WHO: Processed meat cancer report message ‘misinterpreted’

WHO: Processed meat cancer report message ‘misinterpreted’

Health organisation clarifies it is not asking people to stop eating the foods altogether

Eating processed meat can lead to bowel cancer in humans and red meat is a likely cause of the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says. Video: Reuters

Rachel Flaherty

Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 11:18

First published: Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 10:08

 

 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said the message from its cancer report was “misinterpreted” and has clarified it is not asking people stop eating processed meats

This follows the release of its latest cancer research this week.

WHO published research on Monday that put bacon, ham and sausages in the same category of cancer risk as tobacco, asbestos, arsenic and alcohol.

The report also classified red meat – which includes beef, lamb and pork – as a “probable carcinogenic” and linked its consumption to a higher risk of pancreatic and prostate cancer.

Gregory Härtl, a spokesman for WHO, told The Irish Times the original message from the report was “misinterpreted”.

“We’re not saying stop eating processed meats altogether. Do not cut out meats completely as it has nutrients,” he said.

“But we do not want to do anything to excess. Research indicates reducing your consumption of processed meats can reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.”

WHO released the statement overnight in response a number of queries and requests for clarification following the cancer review.

Experts from the International Agency of Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of the WHO, concluded eating 50g of processed meat daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 per cent.

Mr Härtl said it was a “shortcoming” to of the classification system that tobacco, processed meats and arsenic were in the same group.

“We do not want to compare tobacco and meat because we know that no level of tobacco is safe,” he said.

According to estimates cited by the IARC, 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat. About 1 million cancer deaths per year are due to tobacco smoking, it said.

The report estimated 34,000 cancer deaths were attributable to diets high in processed meats and about 1 million cancer deaths were due to tobacco smoking.

He said early next year a standing group of experts would work on giving more details on the levels of processed and red meat people within the context of an overall healthy diet.

Mr Härtl said the classification does not explain amounts and how people use the products.

“Eat healthily means eating a balances diet, too much of anything is not good,” Mr Härtl said.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) said it would examine the report and issue necessary guideline changes, if necessary.

Currently, the FSAI recommends 300g of red meat a week, which is a 100g portion three days a week.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is also to review the research to see if changes are needed to dietary and nutritional policies for patients in hospitals and other public healthcare facilities.

The Irish Farmers’ Association has said they are concerned about the impact on Ireland’s €3 billion meat industry.

Russia’s Putin Says Global Warming Is ‘A Fraud’

Michael Bastasch

10:56 AM 10/29/2015

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes global warming is a “fraud” — a plot to keep Russia from using its vast oil and natural gas reserves.
Putin believes “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries, including Russia,” Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and Putin critic, told The New York Times.
“That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general,” Belkovsky said.
Putin has been casting doubt on man-made global warming since the early 2000s, according to the Times. In 2003, Putin told an international climate conference warming would allow Russians to “spend less on fur coats,” adding that “agricultural specialists say our grain production will increase, and thank God for that.”

 

Putin’s comments likely came after his staff “did very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate,” according to Andrey Illarionov, Putin’s former senior economic adviser, who’s now a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.
“We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited,” Illarionov said. “It became clear that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to ‘fight’ global warming was rather unfounded.”
The New York Times published an article on how the Russian media’s skepticism of global warming is being driven by Putin’s laissez faire attitude on the issue. The Times bashed the Russian autocrat for offering “only vague and modest pledges of emissions cuts ahead of December’s U.N. climate summit in Paris.”
Russia’s largely state-run media has spent little to no time covering global warming despite huge fires raging across Siberia. Instead of blaming the fires on warming, Russian news outlets tended to focus on “locals who routinely but carelessly burn off tall grasses every year, and the sometimes incompetent crews struggling to put the fires out.”

