November 20, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mali-radisson-blu-hotel-islamic-militants-bamako-hostages/

Mali, U.S. forces react after gunmen attack hotel
CBS/AP
November 20, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Ex-FBI supervisor: Al Qaeda could be behind Mali attack
Photograph -- hostage2015-11-20t121639z1929235308gf20000067180rtrmadp3mali-attack.jpg, Still image from video shows a hostage rushed out of the Radisson hotel in Bamako, Mali, November 20, 2015. REUTERS/REUTERS TV
Photograph -- Malian soldiers man a checkpoint on the Gao road outside Sevare, some 385 miles north of Mali's capital Bamako, Jan. 27, 2013. AP



BAMAKO, Mali -- Islamic extremists armed with guns and throwing grenades stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital Friday morning, killing at least three people and taking numerous hostages, authorities said.

A U.S. State Department source told CBS News that no more hostages are being held and no Americans were killed. U.S. officials tell CBS News that all 22 Defense Department military and civilian personnel in Bamako are accounted for.

However, a group of gunmen continued to hold out against security forces, a Mali official told Reuters.

CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips says the attack involved as many as 10 militants who -- according to a local army commander -- rammed into the hotel grounds in a vehicle, firing guns and using grenades. Witnesses said the attackers were shouting "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great," the jihadist battle cry.

Malian troops, backed by special forces from America and France, reacted quickly. As people ran for their lives near the luxury hotel along a dirt road, the soldiers in full combat gear pointed the way to safety. Within hours, local TV images showed heavily armed troops in what appeared to be a lobby area. Malian state TV reported that 80 people have been freed.

There were two members of U.S. Special Forces who happened to be visiting Mali, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. One helped hostages away from the hotel and the other was in the Joint Operations Center.

Malian special forces were freeing hostages "floor by floor," Malian army commander Modibo Nama Traore told The Associated Press. Still, Rezidor Hotel, the Brussels-based group that operates the hotel, said hours after the assault began that 125 guests and 13 employees remained in the hotel.

U.S. special forces troops were assisting Malian forces in hostage rescue efforts, said Col. Mark Cheadle of the U.S. Army's Africa Command. President Barack Obama said he's monitoring the situation.

France's national gendarme service said about 40 French special police forces were playing a support role. The French defense ministry said French soldiers have arrived in Bamako to support Malian forces.

The guests at the sprawling, cream-and-pink colored luxury hotel, which has 190 rooms and features a spa, outdoor pool and ballroom, came from many countries. But the attack was perceived by many in France, particularly in the government, as a new attack on French interests, a week after the Paris attacks.

The attack unfolded one week after the attacks on Paris that killed 130 people.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Al-Mourabitoun, the group run by Mokhtar Belmokhtar that carried out the attack on the sprawling gas plant in southeastern Algeria in January, issued a joint statment claiming responsibility for the siege.

They made the claim in a phone call to the Mauritanian news website Al-Akhbar, which regularly publishes statements by groups operating in West Africa.

Even before the claim, Ali Soufan, former FBI supervisory special agent, told "CBS This Morning" that (AQIM), could well be behind the assault, "because al Qaeda today definitely don't want to be upstaged by ISIS."


"They are in competition," said Soufan. "ISIS used to be part of al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is a poisonous tree and ISIS is just a branch of that tree. ISIS is a symptom of the diseases, al Qaeda is the disease."

The French military operation in Mali in 2013 against Islamic extremists who were holding the northern half of the country was the first of several foreign interventions that President Francois Hollande has launched as president. Those interventions have prompted increased threats against France and French interests from Islamic extremist groups from al Qaeda's North African arm to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

"This could be a strike at important French interests because the French government invested so much military energy in pushing the Islamic rebels out of Mali," said Jens David Ohlin, an international law expert at Cornell University in the United States. "While Mali might not have the same emotional significance to the French as Paris does, it is certainly an important part of the French military strategy."

French news websites and all-news television networks immediately switched from nearly non-stop coverage of the Paris attacks investigation and aftermath to nearly non-stop coverage of the Bamako standoff. Air France says 12 members of one of its plane crew who are staying at the attacked hotel in Bamako are all safe.

Traore said at least one guest reported that the attackers instructed him to recite verses from the Quran before he was allowed to leave the hotel.

A handful of jihadi groups seized the northern half of Mali - a former French colony - in 2012 and were ousted from cities and towns by the French military intervention.

French President Francois Hollande said: "We should yet again stand firm and show our solidarity with a friendly country, Mali."

Monique Kouame Affoue Ekonde, from Ivory Coast, said she and six other people, including a Turkish woman, were escorted out by security forces as the gunmen rushed "toward the fifth or sixth floor."

"I think they are still there. I've left the hotel and I don't know where to go. I'm tired and in a state of shock," she said.

Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders said that four Belgians were registered at the hotel but their whereabouts were unknown.

Citing Chinese diplomats in Mali, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that about 10 Chinese citizens were sheltering inside their hotel rooms. The embassy was in phone contact with them and all were reported safe, according to the report. All are employees of Chinese companies working in Mali.

Five Turkish Airlines personnel were among the freed hostages, Turkey's state-run news agency said.

