Back to Basics

Jeffrey Lord’s story in the American Spectator about a “smoking gun” in the IRS scandal has backfired. He implied that the head of the IRS union had personally met with President Obama to plot against the Tea Party when there is no evidence of such a meeting or such plotting. Instead, as the Daily Caller and U.S. News & World Report have reported, the union chief had been part of a “Workplace Flexibility Forum” in the Old Executive Office Building attended by 200 people and featuring Obama as a speaker.

Lord is a fine columnist, but Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel had previously pointed out that the smoking gun evidence of presidential wrongdoing has been right in front of us all along, in the form of various statements by the President and other administration officials attacking and demonizing the Tea Party, as well as demands from Democrats and their allies that conservative groups be scrutinized by the IRS. This was pressure from above that had its intended effect—to disable the Tea Party movement during the 2012 elections.

“The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies,” Strassel commented. “But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.”

In fact, the pressure came not only from the Democratic Party, but from various George Soros-funded groups and journalists, one of whom, Seth Rosenfeld, obtained personal financial information about filmmaker Joel Gilbert and his financial backers. The Gilbert case, which involves a massive invasion of privacy and harassment of donors to an anti-Obama film, is potentially even more serious in a legal sense than scrutiny of Tea Party groups by the IRS. In addition, the IRS reopened Gilbert’s 2009 tax return, and simply denied all of his business expenses, even though they were well-documented.

Amy Pyle of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) asked that I correct my article on this aspect of the scandal, saying that, “While Seth has done some freelance work for us in the past, as for many other outlets, he is not an employee here nor is he on any contract with us.”

I had reported that Rosenfeld “works” for the CIR and in fact he is listed on its website as a “correspondent” for the group. That suggests an on-going relationship. I told Pyle there would be no correction. In fact, why doesn’t the CIR help us get to the bottom of this scandal?

The CIR is funded by the Open Society Institute of George Soros and other liberal foundations. Its “media partners” include the Arab government-funded Al Jazeera English—a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood—The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio and PBS.

With these collaborators, it would appear that an investigation of Rosenfeld and his methods would have to come from Congress, rather than the media.

Five months before Barack Obama was elected to his first term as president, Herbert Romerstein and I finished a Washington, D.C. briefing on “The Stealth Candidate”—Barack Obama—and his communist connections. I opened it up for questions. “I’m Dana Milbank from The Washington Post,” said the questioner. “So what’s the upshot? Do you think that Barack Obama is a communist?”

Not wanting to fall into an obvious trap, I replied, “We have no way to judge.”

But Herb told Milbank: “No, let’s answer that one a little differently. We’re telling you that you’re not doing your job. We didn’t say Obama was a communist. We said that you have to do due diligence in tracking down what Obama really is because right now he’s a stealth candidate. So, if you don’t do your job, that’s your problem.”

“Herb, you just got us a bad story in The Washington Post, for crying out loud,” I said. To which Herb responded, “I don’t remember ever seeing a good story in The Washington Post.”

Milbank promptly did write a story, labeling Herb “a living relic from the House Committee on Un-American Activities.” It was this committee, of course, that uncovered the treason of State Department official Alger Hiss and his service to the Soviet Union.

Herb’s family, friends and admirers paid tribute to him at a graveside burial service on May 9. This veteran of the Korean War fought for his country not only in wartime but also in peacetime, when the communists continued their onslaught against the West through other means. His wife Pat accepted the American flag in his honor. His daughters talked about their father’s dedication to the cause of freedom and family, as they recounted how he would question and challenge their own beliefs and statements. They cried but also laughed. Herb could be serious but funny, as he showed in that exchange with Milbank.

Herb did the serious research Milbank and his associates did not want to do. He helped unmask one of their icons, I.F. Stone, as a Soviet agent, and exposed Senator Ted Kennedy’s collaboration with the Soviet KGB.

It’s true that Herb worked for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He also worked for the House Internal Security Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, and headed the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation and Active Measures of the United States Information Agency. He was part of the Reagan Revolution that safeguarded our freedom and turned back the Soviet Union and its proxies in the 1980s. As a result of his research in the archives of the Communist International in Moscow, which were briefly opened for outside inspection after the Soviet collapse, Herb ascertained that Harry Bridges of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union had been a secret member of the Communist Party USA. Bridges had always denied party membership.

