The Weekly Sam: Dyslexia: The Disease You Get in School
Dyslexia: The Disease You Get in School
By Me 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 socioecnomic
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.
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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 dido’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 OrtonGillingham
method, his 1929 article is nowhere referred to in the literature on the
subject.
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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 deepseated
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 conunon 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.
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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 simpJy 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.
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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 Enghsh as 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.
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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 ftndings); 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
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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. Furthennore, 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 hann 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!
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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 rime 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 pennanently crippled, their futures handicapped, their selfesteem
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 borne-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.
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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 ofPsyschology, No.
30, 1914, pp. 40-41.)
Editors Note: Here is a link to a PDF version of this article on the Blumenfeld Archives:
http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Articles/Dyslexia-The%20Disease%20You%20Get%20in%20School.pdf
The Weekly Sam: Jewish Society of Americanists
The Blumenfeld Archives
Sam Blumenfeld was involved in many organizations. He was one of the co-founders of the Jewish Society of Americanists founded in April 1966. We believe that Camp Constitution is the only place where you can find the newsletters of the organization. Here is the link:
The Weekly Sam: The Wonderful World Of Charity
Editors note: This article fron the early 1980s, was originally typed and contains some typos which we were not able to correct. A link to a PDF version: http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Transcripts/The%20Wonderful%20World%20Of%20Charity.pdf
The Blumenfeld Archives
By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
Laissez-faire — or a reasonable facsimile thereof — is alive
and well in the wonderful world of nonprofit organizations better
known in America as philanthropy. Anyone can start a charity around
some worthy medical, educational or cultural cause, get a mailing
list, send out a quarter of a million letters pleading for money,
and then wait for the checks to roll in. This is one of the great
freedoms Americans can still joyfully exercise, a freedom that some
people would like to curtail.
And that’s why your mailbox on some days is literally crammed
with letters from such organizations as the American Civil Liberties
Union Foundation, the Sierra Club, American Leprosy Missions, The
Salvation Army, the Cousteau Society, Planned Parenthood, the Epilepsy
Foundation of America, Alternatives to Abortion International,
Animal Protection Institute of America, Sacred Heart Auto League,
Leukemia Society of America, etc.
Would you believe that the cumulative list of tax-exempt
organizarions compiled by the Internal Revenue Service has over
250,000 entries? And that doesn’t tell the whole story, for under
one umbrella organization . may be hundreds of branches or chapters
that are j ust as tax exempt as the parent group . . Would you believe
that Americans give to charity at a rate of over $100 million a day?
Would you believe that America’s total giving — $47.74 billion In
1980 — is more than the national budgets of all but uine of the
160 nations listed in the World Almanac? (Brazil’s national budget
in 1979 was $18.83; Canada’s, $44.75 billion.)
The simple truth is that Americans are the most generous people
on earth. They give about $180 per capita each year to charity,
whereas Canadians give only about $35, and Englishmen a mere $20.
Large-scale philanthropy is a peculiarly American phenomenon for a
number of very good reasons: (1) Americans in ‘ general rely less on
government to get things done than do people in other nations;
(2) Americans, because of their wealth, are grateful for their good
fortune and are thus easily persuaded by religious conviction or a
sense of altruism to help the less fortunate and contrbute to worthy
causes; (3) the tax-exempt status of the nonprofit organization has
made it economically attractive to conduct certain medical, cultural,
educational and scentific enterprises in the nonprofit format;
(4) fund-raising has been developed into a very highly skilled
profession, with the result that more people are being persuaded to
give to more causes than ever before.
$39{93 billion.
become the favorite
Contrary to the popular belief that foundations are the big
givers in America, the fact is that individuals contribute over
80 percent of the total given to charity. In 1980 that came to
And that is why direct-mail solicitations have
way to reach potential donors. They go to
inqividuals in their homes where the letters can be read in an easy
chair in close proximity to a personal checkbook. The appeal letter,
skillfully written by a w|ll-paid professional, is intended to
enlist the reader’s interest and symp}thy to the extent that he
or she will write out a check immediately, slip it in the prepaid
reply envelope, and mail it in the morning. An appeal letter that
is set aside for future answering seldom gets ansv?~reu because the
appeals that arrive in the next day’s mail may command greater
interest and sympathy.
Although begging for alms is probably as old as the human race,
soliciting contributions by mail is a relatively new phenomenon
which, in the computer age, has become a highly sophisticated business.
Legend has it that direct-mail fund-raising was started in Italy
in 1835 by Saint Vincent Pallotti, an advisor to the Pope, wh0 sent
letters to potential donors appealing for money to support his
works of mercy. Undoubtedly Father Pallotti wrote some very persuasive
letters, for he opened a whole new world of charitable enterprise.
Today some direct-mail specialists charge as much as $5,000
to write a good, hard-hitting letter for a client — who might be
a magazine publisher, a sales house, or a charity. In 1978 about
34 billion form letters were sent through the mail by businesses and
organizations trying to drum up mail-order response. Their
success accounted for about 12 percent of all retail sales,
addqng up to $83 billion in gross revenues.
business.
That’s a lot ofBut it all starts with a mailing list. You just don’t send
out letters to everyone in the phone book. You try to get a list
of people most likely to respond to your appeal. Richard Viguerie,
the direct-mail king for conservative. causes, built his thriving
empire on a list of contributors to the Goldwater campaign of 1964.
