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The Weekly Sam: Islamic Trojan Horse at Ground Zero By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Islamic Global Jihad declared war against America on September 11, 2001, in an attack
that killed nearly 3000 Americans in the Twin Towers in Manhattan. the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C., and in four hijacked airliners. Had the fourth airliner succeeded in
reaching Washington, it might have crashed into the White House or the Capitol with
even more loss of life. But, thanks to the brave passengers on the plane, the attack was
thwarted and the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Anyone who has watched videos of ordinary men and women jumping out of the Twin
Towers to their deaths will never forget the horror perpetrated by Islamic jihadists on that
day. The attack took months of intricate, detailed planning by the terrorists, but our
government was simply too inept to prevent it from happening.
Meanwhile, Muslims around the world danced in the streets at their great victory over
America and their spectacular advance in the war against the West. The goal of the
Jihad is to impose the Islamic religion and Sharia law over the entire world, and the
attack on 9/11 was just the visible tip of the iceberg in what has been and will be a very
long war.

For example, there is an Islamic missionary organization active throughout the world in
recruiting converts to Islam. It is called Tablighi Jamaat, and according to reliable
sources, it is estimated that about 15,000 of its missionaries are active in the United
States. It is particularly active among Black Muslims and criminals in our prisons.
And so, while American soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan against the
jihadist enemy, the enemy is quietly subverting the American homeland with virtually no
resistance from the American people.

It should be reminded that Islam is a totalitarian, genocidal political movement operating
under the guise of a peace-loving religion. It is intolerant of other religions and despises
the governing principles of the United States. Islam does not believe in the separation of
church and state, as clearly demonstrated by the regime in Iran. Yet President Obama
refuses to acknowledge that we are at war against Global Jihad or even radical Islamic
terrorism. Terrorism, by the way, is just one of the means the war is being fought
against the West.

And this Global Jihad is being fought by bombing trains in Madrid, bombing subways
and buses in London, bombing a night club in Bali, attempted airplane bombings by the
shoe bomber and the Christmas underwear bomber, an attempted bombing in Times
Square, the murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood by a jihadist in uniform, suicide bombings
in Israel, the murder of a cinematographer in Holland, the beheading of an American
journalist kidnapped in Pakistan, bombings and massacres in India, Indonesia and
Uganda, the killing of Christians and burning of churches in Pakistan, Kenya, and
elsewhere. There is no end to the atrocities being committed by jihadists. In the U.S. a
Muslim father killed his daughter because she was becoming too Americanized.

So it should not take a political genius to figure out why the Muslims want to build a
mosque at Ground Zero. They want to commemorate and honor those jihadists who died
crashing those planes into the Twin Towers. Where better to honor them than at Ground
Zero? And not just an ordinary mosque, but a 13-story, $100-million mosque. The
developer of the project is Feisal Abdul Rauf, born in Kuwait of Egyptian parents with a
known tradition of Islamic radicalism. Rauf was brought to America at the age of 17 by his parents when his father moved from
Malaysia to the U.S. to set up the Islamic Cultural Center in Washington, D.C. Rauf then
got a BS in physics at Columbia University. In 1997, Rauf established the American
Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) with funding from Gloria Steinem’s Ms.
Foundation, New York Carnegie Corporation, U.N. Population Fund, Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, and Hunt Alternatives Fund.

The project is significantly called the Cordoba Initiative, to commemorate the return of
Islam to Spain where it was expelled in 1492. According to Raymond Ibrahim, the
Christian city of Cordoba “was conquered by Muslims around 711, its inhabitants
slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of Cordoba — the namesake of the Ground
Zero mosque — was built atop, and partly from the materials of, a Christian church.
Modern day Muslims are well aware of all this. Such is the true — and ominous —
legacy of Cordoba. More pointedly, throughout Islam’s history, whenever a region was
conquered, one of the first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the
sacred sites of the vanquished.”

The Ground Zero mosque plan is akin to a project initiated by Rauf’s late father in 1965.
That year, Muhammad R. Abdul Rauf came to New York to plan the construction of an
Islamic Cultural Center that took many years to complete.. He bought prime Manhattan
real estate at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue, where a huge mosque was built, with funding
from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya.
The mosque at Ground Zero will contain a community center and will draw thousands of
Muslims to worship at the very site where 3000 innocent men and women were murdered
by their brave, dedicated jihadist martyrs. It will have a swimming pool and a basketball
court to attract the young, an auditorium and culinary school, a library, art studios, and
meditation rooms. But it will still symbolize not only a glorious Islamic victory, but also
the impending surrender of America to Islam. It will also have a “memorial” dedicated
to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, which makes the project even more odious,
hypocritical, and dangerous. After all, it will be easy enough to claim the perpetrators of
the crime as “victims” of an unjust West.

That Americans are willing to permit this Trojan Horse to be built in what is now
considered hallowed ground, where so many men and women lost their lives in the worst
terrorist attack visited on America, should make us realize how weakened America has
become in this life and death struggle under the Obama regime in Washington.
According to Salah Choudhury, a journalist and author, who has exposed the work and
motives of Feisel Abdul Rauf: “Rauf’s early UK education and familiarization with
American popular culture and values made him an acutely adept practitioner of Islamic
taqiyya – deceptive speech and action to advance the interests and supremacy of Islam….
Now, Imam Rauf is set to construct his dream project, wherefrom possibly the radical
Islamists will start Islamization of America. This will not be a mere mosque, but a tower
of terrorism to further flex the muscle of militant Islam right inside the heart of United
States.”

Liberals like Mayor Bloomberg of New York, who seems to live in a fantasy world, use
the argument of freedom of religion to approve the construction of the mosque at Ground
Zero. They do not accept that we are at war with Global Jihad which is determined to
destroy us. It doesn’t occur to them that the U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. But
maybe Bloomberg believes that that Muslims have a Constitutional right to Islamicize
America and destroy our Judeo-Christian heritage in the name of religious freedom. I
wonder what he would say if Christians decided to erect a giant cross at Ground Zero or
if Jews wanted to erect a giant Star of David or a replica of the Ten Commandments at
Ground Zero.

There is no doubt that if the mosque is built, Ground Zero will become the center of daily
religious and political conflict with competing demonstrations, speakers, pamphlet
distributions, and even violence. The resentment against the mosque is so great among
ordinary Americans that it may well inspire greater resistance to this blatant Islamic plan
to conquer America.

Meanwhile, it is hoped that enough New Yorkers rise up against this evil project and kill
it before it becomes the focus of hatred and dread, an arrogant, brutal affront to the men
and women who died at Ground Zero.
The estimated 15,000 Tablighi missionaries reportedly active in the United States present
a serious national security problem. At best, they and their proxy groups form a powerful
proselytizing movement that preaches extremism and disdain for religious tolerance,
democracy, and separation of church and state. At worst, they represent an Islamist fifth
column that aids and abets terrorism. Contrary to their benign treatment by scholars and
academics, Tablighi Jamaat has more to do with political sedition than with religion.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the prospective developer of a $100 million, 13-story
mosque 600 feet from Ground Zero, presents himself as a Muslim
moderate. Yet Kuwait-born Feisal Abdul Rauf also boasts of his issue
from an “Egyptian family steeped in religious scholarship”. Indeed,
Feisal Rauf’s Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as
authentic as it gets.

Rauf’s father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf [1917-2004] – an Egyptian contemporary of
Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna – conveyed to Feisal his family’s long
tradition of radicalism, which he acquired at Islam’s closest equivalent to the Vatican,
Al-Azhar University. The elder Dr. Rauf studied and taught there before fleeing Egypt in
1948. That year, Feisal Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait.
Feisal Rauf has planned for some time to further develop his father’s U.S. Islamic
expansionism. In 1990, Rauf opened the tiny al-Farah Mosque at 245 West Broadway in
lower Manhattan. Area residents did not even notice the mosque until 2006, when the
New York State Liquor Authority [SLA] refused to license a new bar on the same block
and started yanking others’ liquor licenses.

Rauf attended grammar school and high school in the UK and Malaysia, according to his
biography. He probably first lived in America only in 1965, at age 17, when his father
moved from Malaysia to New York to plan and head the Islamic Cultural Center [not
built until the mid-1980s]. Rauf then obtained a BS in physics at Columbia University. In
1971, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Rauf’s father headed the Islamic
Center on Massachusetts Ave. His father, buried in Suitland, MD, at the for-profit
Washington National Cemetery, also founded three Malaysian Islamic studies programs,
including the International Islamic University of Malaysia.
Rauf’s early UK education and familiarization with American popular culture and values
made him an acutely adept practitioner of Islamic taqiyya – deceptive speech and action
to advance the interests and supremacy of Islam. To further that Islamic advancement,
Rauf in 1997 established the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). His
Kashmir-born wife Daisy Kahn, an interior designer by profession, has run the
organization since 2005.

Rauf then began cultivating new spheres of influence. In about summer 2002, Rauf
started lecturing on Islam at the 750-acre southwestern New York campus of Chautauqua
Institution, a 136-year-old non-profit where religion director Joan Brown Campbell took
Rauf under her wing. Under the rubric of the “Abrahamic” faiths, a convenient cover for
Rauf’s Islamic activities, Campbell subsequently named him the prospective head of a
Muslim house now planned on campus by another Rauf brainchild – the 501(3)c
organization Muslim Friends of Chautauqua. Rauf also befriended Karen Armstrong, the
former British nun and devotee of Islam.

In 2003, Rauf befriended leaders of Denver’s Aspen Institute, including former executive
director and four-term Aspen mayor John S. Bennet. In 2004, under ASMA auspices,
Rauf organized a meeting of 125 young Muslims and formed Muslim Leaders of
Tomorrow. With Bennet’s help, he co-founded the Cordoba Initiative in Aspen,
purportedly to “improve” Muslim-West relations. Rauf gets funding from a variety of
other liberal organizations, including, for example, Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Foundation.
Now, the same Rauf is set to construct a mosque at Ground Zero, which he claims will
prove that ‘Islam is not a violent faith’.
As Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001 destroyed the World Trade Center towers,
falling jet debris simultaneously crushed the five-story 1923 structure some 600 feet
away that until that morning housed a robust Burlington Coat Factory store. Over the ruin
of the former retail outlet, Rauf now plans to build a 13-story, $100 million mosque. Rauf
says the Cordoba Initiative bought the former retail building to prove to the world that
Islam is not a violent faith.