As the reaction of Dana Milbank suggests, the media wanted to ridicule our findings on Obama or trick us into saying something that might backfire. Others in the media simply covered these findings up. Even the Drudge Report declined to run our advertising highlighting Obama’s connection to Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s Communist mentor during his growing up years in Hawaii, and communist networks in Hawaii and Chicago.

The most successful campaign initiated by billionaire hedge-fund operator George Soros has been the legalization of marijuana. California has been the focus of most of his efforts. But there are indications that the campaign has gone too far, too fast in Colorado, prompting a backlash from the black Democratic mayor of Denver, who fears his city is becoming a new capital for the marijuana industry.

During my recent trip to Denver to cover the National Conference for Media Reform, I visited a “Native Roots Apothecary,” an official dispensary of “medical marijuana” in Denver, and discovered that a Colorado resident can get two ounces of marijuana a day (at an average of $150 an ounce), and “self-medicate” for almost any reason. Even a heavy marijuana user goes through only a quarter of an ounce a day. So fears are growing that “medical marijuana” is quickly becoming integrated into the illegal drug business. It was not supposed to happen this way, but state “regulation” of the industry has been a tragic joke.

Colorado has been in the news lately for passing new “gun control” legislation, at the urging of President Obama. But the state is also becoming known as a magnet for drug activity and a destination for what is called “drug tourism.”

The Denver Post says that on Saturday, April 20, the city will be the venue for a “coming out for cannabis” party that will attract thousands. The liberal paper also lists “Dozens of marijuana-themed and marijuana-friendly concerts [which] are happening Friday and Saturday.”

April 17-23 is “World Cannabis Week” in Denver.

Marijuana is still illegal on the federal level, but President Obama told ABC News that recreational users of marijuana, in states that have legalized the substance, should not be a “top priority” of federal law enforcement officials.

Denver’s Mayor Michael Hancock, who welcomed participants to the National Conference for Media Reform, is already concerned about the possible damage to his city’s reputation.

Before the state legalized the drug last November, Hancock said, “I do firmly believe it’s a gateway drug. I also think it’s the wrong message we want to send our children that it’s okay for them to consume or use marijuana…We don’t want to be the first state in this nation that legalizes marijuana. I believe we will lose our attractiveness to companies, employers who want to come to our state. Tourism is the number-one industry for the City of Denver, number two in the state of Colorado, and I believe that sector will be disproportionately harmed with the perception that Denver is the marijuana capital.”

Now that the state has legalized the drug, Hancock has advised the City Council to outlaw private marijuana clubs. He is also worried about public consumption of the drug. The Denver Post reported on his testimony: “As a father, Hancock said he is opposed to marijuana. ‘There is no denying …the potential for a negative impact on our kids—on their home lives, their health, their education and their future.”

There are already over 1,400 “medical marijuana” businesses in the state. Full-blown legalization, which passed last November, is still being implemented.

In Denver, there is even a magazine, “Culture,” described as “The #1 medical cannabis lifestyle magazine.” So being “sick” has become a lifestyle?

It appears that the United Nations is trying to breach the sovereignty of the United States and request that they intervene in any state legalizing marijuana. Too bad they don’t understand that the states themselves are sovereign entities and confer limited and enumerated powers to the federal government. And, that treaties control behavior between nations, not provide for the control of another nation’s citizens as long as there is no international component. It appears that growing, distributing and using drugs may be a state issue as long as it meets the requirements of intrastate commerce.

The Seattle times is reporting …

UN: Colo., Wash. legal pot violates drug treaties

A United Nations-based drug agency urged the United States government on Tuesday to challenge the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, saying the state laws violate international drug treaties. The International Narcotics Control Board made its appeal in an annual drug report. It called on Washington, D.C., to act to “ensure full compliance with the international drug control treaties on its entire territory.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that he was in the last stages of reviewing the Colorado and Washington state laws. Holder said he was examining policy options and international implications of the issue. Marijuana is illegal under federal law. The federal government could sue the states over legalization or decide not to mount a court challenge. Washington and Colorado became the first states to pass laws legalizing the recreational use of marijuana in last fall’s elections.

“The entire international system is based on countries respecting the rules, and there’s a broad fabric of international treaties that are part and parcel to that,” said David Johnson, the U.S. delegate to the Vienna-based board.

