Will the Supreme Court Decide the 2008 Election?
How many times are we going to just roll over when the government chooses to ignore the Constitution? Either we have a Constitution or we don't. Either we are a nation of rule by law or rule by men. If it is the latter, it is the very definition of tyranny.
Unless we vehemently insist that the Constitution is to be followed and obeyed by the government, the institution to which it specifically applies, it will cease to exist and forever be lost. It is almost gone. Read it again. Read the Declaration of Independence first, if you haven't read either lately, to understand why the Constitution was written. Ask yourself what you are likely to be given as a replacement, a replacement you will be made to accept by force, by those who actively seek to destroy the Constitution.
My line in the sand was crossed long ago. Where is your line in the sand?
OBAMA MUST STAND UP NOW OR STEP DOWN
By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
October 29, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
America is facing potentially the gravest constitutional crisis in her history. Barack Obama must either stand up in a public forum and prove, with conclusive documentary evidence, that he is “a natural born Citizen†of the United States who has not renounced his American citizenship—or he must step down as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President of the United States—preferably before the election is held, and in any event before the Electoral College meets. Because, pursuant to the Constitution, only “a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of th[e] Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President†(Article II, Section 1, Clause 4). And Obama clearly was not “a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of th[e] Constitution.â€
Whether the evidence will show that Obama is, or is not, “a natural born Citizen†who has never renounced his American citizenship is an open question. The arguments on both sides are as yet speculative. But Obama’s stubborn refusal to provide what he claims is “his own†country with conclusive proof on that score compels the presumption that he knows, or at least strongly suspects, that no sufficient evidence in his favor exists. After all, he is not being pressed to solve a problem in quantum physics that is “above his pay grade,†but only asked to provide the public with the original copy of some official record that establishes his citizenship. The vast majority of Americans could easily do so. Why will Obama not dispel the doubts about his eligibility—unless he can not?
Now that Obama’s citizenship has been seriously questioned, the burden of proof rests squarely on his shoulders. The “burden of establishing a delegation of power to the United States * * * is upon those making the claim.†Bute v. Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, 653 (1948). And if each of the General Government’s powers must be proven (not simply presumed) to exist, then every requirement that the Constitution sets for any individual’s exercise of those powers must also be proven (not simply presumed) to be fully satisfied before that individual may exercise any of those powers. The Constitution’s command that “[n]o Person except a natural born Citizen * * * shall be eligible to the Office of President†is an absolute prohibition against the exercise of each and every Presidential power by certain unqualified individuals. Actually (not simply presumptively or speculatively) being “a natural born Citizen†is the condition precedent sine qua non for avoiding this prohibition. Therefore, anyone who claims eligibility for “the Office of President†must, when credibly challenged, establish his qualifications in this regard with sufficient evidence.
In disposing of the lawsuit Berg v. Obama, which squarely presents the question of Obama’s true citizenship, the presiding judge complained that Berg “would have us derail the democratic process by invalidating a candidate for whom millions of people voted and who underwent excessive vetting during what was one of the most hotly contested presidential primary in living memory.†This is exceptionally thin hogwash. A proper judicial inquiry into Obama’s eligibility for “the Office of President†will not deny his supporters a “right†to vote for him—rather, it will determine whether they have any such “right†at all. For, just as Obama’s “right†to stand for election to “the Office of President†is contingent upon his being “a natural born Citizen,†so too are the “rights†of his partisans to vote for him contingent upon whether he is even eligible for that “Office.†If Obama is ineligible, then no one can claim any “right†to vote for him. Indeed, in that case every American who does vote has a constitutional duty to vote against him.
The judge in Berg v. Obama dismissed the case, not because Obama has actually proven that he is eligible for “the Office of President,†but instead because, simply as a voter, Berg supposedly lacks “standing†to challenge Obama’s eligibility:
regardless of questions of causation, the grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact. * ** [A] candidate’s ineligibility under the Natural Born Citizen Clause does not result in an injury in fact to voters. By extension, the theoretical constitutional harm experienced by voters does not change as the candidacy of an allegedly ineligible candidate progresses from the primaries to the general election.
This pronouncement does not rise to the level of hogwash.
First, the Constitution mandates that “[t]he judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution†(Article III, Section 2, Clause 1). Berg’s suit plainly “aris[es] under th[e] Constitution,†in the sense of raising a critical constitutional issue. So the only question is whether his suit is a constitutional “Case[ ].†The present judicial test for whether a litigant’s claim constitutes a constitutional “Case[ ]†comes under the rubric of “standingâ€â€”a litigant with “standing†may proceed; one without “standing†may not. “Standing,†however, is not a term found anywhere in the Constitution. Neither are the specifics of the doctrine of “standing,†as they have been elaborated in judicial decision after judicial decision, to be found there. Rather, the test for “standing†is almost entirely a judicial invention.
True enough, the test for “standing†is not as ridiculous as the judiciary’s so-called “compelling governmental interest test,†which licenses public officials to abridge individuals’ constitutional rights and thereby exercise powers the Constitution withholds from those officials, which has no basis whatsoever in the Constitution, and which is actually anti-constitutional. Neither is the doctrine of “standing†as abusive as the “immunities†judges have cut from whole cloth for public officials who violate their constitutional “Oath[s] or Affirmation[s], to support this Constitution†(Article VI, Clause 3)—in the face of the Constitution’s explicit limitation on official immunities (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1). For the Constitution does require that a litigant must present a true “Case[ ].†Yet, because the test for “standing†is largely a contrivance of all-too-fallible men and women, its specifics can be changed as easily as they were adopted, when they are found to be faulty. And they must be changed if the consequences of judicial ignorance, inertia, and inaction are not to endanger America’s constitutional form of government. Which is precisely the situation here, inasmuch as the purported “election†of Obama as President, notwithstanding his ineligibility for that office, not only will render illegitimate the Executive Branch of the General Government, but also will render impotent its Legislative Branch (as explained below).
Second, the notion upon which the judge in Berg v. Obama fastened—namely, that Berg’s “grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact,†i.e., if everyone is injured or potentially injured then no one has “standingâ€â€”is absurd on its face.
To be sure, no one has yet voted for Obama in the general election. But does that mean that no one in any group smaller than the general pool of America’s voters in its entirety has suffered specific harm from Obama’s participation in the electoral process to date? Or will suffer such harm from his continuing participation? What about the Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton as their party’s nominee, but were saddled with Obama because other Democrats voted for him even though they could not legally have done so if his lack of eligibility for “the Office of President†had been judicially determined before the Democratic primaries or convention? What about the States that have registered Obama as a legitimate candidate for President, but will have been deceived, perhaps even defrauded, if he is proven not to be “a natural born Citizen� And as far as the general election is concerned, what about the voters among erstwhile Republicans and Independents who do not want John McCain as President, and therefore will vote for Obama (or any Democrat, for that matter) as “the lesser of two evils,†but who later on may have their votes effectively thrown out, and may have to suffer McCain’s being declared the winner of the election, if Obama’s ineligibility is established? Or what about those voters who made monetary contributions to Obama’s campaign, but may at length discover that their funds went, not only to an ineligible candidate, but to one who knew he was ineligible?
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These obvious harms pale into insignificance, however, compared to the national disaster of having an outright usurper purportedly “elected†as “President.†In this situation, it is downright idiocy to claim, as did the judge in Berg v. Obama, that a “generalized†injury somehow constitutes no judicially cognizable injury at all. Self-evidently, to claim that a “generalized†grievance negates “the existence of an injury in fact†is patently illogical—for if everyone in any group can complain of the same harm of which any one of them can complain, then the existence of some harm cannot be denied; and the more people who can complain of that harm, the greater the aggregate or cumulative seriousness of the injury. The whole may not be greater than the sum of its parts; but it is at least equal to that sum! Moreover, for a judge to rule that no injury redressable in a court of law exists, precisely because everyone in America will be subjected to an individual posing as “the President†but who constitutionally cannot be (and therefore is not) the President, sets America on the course of judicially assisted political suicide. If Obama turns out to be nothing more than an usurper who has fraudulently seized control of the Presidency, not only will the Constitution have been egregiously flouted, but also this whole country could be, likely will be, destroyed as a consequence. And if this country is even credibly threatened with destruction, every American will be harmed—irretrievably, should the threat become actuality—including those who voted or intend to vote for Obama, who are also part of We the People. Therefore, in this situation, any and every American must have “standing†to demand—and must demand, both in judicial fora and in the fora of public opinion—that Obama immediately and conclusively prove himself eligible for “the Office of President.â€
Utterly imbecilic as an alternative is the judge’s prescription in Berg v. Obama that,
[i]f, through the political process, Congress determines that citizens, voters, or party members should police the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for the Presidency, then it is free to pass laws conferring standing on individuals like [Berg]. Until that time, voters do not have standing to bring the sort of challenge that [Berg] attempts to bring * * * .
Recall that this selfsame judge held that Berg has no constitutional “Case[ ]†because he has no “standing,†and that he has no “standing†because he has no “injury in fact,†only a “generalized†“grievance.†This purports to be a finding of constitutional law: namely, that constitutionally no “Case[ ]†exists. How, then, can Congress constitutionally grant “standing†to individuals such as Berg, when the courts (assuming the Berg decision is upheld on appeal) have ruled that those individuals have no “standing� If “standing†is a constitutional conception, and the courts deny that “standing†exists in a situation such as this, and the courts have the final say as to what the Constitution means—then Congress lacks any power to contradict them. Congress cannot instruct the courts to exercise jurisdiction beyond what the Constitution includes within “the judicial Power.†Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 173-180 (1803).
In fact, though, a Congressional instruction is entirely unnecessary. Every American has what lawyers call “an implied cause of actionâ€â€”directly under Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution—to require that anyone standing for “the Office of President†must verify his eligibility for that position, at least when serious allegations have been put forward that he is not eligible, and he has otherwise refused to refute those allegations with evidence that should be readily available if he is eligible. That “Case[ ]†is one the Constitution itself defines. And the Constitution must be enforceable in such a “Case[ ]†in a timely manner, by anyone who cares to seek enforcement, because of the horrendous consequences that will ensue if it is flouted.
What are some of those consequences?
First, if Obama is not “a natural born Citizen†or has renounced such citizenship, he is simply not eligible for “the Office of President†(Article II, Section 1, Clause 4). That being so, he cannot be “elected†by the voters, by the Electoral College, or by the House of Representatives (see Amendment XII). For neither the voters, nor the Electors, nor Members of the House can change the constitutional requirement, even by unanimous vote inter sese (see Article V). If, nonetheless, the voters, the Electors, or the Members of the House purport to “elect†Obama, he will be nothing but an usurper, because the Constitution defines him as such. And he can never become anything else, because an usurper cannot gain legitimacy if even all of the country aid, abets, accedes to, or acquiesces in his usurpation.
Second, if Obama dares to take the Presidential “Oath or Affirmation†of office, knowing that he is not “a natural born Citizen,†he will commit the crime of perjury or false swearing (see Article II, Section 1, Clause 7). For, being ineligible for “the Office of President, he cannot “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,†or even execute it at all, to any degree. Thus, his very act of taking the “Oath or Affirmation†will be a violation thereof! So, even if the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court himself looks the other way and administers the “Oath or Affirmation,†Obama will derive no authority whatsoever from it.