Such reasoning wasn’t good enough for the Times, which argued that “Russian media continue to pay little attention to an issue that animates so much of the world.”
Russian media leaders argue it’s not just the tone being set by Putin, but a weak economy and unemployment woes are a top concern of the Russian public — they don’t seem to care much about the weather.
“It is difficult to spend editorial resources on things that are now a low priority in the midst of the economic crisis,” Galina Timchenko, who runs a news site, told the Times. “Unfortunately climate change is not very interesting to the public.”
Low oil prices have hampered Russia’s economic growth, and spurred the Putin administration to take more action abroad, fomenting conflict in Ukraine and supporting the Assad regime in Syria. But at home, Russians are feeling the bite of cheap oil and western sanctions.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/29/russias-putin-says-global-warming-is-a-fraud/#ixzz3q9gUExEe

Blowing It On the Wind by Bjørn Lomborg

Blowing It On the Wind by Bjørn Lomborg 

Blowing It On the Wind

BERLIN – When considering climate change, most people think wind turbines and solar panels are a big part of the solution. But, over the next 25 years, the contribution of solar and wind power to resolving the problem will be trivial – and the cost will be enormous.

The International Energy Agency estimates that about 0.4% of global energy now comes from solar and wind. Even in 2040, with all governments implementing all of their green promises, solar and wind will make up just 2.2% of global energy. This is partly because wind and solar help to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions only from electricity generation, which account for 42% of the total, but not from the energy used in industry, transport, buildings, and agriculture.

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But the main reason why wind and solar power cannot be a major solution to climate change stems from an almost insurmountable obstacle: we need power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.

This has major implications for claims about costs. For example, wind power, we are repeatedly told, is just about to be cheaper than fossil fuels – or even, as a recent global news story claimed, that it is now cheaper than fossil fuels in Germany and the United Kingdom.

This is mostly a mirage – large-scale wind power will not work anytime soon without subsidies. As Warren Buffet says: “[W]e get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” The IEA estimates that the annual bill for global wind subsidies will increase over the next 25 years, not decrease or fall to zero.

One reason is that cheaper wind in Germany and the UK is true only for new construction. Most existing coal and gas suppliers cost about half or less than wind and could run for decades; instead, we half-close them to accommodate wind. Whereas the new, cheap German wind-energy producers cost $80 per MWh ($0.08 per kWh), the average German spot price in 2014 was just $33 per MWh.

More important, wind is cheaper only when the wind blows. When the wind is not blowing, wind-generated electricity is the most expensive electricity of all, because it cannot be bought at any price.

Installing more wind generators makes the electricity they produce less valuable. The first wind turbine brings a slightly above-average price per kWh. But with 30% market share, since all wind producers sell electricity at the same time (when the wind blows), the electricity is worth only 70% of the average electricity price. Solar prices drop even faster at similar market shares. So wind and solar generators have to be much cheaper than the average price to be competitive.

Moreover, wind and solar make fossil-fuel-generated electricity more expensive. Some people may think that is a good thing; but, if our societies are to continue functioning in cloudy, windless weather, that means relying on some fossil fuels. The IEA estimates that 56% of electricity will come from fossil fuels in 2040, with nuclear and hydro accounting for another 28%.

Significant wind and solar usage reduces the number of hours gas and coal generation operates; with large fixed costs, this makes every kWh more expensive. In a real electricity market, this would result in much higher electricity costs on windless evenings. But this is politically problematic, which is why markets are often constructed to spike much less.

In Spain, gas plants were used 66% of the time in 2004, but only 19% of the time now, largely because of more wind use. Because the plants must be kept running 57% of the time to avoid losses, many are likely to close. Across Europe, possibly 60% of all gas-fired generation is at risk.

Keeping the lights on means either accepting much higher prices or emulating what many European governments are beginning to do – namely, subsidize fossil-fuel plants. For example, in 2018 alone, the UK will pay nearly £1 billion ($1.5 billion), mostly to fossil-fuel-based generators, to keep backup capacity available for peak power usage. Building more wind and solar generating capacity with subsidies means societies end up paying three times for power – once for the power, once for subsidies to inefficient renewables, and once more to subsidize our now-inefficient fossil fuels.

