for office right now, Democrat or Republican, except Ron Paul, has promised AIPAC to continue the US belligerent stance against Iran. Obama promised that he would continue to threaten to bomb Iran. Furthermore there is a good chance of US troops in Sudan, Pakistan, and other places. So if we care about the future of the planet our number one concern is to pull the plug on this system of funneling US taxpayer money into corporate subsidies that finance Israel’s wars.

Everybody disagrees with Ron Paul about something. Many left-leaning Democrats reject him because of his pro-life stance on abortion. Yet, Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate in your lifetime that has promised to bring home all troops from every US base that is not in the US. He has promised to cut off all foreign aid to Israel and the Muslim dictators. Did you hear that folks? He is offering you your freedom. He wants to phase out income taxes. The Prophet (pbuh) was also opposed to income taxes.

Ron Paul has taken a moderate stance on the immigration issue. He wants to help 60 million foreigners immigrate here legally. He is the only candidate that is opposed to home to home searches for illegal immigrants. He is realistic about the tax burden on society that is created by uncontrolled immigration. Some people think that you can’t be a nice person if you don’t want amnesty for all illegals. But if your neighbor lost her house and became homeless because of your coercive charity plan, was it worth it? Dr. Paul’s position is not a fixed position regarding immigration. He believes that in a good functioning economy people will be more tolerant of newcomers. He is the only presidential candidate that is not embarrassed to talk to Iran. He promised to lift the sanctions against Iran, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, etc. He is a fiscal conservative. Best of all, he has really good manners. He doesn’t act. He is humble and genuine. He is the only presidential candidate I trust to talk to Ahmedinejad or Bashir. He is in favor of a currency backed by gold or some other commodity. He will stop printing paper money. Isn’t that what we believe in?

Best of all he claims he will liberate thousands of non-violent prisoners his first day in office and give all the US detainees the right to a fair trial. He will shut down Guantanamo and repeal the Patriot Act. He doesn’t believe in “Islamofascism.” He calls this kind of speech war propaganda. There are so many deeply important things that Ron Paul is doing for the Muslims that we should be willing to give everything and do everything we can to be of service to this remarkable man. Don’t go by the official campaign ads; The official campaign flyers are geared towards a certain type of mainstream American consumer audience and don’t give you a good picture of the clarity and depth of Dr. Paul’s grasp on reality. http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/ has his articles and speeches and are a better indication of his thinking on the issues.

Ron Paul has 10 years of a voting record that shows he is the closest to a friend that we have in Washington. No other candidate, not even Kucinich, has promised to cut funding of Israel. If you are not registered to vote as either Unenrolled or Republican, you cannot vote in the primary anyway but you can still get involved with freeatlast2008.com. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of US interventionist policy. Ron Paul is the only candidate talking about non-intervention. That’s priceless.

Also keep in mind: As president he doesn’t have a lot of power to do much about the “controversial” issues like immigration and the gold standard because he’d have to get it through Congress. The only power he really has as president is commander-in-chief of the US military. He’d be authorized to end the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan etc. And he can pardon prisoners. Everything else has to go thru Congress. He’s a low-risk candidate to back, and by doing so you can tap into a VIBRANT peace movement! It’s not your usual leftist peace protest, it’s a socially conservative peace movement. That is so priceless.

It’s important to mention that there is currently a precinct by precinct coordinated attempt to reclaim American democracy from the special interest lobbies. It has been proven that all it takes is about 10-20 people per precinct to turn things around entirely. By hooking into the ronpaul.meetup.com network you would gain valuable contact with other Americans who support the Constitution.

Please watch http://youtube.com/watch?v=FG2PUZoukfA

In closing I want to urge you to give Dr. Paul a chance because the press combined with coordinated email attacks to smear Dr Paul as the scariest man imaginable is because of his refusal to continue funding for Israel’s wars. Nothing they say about him is true. Please note that the people who spearheaded the vicious anti-Paul campaign are the same group of people who always smear CAIR and our mosque. I would only go on like this about a course of action we must take together now, if I thought it were a life and death situation. And it is. We have to pull the US out of everywhere and the only way we can do that is by pulling the plug on war financially. Ron Paul plans to do that.