Third, his purported “Oath or Affirmation†being perjured from the beginning, Obama’s every subsequent act in the usurped “Office of President†will be a criminal offense under Title 18, United States Code, Section 242, which provides that:
[w]hoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, * * *, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined * * * or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Plainly enough, every supposedly “official†act performed by an usurper in the President’s chair will be an act “under color of law†that necessarily and unavoidably “subjects [some] person * * * to the deprivation of [some] rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution * * * of the United Statesâ€â€”in the most general case, of the constitutional “right[ ]†to an eligible and duly elected individual serving as President, and the corresponding constitutional “immunit[y]†from subjection to an usurper pretending to be “the President.â€
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Fourth, if he turns out to be nothing but an usurper acting in the guise of “the President,†Obama will not constitutionally be the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States†(see Article II, Section 2, Clause 1). Therefore, he will be entitled to no obedience whatsoever from anyone in those forces. Indeed, for officers or men to follow any of his purported “orders†will constitute a serious breach of military discipline—and in extreme circumstances perhaps even “war crimes.†In addition, no one in any civilian agency in the Executive Branch of the General Government will be required to put into effect any of Obama’s purported “proclamations,†“executive orders,†or “directives.â€
Fifth, as nothing but an usurper (if he becomes one), Obama will have no conceivable authority “to make Treatiesâ€, or to “nominate, and * * * appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not * * * otherwise provided for [in the Constitution]†(Article II, Section 2, Clause 2). And therefore any “Treaties†or “nominat[ions], and * * * appoint[ments]†he purports to “make†will be void ab initio, no matter what the Senate does, because the Senate can neither authorize an usurper to take such actions in the first place, nor thereafter ratify them. One need not be a lawyer to foresee what further, perhaps irremediable, chaos must ensue if an usurper, even with “the Advice and Consent of the Senateâ€, unconstitutionally “appoint[s] * * * Judges of the Supreme Court†whose votes thereafter make up the majorities that wrongly decide critical “Cases†of constitutional law.
Sixth, and perhaps most importantly, Congress can pass no law while an usurper pretends to occupy “the Office of President.†The Constitution provides that “[e]very Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States†(Article I, Section 7, Clause 2). Not to an usurper posturing as “the President of the United States,†but to the true and rightful President. If no such true and rightful President occupies the White House, no “Bill†will or can, “before it become a Law, be presented to [him].†If no “Bill†is so presented, no “Bill†will or can become a “Law.†And any purported “Law†that the usurper “approve[s]†and “sign[s],†or that Congress passes over the usurper’s “Objections,†will be a nullity. Thus, if Obama deceitfully “enters office†as an usurper, Congress will be rendered effectively impotent for as long as it acquiesces in his pretenses as “President.â€
Seventh, if Obama does become an usurper posturing as “the President,†Congress cannot even impeach him because, not being the actual President, he cannot be “removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors†(see Article II, Section 4). In that case, some other public officials would have to arrest him—with physical force, if he would not go along quietly—in order to prevent him from continuing his imposture. Obviously, this could possibly lead to armed conflicts within the General Government itself, or among the States and the people.
Eighth, even did something approaching civil war not eventuate from Obama’s hypothetical usurpation, if the Establishment allowed Obama to pretend to be “the President,†and the people acquiesced in that charade, just about everything that was done during his faux “tenure in office†by anyone connected with the Executive Branch of the General Government, and quite a bit done by the Legislative Branch and perhaps the Judicial Branch as well, would be arguably illegitimate and subject to being overturned when a constitutional President was finally installed in office. The potential for chaos, both domestically and internationally, arising out of this systemic uncertainty is breathtaking.
The underlying problem will not be obviated if Obama, his partisans in the Democratic Party, and his cheerleaders and cover-up artists in the big media simply stonewall the issue of his (non)citizenship and contrive for him to win the Presidential election. The cat is already out of the bag and running all over the Internet. If he continues to dodge the issue, Obama will be dogged with this question every day of his purported “Presidency.†And inevitably the truth will out. For the issue is too simple, the evidence (or lack of it) too accessible. Either Obama can prove that he is “a natural born Citizen†who has not renounced his citizenship; or he cannot. And he will not be allowed to slip through with some doctored “birth certificate†generated long after the alleged fact. On a matter this important, Americans will demand that, before its authenticity is accepted, any supposed documentary evidence of that sort be subjected to reproducible forensic analyses conducted by reputable, independent investigators and laboratories above any suspicion of being influenced by or colluding with any public official, bureaucracy, political party, or other special-interest organization whatsoever.
Berg v. Obama may very well end up in the Supreme Court. Yet that ought to be unnecessary. For Obama’s moral duty is to produce the evidence of his citizenship sua sponte et instanter. Otherwise, he will be personally responsible for all the consequences of his refusal to do so.
Of course, if Obama knows that he is not “a natural born Citizen†who never renounced his American citizenship, then he also knows that he and his henchmen have perpetrated numerous election-related frauds throughout the country—the latest, still-ongoing one a colossal swindle targeting the American people as a whole. If that is the case, his refusal “to be a witness against himself†is perfectly explicable and even defensible on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment. Howsoever justified as a matter of criminal law, though, Obama’s silence and inaction will not obviate the necessity for him to prove his eligibility for “the Office of President.†The Constitution may permit him to “take the Fifth;†but it will not suffer him to employ that evasion as a means to usurp the Presidency of the United States.
© 2008 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserve
Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).
For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.
He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us
He is also the co-author (under a nom de plume) of the political novel CRA$HMAKER: A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com
His latest book is: "How To Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary" ... and Constitutional "Homeland Security," Volume One, The Nation in Arms...
He can be reached at:
13877 Napa Drive
Manassas, Virginia 20112.
E-Mail: Not available
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This is based on racist bullshit, with a dash of sexism
Dicktater, I knooooooow you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on Obama, but I would like to offer my opinion that this Obama-citizenship malarkey is founded on unconscious racism -- that is, I would bet the farm that if we could crawl into the brain of Phil Berg and others like him, we would find Obama playing the role of scary Black man. I think if he was white, the theory (that he is not a US citizen) would not have nearly the traction that it does. (The sexism part comes in when you consider how things would play if he had been born to a white American father married to a Black Kenyan woman -- there's a bias here as well that nationality is patrilineal.)
So here's the deal. Let's say he was in fact born in Kenya, which I don't believe he was. The circumstances under which a person born abroad to one American is a citizen by birth are as follows:
Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) INA provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen are required for physical presence in the U.S. to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.
http://travel.state.gov/law/info/info_609.html
So is someone alleging that Obama's mother was not present in the US for the obligatory ten years?
My concerns with Obama have to do with his being just another AIPAC minion, not some "he's not a citizen" idea. In my mind, Phil Berg's involvement in this is beyond what even "going Fetzal" can describe.
You shouldn't have to crawl into their heads
Are you aware of anything demonstrated by either Berg or Vieira that would indicate their being racist other than the color of their skin? How about anthing that would indicate their being sexist other than their own gender?
I find it all quite fascinating because I was born abroad while my father was in the service. Both of my parents were born in the same Southern state and I dare say had never left it until they married and followed the Army's orders.
My mother told me that they had friends who were expecting a child about the same time I was to arrive. The man, a lawyer from Arizona, sent his wife home to give birth to their child specifically because, as he told my mother, birth abroad would prevent his child from ever holding the office of President. My mother repeatedly told me while growing up that, though I could never be President, I could choose to hold dual citizenship because I was born abroad.
I know of nothing that Vieira has ever uttered or written that would indicate his being a racist. The question that Vieira weighs in on is a Constitutional one. Vieira is a Constitutional scholar for whom I and many others have huge respect.
As far as Berg, an attorney, goes and as I understand it, he is a life-long Democrat activist. Not that there aren't Democrats who are racists but, I would think given his years (is it 40?) of activism in the Democratic Party that if he were a racist, it would have become news long before now. Don't you think Obama's machine has the ability to ferret out such were it to exist? So, Berg's interest is very curious. I would expect life-long activists of either party to be among the last to rat out one of their own vermin and possibly ruin an opportunity for their party to control the House, Senate, and any upcoming vacancies that might occur on the Supreme Court.
The judge who dismissed Berg's suit because it “would have us derail the democratic process by invalidating a candidate for whom millions of people voted and who underwent excessive vetting during what was one of the most hotly contested presidential primary in living memory†should be impeached, his monkey dress burned, his nakedness dipped in hot tar, and sentenced to plucking chickens for Tysons, if for no other reason than his treating us as if we are complete imbecils.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
Yeah, but sometimes they keep candy in there.
Your personal experience is interesting. I'm going to look around on the internets for more information.
"The man, a lawyer from Arizona, sent his wife home to give birth to their child specifically because, as he told my mother, birth abroad would prevent his child from ever holding the office of President."
You don't mean... oh wait, he didn't grow up there.
Okay, how 'bout this:
Natural-born citizen
Who is a natural-born citizen? Who, in other words, is a citizen at birth, such that that person can be a President someday?
The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But even this does not get specific enough. As usual, the Constitution provides the framework for the law, but it is the law that fills in the gaps.
Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in those gaps. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"
* Anyone born inside the United States
* Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person's status as a citizen of the tribe
* Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
* Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
* Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
* Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
* Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
* A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.
Anyone falling into these categories is considered natural-born, and is eligible to run for President or Vice President. These provisions allow the children of military families to be considered natural-born, for example.
[All of the above is a quote.]
born in Argentina
of US parents...i have dual citizenship in the eyes of Argentina but not the US - only US citizenship.
i believe this to be true, but it could be false, no?
Frankly, I don't know.
I've never seriously thought about my claiming German citizenship. I think it's the food.
So, does our government discriminate against Argetina with regard to dual citizenship but, not with Israel? Like holding some of the highest public offices in the land?
For you, I suppose that it woud depend primarily upon the laws of Argentina. Is there a time limitation on when you can claim citizenship there? Residency requirements? Oh, before I forget, taxes to pay for the priviledge? And even if you do so without renouncing your citizenship here, what the fuck business is it of the federal government anyway?
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
And FFS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born_citizen
John McCain, who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and is the Republican nominee in 2008, was born at the Coco Solo U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone to U.S. parents. Although the Panama Canal Zone was not considered to be part of the United States,[7] federal law states: "Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States."[8] The law that conferred this status took effect on August 4, 1937, one year after John McCain was born — albeit with retroactive effect, resulting in McCain being declared a U.S. citizen.[9]
A citizen, but a natural born citizen?
Nope. Neither!
He is a fucking mutant freak from the loins of Satan.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
Most people miss something
Most people miss something very basic about the 14th.
The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
You're not going to be happy with this. It may be like opening a real can of worms at first. But, I suggest reading this summary of the intent of the 14th and to whom it applies (or should I say "applied"?). There are a couple of treatises, Citizenship and Constitution, that are recommended to be read first that will help this horsepill go down:
The 14th Amendment Clarified
The treatises are not long and they are written such that the common person, even simpletons like me, can understand. Unlike law today, the treatises are not written in "code." Why do you think that they call it code anyway?
I am not a 14th Amendment citizen Also, note the lower case "c" used in this amendment. Find all of the previous uses of the word in the Constitution prior to the 14th and note the case. You may think this to be trivial however, I assure you, it is not. Lawyers know how to be real motherfuckers.
I know that the federal united States is a body of limited jurisdiction. And law is all about jurisdiction. Most people view this corporate beast as some kind of omnipotent, all-powerful entity. When Toto finally pulls back the curtain for you, all of that will change.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
Not just a can of worms.
A full pallet of Costco-size Canned Worms.
Here's a little from that site:
Chief Justice Taney makes it crystal clear that the phrase "people of the United States", and its pre-Civil War synonym, "Citizen of the United States" (as used in the opening of the U.S. Constitution), have a meaning that is forever fixed. It is forever fixed (according to Taney) because those phrases mean only what the men who wrote them, and voted on them, meant them to mean. That is the preeminent rule of constitutional interpretation.
