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Friday, September 23, 2011

Predators with Ph.D.s

By Chris Banescu , www.americanthinker.com

The latest offensive against morality, decency, and sanity in America has been launched by a pro-pedophilia group and several academics who openly advocate for the normalization and legalization of pedophilia.  Referring to Judeo-Christian moral principles and values as "cultural baggage of wrongfulness" and an adult's desire to sexually molest a child as "normative," these predators with Ph.D.s are hell-bent on destroying key moral boundaries and critical societal norms that protect innocent children from pathological and dangerous adults.

On August 17 of this year, the pro-pedophilia group B4U-ACT sponsored an event in Baltimore attended by researchers, professors, mental health professionals, and "minor-attracted persons" (MAP, a euphemism for "adults who crave sex with children").  These individuals endorse the adult molestation of children, consider this sexual perversion as normal, and advocate for the declassification of pedophilia as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

The academic panelists who presented at this "pedophilia-friendly" scientific symposium came from such distinguished institutions as Johns Hopkins University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

According to a press release issued by Matt Barber, vice president of Liberty Counsel Action, and Dr. Judith Reisman, visiting law professor at Liberty University School of Law, who attended the event, several admitted pedophiles were in attendance, in addition to many academics and university professors.  The keynote address was given by Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University, who proclaimed that he wants to "completely support the goal of B4U-ACT."

Key highlights from the conference include these disturbing assertions (more disturbing excerpts available at the end of this article):
  • Pedophiles are "unfairly stigmatized and demonized" by society.
  • "The majority of pedophiles are gentle and rational."
  • There was concern about "vice-laden diagnostic criteria" and "cultural baggage of wrongfulness."
  • "We are not required to interfere with or inhibit our child's sexuality."
  • "Children are not inherently unable to consent" to sex with an adult.
  • An adult's desire to have sex with children is "normative."
  • Our society should "maximize individual liberty. ... We have a highly moralistic society that is not consistent with liberty."
  • "In Western culture sex is taken too seriously."
  • "Anglo-American standard on age of consent is new [and 'Puritanical'].  In Europe it was always set at 10 or 12. Ages of consent beyond that are relatively new and very strange, especially for boys. They've always been able to have sex at any age."
  •  "Assuming children are unable to consent lends itself to criminalization and stigmatization."
  • A consensus belief by both speakers and pedophiles in attendance was that, because it vilifies MAPs, pedophilia should be removed as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in the same manner homosexuality was removed in 1973.
There is no greater moral imperative than the protection of the innocent, and especially defenseless children.  These timeless and universal truths are embedded in the Judeo-Christian principles and moral precepts upon which American society and legal system are based.  Any adult -- especially a university professor or medical doctor -- who cannot grasp such elementary morality has no business teaching, counseling, or treating anyone, especially dangerous predators with an appetite for children.

What these academics are doing -- i.e., providing comfort and support for child-rapists and molesters  -- is unconscionable and unethical.  Instead of helping to suppress these abusers' sick desires, correct their delusional attractions, and moderate (or hopefully cure) their mental illness, these professionals sympathize with these monsters and minimize the evil they perpetrate.  Rather than work to suppress the abomination in these pedophiles' minds and souls, these academics stoke these warped passions with the fuel of justification, rationalization, and normalization.

And their treachery doesn't stop there.  Academics like Fred Berlin, M.D., Ph.D.; Nancy Nyquist Potter, Ph.D.; and others are also attempting to destroy societal protections of children by pushing to declassify this dangerous perversion as a mental illness and decriminalize the behavior.  In essence, they advocate the elimination of statutory rape and sexual offender registration laws designed to protect minors from being sexually exploited by adults, thus removing the ability of the state to punish and incarcerate these monsters.  How many other potential predators -- who previously suppressed their lusts for fear of incarceration, societal rebuke, and sexual predator registration laws -- will now be encouraged to succumb to their perverse impulses, cheered on and defended by credentialed academics and fully protected by a neutered legal system? 

What do the leadership of John Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Louisville have to say about their professors attending a pro-pedophile conference and advocating for the "normalization" of adults having sex with children?  What about the donors, supporters, and alumni who support these institutions?  Are they aware that their donations pay for these professors' salaries and help promote these kinds of "academic" activities?  Is this an indication of the level of "scholarship" and "intellectual discourse" we expect to see in the future from these acclaimed institutions?  What's next?  A conference on how to de-stigmatize and normalize producers, distributors, and users of child porn?


Chris Banescu is an attorney, entrepreneur, and university professor.  He regularly blogs at www.chrisbanescu.com and www.orthodoxnet.com/blog.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Doubts On “Official Story” of Bin Laden Killing

by Russ Baker, www.whowhatwhy.com
 
Article Summary:  When you look closely, nothing seems right about what will surely become the accepted account of the raid that nailed America’s enemy number one. And then things get even weirder…

he establishment media just keep getting worse. They’re further and further from good, tough investigative journalism, and more prone to be pawns in complicated games that affect the public interest in untold ways. A significant recent example is The New Yorker’s vaunted August 8 exclusive on the vanquishing of Osama bin Laden.



The piece, trumpeted as the most detailed account to date of the May 1 raid in Abbottabad Pakistan, was an instant hit. “Got the chills half dozen times reading @NewYorker killing bin Laden tick tock…exquisite journalism,” tweeted the digital director of the PBS show Frontline.  The author, freelancer Nicholas Schmidle, was quickly featured on the Charlie Rose show, an influential determiner of “chattering class” opinion. Other news outlets rushed to praise the story as “exhaustive,” “utterly compelling,” and on and on.