Hqving those names and addresses was literally like having money
n the bank. These were people interested in any number of
conservative causes. The result was the birth of numeyous sinqle
issue organizations that began laying the groundwork for a conservative
c8meback.
Likewise, ln 1972 the liberals put together their own mailing
list from contributors to the McGovern campaign. This list, compiled
by direct-mail specialist Morris Dees, had a half million names to
begin with. If you were on this list, you no doubt have received
since then several hundreds of solicitations from liberal causes.
And, of course, organizations will exchange or buy lists to expand
their reach. One contributor who gave $15 to the Kent State Fund
soon began receiving solicitations from the followers of Karen
Silkwood, the Union of Concerned Scientists (nuclear power) and
the Greenpeace Foundation (baby seals). There is a very lively
traffic in lists, with brokers offering whole catalogues of specialized
lists for rent — doctors, lawyers, teachers, salesmen, home-owners,
boat-owners, farmers, pilots, ministers, etc. Some lists are
computer-coded so that they can be broken down by sex, level of
,donation, ethnic derivation of surname, and zip code, which makes
it pretty easy for an organization or business to direct its
campaign to a very specific group of people.
Renting a list is not cheap. The cost will run between $15
and $60 per thousand names. But that’s only the beginning. There’s
also postage, paper, and printing to pay for — not to mention the
overhead of an office. On the average, the overall cost for a mailing
of 100,000 pieces is about $20,000, or 20 cen¡3 apiece. A resronse
of 2 perc¢nt is considered highly successful. If those 2,000
respondees contribute an average of about $15 each, your income
will be about $30,000, leaving your organization about $10,000 to
spend on the cause.
Actually, in its first year no new charity is expected to raise
much more money than is needed to simply get it off the ground.
The payoff comes after the first year when contributors renew their
donations and the organization developes a loyal following of
interested people and a specialized mailing list of its own.
Because there is now so much competition in direc£-mail.
solicitations, fund-raisers are using all sorts of gimmicks to get
people to respond. Public affairs groups may enclose opinion
polls or postage stamps. Religious charities often enclose plastic
key chains and medallions. Health agencies tend to favor seals.
Other gimmicks include sweepstake tickets, greeting cards, ball-point
pens, return address labels, and bright new pennies. The hope
is that these “gifts” will induce the receiver to send some money
back in the return envelope. The gimmicks often work, for no one
likes to feel that he or she is taking something for nothing,
particularly from a charity. Naturally all of this gimmickry
increases the cost of fund-raising.
There is a great deal of debate over what constitutes fair
operating costs for a chartable organization. Some charities are
accused of spending too much money on raising money and not enough
on the charity itself. That was the case with the Sister Kenny
Foundation which in the years 1952-9 collected $30,674,000 from
the public to help rehabilitate victims of infantile paralysis.
Of that money, 53%, or $16,260,000, went for “overhead” and fundraising
costs. Thus, less than half the money collected was
actually used for therapeutic purposes.
Was this a result of fraud, greed, or plain poor management?
In this case it turned out to be a matter of greed, and the promoters
involved one of whom was a well-known operator in the charity
business were found guilty of mail fraud and conspiracy and were
sent to jail.
But the truth of the matter is that charitable organizations,
subject to the strong pressures of a highly competitive marketplace,
have become more and more like businesses, p la gue d wit the same
economic problems, expected to perform with the same efficiency.
Yet, as we all know, businesses can fail. They can lose money as
well as make it, and the same holds true for the charitable organization,
One ought not to automatically suspect fraud if a charity can’t
quite make it.
In a field of activity as large, diverse, and open as fund-raising
there are bound to be some sharp operators and some shady dealings
and practices. However, most of the people who start charitable
organizatlons are motivated by the desire to serve some worthy causes.
The hired help, however, may not be so altruistically motivated.
The professionals who run the biggest charities are paid salaries
comparable to their peers in government and industry. For example,
five officers of Disabled American Veterans are paid about $49,000
and the top executive officer earns nearly $63,000. Were these
same services performed by a government agency at taxpayer expense
the saiaries would be the same but the staff would, no doubt, be
twice as large.
As for the lower echelon workers, they are no more self-sacrificial
than their counterparts in business or government. Some have been
known to even strike for higher wages. That was the case in the
mid 1970’s when 120 staff members of New York’s Association for the
Help of Retarded Children walked off their jobs and did not return
until they had received $800 in annual increases over their pay
which ranged from $5,100 to $10,000.
How can you as a consumer know which of the charities are worth
contributing to? Most contributors give to causes that interest them.
If the cause is a vital one, they rarely worry about how efficient
the organization championing it is. But if you do want to find out
something about a specific nonprofit organization, there are two
information agencies that can help you: the National Information
Bureau (419 Park Ave., South, New York, N. Y. 10016) and the
Philanthropic Advisory Service of the Council of Better Business
Bureaus (1150 Seventeenth St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036). The
NIB keeps tabs on the finances and activities of almost 400 national
charities. The NIB rates charitiEs according to how well they
measure up to the eight standards which the agency feels every wellintentioned,
well-run chaity should meet:
(1) An active and responsible governing body with effective
administrative control, serving without compensation and holding
regular meetings.
[2) A legitimate purpose with no avoidable duplication of
the work of other sound organizations.