In other words, neither you, nor I, nor the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court can indulge in revisionist history in order to pretend that the words now mean something new and different than they did the day the author wrote them. Whether we like it or not, those words mean (forever) only the white citizens of the 13 independent states (and all states admitted to the Union thereafter).
That is not a racist statement; that is a historical legal reality. Sometimes a historical legal reality may bruise our modern conscience and sensibilities, but the fact that we may feel bruised and angry does not change what the men who wrote the document meant when they wrote the words.
Because the phrase "Citizen of the United States", as used in the opening of the US Constitution, has a fixed meaning for all time, it obviously can never be used to mean people of African decent brought here for the purpose of slavery, or their posterity; so says the US Supreme Court. [see Dred].
Warned ya!
It makes sense to me why we can't change the meaning of the original words. We can change the Constitution by the Amendment process. However, an amendment is going to have to reference the original constitution. If the original meaning were to change over time for "light and transient causes" it would make it doubly difficult to know the meaning of an amendmement.
This is why I became a "strict constructionist."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_constructionism
I really, really, really don't think that we need monkeys in black dresses giving us their whimsical interpretation of fundamental law. It's bad enough when the district courts can't even agree on whether the federal income tax is a direct tax or an indirect tax. Original intent of the Constitution can be gleaned from the writings of the founders. They weren't idiots and they didn't write in code. If the Constitution were actually taught in schools, this wouldn't be an issue. But, it's not because the federal government does not want an educated master. It craves only dumbed-down slaves.
The amendment process was included to provide a means of changing the Constitution if necessary and demanded by a "super majority" of the States. It was never intended to be easy, though. It should be a solemn process that takes sufficient time for thorough deliberation and awareness of the People as to what was happening with the law that applies to their government.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
I missed this
Though I'm feel sure that Stave Mount is probably a fine fellow, I'll stick with Vieira's well-cited opinion.
Domain Name: USCONSTITUTION.NET
Administrative & Technical Contact:
Steve Mount
301 Raven Circle
Williston, VT 05495
US
steve@saltyrain.com
+1.8028784427
+1.3058324627
Common Name: Steve Mount
Formal Name: Stephen J J Mount
Title: Webmaster and researcher for USConstitution.net
Degree: Bachelor of Arts, Political Science, 1989, University of Vermont
Other formal learning: Constitutional Law, Community College of Vermont, 1999 (audit)
Relevant Experience:
Reporter, Vermont Cynic, 1986-1987
News Editor, Vermont Cynic, 1987-1988
Managing Editor, Vermont Cynic, 1988-1989
Webmaster/Editor-in-Chief, USConstitution.net, 1995-Present
Military Experience:
Vermont Army National Guard 1987-1992; tank loader, driver, gunner (M60A3). Stationed: Det. 1 1/172nd HHQ, Swanton, Vermont; Basic training and AIT at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Honorable Discharge 1992.
All research done for the USConstitution.net site was done by me. All opinions are mine and mine alone, with the exception of messages posted by others in the Message Board.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
does he have a passport?
if so, how did he get it if he's not a US citizen? So yes, Phil Berg is more than likely a stooge. Here is the Prison Planet story about the lawsuit he filed on behalf of Ellen Mariani, who claims her husband was on UA 175, the flight (as opposed to the plane) that allegedly hit the south tower. Note that Berg and Mariani are claiming LIHOP as the basis for their lawsuit. If you ask me, all of them were part of a relatively early attempt to define the truth movement in a way that actually supported the OCT (and surprise surprise, AJ was right there lapping it up and spitting it out for his fans!) That Berg would now be going out of his way to associate himself with what looks like a right wing crock is not surprising given the apparent plan to make people think 9/11 truth is some right wing thing as soon as Obama is president. Then we'll have the fake "New McVeigh", etc.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/120403mariani.html
Alex Jones interviews Ellen Mariani, the 9/11 Widow Who Has filed a Bush Treason Lawsuit and Her Attorney, Philip J. Berg, Esquire: Ellen wrote, "You Mr. Bush should be held responsible and liable for any and all acts that were committed to aid in any "cover up" of the tragic events of September 11, 2001..."
911 Victim's Wife, Ellen Mariani, Files RICO Act
Press Release
News Conference - Wednesday - 11/26/03 - 12 Noon
5th & Ranstead Streets, Philadelphia
[corner of Bourse Building with Independence Hall in background]
911 Victim's Wife, Ellen Mariani, files RICO Act
[Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act]
Federal Court Complaint against President Bush
and Cabinet Members
(Philadelphia, PA - 11/26/03) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, announced today that he, attorney for Ellen Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when United Air Lines flight 175 was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9-11 at a news conference regarding the filing of a detailed Amended Complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 11/26/03 in the case of Mariani vs. Bush et al that he is alleging President Bush and officials including, but not limited to Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Feinberg that they:
1. had knowledge/warnings of 911 and failed to warn or take steps to prevent;
2. have been covering up the truth of 911; and
3. have therefore violated the laws of the United States; and
4. are being sued under the Civil RICO Act.
Berg stated: "I will be detailing the charges against Bush and others and handing out copies of the:
1. Amended Complaint;
2. a Letter from Ellen Mariani to President Bush that sets forth her beliefs that President Bush knowingly and willfully failed to act and prevent the murder of her husband on 911 and the ongoing obstruction of justice; and
3. a Sworn Affidavit that the United States government twenty-eight [28] years ago undertook a study to prevent the very events of 911.
Mrs. Mariani was the first victim family member to bring civil action regarding the events of 911 against United Airlines. Since then, the "truth" of 911 has not been forthcoming and Mrs. Mariani, for the good of her country, now seeks the truth via this courageous action under the RICO Act.
Berg said: "The events surrounding "911" to date have yet to be uncovered.
While America was under attack, for approximately the next seven (7) to eighteen (18) minutes Defendant GWB continues to listen to the goat story while Plaintiff's husband was just murdered and does not immediately assume his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces.
Plaintiff, with her amended complaint intends to expose the truth to remember the dead and to prevent continued deaths of American military personnel due to President Bush's "failure to act and prevent" the worst attacks on our nation since Pearl Harbor.
Plaintiff hereby asserts Defendants, officially and individually are exclusively liable to answer the Counts in this Complaint under the United States Constitution and provisions of the 18 U.S.C. � 1964(a) and (c), Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (hereinafter "RICO Act") for "failing to act and prevent" the murder of Plaintiff's husband, Louis Neil Mariani, for financial and political reasons and have "obstructed justice" in the aftermath of said criminal acts and omissions.
Defendant GWB has purported to the American People and the Plaintiff that the infamous attacks of "911" were directly masterminded by Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda Network terrorists (hereinafter "OBL"), almost immediately after the attacks. Yet, Defendant GWB has not been forthright and honest with regard to his administration's pre-knowledge of the potential of the "911" attacks and Plaintiff seeks to compel Defendant GWB to justify why her husband Louis Neil Mariani died on "911.'
Plaintiff believes Defendant GWB is invoking a long standard operating procedure of invoking national security and executive privilege claims to suppress the basis of this lawsuit that Defendant GWB, et al., failed to act and prevent the "911" attacks.
Plaintiff asserts, contrary to Defendant GWB's assertion that OBL is responsible for "911," the compelling evidence that will be presented in this case through discovery, subpoena power by this Court and testimony at trial will lead to one undisputed fact, Defendant GWB failed to act and prevent "911" knowing the attacks would lead to our nation having to engage in an "International War on Terror (IWOT)" which would benefit Defendants both financially and for political reasons.
There are significant business ties that will be proven between Defendants and OBL's family which raise serious conflict of interest and other matters wherein "failing to act and prevent" the "911" attacks have benefited Defendants.
Reports have emerged and will be confirmed through discovery that the Carlyle Group, the giant U.S. defense contractor until recently employed Defendant and former President GHB. Hence, the "Bush Family" and other Defendants financial profiting by war goes to the heart of Plaintiff's RICO Act claim.
Plaintiff asserts, in the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's, Defendants were allies with OBL and Saddam Hussein during the former Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and Iran-Iraq war respectively, wherein, personal and political deals were made and it is believed upon discovery, these dealings hold the truth about "911."
In sum, Plaintiff will call to trial former federal employees with firsthand knowledge and expertise with military intelligence and other duties to support the underlying RICO Act foundational basis to prove Defendants have engaged in a "pattern of criminal activity and obstruction of justice" in violation of the public trust and laws of the United States for personal and financial gains.
Plaintiff will prove, Defendants have engaged our nation in an endless war on terror to achieve their personal goals and agendas.
///////
** Copy of sixty-one [61] page Amended Complaint available by e-mail" - contact Phil Berg at PJBLAW@aol.com
///////
[Berg is a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania; former candidate for Governor and U.S. Senate; an attorney with offices in Montgomery County and an active practice in Philadelphia, PA.]
Well, I think Berg et al are alleging he's a NATURALIZED
citizen -- as opposed to a native. But that should have left quite a paper trail. I think your "dang right-wing truthers" theory is on target.
oh, ok
not that it was clear from this dude's rant. the next question is then why would this be so difficult to establish? is Obama choosing not to dignify this with a response? that would be a shame, since this should not be allowed to become an issue if as it seems it is a non-issue. but i guess the right wingers want to have their own version of "the president is illegitimate" to cling to just as lefties have held since 2000 that Bush stole his presidency (which he probably did).
the New Tim McVeighâ„¢ will no doubt claim that he was acting in the interest of his country by trying to kill a "usurper". this will make all the more sense to people once Obama is elected and certain fake truthers start to act as if Obama, with his undeniable ties to the "evil Council on Foreign Relations", etc. was himself involved in the plotting and execution of 9/11 as they currently pretend with the current illegitimate president.
the fake truthers will try to make it look as if truthers hate Obama for his role in the cover-up, this they hope will turn everyone, but especially black people against 9/11 truth.
Remember--those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks want bring the US to its knees by sowing division, and they will stop at nothing as we know.
Yes, I'm sure he and his campaign staff
consider it racist crap. When was the last time any candidate for President was asked to provide information/documentation about his birth?
Meanwhile, I agree with dicktater that the rationale given for arguing that he must not be required to produce evidence now (that it would disenfranchise voters) is also bullshit.
dang, I think i missed the infOmmercial!
i bet it was fantastic. actually no i bet it was painful to sit through. who cares.
the worst thing I can say about Obama at the moment is that he supports the official conspiracy theory. it is entirely possible that he only claims to and will in fact call for a new investigation after he is elected. however unlikely that may be, much stranger things have happened and unlike McCain he has not done anything as actively against the truth as penning (or more likely allowing his name to be put at the end of) the foreword of an anti-truth book.
fake truthers like alex jones are dangerous because they inspire anxiety in people and may well end up, even if unintentionally, doing a great service to those who would falsely attribute destructive or subversive tendency to the cause of 9/11 truth.
finally, not as a truther but as an american i do have to say that it is a genuinely great thing that our next president will be black. a black woman would have been an even greater thing. this is not an issue of affirmative action--to suggest that Obama is in any way less qualified than George W. Bush to be president would be laughable, of course, and the fact is that he is clearly a skilled politician. to say that Obama was chosen by the powers that be, or god forbid by the voters in primaries, because he is a black man is true. just like the 43 or so before him who were chosen because they were white (and men). and it is a sign of real progress in both our country and in the world that this is possible.
being the first black president of the united states, whether or not it falls to Obama, will without question automatically make anyone an extremely significant and powerful symbol, and that will be that person's cross to bear, for good and for ill. anyone who thinks that harming that person will help their cause would have to be beyond insane--they would have to be one of the stupidest people on earth. stupider even than those Jihadis who thought they would bring the Great Satan to its knees by flying planes into buildings!