Imam Rauf says that New York Muslims provided nearly $5 million in cash to buy the
Park Place building. Yet in fiscal 2009, Rauf’s ASMA received large international
donations. In the year ended June 30, 2009 – days before Feisal closed the purchase –
ASMA received at least $1.3 million. The largest donation, $576,312, came from Qatar.
That Persian Gulf nation has long harbored terror financiers, and even the government
stands accused of funding international terrorism. Qatar also has, for decades, hosted
Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The elderly sheikh, a large and
founding shareholder in the terror-financing al-Taqwa Bank, champions sharia law, wife
beating, and suicide bombing.

ASMA also received $481,942 from Holland’s Millennial Development Goals Fund
[MDG3], $144,752 from New York’s Carnegie Corporation, $53,664 from the U.N.
Population Fund [UNFPA], plus donations from the Rockefeller Brothers and Hunt
Alternatives funds, among others.
The Ground Zero mosque plan is more than a little reminiscent of a program initiated by
Rauf’s late father in 1965. That year, Muhammad R. Abdul Rauf moved to New York to
plan and head a huge Islamic Cultural Center that took decades to realize. He bought
prime Manhattan real estate at 96th St. and 3rd Ave – roughly two thirds of a city block –
apparently with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. The late
Rauf long retained some of that land in a personal trust. But when construction started on
the $17 million mosque in 1984, it had received funding from 46 Islamic nations. By
2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added another two buildings. Since 1984, its
founders-envisioned apartment unit has been restricted to Muslims alone.

Whenever Feisal first considered building a mosque across from Ground Zero, he had the
idea firmly in mind by 2004, when he wrote What’s Right with Islam. The book was
translated into many languages. In Indonesia’s Bahasa, its title translates as “The Call
from the WTC Rubble.” Rauf promoted the book in December 2007 at a Kuala Lumpur
gathering of Hizb ut Tahrir — a terror outfit banned in Germany since 2003, and also
outlawed in Bangladesh, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and Saudi
Arabia, among other places – and ideologically akin to the Muslim Brotherhood. Both
seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law [Sharia], and eventually impose
Islam and Sharia law worldwide. Most North American Muslim Brotherhood
organizations avoid widely publicizing that aim. The Hizb Ut Tahrir however, at a July
2009 Khalifah conference at a suburban Chicago Hilton, openly promised to replace
capitalism with Islam and Sharia law.

Now, Imam Rauf is set to construct his dream project, wherefrom possibly the radical
Islamists will start Islamization of America. This will not be a mere mosque, but a tower
of terrorism to further flex the muscle of militant Islam right inside the heart of United
States.
Hope Americans will realize this, before it is too late!
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of the
“Weekly Blitz”. Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com
HOME May-June 2010 Featured Stories Background Information News On The Web
A REVEALING SKETCH OF IMAM RAUF:
FOUNDED GROUND ZERO MOSQUE PROJECT.
HELPED FUND THE GAZA FLOTILLA
by AllahPundit

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is the founder of the Ground Zero mosque project. He’s also part
of a group[1] that’s funding another group that helped organize the flotilla. Too far
removed for culpability? Let’s see.
The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a
prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the
pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli
commandos at sea this week.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana
Global Peace Organization, according to its website.
Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza
Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break
Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.
Here’s Rauf’s bio at the Perdana website.
Chairman, Cordoba Initiative, USA
Feisal Abdul Rauf has been Imam of Masjid al-Farah in New York
City since 1983. Through his sermons and writings, Imam Abdul
Rauf seeks to provide spiritual seekers with answers to their eternal
questions that often hinder them from developing a personal
relationship with the Divine.
He is the founder of the ASMA Society, dedicated to furthering
Islamic Art and Culture. He invites non-Muslims to experience the
spiritual impulse of Islam, and Muslims to develop on the spiritual
path.

He teaches Islam and Sufism at the Center for Religious Inquiry at
St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, and at the New York
Seminary. He has been particularly effective with non-Muslims who
seek to discover and assimilate the spiritual dimension of the Qur’an
and Islam’s ritual teachings, and who seek to understand the Islamic
experience from within.

He is the author of Islam: A Search for Meaning, in which he defines
Islam as the universal religion that goes beyond the cultural settings
of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islam: A Sacred Law, What Every
Muslim should know about the Shari`ah.
Born in Kuwait of Egyptian ancestry, Imam Abdul-Rauf was educated
in England, Egypt, Malaysia and the United States, and is a graduate
of Columbia University in New York. He speaks Arabic, English and
Malay/Indonesian.

Imam Abdul-Rauf is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic
Center of New York, and of the Interfaith Center of New York. He
lectures regularly at Synagogues, Churches and Mosques, and on
radio and television programs in the United States and abroad.
Reuters[2] confirmed with the Free Gaza Movement — whose supporters include
William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn,[3] natch — that its biggest donation did indeed
come from Perdana. Any reason to fault Rauf for belonging to a “global peace
organization” willing to give money to another group that promises only “civil resistance
and non-violent direct action”?[4] Well, it depends. Did he know that the flotilla was
being co-organized by a Turkish charity with terrorist ties?[5] Did he know that goon
provocateurs would be aboard the flotilla, some of them from the Muslim
Brotherhood?[6] Does he realize that the stated mission[7] of the Free Gaza Movement,
i.e. to “establish a permanent sea lane between Gaza and the rest of the world,” will
assuredly result in weapons shipments to Hamas? If he didn’t know those things before
— and maybe he didn’t — does finding out now change his opinion of the FGM?
Inquiring reporters should want to know.

But as intriguing as the Post’s report is, it’s actually missing a bigger story. Go take a look
at who the most prominent member[8] of Perdana is. Right — Mahathir Mohamad,
former prime minister of Malaysia, Jew-baiter[9] extraordinaire, and prominent … 9/11
Truther.[10] Actual quote: “There is strong evidence that the attacks were staged. If they
can make Avatar, they can make anything.” Question for Rauf: If you’re all about peace
and healing at Ground Zero, why stick with a charity that’s being spearheaded by a guy
who blames the U.S. government for what happened there?
Which brings me to a point that’s been drowned in the uproar over the mosque. A few
days ago, Greenroomer CK MacLeod accused the mosque’s critics of playing into
jihadists’ hands[11] by conflating radical Muslims with all Muslims. Why punish all
members of the faith collectively by denying them a mosque near Ground Zero, asked
CK, when it’s the Bin Ladenites who are culpable for bringing down the towers? The
problem is, Islam isn’t divided cleanly into “radical” and “liberal” camps, with Osama
emblematic of the first camp and, say, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser (who, incidentally, opposes[12]
the Ground Zero mosque) emblematic of the other. It’s a spectrum, which includes true
jihadis, who are willing to commit violence; those who support them morally (and
financially) but are unwilling to commit violence themselves; those who oppose violence
but nonetheless believe in Islamic supremacy; those who believe civil law should be
supreme but nonetheless condone various forms of cultural self-isolation; and of course
truly assimilated, liberal Muslims like Jasser, who risks his life every day speaking out
against the scum on the other end.

At what point on the spectrum does Rauf fall? Does his association with Mahathir affect
that judgment? How about the fact that, as Greenroomer J.E. Dyer[13] notes, he’s
coincidentally chosen to name his mosque after a great Muslim victory over the west? Or,
if all that’s too heady, what about his insistence on bringing his symbol of “healing” to
Ground Zero despite the fact that the idea’s had quite the opposite effect for many New
Yorkers? As I’ve said before, that’s a curious bit of cultural insensitivity, particularly
when no one’s objecting to the idea of a new mosque located pretty much anywhere else
in the city. Just wondering: If some imam decided he wanted to build a mosque on
Ground Zero itself, at the foot of the never-to-be-completed Freedom Tower, shouldn’t
we indulge him per CK’s logic? And if he decided he wanted to build it in the shape of an
airplane — just to “reclaim the symbol” from the evil jihadists who attacked on 9/11,
mind you — shouldn’t we indulge him that, too? At what point is it okay to question
motives here?

THE TWO FACES OF THE GROUND ZERO
MOSQUE
by Raymond Ibrahim
Depending on whether Islamists address Americans or fellow Muslims, the same exact
words they use often relay diametrically opposed meanings. One example: when
Americans hear Muslims evoke “justice,” the former envision Western-style justice,
whereas Muslims naturally have Sharia law justice in mind.
Islamists obviously use this to their advantage: when addressing the West, Osama bin
Laden bemoans the “justice of our causes, particularly Palestine”; yet, when addressing
Muslims, his notion of justice far transcends territorial disputes and becomes
unintelligible from a Western perspective: “Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from
the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a
justice and kindness to them.

West perceives fighting, enmity, and hatred all for the
sake of the religion [i.e., Islam] as unjust, hostile, and evil. But who’s understanding is
right — our notions of justice and righteousness, or theirs?” (Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43[1]).
Of course, that Osama bin Laden — slayer of 3,000 Americans and avowed enemy to the
rest — exhibits two faces,[2] one to Americans another to Muslims, is not surprising. Yet
the reader may well be surprised to discover that the controversial Cordoba Initiative,
which plans on manifesting itself as the largest American mosque, situated atop Ground
Zero — that is, atop the carnage caused by none other than bin Laden — also has two
faces, conveying one thing to Americans, quite another to Muslims.