(3) Reasonable management efficiency with adequate material
and personnel resources to carry on its stated program together with
reasonable dministration nd fund-raising expense.
(4) Consultation and cooperation with established agencies in
the same and related fields.
(5) Ethical methods of publicity, promoton and fund solicitation.
(6) No payment of commissions for fund raising, no mailing of
unordered tickets or mercharldise with a request for money in return,
no general telephone solicitation of the public and no use of
icentitled government employees to solicit the public.
(7) An annual audit employing the Uniform Accounting Standards
and prepared by an independent certified public accountant, showing
,
all support/revenue and expenses in reasonable detail. A combined
audit of the national office and affiliates is required.
(8) A detailed annual budget consistent with the Uniform
Accounting Standards.
—– —l.
”
The NIB publishes a rating list, updated each month, of some
365 national charities entitled the “Wise Giving Guide,” available
free on request. In-depth individual reports are also available,
with a limit of three per request.
Th2 Council of Better Business Burearus maintains files on
about 7,0 00 national nonprofit organizations that solicit public
support. It publishes a rating list of the 360 or so most active
ones. Detailed reports on any charities monitored by CBBB are
available on request. The rating list can be had for $1.
¥he NIB and the CBBB do not always agree in their evaluations
of particular organizations. But both watchdog groups have
reservations about the following charities: American Brotherhood
for the Blind, AMVETS National Service Foundation, Christian
Appalachian Project, Cousteau Society, David Livingstone Missionary
Found¦tion, Disabled American Veterans, Guiding Eyes for the Blind,
Help Hospitalized Veterans, Korean Relief, Paralyzed Veterans of
America, Salesian Missions, Seeing Eye, Southern Poverty Law Center,
Southwest In§ian Foundation, and World Ch¨ngers.
The ratings may not ma©e much sense to those who contribute to
organizations because of the causes they espouse rather than because
they meet a set of standards devised by some self-appointed watchdogs.
For example, I found that several of my favorite organizations did
not get the approval of the NIB, while others which I didn’t like at
all made the approval list. I hate to think that the NIB’s rating
system is biased. But one thing is certain: you can’t base your
glvlng decisions solely on their criteria and findings. All of which
means that even the work of a watchdog agency must be monitored for
its own inherent prejudices. There is more to a charity or a nonprofit
organization thar. the frequency of its board meetings and
the cost of its fund-raising.
There have been attempts in some states to legislate limits
on fund-raising costs. In Florida the limit is 25 percent of the
funds raised; in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the limit is
35 percent; and in New York and New Jersey it is 50 percent. Clearly
it is impossible to come up with a figure that means anything.
It’s like trying to legislate limits on how much a businessman may
put into a ne business before he turns a profit. Start up costs
for nonprofit organizations are subject to just about as many
variables, pre
ictable and unpredictable, as those for businesses.
All tax-exempt organizations — except churches _.- are required
by the IRS to file annual financial reports. These reports really
tell us as much as we have to know about how a particular nonprofit
organization is handling its money. In addition, these reports are
thoroughly analyzed by the NIB and the CBBB. Therefore, if any
contributor has doubts or reservations about any charity, he can
always get plenty of information about it. Nonprofit organizations
will send you their annual reports on request.
But because church-affiliated charities are not required to
submit annual financial reports to the IRS — remember separation
of church and state — it is far more difficult for the contributor
to find out how that charity is handling its funds. We assume that th
priests, ministers, and rabbis who administer these charities are
_.L.L’-‘ …… …………. ,1
kept honest by the higher laws of their respective religions. But
even men of the cloth are susceptible to temptation. In fact, a
recent scandal involving a well-known Catholic charity reminds us
that Original Sin has not gone the way of the Latin mass.
Foy years the Pall ottine Fathers of Baltimore, a venerable
Roman Catholic missionary order with 2200 priests and brothers in
’23 countries, had been soliciting contributions by mail. In fact,
the order was founded in 1835 by Saint Vincent Pallotti, the father
of direct-mail fund-raising. From that modest beginning grew a
mammoth direct-mail charity which is now run from a warehouse in
Bltimore with computerized mailing lists, automatic typewriters and
high-speed envelope stuffers.
From June 1974 through December 1975 the order sent out 150
million appeals, some of which contained ball-point pens, calendars,
prayer cards, and sweepstakes tickets. The response during that
period added up to $20 million of which less than 3 percent ever
reached the charitable missions. The bulk was used to pay for the
mailings, including a postage bill of $2 million a year.
This alone was dismal pnough, but when a federal probe into a
Maryland bank revealed that the Pallottine Fathers had loaned the
bnnk $87,000, the state attorney general began an investigation
that finally led to the indictment and conviction in 1978 of the
charity’s fund-raising director, the Very Rev. Guido John Carcich.
It turned out that millions of the charity’s funds had been
invest8d in real estate and business ventures, including a portable
classroom manufacturing company owned by the nephew of the Pallottjne
CharityFathers’ accountant. An investigation into that company resulted in
the indictment of Maryland’s school construction chief. Another
Pallottine loan of $54,000 helped pay for Maryland Governor Marvin
Mandel’s 1974 divorce; and $52,000 was used for the purchase of a
house for Father Carcich’s niece.