Stupider than BATFE stooges...
... hopped up on energy drinks, wearing white tuxedos and top hats, and hanging out of the windows of a hillbilly hot rod to commit an assassination?
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
BATFE stooges?
Perhaps. It will be interesting to see what becomes of Mssrs. Cowart and Schlesselman. I'm guessing some kind of reality tv or talk show...
Kraft cheese?
The reason I like this is because it is a way to use the Constitution to dispose of roughly half of the criminals in CONgress in one swoop. However, those who look into other pieces written by Kraft may be quick to dismissed him as just another right-wing liberal-hating zealot out to get Democrats.
Whatever it takes, I say. Matters not to me which side of the aisle goes on a long club fed vacation first. Only if they all go can I ever be truly happy again.
Kraft is definitely wrong about this being the greatest swindle in US history, though. Nothing, except maybe the bailout, will eclipse the massive hoax and fraud of the misapplication of the federal income tax.
October 28, 2008
The Great Obama Swindle of 2008
Raymond Kraft
PART ONE
OBAMA: THE ILLEGAL ALIEN
I have become 100% convinced, to a moral certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Barack Obama is not only not a "natural born citizen" as required by the U.S. Constitution to be president, but that he was not even born in the USA, not born in Hawaii, probably in Kenya, never naturalized. If he is elected, he will be the UnConstitutional President from the moment he takes the oath of office, the first president who is not a citizen of the United States.
Why I am so sure?
I was not convinced by the lawsuits filed by Philip Berg, Andy Martin, Jerome Corsi, and others seeking disclosure of Obama's birth certificate. I was not convinced by the books and articles that now abound contesting Obama's origins. I was convinced by the behavior of Barack Obama and his lawyers, asking the governor of Hawaii to seal Obama's birth certificate so it could not be seen, by anyone, and by the behavior of Barack Obama and his lawyers, sealing his records at Columbia University and Harvard Law. Barack Obama is hiding himself from America. And he wants to be POTUS, and Commander-in-Chief.
In the litigation business, one quickly learns that if somebody has a document that will be good for them, they can't wait to give it to you. And if somebody has a document that will hurt them, they'll be tap dancing faster than Richard Gere in Chicago to keep you from getting it.
Obama is tap dancing.
If I were Obama's lawyers, and if there was a good, authentic, birth certificate that proved Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii, I would tell him to instruct the Hawaiian Department of Health to provide a certified copy to every journalist who asked about it, to the Courts and plaintiffs in all the lawsuits, and to make the original available for inspection by any expert forensic document examiner any litigant or news agency engaged to examine the birth certificate for authenticity. I would tell him to come clean, and end the speculation. And I would tell him that the speculation could cost him the election.
But that's not what Obama's lawyers are doing, they're filling motions for summary judgment, not on the merits of the case, but on "technicalities," at least in the Berg case, arguing that Citizens, voters, do not have standing to enforce the United States Constitution, and at least one judge, Richard Barclay Surrick, has agreed.
But what Obama and his lawyers and the Democrat National Committee (DNC) are not doing is being open and honest with America. They're tap dancing faster than Richard Gere in Chicago. So we are forced to this conclusion as a matter of logical necessity:
1. If Barack Obama could produce a good birth certificate that would verify his status as a "natural born citizen," he would. Failing to do so can only hurt him. Failing to do so can cost him the election.
2. He hasn't, and is doing all possible not to.
3. Therefore, we can only conclude that he can't, and that his birth certificate, if it exists at all, is either altered, forged, or shows him born outside the U.S. We have to conclude that producing his birth certificate, if he can, will prove he is not eligible to be president, not a natural born citizen, or not a citizen at all. We can only conclude that Obama and his lawyers know that producing his birth records will hurt him even more than not producing them.
Now, I could be wrong. Barack Obama can prove me wrong by producing a good birth certificate. But he hasn't. Will he? Can he?
PART TWO
NO "STANDING" TO SUE?
In the case of Berg v. Obama, US Federal Judge Richard Barclay Surrick agreed with Obama's lawyers and ruled that Berg, as a citizen, as a voter, has no "standing" to enforce the United States Constitution. I have read that other agencies have asserted that only another presidential candidate has standing to sue respecting the qualifications of a candidate, presumably because, arguendo, only another presidential candidate could be injured (lose an election) as a result of a non-qualified candidate on the ballot.
This may be the most patently absurd, illogical, incomprehensible, astonishing, mind-boggling, and utterly stupid argument I have ever heard in my life – and from a Federal Judge, at that. And if I didn't make myself perfectly clear, let me know and I'll try again.
Let's do the analysis.
1. The U.S. Constitution is a CONTRACT between The People, The States, and The United States, the federal government, that defines and limits the role of the federal government, and the rights of the States and The People, and, among other things, defines and limits the qualifications for president, i.e., that the president must be over the age of 35 years, and must be a natural born citizen.
2. Any party to a CONTRACT has standing to enforce it. This is as basic as it gets. Contract Law 101. First week of law school stuff. And it seems that lawyers and judges all over the country have forgotten all about it. Also, the Constitution was intended to benefit all American citizens, We, The People, and in basic contract law the intended beneficiaries of a CONTRACT, i.e., us, also have standing to enforce it.
3. If We, The People, do not have standing to enforce the CONTRACT, the U.S. Constitution, then it is unenforceable, and if it is unenforceable it is just a historic curiosity that means nothing. It’s just an old piece of parchment. But that was not the intent, and to give intent to the CONTRACT it must be enforceable by its parties and beneficiaries.
4. We, The People, have standing under the First Amendment "to petition the government for redress of grievances." If we have a grievance that a non-citizen, illegal alien, is running for president, I think the First Amendment unequivocally gives every American citizen standing to sue the government to redress that grievance and enforce the Constitution.
I think Judge Richard Barclay Surrick is dead wrong, illogically wrong, irrationally wrong, legally wrong, I think his legal analysis of this issue, in legalese, stinks.
PART THREE
THE DUTY OF CONGRESS
Article II, Section 1, requires that upon taking office the President of the United States shall take the following oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the
United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution
of the United States."
Article VI, Clause 3, requires that Senators and Representatives requires:
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution . . ."
Members of Congress take this oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
Having taken this oath, Sen. Barack Obama has violated his oath of office if he is refusing to disclose a birth certificate that proves his candidacy for president is unconstitutional, and I believe this is a mandatory basis for his impeachment.
Having taken these oaths, the President, the Vice President (an executive officer of the United States), every member of the Senate and House, every member of every State legislature, and every executive and judicial officers of the United States and of each State, has a mandatory duty per Article VI Clause 3 of the US Constitution to "support and defend" the Constitution, and that would necessarily include taking whatever action is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President.
And every Federal Judge, and every Justice of the Supreme Court, having taken this oath, also have a mandatory duty to "protect and defend" the Constitution by doing whatever is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President. Indeed, I believe that the Supreme Court has a sua sponte duty to resolve this dispute by ordering, on its own initiative, the immediate production of all of Obama's birth records in order to confirm his place of birth, and prevent the election of an UnConstitutional President. So far, all Justices of the Supreme Court have failed this mandatory duty.
So far, the President, the Vice President, every member of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, ever Federal Judge and Justice, every member of every State legislature, and every governor, have failed in this duty. They have all failed to fulfill their oaths of office. Every one. They must all demand that Sen. Barack Obama either (a) produce a good birth certificate proving his status as a "natural born citizen," or (b) withdraw his candidacy before November 4th.
All those who do not should be impeached for having failed their oath of office.
PART FOUR
THE GREATEST SWINDLE IN HISTORY
If Senator Barack Hussein Obama cannot prove that he is a "natural born citizen," then Obama, the Democrat National Committee, the Democrats in the Senate and House who support him, and others such as former president Bill Clinton who openly support him, have perpetrated the greatest swindle in history by falsely and fraudulently misrepresenting Obama as Constitutionally eligible to be president, concealing the truth about his place of birth, thereby inducing millions of Democrats by the fraud of concealment, by the lie of non-disclosure, by "trick and device," to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the Barack Obama presidential campaign to elect an UnConstitutional President.
My opinion.
Note, this is a fraud perpetrated by Sen. Barack Obama, the DNC, and hundreds of Democrats in Congress, on their own constituency, the Democrat voters of America. It is a fraud of the Democrats, by the Democrats, and perpetrated on the Democrats. And it has defrauded Democrats out of more than $600 million.
According to their oaths of office, every Democrat member of Congress has an affirmative duty to assure that their presidential candidate is constitutionally qualified. As soon as questions about Obama's birth arose, every Democrat in Congress had a mandatory duty to confirm his eligibility by demanding release of his birth records. But, they have not. Not to my knowledge. Instead, every Democrat in Congress is complicit in the cover up – the cover up – of Obama's birth certificate, by failing to demand full disclosure to confirm his place of birth.
In my opinion, unless Obama can produce a good birth certificate proving that he is a "natural born citizen," then every Democrat member of Congress, every person managing Obama's campaign, every officer and director of the Democrat National Commitee, and every person who has ever taken an oath to "support and defend" the Constitution and is now supporting an UnConstitutional candidate for president, has participated in a vast left-wing conspiracy to defraud millions of Democrats out of hundreds of millions of dollars to elect an UnConstitutional President.
In my opinion, every one of these people, hundreds of them, should be prosecuted for fraud under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), for if Obama is not a "natural born citizen," that is what the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has become. And every one of them should be tried, convicted, and sent to prison for decades, for this is a $600 billion swindle of America's Democrats, a swindle perpetrated by the DNC and Barack Obama.
Now, I could be wrong. I could be wrong about every opinion I have expressed here.
Sen. Barack Hussein Obama can prove me wrong, quickly, simply, easily, by opening the doors of the hospitals and the Hawaiian Department of Health and showing us, showing America, showing the Democrats, all of his birth records.
Unless and until he does, I will remain convinced that Barack Hussein Obama is not an American citizen.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Raymond S. Kraft is an attorney and writer in Northern California. He can be contacted at rskraft@vfr.net.
You can find this online at: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1614/pub_detail.asp
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
good discussion!
Maybe I'm being pragmatic to a fault here, but this issue may best be left to others outside of the truth movement to pursue if in fact it is worth pursuing. there is nothing to be gained and much to be lost for 9/11 truth by letting Berg associate our movement and cause with this one.
Here are a couple of scenarios:
1) Obama is being coy and deliberately pretending to have something to hide so long as he can get away with it--the judge in question is playing along by giving his BS opinion. After it becomes a big issue, Obama's people will produce his birth certificate proving his citizenship faster than the Pentagon could release the many videos clearly showing flight 77 hitting the Pentagon (joke--ha!) Then everyone who has latched onto this issue will end up looking like a racist asshole who had it in for Obama even before he became prez. not a bad way to launch the New Democratic Century.
2) It's true, he's not really a citizen, or not exactly the right kind of citizen to be prez. the law is then changed quietly to make it ok and as a result the Republicans can run Arnold Schwarzenneger and Henry Kissinger in 2012. Problem Reaction Solution. BWAHAHA!
Use of his middle name
The way this author repeats Obama's middle name looks like xenophobic crapola to me.
Question for dicktater: my reading of the Constitution site you mentioned above gives me the impression that a) I am not a capital-C Citizen of the US by virtue of being female b)no one who is not white is a Citizen. Is that your understanding? (I get the strict-constructionism thing and I wouldn't hold this against you personally. Just askin'.)
be sure to check out...