Martin Luther King Day Money Bomb – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA2AGnOOp3g

Hit Piece Bruises Ron Paul
January 10, 2008
MariaHussain.wordpress.com

Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic and funder of
Hillary really hurt Paul yesterday. It was a typical
Peretz thing to do – smear someone as a “homophobe”
and “racist” the day of the election. The New
Republic’s Jamie Kirchick ludicrously claimed that Ron
Paul personally called Martin Luther King a “gay
pedophile,” and other outlandish claims he later
retracted as mere gossip.

A very similar thing happened in Somerville on the eve
of the vote about whether or not city funds should be
invested in Israel or locally – in order to make it
sound more “controversial” than the issue really was,
all the neocon pundits went crazy, making up stories
about how I am a supporter of the local investment
movement and I’m a homophobic terrorist supporter that
hangs out with David Duke. This is a common tactic. It
makes you seem really “scary” to liberals. Liberals
whose vote we were counting on.

If the American people can’t get beyond the
“homophobic” smear in order to save their country,
America probably deserves to be crushed like a bug
quite frankly. People act exactly like insects.
Running around doing what “they” expect, never
thinking.

We have to be prepared in advance. I mentioned a
couple weeks ago the Zionist press is going to do
this. Dr. Paul needed a pre-emptive attack – a
statement on how his program is best for Blacks and
Gays. As we all know, there is no difference between
Huckabee and Hillary when it comes to AIPAC issues.
This game is a distraction. But there is a comeback.

Is Dr. Paul a racist? No, Dr. Paul WILL SET YOU FREE.
We need to emphasize his prison release program and
make sure people realize that Hillary and Obama are
NOT going to end war, they want new wars. Ron Paul is
the Black Man’s Best Friend. He is going to bring your
sons home from the war and release all non-violent
drug offenders from prison his first day in office, he said.
Ron Paul has more Black supporters than any other
Republican candidate and more active US military
personnel supporters than any other candidate.

The issue is not which candidate will win or lose. The
real issue is are we going to lose our country?
Americans are such sheep. If we don’t somehow teach
our friends to mistrust the media and double check
everything, that’s it for USA.

The sad part is that Dr. Paul was polling at 17% but
then a lot of those people went to vote Democratic
because they were embarrassed by the homophobic racist
smear that was circulated on the internet. It is true
that there was reportedly voter fraud. The hand count
of the votes puts Dr. Paul at 15% not 8% as the
newsmedia erroneously reported. But that still means
he lost 2% of the expected vote and all of the
fence-sitters who could have put him above 20% just
because of this typical Jewish smear tactic that was
coordinated and planned to not give Ron Paul time to
answer the accusations before the election.

Dr. Paul will not be counted as a winner unless he
wins by an overwhelming landslide. Even then, the
neocons might send in the National Guard to prevent
him from taking office, except the Guard is in Iraq.
(How convenient.) What happens next? No country in the
world knows what the next step is, how to get free.
The question is, how much longer will Americans fall
for these tricks?

RON PAUL’S RESPONSE

Ron Paul has already responded to these ridiculous
accusations and slammed them as political haymaking to
coincide with the New Hampshire primary.

“The quotations in The New Republic article are not
mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever
believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce
such small-minded thoughts.

In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King,
Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content
of a person’s character, not the color of their skin.
As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on
April 20, 1999: `I rise in great respect for the
courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood
steadfastly for the rights of individuals against
unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’

This story is old news and has been rehashed for over
a decade. It’s once again being resurrected for
obvious political reasons on the day of the New
Hampshire primary.

When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine
full-time, a newsletter was published under my name
that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to
the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken
moral responsibility for not paying closer attention
to what went out under my name.”

[We invite readers to share their views on Mr.
Kirchick’s article by e mailing him at
james.kirchick@gmail.com.]

Dr. Paul has an honest opinion. The neo-liberals have
think tanks working night and day doing marketing
analysis and using psychology to turn the public away
from Dr. Paul. There are Israeli/neocon spies that
keep tabs on every political activist in Boston and do
write-ups about them in Jerusalem, and meet with the
local & Israeli government about how to neutralize
them. In Palestine they just use a laser gun if
someone starts telling the truth. In America they
character assassinate more often. Like we have any
importance whatsoever. They flew the mayor of
Somerville to talk to Ariel Sharon about how to
silence eleven Boston responsible investment
activists.