The U.N. mission said it was sending security reinforcements and medical aid to the scene. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said some U.N. "quick-reaction forces" deployed to the hotel and are supporting Malian and other security forces. He said the United Nations had a few staff members in the Radisson hotel at the time of the attack but they are all safely out.

Ambulances were seen rushing to the hotel as a military helicopter flew overhead.

Northern Mali remains insecure and militant attacks have extended farther south this year, including the capital. In March masked gunmen shot up a restaurant in Bamako that is popular with foreigners, killing five people.

France has 3,500 troops operating in Mali and four other countries in the Sahel region as part of a five-nation counterterrorism operation codenamed Barkhane. The ministry did not specify how many soldiers have been sent to the Malian capital.

The Netherlands also has troops working with the UN mission in Mali. According to the Dutch defense ministry, some 450 Dutch military personnel are taking part in the mission along with four Apache and three Chinook helicopters. Most of the Dutch force is based in Gao, but there are a few officers at the U.N. mission headquarters in Bamako.




Clearly ISIS is not the only problem these days. It's just the one on the front burner. Our old favorite al-Qaeda is still in business. The radical fundamentalism trend in Islam is here to stay and growing. I can’t help being concerned. I still don’t want to toss all Islamic people out of the US, however, or go through their neighborhoods and shoot them. I hope that isn’t going to come to the US, as it has already begun to appear in France according to one article yesterday, but it is a very real possibility. Quite a few of our right wing groups in this country are violently racist and religiously biased in their orientation.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-attacks-third-body-saint-denis-raid-abdelhamid-abaaoud/

New details from fast-expanding Paris attacks probe
CBS NEWS
November 20, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Alleged planner of Paris attacks confirmed dead
VIEW GALLERY -- Mathias Dymarski and Marie Lausch were among the victims killed in the Nov. 13, 2015, terror attacks in Paris, their friend Clara Regigny posted to Twitter Nov. 14, 2015. CLARA REGIGNY VIA TWITTER
Play VIDEO -- How did suspected Paris attack plotter become a terrorist?


French prosecutors said Friday that a third body was found at the apartment where police killed suspected Paris attacks planner Abdelhamid Abaaoud in a bloody raid earlier in the week.

Scores of SWAT team officers encounter fierce resistance from Abaaoud and a handful of accomplices as they raided the apartment on Wednesday.

French media reported, meanwhile, that new security camera video has emerged showing Abaaoud in a Paris subway station just after the Friday attacks, near where a getaway car was abandoned. The discovery has led to suspicions Abaaoud may have taken part in the carnage he's believed to have set in motion.

One of his conspirators in the attacks, Salah Abdeslam, is still on the run and the subject of an international manhunt. French officials say they have no idea where he is.

Unlike seven of the other attackers, Abdeslam didn't blow himself up but instead slipped through the fingers of French police as he escaped, reports CBS News correspondent Holly Williams.

The death toll from the gruesome, coordinated Friday night attacks also went up by one a week later, with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls telling the Senate that a 130th victim had succombed to their injuries in the hospital. He did not identify the person.

A woman named Hasna Aitboulahcen, believed to have been Abaaoud's cousin and to have detonated a suicide bomb as police stormed the apartment in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday, was confirmed to have been among the dead. French officials said she was identified by fingerprints.

An audio recording apparently captured her last moments alive as police demanded to know the whereabouts of Abaaoud before the bomb was detonated.

Acquaintances have said Aitboulahcen didn't seem like an Islamic extremist.

"She loved to party, she smoked occasionally. She drank in the evenings," said one man, who claimed to know her.

Police searched the apartment of Aitboulahcen's mother on Thursday -- one of more nearly 800 locations raided by French authorities since the attacks a week ago.

The French government said Abaaoud, who fought with ISIS in Syria, was able to re-enter Europe undetected, raising concerns about border controls. European officials are meeting Friday in Brussels to discuss tightening their borders.

About 1,000 French citizens are thought to have joined extremist groups in Iraq and Syria, and more than 200 are believed to have returned home.

The French Senate was to vote Friday on legislation that would extend the country's current state of emergency for three months. That would allow French police to place people under house arrest without trial and raid homes without a warrant.




“One of his conspirators in the attacks, Salah Abdeslam, is still on the run and the subject of an international manhunt. French officials say they have no idea where he is. …. About 1,000 French citizens are thought to have joined extremist groups in Iraq and Syria, and more than 200 are believed to have returned home. The French Senate was to vote Friday on legislation that would extend the country's current state of emergency for three months. That would allow French police to place people under house arrest without trial and raid homes without a warrant.”


I wonder if we have an emergency act such as this on the shelves waiting to be put into position in the US. The depths of the USAPatriot Act probably haven’t been revealed fully yet. I do believe France does need the freedom to isolate the known extremists from their Islamic neighborhoods and put them into some form of humane detention. Believing in a fundamentalist religion is different from killing in the name of that faith. Something does need to be done.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-fbi-agent-ali-soufan-on-mali-hotel-attack-al-qaeda-isis-threats/

Ex-FBI agent: Al Qaeda "a poisonous tree," ISIS just a branch
By REBECCA LEE CBS NEWS
November 20, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Former FBI agents assess current global terror threat
Play VIDEO -- ISIS releases video promising to attack Washington
Play VIDEO -- Paris terror attacks: Details on alleged ringleader's death


Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Ali Soufan said he wouldn't be surprised if al Qaeda is behind the Mali hotel attack, as an attempt to upstage the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

"I won't be surprised if al Qaeda or one of its affiliates ... were behind the attack because al Qaeda today definitely don't want to be upstaged by ISIS," Soufan told "CBS This Morning" Friday.

