Fund Your Utopia Without Me.™

12 April 2014

The Roots of CAIR’s Intimidation Campaign










11 April 2014

Is Dingy Harry Behind The Siege At The Bundy Ranch?





OK, it’s from infowars.com (not all of the post nor links, just the 'breaking news'...so caution is advised until we get confirmation from other media), but they cite some credible sources in the MSM such as Reuters (Update: Breitbart, National Review, and the Washington Times are now reporting it, too)… 

Breaking: Sen. Harry Reid Behind BLM Land Grab of Bundy Ranch  

BLM attempted cover-up of Sen. Reid/Chinese gov’t takeover of ranch for solar farm 

Another BLM report entitled Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone (BLM Technical Note 444) reveals that Bundy’s land in question is within the “Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area” which is part of a broad U.S. Department of Energy program for “Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” on land “managed” by BLM.

“In 2012, the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States,” the report reads. “The Final Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement assessed the impact of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands in the six southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

“The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments/Record of Decision (ROD) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States implemented a comprehensive solar energy program for public lands in those states and incorporated land use allocations and programmatic and SEZ-specific design features into land use plans in the six-state study area.”

In 2012, the New American reported that Harry Reid’s son, Rory Reid, was the chief representative for a Chinese energy firm planning to build a $5-billion solar plant on public land in Laughlin, Nevada.

And journalist Marcus Stern with Reuters also reported that Sen. Reid was heavily involved in the deal as well.

“[Reid] and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert,” he wrote. “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada.”

“His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.”





Now, here’s an added twist (not from infowars)… 

Such was the case with the Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002—a piece of legislation introduced by Reid—which dealt with a variety of boundary shifts and land trades in Nevada. Reid assured his colleagues that the bill was a bipartisan measure that would benefit both the natural environment and the economy in Nevada. 

“What Reid did not explain,” the Los Angeles Times reported, “was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms.” 

For example, the Howard Hughes Corporation alone paid $300,000 to the small, Washington-based consulting firm of Reid’s son-in-law, Steven Barringer, to promote a provision allowing Hughes to acquire 998 acres of highly valuable federal land situated in the rapidly growing Las Vegas metropolitan area. In federal lobbyist reports, Barringer is listed as one of Hughes’s representatives on the measure that Reid introduced.

Other provisions of the 2002 bill were intended to benefit (to the tune of several million dollars) a real-estate development headed by Harvey Whittemore, a senior partner in the Nevada law firm that employed all four of Reid’s sons. Specifically, Reid intervened to gain monumental government concessions on behalf of Whittemore, who wished to build thousands of homes and numerous golf courses on 43,000 acres of barren land in an area called Coyote Springs, an hour northeast of Las Vegas. 

This land had a number of federal restrictions on its use: Most notably, one-fourth of it was off-limits to developers because of federal protections for an “endangered” species of desert tortoise that dwelt there; another one-fourth (about 10,500 acres) was government-owned and was subject to a federal power-line right of way; and the Coyote Springs territory as a whole was rife with streams and washes that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had designated as crucial to the health of the desert’s ecosystem, and was therefore generally off-limits to construction. 

Thanks to Senator Reid’s intercession, however, the Bureau of Land Management agreed to relocate the “endangered” tortoises to an adjacent federal preserve, thereby opening that portion of Coyote Springs to developers. 



That would be the very same Harvey ‘Very Close Friend of Harry’ Whittemore, who was recently sentenced to Federal prison for violating federal campaign cash laws by giving Dingy dirty, illegal money.  (But, but, but, the Koch Brothers!!!):


Reid Supporter Whittemore Gets 2 Years in Campaign Cash Case 




So that all of those, who still think – erroneously – that the government acted correctly in Ruby Ridge and Waco, both of which were later cited as part of the reason Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building, wrap your heads around this little tidbit: 

Remember how Dingy Harry got the ‘endangered’ desert tortoise removed from the land for his ‘very, very, very, very, very rich’, powerful and influential friend and donor? 