The very name of the initiative itself, “Cordoba,” offers different connotations to different
people: In the West, the Andalusian city of Cordoba is regularly touted as the model of
medieval Muslim progressiveness and tolerance for Christians and Jews. To many
Americans, then, the choice to name the mosque “Cordoba” is suggestive of
rapprochement and interfaith dialogue;[3] atop the rubble of 9/11, it implies “healing” —
a new beginning between Muslims and Americans. The Cordoba Initiative’s mission
statement[4] certainly suggests as much:

Cordoba Initiative[5] aims to achieve a tipping point in Muslim-West relations
within the next decade, bringing back the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and
respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together
in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago.
Oddly enough, the so-called “tolerant” era of Cordoba supposedly occurred during the
caliphate of ‘Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) — well over a thousand years ago. “Eight
hundred years ago,” i.e., around 1200, the fanatical Almohids — ideological predecessors
of al-Qaeda — were ravaging Cordoba, where “Christians and Jews were given the
choice of conversion, exile, or death.”[6] A Freudian slip on the part of the Cordoba
Initiative?

At any rate, the true history of Cordoba, not to mention the whole of Andalusia, is far less
inspiring than what Western academics portray:[7] the Christian city was conquered by
Muslims around 711, its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of
Cordoba — the namesake of the Ground Zero mosque — was built atop, and partly from
the materials of, a Christian church. Modern day Muslims are well aware of all this. Such
is the true — and ominous — legacy of Cordoba.
More pointedly, throughout Islam’s history, whenever a region was conquered, one of the
first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the sacred sites of the
vanquished: the pagan Ka’ba temple in Arabia was converted into Islam’s holiest site, the
mosque of Mecca; the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was built atop
Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem; the Umayyad mosque was built atop the Church of St.
John the Baptist; and the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque upon the conquest
of Constantinople.

(Speaking of, in 2006, when the Pope visited the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, there was a
risk that the “Islamic world [would go] into paroxysms of fury”[8] if there was “any
perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to
Muslims,” for example, if he had dared pray there — this even as Muslims today seek to
build a mosque on the rubble of the Twin Towers.)
Such double-standards lead us back to the issue of double-meanings: As for the literal
wording of the mosque project, “Cordoba House,”[9] it too offers opposing paradigms of
thought: to Westerners, the English word “house” suggests shelter, intimacy — coziness,
even; in classical Arabic, however, the word for house, dar, can also mean “region,” and
is regularly used in a divisive sense, as in Dar al-Harb, i.e., “infidel region of war.” Thus,
to Muslim ears, while “Cordoba” offers allusions of conquest and domination, dar is
further suggestive of division and separation (from infidels, a la the doctrine of al-Wala’
wa al-Bara’,[10] for instance).

Words aside, even the mosque’s scheduled opening date — 9/11/2011 — has two aspects:
to Americans, opening the mosque on 9/11 is to proclaim a new beginning with the
Muslim world on the ten-year anniversary of the worst terror strikes on American soil;
however, it just so happens that Koranic verse 9:111 is one of the loftiest calls for
suicidal jihad — believers are exhorted to “kill and be killed” — and is probably the
reason al-Qaeda originally chose that date to strike. So while Americans may think the
mosque’s planned 9/11 opening is meant to commemorate that date, cryptically speaking,
it is an evocation for all out war. A “new beginning,” indeed, but of a very different sort,
namely, the propagation of more Islamists and jihadists — mosques are, after all,
epicenters of radicalization[11] — on, of all places, soil sacred to America.

Some final thoughts on the history of Cordoba and the ominous parallels it bodes for
America: though many Christian regions were conquered by Islam prior to Cordoba, its
conquest signified the first time a truly “Western” region was conquered by the sword of
Islam. It was also used as a base to launch further attacks into the heart of Europe (until
decisively beaten at the Battle of Tours[12]), just as, perhaps, the largest mosque in
America will be used as a base to subvert the rest of the United States. And, the sacking
of the original Cordoba was facilitated by an insider traitor — a warning to the U.S.,
which seems to have no end of traitors[13] and willing lackeys.[14]

Such, then, is the dual significance of the Cordoba Initiative: What appears to many
Americans as a gesture of peace and interfaith dialogue, is to Muslims allusive of Islamist
conquest and consolidation; mosques, which Americans assume are Muslim counterparts
to Christian churches — that is, places where altruistic Muslims congregate and pray for
world peace and harmony — are symbols of domination and centers of radicalization; the
numbers of the opening date, 9/11/11, appear to Americans as commemorative of a new
beginning, whereas the Koranic significance of those numbers is suicidal jihad. Of
course, the two faces of the Cordoba House should not be surprising considering that the
man behind the initiative, Feisal Abdul Rauf, also has two faces.[15]
Going along with the historic analogy, there is one bit of good news: As opposed to the
vast majority of onetime Western/Christian nations annexed by Islam, Cordoba, Spain
did ultimately manage to overthrow the Islamic yoke. Though only after some 700 years of occupation.

 

Protecting the Constitution: Hal Shurtleff on the Pro America Report with Ed Martin

Ed Martin, host of Pro America  Report recently interviewed Camp Constitution director Hal Shurtleff.  Ed’s show is heard on a number of radio stations and podcast platforms:  https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2023-11-13T14_02_16-08_00

Hal Shurtleff, director and co-founder at Camp Constitution, joins Ed to discuss his Supreme Court victory last year, in which the Supreme Court upheld his right to fly the Christian Flag in a precedent-setting First Amendment case. Hal and Ed also discuss the importance of educating people about the Constitution.

 Ed Martin is the New York Times best-selling author of   The Conservative Case for Trump. He’s a former CNN political contributor and has appeared on every major TV network and hundreds of radio stations. He serves as an articulate advocate for Donald Trump’s policies that put Americans first. Formally trained as a lawyer and ethicist, Ed is the president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and the hand-picked successor to Phyllis Schlafly. He was the Missouri Republican Party chairman and a member of the Republican National Committee from 2013-2015. He lives in Virginia (in the swamp, not of the swamp!) with his wife and four children.

The Weekly Sam: Dyslexia: The Disease You Get in School By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Dyslexia is an exotic word, concocted from the Greek dys, meaning ill or bad,
and lexia, meaning words. It was invented to describe a condition that affects
many normal and intellectual youngsters who, for some reason that seems to baffle most educators, parents, and physicians, can’t learn to read. The difference between a dyslexic and a functional illiterate is purely social.
Dyslexics are usually adolescents from middle-class or professional families
whose parents assume that their child’s reading difficulty is more of a medical or
psychological problem than an educational one. The child is too smart to be that
dumb.

The functional illiterate is simply someone who has kept his reading problem
to himself and goes through life pretending he can read, avoiding situations which
involve reading, choosing, jobs which do not reveal his reading disability. He assumes he’s dumb, not sick or mentally disturbed.
However, in the last ten years, with the growth of federally funded Special Education and the proliferation of early testing, more and more children with reading
difficulties are being labeled “learning disabled,” or LD, in the first grade or even
kindergarten. These children are being “diagnosed” as suffering from minimal
brain damage, minimal brain dysfunction, neurological impairment, perceptual
impairment, attention deficit syndrome, or dyslexia.

 The Symptoms

What are the symptoms of dyslexia? The Academic American Encyclopedia
(Vol. 6, page 320) gives us as good a summary of the disease as we shall find
anywhere. It says:
“Dyslexia refers to an impaired ability to read or comprehend what one reads,
caused by congenital disability or acquired brain damage. Dyslexia is independent
of any speech defect and ranges from a minor to a total inability to read.”

Specialist used the term specific dyslexia to refer to inability to read in a person
of normal or high general intelligence whose learning is not impaired by socioeconomic deprivation, emotional disturbance, or brain damage. Psychologists disagree about whether specific dyslexia is a clearly identifiable syndrome. Those
who think it is clearly identifiable note that it persists into adulthood despite conventional instruction; tends to run in families; and occurs more frequently in males. It is also associated with a specific kid of difficulty in identifying words
and letters, which dyslexics tend to reverse or invert (reading p or q, or example
or on for no). Competing theories exist about the causes and nature of dyslexia.

Although there is disagreement among “experts” over the causes of dyslexia,
there is general agreement that the most effective “cure” is remedial programs that
stress phonics.

 Dr. Orton’s Findings

But it is somewhat puzzling that there should be so much disagreement over
the cause of dyslexia, when, as early as 1929, a leading physician attributed its
cause to a new look-say, whole word, or sight method of teaching reading that
was being introduced in the schools of America. In February 1929, there appeared
in the Journal of Educational Psychology an article entitled “The ‘Sight Reading’
Method of Teaching Reading as a Source of Reading Disability.” written by Dr.
Samuel T. Orton, a neurologist at Iowa State University.
Dr. Orton, a brain specialist who dealt with children’s language disorders, had
been seeing a lot of children with reading problems at his clinic. In diagnosing the
children’s problems at his clinic he came to the conclusion that their reading disability was being caused by this new instruction method. He decided to bring these findings to the attention of the educators, and he did so in as diplomatic a
way as was possible. He wrote:

“I wish to emphasize at the beginning that the strictures which I have to offer here
do not apply to the use of the sight method of teaching reading as a whole but
only to its effects on a restricted group of children for whom, as I think we can
show, this technique is not only not adapted but often proves an actual obstacle to
reading progress, and moreover I believe that this group is one of considerable
size and because here faulty teaching methods may not only prevent the acquisition of academic education by children of average capacity but may also give rise to far reaching damage to their emotional life.”

This warning to the educators was quite explicit: this method of teaching will
harm a large number of children.
D. Orton expected the educators to respond to his findings. They did – negatively. In fact, they accelerated the introduction and promoted of the new teaching methods throughout the primary schools of America. And it didn’t take very long
before America began to have a reading problem.

The Disease Spreads

Although Dr. Orton went to become the world’s leading authority on “dyslexia,”
and in effect created on of the most effective remediation techniques, the Orton-Gillingham method, his 1929 article is nowhere referred to in the literature on the
subject.

I came across it quite by accident while doing research for my book, The New
Illiterates, which was published in 1973. But why the experts on dyslexia have not
found it, I don’t know. In any case, dyslexia was virtually unknown in this country until the 1940s when, suddenly millions of American children were coming
down with the disease. Life magazine reported in April 1944:

“Millions of children in the U.S. suffer from dyslexia which is the medical
term for reading difficulties. It is responsible for about 70% of the school failures
in the 60 to 12-year-age group, and handicaps about 15% of all grade-school children. Dyslexia may stem from a variety of physical ailments or combination of them – glandular imbalance, heart disease, eye or ear trouble – or form a deep-seated psychological disturbance that ‘blocks’ a child’s ability to learn. The article then described the treatment for dyslexia giving a young girl at
Chicago’s Dyslexia Institute on the campus of Northwest University: “thyroid
treatments, removal of tonsils and adenoids, exercise to strengthen her eye muscles. Other patients needed dental work, nose, throat or ear treatment, or a thorough airing out of troublesome home situations that throw a sensitive child off the
track of normality.”