To be sure, it is the kind of granular, heroic story that the public loves, that generates follow-up bestsellers and movie options. The takedown even has a Hollywood-esque code name: “Operation Neptune’s Spear”
Here’s the introduction to the mission commanderfull of minute details that help give it a ring of authenticity and suggest the most intimate reportorial access:
James, a broad-chested man in his late thirties, does not have the lithe swimmer’s frame that one might expect of a SEAL—he is built more like a discus thrower. That night, he wore a shirt and trousers in Desert Digital Camouflage, and carried a silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistol, along with extra ammunition; a CamelBak, for hydration; and gel shots, for endurance. He held a short-barrel, silenced M4 rifle. (Others SEALs had chosen the Heckler & Koch MP7.) A “blowout kit,” for treating field trauma, was tucked into the small of James’s back. Stuffed into one of his pockets was a laminated gridded map of the compound. In another pocket was a booklet with photographs and physical descriptions of the people suspected of being inside. He wore a noise-cancelling headset, which blocked out nearly everything besides his heartbeat.
On and on went the “tick-tock.” Yet as Paul Farhi, a Washington Post reporter, noted, that narrative was misleading in the extreme, because the New Yorker reporter never actually spoke to James—nor to a single one of James’s fellow SEALs (who have never been identified or photographed–even from behind–to protect their identity.) Instead, every word of Schmidle’s narrative was provided to him by people who were not present at the raid. Complains Farhi:
…a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.
That didn’t trouble New Yorker editor David Remnick, according to Farhi:
Remnick says he’s satisfied with the accuracy of the account. “The sources spoke to our fact-checkers,” he said. “I know who they are.”
But we don’t.
On a story of this gravity, should we automatically join in with the huzzahs because it has the imprimatur of America’s most respected magazine? Or would we be wise to approach it with caution?

Most of us are not the trusting naïfs we once were. And with good reason.
The list of consequential events packaged for us by media and Hollywood in unsatisfactory ways continues to grow. It starts, certainly, with the official version of the JFK assassination, widely discredited yet still carried forward by most major media organizations. (For more on that, see this.) More and more people realize that the heroic Woodward & Bernstein story of Nixon’s demise is deeply problematical. (I’ve written extensively on both of these in my book Family of Secrets.)
And untold millions don’t think we’ve heard the real (or at least complete) story of the phenomenal, complex success of those 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001. Skeptics now include former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who recently speculated that the hijackers may have been able to enter the US and move freely precisely because American intelligence hoped to recruit them as double agents—and that an ongoing cover-up is designed to hide this. And then, of course, there are the Pentagon’s account of the heroic rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq, which turned out to be a hoax, and the Pentagon’s fabricated account of the heroic battle death of former NFL player Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, who turned out to be a victim of friendly fire. These are just a few from scores of examples of deceit perpetrated upon the American people. Hardly the kind of track record to inspire confidence in official explanations with the imprimatur of the military and the CIA.

Whatever one thinks of these other matters, we’re certainly now at a point where we ought to be prudent in embracing authorized accounts of the latest seismic event: the dramatic end to one of America’s most reviled and storied nemeses.
 

The bin Laden raid presents us with every reason to be cautious. The government’s initial claims about what transpired at that house in Abbottabad have changed, then changed again, with no proper explanation of the discrepancies. Even making allowances for human error in such shifting accounts, almost every aspect of what we were told requires a willing suspension of disbelief—from the manner of Osama’s death and burial to the purported pornography found at the site. (For more on these issues, see previous articles we wrote on the subject, here, here and here.)

Clarke’s theory will seem less outrageous later, as we explore Saudi intelligence’s crucial, and bizarre, role at the end of bin Laden’s life—working directly with the man who now holds Clarke’s job.

Add to all of this the discovery that the reporter providing this newest account wasn’t even allowed to talk to any raid participants—and the magazine’s lack of candor on this point—and you’ve got an almost unassailable case for treating the New Yorker story with extreme caution.

We might begin by asking the question: Who provided The New Yorker with its exclusive, and what was their agenda in doing so? To try and sort out Schmidle’s sources, I read through the piece carefully several times.
One person who spoke to the reporter, and who is identified by name is John O. Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser. Brennan is quoted directly, briefly, near the top, describing to Schmidle pre-raid debate over whether such an operation would be a success or failure:
John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, told me that the President’s advisers began an “interrogation of the data, to see if, by that interrogation, you’re going to disprove the theory that bin Laden was there.”
 

The mere fact of Schmidle’s reliance on Brennan at all should send up a flare for the cautious reader. After all, that’s the very same Brennan who was the principal source of incorrect details in the hours and days after the raid. These included the claim that the SEALs encountered substantial armed resistance, not least from bin Laden himself; that it took them an astounding 40 minutes to get to bin Laden, and that the White House got to hear the soldiers’ conversations in real time.
Here’s a Washington Post account from Brennan published on May 3, less than 48 hours after the raid:
Half an hour had passed on the ground, but the American commandos raiding Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideaway had yet to find their long-sought target.
…The commandos swept methodically through the compound’s main building, clearing one room and then another as they made their way to the upper floors where they expected to find bin Laden. As they did so, Obama administration officials in the White House Situation Room listened to the SEAL team’s conversations over secure lines.
“The minutes passed like days,” said John O. Brennan, the administration’s chief counterterrorism adviser. “It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled.”
Finally, shortly before 2 a.m. in Pakistan, the commandos burst into an upstairs room.Inside, an armed bin Laden took cover behind a woman, Brennan said. With a burst of gunfire, one of the longest and costliest manhunts in modern history was over.
.. The commandos moved inside, and finally reached bin Laden’s upstairs living quarters after nearly 40 minutes on the ground.
 

Almost all that turns out to be hogwash—according to the new account produced by The New Yorker three months later. An account that, again, it seems, comes courtesy of Brennan. The minutes did not pass like days. Bin Laden was not armed, and did not take cover behind a woman. And the commandoes most certainly were not on the ground for 40 minutes. Some of them were up the stairs to the higher floors almost in a flash, and it didn’t take long for them to run into and kill bin Laden.
For another take, consider this account from NBC News’ Pentagon correspondent—also reported the week after the raid— two days after Brennan told the Washington Post a completely different story. This one appears to be based on a briefing from military officials who would have been likely to have good knowledge of the operational details:
According to the officials’ account, as the first SEAL team moved into the compound, they took small-arms fire from the guest house in the compound. The SEALs returned fire, killing bin Laden’s courier and the courier’s wife, who died in the crossfire. It was the only time the SEALs were shot at.
The second SEAL team entered the first floor of the main residence and could see a man standing in the dark with one hand behind his back. Fearing he was hiding a weapon, the SEALs shot and killed the lone man, who turned out to be unarmed.