Basically how the Lobby won it (and it was a close
race, 45 to 55%) was they made a bunch of slick
posters with Deval Patrick’s face on it, AND they
released a number of news reports and commentaries
that totally twisted the positions and arguments of
both sides, so that the average voter would be
confused about what they were voting for or against.
They also used a lot of psychological pressure
labeling people as “racists” “anti-Semites” etc. so
that the people who would normally support the ballot
initiative got scared away.

These people are very serious about not wanting Dr.
Paul’s voice to be heard and they don’t want him to
win. But they always use the same tactics.

If they don’t succeed in turning Dr. Paul’s name into
mud, they will turn on the organizers of the movement.
It’s going to go on and on and we have to strategize.
Is there a strategic planning wing of the People for
Paul movement?

Glenn Greenwald went on for paragraph after paragraph in Salon Magazine http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/22/klein/index.html going on and on about why he still deserves to live even though he’s considering voting for a pro-life Republican, namely Dr. Ron Paul, for president.

It is stunning to me how many people would rather have an abortion than have world peace. It seems pretty selfish to me. But I guess that’s what having an abortion is all about. Men who don’t want to take responsibility for their offspring. It has absolutely nothing to do with women’s rights if you ask me, and I have always been female. It has to do with the assumption that women must earn a living or else they are a drain on society.

Glenn Greenwald wrote:

“There’s no question that abortion — whatever one’s views on it are — is a vital, even central issue of individual rights… But abortion isn’t the only important issue… of Paul’s candidacy.”

There are actually a lot of questions about what are the most vital issues concerning the individual rights of women, and how abortion fits into that picture. If you ask me, abortion is a distraction from the three fundamental rights of sexually active women.

Marriage – the promise of a man to provide for his offspring and fulfill the needs of his woman.

Dowry – a gift given from the man to the woman to legitimize his interest in her.

Maintenance – all expenses paid (food, clothing, shelter, medical care) for life.

In the ideal world, every woman should and would demand this from any man seeking to enjoy her. Abortion “on demand and without apology” destroys this ancient security net for women.

“If people who support a candidate with the wrong position on abortion (or gay rights) can be accused of being indifferent to the rights of women or gay people, then — by the same exact “reasoning” — those who end up supporting candidates who affirm America’s right to act as an imperial power or who want to continue many of Bush’s executive power abuses [as Hillary Clinton certainly does and as even Barack Obama and (to a lesser extent) John Edwards do] should be accused of being indifferent to constitutional liberties, the rule of law, and the lives of millions of innocent Muslims,” continues Greenwald.

I do not presume to know what the “right” position is on abortion. Neither does Ron Paul. He doesn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of the Constitution. He says leave it up to the state. There is no way New York Jews are ever going to criminalize abortion. So it’s a non-issue.

From the November 15th Democratic debate:

BLITZER: You say national security is more important than human rights. Senator Clinton, what do you say?

CLINTON: I agree with that completely. The first obligation of the president of the United States is to protect and defend the United States of America. That doesn’t mean that it is to the exclusion of other interests.

There’s been a bit of talk in the interwebs over this answer, but – contrary to expectations I guess – I don’t find it terribly controversial.  The first obligation of the president is to protect and defend the United States and not to promote human rights.  Now, as Senator Obama noted when asked the question, the two aren’t mutually exclusive (which makes it a bad question on Blitzer’s part), but it’s not controversial to state that one takes precedence over the other.

The problem with the answer has more to do with the political establishment itself, rather than Hillary Clinton. 

Most – if not everyone – in Washington equates American “security” with American “interests.”  Quite frankly, the physical security of the United States is above question.  Of course, there is the (relatively small) danger of a terrorist attack.  But even the worst-case scenario – a (low-yield) nuclear weapon going off in an urban center – would leave the rest of the country unblemished.  Not to say that it wouldn’t be absolutely terrible, but simply to point out that the “destruction” of the United States by external forces is – at this point in time – extremely unlikely.

When we use military force, we are almost always defending the “interests” of the United States.  There isn’t a concrete definition for “American interests,” by they range from economic interests, to diplomatic interests, to the security of an ally or a region.

I’m not necessarily opposed to defending the various American interests, but I would appreciate a bit of honest rhetoric from the ruling class.  When Senator Clinton says, “I agree with that completely,” what she means that there will be some circumstances when the economic/diplomatic/political interests of the United States outweighs human rights of a particular group of people.  I would really appreciate it if she (and every other politician in the Beltway) would just come out and say that.