When all the faces were finally known, Father Carcich pleaded
guilty to diverting $2.2 million of the charity’s funds into 28
secret bank accounts. Under a plea-bargaining arrangement, Father
Carcich was placed on probation for 18 months Qnd ordered to work
for one year in the Maryland penal system “ministering to the needs
of prisoners.” Meanwhile, the order was stripped of its fiscal
autonomy by senior officials of the Catholic Church who also imposed
a moratorium on future Pallottine financial dealings pending a
review of its fund-raising methods and philosophy.
It would be wrong to conclude from the Pallottine case that
the charity world is riddled with crooks and charlatans. There
about as much fraud in the nonprofit sector as one is likely to
find in government or business, perhps even less these days because
of the inordinate publicity charity frauds get. Cal Bakal, author
1Sof USA, states that from $500 million to $1.5 billion is
estimated to wind up with chaity charlatans. That’s about 2 percent
of the total $47.74 billion contributed to all charitable organizations.
One can philosophize that it’s part of the cost we must bear if we
are to enjoy the freedom to organize and raise money for any cause
that grabs hold of us.
Some social critics have suggested that we create a federal
agency to regulate and police charitable organizations. But instantly
you would have to exclude religious organizations from such government
regulation because of our long-standing tradition of separation of
church and state. In 1980 religion received $22.15 billion in
contributions, or 46.3 percent of all charitable giving. Thus, -almost
half of all charitable acIivity would be exempt from government
surveillance.
On the other hand, government regulation would merely create
another expensive federal bureaucracy which would generate tons of
needless paperwork and red tape. It would place a damper on nonprofit
entrepreneurship, it would inhibit the starting of new organizations
and solidify the dominance of the establishment charit)es. Federal
regulations would increase the cost of fund-raising without improving
the quality of services rendered. They might reduce the chance
of fraud, but they would not solve the problems of human error and
mismanagement. But worsJ of all, they might also kill the vitality
of the nonprofit sector which depends so heavily on personal motivation
and the freedom to act forcefully in its behalf. Bureaucracy is no
substitute for individual initiative and dedication.
Asking,
Charity – 16
entrepreneurship, it would inhibit the starting of new organizations
and solidify the dominance of the establishment charities. Federal
rºgulations would increase the cost of fund-raising without improving
the q»ality of services rendered. They might reduce the chance
of fraud, but they would not solve the problems of human error and
mismanagement. But worst of all, they might also kill the vitality
of the nonprofit sector which depends so heavily on pe¼sonal motivation
and the freedom to act forcefully in its behalf. Bureaucracy is no
substitute for individual initiative and dedication.
Meanwhile, fund-raisers are worried about the future. They
don’t know if Reagan’s new tax policies will help or hurt charitable
giving. But one thing is certain: people will continue to give as
long as there are good causes to support and enough persuasive
fund-raisers to do the asking. One 27-year-old sheet metal worker who
pledged $20 to a policeman’s benefit association in response to a
phone solicita’tion summed up the feelings of a lot of contributors
when asked why he gave :
“It’s hard for me to say no when someone wants my help ,
when they come right out and ask me. I want people to like me. I feel
that I have failed or fallen short in some way when I refuse to help
people. I’d rather pay the $20 than feel bad about it for several days
because I didn’t pay it½ Twenty dollars isn’t very much . . . I can
handle that much.”
But not every donor is a soft touch. Here’s what a 50-year-old
sports store owner replied when asked by Paul Schneiter, author of
The Art of why he gave a motor boat and three canoes wortil
Charity – 17
$6,500 to a parochial high school: “I ‘m basically stingy about
donating, except where the church is concerned. I believe in
their programs. • Another reason I gave is because I would rather
control where my money goes than simply turn it over to the Internal
Revenue Service.”
But perhaps the 52-year-old owner of a grocery store who
gave $2,500 to a boys’ club hit the nail on the head when he said:
“When the boys’ club president and two of the boys visited me and
asked for the money, I just didn’t want to refuse • • . . They. made
me feel important, and I just couldn’t let them down .. .. You
know, after you make some big purchase you feel blue about it for
days afterward, wondering if you did the right thing. But after
I gave that $2,500, it wasn’t that way. It was just a great feeling}
and the feeling comes back every time I think about it.n
For many Americans? giving to charity is a sure way to
experience that great feeling — whether it be in giving fifty cen·ts
to a down-and-outer, SIOO to a Jerry Lewis telethon for Muscular
Distrophy, or S105 million to a university. Yes, that much money,
in Coca Cola stock, was given to Emory University in 1980 by the
Emily & Ernest Woodruff Fund, ,the largest single gift in the history
of philanthropy_ It ·s assumed that great feelings — in some cases
approaching delir.ium was had by all. Of such stuff are ·the
dreams of fund-raisers made.’
Camp Constitution’s 2017 Annual Family Camp
Camp Constitution’s 2017 family camp came to a close Sunday. The camp enjoyed its largest attendance since the camp started in 2009. Instructors included Professor Willie Soon, one of the world’s top climate realists, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, and Alex Newman, author and writer for “World Net Daily.” Attendees celebrated Indpendence Day in style by having Mrs. Catherirne White conduct a class entitled “The Lives of the Signers, and a class by historian Rich Howell on the basis for our indpendence Campers were entertained by Mike Piazza and his High Flying Frisbee Dogs, and a magic show by the camp’s webmaster, Eric Conover. In the evening, campers enjoyed a fireworks display.