Guess what the Feds are using as the justification to remove the ranchers from state land that the BLM claims jurisdiction over? 

The very same ‘endangered’ desert tortoise that Dingy Harry had moved from Whittemore’s land to this area! 




America has 50 million people on food stamps and close to 100 million adults of working age out of the labour force. We are also watching meat prices soar. So, what is the Federal government doing? 

It is seizing the Bundy cattle and killing them to protect this ‘endangered’ desert tortoise that is, evidently, so populous that the BLM cannot contain them within the ‘resort’ it built for them. 

And, here, at last, is the mind-warp: 

While the Federal government is killing badly-needed cattle that is owned by a private citizen, allegedly, to protect an ‘endangered’ desert tortoise, it is also currently euthanising thousands of those same tortoises. 

Killing privately-owned cattle to protect a tortoise that it is killing by the thousands itself. Smart power, baby! 

Amerika, the ugly! 

200 agents, many of whom are snipers, helicopters, military vehicles, ‘First Amendment zones' (I thought ALL of America was a 'First Amendment zone’), and the assault and battery of several law-abiding Americans already. 

Apart from civil liberties and property rights, how much is this costing taxpayers? 


 

Riddle me this, ‘torture’ hysterics: 

Would you consider it to be ‘torture’ for the Federal government to taser innocent Americans, who are exercising their Constitutional rights?


 



BTW, guess who the newly-appointed BLM's acting deputy director for programmes and policy is?

Neil Kornze, who served as Dingy Reid's policy adviser for public lands for 8 years.



A thought...

Two years after the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, King Henry II signed the Charter of the Forest.  Whereas the Magna Carta extended legal protections to the nobles, the Charter granted rights to the common man.

Pardon me for quoting wiki, which I hate, but it is just easier in this case:
 

In contrast to Magna Carta, which dealt with the rights of barons, it provided some real rights, privileges and protections for the common man against the abuses of the encroaching aristocracy.

At a time when the royal forests were the most important potential source of fuel for cooking, heating and industries such as charcoal burning, and such hotly defended rights as pannage (pasture for their pigs), estover (collecting firewood), agistment (grazing), or turbary (cutting of turf for fuel), this charter was almost unique in providing a degree of economic protection for free men, who also used the forest to forage for food and to graze their animals.
 

The Charter provided a right of common access to (royal) private lands that would wait until the Union of England and Scotland in 1707 to be equaled within the realm. It also rolled back the area encompassed by the designation "forest" to that of Henry II's time, essentially freeing up lands that had become more and more restricted as King Richard and King John designated greater and greater areas of land to become royal forest. Since "forest" in this context didn't necessarily mean treed areas, but could include fields, moor or even farms and villages, it became an increasing hardship on the common people to try to farm, forage, and otherwise use the land they lived on. The Charter specifically states that "Henceforth every freeman, in his wood or on his land that he has in the forest, may with impunity make a mill, fish-preserve, pond, marl-pit, ditch, or arable in cultivated land outside coverts, provided that no injury is thereby given to any neighbour."

We are reverting back to the tyranny of King John where the King could fence off as much land as he liked.  It was 'his,' not property of the state.  As such, he could prevent his people from feeding their families, grazing their animals, fueling their homes, etc.  They were forced to pay tolls to use the roads and levies/taxes for other things as the King deigned.  Consequently, the common people became poorer, colder, and hungrier.  The nobles had protections, but not anyone else.

The modern-day interpretation of Robin Hood stealing from the Kochs to give to the poor, oppressed people is a product of the late 19th century (after Marx).  In reality, Robin 'robbed' the King, et al, by taking back the onerous taxes that the people had paid.  He returned the tax dollars to the taxpayers.  


Maybe, a Robin Hood will 'rob from the rich and give to the poor.'  Return our money and our lands (there is NO reason for the Federal government to own 28% of the land in the country) to 'We the People.'  


The Federal government is not the King.