Many will say, “But at least we cut CO₂.” That is true, although the reduction is perhaps only half of what is often touted, because the back-up power needed to smooth intermittent wind and solar is often more CO₂-heavy. Moreover, we pay dearly for these cuts. In 2013, the world produced 635 TWh of wind electricity and paid at least $28 billion in subsidies, or $76 per avoided ton of CO₂, and likely twice or more than that. When the estimated damage costs of CO₂ are about $5 per ton, and a ton of CO₂ can be cut in the European Union for about $10, we are paying a dollar to do less than 7-13 cents of good for the climate.

And its positive impact on the climate is negligible. Consider two worlds: in the first, all governments implement all their green promises, as indicated by the IEA, and increase solar and wind energy more than seven-fold by 2040; in the second, not one new solar panel or wind turbine is purchased over the next 25 years.

The difference in subsidy spending between the two worlds is more than $2.5 trillion. Yet the difference in temperature increase by the end of the century, run on the United Nations climate panel’s own model, would be a mere 0.0175°C (0.03°F).

One day, when the wind price has fallen much further and solar is almost as cheap as wind, significant investments in wind and solar could be a great idea. But even after decades of capital reallocation, these sources might account for a bit less than a quarter of our electricity.

In short, a world powered by solar and wind – one that has resolved the climate challenge – is very unlikely anytime soon.

Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/wind-power-wasted-subsidies-by-bj-rn-lomborg-2015-10#dcRPBZ0iAhqJ0SQV.99

Five Myths About Marijuana and You

Five Myths About Marijuana and You

By James Arlandson

Myths about marijuana are apparent in college papers, online, and in the media. The users are eager to believe they don’t have a problem, so an entire mythology has grown up around the plant.
But here are the counterarguments.
Myth 1: Marijuana’s potency today is meek and mild
We are far from the “Woodstock marijuana” of 1969.
At the University of Mississippi, the Potency Monitoring Project (PMP) has been underway for the past several decades, measuring the THC concentrations in confiscated marijuana. The trend is clear: the potency of samples has grown from ten percent from before 2002 to forty percent today.
It is true that low-grade marijuana is purchased by the majority of customers, but the average potency in nearly all products has risen (Caulkins et al. 28-29).
This high-potency marijuana is called “turbo marijuana” (Bennett and White 17). To draw comparisons with alcohol, in some marijuana products the difference in potency from past decades to now is like drinking a lite beer versus twelve shots of vodka a day (Sabet 35).
Myth 2: Marijuana is harmless and even good for your otherwise healthy body
As difficult it is to believe, some students say it’s healthy for them. Of course, this belief defies common sense and science. Any chemical- and carcinogen-laden smoke that enters the lungs and goes into the bloodstream is bound to damage the body and tweak the brain.
Currently, the best science has come up with at least twelve health defects.
Users read on pro-marijuana websites that these studies are tainted by Big Business (e.g. Big Pharma) and Big Government. However, why wouldn’t Big Pharma get involved in the manufacture and sales of marijuana if it becomes legal? It seems that their “profit motive” would lead them to sponsor studies that conclude there is nothing wrong with the product, certainly not enough wrong to stop its legalization.
As for Big Government, one conspiracy deserves another: the government should push studies to conclude that marijuana is harmless (when it really isn’t), so the government can keep people stupid and get more taxes and impose more control over them.
And what about Big Marijuana? Don’t legalization advocates have a “profit motive” to deny common sense and challenge science that doesn’t suit them, so they can get more customers and therefore more money?
Instead, let’s follow common sense and science: smoking or eating marijuana is unhealthy.