Super campers were Madeleine Girard of Manchester, NH, and Jordan Britt of Northeast, PA. The local paper “The Monadnock Ledger” send a reporter to camp on Monday and he wrote a good article: http://www.ledgertranscript.com/Camp-Constitution-in-Rindge-11201932
Classes and camp activities were videotaped and will be available on the camp’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/my_videos?o=U
The Daily Sam: Sam Offers the Mayor of Newark NJ His Services
Sam Blumenfeld wrote letters to numerous mayors around the U.S. offering to improve their students reading skills. They never responded. Here is a letter he send to the Mayor of Newark in 2011:
S A M U E L L. B L U M E N F E L D
161 Great Road Littleton, MA 01460 781-354-2040
slblu123@verizon.net
January 7, 2011
Hon. Cory A. Booker
Mayor of Newark
City Hall
920 Broad Street
Newark, NJ 07102
Dear Mayor Booker:
I recently became aware of your efforts to improve education in the city of Newark and
of Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to help you in that endeavor. As a writer of over ten
books on education, I’ve been aware of the problems that beset American public schools
for over forty years and have worked strenuously to find ways to improve the
performance of our children. But the greatest obstacle I have found is the educational
establishment that refuses to make the necessary changes that would guarantee academic
success for all students.
I first became aware of the reading problem back in the 1960s when I was an editor at
Grosset & Dunlap in New York. I was invited to become a member of the Reading
Reform Foundation’s National Advisory Council. It was then that I became aware of the
war among educators between advocates of phonics and advocates of look-say, the
whole-world or sight method that teaches children to read English as if it were Chinese.
I did an investigation of the reading problem and came to the conclusion that the sight
method could cause reading disability and dyslexia among many children. I put all of
this in my book, The New Illiterates, published in 1973. The Establishment response to
my findings was zero.
Determined to provide parents with a way of saving their children from such educational
malpractice, I created a simple, inexpensive, easy-to-use intensive phonics reading
program–Alpha-Phonics–that any parent could use to teach their children to read at
home. It has now been used very successfully by thousands of homeschooling parents
for over twenty years and has produced wonderfully literate children.
In your press release about Newark’s Education Opportunity, it states that “In 2008-2009,
only 40 percent of students could read and write at grade level by the end of the third
grade, only 54 percent of high school students graduated and just 38 percent enrolled in
college.”
I can show you how to get all of the children in Newark’s schools to become proficient
readers, dramatically increase the rate of graduation, and increase the percentage of
students enrolling in college.
I recently received a testimonial from a teacher in Florida who has been using
Alpha-Phonics for the last ten years, and he has literally performed miracles with some of
the worst readers in his classes. I can state without any equivocation, that I can produce
a miracle in Newark if permitted by you to do so. I am enclosing this teacher’s
remarkable testimony of the power of this program.
The “miracle” that Alpha-Phonics performs is really no miracle at all. It is simply the
sensible and proper use of a primary program that puts the emphasis on the development
of the right side of the brain, the language faculty. Today’s schools force children to use
their right brains to perform the functions of the left brain, thereby actually deforming the
children’s brains. This phenomenon can be seen by extensive brain scans conducted by
neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, author of Reading in the Brain. In other words,
common teaching practices in our schools are actually deforming the brains of our
children. And that is why the children act out, knowing that something harmful, which
they can’t understand, is being done to them.
All children are born with a dominant language faculty in their left brains. When the
continued natural development of this faculty is thwarted by faulty teaching methods, you
get educational problems. You get ADD and ADHD. I would like to show you how it is
possible to reverse this process and get kids back into a positive learning mode. I propose
a pilot project whereby I am given the worst elementary school in Newark and allowed to
demonstrate how it can become the best school in the city in about eight months.
Although I have lived in New England since 1965, I know Newark well. My sister lived
there with her husband and children, and as a teenager I spent many pleasant summer
weeks on leafy Elwood Place. I know that Newark today is not what it once was: the
safest, most pleasant place to live in America. But I am more than willing to do
whatever I can to assist you in making Newark’s schools the best in the nation.
I hope you will take me up on my offer. This is an opportunity that Newark can’t afford
The Blumenfeld Archives
to miss.
Sincerely yours,
Samuel L. Blumenfeld
Cc: Governor Chris Christie, Mark Zuckerberg: Startup Education
A link to the letter from the Blumenfeld Archives:
Click to access Newark%20Mayor%20Booker-Alpha%20Phonics.pdf
Camp Constitution’s Annual Family Camp Less Than A Week Away
Camp Constitution’s annual family camp is less than week away. We have an excellent line up of speakers, and plenty of activies.
Here is the daily schedule not including the junior camper schedule:
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Sunday July 2nd 4:00 PM Registration by Mr. Everett) + 4:00 PM staff mtg.
6:30 PM Entrance Quiz (in Cafeteria / Mess Hall) All campers age 11 and up; Staff
7:45 PM Camp Orientation by Mr. Shurtleff, Mr. Hoderny, Mr. Kalis …
Monday
9:00 AM Know the Constitution by Mr.Hal Shurtleff
10:00 AM Crimes of the Educators by Mr. Alex Newman
11:00 AM The New World Order by Mr. John McManus
1:00 PM Class Picture – See 2010: (face Hebron deck & drive: mountain view; picnic tables as risers?)