Gunmen stormed the luxury Radisson Blu Hotel in the capital city of Bamako Friday, taking 170 guests and staff as hostages.

Newly released ISIS propaganda videos threatening New York City and Washington are stirring fears of attacks on U.S. soil, similar to last week's carnage in Paris. But Soufan said al Qaeda also poses an imminent threat.

"ISIS may be stateless but the state of al Qaeda is very strong and we have to remember, ISIS came out of al Qaeda," Soufan said. "Al Qaeda is a poisonous tree and ISIS is just a branch of that tree. ISIS is a symptom of the disease, al Qaeda is the disease."

In 2013 France intervened to help Mali gain back control from al Qaeda-linked militants. But al Qaeda has also extended their network with affiliates operating in Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. According to Soufan -- who was a key figure in the FBI's investigations of the terror group before and after 9/11 -- al Qaeda is now "way stronger" than it was on 9/11, when they had just 400 members.

Soufan also discussed important developments following last week's carnage in Paris over recent days. French prosecutors confirmed Thursday that Abedelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged ringleader of the Paris attacks, was killed in a police raid in Saint-Denis. Soufan said police were also able to disrupt more potential terror attacks.

"French sources tells us that were maps for the Charles de Gaulle airport, for the defense district in Paris, they found explosives, they found weapons," said Soufan.

While Soufan said these developments offered "some sense of closure," he said there "are a lot of things to be done" and threats remain high in Paris.

"Look at the network that conducted this attack. This network is not only a network in France - it's also in Belgium," said Soufan.




"I won't be surprised if al Qaeda or one of its affiliates ... were behind the attack because al Qaeda today definitely don't want to be upstaged by ISIS," Soufan told "CBS This Morning" Friday. …. In 2013 France intervened to help Mali gain back control from al Qaeda-linked militants. But al Qaeda has also extended their network with affiliates operating in Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. According to Soufan -- who was a key figure in the FBI's investigations of the terror group before and after 9/11 -- al Qaeda is now "way stronger" than it was on 9/11, when they had just 400 members. …. "Look at the network that conducted this attack. This network is not only a network in France - it's also in Belgium," said Soufan.”


One article yesterday blamed the overall poverty and social segregation of Islamic groups in France for the fact that some neighborhoods are producing an overly large number of radicals. That isn’t surprising, but they are at a disadvantage when they come here as refugees, and then don’t or can’t conform to local standards, forming their own ghetto-like neighborhoods. Negativity begets ever more negativity on both sides, so everybody involved feels angry. Refugees are being allowed to enter the border of France and other European countries, but they are not integrated into the society as members, much less as equals.

I do hope Europe and the US don’t end up in fifteen or twenty years looking like the Europe of the Middle Ages – numerous walled cities. That’s what Donald Trump has claimed he will do, build a wall on the size and scope of the Great Wall of China to keep all refugees out. I don’t actually think that is actually feasible, but if such a construction project were to be initiated it would be a great shame on the name of US democracy. I certainly wouldn’t want to see it. We have grown away from that time in history, and I would hate to see something like that occur again. The following article gives a better suggestion for France to follow.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-attacks-france-struggles-to-keep-muslims-from-being-radicalized/

In France, marginalized Muslims fall prey to radicalization
By HOLLY WILLIAMS CBS NEWS
November 19, 2015

Photograph -- Belgian-born Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam is seen on a call for witnesses notice released by the French National Police information services on their twitter account, Nov. 15, 2015. REUTERS
Play VIDEO -- How did suspected Paris attack plotter become a terrorist?


PARIS -- For some, the step from feeling marginalized to taking up arms can be a short one.

At least five of the terrorists who launched Friday's attacks in Paris were French citizens, some of them born and raised there. The French president says his country is now at war, but the uncomfortable truth is that the enemy comes from within.

They're a tiny fraction of France's more than five million Muslims, but around a thousand French citizens are thought to have joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria -- and more than 200 are believed to have returned home.

Christian Prouteau used to lead the anti-terror squad in France's paramilitary police and has studied how young men are radicalized.

"Somebody convince them that this is right," Prouteau told CBS News, referring to "dying... in the name of God."

After the bloodshed, the French have shown unity in their grief. Muslim leaders have condemned the attacks.

Yet many Muslims in France say they feel excluded, ghettoized in poor suburbs and discriminated against because of their religion.

Kamal Masaudi told CBS News he immigrated to France four years ago from Algeria.

"It's not equal," Masaudi said. "For Muslims has bad picture here in France."

Only in a small minority of cases do those feelings turn to violent extremism. But Prouteau said fixing social problems is the only solution.

"They have no money, no work, and so on. And suddenly they think that perhaps they can find an aim in their, an action in their life," Prouteau said.

There was a sharp spike in anti-Muslim incidents in France following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. The fear now is that in the aftermath of these attacks, French Muslims will become even more isolated.