Myth 3: “Marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol” Those were President Obama’s off-the-cuff and unwise words.
But let’s appeal to common sense again. Alcohol is legal and readily available; more people drink it, so the monetary costs to society from drunkenness are higher than those from marijuana, which is not consumed as often because it isn’t (yet) legal. This argues against legalization of marijuana. If we legalize the mythologized plant, were making the same mistake twice.
Further, there is only one reason why someone smokes marijuana: to get high. In contrast, someone can drink an aperitif before dinner or a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and not get high. A small amount of dark red wine can even be heart-healthy. In reply, students say I shouldn’t compare a joint with a glass of wine. A half a bottle of wine is closer. They’re right, considering turbo marijuana that is currently being sold.
Nonetheless, getting drunk from a half-bottle of alcohol or high from one joint are symptoms of a deeper problem.
But the difference is clear: alcohol in moderation, particularly wine, which does not get a person inebriated, is not the same as smoking a joint that always gets a user high. And if a marijuana smoker believes that marijuana does not get him high (some students believe this), then why bother inhaling smoke?
Myth 4: Smoking or eating marijuana is a safe “delivery system” for medical purposes

“We will use [medical marijuana] as a red herring to give marijuana a good name”--

Keith Stroup, 1979, head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) (qtd. in Sabet 55)
In no other area of medicine is it allowed or recommended to smoke a plant or eat candy or brownies or whatnot in unstandardized doses for medical purposes. The FDA has never recommended this delivery system. Do we chew on the opium plant to get morphine or the willow bark to get our daily dose of aspirin? Whatever medicine exists in these plants needs to be extracted so the medicine can be controlled (Sabet 57).
The FDA writes in 2013:

… [T]here is currently sound evidence that smoked marijuana is harmful … [N]o sound scientific studies support[s] medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use. There are alternative FDA-approved medications in existence for treatment of many of the proposed uses of smoked marijuana. (updated in 2014)

Rent-a-docs are an open mockery as they prescribe marijuana either by smoking it or eating “edibles.” Accordingly, after warning real doctors to exercise great care in prescribing approved forms of cannabis (i.e. synthetic versions), the American Society of Addiction Medicine writes, “ASAM rejects smoking as a means of drug delivery since it is not safe.”
The American Medical Association recommends placing a warning label on marijuana products that are not approved by the FDA, but are legal by the vote. The label should read: “Marijuana has a high potential for abuse. It has no scientifically proven, currently accepted medical use for preventing or treating any disease process in the United States.”
And so far the only forms approved by the FDA are in pills.
“Rent-a-docs” need to be held liable in a court of law, if something goes wrong with their “patients.”
Myth 5: It’s my body, so I can do what I want with it without bothering anyone else
This is called autonomy: the right to self-rule. In reply, however, private behavior always seeps out into public. No one makes drug consumption choices by himself; he is usually influenced by others. If marijuana is popular or fashionable, then people are drawn to it (Caulkins et al. 121-24).
Substance abuse -- whether strong doses of alcohol or harder drugs or marijuana -- monetarily and personally impacts society and is never an individual matter. By keeping marijuana illegal, if the law can prevent some measure of private self-damage that always leaks out into the public sphere, then it is worth the modest cost.
Let’s wrap this up.
To be blunt but truthful, marijuana legalizers -- Big Marijuana -- have told half-truths and outright lies against common sense and the science that doesn’t suit them, to snare as many customers as they can, so the advocates as a whole can make more money. It’s a commercial enterprise.
One gets the impression that if the science suited them, they would suddenly drop their hyper-skepticism and celebrate the results.