6:30 PM The Climate-Change Hoax by Professor Willie Soon–Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
7:45 PM Target of a Smear – Senator Joseph McCarthy by Mr. McManus
Tuesday, July 4th Independence Day!
10:00 AM Faith of the Signers by Rev. Steven Craft
11:00 AM The Lives of [some of] the Signers by Mrs. Catherine White
1:00 PM “High Flying Frisbee Dogs and Magic Show” with Mr. Eric Conover
6:30 PM “Red Pill Politics” Live Radio Show! Dave Kopac interviews Rev. Craft, and others
7:45 PM Signing of the Declaration of Independence with (Mr.) Eric Eastman
(8:00 Shuttle campers to…) 9:00 PM Rindge Center for the fireworks!
Wednesday
9:00 AM Environmental Alarmism Refuted by Professor Willie Soon – Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Ctr.
10:00 AM U.S. Constitution Article I (Legislative branch / powers of Congress) by Mr. Norman Tregenza
11:00 AM The U.S. Constitution vs. Sharia Law by Father Michael Carl
1:00 PM Optional – Field Trip: Rindge Historic Society
6:30 PM Applying 10 Commandments to Advocate for Bill of Rights in Contemporary Issues Mr. Earl Wallace
7:45 PM Article 2 (Executive branch) and Article 3 (Judicial branch) by Mrs. White / Mrs. Harper
Thursday
9:00 AM 13 Rules for Radicals Used to Redistribute Wealth & Wreck the Republic by Mr. Earl Wallace
10:00 AM Declarations and Preambles by Mrs. White
11:00 AM The Moral American by Mr. John Hoderny
1:00 PM Optional – Hike up Mount Monadnock
6:30 PM The Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Mr. Larry Pratt – Gun Owners of America (GOA)
7:45 PM Engaging America by Michael King of the Massachusetts Family Institute
Friday
9:00 AM Refuting the Gun Controllers by Mr. Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America (GOA)
10:00 AM History of Drug Addiction in America
11:00 AM Articles 4=States, 5=Amending it, 6=Debts, Supremacy, Oaths, & 7= “Done!” 17Sept., 1787
6:30 PM The Electoral College [How It Saves Us from Runaway Mob Rule] by Tom Moor
7:45 PM Exit Quiz – Teaching Staff
Saturday
9:00 AM Color, Communism, and Common Sense by Rev. Craft
10:00 AM Death by Government by Mr. Chris Kalis
11:00 AM Actions Anyone Can Take to Confront Lies & Claim Liberties by Mr. Wallace
1:00 PM Optional Workshop: First Aid – by Mr. Scott Richards, EMT
6:30 PM Test Review w/ Mr. Tregenza & Mrs. Harper
7:45 PM Awards & Graduation Mr. Shurtleff and Rev. Craft
CAMP CONSTITUTION – General Daily Schedule A.D. 2017
Note: All buildings at Toah Nipi are named for Biblical places of refuge.
Bethel – Building next to stairway to lake & campfire; has Newspaper Office, Girls Dorm, Faculty Rooms
Hebron – Bldg. w/front porch supported by cross; Mess Hall / Ping-Pong; Boys Dorm; Classrooms; VIPs
Every morning: (Monday – Sunday)
[Except Tues. July 4th, when all morning events =1 hour later, & NO 9:00 AM CLASS!!]
M, W, Th, F, Sat., Sun. :
6:30 AM Polar Bear Swim / Run (optional)
7:00 AM Non-polar bears, Wake-up!
7:50 AM Flagpole: Devotions, Announcements +
Recite Preamble to US Constitution and/or Pledge at Flagpole
8:00 AM Breakfast Hebron (Main Building) Meet on porch until line opens.
8:30 Staff Meeting – Hebron // Students in Cabins cleaning & decorating
Classes (Mon-Sat) at 9:00,* 10:00, and 11:00 AM (with mini-breaks between classes)
*Tuesday, July 4th – No 9:00 AM class on Independence Day
Locations – See other side for detailed class list:
Classes are in Hebron (just upstairs from Cafeteria / Mess Hall)
Meet in Mess Hall: Sun, July 2, 6:45pm – Placement Quiz; & Fri., July 7, 7:45pm – Exit Quiz
Lunch at Noon – Meet on Hebron porch for grace (Monday – Saturday)
1:00–5:30 PM = Recreation, Swimming + Pictures, Hikes, or Field Trips…
Evenings: (Sunday – Saturday):
Dress-up only for Saturday Supper and Graduation
5:30 PM Dinner (Meet on Hebron porch for grace)
6:30 PM Classroom
7:20 PM Flagpole
7:45 PM Classroom
8:35 Break – Rooms to get long sleeves, or mosquito stuff, and…
9:00 PM Campfire (Bring Flashlight & Song Book!); beware mosquitoes!)
10:00 PM Break – Snacks** & Camp Newspapers usually available in Mess Hall.
10:30 PM in Cabins
11:00 PM Lights Out!
** Pizza Party – after Campfire Saturday evening! Class pictures if ordered. Take pictures of and with friends,
exchange phone and e-mail information! You may also wish to organize for your trip home, take down your
cabin decorations, and plan for next year!
Final Sunday morning, clean up room and bathroom. Use cleaning supplies and vacuum, as needed, to tidy up.
A good rule-of-thumb, as they say: “Always leave a place as good as, or better than, you found it!” Safe Travels!