Enter Dr. Flesch

In 1955, Dr. Rudolf Flesch published his famous book, Why Johnny Can’t
Read, in which he revealed to parents the true cause of the reading problem. He
wrote:

“The teaching of reading – all over the United States, in all schools, and in all
textbooks – is totally wrong and flies in the face of all logic and common sense.”
And then he explained how in the early 1930s the professor of education
changed the way reading is taught in American schools. They threw out traditional alphabetic-phonics method, which is the proper way to teach a child to read an alphabetic writing system, and put in a new look-say, whole-word, or sight
method that teaches children to read an alphabetic writing system, and they put I a
new look-say, whole-word, or sight method that teaches children to read English
as if it were Chinese, an ideographic writing system. Flesch contended that when
you impose an ideographic teaching method on an alphabetic writing system you
cause reading disability.

Dr. Orton had said as much in 1929, but in 1955 Flesch could cite millions of
reading-disabled children as substantiation of what he was saying. Naturally, the
educators rejected Flesch’s contentions.
Most people, of course, don’t know the difference between an alphabetic system and an ideographic one. But one must know the difference in order to understand how and why look-say can cause dyslexia.

The Alphabet

Ours is an alphabetic writing system, which means that we use an alphabet.
What is an alphabet? It is a set of graphic symbols – we call them “letters” – that
stand for the irreducible speech sounds of the language. In other words, alphabet
letters are not meaningless configurations. They actually stand for something.
Each letter represents a specific sound, and in some cases more than one sound.
All alphabets are the same in that regard. The Russian, Greek, and Hebrew alphabets all stand for sounds of their respective languages, and the English alphabet stands for the sounds of the English language.
How does one teach a child or anyone else to read an alphabetic writing system? For hundreds of years it was done very simply in three steps.

First, the child was taught to recognize the letters of the alphabet; second, the child was taught
the sounds the letters stood for; and third, the child was then given words and sentences to read.
How was the child taught the letter sounds? Usually it was done in the simplest
mechanical way possible. For example, the child was taught the consonant sounds
and then drilled on the consonant-vowel combinations arranged in colwnn form,
such as ba, be, bi, bo, bu; da, de, di, do, du etc. the purpose of the drill was to enable the child to develop as quickly and easily as possible an automatic association between letter and sound. Developing that association is at the heart of learning to read an alphabetic writing system.

Pictographs and Ideographs

The first alphabet was invented about 2,000 B.C. Prior to that invention, the
earliest form of writing we know of is pictograph – the pictures represented objects and actions. You didn’t have to go to school to learn to read pictographs, for the symbols looked like the things they represented.
However, as civilization became more complex, the scribes had to begin drawing
pictures of things that did not lend themselves to easy depiction. For example,
how would you draw pictures of such concepts as good, bad, dream, reality, persuasion, confidence, memory, intent, liberty, justice, etc? You can’t. So the scribes drew symbols, none of which looked like the concept they represented.

Thousands and thousands of such symbols – called idiographs – were created.
And now you had to go to school and be taught what all these symbols meant.
The result was that literacy was limited to a small class of scholars, scribes and
priests. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics is an ideographic writing system, and so
is modern Chinese. The Chinese use 50,000 ideographs, of which 5,000 must be
mastered if an individual is to be able to read a Chinese newspaper. Thus, ideographic writing is cumbersome, difficult, and time-consuming to master.

However, somewhere around 2,000 RC. someone in the area of ancient Phoenicia
(today’s southern Lebanon and northern Israel) made a remarkable discovery. He
discovered that all the human language, everything we say, is actually composed
of a small number of irreducible speech sounds arranged in end.less combinations.
It occurred to him that by creating a set of symbols to stand for the irreducible
speech sounds of the language, he could create a new form of writing based on
actual transcription of the spoken word. And so alphabetic writing was invented.
Advantages of tbe Alpbabet

And now for the first time an had an accurate, precise means of transcribing
the spoken word directly into written form, and an equally precise means of translating the written word back into its spoken form. It was the most revolutionary invention in all history. It did away with hieroglyphic and ideographic writing and
accelerated the speed of intellectual deVelopment. It also made learning to read
simple and available to the population as a whole. The invention of the alphabet also had great spiritual significance for mankind.
It permitted the word of God to be put down on paper accurately and precisely in
the form of the Scripture. It made the word of God accessible to the human race.
Clearly, alphabetic writing had enormous advantages over ideographs: I it permitted greatly increased speeds and accuracy in communications, it was easy to master, and it facilitated a tremendous expansion in vocabulary, permitting the human
mind to develop ideas hitherto inconceivable.

In the light of all these advantages, it seems strange that professors of education in the 1930s would decide to teach American children to read English  if it were an ideographic writing system. How could you possibly teach children to
read that way? To a logical mind the whole idea seems not only absurd but insane.
Yet, that is what the professors did.

Going Backwards

Their idea was that it was better for children to look at whole words as pictures
and have them associate them directly with objects, actions and ideas rather than
have them learn to associate the letters with sounds. And so they eliminated step
two in the three-step alphabetic learning process and had the children go directly
from step one to step three; sometimes they would even skipped step one and
started out with whole words. Essentially, the method works as follows: the child is given a sight vocabulary
to memorize. He is taught to look and say the word without knowing that the letters stand for sounds. As far as the pupil is concerned, the letters are a bunch of
arbitrary squiggles arranged in some arbitrary, haphazard order. His task is to see
a picture in the configuration of the whole word – to make the word horse look
like a horse.

Of course, the word horse does not look like a horse. So how does a child remember that the word is horse? Anyway, he can. There isn’t a professor of education anywhere in the world who can tell you how a child learns a sight vocabulary. The only research we know of that addresses that question was done by Josephine H. Bowden at the elementary school of the University of Chicago around
1912. A description of the studies was given by Prof. Walter F. Dearborn in 1914
as follows:

In the first study of pupils, who had no instruction in reading, were
taught by a word method without the use of phonics and the problem was
to determine by what means children actually recognized and differentiated words when left to their own devices. The following quotation indicates the methods employed by the experimenter: “First, incidents; for example, one day when the child was given the cards to read from, it was observed that she read with equal ease whether the card was right side up
or upside down. This incident suggested a test which was later given. Second, comments of the child; for example, when she was asked to find in context the word ‘shoes,’ she said that ‘dress’ looked so much like ‘shoes’
that she was afraid she would make a mistake. Third, questioning; for example, she had trouble to distinguish between ‘sing’ and ‘song.’ When she had mastered the words she was asked how she knew which was which.
Her reply was, ‘by the looks.’ When questioned further she put her finger
on the ‘i’ and the ‘0.’ These three types of evidence correspond to introspection with an adult. The fourth type of evidence is comparison of the words learned with the words not learned as to the parts of speech, geometric form, internal form, and length. Fifth, misreadings; for example,   ‘dogs’ was read ‘twigs,’ and ‘feathers,’ ‘fur.’ Sixth, mutilations; for example ‘dogs’ was printed ‘digs,’ lilac’ was printed ‘laJci.”’

Some of the conclusions may be cited, first as regards the kinds of
words most easily learned on the basis of the word form. Four out of six
children learned more ‘linear’ words, i&., words like “acorns,” “saw,” in
which there were no high letters, than of any other group. In but one case
were the “superlinear” words more easily recognized misreadings or the mistaking of one word for another occurred most frequently in these early stages, first when the words were of the same length (which again converts Messmer’s findings); secondly, when words had common letters, the “g” and “0” of “igloo” caused it to be read as “dogs”;
thirdly, when the initial letters of words were the same; and fourthly, when
the final letters were the same. Words were recognized upside down
nearly as easily as right side up, but [ only] two children noticing any difference. The word seems to be recognized as a whole, and as the author notes, recognized upside down just as the child would recognize a toy upside down. The general conclusion of the study may be quoted:

“The comments and the questions, as well as misreadings, seem to
show that children learn to read words by the trial-and-error method. It
may be the length of the word, the initial letter, the final letter, a characteristic letter, the position of the word in the sentence, or even the blackness of the type that serves as the cue. . .. There is no evidence that the child
works out a system by which he learns to recognize words. That he does
not work out phonics for himself comes out quite clearly in the transposition test. Furthermore, only once did a child divide a word even into its syllables. There is some evidence that conscious of letters, except in the
case of “E,” who so analyzed the word “six.” Sometimes, when the child
seems to have made a letter analysis, he failed to recognize the word a
second time, and in some cases did not learn it at all.”

And so it was obvious to the professors as far back as 1914 that the sight method
was a totally horrendous, inefficient and illogical way to teach a child to read.
And despite Dr. Orton’s warning in 1929 that the method would harm many children, they proceeded to put their new reading programs in all the schools of America.

 Look-Say Strategies.

Of Course, they beefed up their sight vocabulary approach with a battery of
“word recognition strategies.” They provided configuration clues – putting sight
words in frames; picture clues – loading the page with illustrations depicting the
words; context clues – inane stories in which the word could be easily guessed on
the basis of context; and phonetic clues – teaching initial and final consonant
sounds to reduce some ridiculousness of some of the guessing.

It is important to note that teaching phonetic clues is not the same as teaching intensive, systematic phonics. The latter helps the child develop an automatic association of letters and sounds and teaches blending. The fonner simply teaches isolated consonant sounds with no connection to the rest of the syllable.
That this method of teaching can cause symptoms of dyslexia is not difficult to
surmise. What are the symptoms? Dr. Harold N. Levinson, founder of the Medical
Dyslexic Treatment Center in Lake Success, New York, and author of Smart But
Feeling Dumb which he dedicated to “40 million dyslexic Americans,” lists the
symptoms as follows: (1) memory instability for letters, words, or numbers; (2) a
tendency to skip over or scramble letters, words, and sentences; (3) poor, slow,
fatiguing reading ability prone to compensatory head tilting, near-far focusing,
and finger pointing; (4) reversal of letters such as Q, g, words such as saw and
was, and numbers such as 6 and 9 or 16 and 61.