More Islamophobic Screeds
Perhaps the saddest thing about all of this is how arabs and muslims are letting themselves be defamed. What difference is there between this kind of stuff and the way David Duke and his ilk talk about Jews as the enemy? There is no difference except that when the maligned party is arab and/or muslim it is considered to be OK to incite hatred and violence based on lies and distortions.
this is kind of
this is kind of wacky...
Offensive Search Results
We're disturbed about these results
as well. Please read our note here.
www.google.com/explanation
for even more fun, compare the google results for "Jew" with those for "Jihad"...
Interesting parallel
jewwatch.com is high in the results for "Jew" and jihadwatch.com is high in the results for "jihad." Oddly, the "we are also disturbed" note does not come up for the latter.
Top of the page for results from "Muslim":
Related searches: Obama muslim
well also the fact that
wikipedia is number one for each and the "XXXXwatch" variant is number two. Apparently Google forced "jewwatch" into the number two position. After putting on my ADL 3D glasses I can see that there is Demonization, Deligitimation, and a Double standard in the treatment of "Jihad", which means that Google is indeed being anti-semitic in this case, against muslim semites. the Jihad debate flared up at Harvard several years ago and is an interesting case study...
My American Jihad - Beliefnet.com
www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Islam/2002/06/My-American-Jihad.aspx - 32k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
RDN Article: At Harvard, Controversy Over "American Jihad" Speech
www.pluralism.org/news/article.php?id=2641 - 15k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
Harvard’s ‘Inner Struggle’
www.academia.org/news/struggle.html - 14k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
Harvard's Un-American Activities
www.danielpipes.org/article/480 - 33k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
double standards, second guessing, backtracking, mea culping
First, from the Pipes link:
Harvard's Un-American Activities
by William Levine
Harvard Salient
October 4, 2002
Recent happenings here at Harvard indicate a growing opposition — as though it were not large enough — of the university toward America's war on terrorism. The unconscionable decision to allow the commencement speech called "My American Jihad" — which whitewashed the real meaning of the term in favor of a mild vision of personal struggle — has now been followed by a faculty-signed petition against war on Iraq. As it has done all too often, the Harvard faculty, on practical matters, are blindly marching toward inconsequence. Unfortunately, Harvard is hardly the only American university suffering from this unpatriotic extremism. To hear an experienced perspective on Middle Eastern events, we spoke to Daniel Pipes '71 (Ph.D. '78), director of the Middle East Forum and prize-winning columnist for the New York Post and Jerusalem Post. Recently he launched Campus-Watch.org, which will monitor professors who propagate hatred and bias through the medium of Middle Eastern studies. The site currenly lists fourteen universities, Harvard among them, that promote bias. Mr. Pipes was interviewed September 30 by William Levine, a staff writer for the Harvard Salient.
Contrast with this, five years later...
About Face: Experts Rethink the Iraq War
Published On Monday, March 17, 2008 1:41 AM
By LOIS E. BECKETT
Crimson Staff Writer
In Lawrence H. Summers’ Elmwood living room, a hand-picked group of Harvard foreign policy experts balanced their dinner plates on their laps. Weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Summers, then University president, had brought the professors together to discuss the coming war. Summers held court from a couch and directed the conversation.
Two professors present at the dinner remember there was widespread skepticism about the reasons the Bush administration had provided for war—but nearly all thought the war would be a success.
“In medicine, there’s medical malpractice,†Graham T. Allison Jr. ’62 said.
“In law, you can be disbarred. Well, how about in our business?â€
The answer, Allison said, is that there is no formal way of holding intellectuals responsible for their ideas, no matter how badly they get them wrong.
Politicians and presidential candidates who supported the Iraq War have been held publicly accountable for their votes, but academics advocates of the war have not faced the same kind of scrutiny, said Allison, the director of the Belfer Center for Science in International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.
A DREAM DEFERRED
Only weeks after Sept. 11, Government professor Stephen P. Rosen ’74 signed a notorious open letter from the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century to President Bush advocating regime change in Baghdad.
“Any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,†the letter read.
Five years after the invasion, Rosen said in a recent interview that he is not sure whether the war in Iraq has actually served as a deterrent.
“Whether we are killing more al-Qaida members than we are creating—that’s hard to tell,†he said.
Rosen’s support for the war has remained unflagging, even as he has criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the reconstruction of Iraq.
“I still think it was necessary,†he said.
But over the past three years, Rosen’s optimism about the prospects for democracy in Iraq has faded.
From the American perspective, Rosen said, the best-case scenario for Iraq may now be “some sort of government backed by military power, which allows a certain amount of democracy at the local level.â€
“Everyone would have liked to see a democracy in Iraq, including me,†Rosen added.
“I think the essential thing is to generate an Iraq which is not an aggressor state, which is not falling apart.â€
ON THE BOOKS
Lost somewhere in Allison’s Kennedy School office is a betting book that documents just how confident Belfer Center experts were that Americans would discover biological or chemical weapons in Iraq.
“People always misremember their own views,†Allison said.
This is why the man who once worked next to Colin Powell likes to make his own “track record†to keep himself and his colleagues honest about the quality of their judgment.
Allison’s preferred form is a betting book in which he records the wagers he and his fellow policy experts are willing to make about the future.
His colleagues “place small bets†on their predictions—just a couple dollars, he said, whatever’s “enough to matter.â€
Some of his colleagues bet there was a 99 percent likelihood of discovering weapons, Allison said.
He remembers only one colleague who said there was zero chance that anyone would find chemical or biological weapons in Iraq: Molecular and Cellular Biology professor Matthew S. Meselson.
Meselson did not return a request for comment.
NOT QUITE ‘VINDICATED’
Unlike most of his Belfer Center colleagues, Ashton B. Carter had already seen all the cards the Bush administration was holding.
A former assistant secretary of defense for international security policy in the Clinton administration, Carter had been privy to the same Iraq intelligence that President Bush used—intelligence that dated back to 1998.
He was also a specialist in nuclear weapons proliferation.
On the eve of the war, Carter told The Crimson that the United States would be “vindicated when we are able to hold up and show the chemical and biological arsenal that is the cause of this war.â€
“It will not be seen that we did it without the U.N. Security Council, but that the Security Council did not have the fortitude and appreciation to see it done,†he added.
Carter said he made the same mistakes as the administration’s CIA analysts did.
He trusted the 1998 intelligence, and said he believed that Saddam “was like Fearless Leader in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, where in reality he was delusional.â€
But given his own belief in the weapons threat at the time, Carter said, “I wouldn’t have done anything differently.â€
MEA CULPA?
Allison may not be able to find his betting book, but some professors at Summers’ dinner discussion still remember the tenor of expert opinion before the war.
“I came away with the sense that many, if not most, in the room, were skeptical of the Administration’s policies toward Iraq,†economics professor Jeffry A. Frieden wrote in an e-mail recalling that night.
But, he wrote, his impression of experts in the room was that “they largely believed that Saddam Hussein did in fact have weapons of mass destruction; and that the invasion would probably succeed in its immediate goals.â€
Louise M. Richardson, a lecturer at the Law School and the author of “What Terrorists Want,†was the only one who predicted that night just how difficult the course of the conflict would be, Frieden wrote.
Richardson said she remembers voicing doubt about how easy it would be to defeat Saddam—not a particularly prescient comment, it turned out—but also about how easy it would be to win the peace.
“I certainly felt I was the lone wolf,†she said.
“Nobody likes to be seen as soft on terrorism, soft on the bad guys.â€
For the Harvard academics who predicted the current turmoil in Iraq, the lack of accountability for the war’s intellectual supporters can be frustrating.
No policy expert has a perfect track record, said Belfer Center expert Stephen M. Walt, who was one of 36 American political scientists to sign an advertisement in The New York Times in September 2002 opposing the war.
Only one of his Harvard colleagues, Stephen E. Miller, joined him in signing the letter.
“What is more troubling is the absence of remorse or regret or humility on the part of many of the people who helped get the country into war,†Walt said.
“I’d feel better, I suppose, if a few of the people who were responsible had expressed some regret for the human suffering.â€
—Prateek Kumar contributed reporting to this story.
—Staff writer Lois E. Beckett can be reached at lbeckett@fas.harvard.edu.
don't let's forget CAMPUSwatch, brought to you by Daniel Pipes
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6048
Republican Group Distances Itself from Rashid Khalidi
by Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com
October 30, 2008
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=38429
Concerns raised about Sen. Barack Obama's relationship with Palestinian-American Professor Rashid Khalidi have prompted critics of Sen. John McCain to try to link him to Khalidi as well.
A reporter for the liberal Huffington Post Web site noted that the International Republican Institute (IRI) during the 1990s gave grants to a Palestinian think tank, which Khalidi co-founded. McCain became chairman of the IRI's board of directors in 1993.
The Huffington Post's Seth Colter Walls pointed to a 1998 IRI tax return that showed the institute gave a grant of a little under $500,000 to what Walls calls "Khalidi's Center for Palestinian Research and Studies" (CPRS).
"The guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well," wrote Walls, who was critical of attempts by McCain supporters to draw connections between Obama and the pro-PLO Khalidi, who holds a prominent professorship at Columbia University.
The McCain campaign wants the Los Angeles Times to make available a videotape it has, purportedly showing Obama speaking warmly and personally about Khalidi at an event in the professor's honor five years ago. The paper says it promised the source of the tape not to release it.
Walls described the links between Obama and Khalidi – whom he called "an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights" – as "rather tenuous."
The now-defunct CPRS was established in Nablus in 1993, the year the Oslo Accords launched Palestinian self-rule in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. One of its seven founding trustees was Khalidi, who served as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the peace talks leading to the Oslo agreement and was at the time a professor of Middle East history at the University of Chicago.
According to archived versions of the CPRS' non-operational Web site, the IRI was one of 14 international funders. Other included the National Endowment for Democracy, the Ford Foundation, the Rockerfeller Foundation, the Canada Fund and the Mennonite Committee.
The IRI, a body with a stated goal of promoting democracy worldwide, issued a statement Wednesday reacting to the claims. It confirmed giving grants to the CPRS during the 1990s for polling to measure support for the peace process and political groups in the self-rule areas.
"At that time no other organization could credibly conduct polling in the West Bank/Gaza," IRI said.
The institute said it did not at the time conduct background checks of grantees' founders, although it "did on a number of occasions vet CPRS as an organization, including, as was our custom, with the Israeli government, and we were given no cause for concern."
"We do not recall any contact between Mr. Khalidi and IRI, and there is no evidence that Mr. Khalidi benefited in any way from IRI's grants."
The CPRS was headed by Khalil Shikaki, a leading Palestinian pollster. In 1999 Shikaki took flak from Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for a Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored report on corruption. In response he reportedly shut down the institute and reopened it under the name Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah, where it continues to operate.
It is unclear how big a role Khalidi played in the CPRS. A Nexis major world newspaper search of "Rashid Khalidi" and "Center for Palestinian Research and Studies" for 1993-2000 – the period of the CPRS' existence – brings up no records. A search of "Khalil Shikaki" and "Center for Palestinian Research and Studies" delivers 25 news reports.
Attempts to reach Khalidi and Shikaki for comment were unsuccessful.
Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.
Notice the hat tip to the ADL at the bottom?
"p.s. You may be interested in some additional information the Anti-Defamation League has posted about this issue at http://www.adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp. In addition, we call your attention to Google's search results on this topic."
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
how arabs and muslims could respond...
...but probably won't.
http://Web of Hatred
Jun. 18, 2008
Ziv Hellman , THE JERUSALEM POST
Cover story in Issue 6, July 7, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.
How pervasive is hatred on the web - and what can be done to combat it?