“Muslim leaders have condemned the attacks. Yet many Muslims in France say they feel excluded, ghettoized in poor suburbs and discriminated against because of their religion. …. "It's not equal," Masaudi said. "For Muslims has bad picture here in France." Only in a small minority of cases do those feelings turn to violent extremism. But Prouteau said fixing social problems is the only solution. …. There was a sharp spike in anti-Muslim incidents in France following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. The fear now is that in the aftermath of these attacks, French Muslims will become even more isolated.”


War, innate competition and hatred of the other are built into the human psyche. Luckily not every person ascribes to those things, and some philosophies have introduced a much higher level of thought alongside the biased views that dominate. Unfortunately many people around the world and even in the US are functionally illiterate, and are therefore unable to read and understand a new philosophy. I do wish Christianity, Judaism and Islam had not become huge, wealthy and ever-increasingly ambitious power structures rather than philosophies. To me religion is the childhood phase of the human conscience, and benign philosophy is the adult.

I hope that the more benign members of human society will overcome the greedy and the violent individuals by outnumbering them and, in free nations, outvoting them. Something like that is what has happened after WWII on both sides of the Atlantic, but now ultra-rightist groups are beginning to be not only become more numerous, but more bold and more wealthy as well. They are dominating to a degree that does frighten me. I hope we can come through this phase into a new gentleness and generosity of spirit, with the preservation of the natural world being of an equal importance to our citizens.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-community-struggles-with-isis-recruiting-tactics/

Minneapolis community struggles with ISIS recruiting tactics
By JAMIE YUCCAS CBS NEWS
November 19, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Alert warns ISIS trying to recruit American teenagers
Photograph -- en1119yuccasminneapolis01.jpg
Dahir Ali is exactly who terrorist groups like ISIS are looking to recruit -- the 18-year-old is young, Muslim and often feels like an outsider. CBSNEWS.COM
Play VIDEO -- Two ISIS-inspired, NYC women accused of domestic bomb plot


MINNEAPOLIS -- A new report by Congress says more than 250 Americans have attempted to join ISIS, and one in four of them is from Minnesota, many of them former refugees.

Minneapolis might seem a long way from the wars in the Middle East and North Africa. But extremist groups have found the city to be fertile ground for recruits.

Dahir Ali is exactly who terrorist groups like ISIS are looking to recruit -- the 18-year-old is young, Muslim and often feels like an outsider.

"People come up to me and say, you know, you're this, you're that. You're a terrorist," said Ali.

He grew up in the Cedar Riverside community in Minneapolis, which has the largest Somali population in the country. Many came as refugees in the 1990s. The unemployment rate here is 21 percent, three times the state average. And an alarming number of young Somali men from this neighborhood have left to join extremist groups. Since 2007, two dozen have joined AL-Shabab in Somalia.

"It's time for Muslims to really stand up and really fight these groups and defeat them through faith and military too," said Imam Adbisalam Adam, who is part of a community task force created this summer to stop the radicalization.

The appeal is "the sense of accomplishment to be something bigger than yourself. It's that sentiment that extremists tap into," said Adam.


He also noted that "there's no contradiction to being a Muslim, being an American, and being a Somali -- all three are good."

The city has also deployed Somali police officers like Mukhtar Abdulkadir and Abdiwahab Ali to develop trust in a neighborhood suspicious of authorities. They walk the beat, meeting elders, interacting with the young, and handing out contact cards written in Somali.

"They call us, you know, before they call 911," said Abdulkadir.

But they feel the frustration when one of those calls comes too late.

"They call and say mom, I joined a terrorist group. We'll meet in heaven," said Ali.

Currently, five Somali men from Minnesota accused of trying to join terror group ISIS are awaiting trial.

There are at least 15 other cases being investigated.

The task force has the support of Minnesota's U.S. attorney -- but the group says it still has a lot of work to do within their community.




“A new report by Congress says more than 250 Americans have attempted to join ISIS, and one in four of them is from Minnesota, many of them former refugees. Minneapolis might seem a long way from the wars in the Middle East and North Africa. But extremist groups have found the city to be fertile ground for recruits. Dahir Ali is exactly who terrorist groups like ISIS are looking to recruit -- the 18-year-old is young, Muslim and often feels like an outsider. …. The unemployment rate here is 21 percent, three times the state average. And an alarming number of young Somali men from this neighborhood have left to join extremist groups. Since 2007, two dozen have joined AL-Shabab in Somalia. "It's time for Muslims to really stand up and really fight these groups and defeat them through faith and military too," said Imam Adbisalam Adam, who is part of a community task force created this summer to stop the radicalization. The appeal is "the sense of accomplishment to be something bigger than yourself. It's that sentiment that extremists tap into," said Adam. …. The city has also deployed Somali police officers like Mukhtar Abdulkadir and Abdiwahab Ali to develop trust in a neighborhood suspicious of authorities. They walk the beat, meeting elders, interacting with the young, and handing out contact cards written in Somali. "They call us, you know, before they call 911," said Abdulkadir. …. The task force has the support of Minnesota's U.S. attorney -- but the group says it still has a lot of work to do within their community.”