Most of these symptoms sound like the very mistakes made by those children
back in 1912 who were trying to learn a sight vocabulary. Some of those children
even read words upside down!

Poor Spelling

But it is obvious that if you are told to look at words as a picture, you may look
at it from right to left as easily as from left to right You will reverse letters because they look alike and you have not been drilled to know them by sound as well as by sight. You will be a poor speller because the sequence of letters seems
completely arbitrary, with no rhyme or reason. Of course, to a phonetic reader the
sequence of letters is most important because it follows the same sequence in
which the sounds are uttered. Other symptoms include transposing letters in a word, for example, abroad for
aboard, left for felt, how for who; confusing words with others of similar configuration, such as, through, though, thought, or quit, quite, quiet, guessing at unknown words.

Dr. Kenneth L. Goodman, America’s top professor of reading, calls reading a
“psycho linguistic guessing game.” And that’s exactly what it is for most American children in today’s primary schools. The result is an explosion in Special Education, which has become the growth industry for educators so worried about
falling enrollment. The primary schools create the learning disabilities, and the
federal government is funding a new industry to deal with them. In the 1976-77
school year there were 976,000 learning disabled students in Special Education.

In 1983-84 there were 1,806,000. Dyslexia is booming!
Obviously, the prevalent teaching method causes dyslexia. I have visited many
American cities on my lecture tours and have seen for myself the look-say basal
reading programs being used in today’s primary classrooms all across the country.
You can imagine my feelings when I know that the minds of millions of American children are being permanently crippled, their futures handicapped, their self-esteem destroyed by educators who should have known better. This criminal malpractice is going on right now in your community. And yet there is little one can
do about it. The professors of education won’t listen – after all, they write the
textbooks. The book publishers publish what the educators want and what the
textbooks committees adopt. The classroom teachers, as a whole, now no other
way to teach; the professional organizations promote look-say; the principals,
administrators, and superintendents leave the teaching of reading to the “experts.”

Circumventing the System

But there is some hope. There are a growing number of private and church
schools that are teaching children to read by alphabetic, systematic, intensive
phonics. Also, the home-school movement has largely adopted phonics as the technique to teach reading. And here and there one finds a teacher in public schools
who uses an alphabetic-phonics approach or even a school district that has
adopted a phonics-oriented basal.

However, for the nation as a whole, there is little hope that the vast majority of
schools will change their teaching methods in the foreseeable future – unless a
group of well informed top business leaders make the teaching of reading a top
priority issue and force the educators to change their ways. But considering how
poorly informed our business leaders are and how difficult it is to reach them, let
alone brief them on this rather complex subject, there is little likelihood that they
will act effectively on behalf of the children entrapped in the public schools.
(The quotation from Dr. Dearborn is from The Psychological Researches of James
McKeen Cattell: A Review by Some of His Pupils, Archives of psychology, No.
30, 1914, pp. 40-41.)

The above article was written in the mid 1980s and can be found along with much of Sam Blumenfeld’s works in the Sam Blumenfeld Archive:  https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

It’s a must-read for anyone interested in Resistance to Tyranny by Charl van Wyk

“The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates: A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government” by Pastor Matthew J. Trewhella is a thought-provoking and controversial exploration of the relationship between citizens, governments, and the moral responsibility to resist tyranny.

Pastor Matt’s book, published in 2013, delves into historical and theological arguments to support the idea that lower-ranking government officials, or lesser magistrates, have a moral duty to oppose laws and policies imposed by higher authorities when they violate Biblical Law and principles, or infringe upon the rights of the people.

One of the strengths of this work lies in the author’s meticulous research and analysis of Biblical and historical examples where lesser magistrates stood up against unjust rulers, thereby supplying a compelling context for his argument.

By drawing on events recorded in Scripture, and various other time periods and cultures, the author builds a strong case for the doctrine he advocates. The Biblical and historical perspectives add depth and credibility to his thesis, making the book informative and enlightening for readers interested in theology, political philosophy and history.

Pastor Matt’s writing is passionate, and he presents his ideas in a clear and accessible manner. He skillfully combines historical anecdotes, legal analysis, and theological interpretations to support his central claim. The book is well-structured, making it easy for readers to follow his line of reasoning and understand the complexities of the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

A South African Advocate (lawyer) explained how, after having distributed copies of this landmark book to his pastor friends, the friends attended a government meeting where bureaucrats tried, even with promises of tax aid for churches, to coerce the pastors to register their churches with the state.

I’m told pastors lifted this book as they berated the officials.

They quoted from Chapter 6, some of which includes, “When Jesus said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” He was making clear that the civil government has limitations. The State is not the “be all and end all.” It cannot declare just anything to be its own. They cannot make up law as they go, nor change the immutable laws of God. The authority they have is delegated to them from God – it is not autonomously held.”

Praise the Lord for pastors who would not be bought, who understood the Biblical obligations of state officials, and were bold enough to proclaim the Truth!

Get your copy by clicking here: “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates

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Burning the Asherah pole by Charl van Wyk

(From our friend Charl van Wyk

 

Cozmore gazed into the distance and couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Maybe,” he thought, “my eyes are deceiving me!”

What he saw was a group of women taking a shower under “The Tree.” He ran to fetch his camera from his tent. When he emerged, they were nowhere to be seen.

If you’ve just joined us by having downloaded “How to Win a Gunfight… Even if You’re Not a Great Shot”, welcome – please meet Cozmore, our fearless Zimbabwe ministry partner.

Cozmore and Laizah
Earlier that week Cozmore saw one of the local village politicians under “The Tree” at midnight. Then he discovered clay earthen pots and clothing used in witchcraft—and ancestral worship—under “The Tree.”

“The Tree” stood tall right outside our ministry base in Zimbabwe.

Cozmore was warned by neighbors, “There is a vicious snake that lives in that tree. You better not go near it!”

In Africa, snakes are sometimes looked upon as the incarnation of deceased relatives. Serpent worship is, in some areas, closely connected with the worship of the dead.

Cozmore believed the warning of the snake to be a tactic to scare him so that he wouldn’t act against “the evil outside our yard!”

He remembered King Josiah in the Bible and how he dealt with the Asherah pole—a sacred tree or pole that honored the pagan goddess Asherah that was brought into the house of the Lord.

And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.” 2 Kings 23:6

Responding in prayer and faith, Cozmore cut down the tree, burnt the clothing, and destroyed the pots.

This move could have brought conflict with the local authorities. No doubt some were unhappy with Cozmore. But for those who love the Lord God, it has brought peace and joy.

Many, including a village tribal leader, came to thank Cozmore for his courage in the face of danger and spiritual warfare. These were not idle words.

That very week, Cozmore was struck by a cobra!

Cobra bites can be deadly. Their venom has potent neurotoxic and cardiotoxic compounds. Bites can cause blistering, tissue damage, and fatalities.

But, Cozmore had gumboots on! Praise the Lord!

He killed and burnt the snake!

Often spiritual warfare plays out in the physical world.

If Cozmore had been injured or killed by the snake, we might as well have closed our mission base. The locals would have been convinced that the God of the Christians was not as powerful as the other gods.

Cozmore and his team are still serving and discipling the local villagers. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is what motivates us to carry on.

The corn plants are healthy and tall, the nuts are growing well, the community can’t believe that our originally barren land can produce such healthy crops. The antagonists are speechless.

We serve a great God!

Our team has been feeding some 60 families. The widows we serve, previously emaciated, are now healthy and strong.

We are so thankful to our ministry partners who helped us drill a borehole at our ministry base.
The borehole supplies life-giving water to nourish our chickens, rabbits, and vegetables. It also connects to our offsite tap, which ensures many local families—as well as any passersby—enjoy access to a convenient means to quench their thirst. It’s also a great opener to speak to them about He whose Living Water quenches all thirst.

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” John 4:13-14.

In Zimbabwe today, 1.7 million people—including some 408,000 women and 935,000 children—lack access to safe, clean water. Why? Within rural areas, only 50 percent of water pumps are working.

The shear demand for clean drinkable water has led to us needing to upgrade our submersible water pump, and system.

This includes two more solar panels, a 10,000-liter water storage tank, a two-horsepower pump, a solar panel stand, and a tank platform, costing USD2,400.00.

Again, we are so thankful to our ministry partners who’ve prayed for and helped serve the suffering through our ministry base.

Yours,

Charl van Wyk

PS. Our greatest goal is to share Jesus Christ who is the “Living Water,” offering eternal life to those who believe in Him (John 7:37-38).

(Please visit Charl’s website https://missionliberty.wordpress.com/2023/10/31/burning-the-asherah-pole/

 

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Charl van Wyk – Missionary In Africa
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The Weekly Sam: What’s Wrong With Government Education? by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

The emormous failure of our government school system was nicely
summed up by a Boston high school teacher in a recent issue of Education
Week (12/9/98). He said:

“I have about 30 kids in my U.S. history class. They come from nine
different countries; most of them can’t read. Even if they can read the text,
they don’t know what it means. How am I supposed to teach U.S. history to
kids who can’t read? I could come in here every day for 20 years and still
not figure out how to do it.”

Obviously, this particular teacher had no idea how these kids got into
high school without knowing how to read. He had no idea what goes on in
primary school that prevents these children from learning to read, and he
had no idea what to do with older students who are functionally illiterate.
Clearly, the teacher himself is part of the problem. His ignorance of how the
system functions prevents him from helping his students get through it in
one piece. In other words, the compartmentalization of teachers explains
why so many of them have no idea of how the total system works and why
the system can lurch from crisis to crisis without any effective change taking
place.