Interesting that the comment on the situation was offered up by a director of the Open Society Foundations – an non-governmental foundation whose founder and chairman is none other than George Soros, a man who believes that drugs should be legalized. Something I think is meant to further devolve a creative society into a puppet state of socialism or communism. Of course, when “they” take over, the first ones that are purged are the gays, misfits, druggies and educated dissidents.

The director of the Open Society Foundations’ Global Drug Policy Program, Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, blamed repressive drug laws for millions of arrests and called on the United Nations General Assembly to reconsider its approach when it holds a special session on drugs in 2016.

The U.N. report also cited prescription drug abuse as a continuing problem as well as the emergence of so-called designer drugs that are engineered to fall out of the scope of existing drug controls. Source: <UN: Colo., Wash. legal pot violates drug treaties | Nation & World | The Seattle Times>

Bottom line …

Other than untaxed and uncontrolled narcotics trafficking, perhaps the United Nations should go back to stopping genocidal maniacs from killing their own people and people in neighboring countries. Get US out of the UN! The drug war is a farce and has made billionaires out of thugs, criminals, killers and miscreants.

– steve

The Obama Administration is facilitating the activities of foreign jihadists and al Qaeda throughout the Middle East, while claiming that it is fighting al Qaeda and that the organization has been “decimated.” This monumental deception is being carried out not only by the administration but its supporters. It is a crime that has cost four American lives in Benghazi and three in the kidnapping and hostage crisis in Algeria.

The George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP) is running interference for the Obama Administration by attacking those, like Senator Rand Paul, who are trying to expose the suicidal policy.

In an item headlined, “Senator questions Secretary of State about right-wing conspiracy theory,” CAP says Paul used Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “to advance a bizarre right-wing conspiracy theory involving alleged gun-running from Libya to Syria, via Turkey.” The basic facts about the so-called “right-wing conspiracy theory” have been reported by The New York Times, hardly a right-wing propaganda organ. And the “conspiracy” also involves Qatar, the host and sponsor of Osama bin Laden’s favorite television channel, Al Jazeera, now poised to get into 40-50 million American homes through the purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV.

The New York Times reported that the Obama Administration “secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar” in 2011 and that “Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants.” These rebels stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing four Americans, in a major foreign policy scandal that continues to this day. It was the reason for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing featuring the Rand Paul-Hillary Clinton exchange.

It’s true that the paper claimed the U.S. was somewhat caught off-guard by the arms going into the hands of anti-American jihadists. But that is hard to believe, considering that Qatar, the sponsor of “Terror TV” Channel Al Jazeera, is a close ally of the Obama Administration. The administration has approved the entry of “Al Jazeera America” into the U.S. media market, even though Qatar evaded the law requiring federal approval of a foreign acquisition of a U.S. company that has national security implications. Obama’s Department of Justice refuses to enforce the law that requires Al Jazeera programs to be labeled as foreign propaganda when aired in the U.S.

Any notion that all of this is happening by accident has been undermined by an additional report from the Times that the CIA was using Turkey and “a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood” to send weapons to Islamists fighting the regime in Syria. The weapons were being “paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” the paper reported.

By ignoring these facts, which have not been disputed, the Center for American Progress (CAP) is playing a role in the current controversy and scandal which is comparable to what the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) did in regard to U.S. policy toward China in the 1940s. The IPR was an unofficial arm of the State Department which facilitated the Communist takeover of China in 1949.

Amy Goodman, the host of the far-left radio and TV show “Democracy Now!,” which has become “one of public broadcasting’s fastest growing programs,” thinks she knows why the progressives are winning elections. “Missed by the mainstream media, but churning at the heart of our democracy, are social movements, movements without which President Obama would not have been re-elected,” she says. What she doesn’t say is that many of these “social movements” are bought and paid for by George Soros. One of them—the campaign to abolish the death penalty—has been a pet project of Soros for decades.

But this is also an Achilles heel for the progressives, who stand exposed as people who want to save the lives of serial killers, cop killers, traitors, and those who rape and murder women and children. In a major setback, they lost the battle over Proposition 34 in liberal California on November 6. Proposition 34 would have abolished the death penalty.