It seems to me that this task force will almost undoubtedly help the situation in Minneapolis, but it would be a useful thing for white and black police officers nationwide to build more and better ties to minority communities. We tend to say black communities, but Hispanic and American Indian people are as likely to be disenfranchised and resentful as are the blacks. In Ireland the war zone is between Protestants and Catholics. Though there’s been a cease fire in that country, there is one day a year when the Protestants of the North parade in an abusive way through the Catholic neighborhoods. Not only does that fuel the flame of hatred, but it is intended to. White policemen when they patrol black neighborhoods here, too often behave to one and all like a conquering army. That isn’t going to improve the crime statistics or the attitude toward whites. Peace can only be won by good works, and not by sheer dominance and abuse. That makes me say that we are doomed to behave in these destructive ways until the end of time.




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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/11/19/an-atheist-attorney-has-helped-more-than-2500-mormons-resign-from-the-church-for-free/

An Atheist Attorney Has Helped More Than 2,500 Mormons Resign From the Church for Free
November 19, 2015 by Hemant Mehta


With all the people leaving the Mormon church over the past week, due to the Church’s bigoted stance toward gay couples and their children, Mark Naugle has been working like mad to make sure all those resignation letters are being processed correctly.

He’s an immigration attorney by trade, but he knows what it takes to leave the Church since his own family did it when he was a teenager. Several months ago, he posted on Reddit about how he could help people through the process for free. When the new policies were made public, there were more people than ever before looking for the exit sign, and he’s been helping as many of them as he can.

The obvious question is: Why would Mormons need a lawyer in order to tell the Church they want out?

He explained why to Michelle Woo at Upvoted:

A lot of people don’t realize how difficult it is to leave. My grandmother who’s a Lutheran in Kansas says, “Well, if I don’t want to go to church anymore, I just stop going.” But it’s not that easy with the Mormon church.

If you attempt to resign from the church on your own, you’re going to be contacted by your local bishop. He’s going to come over and start asking you questions to figure out what you’ve done wrong and why you don’t have a testimony anymore. He’s going to put you on a 60-day probation period. He’s going to call your family, the neighbors and everyone in the congregation so they can start helping you stay in the fold. It’s essentially a form of harassment. I don’t think they do it maliciously necessarily, but they feel that your eternal salvation is on the line. This process can take three to four months with a lot of pain and suffering. For most people, it’s not worth it to do it that way.

[Under my representation,] people fill out the forms and send them back to me. I’ll print them, sign them and mail them to the church. When I receive confirmation that their name has been removed, I email them. They should receive no contact [from the church].

In other words, he’s the middleman between the Church and the people who want to leave it. With his involvement, others can get out with as little friction as possible. Anyone who needs help can message him on Reddit.

Naugle, who’s now an atheist, attributes his generosity to his recently deceased father:
I tell people that as long as I live and can sign the form, I’ll do it. My dad just passed away. He’s the one who led us out of the church when I was 15 and he’s the reason I do what I do today. Without his courage, I might still be there. He taught me to always question what I was told. He taught me to think for myself. He taught me to always look to help others.

He’s asking anyone who appreciates his services to make a donation to charity as a way to pay it forward. Even if you’re not Mormon, that’s a wonderful way to express your gratitude.




“A lot of people don’t realize how difficult it is to leave. My grandmother who’s a Lutheran in Kansas says, “Well, if I don’t want to go to church anymore, I just stop going.” But it’s not that easy with the Mormon church. If you attempt to resign from the church on your own, you’re going to be contacted by your local bishop. He’s going to come over and start asking you questions to figure out what you’ve done wrong and why you don’t have a testimony anymore. He’s going to put you on a 60-day probation period. He’s going to call your family, the neighbors and everyone in the congregation so they can start helping you stay in the fold. It’s essentially a form of harassment. I don’t think they do it maliciously necessarily, but they feel that your eternal salvation is on the line. This process can take three to four months with a lot of pain and suffering. For most people, it’s not worth it to do it that way.”


Mormonism is, in my view, a cult rather than a church; it’s just a cult that found no strong opposition in the new state of Utah. As a result it grew there and in some other western states like something that I can only liken to cancer. I know. I shouldn’t say things like that, but I think it’s true. It is no accident that wherever it tried to set up shop in the decades before that, it was driven out in fury by the established citizenry.

Membership in a church or other kind of religious group must never be made mandatory. It’s no different than required membership in the Communist Party. It’s a form of mind control, no matter how benign it pretends to be, and that means the exercise of power is the primary goal. To the group leaders it brings money and group status, sometimes sexual dominion as in the Jim Jones cult, sometimes a form of slavery as in China, and a range of other abuses of power. ISIS is right now in the Middle East trying to take over large swaths of the land in Syria and Iraq. It brings about complete corruption.

Yet from the rightwing fringe of the Tea Party have come several statements that amount to advocating mandatory religious participation. Either lots of Americans aren’t reading the news anymore, or they just aren’t as astounded and thoroughly aghast at this as I am. Many people, most in fact, believe that a philosophy is merely a godless form of religion, but to me philosophies tend to be good and self-improving thought patterns which are relatively free of the dogmatism of most god-centered religions. Where an ethnic divide is at play, of course, that may not be true. People can still feel it is a blameless thing to kill those “others” for believing something different.





http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/11/19/la-times-issues-savage-response-to-county-supervisor-imposing-his-faith-through-the-government/

LA Times Issues Savage Response to County Supervisor Imposing His Faith Through the Government
November 19, 2015 by Hemant Mehta


For almost a decade now, this has been the seal of Los Angeles County in California:
IMAGE – County of Los Angeles seal (Go to website).