The real blame for the system’s dysfunction, however, must lie with the
professors of education, the state departments of education, and the
administrators who have all conspired to create the functional illiteracy that
plagues the public schools of America — once considered the most literate
and advanced nation on earth. Deliberately induced illiteracy among
students is a vital part of the plan to dumb down Americans so that they will
be unable to resist the imposition of social and political control by an
arrogant universitarian elite determined to create a new world order based
on humanist-socialist values.

This “education” plan is part of the utopian socialist agenda set down
by the progressives at the turn of the century. The progressives were
members of the Protestant academic elite who no longer believed in the
religion of their fathers. They put their new faith in science, evolution, and
psychology. Science explained the material world (matter in motion),
evolution explained the origin of life (organisms crawling out of the
primordial ooze), and psychology explained human nature and provided
the elite with the scientific means of controlling human behavior.
These men were also socialists. Why? Because they had to deal with
the problem of evil. The Bible tells us that evil is the result of man’s innate
depravity, his innate sinful nature. But since the progressives did not
believe in the Bible, they decided that evil was caused by ignorance,
poverty, and social injustice. And what was the cause of social injustice?
Why, it was this horrible capitalist system with all of its inequities. Socialism,
it was believed, would remove these inequities and thereby solve the
problem of evil. By the way, the progressives did not get their model of
socialism from Karl Marx.

They got it from an American by the name of
Edward Bellamy whose book, Looking Backward, published in 1888,
projected the fantasy of a socialist America in the year 2000.
And so, the progressives, dedicated to their utopian ideal, decided to
do all in their power to change America from an individualistic, capitalist,
and religious society into a socialist, collectivist, humanist or atheist society.
How were they to accomplish that? Through the education system. They
would change the curriculum and teaching methods in the public schools so
that American children would emerge as young socialists willing to change
our way of life into a socialist one.

The socialists realized that the transformation might take as much as a
hundred years to complete. In fact, John Dewey wrote in 1898: “Change
must come gradua.lly. To force it unduly would compromise its final success
by favoring a violent reaction .” Dewey then outlined the long-range strategy
which the progressives were to adopt:

What is needed in the first place is that there should be a full and frank statement
of conviction with regard to the matter from physiologists and psychologists and from
those school administrators who are conscious of the evils of the present regime.
Educators should also frankly face the fact that the New Education, as it exists today, is
a compromise and a transition: it employs new methods but its controlling ideals are
virtually of the Old Education. Wherever movements looking to a solution of the
problem are intelligently undertaken, they should receive encouragement, moral and
financial, from the intellectual leaders of the community. There are already in
existence a considerable number of educational “experiment stations,” which
represent the outposts of educational progress. If these schools can be adequately
supported for a number of years they will perform a great vicarious service. After such
schools have worked out carefully and definitely the subject-matter of the new
curriculum,–finding the right place for language-studies and placing them in their right
perspective,–the problem of the more general educational reform will be immensely
simplified.

One hundred years later we can see how successful the Dewey plan
has been in transforming our educational system into one that serves the
needs of the atheist socialist state. Dewey was aided and abetted by a
cadre of reformers that included such luminaries as Edward L. Thorndike,
James McKeen Cattell, Elwood P. Cubberly, George D. Strayer, Charles
Judd, James R. Angell and a host of others. Thorndike, Cattell, and Strayer
ra~ an educational mafia out of Teachers College (Columbia), Cubberly
reigned at Stanford, and Angell became president at Yale.
Change in the curriculum of public education has happened so
gradually that most parents haven’t the faintest idea what is happening to
their children, four million of whom are being drugged daily with Ritalin so
that they can sit in their classroom seats and be socialized without
resistance.

What is truly amazing is the coherence and continuity of the
progressive agenda which is as much alive today at it was when Dewey and
company were pontificating. For example, The Whole Language Catalog, a
sort of bible of the whole-language movement published in 1991, has 15
entries for John Dewey in its index. After citing his debt to Dewey, Kenneth
Goodman, the leading guru of whole-language philosophy, writes:
Whole language picks up where the progressives left off . … [It] takes the
philosophy and positive, child-centered view of the progressive educators and adds
the knowledge of language, of learning, of child development, and of teaching, and
builds a strong scientific base under them . It is this combination of science and
humanistic educational and social philosophy that forms the foundation for whole
language curriculum . … We use the psychological concepts of Piaget and Vygotsky to
underscore Dewey’s concept of learning as transaction: pupils making sense of their
world and being changed themselves in the transactions. (p. 281)
In the early days, the progressives were mainly supported by the major
philanthropic foundations.

Today the reforms are being underwritten by
federal and state governments. Three recent federal programs are funding
the massive restructuring of American education in accordance with the
progressives’ plans: Goals 2000 (enacted 3/31/94), School-to-Work
Opportunities Act (enacted 5/4/94), and the Improving America’s Schools
Act, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 (enacted 10/20/94). Thus, the Congress of the United States has
become an accomplice in the progressive plan to restructure American
education in the socialist mold.

Apart from needing the funds to carry out their plan, the progressives
also realized that coherence and continuity of their agenda over a hundred
years was vitally necessary if the plan was to be successful. Thus, in 1901
they created the National Society for the Study of Education, wherein the
progressive leaders would be able to formulate their programs of reform,
debate their effectiveness, and pass on the baton to their loyal disciples. By
studying their yearbooks, the first of which was published in 1902, one can
follow the inexorable progress of the socialist takeover of American
education.

All of this was accomplished by tenured professors of education and
behavioral psychologists, working within a maze of well funded professional
organizations, publishing journals, writing textbooks, holding hundreds of
conferences, seminars, and conventions each year. None of this has been
visible to the average parent who puts a child in a public school. Parents
assume that their schools are run by local school boards, superintendents,
principals, and teachers. What they don’t see is the invisible hand behind
this constant pressure for reform that keeps recreating the curriculum .
The average teacher may feel that there is some kind of invisible hand
at work, but teachers would rather blame failure on cultural trends,
excessive television viewing, dysfunctional parents, and such student
disabilities as attention deficit disorder and dyslexia.

Obviously, this is a system of education that cannot be supported by
any Christian. Local control no longer exists. It was inevitable that a
government education system would become a federal system controlled
by those who have been leading us toward totalitarian socialism. Do I
exaggerate? To be convinced that the end goal is a totalitarian system, all
one has to do is read the Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood,
Elementary, and Secondary Education (NCES 94-303). This is the official
guidebook for the computerized data-gathering system dreamed up by our
totalitarian bureaucrats. The data will include massive information on
health, family, religion, attitudes, psychological assessments, etc. For
example, the attitudinal test is described as: “An assessment to measure
the mental and emotional set or patterns of likes and dislikes or opinions
held by a student or a group of students.

This is often used in relation to
considerations such as controversial issues or personal adjustments.”
All of this sensitive, personal data will be housed in a central computer
in Washington making it easy for “educators” to control just about everyone.
But the question is simply this: does the government of a free people have
the right to collect this kind of information on all of its citizens for its own
political or social purposes? Should the government of a free people record
the attitudes and opinions of its citizens so that it can engineer thei r
personal adjustment?

The time has come for Christians to realize what has become of the
“land of the free and the home of the brave.” If Christians want to restore
the full measure of our freedoms, they will have to do what they are
reluctant to do: remove their children en masse from the public schools.
What is needed now is not accomodation to the plans of the American
Pharoah but a full-fledged exodus of Christian children. That’s the easiest
and most peaceful way to put an end to the socialist agenda and return
America to its basic constitutional principles. Will Christians have the
courage to do what must be done? That test will be upon us sooner than
anyone anticipated.

(The above article was written in 1998.  It is part of the Sam Blumenfeld Archives-a free on-line resource:  https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

The Weekly Sam: Argentina and Paper Money by Sam Blumenfeld

 

What the people of Argentina are going through is possible in any country that uses paper “money” as the basis of its economic activity. Today’s paper money has no backing and therefore is only worth what the government or central bank says it is worth. We call that kind of paper money “Legal Tender.” In other words, the government invests its faith and credit in the value stated on the paper note. Money is supposed to be a medium of exchange and a storage of wealth and we accept paper money because the government backs its stated value. But such a system can only work if the people have trust and confidence in their government and their government behaves responsibly. If we go back to the early days of economic activity, we find that barter was the earliest form of exchange.

A person could exchange a cow for sausages. In other words, one gave value for value. The medium of exchange was awkward and cumbersome, and the two individuals involved had to make value judgments about what they were getting for their commodity. But then it was found that gold would be accepted by many sellers in lieu of a perishable commodity as a medium of exchange, because of its scarcity and convenience. Gold also became an excellent storage for wealth. You could hold gold without its spoiling for as long as you wanted, and people would gladly exchange commodities for it. But then, as civilization ‘progressed, keeping gold became inconvenient. It could also easily be stolen. So, people began putting their gold for safekeeping in banks, and the banks issued gold certificates or banknotes. The banknotes were worth their weight in gold. But then the banks used the gold deposits as security for high-interest loans, which they made by issuing banknotes. But when the loans were not repaid, and the owners of gold cashed in their banknotes, the bank became insolvent, and their notes were no longer honored.

This was the case in early America, where the Farmer’s Almanack up to 1863 actually listed “Worthless and Uncurrent Bank Notes in New England.” Thirteen banks in Boston alone were listed as having worthless bank notes. None of today’s currencies have any backing at all except the faith and credit of the government behind it. In Argentina, the faith and credit of the government no longer exists. And so, its citizens hold paper money that has already lost half its value by government devaluation. The Argentine peso cannot be said to be a storage of wealth. Only those individuals who were smart enough to buy gold or U.S. dollars will come out ahead of the game, because they did not trust their government to maintain the value of Argentine currency. So, what is money today? The money that becomes figures in a computer must still be earned the old-fashioned way, by working for it, or earning it through prudent investment. That is, for most people. The expansion of government has made it possible to pay the needy in welfare checks and food stamps.

It is still possible to use gold as a storage of wealth. As long as paper money is susceptible to inflation, the dollar will continue to decrease in value. Thus, we have experienced exactly what the Argentines have experienced but over a much longer period of time. Those people in Argentina who owned gold came out ahead of everyone else, because the price of gold is set on the world market in London, and it is now worth as much as holders of the Argentine peso have to pay for it. Also, those who owned valuable real estate did well.