The Website bills itself as "the Internet's largest scholarly collection of articles on Zionist history." A seemingly endless list of topics includes "the genocidal plans of Zionism," "Jewish banking and financial manipulations," "Jewish mind control methods" ("liberalism" and "civil rights" among others), and "Jewish pornography." A reeking cauldron of every anti-Semitic trope ever invented, it even manages the classic anti-Semitic double-think of seeing Jews behind communism and capitalism, government and crime, black slavery and the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
"Jew Watch" is no marginal site. When you google "Jew," it's the second search result. And it was dropped from first place only after Google was bombarded with complaints. In response, Google took the unusual step of adding a statement that appears together with the other search results for "Jew" noting that it does not in any way endorse the views expressed by the sites. The statement further explains that Jew Watch had attained its top-ranking position
solely due to the computer algorithms the company uses to rank websites. But in response to the outcry, the company made an exception and circumvented its standard algorithms so as to "demote" Jew Watch from first to second place in the search results.
The Web may be the most important new medium since the printing press, and with an estimated worldwide audience of 1.3 billion, it is a prime means of communication and marketing. But along with its explosive growth and its valuable and informative sites, it is also a major platform for spreading messages of hatred. Precisely because of its spirit of openness, the free exchange of ideas, and the absence of censorship, anti-Semitic groups have discovered that the Web offers them avenues of expression and recruitment that go beyond anything they could have dreamt of in the past.
The paradox is underlined by Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet Prisoner of Zion and government minister. "There is no doubt that the Web is an unparalleled democratic tool. The Soviet Union would not have succeeded as long as it did if the Web and satellite television had existed in its time. But even democracies need to defend themselves against dangers. Yelling 'fire' in a crowded cinema might be an exercise of free speech, but it is also a public danger. Anti-Semitism on the Web is definitely a public danger," says Sharansky, now chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem think tank
Even George Eliot, who wrote in 1878 that it is "difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about [Jews] which has not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print," would be astonished at what the Web has to offer. Sites range from purveyors of crude Nazi propaganda, to sophisticated-looking analyses of Jewish conspiracies behind 9/11, to cute games and cartoons for children. It is all there, from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to paeans to Adolf Hitler, to Holocaust denial, right up to the Islamic variety of Jew-hatred, with electronic calls for Jihad and the destruction of Israel. Osama Bin-Laden is idolized, unbridled Jewish conspiracy theories are rife, and there are celebratory videos of decapitations of "infidels" and "inferiors." On the practical, operational side, there are terrorist instruction manuals and, experts say, even coded messages to terror cells.
Jewish organizations devoted to combating hatred and anti-Semitism have in recent years been channeling increasing resources into monitoring Web anti-Semitism. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has a Digital Terror and Hate division that produces an annual "iReport" on the subject. The Center on Extremism in the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) employs full-time researchers and analysts to monitor blogs and websites. "We've exposed sites by and for white supremacists and educated law enforcement officials about terrorist use of secret communications in websites," says Myrna Shinbaum, the ADL Director of Public Information.
But the sheer numbers makes monitoring everything virtually impossible. The Simon Wiesenthal Center last year identified about 8,000 "problematic hate and terrorist websites and other Internet postings," an increase of 30 percent over the previous year. It's not restricted to anti-Semitism. "The overwhelming majority [of sites] are anti-Semitic in various forms," says Leo Adler, the Wiesenthal Center's director of National Affairs in Canada, who has been active in Web monitoring efforts. "But there are sites that are anti-immigrant, homophobic, anti-Muslim… it's very democratic. Nobody is left out. There's a hate group for everyone."
The speed of innovation also enables hate groups to upgrade their techniques on a continual basis. The advent of Web 2.0 - which encourages information sharing and collaboration - has given rise to tools like video sites, social networks, games, blogs and three-dimensional virtual worlds that are seized upon by hate merchants as soon as they became available. Entering "Jew" into the search function on YouTube brings up videos such as "A Jew Defends Hitler." Holocaust denial sites portray themselves as paradigms of historical research. Islamist and white-supremacist sites push annotated conspiracy theories blaming the Jews for everything from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to engineering the Holocaust itself. Fantasy games give players the illusion of fighting in a neo-Nazi army that is confronting and killing hostile, dark-skinned "Nigs." There are even on-line suicide-bombing simulation games, such as Kaboom, that grant points to players who manage to kill as many civilians as possible.
Experts are concerned about the effects these new media can have on young and impressionable minds. The Wiesenthal Center's iReport notes that many sites use "persuasive story-telling" to make the messages seem initially innocuous and emotionally appealing to the young. According to the report, they use combinations of "civilized messages, humor..., simple and persuasive appeals, claims of self-preservation and product advertisements; educational narratives, stealth images, dialogues… metaphor and marketing rhetoric."
The perception of authority that hate-filled websites manage to present is perturbing. Most adults can remember when virtually all printed materials were edited, fact-checked and distributed by publishing houses and newspapers. Radio and television stations operated under official licences. "Published" was synonymous with "authoritative" or "factual" and there are still many people who accept what they see on a website as true or real because it has been "published."
"The major problem with on-line anti-Semitism is the effect it has on the casual observer," says Andre Oboler, a research fellow at NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based think tank, who runs a site devoted to combating on-line anti-Semitism. "It is not the sites of extremists that pose the greatest threat; they are usually clear about who and what they are. Rather it is the low level of anti-Semitism on-line that left unchecked will create social acceptability of anti-Semitism in on-line communities. In a heartbeat, decades of work countering racism and discrimination and creating a culture of tolerance to individuals, while designating racism socially unacceptable, can be undone."
"The anti-Semitism on the Internet is not innocuous. It hurts, and is dangerous," says Leo Adler. "People often take what they see on the Web as authoritative, and messages on it can then seep into thoughts, beliefs and eventually actions. The false images of Jews that are being created are appalling .… In many schools, if you ask students how many Jews there are in the world, you might get answers such as 'hundreds of millions' - which they believe must be the number because 'Jews control the world.' There are students going to Holocaust denial sites for material for school essays."
The Internet developed within a free-wheeling, anything-goes and anti-authority ethos. Although it was initiated and funded by the United States' Department of Defense, and intended to function as a flexible communications network in case of a Soviet attack on the American mainland, the academics who laid down its original infrastructure were influenced by the left-leaning atmosphere on American campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They conceived of the Internet as a democratizing tool, enabling any and all views to be expressed freely, outside the reach either of official arms of censorship or the self-restraint of mainstream publications, and their motto was "information wants to be free."
This made it attractive to purveyors of anti-Semitism, who often found their ideas shunned in mainstream publications, and their Web presence has grown with every new development. Neo-Nazis were early adopters of bulletin boards - simple, text-only precursors to the Web - which made Nazi-slanted writings widely and easily available for the first time since the Second World War. As early as 1984, The New York Times reported that The Order, a neo-Nazi spin-off of the Aryan Nations group, was using stolen money "to purchase a state-of-the-art computer system … [for] access to the Internet." The invention of IRC (internet-relay chats) enabled geographically scattered groups to find each other and open direct lines of communications. Newsgroups allowed topical groupings of writings to attract devoted user bases. When the Web as we know it today arrived in the mid-1990s with the first browsers, neo-Nazi sites were quickly established.
Web 2.0, with its focus on user-supplied content, has enabled millions to air their views without the expense and effort of maintaining a site. This has fuelled the blurring of the boundaries between legitimate criticism of Israel and the nastiest tropes of anti-Semitism. The neo-Nazi sites are fairly easily identified and occupy their own niche. "The sites with overt swastikas and explicit expletives about Jews, exist," says Adler, "but everyone condemns them. The more subtle sites are much more disconcerting."
The hottest battlefields now are on mass-market sites such as Facebook, where groups praising suicide bombers or titling themselves "Israel is a terrorist country, we all hate Israel," pop up regularly; the open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia, where the entries on "Jew" and "Israel" were long ago locked against general-audience editing due to repeated vandalism of their contents; or the Guardian's Comment-Is-Free, which on a daily basis attracts anti-Israel postings from around the world faster than its moderators can delete them.
The unforeseen dynamic of the past decade that brought together jihadists, white supremacists and elements of the far left into a de facto alliance of anti-Zionist ideology might not have developed to the extent it has without the Web. Islamic expressions of hatred towards Israel, and even the adoption of classic anti-Semitic imagery in the Arabic press, are not new phenomena. But the Web has enabled themes to be shared between disparate groups much more easily than in the past. Jihadist claims that the West's war on terrorism is the nefarious invention of a small cabal of Jewish neoconservatives intent on humiliating and controlling the Muslim world, especially through the agency of an "illegal" and "illegitimate" Israel, were amplified by repetition on the Web, and found a willing audience among leftist groups who were already inclined to regard American policy as "imperialistic" by definition. Extreme right groups, who have for centuries peddled the idea of an international "Jewish conspiracy," found it very easy and convenient to adopt a slight shift in terminology and embrace the idea of a "Zionist conspiracy."
The speed, openness, anonymity and volume that characterize the Web have played a part in blurring traditional political positions. Groups espousing rightist social views have claimed the mantle of anti-colonialism and presented themselves as left, while the left, wittingly or not, absorbed language that had once been confined to the far right. Copy-and-paste, either literally or metaphorically, brought about a situation today in which sentences taken from extreme right websites, Jihadist writings or left-wing postings can appear identical - all of them resurrecting and normalizing, in one form or another, the traditional anti-Semitic image of Jews as supernaturally powerful and able to shape world events.
The theme of a shadowy Jewish/Zionist conspiracy, say monitors of anti-Semitism, has gone beyond fringe groups to attain a legitimacy in elite circles that was once unthinkable. It becomes easy to believe that, say, the Iraq war was initiated by "Jewish interests," when that claim appears endlessly on the Web, and is then repeated by figures such as British Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who stated that Tony Blair was unduly influenced by a "cabal of Jewish advisers," or academics at elite American universities, such as Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh of Yale Medical School, who made a similar accusation with respect to the Bush administration.
"Attitudes start taking root," says Adler. "Even when they are not publicly expressed, they become part of 'private anti-Semitism' - when professionals get together and know there are no Jews around, negative comments about Jews start being said."
Just as disconcerting to the experts is the fact that many anti-Jewish messages are cloaked in ways that make them seem like dispassionate analysis. For example, instead of speaking openly about a "Jewish conspiracy," code words like "neocon" - which many understand as referring to Jews because of the prominence of neoconservative Jews - are used. Complaints that many anti-Zionist expressions are indistinguishable from classic anti-Semitism are often dismissed as attempts to stifle criticism of Israel, thereby putting those fighting anti-Semitism on the defensive.
"When we look for anti-Semitism on the Web, we use an operative definition: If it quacks like a duck and has feathers like a duck, it's a duck," says Adler. "There is a legitimate discussion of the rights of Arabs in the democratic State of Israel, but when Israel becomes characterized as a Nazi state perpetrating a holocaust - that's anti-Semitism. The difficulty is that there are a lot of Israeli and Jewish academics who are the first to use this terminology."
Sharansky tells The Report that the way to distinguish anti-Semitism from legitimate criticism is to apply what he terms "the 3D principles: look out for demonization, delegitimation, and double standards." "Just as you need to wear special glasses to see a 3D film, you need to apply these 3D principles to understand what is really going on with much of the anti-Zionism that is expressed on the Web," says Sharansky. "Criticism of Israel - even extreme criticism - is acceptable, if it passes the 3D test. But when people begin describing the Palestinians as undergoing a form of Auschwitz, the first of the 3Ds, demonization, becomes evident. I've been to Palestinian refugee camps, and they are not pleasant places, but neither are they Auschwitz.