Further, claiming or implying that smoking or eating only marijuana can relieve suffering, the legalizers also manipulate people’s natural compassion on those who suffer with diseases and pain. But here again science does not support their claims. Of course any substance that tweaks the brain is bound to provide some relief, but smoking or eating it is not a wise and safe delivery system. Therefore, states that have legalized marijuana for recreational or medical purposes must reverse their course.
And states contemplating doing so must not go down this smoky path.
James Arlandson, Ph.D. (1994), has taught college and university for years.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/five_myths_about_marijuana_and_you.html#ixzz3q4gu8e7e
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13 reasons why we should not admit Muslim 'refugees'

13 reasons why we should not admit Muslim 'refugees'

By Carol Brown

 

President Obama wants to flood this country with “Syrian refugees.” As most AT readers know, we should not admit a single one. Unfortunately, a lot of folks are in the dark about what’s going on and/or are so brainwashed by politically correct thinking they dare not acknowledge the truth. We need to keep chipping away at this gargantuan problem of Americans choosing stupidity over survival.
Any one of the reasons noted below should be sufficient to make the case as to why we must close our doors to Muslims pouring out of Islamic countries heading points West. But in case you encounter someone who is truly thick (and there are a lot of them out there), it’s always best to have several facts on hand.

• They are not “refugees.” They are invaders; soldiers of Allah: What is unfolding is hijra, otherwise known as immigration jihad. It is written in the Quran and is a powerful strategy the Islamic world has used for many centuries to overwhelm nations and assert dominance. We must not allow our culture to be undermined and destroyed by increasing the population of Muslims in the United States. (See here, here, here, and here. See here for a book on the topic by Ann Corcoran.)
• The vast majority of Muslims flooding into the West are young men: We are being invaded by an army of young fighting-age men from across the Islamic world. Muslim males often wreak havoc wherever they go, including disproportionately high levels of involvement with criminal activity, rape, threats against others, terrorism, and everything in between. We should not be importing a demographic of people who have a propensity toward violence. (See here, here, here, and here.)
• We can’t vet these invaders: The FBI has stated we are unable to screen people leaving Islamic countries en route to the West. That should count for something. It’s madness to invite people into one’s home – one’s nation – when we know next-to-nothing about them. In addition, the FBI is stretched to its limit with nearly 1,000 ISIS investigations spanning all 50 states. We are doing a poor job of playing offense and we’re on the verge of losing our ability to play defense. That is a dangerous combination that will lead to increased violence against Americans. (See here, here, and here.)
• The teachings of Islam are incompatible with Western civilization: Although the FBI can’t vet these invaders the way they would like to, they’re already sufficiently vetted because we know they will bring an ideology with them that is in direct conflict with our values. Islam is a totalitarian vision that seeks world domination. As in convert, pay the jizya tax, or die. As in the teachings of the Quran. As in what is unfolding across the Middle East and beyond. As in the death knell for any nation these conquerors infiltrate in relatively large (or even small) numbers. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here. List of jihad attacks in America, here, and here.)
• Terrorists will be among them: The FBI has stated this will be inevitable – that terrorists will slip through. It has already been documented in Europe. We cannot afford to import terrorists. Not a single one. (See here, here, here, and here.)
• Some invaders morph into jihadists: Many may not be terrorists. Yet. But plenty will undoubtedly become radicalized once they’re here. We know this from past history. We cannot risk importing one more person who may become a jihadist. (See here, here, here, and here.)
• The number we admit will increase exponentially in a year or two: Once approved for refugee status invaders can petition to bring immediate family members. And they do. And not just one or two (though that would be bad enough), but often as many as eight family members. This increases the base number initially admitted dramatically from, for example, 200,000 (which is 200,000 too many) to nearly 2,000,000. (See here and here.)
• Support for sharia law: More than half of Muslims in America want sharia law and 25% support violence against Americans who commit blasphemy against their religion and their prophet. The more Muslims we admit, the higher those already staggeringly high numbers will likely go. Sharia law conflicts with our Constitution. It makes no sense to import people who embrace an oppressive legal code that is not in line with our laws and our values, nor is it in our best interests to admit (more) people who feel justified in committing violent acts against Americans. (See here, here, here, and here.)
• Lack of assimilation: Muslims in Western countries often form their own enclaves and do not assimilate. This is another way they assert supremacy and maintain Islamic values (such as they are) instead of adopting the values of the host country. It also increases the risk of developing no-go zones. It is not in our interest to admit people who prefer to live in insular communities, living life as if still in their native country. Assimilation is necessary to maintain our values and our identity as a nation. (See here, here, here, and here.)
• There will be increased proliferation of mosques and Islamic schools: The more Muslims we admit, the more mosques and Islamic schools that will be built. More than 80% of mosques in the United States teach jihad and/or advance the idea of sharia law while many Islamic schools indoctrinate their students to distain non-believers. We cannot afford to have more Islamic institutions that teach hate and incite members to violence. In addition, mosques also double as military installations when the time is ripe. (See here, here, here, here, and here.)
• Inbreeding: Half of the Muslim population worldwide is inbred because Mohammed married his cousin and stands as the model of the perfect man. Inbreeding deteriorates human genetics. We should not be importing people who are genetically compromised and who will continue to perpetuate inbreeding and genetic decline, including a baseline drop in average IQ currently 10-16 points below normal. (See here, here, and here.)
• Disease: Many of these invaders have diseases, many of them contagious and life-threatening, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, cholera, typhoid, and HIV/AIDS among many others. There are also diseases unknown in the West. This demographic of people are also not inoculated against diseases we eradicated a long time ago, such as polio. We should not be admitting people into this country who will introduce and spread disease in society that will cost money to treat, and more importantly, that will cost American lives. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
• They will rely on the public dole: Many invaders from Islamic countries are uneducated and unemployable, if not also genetically damaged. A disproportionately high percentage of them will be dependent on a wide array of public assistance for all manner of things, including medical care, food, clothing, shelter, education, job training, transportation, child care, interpreters, and other goods and services. This dependence occurs, at the very least, during the initial period after their arrival. For many, independence is never attained. It makes no sense to import people who will siphon off huge sums of money from the public dole. (See here, here, here, and here.)