Camp Constitution Loses a Friend with the Passing of Dr. Michael Coffman
We lost a good friend with the passing of Dr. Michael Coffman. On Monday June 19th, Mike posted this on his facebook page:
As a scientist and writer, I have been fighting the global agenda that would destroy America as we know it for decades. As a researcher in the American paper industry, I ran a multimillion dollar research project on the effects of acid rain. When the results came in that it was basically a non-issue, I was told to quash my results or find a new job. That was when my eyes were opened to the fact that it was politics driving the science and not the other way around.
In 1994, myself and a few other individuals stopped the cloture vote to move forward to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity Treaty which would have destroyed property rights in our country, thereby destroying free enterprise, the American way of life, and ultimately Freedom itself. That is the goal of the Globalists. It is not “saving the planet,” it’s not even redistribution of wealth ultimately. It is Control. Global control of everyone and everything. Together with my wife and all who have worked with us, both as colleagues and as fellow warriors in the fight for freedom, we have labored to inform citizens and policy makers, and to stop this agenda.
To all of you who read this, I say this, Don’t give up. Keep fighting. Keep working. Keep doing whatever it is that God has called you to do.
For me the fight is over. After a 2 ½ year battle with cancer, I am going Home. My time here is almost over. I thought I had more to do, but God is saying otherwise.Thank you to all who have fought and are continuing to fight for freedom.Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Cor. 15:58.
Here is Mike’s bio from his website http://www.americaplundered.com/dr.-michael-s.-coffman.html
Dr. Michael Coffman received his BS in Forestry and MS in Biology at Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, Arizona and his Ph.D. in Forest Science at the University of Idaho at Moscow. He taught courses and conducted research in forest ecology and forest community dynamics for ten years at Michigan Technological University, a leading forestry school in the Midwest.
Until 1992 Dr. Coffman was a manager for Champion International, a leading forest and paper products company in the United States. During his tenure with Champion, he became Chairman of the Forest Health Group within National Council for the Paper Industry for Air and Stream Improvement, a respected scientific research group for the Paper Industry. In this, and other related responsibilities, he oversaw a multimillion dollar research program in which he became intimately involved in such national and international issues as acid rain, global climate change, wetlands, cumulative effects and biological diversity. During this time he was a spokesperson for the Paper Industry for the Media on these issues. It was during this time that Dr. Coffman began investigating the environmental movement and the blatant distortions of science that were being used to justify sweeping, and very punitive legislation. What he found shocked him and lead him to quit his job to try to expose the horrifying agenda to create a tyrannical world government, now called global governance.
Dr. Coffman is currently President of Environmental Perspectives, Inc. (EPI). He provides professional guidance and training in defining environmental problems and conflicts, and developing solutions to specific issues as well as the hidden dangers of international treaties and agreements that threaten our Constitutional protections, especially property rights. He played a key role in stopping the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity Treaty) in the U.S. Senate one hour before the ratification vote. He has written many books exposing the attack on our Constitution and personal liberties; including, Plundered, Rescuing a Broken America, and Radical Islam In The House. He has also produced numerous videos, the most recent are two in which numerous scientists explain why global warming cannot be caused by man. Dr. Coffman frequently authors articles on national and global issues.
Mike visited Camp Constitution and conducted several excellent classes which included a nature walk. In the video below Mike explained how he and a handful of patriot activists stopped the ratification of the Biodiversity Treaty
Mike died Tuesday the 20 of June after a 2 1/2 year bout with cancer. Camp Constitution’s Rev. Craft, and Hal Shurtleff had the opportunity to visit with Mike and his wife Suz last November. It was a good time of fellowship. He was a great man, a loving husband, father and grandfather, a devout Christian and patriot. He will be missed but his legacy lives on.
The Weekly Sam: Islamic Trojan Horse at Ground Zero
Sam wrote this well-documented article several years before he passed:
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. The 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.
A link to the article on the Blumenfeld Archives:
http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Transcripts/Islamic%20Trojan%20Horse%20in%20America.pdf
The Blumenfeld Archives
Flag Day Poetry by Del “Abe” Jones
FLAG DAY
Once again Old Glory has its time
We’ll wave it and put it on display
At least, those of us who own one
And not all do, I’m so sad to say.
There are some that don’t salute it
And some want to share its place
With flags of some other country
And I think, that’s a disgrace.
Political correctness, out of control
Our Federal Courts, I think, are wrong
When they say, anyone can burn it
And We, the People, must just go along.
Some had to change the old “Pledge”
And add, the “under God” to it
It was just fine, the way it was
But now, those words give some, a fit.
It’s for the pride of our Country
For, those Stars and Stripes which wave
For all Americans. of all faiths
And too, for all of those who Gave.
Once it was loved, and/or respected
In most places, ‘round this Earth
Now there’s some, question its meaning
And just how much, Freedom is worth.
Our prestige around the World
Has dropped to an all-time low
And more people want to burn it
Yes, even here at home, you know.
There’s hope, that we can overcome
And, that all, will once more see
We really are, “Home of the Brave
And, “The Land of the Free”!
So, take our Star Spangled Banner
And wave it proudly and hold it high
Tell all, it stands for, Freedom and Rights
For if we don’t, worse times draw nigh.
Del “Abe” Jones
OUR FLAG DAY
“They’re fighting now about our Flag
Some say that, “It’s alright to burn it!”