There’s a lot going on there, but check out the center right image. That’s supposed to represent the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel, a Catholic mission dating back hundreds of years. It’s conspicuously missing a cross because, from 1987-2009, the actual building didn’t have one (due to it being destroyed in an earthquake, then stolen). It wasn’t until 2009 that the cross was restored on the building.

So now, some members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors want to change the seal to reflect that. Which is verrrrry convenient considering how often Christians try to get crosses on government seals…

So earlier this year, the supervisors voted 3-2 to revise the seal to include the cross, inviting a challenge from the ACLU. Since the supervisors began using the “revised” seal while that challenge was pending, the ACLU filed a lawsuit.

I bring this all up against because one of the supervisors, Mike Antonovich, was furious after the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial opposing the seal with the cross. He referred to the newspaper as “secular extremest” [sic], whatever that means for an intangible object.

Now, the LA Times has responded to Antonovich since they found out about the insult after it was “included in court filings about the seal,” and their latest editorial is glorious:
First off, the word is spelled “extremist.” With an “i.”

Also, supervisor, please don’t leave out this page’s criticism just last week of Irvine City Council members who wanted to post “In God We Trust” in huge letters on the wall behind them so that no one who attends the meetings could possibly miss the council’s political statement about God.

Come to think of it, we have also argued that public meetings should not begin with invocations to Jesus Christ, and that giant monuments to Christianity should not dominate military cemeteries that include the bodies of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, non-believers and others.

It’s odd that a government official who has for so long been skeptical of government’s role in private life would get so bent out of shape over The Times calling for government to mind its own business and leave faith and religious symbols to the people and their houses of worship.

Damn right. In Antonovich’s mind, the government should stay out of everyone’s lives unless it involves imposing Christianity on them.

The decision to include the cross on the seal was wrong earlier this year and the supervisors’ subsequent actions haven’t been any better.

This is all about pushing God through government.

(Thanks to Brian for the link. Large portions of this article were published earlier.)




“It wasn’t until 2009 that the cross was restored on the building. So now, some members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors want to change the seal to reflect that. Which is verrrrry convenient considering how often Christians try to get crosses on government seals… So earlier this year, the supervisors voted 3-2 to revise the seal to include the cross, inviting a challenge from the ACLU. Since the supervisors began using the “revised” seal while that challenge was pending, the ACLU filed a lawsuit. …. Mike Antonovich, was furious after the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial opposing the seal with the cross. He referred to the newspaper as “secular extremest” [sic], whatever that means for an intangible object. Now, the LA Times has responded to Antonovich since they found out about the insult after it was “included in court filings about the seal,” and their latest editorial is glorious: first off, the word is spelled “extremist.” With an “i.” …. It’s odd that a government official who has for so long been skeptical of government’s role in private life would get so bent out of shape over The Times calling for government to mind its own business and leave faith and religious symbols to the people and their houses of worship. Damn right. In Antonovich’s mind, the government should stay out of everyone’s lives unless it involves imposing Christianity on them.”


“Come to think of it, we have also argued that public meetings should not begin with invocations to Jesus Christ, and that giant monuments to Christianity should not dominate military cemeteries that include the bodies of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, non-believers and others.” This is why I like the ACLU so much. They stick to the governmental principles that our forefathers decided upon so long ago, no matter how many of our largest minority group – the Republican Party – cry out about the lack of “religious freedom.” That claim comes from their being sued and prosecuted for things like refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple and doing a wide range of rather sneaky things to insert their personal religious viewpoint into government. Local government should not be immune from the rules about and the establishment of a state religion. Discrimination against someone on religious grounds should be within their personal rights, they feel, and since most of the small Southern town happen to be Baptists, they should therefore have the right to post the Ten Commandments in the local courthouse. The Rightwing in this country used to talk about “creeping communism”, when the prevailing wind blows toward creeping fascism!





http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/harvard-law-faculty-black-tape/416877/

Black Tape Over Black Faculty Portraits at Harvard Law School
An act of vandalism comes on a campus frequently divided over matters of race.
DAVID A. GRAHAM
NOV 19, 2015


Photograph -- Wasserstein Hall at Harvard Law School Wikimedia


When students and faculty arrived at Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall Thursday morning, they found a disturbing sight. On a wall of portraits of the law school’s tenured faculty, black tape had been placed over each of the African American faculty members.

A second-year student called the tape “a hate crime” in a widely shared Blavity post that included pictures of the portraits. Dean Martha Minow said that racism is a “serious problem” at the school. Police say they are investigating.

The tape isn’t a non sequitur. As activism has swept college campuses, Harvard Law students have been mounting a charge against the school’s crest. The emblem is taken from the Royall family, whose scion Isaac Royall Jr. endowed its first law professorship. The Royalls were also major slaveholders on Antigua, profiting handsomely from it before moving to the North American colonies, bringing some slaves with them. According to a statement from Royall Must Fall, the group campaigning against the seal, members had placed black gaffer tape over the seal around Wasserstein Hall on Wednesday night, and some of that tape was removed and placed on the faculty pictures.