Once you understand the vulnerabilities of paper money, you have to invest your money and store it in ways that will maintain and hopefully increase its value. Putting it in the bank at today’s low interest will not increase its value. The stock market is still the best way to grow wealth. But you must buy stock in companies that you know will grow and prosper. Real estate is one of the best ways to store wealth, particularly in areas of increasing value. It makes sense to take advantage of today’s low mortgage rates to buy a house. Antiques and valuable works of art also make good investments. As for gold, it is a commodity. Its price is subject to periodic fluctuations caused by political and economic crises. There is no way of knowing for sure what the price of gold will be tomorrow. In other words, those who bought gold when it was $800 an ounce lost half its value as it declined to $350. It all depends at what price you buy it and at what price you sell it.

(The above article was written in the 1990s and is found among much of Sam’s work in the Sam Blumenfeld Archives:  https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

General Cornwallis Surrenders at Yorktown October 19, 1781

 

On this day in 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis formally surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing the American Revolution to a close.

Previously, Cornwallis had driven General George Washington’s Patriot forces out of New Jersey in 1776, and led his Recoats in victory over General Horatio Gates and the Patriots at Camden, South Carolina, in 1780. His subsequent invasion of North Carolina was less successful, however, and in April 1781, he led his weary and battered troops toward the Virginia coast, where he could maintain seaborne lines of communication with the large British army of General Henry Clinton in New York City. After conducting a series of raids against towns and plantations in Virginia, Cornwallis settled in Yorktown in August. The British immediately began fortifying the town and the adjacent promontory of Gloucester Point across the York RiverWashington instructed the Marquis de Lafayette, who was in Virginia with an American army of around 5,000 men, to block Cornwallis’ escape from Yorktown by land. In the meantime, Washington’s 2,500 troops in New York were joined by a French army of 4,000 men under the Count de Rochambeau. Washington and Rochambeau made plans to attack Cornwallis with the assistance of a large French fleet under the Count de Grasse, and on August 21 they crossed the Hudson River to march south to Yorktown. Covering 200 miles in 15 days, the allied force reached the head of Chesapeake Bay in early September.Meanwhile, a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves failed to break French naval superiority at the Battle of Virginia Capes on September 5, denying Cornwallis his expected reinforcements. Beginning September 14, de Grasse transported Washington and de Rochambeau’s men down the Chesapeake to Virginia, where they joined Lafayette and completed the encirclement of Yorktown on September 28. De Grasse landed another 3,000 French troops carried by his fleet. During the first two weeks of October, the 14,000 Franco-American troops gradually overcame the fortified British positions with the aid of de Grasse’s warships. A large British fleet carrying 7,000 men set out to rescue Cornwallis, but it was too late.On October 19, General Cornwallis surrendered 7,087 officers and men, 900 seamen, 144 cannons, 15 galleys, a frigate and 30 transport ships. Pleading illness, he did not attend the surrender ceremony, but his second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French commanders. As the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the British band played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.”Although the war persisted on the high seas and in other theaters, the Patriot victory at Yorktown effectively ended fighting in the American colonies. Peace negotiations began in 1782, and on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, formally recognizing the United States as a free and independent nation after eight years of war.

  This is from This Day in History:  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cornwallis-surrenders-at-yorktown

 

The Weekly Sam: Should Christians Support Education Without God

Back in 1849, when the organized Protestants of Massachusetts debated whether or not to support the public-school movement, which was then being heavily promoted by the Unitarians, they decided in favor of support, but with well-expressed conditions. They wrote:

The benefits of this system, in offering instruction to all, are so many and so great that its religious deficiencies, –especially since they can be otherwise supplied, do not seem to be a sufficient reason for abandoning it, and adopting in place of it, a system of denominational parochial schools …. It is however a great evil to withdraw from the established system of common schools, the interest and influence of the religious part of the community. On the whole, it seems to be the wisest course, at least for the present, to do all in our power to perfect as far as it can be done, not only its intellectual, but also its moral and religious character. If after a full and faithful experiment, it should at last be seen that fidelity to the religious interests of our children forbids a further patronage of the system, we can unite with the Evangelical Christians in the establishment of private schools, in which more full doctrinal religious instruction may be possible. But, until we are forced to this result, it seems to us desirable that the religious community do all in their power to give an opportunity for a full and fair experiment of the existing system, including not only the common schools, but also the Normal Schools and the Board of Education.

I do not believe that any Christian can doubt that there has been a “full and fair experiment” of public education for the last 150 years and that its fidelity to the religious interests of Christian children has been proven to be decidedly negative. In fact, thousands of Christian parents, without knowledge of what was written in 1849, have already taken their children out of the public schools and either decided to homeschool them or place them in Christian schools. Their responsibilities as Christian parents have led them to make the necessary decision for the sake of their children’s spiritual wellbeing. But what is disturbing is that most Christians still patronize a system that is undermining the religious beliefs of their children.

One wonders what must happen before these parents realize the harm, they are doing to their children by keeping them in public schools. The simple fact is that the present government education system has as its foundation an anti-Christian philosophy known as secular humanism. All one has to do is read the Humanist Manifestos I and II to confirm the truth of this assertion. Humanist Manifesto I was written in 1933 by young Unitarian ministers who believed that the spiritual power of orthodox religion was in decline and should be replaced by a rational, man-centered, nontheistic religion. They wrote:

Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values …. Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. . . Religious humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and institutions with a view to the enhancement of human life is the purpose and program of humanism. Certainly, religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, ecclesiastical methods, and communal activities must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows, in order to function effectively in the modern world.

Humanism is the only religion in America that has as its purpose and program the reconstitution of the institutions, rituals, and ecclesiastical methods of other religions. This is an overt declaration of war against Biblical religion. Forty years later, Humanist Manifesto II states:

As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity. [We]e can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species …. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.

In the January/February 1983 issue of The Humanist magazine, a young scholar by the name of John J. Dunphy expressed exactly what the aim of humanists is in education:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public-school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey. So humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of educational level-­ preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new–the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of “love thy neighbor” will finally be achieved.

The humanist war against Christianity is going on everyday in the classrooms of America. But the real battle is being fought in the courtrooms of the nation. In March 1987, U.S. District Judge W. Brevard Hand ruled in Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County. Alabama that the public-school curriculum was based on the tenets of secular humanism, and he thereby ordered that humanist textbooks to be removed from the schools. Five months later this ruling was overturned by the Eleventh Circuit Court which stated that “none of these books convey a message of government approval of secular humanism.” In other words, humanists are free to teach their dogma in the public schools as long as the government does not convey a message of approval. But that is the argument used to keep Christianity out. It is said that the mere inclusion of anything Christian in a public-school curriculum automatically implies government approval.

The notion that public schools are neutral when it comes to religion is belied by the strong prejudice against Christianity as openly expressed by such humanists as John Dunphy. What we have is not neutrality but warfare. Until Christians recognize that the government schools are establishments of religion, and that education is fundamentally a religious activity, we shall not be able to deal realistically with our educational crisis. The message for Christian parents must be loud and clear: putting a child in a public school violates God’s commandment as given in Deuteronomy 6 to educate a child in the love and admonition of the Lord.

There is no substitute for a godly education. In place of God, the public schools offer evolution, sex education, death education, multiculturalism, transcendental meditation, situational ethics, drug education, and other forms of humanist teachings. These are the programs that are creating the new nihilist, amoral barbarians that are devastating the lives of thousands of parents. There is hardly a Christian family that has not lost a child to the satanic culture that grows in the public-school environment. If Christians wish to restore America as a nation under God, they shall have to educate their children in schools that revere Him. •

American Minute with Bill Federer Four Voyages of Columbus to the New World – and Hurricanes in the Caribbean

 

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American Minute with Bill Federer
Four Voyages of Columbus to the New World – and Hurricanes in the Caribbean

Mehmet II succeeded his father, Murad II, to rule the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

After killing his brothers, he later formalized this practice into law, stating:

“Whichever of my sons inherits the sultan’s throne, it behooves him to kill his brothers in the interest of the world order” … continue reading American Minute here …