As the U.S. commandos moved through the house, they found several stashes of weapons and barricades, as if the residents were prepared for a violent and lengthy standoff — which never materialized.

The SEALs then made their way up a staircase, where they ran into one of bin Laden’s sons. The Americans immediately shot and killed the 19-year-old son, who was also unarmed, according to the officials.

Hearing the shots, bin Laden peered over the railing from the floor above. The SEALs fired but missed bin Laden, who ducked back into his bedroom. As the SEALs stormed up the stairs, two young girls ran from the room.

One SEAL scooped them up and carried them out of harm’s way. The other two commandos stormed into bin Laden’s bedroom. One of bin Laden’s wives rushed toward the Navy SEAL, who shot her in the leg.

Then, without hesitation, the same commando turned his gun on bin Laden, standing in what appeared to be pajamas, and fired two quick shots, one to the chest and one to the head. Although there were weapons in that bedroom, bin Laden was also unarmed when he was shot.

Instead of a chaotic firefight, the U.S. officials said, the American commando assault was a precision operation, with SEALs moving carefully through the compound, room to room, floor to floor.

In fact, most of the operation was spent in what the military calls “exploiting the site,” gathering up the computers, hard drives, cellphones and files that could provide valuable intelligence on al-Qaida operatives and potential operations worldwide.
The U.S. officials describing the operation said the SEALs carefully gathered up 22 women and children to ensure they were not harmed. Some of the women were put in “flexi-cuffs” the plastic straps used to bind someone’s hands at the wrists, and left them for Pakistani security forces to discover.
Given that Brennan’s initial version of the raid was strikingly erroneous, his later account to The New Yorker is suspect as well. So who else besides Brennan might have been Schmidle’s sources? At one point in his piece, he cites an unnamed counterterrorism official:
A senior counterterrorism official who visited the JSOC redoubt described it as an enclave of unusual secrecy and discretion. “Everything they were working on was closely held,” the official said.
Later, that same unnamed counterterrorism official is again cited, this time seeming to continue Brennan’s narrative of the meeting before the raid, in which participants disagreed on the likely success of such a mission:
That day in Washington, Panetta convened more than a dozen senior C.I.A. officials and analysts for a final preparatory meeting. Panetta asked the participants, one by one, to declare how confident they were that bin Laden was inside the Abbottabad compound. The counterterrorism official told me that the percentages “ranged from forty per cent to ninety or ninety-five per cent,” and added, “This was a circumstantial case.”
From the story’s construction, one could reasonably conclude that the unnamed counterterrorism official is indeed still just Brennan. If not, who could it be? How many different white House counterterrorism officials would have debriefed the SEALs, if indeed that is even their role? How many would have been privy to that planning meeting? And how many different officials would have gotten authorization to sum up the events of that important day for this New Yorker writer? Also, it’s an old journalistic trick to quote the same source, on and off the record— thereby giving the source extra cover when discussing particularly delicate matters. 

So, we don’t know whether the article was based on anything more than Brennan, under marching orders to clean up the conflicting accounts he originally put out.

UNEXPLAINED DISPUTES

It’s curious that the source chooses to emphasize the fundamental disagreement over whether the raid was a good idea. Presumably, there was a purpose in emphasizing this, but the New Yorker’s “tick-tock”, which is very light on analysis or context, doesn’t tell us what it was. It may have been intended to show Obama as brave, inclined toward big risks (thereby running counter to his reputation)—we can only guess.

 
This internal discord will get the attention of anyone who remembers all the assertions from intelligence officials over the years that bin Laden was almost certainly already dead—either of natural causes or killed at some previous time.

Here’s a bit more from The New Yorker on officials’ doubts going into the raid:

Several analysts from the National Counterterrorism Center were invited to critique the C.I.A.’s analysis; their confidence in the intelligence ranged between forty and sixty per cent. The center’s director, Michael Leiter, said that it would be preferable to wait for stronger confirmation of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.
Those doubts are particularly interesting for several reasons: the CIA has had a long history of disputes between its covert action wing, which tends to advocate activity, and its analysis section, historically prone to caution. The action wing also has a history of publicizing its being right—when it could purport to be right—and covering up its failures. So when an insider chooses to make public these disagreements, we should be willing to consider motives.

This dispute can also be seen as an intriguing prologue to the rush to dump Bin Laden’s body and not provide proof to the public that it was indeed bin Laden. What if it wasn’t bin Laden that they killed? Would the government announce that after such a high-stakes operation? (“While we thought he’d be there, we accidentally killed someone else instead”? Seems unlikely.)

Now, let us go to the next antechamber of this warren of shadowy entities and unstated agendas.
 

Who exactly wanted bin Laden shot rather than taken alive and interrogated—and why? There’s been much discussion about the purported reasons for terminating him on sight, but the fact remains that he would have been a source of tremendous intelligence of real value to the safety of Americans and others.
Yet, early in the piece, Schmidle writes:
If all went according to plan, the SEALs would drop from the helicopters into the compound, overpower bin Laden’s guards, shoot and kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan.
That was the plan? Whose plan? We’ve never been explicitly told by the White House that such a decision had been made. In fact, we’d previously been informed that  the president was glad to have the master plotter taken alive if he was unarmed and did not resist. So, that’s a huge and problematical discrepancy that is only heightened by Schmidle’s misleadingly matter-of-fact treatment of the matter.

GET ME RIYADH
If the justification for killing Osama presented in The New Yorker warrants concern, the account of how—and why—they disposed of his body ought to send alarm bells clanging.

At the time of the raid, the decision to hastily dump Osama’s body in the ocean rather than make it available for authoritative forensic examination was a highly controversial one—that only led to more speculation that the White House was hiding something. The justifications, including not wanting to bury him on land for fear of creating a shrine, were almost laughable.