Each and every one of us must do all that can to educate others about this Islamic advance against the West and what it means for our future.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/13_reasons_why_we_should_not_admit_muslim_refugees.html#ixzz3q4cgkg4W
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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

By James Simpson

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth.

In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of "crisis" they were trying to create:

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.

No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:

1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

Capitalizing on the racial unrest of the 1960s, Cloward and Piven saw the welfare system as their first target. They enlisted radical black activist George Wiley, who created the National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO) to implement the strategy. Wiley hired militant foot soldiers to storm welfare offices around the country, violently demanding their "rights." According to a City Journal article by Sol Stern, welfare rolls increased from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s as a result, and in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls... for every two working in the city's private economy."

According to another City Journal article titled "Compassion Gone Mad":

The movement's impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay's first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.  

The vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975. Rudy Giuliani cited Cloward and Piven by name as being responsible for "an effort at economic sabotage." He also credited Cloward-Piven with changing the cultural attitude toward welfare from that of a temporary expedient to a lifetime entitlement, an attitude which in-and-of-itself has caused perhaps the greatest damage of all.

Cloward and Piven looked at this strategy as a gold mine of opportunity. Within the newly organized groups, each offensive would find an ample pool of foot soldier recruits willing to advance its radical agenda at little or no pay, and expand its base of reliable voters, legal or otherwise. The radicals' threatening tactics also would accrue an intimidating reputation, providing a wealth of opportunities for extorting monetary and other concessions from the target organizations. In the meantime, successful offensives would create an ever increasing drag on society. As they gleefully observed:

Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.

The next time you drive through one of the many blighted neighborhoods in our cities, or read of the astronomical crime, drug addiction, and out-of-wedlock birth rates, or consider the failed schools, strapped police and fire resources of every major city, remember Cloward and Piven's thrill that "...the drain on local resources persists indefinitely."

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

In 1970, one of George Wiley's protégés, Wade Rathke -- like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn't accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke's group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income "rights." Shortly thereafter they changed "Arkansas" to "Association of" and ACORN went nationwide.

Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN's website: "ACORN is the nation's largest grassroots community organization of low-and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country," It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts.

Voting

On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places.

That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony.

ACORN's voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

• 1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
• 2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
• 3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.

In this effort, ACORN sets up registration sites all over the country and has been frequently cited for turning in fraudulent registrations, as well as destroying republican applications. In the 2004-2006 election cycles alone, ACORN was accused of widespread voter fraud in 12 states. It may have swung the election for one state governor.

ACORN's website brags: "Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote." Project vote boasts 4 million. I wonder how many of them are dead? For the 2008 cycle, ACORN and Project Vote have pulled out all the stops. Given their furious nationwide effort, it is not inconceivable that this presidential race could be decided by fraudulent votes alone.

Barack Obama ran ACORN's Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven's aspirations for ACORN's voter registration efforts:

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation's wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.

Illegal Immigration

As I have written elsewhere, the Radical Left's offensive to promote illegal immigration is "Cloward-Piven on steroids." ACORN is at the forefront of this movement as well, and was a leading organization among a broad coalition of radical groups, including Soros' Open Society Institute, the Service Employees International Union (ACORN founder Wade Rathke also runs a SEIU chapter), and others, that became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CCIR fortunately failed to gain passage for the 2007 illegal immigrant amnesty bill, but its goals have not changed.

The burden of illegal immigration on our already overstressed welfare system has been widely documented. Some towns in California have even been taken over by illegal immigrant drug cartels. The disease, crime and overcrowding brought by illegal immigrants places a heavy burden on every segment of society and every level of government, threatening to split this country apart at the seams. In the meantime, radical leftist efforts to grant illegal immigrants citizenship guarantee a huge pool of new democrat voters. With little border control, terrorists can also filter in.

Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Governor Jim Edgars, who feared the law was an opening to widespread vote fraud.

His fears were warranted as the Motor Voter law has since been cited as a major opportunity for vote fraud, especially for illegal immigrants, even terrorists. According to the Wall Street Journal: "After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote..."

ACORN's dual offensives on voting and illegal immigration are handy complements. Both swell the voter rolls with reliable democrats while assaulting the country ACORN seeks to destroy with overwhelming new problems.

Mortgage Crisis

And now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago.  It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter's answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low income, high risk customers. PhD economist and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm has called it: "a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks."

ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post:

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications-but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining.  Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.

As a New York Post article describes it:

A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

The lender they were speaking of was Countrywide, which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.

Investor's Business Daily added:

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. (Emphasis, mine.)

Since these loans were to be underwritten by the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."

And if you think Washington policy makers cared about ACORN's negative influence, think again. Before this whole mess came down, a Democrat-sponsored bill on the table would have created an "Affordable Housing Trust Fund," granting ACORN access to approximately $500 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revenues with little or no oversight.

Even now, unbelievably -- on the brink of national disaster -- Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Senator Lindsay Graham reported last night (9/25/08) in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of On the Record that Democrats want 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!

This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN's efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.

Enter Barack Obama

In attempting to capture the significance of Barack Obama's Radical Left connections and his relation to the Cloward Piven strategy, I constructed following flow chart. It is by no means complete. There are simply too many radical individuals and organizations to include them all here. But these are perhaps the most significant.

The chart puts Barack Obama at the epicenter of an incestuous stew of American radical leftism. Not only are his connections significant, they practically define who he is. Taken together, they constitute a who's who of the American radical left, and guiding all is the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Conspicuous in their absence are any connections at all with any other group, moderate, or even mildly leftist. They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.

Saul Alinsky

Most people are unaware that Barack Obama received his training in "community organizing" from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. But he did. In and of itself that marks his heritage and training as that of a radical activist. One really needs go no further. But we have.