Amy Goodman spoke at Bradley University on October 30 about these “social movements,” including the movement behind Proposition 34. The movement to end the death penalty is just one of many “movements for social justice and change” that the media should be following, Goodman said. She is correct. It is important to analyze these movements, their funding, and their methods. It is also important to understand how they win and why they lose.

Proposition 34, which would have saved the lives of more than 700 inmates awaiting execution on California’s death row, was defeated by a margin of 52-48 percent in one of the most liberal states in the nation.

The outcome was extraordinary in view of the fact that the measure’s backers vastly outspent opponents by millions of dollars. The backers were led by the American Civil Liberties Union, which contributed more than $700,000, while the grass-roots opposition to Proposition 34 was described in news reports as “cash-strapped.”

In an extraordinary video recorded in April of 2010, Ann Beeson, then-Executive Director of U.S. Programs for the Soros-funded Open Society Institute, spoke in detail about the campaign to abolish the death penalty. Beeson, a former Associate Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, described to a sympathetic audience how the “death penalty movement” was “underfunded” and “haphazard” in 2005 but with the support of George Soros and other big funders by the end of 2007 had developed “a comprehensive campaign to abolish the death penalty in the United States by the year 2025.” The strategy was based on a “sophisticated” document, she said, which included as one of the key claims that the death penalty was just too costly to implement.

This is why the liberals called Proposition 34 the “Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for California (SAFE Act) Initiative.”

“The central tactic of those leading the opposition to California’s death penalty is to focus on costs to the public of pursuing the death penalty in the criminal justice system, as if that alone should be the determinant factor in meting out justice,” a Judicial Watch report noted in advance of the vote.

As more states embrace legalization of marijuana—a pet cause of George Soros for decades—the British publication The Independent has published a groundbreaking series of articles by journalist Patrick Cockburn on how his son went insane smoking the drug.

Cockburn and his son Henry, who was treated for psychosis and partially recovered, have written an article in which Patrick Cockburn is quoted as saying his son played Russian roulette with cannabis “and lost.”

Henry, who smoked marijuana daily for seven years and was in mental hospitals for about eight years as a result, says, “When I reached a mental hospital, called St Martin’s, I spent three hours walking around the lunch tables trying to listen to my shoes. I thought my shoes were talking to me.”

Patrick Cockburn spent months speaking to the experts in the field and reports on the substantial evidence linking sustained marijuana use with mental illness. One expert, Sir William Paton, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, reveals “that even limited social use of cannabis could precipitate schizophrenia in people who previously had no psychological problems,” and noted that “smoking a single joint could induce schizophrenia-like symptoms such as hallucinations, paranoia and fragmented thought processes.”

“Three-quarters of consumers may take cannabis with no ill effect but the remaining quarter, the genetically vulnerable, play Russian roulette,” Cockburn says.

The added significance of the series of articles by Patrick Cockburn is that he is a left-wing media figure—the son of Marxist author Claud Cockburn—and might be predisposed to believe that marijuana is, as the liberal media constantly tell us, a relatively harmless drug or a substance with “medical” qualities. But he knows the harm it causes firsthand through what it did to his son.

AIM noted back in 2004, in a special report on George Soros, the main financier behind the drug legalization movement, that although marijuana is depicted by the media as a “soft” drug, it has “extremely negative consequences.” The book, Marijuana and Madness, cites studies and evidence from around the world, some of it going back 40 years, linking the use of marijuana to mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and psychosis.

In a previous article for the left-wing publication Counterpunch, Patrick Cockburn took issue with a report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy which played down the dangers associated with marijuana. “They fail to make clear that for people genetically susceptible to psychosis the risks involved in taking cannabis may be lethally high,” he noted. “Cigarettes and alcohol, whatever harm they cause, do not, at a young age, send you mad.”

The Global Commission on Drug Policy is funded by the Open Society Institute of George Soros.

In this country, the case of Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell stands out as a case study of the harmful effects of the drug. Bedell, who shot and wounded two guards at the Pentagon in March of 2010, was a psychotic pothead who hated a government that he believed was standing in the way of his desire to use, grow and glorify marijuana. He virtually worshipped the drug. “I’m a cannabis enthusiast,” he proclaimed.

John Podesta, head of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), had suggested on ABC News that the taxing and legalization of marijuana on a national basis could be a way to pay for Obama’s health care plan.