"When people say that Jews are not a nation, that's delegitimation," says Sharansky. "And when criteria are applied to Israel that are not applied to any other nation, that's a double standard. Has there been any initiative to cast an academic boycott against Iran? Or against Saudi universities? In Russia there used to be laws requiring Jewish merchants to pay twice as much in taxes as their non-Jewish counterparts. The age-old double standards against Jews are now revived in double standards applied against Israel."
What can be done to combat the proliferation of anti-Semitic messages and sites on the Web? There are two main tools being used with varying degrees of success: legal and educational.
In the worst cases, hate sites can endanger human life by containing information on how to perform acts of terrorism, serving as recruiting fronts for terrorist organizations, or inciting violence. Those cases often attract the attention of law authorities, but prosecuting offenders is not easy. Laws vary, and by the very nature of the Internet, written and visual materials can exist in various forms on servers scattered around the world, making it difficult for agencies bound by national borders to track them down.
"Hate sites can be prosecuted in Canada, for example," says Adler, who is a Canadian attorney, "but a lot of sites are anonymous. You don't know who is involved, and who is behind it. That makes it impossible under current law to get those responsible. Sites go off-shore, where they can't be traced." Adler advocates putting together "international efforts, under international treaties and regulations, to find the responsible parties."
"It is a daily struggle to keep up with developments," continues Adler. "The police and intelligence services are in a race against the hate sites, and they are struggling. There is no doubt, however, that technological tools can be developed [for the purpose]."
"We have had positive response from EU states with respect to shutting down anti-Semitic servers, as part of the broader fight against racism, hatred and discrimination," notes Aviva Raz Schechter, director of the Department for Combatting Anti-Semitism in Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who says the subject is a component of Israel's dialogue with the European Union in the framework of the ENP (European Neighbourhood Policy, a framework of political, economic and social relations between member states of the EU and nearby countries).
Raz Shechter tells The Report that there is a clear distinction between U.S., European and Canadian policies regarding the use of the law to prohibit Web servers from carrying anti-Semitic messages. The freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is broadly interpreted as protecting nearly all hate speech, including that appearing on websites. In contrast, says Raz Shechter, "the Europeans and Canadians are far more willing to use laws to go after hate sites and do everything needed to shut them down. Israel's Foreign Ministry is active with many countries in seeking to expand international efforts and co-operation to reduce expressions of hate on the Web."
Others experts say that the legal approach is insufficient. What can, and must be done, they say, is to educate people how to distinguish between legitimate analysis and hate, and to establish reputable websites that counter the offensive ones.
"Reining in the Internet is very difficult, if not impossible," says Sharansky. "And running after each individual site, among the thousands, is also difficult. But what we can do is explain why this is a dangerous phenomenon for a free society. Atmosphere is very important. If only one person raises a voice, it can be ignored, and others may be too frightened to say what they believe. But if 30 or 40 individuals speak up, the atmosphere changes. The arguments used by the anti-Semites are really very weak and easy to disprove. We need to have our own sites answering all their claims, and to get a lot of people involved. This is too important to ignore."
Oboler seconds the call for concerted action, and charges that "Jewish organizations are behind the times and are not devoting the resources necessary to stop the hate virus from spreading." He adds: "Those who are trying to engage with the on-line world are over a decade behind and are mostly seeking to individually remove, through legal action, the most visible hate sites. The impact is, in most cases, insignificant and the communities of hate will simply move on to a new location. Today's Web is centered on searches and social media. The community needs to get on-line, and to upgrade their skills."
Oboler himself has established a site, ZionismOnTheWeb.org which describes itself as "on-line facts to combat real world hate." He warns particularly against what he terms "Anti-Semitism 2.0," which he defines as "the use of on-line social networking and content collaboration to share demonization, conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, and classical anti-Semitic motifs with a view to creating social acceptability for such content."
Shinbaum rejects claims that the major Jewish organizations are 'behind the curve' when it comes to combating Web 2.0 anti-Semitism, and insists the ADL is 'cutting edge.' "Just as there has been no one antidote to anti-Semitism over the centuries, there is no one method for stopping its proliferation on the Web," she tells The Report. "That is why the ADL is engaged in a multi-pronged approach. We devote resources to train law enforcement officials on extremists' use of the Internet and create curricula for educators to help combat cyber-bullying. Our expertise is relied upon globally, and we have had significant results, including convictions."
Apart from the establishment Jewish organizations, some scattered groups on the Web have made their own efforts to fight anti-Semitism 2.0. GIYUS (Give Israel Your United Support), a site initiated by WUJS (World Union of Jewish Students), gives users a "digital megaphone" alerting them to on-line articles and surveys presenting one-sided accounts against Jews and Israel and enabling them to respond in on-line comments and blogs. The success of GIYUS (which means mobilization in Hebrew) in increasing the vocalization of pro-Israel views has itself fuelled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, with rumors now circulating on the Web that the Mossad has equipped GIYUS with artificial-intelligence robots producing automated writings ready to be affixed to comments, blogs and surveys.
The Web battles on these issues continue to rage. Facebook groups calling for the destruction of Israel or praising suicide terrorists are confronted by other Facebook groups calling for the deletion of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Facebook groups. Conspiracy-minded YouTube videos are debunked by counter-videos. Given the fluid and fast pace of the Web, links, sites and groups can be created or disappear with the click of a mouse. Oboler complains that after he published a report on Anti-Semitism 2.0, "one activist saw fit to remove every link to Zionism On The Web from Wikipedia. These links (and it turns out there were a few hundred of them) had been added over time not by myself, but by well-known Wikipedia contributors who found the historic information on Zionism On The Web and our collection of primary source material a vital resource. This was not only damaging to numerous pages related to Zionist history, but shows how an elite can control the encyclopedia. I've asked for the matter to be addressed by Wikipedia administrators, but so far no one seems interested in considering it, let alone taking action."
Raz Shechter admits that Web 2.0 presents new challenges. "Our efforts at the Foreign Ministry are focused on getting as many countries as possible to pass laws and enforce existing laws against websites expressing flagrant hate messages, at the state level," she says. "It is easier - although still a hard challenge - to use legal tools to combat sites entirely devoted to racism. It is unclear what legal tools can be used effectively against user-content sites that are not hate sites in general, but include anti-Semitic elements. Right now, the best that can be done is to use the strengths of Web 2.0 itself - mobilize large numbers of people to participate on those sites and present a different message."
"I recall speaking to Simon Wiesenthal before he passed away," says Adler. "The hardest fact for him to accept was that anti-Semitism was restored, after the Holocaust. Anti-Semitism always manages to take on new faces, and the Web is just the latest format to which it has attached itself." Adler's remarks bring to mind a remark by novelist Iain Pears: "Anti-Semitism is like alcoholism. You can go for 25 years without a drink, but if things go bad and you find yourself with a vodka in your hand, you can't get rid of it."
Calling on individuals to help combat anti-Semitism on the Web, Sharansky says, "We have a responsibility to protect our own image, as best we can."
The danger goes beyond concern for Jews alone, he says, likening Jews to the canaries in mines. "Jews are the early warning system for civilization. If hatred of Jews is not stopped, it eventually expands to hatred and destruction in general." •
Cover story in Issue 6, July 7, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659763004&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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Copyright 1995- 2008 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/
That is one expert mindfuck.
Just as disconcerting to the experts is the fact that many anti-Jewish messages are cloaked in ways that make them seem like dispassionate analysis. For example, instead of speaking openly about a "Jewish conspiracy," code words like "neocon" - which many understand as referring to Jews because of the prominence of neoconservative Jews - are used. Complaints that many anti-Zionist expressions are indistinguishable from classic anti-Semitism are often dismissed as attempts to stifle criticism of Israel, thereby putting those fighting anti-Semitism on the defensive.
"When we look for anti-Semitism on the Web, we use an operative definition: If it quacks like a duck and has feathers like a duck, it's a duck," says Adler. "There is a legitimate discussion of the rights of Arabs in the democratic State of Israel, but when Israel becomes characterized as a Nazi state perpetrating a holocaust - that's anti-Semitism. The difficulty is that there are a lot of Israeli and Jewish academics who are the first to use this terminology."
"There is a legitimate discussion of the rights of Arabs in the democratic State of Israel." That's some grade-A framing of the debate right there.
no paradox here
 only paranoid delusons.The whole thing drips of group pity and an irrational interpretation of critisism.While there is certainly plenty of bigoted web sites to go around,there are many more groups much more at risk of violence or ostrasism.Muslim,back or dark skinned,gay.Id walk in a Jewish mans shoes any day as long as I conduct myself as most people, jewish or otherwise.
 "The age old double standards against Jews are now revived in double standards applied against Israel."
"There is a legitimate discussion of of the rights of arabs in the democratic state of Israel,but when Israel becomes characterized as a Nazi state perpetuating a holocaust thats anti-semitism."
 Double standards?Lets see,if you remove the mythical gas chambers,the lie of german extermination orders and consider the rights of Arabs in Israel AND the OCCUPIED TERRITORIES,Israel and Zionism are very similar to Nazism. Palestinians are stripped of certain basic human rights,forced to live in ghettos/outdoor prisons,deprived of their property,mistreated.But according to Ziv Hellman this statement would be anti-semetic if looked apon as a 3D picture with your Zionist supplied shit goggles.
 If the U.S. were to adopt "hate" laws similar to cetain EU states Grevato would soon find himself in jail and neck deep in leagal trouble.
 "likening the Jews to the canaries in the mines.Jews are the early warning system for civilization."   AH THE EXEPTIONAL CHOSEN STATUS AGAIN.IN FOOTBALL THIS IS CALLED TAUNTING.Â
C455: Sadly, yes.
I'm tired of the middle name shit, too. But, it is his middle name and everybody should should get used to it. How many other presidents or future presidents used or were consistently referred to and recognized by their full names?
George Dubya Bush, WJC, JFK, LBJ, RMN, DDI, FDR, ...
But to answer your question, yes. Unfortunately, over 200 years of enlightenment doesn't and can never change that. The only remedy being appropriate amendments.
If I were the king of some forest, I would push for several amendments. One would recognize that ALL People are created equal [no weasel words that make room for future unintended interpretation allowed to exclude some peoples] and possess certain UNALIENABLE Rights granted by their creator (which may never be infringed by CONgress' law-making authority), chiefly among them being the Right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness which in no uncertain terms includes pursuit of Property. ALL Rights are derived from the ownership of Property. Your Right to Life exists because, by Divine Right, you own your self. If you didn't, it leaves a window for ownership claim to be laid by someone or something else. That would make possible for you and I to be property/slaves and is totally unacceptable.
Another would be to FOREVER forbid the support of political campaigns in any way, shape, or form by corporations and trade associations and for it to be a treasonable offense for them to do so, and and and punishible by death. Yeah! Simply because they are ficticious creations beneath us in the natural hierarchy (see Red Beckman's google video for a fantastic explanation), not flesh and blood humans.
I personally do not support the death penaly, by the way. But, there are some who believe it to be a deterent to certain behavior. I just want CEOs and BODs to know that if they cross the line, they may not be lucky enough to just do some time.
Repeal of the 14th, 16th, and 17th amendments would follow that. Oh, and I would like to see recognition and ratification of the lost 13th amendment burned by the British in 1812, too. :)
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
Joan Swirsky's Mother's Birth Certificate - And Barack's
10/27/2008
My Mother's Birth Certificate - And Barack's
By Joan Swirsky, For The Bulletin
http://www.thebulletin.us/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=2737&dept_id=5763...