It would gives us something to actually debate, as opposed to blathering mindlessly about meaningless soundbites. 

After the Republican debate on Tuesday evening in Dearborn, Mich., a reporter from the Arab-American News asked Ron Paul what he thought of the term “Islamic fascism.”

“It’s a false term to make people think we’re fighting Hitler,” Paul responded. “It’s war propaganda designed to generate fear so that the war has to be spread.”

The call has gone out to all the Muslim Americans to hurry up and register to vote Republican so that they can vote in the Republican Primary to support Ron Paul, the anti-interventionist, non-isolationist candidate for President of the United States. Muslims are opening their wallets and joining teaparty07.com as well.

An anonymous Ron Paul supporter posted the following message on the internet: “Muslims and Americans have an unique window of opportunity for the 2008 election. There is a candidate running as a Republican that would work to completely cut off the funding to Israel, remove ALL US troops from Arab lands, and repeal the Patriot Act. He’s a Republican with Libertarian views named Ron Paul. Ron Paul’s policies ranging from monetary to foreign are top notch. Till now Muslims and Americans have not had an American Presidential candidate that really suited their best interests. This election is unique in that we have a man running as a Republican that speaks the truth…We know the current policies in the Middle East are failing, not only making it less safe in the world but hurting and killing innocent Muslims, which our media callously calls collateral damage. It is our duty as Muslims to follow the truth regardless of how futile it may seem. Ron Paul is the only candidate that does not seem to be swayed by the influential lobbies that the other candidates are catering to.”

Ron Paul stood up in Congress in 2006 and opposed a resolution that sided with Israel in the Lebanon-Israel conflict. He stated the following.

Ron Paul: “Mr. Speaker, I follow a policy in foreign affairs called non-interventionism. I do not believe we are making the United States more secure when we involve ourselves in conflicts overseas. The Constitution really doesn’t authorize us to be the policemen of the world, much less to favor one side over another in foreign conflicts. It is very clear, reading this resolution objectively, that all the terrorists are on one side and all the victims and the innocents are on the other side. I find this unfair, particularly considering the significantly higher number of civilian casualties among Lebanese civilians. I would rather advocate neutrality rather than picking sides, which is what this resolution does.”

Ron Paul has also sponsored a bill to overturn the Patriot Act. He is one of the few members of Congress from either of the major houses that is speaking rationally about these issues. How can we get everyone, and I mean everyone, to join the Ron Paul Republican voter sign-up campaign?

There is general frustration with politicians these days, and the unwillingness to believe that supporting a particular candidate will make a difference. But whether Ron Paul wins or loses, ronpaul.meetup.com is a great way to meet your neighbors who are against the war and organize the community on a grassroots level. If something like Katrina ever happened to us, knowing our neighbors could mean the difference between life and death to our families.

The common thread I’ve been reading lately about leftists and Jews is that they are having trouble getting more than a dozen people to come to their stuff (whether anti-Zionist or Zionist). The anti-Israel movement is not moving forward, because “protest Zionist imperialism” is just not a catchy slogan. By contrast, there are over 400 RP activists against war taxes in Boston alone. Every day the list of passionate anti-war activists grows. Very few of them agree with every single RP position, they just want to get the Lobby out of the way and pull the troops out of Iraq.

One reason it’s working is because of the software. They made the ronpaul.meetup.com site almost like a dating site, where you can make friends with people in or near your zip code. They made it very easy to get together with new people to join the activism. You can’t beat technology, may as well use it.

In the event that RP actually won the election and got the Hamas treatment, his supporters are fully in support of the Right to Bear Arms. It would be interesting to see what followed.

If anti-war protesters want to continue to focus on the genocidal machinations of the global zionist-imperialist military, industrial, financial, political, neoliberal, media complex, they have to be willing to meet with anyone any time to hear what ideas people have to address this, which is our primary responsibility – even if they are Republicans.

If you ever saw Ron Paul in an interview it cannot be said that he avoids discussing vital issues. He is someone who is willing to make a statement and stick by it even when no one agrees with him. I don’t “believe” in electoral politics but it’s not that much sweat off my brow to go and vote to end war.