But our History’s reached another page
And the time has quickly come to turn it.
We have people marching in the streets
Who wave flags from some foreign land
They want the same Rights as you and I
(Like that’s what, our Forefathers planned?)
Some want a two language Nation
To speak English, and that other one
They want to steal all our identities
And probably will, before they’re done.
We are being sold to the lowest bidder
Our jobs are being outsourced “over there”
They don’t have to Fight, they’ll just buy us
And it seems, nobody seems to care!
We spend billions in foreign aid
“To make the World, a better place!” (?)
They take all those dollars greedily
And then, they’ll slap us in the face.
We went from having money in the bank
To the worst deficit in our history
While the rich keep getting richer
At the cost of those like you and me.
We have seniors, the poor, and young
Who don’t have the basic Human needs
Like food and shelter and health care
And that plants some very bitter seeds.
It seems we care more about others
Than trying to take care of our own
Especially those who hold our purse strings
Most who, hard times they’ve never known.
Thirty-five hundred Warriors killed
With more added each and every day
And thousands more hurt and maimed
While some say, “The price we must pay!”
But those who send them off to War
Are not the ones who pay that cost
It’s not their loved ones sent away
Who might not return, who are lost.
We were misled or led astray
But that’s a whole other story
The real truth, while in waging Wars
There is rarely any Truth or Glory.
We People must all be appeased
And made to think we’re doing good
That, in the end it will all be worth it
(And would be a nice change if it would.)
But the killing of our fellow Man
Has always been the Human way
Usually fueled by greed and power
No matter, what else they may say.
Those who penned our Constitution
Are probably turning in disgust
As our Rights are disappearing
And it’s wrong (?), “In God We Trust!”
Our Independence is being hijacked
By a Government that has gone wild
Who say they know what’s best for us
And treat us all, like some stepchild.
That, “By And For The People!”
Is the way it was always meant to be
But the way things have been going
Takes from, this “Land Of The Free!”
Even when we try to speak our mind
Most of them will turn a deaf ear
Say, “No, we know what’s good for you!”
Or, “That’s not what we want to hear!”
Someday, with a day of reckoning
We will all wonder, “What went wrong?
When we used to be the Greatest Nation
And were Free, and Proud, and Strong!”
JUNE 14, A FLAG’S BIRTHDAY
On the Fourth we Celebrate
The Birth of our Nation
But a Teacher in Wisconsin
Gave the Flag its Occasion.
In Eighteen eighty-five
He had his students Celebrate
The Birthday of our Flag
Which was one hundred and eight.
As more People over years
Observed the Fourteenth as “Flag Day”
In Nineteen sixteen Woodrow Wilson
Proclaimed it so, in May.
Then in nineteen forty-nine
An act of Congress was declared
Signed by President Truman
That since, we all have shared.
“National Flag Day” was born
From those sewn strips of rag
And we should Honor it every day
Old Glory, our Grand Flag.
OLD GLORY
More than two hundred years ago
Betsy Ross sewed strips of rag –
From those bits of colored cloth
Was shaped “Old Glory”, our grand flag.
Stripes of red and white
For the thirteen colonies –
White stars against the blue
Began waving in the breeze.
It’s gone through minor changes –
With stars added, as we grew –
It’s flown proudly o’er our land
And in some other countries, too.
That symbol of our freedom –
Should be protected, at all cost –
But now our reverence for it
Seems, to be getting lost.
There are some things so sacred
To our great American way
That, those who desecrate it
Should, have a price, to pay.
Even though each buys his own
That flag belongs to us all –
It’s owned by all the people
And we should never let it fall.
THE GOOD OL’ DAYS
They said, “It’s alright to burn it.”
“You can throw it to the ground.”
“You can wear it on your back.
That symbol of the freedom bound.
It’s been through catastrophes –
Flown high in wartimes’ strife –
Men swore they would protect it
And did so with their life.
What makes them so supreme –
The high court of this land
To tell us when those Stars and Stripes
Should fall; when they should stand.
What right do they think they have
To let our flag be set ablaze –
Once, it was loved and respected –
Back there, in the good ol’ days.
Del “Abe” Jones
The Weekly Sam: Camp Constitution is Making a Difference with the Sam Blumenfeld Archives
We are delighted over the number of views and downloads the Sam Blumenfeld Archives is receiving.
Here are the stats for the month of May 2017:
Views 2232,335
50.62 GB
Downloads:
Alpha-phonics Workbook 6727
Alpha-phonics Instruction Manual 1241
Are Public Schools Harming Your Kids – CT.mp4 1058
Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection (editor).pdf 1039
America’s Future – On Public Education.mp4 549
Are Public Schools Harming Your Kids – Stockton CA 1986.mp4 513
America First Ep1.mp4 486
Foreign Traffic accounts for roughly 25% of all traffic
Russian Federation 11,042
Australia 5,827
Canada 5,611
And in the past five months:
2017: 845, 081 hits with 29,304 Workbooks downloaded over 5 months.
We pledged to Sam on his deathbed that Camp Constitution will do its utmost to ensure that his rich legacy will live on after he passes. I think we are off to a good start. Please help us reach out to more people. Make a donation today from our PayPal account on our home page https://www.campconstitution.net
And, of course, visit and share the Blumenfeld Archives http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/
The Blumenfeld Archives