Related Reading:



Bundy and the Rule of Law

When the Cows Came Home – A Rancher’s Story, Our Story

Here's What I Would Have Said at Brandeis



Vogue 2006

We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking.

On Tuesday, after protests by students, faculty and outside groups, Brandeis University revoked its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at its commencement ceremonies in May. The protesters accused Ms. Hirsi Ali, an advocate for the rights of women and girls, of being "Islamophobic." Here is an abridged version of the remarks she planned to deliver.


One year ago, the city and suburbs of Boston were still in mourning. Families who only weeks earlier had children and siblings to hug were left with only photographs and memories. Still others were hovering over bedsides, watching as young men, women, and children endured painful surgeries and permanent disfiguration. All because two brothers, radicalized by jihadist websites, decided to place homemade bombs in backpacks near the finish line of one of the most prominent events in American sports, the Boston Marathon. 

All of you in the Class of 2014 will never forget that day and the days that followed. You will never forget when you heard the news, where you were, or what you were doing. And when you return here, 10, 15 or 25 years from now, you will be reminded of it. The bombs exploded just 10 miles from this campus. 

I read an article recently that said many adults don't remember much from before the age of 8. That means some of your earliest childhood memories may well be of that September morning simply known as "9/11." 

You deserve better memories than 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing. And you are not the only ones. In Syria, at least 120,000 people have been killed, not simply in battle, but in wholesale massacres, in a civil war that is increasingly waged across a sectarian divide. Violence is escalating in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Libya, in Egypt. And far more than was the case when you were born, organized violence in the world today is disproportionately concentrated in the Muslim world. 

Another striking feature of the countries I have just named, and of the Middle East generally, is that violence against women is also increasing. In Saudi Arabia, there has been a noticeable rise in the practice of female genital mutilation. In Egypt, 99% of women report being sexually harassed and up to 80 sexual assaults occur in a single day. 

Especially troubling is the way the status of women as second-class citizens is being cemented in legislation. In Iraq, a law is being proposed that lowers to 9 the legal age at which a girl can be forced into marriage. That same law would give a husband the right to deny his wife permission to leave the house. 


http://www.indonesiamatters.com/images/submission.jpg


Sadly, the list could go on. I hope I speak for many when I say that this is not the world that my generation meant to bequeath yours. When you were born, the West was jubilant, having defeated Soviet communism. An international coalition had forced Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The next mission for American armed forces would be famine relief in my homeland of Somalia. There was no Department of Homeland Security, and few Americans talked about terrorism. 

Two decades ago, not even the bleakest pessimist would have anticipated all that has gone wrong in the part of world where I grew up. After so many victories for feminism in the West, no one would have predicted that women's basic human rights would actually be reduced in so many countries as the 20th century gave way to the 21st.
 
 


Today, however, I am going to predict a better future, because I believe that the pendulum has swung almost as far as it possibly can in the wrong direction. 

When I see millions of women in Afghanistan defying threats from the Taliban and lining up to vote; when I see women in Saudi Arabia defying an absurd ban on female driving; and when I see Tunisian women celebrating the conviction of a group of policemen for a heinous gang rape, I feel more optimistic than I did a few years ago. The misnamed Arab Spring has been a revolution full of disappointments. But I believe it has created an opportunity for traditional forms of authority—including patriarchal authority—to be challenged, and even for the religious justifications for the oppression of women to be questioned. 

Yet for that opportunity to be fulfilled, we in the West must provide the right kind of encouragement. Just as the city of Boston was once the cradle of a new ideal of liberty, we need to return to our roots by becoming once again a beacon of free thought and civility for the 21st century. When there is injustice, we need to speak out, not simply with condemnation, but with concrete actions. 

One of the best places to do that is in our institutions of higher learning. We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking, where all ideas are welcome and where civil debate is encouraged. I'm used to being shouted down on campuses, so I am grateful for the opportunity to address you today. I do not expect all of you to agree with me, but I very much appreciate your willingness to listen. 