I think the fact that NO pro-Israel group will let Ron Paul speak at their convention, not even peace Zionists, is evidence enough that he is the only person to put in charge as commander-in-chief. And, even if he loses, making all these contacts with local anti-interventionists is priceless. If you want to expand the peace movement so that it overlaps with the freedom movement like ripples in a pond, you just have to respect the fact that people might agree with you, but for different reasons.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/muslims_for_ronpaul/

Does America have a future? Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of choices here. You want Rudy Giuliani, who dressed up as a woman and marched in the gay pride parade, and who has been profiteering off 9/11, or you want Hillary, who strongly supported the genocidal sanctions against Iraqi children while she was First Lady? Both of them have promised AIPAC to bomb Iran. Also, Obama is influenced by AIPAC. At this point, there is nothing more important than pulling our troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere. I heard that Cynthia McKinney might run as a Green, but her chances of winning are slim because the Green Party has no money and has very few active volunteers. Ron Paul actually has a fighting chance to stop the wars because he has a strong base of support among the Young Republicans who are very enthusiastic and remarkably sane. He wins every debate because he makes a “self-interest” argument for ending the wars which works with Americans. Even Jay Leno respected him.

Ron Paul is a Constitutionalist and a non-interventionist. Everybody disagrees with him about something. The leftists hate him because he’s anti-abortion. But again, we have to put aside our personal opinions and stop the war immediately or lose our democracy. We only have one chance. The only thing that can unite Americans is the Constitution (as flawed a document as it is – but it’s better than the lawlessness of Bush). Not a single Jewish organization supports Ron Paul for president.

Ron Paul approaches the Constitution almost like an Islamic jurist. He did not say he didn’t think universal health care might be a good idea. He said it’s not in the Constitution that the US government has the role of providing health care. If you want to do it, then you have to amend the Constitution. If you allow Congress to do things that the Constitution doesn’t allow, then we no longer have a constitutional democracy. They can declare war without an act of Congress, they can cancel your currency value, they can put you in jail without evidence, etc.

I have never come across him saying anything racist. He did say, “I certainly join my colleagues in urging Americans to celebrate the progress this country has made in race relations. However, contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

That is certainly true. Boston’s bizarre busing system destroyed neighborhoods which had closely knit communities that worked together on a local level to organize social programs like Boy Scouts, now we have a welfare state where you have to enter a lottery to get your kids into a decent school, and they waste a lot of gas busing kids across town when there is a school walking distance from their house. Nobody attends Boy Scouts anymore, and neighborhood crime is rampant. The situation for blacks and whites has worsened since the 1960s because our economy is going down the drain due to our foreign policy. Studies have shown that the more racially mixed a neighborhood is, the less likely it is that the people will be active in community organizing. So that leads to increased dependency on government services. I guess there is idealism on one hand, and the reality on the other hand. In any case, he has a rational argument for his views.

The current drug policy in the United States is completely irrational. The CIA invades a country, forces them to grow drugs, then the CIA brings it into the country and sells it to the police, who then sell it to the drug mafia, and then we spend billions of dollars putting people in jail for non-violent crimes. By decriminalizing drugs, and dismantling the CIA, as Paul proposes, you will have far fewer social problems created by criminal mafias and gangs because something like cocaine would no longer be profitable. And our tax money would no longer pay for these drug wars. That was also the approach in the early days of Islam. Scholars, including Caliph Ali refused to criminalize intoxicating herbs because there was nothing specifically in the Quran outlawing any plant. There was no criminal offense for hashish or opium, and usually they were prescribed by doctors as medicines. Avincenna (I forgot his name in Arabic) talks a lot about the medieval Muslim uses of what we now consider to be “illegal” drugs. The drug wars have cost US taxpayers billions of dollars and have not improved anything. So it’s useful to look at how America used to deal with these issues. Did you know that George Washington grew marijuana on the White House lawn? Farmers used to pay their taxes with hemp. The laws changed in the 1940s due to pressure from special interest groups. The herbicide (genocide of plant species) led to great dust storms, the ruination of farmers, and the Great Depression.

I am aware of “states rights” connection with the American history of slavery, however in this day and age, states rights gives you protection from Bush. And it also protects people. Because as long as, for example, gay marriage is a states issue, then every state can decide if it does or doesn’t want to have gay marriage. If you gave the Feds the authority to make that decision, a special interest lobby could convince the federal government to legalize or outlaw gay marriage for the entire country. So there are pros and cons to Ron Paul’s positions.