Bill Ayers

Obama objects to being associated with SDS bomber Bill Ayers, claiming he is being smeared with "guilt by association." But they worked together at the Woods Fund. The Wall Street Journal added substantially to our knowledge by describing in great detail Obama's work over five years with SDS bomber Bill Ayers on the board of a non-profit, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to push a radical agenda on public school children. As Stanley Kurtz states:

"...the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."

Also included in the mix is Theresa Heinz Kerry's favorite charity, the Tides Foundation. A partial list of Tides grants tells you all you need to know: ACLU, ACORN, Center for American Progress, Center for Constitutional Rights (a communist front,) CAIR, Earth Justice, Institute for Policy Studies (KGB spy nest), National Lawyers Guild (oldest communist front in U.S.), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and practically every other radical group there is. ACORN's Wade Rathke runs a Tides subsidiary, the Tides Center.

Carl Davidson and the New Party

We have heard about Bomber Bill, but we hear little about fellow SDS member Carl Davidson. According to Discover the Networks, Davidson was an early supporter of Barack Obama and a prominent member of Chicago's New Party, a synthesis of CPUSA members, Socialists, ACORN veterans and other radicals. Obama sought and received the New Party's endorsement, and they assisted with his campaign. The New Party also developed a strong relationship with ACORN. As an excellent article on the New Party observes: "Barack Obama knew what he was getting into and remains an ideal New Party candidate."

George Soros

The chart also suggests the reason for George Soros' fervent support of Obama. The President of his Open Society Institute is Aryeh Neier, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As mentioned above, three other former SDS members had extensive contact with Obama: Bill Ayers, Carl Davidson and Wade Rathke. Surely Aryeh Neier would have heard from his former colleagues of the promising new politician. More to the point, Neier is firmly committed to supporting the hugely successful radical organization, ACORN, and would be certain back their favored candidate, Barack Obama.

ACORN

Obama has spent a large portion of his professional life working for ACORN or its subsidiaries, representing ACORN as a lawyer on some of its most critical issues, and training ACORN leaders. Stanley Kurtz's excellent National Review article, "Inside Obama's Acorn." also describes Obama's ACORN connection in detail. But I can't improve on Obama's own words:

I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career (emphasis added). Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. - Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax.)

In another excellent article on Obama's ACORN connections, Newsmax asks a nagging question:

It would be telling to know if Obama, during his years at Columbia, had occasion to meet Cloward and study the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was?? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?

As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN's Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN's successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN's representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns -- both with money and campaign workers; it is doubtful that he was unaware of ACORN's true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

Fast-forward to 2005 when an obsequious, servile and scraping Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing in ceremony for newly-elected Illinois Senator, Barack Obama. Mudd called, the Congressional Black Caucus "our family" and "the conscience of Fannie Mae."

In 2005, Republicans sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Senator John McCain was at the forefront of that effort. But it failed due to an intense lobbying effort put forward by Fannie and Freddie.

In his few years as a U.S. senator, Obama has received campaign contributions of $126,349, from Fannie and Freddie, second only to the $165,400 received by Senator Chris Dodd, who has been getting donations from them since 1988. What makes Obama so special?

His closest advisers are a dirty laundry list of individuals at the heart of the financial crisis: former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson; Former Fannie Mae CEO and former Clinton Budget Director Frank Raines; and billionaire failed Superior Bank of Chicago Board Chair Penny Pritzker.

Johnson had to step down as adviser on Obama's V.P. search after this gem came out:

An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report^[1] from September 2004 found that, during Johnson's tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998.^[2] A 2006 OFHEO report^[3] found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson's compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.

Obama denies ties to Raines but the Washington Post calls him a member of "Obama's political circle." Raines and Johnson were fined $3 million by the Office of Federal Housing Oversight for their manipulation of Fannie books. The fine is small change however, compared to the $50 million Raines was able to obtain in improper bonuses as a result of juggling the books.

Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the current Finance Chairperson of Obama's presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown. She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action law suit but doesn't seem to have come out of it too badly.

As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.

Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.

Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!

God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, DC the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html#ixzz3qMfHdKGr
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