Download as PDF …

On May 29, 1453, at the age of 21, Mehmet II conquered the Byzantine city of Constantinople, the largest and richest city in Europe.
Located on the Bosporus, where the East and West met, it largely served as the capital of Christendom for over a thousand years.
Mehmet had stated:
“The ghaza (holy war) is our basic duty, as it was in the case of our fathers … The conquest of (Constantinople) is … essential to the future and the safety of the Ottoman state.”
The fall of Constantinople ended the Byzantine Empire and permanently altered trade routes from Europe to Asia, which had been traveled for centuries by merchants, such as Marco Polo.
Detractors of Columbus should turn one chapter back in the history books and lay blame for his voyages on the expansionist policies of Sultan Mehmet II, who blocked Western access to the land trade routes to India and China.
Even socialist historian Howard Zinn admitted in A People’s History of the United States (1980):
“Now that the Turks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia, a sea route was needed.
Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tip of Africa.
Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean.”
William Lawson Grant, Professor of Colonial History at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, wrote in the introduction to Voyages and Explorations (Toronto, The Courier Press, Limited, 1911, A.S. Barnes Company):
“The history of Western Civilization begins in a conflict with the Orient, a conflict of which it may be the end is not yet.
… The routes between East and West have been trodden by the caravans of trade more often even than by the feet of armies.
… The treasures of the East were long brought overland to Alexandria, or Constantinople, or the cities of the Levant, and thence distributed to Europe by the galleys of Genoa or of Venice.
… But when the Turk placed himself astride the Bosporus, and made Egypt his feudatory, new routes had to be found.”
Grant continued in Voyages and Explorations:
“In the search for these were made the three greatest voyages in history, those
of Columbus,
of Vasco da Gama, and
greatest of all of Magellan …
… In his search for the riches of Cipangu (Japan), Columbus stumbled upon America.
The great Genoese lived and died under the illusion that he had reached the outmost verge of Asia.”
In 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama successfully sailed around South Africa to India.
But six years earlier, Columbus proposed another westward SEA route.
Beginning in 1492, Christopher Columbus took FOUR VOYAGES to the New World:
1ST VOYAGE (1492-1493), he DISCOVERED land;
2ND VOYAGE (1493-1496), he encountered a hurricane, malaria, and CANNIBALS;
3RD VOYAGE (1498-1500), he faced doldrums, rebellion, and was ARRESTED;
4TH VOYAGE (1502-1504), he survived another hurricane, explored Panama, and was SHIPWRECKED on Jamaica for a year.
1ST VOYAGE (1492-1493) was truly historic.
Columbus used his knowledge of the “trade winds” to make the longest voyage ever out of the sight of land.
Thinking he had made it to India, he referred to the inhabitants as “Indians,” and the name stuck.
It is interesting to consider that native Americans might never have been called “Indians” had it not been for Islamic jihad cutting off the land trade routes to India.
These first inhabitants were peaceful Taino Arawak natives.
Columbus thought that Cuba was the tip of China and that Hispaniola (Dominican Republican/Haiti) was Japan.
Returning to Europe, Columbus’ ship, Santa Maria, hit a reef off the coast of Hispaniola and wrecked on December 24, 1492. He left 39 sailors in a make-shift fort named La Navidad.
2ND VOYAGE (1493-1496), Columbus was frustratingly saddled with 17 ships and 1,500 mostly get-rich-quick Spanish opportunists.
This was the doings of the jealous Spanish Bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, who continually undermined Columbus at the royal court.
Fonseca thought it was a mistake that the Spanish Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, gave so much authority to a “non-Spaniard” — Columbus being just a low-class Genoese, from the rival Italian city-state of Genoa.
In this sense, Columbus was the victim of racial discrimination.
Bishop Fonseca is to be blamed for altering Columbus’ goal from finding India and China to managing hundreds of ambitious settlers. Columbus was an amazingly gifted explorer, but unfortunately failed miserably as a governor.
Looking for a location for a settlement, Columbus explored Puerto Rico and Jamaica.
Arriving at La Navidad, Hispaniola, they were shocked to find that the sailors Columbus had left the previous year were all killed by natives.
Reality set it.
Instead of finding a paradise, Spaniards were shocked to discover the existence of aggressive Carib natives.
Caribs would land on an island inhabited by the peaceful Taino Arawak natives and proceed to emasculated, sodomized and cannibalized them.
Columbus had them establish the settlement of La Isabella on Hispaniola, but shortly after it was destroyed in a hurricane, a storm of unbelievable intensity which none of them had experienced before.
They abandoned La Isabella and founded a new settlement named Santo Domingo, presumably in honor of Columbus’ father Domenico.
After the hurricane, followed by malaria, together with the fear of cannibals, the Spanish settlers began to feel Columbus misrepresented this new world “paradise.”
They began to grow impatient at having to obey Columbus, who, after all, was not even Spanish, but rather an Italian of low birth from Genoa.
Columbus unfortunately yielded to their greedy demands and allowed them set up European-style feudal plantations, called “mayorazgos.”
This tragically set a precedent for generations of mistreatment of native populations.
Columbus sailed back to Spain, leaving his two younger brothers Bartholomew and Diego (Giacomo) in charge of Santo Domingo.
3RD VOYAGE (1498-1500), Columbus sailed across the Atlantic further south, closer to the equator.
This brought him through a stretch of sea called “the horse latitudes” and “the doldrums,” where there is no wind for weeks at a time.
Parched in the windless heat of the blazing sun, Columbus prayed that if the winds returned, he would name the first land he saw after the Trinity.
When the winds picked up, Columbus named the first land he saw “Trinidad.”
Columbus then set foot and planted the Spanish flag on the Paria Peninsula of present-day Venezuela, August 1, 1498, making him the first European to set foot on South America.
He explored the beautiful Orinoco River, speculating that it could be the outer regions of the Garden of Eden.
When Columbus arrived back at his settlement of Santo Domingo, he found that the greedy Spanish settlers had rebelled against his brothers, Bartholomew and Diego.
In despair, Columbus sent a letter to the King, pleading for help.
The plea was intercepted by the ambitious Bishop Fonseca, who convinced the King that, instead of sending help, he should replace Columbus as governor.
The King sent a replacement governor named Bobadillo in 1500.
Bobadillo arrested Columbus and his brothers, and sent them back to Spain in chains.
Columbus wrote to a friend and confidante of the Queen, Dona Juana de Torres:
“I undertook a new voyage to the New World which hitherto had been hidden …
They judge me there as a governor who had gone to Sicily or to a city or town under a regular government …
I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies.”
4TH VOYAGE (1502-1504).
After a two year delay, Ferdinand and Isabella finally permitted Columbus to sail on May 12, 1502, from Cadiz, Spain, on his last voyage.
Columbus was forbidden to visit his settlement of Santo Domingo, but upon reaching the Caribbean, he was alarmed to see another hurricane brewing, similar to the one experienced at La Isabella.
Weighing the risk, he entered the harbor of Santo Domingo to warn them of the approaching danger and to seek shelter for his ships.
He anchored and rowed ashore.
A second replacement governor had arrived named Orvando.
He ignored Columbus.
Orvando was preoccupied in preparing to send back to Spain the previous governor, Bobadillo, along with a treasure fleet of 30 ships filled with gold and native slaves.
Unwittingly, the ships would be heading directly into the path of the hurricane. Columbus’ warning was completely spurned, as he was considered an unwelcome persona-non-grata.
Orvando ordered Columbus to immediately leave the harbor.
With the hurricane now fast approaching, Columbus did not even take the time to pull aboard his row boat.
He sailed as fast as he could to seek shelter from the wind on the far side of the island.
The hurricane hit around July 1, 1502, with such fury that it almost completely destroyed Santo Domingo.
Of the treasure fleet, 4 ships returned to Santo Domingo, and 25 sank, with the loss of approximately 500 lives, including Bobadillo.
The one ship that survived and made it to Spain was the Aguja. It was so old and slow that it had not yet cleared the island mangroves when the hurricane hit.
When the ship arrived in Spain, to everyone’s amazement, it was found to be the one carrying Columbus’ portion of the gold, per his initial agreement with Ferdinand and Isabella.
The providential nature of this incident vindicated Columbus’ reputation, though he did not find out about it for over a year, as he was blown around the Caribbean.
Describing the violent weather, Columbus recorded:
“The tempest arose and wearied me so that I knew not where to turn, my old wound opened up, and for 9 days I was lost without hope of life; eyes never beheld the sea so angry and covered with foam …”
He continued:
“The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. The people were so worn out that they longed for death.”
After a day and a half of continuous lightning, Columbus’ 15-year-old son, Ferdinand, recorded that on December 13, 1502, a waterspout passed between the ships:
“… the which had they not dissolved by reciting the Gospel according to St. John, it would have swamped whatever it struck … for it draws water up to the clouds in a column thicker than a waterbutt, twisting it about like a whirlwind.”
Columbus’ biographer, Samuel Eliot Morrison described Admiral Columbus:
“It was the Admiral who exorcised the waterspout. From his Bible he read of that famous tempest off Capernaum, concluding, ‘Fear not, it is I!’
Then clasping the Bible in his left hand, with drawn sword he traced a cross in the sky and a circle around his whole fleet.”
Columbus explored the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
He briefly landed in Panama, but was too ill and too suspicious of the natives to cross the 50 mile-wide isthmus on foot to the Pacific side, where he could have seen the real route to India and China.
As it was, they were attacked by Indians, and barely made it out of a shallow Belen River at low tide with 3 of his 4 ships. Another ship was lost in a storm off Cuba.
With his last two ships worm-eaten and taking on water, he beached them on the Island of Jamaica at St. Anne’s Bay, on June 25, 1503, marooned for the next year.
Natives at first accommodated them, but the situation deteriorated when some sailors began an unruly mutiny.
Fearing an attack, Columbus had to act fast.
An accomplished explorer, Columbus had been diligent to keep track of the position of the moon and stars in the night sky of the Western Hemisphere, something that had never been observed before.
Using astronomic tables made by Rabbi Abraham Zacuto of Spain, Columbus summoned the chiefs to his marooned ships on the specific night of February 29, 1504.
When he correctly predicted a lunar eclipse, the natives became afraid and convinced Columbus had divine favor.
They abandoned their plans of attack and continued to provide for them.
Finally, Columbus’ captain, Diego Méndez de Segura, purchased a canoe from the natives and set off with several of them from Jamaica toward Hispaniola (Haiti), crossing 450 miles of open sea.
Arriving there, Méndez found Governor Ovando in the jungle, subduing the Taino Arawak natives.
Ovando was not thrilled to hear that Columbus was still alive and waited months to send help.
Being rescued at last, Columbus returned to Santo Domingo for a final visit, then to Spain, arriving on November 7, 1504.
Three weeks later, his chief patron, Queen Isabella, died.
Columbus died a year and a half later at the age of 55.
Though unsuccessful as a governor, Columbus was nevertheless one of the world’s most accomplished sailors and explorers, and though he did not reach India or China, he did change history.
Back during his fourth and final voyage, when he was in Panama, trapped on the Belen River at low tide, he was incapacitated with physical pain.
On July 7, 1503, not knowing if anyone would ever read it, he wrote his Lettera Rarissima:
“The Indians were many and united and attacked … I was outside very much alone, on this rude coast, with a high fever and very fatigued.
There was no hope of escape. In this state, I climbed painfully to the highest part of the ship and cried out for help with a fearful voice …
… At length, groaning with exhaustion, I fell asleep, and heard a compassionate voice saying,

‘O fool, and slow to believe and serve thy God, the God of every man! … From thy birth He hath ever held thee in special charge …

Of those barriers of the Ocean Sea, which were closed with such mighty chains, He hath given thee the keys …

Turn thou to Him and acknowledge thy faults; His mercy is infinite; thine old age shall not hinder thee from performing mighty deeds … Whatever He promises He fulfills with interest; that is His way.”

(Published with permission from the American Minute.)