Four years ago, when I had just about completed the lengthy legal and financial vetting process required by the U.S. government to place my then-92-year-old-mother in a nursing home, I was asked to produce her birth certificate as "proof" of her citizenship. While she was born in America, had voted in every election for untold decades and paid her taxes religiously, that wasn't good enough to qualify my elderly mother to be admitted to the facility I had chosen for her near my home.
Frankly, I didn't think finding my mother's birth certificate was possible, given the fact she had been born in a farmhouse in Storrs, Conn., along with nine of her 10 siblings, to parents who didn't speak English. Despairing that she would never be "qualified" to receive the care she desperately needed, I set about to find the document, which I was sure had vanished in the unreliable record-keeping of 1913.
First I called an official in Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, who recommended that I call the Storrs record-keeping office.
That took 2 minutes.
Next I called the Storrs office and was told to call another number.
That took 2 minutes.
When I called the third number, I explained to the woman who answered the phone that I was "asking something impossible." I gave her my mother's first name and her father's last name.
Within 4 minutes, she said, "Here it is!" She had found my mother's birth certificate, and it surprised me when I learned my mother's "real" first name and "real" last name had changed significantly as she and her family became Americanized.
When I expressed my amazement, the woman said: "That's nothing ... we're routinely asked to find birth certificates from the 1800s, and we do that all the time!"
Total time it took me to find my mother's 1913, born-in-a-farmhouse birth certificate: 10 minutes!
To this date, Sen. Barack Obama has refused - or been unable - to produce an authentic birth certificate that attests to the fact he is an American-born citizen. He has had more than the two-years of campaigning for the presidency of the United States to do this, but failed.
Why is this important? Because the Constitution of the United States expressly forbids anyone born on foreign soil to run for the highest office in our land!
You would think that Mr. Obama would have volunteered the "proof" of his eligibility within a nanosecond of entering the race. But here we are, less than two weeks away from the election, and Americans still don't know if Mr. Obama is an American!
While Mr. Obama's camp submitted a supposedly authentic birth certificate to the far-left blog Daily Kos, it was found to have been a Photosop-ed version of the birth certificate of his half-sister, who was actually born in Hawaii, as Mr. Obama claims he was.
While this glaring omission in Mr. Obama's eligibility to become the most powerful man on earth mystified some and rankled others, a few people - clearly alarmed at what they considered a stealth candidate's attempt to dance his way around the Constitution and venture into the realm of criminality - took action.
According to the plaintiffs in the lawsuits against him, Mr. Obama was really born in the Coast Provincial General Hospital at Mombassa, Kenya on Aug. 4, 1961, a birth that was documented by a certificate with an embossed seal that displays the name of the hospital, as well as witness signatures. In addition, reports say his grandmother in Kenya, as well as his brother and sister, claim they were present during Mr. Obama's birth in Kenya.
Now that the net is closing in on Mr. Obama, he has seemingly discovered an interest in his ailing grandmother. Yes, that Grammy who he so facilely threw under the bus during the early days of his campaign.
He is now so worried about Grandma Dunham - the woman who raised him but strangely didn't attend his nomination - that he is taking a few days off from his intense campaign to visit this ailing widow.
Or could his strangely-timed trip to Hawaii really be to "clear up" the sticky case of his missing birth certificate?
I live in New York, where it is not uncommon for BIG payoffs to influence people to come up with "the goods." A half-a-million here, a dire threat there, often influence people to do things - like perjure themselves, produce phony documents, et al. - that they would never do under less "pressured" circumstances.
If the magic document doesn't appear, it is possible, and entirely legal, that Mr. Obama could be removed from the ballots in states that are questioning his eligibility.
Interest in this case is understandably intense. But predictably, the overwhelmingly liberal media has yet to pick up on this story, as if ignoring a story that has profound implications for our republic and for the potential of a constitutional crisis is less important than discussing Sarah Palin's wardrobe.
It's possible that all the states that are working on obtaining Mr. Obama's birth certificate will simultaneously remove him from the ballot at one time. It's also possible that, failing to produce the birth certificate, Mr. Obama will voluntarily step aside, leaving a breach through which Hillary Clinton will walk.
Meanwhile, as legal challenges proceed at warp speed, and Mr. Obama's lawyers scramble to avoid the Scandal of the Century, one thing remains intractably the same: Mr. Obama still hasn't produced proof of his U.S. citizenship.
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
um, the birth certificate thing...
Apparently the "forged" birth certificate is legit after all. Or if it isn't, there doesn't seem to be proof of the forgery. So... I'm more convinced than before that this is a smear campaign.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth...
Did you get to this part?
Peter Goelz knows a little something about conspiracy theorists.
He was managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board in 1996 when TWA Flight 800 crashed off Long Island, killing 230 people. While the NTSB’s investigation found no evidence of sabotage or terrorism, the Internet was stocked with insistent accusations.
“We were right at the beginning of this Internet lunacy,†Goelz said in an interview with PolitiFact. “And there were a variety of crackpot Web sites and Web commentators that generated all sorts of rumors. The principle one was that TWA in fact was shot down by an errant Navy missile in ... a live-fire exercise off the Hamptons.â€
Nine miles off Long Island, in the middle of summer. And then a full-scale coverup by the Navy and all the sailors involved.
“I am sure that we spent another $10-million, perhaps $20-million, out of a $50-million investigation, to just knock down and put to bed these kinds of rumors, these insidious rumors,†Goelz said. “We felt like we had to answer every question because it was such a public and dreadful and confounding event.â€
Goelz, who is now a communications consultant in Washington, D.C., says the Internet has given a platform to anyone to say anything. And a way to find others who want to hear it.
“Online, they can be almost anything,†he said. “They can be the crusading investigators that they always wanted to be.â€
How much out of their budget for 9/11?
...to just try and knock down and put to bed those rumors, those insidious rumors.
"“I am sure that we spent another $10-million, perhaps $20-million, out of a $50-million investigation, to just knock down and put to bed these kinds of rumors, these insidious rumors,†Goelz said."
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
Interestingly, this one has been altered
Notice at the bottom of this states "ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE."
OK, an obvious alteration, CERTIFICATE NUMBER has been digitally blacked out. But, why? What could possibly create the need to obfuscate the certificate number?
Then there is the issue of the typeface. I would love to see a typewriter that was in common use in hospitals and state health department offices in Hawaii in 1961 that hammered out letters like what you see above. No need, though. The bottom left corner shows that it was produced sometime after November 2001 when the document format "OHSM 1.1 (Rev. 11/01) LASER" was approved. A date seems to bleed through from the back that looks like 2007. This is not a copy of the true birth certificate; merely something filled in from stored data fields and printed.
At the bottom, it also states that the document presented "serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of live birth in any court proceedings."
Isn't that what the Berg suit is all about? A test as to the authenticity of the document and birth and subsequent ruling on that matter? Not on whether Berg or any other American has standing to enforce the Constitution.
But, if it is a modern printout of information now held in a computer database, to be a certified copy shouldn't the certificate carry a seal, maybe something like what my notary applies to authentificate my signature or appears on the Certificate of Title for my truck?
And, what does this from the CHICAGO TRIBUNE prove?
Obama birth certificate rumor debunked
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-birth-certificate-30-...
"Contacted Wednesday, Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo cited Hawaii state privacy laws and guidance from the state attorney general in saying she was not permitted to confirm the authenticity of the certificate released by the Obama campaign.
But she said it appeared similar to other Hawaii birth certificates.
"It looks exactly the same as my own birth certificate," Okubo said."
Her statements prove absolutely nothing.
Obama Birth Certificate Fraud Proof?
"The State of Hawaii considers a Certification of Live Birth is a secondary source of identification for the purpose of establishing Hawaiian ancestry; a Certificate of Live Birth is considered a primary source. To respond to challenges as to his eligibility for POTUS, BO first posted and then removed from his web site, a Certification of Live Birth, claiming this was his Birth Certificate. But such Certification is only issued when a birth certificate cannot be located in the records."
A response to the video author from a viewer:
"I reveived this reply and thought it was worth posting.
It is from someone [Nameless] that appears to have a background in these documents:
This might really interest you. As your video mentioned there are two (2) birth documents.
1The medical Birth Certificate filled out at hospital signed by doctor attesting to birth of infant, infant weight etc.
2. The legal document the Certificate of Live birth which is filled out at a Govt office. This document is a short form for legal purposes based off the medical record of the Birth Certificate.
So the question is...what was this secretary looking at when she typed out Obamas Certificateof Live Birth form in that Hawaii Govt office 47 years ago?? One clue is in the odd detail of the word "African" typed in to the space for "Race of Father".If that secretary was looking at a AMERICAN style Birth Certificate from the hospital the "Race of Father" information would in 1961 have said "Negro" not "African". After all "African" isnt a race.The State of Hawaii Govt secretary would have simply typed in "Negro" in the race slot. But she didnt. Why? Because she was looking at a Birth Certificate FROM KENYA. The poor Secretary didnt know what to do with that. She had to fill in the "Race of Father" blank but she didnt know if "Negro" was appropriate. After all Negro IS NOT A KENYAN TERM..KENYANS DO NOT USE THE WORD "NEGRO" its an AMERICAN usage. In fact sample Kenyan birth certificates I have looked at have no slot for "Race" at all. They dont think in those terms So the poor secretary simply typed in "African" and was done with it."
I say that it's prudent to question every fucking thing coming from our pubic serpents in all quarters. The more I look at this the stinkier it gets. Something reeks. And, it's getting worse.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
~~ attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen
a digital blackout is not an alteration
That condition presumably applies to the actual document which I would assume is not blacked out. This is a printout of whatever records are in their database and the issue then is whether there is indeed or not somewhere an actual original. The problem here is that what you and others are alleging is that someone in Hawaii committed fraud in order to produce this document. If that can be shown to be the case then we would surely have a problem on our hands, but where is the evidence?
In any case, and forgive me for not being a militant constitutionalist, having an illegitimate president would be nothing new for America. If we were to pursue and expose and take action on every kind of fraud that goes on in the government in these times we would have to declare the whole country null and void. In fact, why should we consider the constitution itself a legally valid document? Who gave the founding fathers title to the land on which they declared their new state? Surely if you are a law and order type you would have to concede that we must return the vast majority of the US territory to the original inhabitants, right?
The point I'm trying to make is that the letter of the law is *not* in fact the most important thing. I don't fight for 9/11 truth simply because laws were broken, I fight for it because of the gross violation of human decency that the 9/11 fraud entails. Obama becoming president may not be ideal given his deference to that fraud but neither is it the end of the world, even if he is lying about his birth and therefore eligibility. There are much bigger things to worry about and to be working to expose, and given the reality that we are probably going to see a narrative woven around the idea that truthers are right wing jerks I can only see fixating on this particular issue as harmful to our cause.
So the bottom line is this--I do not want to prohibit discussion of the topic but neither do I want this site to become a forum for claims that the presidnet of the united states is illegitimate. You'll notice that though most of us probably agree that Bush's presidency is not legitimate (for much more obvious reasons than it is suspected of Obama) we do not spend much time worrying about that fact. Whoever the president is, legitimately elected or not, we have to live with it, unfortunately. And whoever it may be, they will have to live with us truthers and will one day hopefully be forced by the popular will to deal with the 9/11 fraud.
The only way they can stop us is by convincing people that we are somehow dangerous or a threat and the perception that we are as concerned with Obama's legitimacy as we are with the truth about 9/11 is not one that I think is accurate or that we want to become prevalent. I for one will oppose Obama's policies (when I disagree with them which I suspect will be often) but I will not allow myself to be sucked into pointless and destructive forms of dissent and I would urge everyone to do the same and keep their focus on the issue that made most of us truthers in the first place.