Affirmative action has not succeeded in addressing inequalities in society. What most average black and white people want is more money to live. So again, smaller government would decrease the individual burden on average people to sustain an empire with their taxes and we’d have less poverty. Dr. Paul is a moral person so I’m sure that minorities could work with him to end poverty in ways that conform to the Constitution. In Roxbury here, the black community has been having a lot of meetings to figure out what to do because even though they succeeded in getting federal funding for all kinds of stuff, the crime in the neighborhood is just getting worse and worse. So, the socialist approach isn’t working and Ron Paul’s approach – locally based government, is what the black community is doing anyway, out of necessity. The #1 concern for black youth right now is not wanting to get killed in Iraq. Paul has a young black following.

Bottom line, we have to stop the war. Ron Paul is approachable. He is neither a criminal nor insane. As long as you can make an argument from the point of view of the Constitution you can get by. Sort of like when you are dealing with the Taliban, you have to make your argument based on Quran/Hadith and they will listen.

About immigration, I think it’s a non-issue for those who immigrated here legally. I suspect that the anti-Mexican rhetoric is playing to popular sentiment, yet with his “small government” proposal, we’d have less of a police state working night and day to bust into the homes of the Mexicans, so they still might be better off with Ron Paul, and also, fewer Mexicans would join the US military and kill Muslims in order to get a green card, if there was no war. Ideally, the US should have a less predatorial relationship with Mexico so that their country would not be so impoverished that their young people would all have to leave home.

Some people feel that “ideally” they want some kind of welfare system with open borders. They don’t want to support Ron Paul because they disagree with this or that. However, what we have right now is Bush and a government that has descended into lawlessness. No amount of protesting is going to automatically transform what we have into a socialist utopia. In fact, the US is bankrupt. So either we give in to complete tyranny, or we stick to the Constitution. I don’t see any other choice. There is no other candidate who has indicated willingness to uphold the Constitution when it comes to declaring wars, detainee rights, and our personal freedoms.

Watch Ron Paul karate slam CNN

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Q: Why is it the US welcomes Egypt building nuclear plants while we condemn Iran?
[See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/message/8166]

A: Egypt is on our payroll. Egypt signed a treaty with Israel and the US which includes that they are given US tax money in order to buy weapons they use against their population to keep them in line, in exchange for “recognizing” Israel. Under the Egypt-Israel treaty, the US pays Egypt about $2 billion/year in order not to wage wars against Israel.

Iran has no such agreement with the US or Israel.

There are many possible rationalizations for the differences in the reactions to attempts by Iranians, Pakistanis and Egyptians to master nuclear technology, but the general hysteria results from the apparent interest of the Iranian government in opening a public Israel-Palestine discussion, which Neocons, the Israel lobby and the organized Jewish community are unwilling to countenance.

A nuclear Iran might be able to force such a discussion.

The usual list of distractions from the real reason for the anti-Iran frenzy are:
the hostage crisis during the Carter administration,
possible payback for US support of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war,
possible payback for CIA involvement in the overthrow of Mossadegh,
the alleged irrational Iranian suicide culture,
alleged Iranian involvement in terrorism,
alleged Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents,
alleged or mistranslated Iranian threats against Israel
Iranian support for Hizbullah, and
Iranian support for Hamas,

There are probably a few other issues that do not occur for me, but if US foreign policy were rational from an American standpoint, they would constitute reasons to create a dialogue between the US and Iran.

Due to a conflict between those wanting to focus on legal approaches and those preferring to dwell on idealistic platitudes, the first One State meeting in Boston was canceled before it happened.

It seems like whether you talk about a two state solution or a one state solution, certain folks are always willing to concede rights on behalf of the Palestinians that they would never cede for themselves under American or international law. I think that’s why they like to keep it a Jewish-Arab issue or a “bi-national” issue, to leave majority of the world population out of the conversation, to leave the Arabs without back-up.

There is also a split between those who want to wait until “someday” when Israelis can be convinced to accept their neighbors as “equals” – as long as they don’t try to demand from Jews what Jews expect from the Germans (like putting aging prison guards in prison, getting their former houses back, demanding reparations and social security benefits) – and those who believe that we must have a plan that takes into account the possibility that some Jews are not going to like being treated like equals to non-Jews, and some of them will perceive the enforcement of international law as “vengeance.”