So what do we learn about this from The New Yorker? It’s truly bizarre: the SEALS themselves made the decision. That’s strange enough. But then we learn that Brennan took it upon himself to verify that was the right decision. How did he do this? Not by speaking with the president or top military, diplomatic or legal brass. No, he called some foreigners—get ready–the Saudis, who told him that dumping at sea sounded like a good plan.

Here’s Schmidle’s account:
All along, the SEALs had planned to dump bin Laden’s corpse into the sea—a blunt way of ending the bin Laden myth. They had successfully pulled off a similar scheme before. During a DEVGRU helicopter raid inside Somalia in September, 2009, SEALs had killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, one of East Africa’s top Al Qaeda leaders; Nabhan’s corpse was then flown to a ship in the Indian Ocean, given proper Muslim rites, and thrown overboard. Before taking that step for bin Laden, however, John Brennan made a call. Brennan, who had been a C.I.A. station chief in Riyadh, phoned a former counterpart in Saudi intelligence. Brennan told the man what had occurred in Abbottabad and informed him of the plan to deposit bin Laden’s remains at sea. As Brennan knew, bin Laden’s relatives were still a prominent family in the Kingdom, and Osama had once been a Saudi citizen. Did the Saudi government have any interest in taking the body? “Your plan sounds like a good one,” the Saudi replied.
Let’s consider this. The most wanted man in the world; substantive professional doubts about whether the man in the Abbottabad house is him; tremendous public doubts about whether it could even be him; the most important operation of the Obama presidency; yet the decision about what to do with the body is left to low-level operatives. Keep in mind SEALs are trained to follow orders given by others. They’re expected to apply what they know to unexpected scenarios that come up, but the key strategic decisions— arrived at in advance—are not theirs to make.

Even more strange that Brennan would discuss this with a foreign power. And not just any foreign power, but the regime that is inextricably linked with the domestically-influential family of bin Laden—and home to many of the hijackers who worked for him.

Is it just me, or does this sound preposterous? Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser is just winging it with key aspects of one of America’s most important, complex and risky operations? And the Saudi government is the one deciding to discard the remains of a man from one of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful families, before the public could receive proper proof of the identity of the body? A regime with a great deal at stake and perhaps plenty to hide.

Also please consider this important caveat: As we noted in a previous article, the claim that the body had already been positively identified via DNA has been disputed by a DNA expert who said that insufficient time had elapsed before the sea burial to complete such tests.
 

The line about Brennan himself having been a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia is just sort of dropped in there. No recognition of what it means that a person of that background was put into that position after 9/11, no recognition that a person of that background and those fraught personal connections is controlling this narrative. He’s not just a “counterterrorism expert”—he is a longtime member of an agency whose mandate includes the frequent use of disinformation. And one who has his own historic direct links to the Saudi regime, a key and problematical player in the larger chess game playing out.

 

It’s relevant to note that Brennan is not only a career CIA officer (they say no one ever really leaves the Agency, no matter their new title) but one with a lot of baggage. He was deputy director of the CIA at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He was an adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign, after which Obama initially planned to name him CIA director. That appointment was pulled, in part due to criticism from human rights advocates over statements he had made in support of sending terrorism suspects to countries where they might be tortured.

Of course, there could have been other sources besides Brennan. In addition to the unnamed “counterterrorism official” previously cited, the New Yorker mentions a “special operations officer,” as in:
…according to a special-operations officer who is deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid.
Subsequent quotes from him indicate that this had to be a supervisory special ops officer. His comments are surprising:
“This wasn’t a hard op,” the special-operations officer told me. “It would be like hitting a target in McLean”—the upscale Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.
Whoops! Here’s a Special Ops guy saying the Special Ops raid was actually no big deal! Shouldn’t that, if a valid assessment, get more attention? Especially given the endless praise and frequent statements of how difficult the operation was. I mean, the toughness and diciness of the Abbottabad mission is the prime reason we want to read the New Yorker’s account in the first place!
To further underline the point, consider that this fellow is not alone in his assessment:
In the months after the raid, the media have frequently suggested that the Abbottabad operation was as challenging as Operation Eagle Claw and the “Black Hawk Down” incident, but the senior Defense Department official told me that “this was not one of three missions.”…. He likened the routine of evening raids to “mowing the lawn.”
Why would a person overseeing an operation like this deflate the bubble of adoration? It doesn’t seem helpful to the interests of Special Operations – and it doesn’t seem credible, either. So there’s presumably a reason that this person is—again speaking to The New Yorker after this important exclusive has been carefully considered and strategized. We just don’t know what it is, and the magazine doesn’t even bother to wonder.

Most of the other sources seem to play bit roles. One is “a senior adviser to the President” whose only comment is that Obama decided not to trust the Pakistanis with advance notice of the raid—which we already knew.  Another— named—source is Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser, who does not evince any intimate knowledge of the raid itself.

The New Yorker also includes a few other officials who brief Schmidle on general background, like a “senior defense department official” explaining the overall relationship between Special Operations and CIA personnel, and a named former CIA counsel explaining that the Abottabad raid amounted to “a complete incorporation of JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] into a C.I.A. operation.”

That’s only slipped into the article, but it is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the piece, along with a brief mention of the way in which former Iraq/Afghan commander General David Petraeus has gone to CIA while CIA director Panetta has been made Defense Secretary. (For more on these important but confusing games of high-level musical chairs, which were not deeply scrutinized in the conventional media, see our WhoWhatWhy pieces here and here.)

This may sound too technical for your taste, but the takeaway point is that fundamental realignments are afoot in that vast, massively-funded, powerful and secretive part of the US government that is treated by the corporate press almost as if it does not exist. The tales of internal intrigue that we do not hear would begin to provide us with the real narratives that are not ours to have.

In the New Yorker piece, we do learn lots of things we did not know before—for example, that Special Ops considered tunneling in or coming in by foot rather than helicopter. We learn that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wanted to drop massive bombs on the house. General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shared that view—Cartwright is one of the few who is directly identified as a source for Schmidle. That’s important stuff, and worth more than brief mention. And, once again, we need more effort to try and understand why we are being told these things.