I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women's and girls' basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight. 

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect. 

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation. 

Is such an argument inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews. 

The motto of Brandeis University is "Truth even unto its innermost parts." That is my motto too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of the sexes. 

Ms. Hirsi Ali is the author of "Nomad: My Journey from Islam to America" (Free Press, 2010). She is a fellow at the Belfer Center of Harvard's Kennedy School and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.




'Today, however, I am going to predict a better future, because I believe that the pendulum has swung almost as far as it possibly can in the wrong direction.'

Loved it, but it can swing further in the wrong direction. It is spreading. Imams in the UK have been busted on undercover videos agreeing to perform marriages with very young brides, honour killings are on the rise, parents are either having the girls undergo FGM there or send them back to the old country, the prisons are exploding with converts, poor Lee Rigby couldn’t even walk the street in broad daylight, and the government estimates that more than 200,000 native, white Brits convert to Islam every year in a country of 61 million and where you can fire a cannon in a church on Sunday and probably not harm too many people, if any.

And, look what happened to you here with CAIR.

Yesterday, I was pleased to read posts from liberals like these at National Review:



I couldn't get more confused about what liberals stand for than I am after reading this.




Me either. And I’m a liberal! 



My response to them:

Thank you for that. 

In 2009, the leftist Norwegian Labour government’s Ministry of Children, Equality, and Social Inclusion named Mahdi Hassan, a noted homophobe, as the Role Model of the Year. 

Hassan told the newspaper Arbeidets Rett that he wants a ban on homosexuality, based on the Qur'an. Does he support the death penalty for gays? That's "up to each individual country to decide, but, in general, yes." 

Was he condemned? Needless to say, the homosexual community wasn’t thrilled, but other than that he was cheered with the Socialists applauding loudly. 

“There is freedom of speech in Norway and in the Tynset Socialist Left Party we consider it unproblematic that Mahdi is opposed in principle to homosexuality. It is in accordance with his religion,' said Stein Petter Løkken, leader of the Socialist Left Party in Hassan's home kommune of Tynset. 

Then, there is the lovely Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo.  She said in response to a report that proved that every solved case of rape in Oslo in the previous five year period had been committed by a Muslim: 

'Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes (because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor’s conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite)...Norwegian women must realise that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.' 

I. Am. NOT. Kidding. 

If you're interested, the above comes from a piece that I wrote several years ago: Norway:A Tolerant, Inclusive, Diverse, Multicultural Society For Everyone...ExceptJews  (Sorry for the old colours. I really should update it, but anyhoo...) 

Too few on the Left (anywhere) and on the far-far-Right in Europe* are willing to question the wisdom of multi-kulti, if it means that those with the means and desire to, literally, cut off your heard if you step out of line get the power to shut everyone up. 

Hell, one Muslim gay man has to attend CHURCH with his Christian husband because of threats and only one Muslim in the entire country has publicly come out as a lesbian: Sara Azmeh Rasmussen. The entire Muslim population of the country is a mere 3%, but very few are willing to say anything that might offend them. 

So, even though we probably disagree on a lot, I want to really thank you for giving pause to what has happened to a genuine, modern-day heroine, Ms Ali, and its wider implications to our society.



‘I was young, fiery, and impatient when I said the things that I did. I now realise that the changes I want to make won’t be immediate.’ 

- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2006, in response to questions posed during an interview with Anna Wintour, the Editor in Chief of Vogue, about her more militant statements against Islam made in the late 1990s, which were cited by CAIR and the MSA of Brandeis University in its protest.


But, she is still punished for them while Ibrahim Cooper, the head of CAIR, has applauded the Palestinians terror and rocket attacks against and in Israel in recent years; yet, he’s fine and displays enough of Brandeis’ ‘core values’ to attain the power to force the school to submit.

Disgusting.


* The far-far-Right in Europe often makes common cause with the far-far-Left, anarchists, and Islamists against Jews, Israel, and 'the rich'