There’s a certain irony to defacing the wall of faculty pictures, since it already painted a fairly stark picture of the institution’s tenured teaching staff as dominated by white men. As of 2014-2015, the law school had 91 tenured or tenure-track faculty. Nine of them were black. Less than a quarter of the tenured faculty were women. The numbers among less prestigious visiting faculty, who are not permanent, are slightly better: “During the 2013-2014 year, 24% of School’s visiting professors were women and 21% were people of color. Additionally, during 2013-2014 the Law School’s faculty approved 26 women for visiting appointments in future terms.” HLS says its Class of 2018 is 47 percent female and 44 percent students of color.

The Harvard Crimson reports on the town-hall meeting where Minow made her remarks:

Law School students, faculty, staff, and administrators gathered for a “community meeting” at noon on Thursday to discuss the incident. Attendees filled Milstein Hall East, where students took microphones to speak, some describing the Law School as a sometimes racist and unwelcoming environment. Some student speakers directly criticized Minow, arguing that she does not do enough to support minority students.

Bitter battles over diversity, and particularly faculty diversity, are nothing new on the campus where Barack Obama became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. In 1991, Derrick Bell announced he was going on unpaid leave until the school hired a single tenured female faculty member of color. (This protest became briefly newsworthy again during the 2012 campaign, when Breitbart tried to gin up a story with a video of Obama embracing Bell, a controversial legal theorist.)

Bell himself had been hired in 1969, when students demanded the law school add its first black professor. In response to Bell’s own protest, Harvard hired Lani Guinier. (She was famously nominated and then withdrawn for the post of assistant attorney general for civil rights during the Clinton Administration.) The saga created serious tension on the faculty. Today, Harvard Law has several prominent black faculty members, including Guinier, Charles Ogletree, and Randall Kennedy. But the numbers still lag well short of proportional representation. (In 2013, the Crimson ran a series on how women were also underrepresented on the faculty.)

Despite the disparities, and despite Minow’s statement, not everyone is convinced that there’s a problem. Prominent Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz blasted the string of campus protests around the nation to Business Insider.

“The last thing these students want is diversity,” he said. “They may want superficial diversity, because for them diversity is a code word for ‘more of us.’ They don't want more conservatives, they don’t want more white students, they don't want more heterosexuals.” Dershowitz, who is white, straight, and male, received tenure at Harvard Law in 1967.




“They may want superficial diversity, because for them diversity is a code word for ‘more of us.’ They don't want more conservatives, they don’t want more white students, they don't want more heterosexuals.” Let’s face it, diversity does mean the addition of more minorities because there is already a majority, and at Harvard apparently a large majority, of white, Anglo-Saxon students. There are also a small number of black colleges such as Howard University in Washington, DC. See the interesting article below on the ethnic/racial quotas at major universities.

Economic privilege all too often goes hand in hand with classism, and therefore with racism. Harvard and other Ivy League schools, preferred by so many of the privileged members of American society, do have not only racial and religious group promotion processes, but also exclusion processes. Sometimes that is a recent development to include more blacks and Hispanics people, while maintaining a “safe” and desirable number of minorities. They aren’t happy to simply admit students by their personal qualities.

The following article is about the interesting change from a Harvard policy limiting the number of Jews admitted, to the number of Asians instead. It still looks like racism to me. See this article by George C. Leef below on the subject. “http://www.newsweek.com/harvard-too-jewish-has-become-too-asian-342335, At Harvard, 'Too Jewish' Has Become 'Too Asian'”, BY GEORGE C. LEEF, 6/14/15. The following is copied from Leef’s article:

“You might think that trustees and alumni would demand to know why their school leaders persist in the dubious diversity mania instead of trying to recruit the best students. They should not just meekly sit by and allow racial preferences to impede their schools from excelling.

How about an alumni petition to the president of Harvard saying, “Why can’t we be more like Cal Tech?”

Although it is repeatedly asserted, there is no reason to believe that admitting quotas of students from “under-represented” groups actually does anything to improve the learning climate on campus.

On the contrary, it can degrade the learning climate when administrators feel compelled to make allowances for weaker students. That is the case at the University of Wisconsin, where administrators want faculty members in certain introductory courses to ensure that grades are distributed “equitably.” (Professor Lee Hansen has written about that for the Pope Center here.)

I am delighted to see that Asian-Americans (that awful hyphen again) are speaking out against racial preferences. That stands to reason, since their children are the big losers in the racial preferences game.

But they should be joined by non-Asians who understand that the purpose of college is for students to maximize their learning, not for administrators to play at social engineering.




While I agree with Leef that colleges should maintain high educational levels by the coursework, study materials and professors chosen, as well as by the grades given by professors; I do not believe that all universities have “watered down” their grading system as the University of Wisconsin mentioned above allegedly has. I think that all racial and religious groups should be admitted on an equal footing, but no student should be “helped” by a professor’s grading curve. If he wants to assign a tutor to a particular student that would be fair play, as college is always a matter of playing “catch up”. Not all white students have attained the same pre-college educational level either, and many of them will “flunk out.”

Colleges should not decline students in the admission process on the basis of race, but should not retain them on that basis, either. The idea that all black students are incapable of doing college level work is cynical at best, and blatantly racist at worst. I think black students like other groups should be admitted on the basis of their high school grades, their College Board scores, and their expressed interests and vocational goals. I also think they should not have a recent or continual criminal background for gang membership, drug use, carjacking, etc. It is just as possible for young black people to follow a moral path as for whites, Asians and Jews, and I do think college admissions should reflect our society’s values on those issues. Part of what we expect from a college graduate is a that they are a good citizen of this country.