“WE REALLY DIDN’T KNOW…WHAT WAS GOING ON”
About two-thirds of the article is a sort of scene-setter, a prologue to on-the-ground story we’ve all been waiting for. But when the big moment arrives, The New Yorker’s Schmidle instead punts:
Meanwhile, James, the squadron commander, had breached one wall, crossed a section of the yard covered with trellises, breached a second wall, and joined up with the SEALs from helo one, who were entering the ground floor of the house. What happened next is not precisely clear. “I can tell you that there was a time period of almost twenty to twenty-five minutes where we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on,” Panetta said later, on “PBS NewsHour.”

Until this moment, the operation had been monitored by dozens of defense, intelligence, and Administration officials watching the drone’s video feed. The SEALs were not wearing helmet cams, contrary to a widely cited report by CBS. None of them had any previous knowledge of the house’s floor plan, and they were further jostled by the awareness that they were possibly minutes away from ending the costliest manhunt in American history; as a result, some of their recollections—on which this account is based—may be imprecise and, thus, subject to dispute.
Schmidle claims that the SEALs’ “recollections—on which this account is based”—are subject to dispute. But as I’ve noted, the article is NOT based on their recollections, but on what some source claims to Schmidle were their recollections. Why the summary may be imprecise and thus subject to dispute after it has been filtered by a person controlling the scenario, must be asked. Perhaps this is why The New Yorker is not permitted to speak directly to the SEALs—because of what they could tell the magazine.
Now, killing the men who lived in the compound: First, the SEALs shot and killed the courier, who they say was armed, and his wife, who they say was not, when they emerged from the guesthouse. Then they killed the courier’s brother inside the main house, who they say was armed. Then they moved up the stairs:
..three SEALs marched up the stairs. Midway up, they saw bin Laden’s twenty-three-year-old son, Khalid, craning his neck around the corner. He then appeared at the top of the staircase with an AK-47. Khalid, who wore a white T-shirt with an overstretched neckline and had short hair and a clipped beard, fired down at the Americans. (The counterterrorism official claims that Khalid was unarmed, though still a threat worth taking seriously. “You have an adult male, late at night, in the dark, coming down the stairs at you in an Al Qaeda house—your assumption is that you’re encountering a hostile.”) At least two of the SEALs shot back and killed Khalid.
Ok, that’s pretty strange. First, Schmidle asserts that Khalid bin Laden was armed and fired with an AK-47. Then he quotes this counterterrorism official—who could in fact be Brennan—saying that Khalid was unarmed. Why does the New Yorker first run the “Khalid was armed” claim as a fact, and then include the official disclaimer? What’s really going on here, even from the New Yorker’s editorial standpoint?
Here’s another such instance: a dispute over where Osama was when they first saw him:
Three SEALs shuttled past Khalid’s body and blew open another metal cage, which obstructed the staircase leading to the third floor. Bounding up the unlit stairs, they scanned the railed landing. On the top stair, the lead SEAL swivelled right; with his night-vision goggles, he discerned that a tall, rangy man with a fist-length beard was peeking out from behind a bedroom door, ten feet away. The SEAL instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft [codename for Osama]. (The counterterrorism official asserts that the SEAL first saw bin Laden on the landing, and fired but missed.)
What’s the purpose of all this? How good is intelligence work when they can’t reconstruct whether the singular focus of the operation was first spotted peeking out from a doorway, or standing on the landing above them?

And then one of the most interesting passages, about the kill:
A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed. “There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” the special-operations officer told me. (The Administration maintains that had bin Laden immediately surrendered he could have been taken alive.)
Uh-oh. So who is this Special Operations officer? He is directly disputing the administration’s claim on what surely matters greatly—what were President Obama’s intentions here? And did they always plan to just ignore them? That The New Yorker just drops this in with no further analysis or context is, simply put, shocking.

It seems almost as if Panetta, Obama, and the people in the story who most closely approximate actual representatives of the public in a functioning democracy, were basically cut off from observing what went down that day—or from influencing what transpired.

Consider this statement from Panetta, not included in the New Yorker piece:
“Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.

“We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound.”
Panetta’s “lost 25 minutes” needs to be seen in the context of a man with civilian roots, notwithstanding two mid-60s years as a Lt. in military intel: Former Congressman, Clinton White House budget chief and Chief of Staff, credentials with civil rights and environment movements—a fellow with real distance from the true spook/military mojo.

Taken together, here’s what we have: President Obama did not know exactly what was going on. He did not decide that bin Laden should be shot. And he did not decide to dump his body in the ocean. The CIA and its Special Ops allies made all the decisions.

Then Brennan, the CIA’s man, put out the version that CIA wanted. (Keep in mind that, as noted earlier, CIA was really running the operation—with Special Ops under its direction).

What we’re looking at, folks, is the reality of democracy in America: A permanent entrenched covert establishment that marches to its own drummer or to drummers unknown. It’s exactly the kind of thing that never gets reported. Too scary. Too real. Better to dismiss this line of inquiry as too “conspiracy theory.”
If that sounds like hyperbole, let me add this rather significant consideration. It is the background of Nicholas Schmidle, the freelancer who wrote the New Yorker piece. It may give us insight into how he landed this extraordinary exclusive on this extraordinarily sensitive matter—information again, significantly, not shared by The New Yorker with its readers:
 

Schmidle’s father is Marine Lt. General Robert E. “Rooster” Schmidle Jr.  General Schmidle served as Commanding Officer of Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force (Experimental)—that’s essentially Special Operations akin to Navy SEALs. In recent years, he was “assistant deputy commandant for Programs and Resources (Programs)”—where, among other things, he oversaw “irregular warfare.” (See various, including contract specs here on “Special Operations,” and picture caption here) In 2010, he moved into another piece of this, when Obama appointed him deputy commander, U.S. Cyber Command. Cumulatively, this makes the author’s father a very important man in precisely the sort of circles who care how the raid is publicly portrayed—and who would be quite intimate with some of the folks hunkering down with Obama in the Situation Room on the big day.
 