My point of view is that until Zionism is declared a criminal ideology and prosecuted as such, there is not much hope of any useful compromise since Zionism gives certain folks rights over others and that’s not fair.

Any solution based on human equality has to also take into account that giving Jews “equal rights” with Palestinians discriminates against all non-Palestinian Gentiles. Why should an American Jew have more stake in what goes on in Palestine than say, an Irish American or a Chinese Malaysian? A Jewish State is unfair because it favors Jews over Palestinians, but a bi-national state is unfair because it favors Jews over non-Jews worldwide. Before Israel’s existence, Palestine used to accept peaceful immigrant communities from all over the world who were not Arabs nor Jews. Why should Jewish residency permits be placed above others? Why not use other methods of preferring groups of immigrants over others?

I believe the Palestinians should have the right to decide who gets to live as an immigrant in Palestine, and maybe they should give a chance for non-Jews who want to immigrate there with the Palestinians’ permission. The idea of Palestine as a safe haven for childlike Jews is also insulting to Jews.

I think it is healthy to go back and forth between the extremes of idealism and justice-thinking to come up with a workable plan. So I guess it shows you what you are up against when trying to fight for justice for Palestinians, because there is still a lot of resistance from older Jews especially – using human rights language to tell Palestinians what they need to give up next. Claiming to want peace and reconciliation while excluding those who want to talk about what specific legal actions will be necessary for peace, by slurring them as full of “hate” or “vengeance,” is really no different than the approach that the Zionists are already using.

In any case, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the One State group was supposed to be. If what is required is a discussion group, then maybe we should just throw it out there and let the Palestine discussion groups fight it out. So that is why I am making this an open letter. I really think that no One State Solution is possible without the majority participation of non-Jews.

I tend to view this from a psychological perspective. I see that liberal secular Jews do not have a tradition of gut-wrenching repentence in front of God, although this does exist in Rabbinical Judaism where you say to God, “I deserve to die for what I did, but please forgive me.” The resistance within the secular mind to getting to this point of spiritual abasement is what I view as a primary obstacle to dealing with “terrorist populations.” Muslims and Christians do have “sorry” and “accepting punishment” as a cultural philosophy and tend to view these two actions as a prerequisites for forgiveness of sinners.

What we are seeing with the Secular One Statists, is the imposition of secular values onto a non-secular society, where they want Jews to just be accepted as equals with Palestinians while they want Jews to be exempted from having to make reparations and especially exempted from prosecution for their crimes. And as I see it increasingly clearly, we are dealing with a sociological issue that is deeper than racism.

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more
than 500 employees and has the following statistics:

* 29 have been accused of spousal abuse
* 7 have been arrested for fraud
* 19 have been accused of writing bad checks
* 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
* 3 have done time for assault
* 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
* 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
* 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
* 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
* 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year…

Can you guess which organization this is?

Give up yet?

It’s the 535 members of the United States Congress.

The same group that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to
keep the rest of us in line.

The Dixie Chicks last album won five grammys. They should have. They are very talented singers; but, American radio doesn’t like their patriotic views. I always thought that the good ole USA was a place that people had the right to their political views. The Dixie Chicks have paid the price because of thesehypocritic radio stations who refuse to play their music. What a joke. I wonderjust how many of these radio station owners voted for the present, President? The Bible says: “If you are without sin, cast the first stone”.I guess all of these radio stations are perfect, course we’ll see, when Judgement Day comes….won’t we?

The Country Music Association didn’t nominate them for any awards. What a bunch of hypocrits. Reminds me of the baseball writers who refuse to put anAmerican hero into the Baseball Hall of Fame for gambling; but, the ones who vote for the Football Hall of Fame, voted for a “coke” addict to be admitted. Sounds to me like our newspaper writers have their priorites bassackwards.

I, for one, will continue to listen to whatever music I so desire; and it will be by cds or cassettes. Maybe if enough of us listen to cds and tapes and cassetts, the radio won’t have anyone to listen. Wouldn’t that be funny. I keep my music and politics seperate. I don’t choose to tell the world what to do or to censure the world. That is God’s job, not mine. As far as I know, our US Constitution guarantees our right of freedom of speech, and it doesn’t say to retaliate against people who do. I would rather listen to a CD or a Cassett any day as listen to a bunch of music jockeys who think they have the right to censure people and their beliefs.