Just to mention one other thing which is unrelated to race, Duke University, in at least one case, sent a football coach into the classroom of a professor who was failing a member of the football team. According to my former husband, who was in that class, the coach stood at the back of the class in a threatening manner to intimidate the professor. Even the administration at UNC-CH came under fire last year for cheating on the part of their football players. I was so sorry to see that. This is not about race, but it is about the primary god in modern colleges across the nation – the love that alumni tend to have for their alma mater sports teams—which means many dollars in donations. Colleges have never been wholly motivated by the search for academic excellence, and “earthly” matters always have and do interfere from time to time. Still, I stand in vocal opposition to it.

George C. Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, on whose site this article first appeared. George C Leef’s opinion is suspect based on that as he is employed at a group related to the Koch brothers and known to be “conservative.” Painfully for me, my dear UNC-CH is apparently not so liberal as it was when I was there. See Wikipedia below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Center

The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy is a conservative,[1] nonprofit institute located in Raleigh, North Carolina "dedicated to improving higher education in North Carolina and the nation."[2] It was founded and is funded largely by Art Pope, a conservative businessman.[3] The Pope Center is one of several conservative public policy centers underwritten by the Pope family, which has also contributed significantly to UNC-Chapel Hill and, in lesser amounts, to arts and humanitarian causes in North Carolina.[4] It is named for John William Pope,[5] who served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[6] The Pope Center has attained the GuideStar Exchange Gold participation level, a symbol of transparency and accountability.[7]

History and organization[edit]

The Pope Center originated in 1996[8] as a project of the John Locke Foundation (also founded by Art Pope), a nonprofit think tank concerned especially with free markets, limited constitutional government, and personal responsibility.[9] In 2003, the Pope Center was incorporated as a separate entity.

The current president of the Pope Center is Jenna A. Robinson, a long-time employee of the John Locke Foundation and a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and the Koch Associates Program sponsored by the Charles G. Koch Association.[10]



https://www.charitywatch.org/charitywatch-articles/the-guidestar-exchange-program-sometimes-gold-silver-and-bronze-mean-less-than-you-think/131

The GuideStar Exchange Program: Sometimes Gold, Silver and Bronze Mean Less Than You Think
Published 5/1/2014

In June 2013, GuideStar, which connects people and organizations with information on the programs and finances of IRS-registered nonprofits, announced “major changes” to its “GuideStar Exchange” program. GuideStar describes GuideStar Exchange as “the only program of its kind that encourages nonprofit transparency on a national scale and allows nonprofits to supplement the public information that is available from the IRS.” The program is free of charge and open to any-sized nonprofit. Now, however, instead of being an “all-or-nothing Seal program,” GuideStar Exchange is made up of bronze, silver and gold participation levels based on the amount of information the participant shares with the public through GuideStar.

The information required for each GuideStar Exchange participation level is summarized below.

Bronze (Basic Information): Only basic level information is required. The basic information includes the nonprofit’s address, the name and email of an employee contact, mission statement, geographic area served, and the names of the organization’s leader and board chair. No financial information at all is required to be provided by the nonprofit.

Silver (Financial Information): Audited financial statements or a “GuideStar Basic Financial Statement” is required. The nonprofit also must certify that the financial information provided is “up to date and accurate.” The basic information for the bronze level also is required.

Gold (Impact/Effectiveness Information): A “Charting Impact” report is required and must be certified as being “up to date and accurate.” A Charting Impact report is a self-reported collection of impact information based on the nonprofit’s own responses to five questions related to goals, strategies, capabilities, indicators, and progress. The financial information for the silver level and basic information for the bronze level also is required.
While CharityWatch believes that nonprofit transparency and information sharing with donors is critical, we caution donors not to be misled when you see the Gold, Silver or Bronze GuideStar Exchange Participant Logo being displayed by a charity. Being a GuideStar Exchange participant at any level, including gold, does not indicate one way or the other if the charity will use your cash donations efficiently.

Participation merely indicates that certain types of information are being shared by the charity via GuideStar. No independent analysis or assessment of the provided information is being conducted. All nonprofits should be able to fulfill the very basic information sharing requirements for at least the bronze or silver level GuideStar Exchange participation with relative ease. In fact, except for the self-assessed impact report, charities already are reporting much of this information in order to be legally registered in the states that require it.



http://fee.org/freeman/about-the-freeman/

The Freeman is the flagship publication of the Foundation for Economic Education and one of the oldest and most respected journals of liberty in America. For more than 50 years it has uncompromisingly defended the ideals of the free society.

Through its articles, commentaries and book reviews, several generations of Americans have also learned the consequences and contradictions that flow from collectivism, interventionism, and the welfare state.

No other magazine, outlet, or scholarly journal introduces readers to so many implications of what the free society is all about: its moral legitimacy, its tremendous efficiency, and its liberating effects in every area of life.

Questions? Comments? Feedback? Submissions? Email editor@fee.org

Click here to subscribe to The Freeman.




“Through its articles, commentaries and book reviews, several generations of Americans have also learned the consequences and contradictions that flow from collectivism, interventionism, and the welfare state.” This self-descriptive statement shows it’s rightwing orientation as a publication. Its’ statement of fact and opinion should be evaluated accordingly.