You can see a photo of Gen. Schmidle on a 2010 panel about “Warring Futures.” Event co-sponsors include Slate magazine and the New America Foundation, both of which, according to Nicholas Schmidle’s website, have also provided Schmidle’s son with an ongoing perch (with Slate giving him a platform for numerous articles from war zones and the foundation employing him as a Fellow.) These parallel relationships grow more disturbing with contemplation.
***
So let’s get back to the question, Who is driving this Ship of State?
First, consider this passage:
Obama returned to the White House at two o’clock, after playing nine holes of golf at Andrews Air Force Base. The Black Hawks departed from Jalalabad thirty minutes later. Just before four o’clock, Panetta announced to the group in the Situation Room that the helicopters were approaching Abbottabad.
 

To be really useful reporting here, rather than just meaningless “color”, we’d need some context. Was the golf game’s purpose to blow off steam at an especially tense time? Did Obama not think it important enough for him to be constantly present in the hours leading up to the raid? Is this typical of his schedule when huge things are happening?  We desperately need a more realistic sense of what presidents do, how much they’re really in charge, or, instead, figureheads for unnamed individuals who make most of the critical decisions.

Here’s something just as strange: we are told the President took a commanding role in determining key operational tactics, but then didn’t seem interested in important details, after the fact.
Forty-five minutes after the Black Hawks departed, four MH-47 Chinooks launched from the same runway in Jalalabad. Two of them flew to the border, staying on the Afghan side; the other two proceeded into Pakistan. Deploying four Chinooks was a last-minute decision made after President Barack Obama said he wanted to feel assured that the Americans could “fight their way out of Pakistan.”
 

Now, consider the following climactic New Yorker account of Obama meeting with the squadron commander after it’s all over, with bin Laden dead and the troops home and safe. Schmidle decides to call the commander “James…the names of all the covert operators mentioned in this story have been changed.” The anecdote will feature a canine, one who, in true furry dog story fashion, had already been introduced early in the New Yorker piece, as “Cairo” (it’s not clear whether the dog’s name, too, was changed):
As James talked about the raid, he mentioned Cairo’s role. “There was a dog?” Obama interrupted. James nodded and said that Cairo was in an adjoining room, muzzled, at the request of the Secret Service.

“I want to meet that dog,” Obama said.
“If you want to meet the dog, Mr. President, I advise you to bring treats,” James joked. Obama went over to pet Cairo, but the dog’s muzzle was left on.
Here’s the ending:
Before the President returned to Washington, he posed for photographs with each team member and spoke with many of them, but he left one thing unsaid. He never asked who fired the kill shot, and the SEALs never volunteered to tell him.
Why did the president not want to ask for specifics on the most important parts of the operation—but seemed so interested in a dog that participated? While it is certainly plausible that this happened, we should be wary of one of the oldest p.r. tricks around—get people cooing over an animal, while the real action is elsewhere.

Certainly, Obama’s reaction differs dramatically from that of other previous presidents who always demanded detailed briefings and would have stayed on top of it all throughout—including fellow Democrats JFK, Carter and Clinton. At minimum, it shows a degree of caution or ceremony based upon a desire not to know too much—or an understanding that he may not ask. Does anyone doubt that Bill Clinton would have been on watch 24/7 during this operation, parsing legal, political and operational details throughout, and would have demanded to know who felled America’s most wanted?

Summing up about the reliability of this account, which is now likely to become required reading for every student in America, long into the future:
  • It is based on reporting by a man who fails to disclose that he never spoke to the people who conducted the raid, or that his father has a long background himself running such operations (this even suggests the possibility that Nicholas Schmidle’s own father could have been one of those “unnamed sources.”)
  • It seems to have depended heavily on trusting second-hand accounts by people with a poor track record for accurate summations, and an incentive to spin.
  • The alleged decisions on killing bin Laden and disposing of his body lack credibility.
  • The DNA evidence that the SEALs actually got their man is questionable.
  • Though certain members of Congress say they have seen photos of the body (or, to be precise, a body), the rest of us have not seen anything.
  • Promised photos of the ceremonial dumping of the body at sea have not materialized.
  • The eyewitnesses from the house—including the surviving wives—have disappeared without comment.
We weren’t allowed to hear from the raid participants. And on August 6, seventeen Navy SEALs died when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. We’re told that fifteen of them came, amazingly, from the same SEAL Team 6 that carried out the Abbottabad raid—but that none of the dead were present for the raid. We do get to hear the stories of those men, and their names.

Of course, if any of those men had been in the Abbottabad raid—or knew anything about it of broad public interest, we’d be none the wiser—because, the  only  “reliable sources” still available (and featured by the New Yorker) are military and intelligence professionals, coming out of a long tradition of cover-ups and fabrications.

Meanwhile, we have this president, this one who according to the magazine article didn’t ask about the core issues—why this man was killed, who killed him, under whose orders, what would be done with the body.

Well, he may not want answers. But we ought to want them.  Otherwise, it’s all just a game.


Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Gun Running Scandal Threatens to Bring Down Obama

TheAlexJonesChannel
September 4, 2011

Larry Pratt, director of Gun Owners of America, joins Alex to talk about Operation Fast and Furious, the covert ATF effort to arm murderous Mexican drug cartels and blame it on the Second Amendment and legal gun dealers in the United States. So far, the scandal has brought down the boss of the ATF, a U.S. attorney in Arizona, and threatens the Obama administration.



Source: http://www.infowars.com/gun-running-scandal-threatens-to-bring-down-obama/

Friday, September 2, 2011

Social Engineering For Global Change

By Carl Teichrib, (www.forcingchange.org)

NOTE: Although this essay was originally penned a number of years ago, it is as vital today as when first published. Some slight editing changes have been made, but the essay is essentially the same as when it was released in 2004

Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal – and power.” — Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End. [1]

A world society cannot be haphazard. Since there are no precedents, its cannot be traditional at this stage in its development. It can only be deliberative and experimental, planned and built up with particular objectives and with the aid of all available knowledge concerning the principles of social organization. Social engineering is a new science.” — Scott Nearing, United World [2]

Without question, one of the greatest tools for social engineering is in the realm of public education. This is not a blanket statement downplaying the role of education per se, but a judgment call recognizing the tremendous influence that the educational system can play in creating “social change.”

Consider this statement from Naresh Singh, a program director at the International Institute for Sustainable Development,

Education has been advanced as significant in bringing about changes in attitudes, behaviour, beliefs and values… In order to redirect behaviour and values towards institutional change for sustainable development there is a need to investigate strategic options in relation to educational philosophies, scope for propagation and adoption, and groups most likely to be susceptible to change.” [3]

All of this points to a radical shift now taking place – a shift which emphasizes “global thinking” and “planetary norms.” According to the IISD literature, “the task of education for the immediate future is to assist in activating an ethic of planetary sensitivity… We must pass from a human-centred to an earth-centred sense of reality and value.” [4]

This “global-shift role” for general education is a foundational platform for UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. The first Director General of UNESCO, Julian Huxley, clearly laid out UNESCO’s educational scope,

In general, Unesco must constantly be testing its policies against the touchstone of evolutionary progress. A central conflict of our times is that between nationalism and internationalism, between the concept of many national sovereignties and one world sovereignty…

The moral of Unesco is clear. The task laid upon it of promoting peace and security can never be wholly realised through the means assigned to it – education, science and culture. It must envisage some form of world political unity, whether through a single world government or otherwise… However, world political unity is, unfortunately, a remote ideal, and in any case does not fall within the field of Unesco’s competence. This does not mean that Unesco cannot do a great deal towards promoting peace and security. Specifically, in its educational programme it can stress the ultimate need for world political unity and familiarise all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization.” [5]

Back in 1968, UNESCO, along with The Twentieth Century Fund (now called The Century Foundation) and the Ford Foundation, helped start a new educational body located in Geneva, Switzerland; the International Baccalaureate Organization. [6]

Originally, the IBO was established to provide a common educational basis for international students that would be acceptable to universities around the world. With this in mind, IBO curriculum has, for over 35 years, emphasized that its students broaden their understanding of various cultures, languages, and points of view.

Understanding other’s points of view, cultures and languages is, in itself, a noble task – it’s something that I work at pursuing and instilling within my own children and in myself. But underlining IBO’s philosophy is something deeper; according to George Walker, the Director General at IBO, “International education offers people a state of mind: international-mindedness. You’ve got to change people’s thinking.” [7] Hence, “students develop an awareness of moral and ethical issues and a sense of social responsibility… fostered by examining local and global issues.” [8]

This is not ambiguous language. In advancing the international-mindedness of IBO, the organization has endorsed the Earth Charter – an earth-centered declaration which venerates global political-ethical-moral and spiritual unification. Some, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, have gone so far as to compare the Earth Charter with “those 10 or 15 Commandments which we all know about… those famous testaments…” [9]

Providing the Earth Charter initiative with advanced support, the International Baccalaureate Organization has agreed to become an Earth Charter partnership entity, along with such groups as the Association of World Citizens, Friends of the Earth, Global People’s Assembly, Rain Forest Action Network, the US branch of the United Nations Association, and the World Parliament of Religions. [10] Furthermore, IBO Deputy Director General, Ian Hill, sits on the Earth Charter Initiative Education Advisory Committee.

Propagating this new global “testament,” IBO is currently looking at ways to incorporate the Earth Charter into the following curriculum areas; Theory of Knowledge, Environmental Systems, Environmental Science, Technology and Social Change, Peace and Conflict Studies, Experimental Science, Philosophy, Geography, History, Math, and the Arts. [11]

None of this would be very remarkable if the IBO were a small entity stuffed somewhere in a forgotten corner of the world, but it’s not. Presently, almost 1,300 schools around the globe are authorized to offer IBO programs. And in the United States and Canada, close to 650 schools are tied into the IBO, with 473 in the US. Adding to this, the IBO is linked into a number of United Nations’ functions beyond the UN inspired Earth Charter and UNESCO – where it holds a special consultative status. Examples of this UN partnering includes: preparatory work for the UN’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, activities within a number of UN International Schools, and involvement with a variety of United Nations Model programs. [12] Simply put, it’s an organization with considerable “social change” inroads at the international level.

Funding for the body also reflects this global-local-global approach. During the month of October, 2003, in a monetary show of support, the US Department of Education awarded the IBO a grant of $1.17 million. According to the IBO press release, these US taxpayer funds were to be specifically channeled into setting up IBO programs “in six middle and high school partnerships in disadvantaged areas in Massachusetts, New York and Arizona.” [13]

Additional funding for the IBO has come from 14 other major national governments, including the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada. Monies have also been funneled through contributions from the Goldman Sachs Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the US Agency for International Development, the Armand Hammer Foundation and the Armand Hammer United World College, the United Nations International School, the New York Times Foundation, Gulf Canada, the IBM World Trade Organization, and many others. [14] Obviously, incorporating a global mind-change educational agenda carries a hefty price tag – and it’s no surprise that foundations and financial actors are involved in the play.

Progressing the idea of an international educational platform, Professor Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, delivered a speech to the International Baccalaureate Organization on May 5th, 2003, stating that we need to see things in broader terms than just nation-states and western liberal democracy. Additionally, he stated that when people’s religious beliefs become a vehicle for political and social agendas, it’s an abuse of religion. [15]

Somehow I think the irony of this proposition went unnoticed. By endorsing and incorporating the Earth Charter, the IBO is blatantly pushing a pseudo-religious/spiritual agenda – an international social-change concept that is grossly intertwined with global governance aspirations, United Nations empowerment, and earth-centered religious philosophies. UNESCO itself, as part of IBO’s foundational base, endorses a quasi-religious version of international education through the work of a former high-ranking UN official, Robert Muller.

In 1989, Robert Muller received the UNESCO Peace Education Prize for his work in developing a World Core Curriculum. Frederico Mayor, the Director-General of UNESCO at the time, praised Muller as an “innovator in education” and gave accolades for Muller’s book New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality, saying that it “offers the world a blueprint for a new, spiritual vision of human destiny.” [16]

Yes it does! According to New Genesis,

“…humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with the “divine,” its transcendence into ever higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning again upon humanity. Its full flowering will be the real, great new story of humanity, as we are about to enter our cosmic age and to become what we were always meant to be: the planet of God.” [17]

Predictably, Muller’s World Core Curriculum follows this New Genesis -New Age vein. In fact, Muller’s World Core Curriculum is really more of a philosophy of education than an actual curriculum – a philosophy firmly grounded in New Age concepts of man’s deification and “Earth spirituality.” Bridging all of this, Muller explains, “Yes, global education must transcend material, scientific and intellectual achievements and reach deliberately into the moral and spiritual spheres.” [18]

Why? According to Muller,

We must manage our globe so as to permit the endless stream of humans admitted to the miracle of life to fulfill their lives physically, mental, morally and spiritually as has never been possible before in our entire evolution. Global education must prepare our children for the coming of an independent… happy planetary age.” [19]

Lucile Green, a long-time world government activist and friend of Robert Muller, describes this new “planetary age” in her memoir, Journey To A Governed World,

The most urgent item on the planetary agenda is to set the limits of freedom and order in supra-national, global affairs. A constitution for the world is needed which combines the achievements of both hemispheres: that is, constitutional limitations and a bill of rights from the West and a spacious world-view from the East.” [20]

Another contemporary of Muller, William D. Hitt, wrote in his book The Global Citizen, “As global citizens, we will need a new type of thinking.” [21]

This is the crux of global social change: a “new type of thinking” that bridges international education, global ethics, world political unity, and the emergence of a “planetary spirituality.” It is the desire to shape and mold man according to man’s image. It is the desire to re-cast history and human endeavor to conform with a centralized-utopian version of a “world society” – a society shaped by propaganda, planetary-correctness, and a faulty and exalted image of man and nature. And finally, when contemplating the move towards this world society and the propaganda role of “international education,” consider the words of Scott Nearing, who was an avid socialist and proponent of world government,

The conversion of a continent of localists into a continent of nationalists in a few generations must rank as one of the outstanding achievements of modern times. Indoctrination works. Human loyalties can be and are speedily shifted by experience coupled with propaganda.

Worldizing processes are building up a great number and variety of world experiences. Millions of human beings, responding to these experiences, are already world conscious, world minded and prepared to function as citizens in a world society. Such human beings have passed through and graduated from the school of nationalism. They are wordlists. They wait with impatience for the emergence of a world commonwealth.” [22]

As the line between education, “political correctness,” and propaganda becomes increasingly blurred, it is essential that we navigate this global maze with sobriety, clear thinking, and an understanding of the forces that are shaping our 21st century.

Endnotes:

1. Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End (New York: Ballantine Books, 1953), p.69.
2. Scott Nearing, United World (New York: Island Press, 1944), p.221.
3. Naresh Singh, “Empowerment for Sustainable Development: An Overview,” Empowerment For Sustainable Development (Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing/Winnipeg, MB: International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1995), p.27.
4. Budd Hall and Edmund Sullivan, “Transformative Education and Environmental Action in the Ecozoic Era,” Empowerment For Sustainable Development (Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing/Winnipeg, MB: International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1995 – edited by Naresh Singh) p.102.
5. Julian Huxley, UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1947) p.13.
6. See “Founding Donors” at the IBO’s webpage, www.ibo.org [accessed February 18, 2004].
7. IBO Background Paper – Themes in Education, Education Weaves Together the Threads of Peace, IBO Head Office, Geneva, Switzerland, 15 June, 2003 (see page 2).
8. See “The Six Academic Subjects” at the IBO webpage, www.ibo.org [accessed February 18, 2004].
9. Mikhail Gorbachev, “The Earth Charter,” Speech: Rio+5 Forum, March 18, 1997. Green Cross International webpage, www.gci/ch/GreenCrossFamily/gorby/newspeeches/speeches/spech18.3.97.html [accessed March 20, 1998] This particular website has since been moved to http://web243.petrel.ch/GreenCrossFamily/gcfamilyhp.html and Mr. Gorbachev’s speech can be read at
http://web243.petrel.ch/GreenCrossFamily/gorby/newspeeches/speeches/speech18.3.97.html. See Gary Kah’s book, The New World Religion (Noblesville, IN: Hope International Publishing, 1999), chapter six. Note: These links are currently not accessible.
10. See “Our Partners” at the Earth Charter Community Summits webpage, www.earthchartersummits.org [accessed February 18, 2004].
11. See “Educational Resources” at the Earth Charter Community Summits webpage, www.earthchartersummits.org [accessed February 18, 2004].
12. The work of the IBO at the World Summit on Sustainable Development was published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Special Report on Selected Side Events at WSSD PC-III, 25 March – 5 April, 2002. The other connections can be easily found by doing a basic web search on the IBO and the United Nations.
13. IBO Press Release, “US Department of Education Grants IBO US$1.17 Million,” IBO Head Office, Geneva, Switzerland, 14 October 2003.
14. See “Founding Donors” at the IBO’s webpage, www.ibo.org [accessed February 18, 2004], it contains a list of other contributors and regular funding partners.
15. “IIS Director Delivers 2003 Peterson Lecture,” June 2003, document from the Institute of Ismaili Studies, posted at the IBO webpage as a PDF file.
16. Excerpt from the address by Mr. Federico Mayor, Director-General of UNESCO, 20 September 1989. Reprinted in Robert Muller’s book, Dialogues of Hope (Ardsley, NY: World Happiness and Cooperation, 1990), p.172.
17. Robert Muller, New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality (Anacortes, WA: World Happiness and Cooperation, 1982), p.49.
18. Ibid., p.8.
19. Ibid., p.8.
20. Lucile Green, Journey To A Governed World: Thru 50 Years in the Peace Movement (Berkeley, CA: 1991), pp.34-35.
21. William D. Hitt, The Global Citizen (Columbus, OH: Battelle Press, 1998), p.110.
22. Scott Nearing, United World (New York: Island Press, 1944), pp.20-21.