Day: January 2, 2009

Australians organizing to oppose refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Just now browsing around and reading news on refugees I came across a blog from the southeastern corner of Australia (not far from Melbourne).   This is the blog’s banner: 

PORT MACQUARIE PRESERVATIONISTS – resisting the refugee madness in the Hastings

 Port Macquarie Preservationists are a group of concerned Hastings citizens who seek to inform the Hastings community of the dangers of the area becoming an official, or even unofficial part of the federal government’s refugee relocation program. We cite four soild reasons for refusing the scheme: #1: The region’s housing crisis #2: The region’s medical crisis #3: The health threat posed by refugees and #4: Refugee crime and terrorism links as experienced in other areas of the country.

I thought this was interesting because these folks don’t seem to be intimidated into silence by the multiculturalists that surely must be part of the Australian elite.   Also, they aren’t shy about saying they are attempting to PRESERVE their way of life, and I found that refreshing.

Read some of the blog entries and see what I mean.

Africa crisis (and others) waiting for Obama

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Africa is a mess.   The only bright spot for the whole year on the continent was the election of a son of Kenya, Barack Hussein Obama, to be President of the United States, so there is hope for Africa now, or so this article implies.

How bad was it for Africa in 2008? The highlight of the year for most of the continent just might’ve been the election of a half-Kenyan to lead a nation thousands of miles away.

President-elect Barack Obama’s triumph in the U.S. raised Africa’s hopes – no small feat in a year that saw rigged elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, virtually no progress toward ending the mass suffering in Darfur, political and social upheaval in South Africa and – just when you thought some places had hit bottom – even more chaos and bloodshed in Congo and Somalia.

Throughout Africa, 2008 was a year to forget. For all the hope embodied in the arrival of a new year, and of Obama himself, however, 2009 brings no obvious solutions for any of Africa’s most intractable problems.

Asked what should be Obama’s and the world’s priorities for the continent in 2009, Francois Grignon, a veteran analyst and now Africa director for the International Crisis Group research agency, sighed.

“The whole of Africa, really, remains at the top of the list,” he said.

And, you can bet that the International Crisis Group, with a list of board members who helped Obama get elected will be at the White House gate knocking to get in on January 21st.

I mentioned the International Crisis Group in August here when I wrote about a study they had just released about the refugee “crisis” in Iraq.   This is what I said then:

I don’t know all the names on the International Crisis Group Board of Trustees, but here are a few I know: George Soros, Wesley Clark, Kofi Anan, Richard Armitage, Zibigniev Brzezinski and the best of all HRH Prince Turki-al-Faisal. LOL, such a bunch of independent members of the anti-war crowd. As security improves in Iraq, this refugee “crisis” is the last thing they have to wrap around the neck of the Bush Administration.

I am starting to see a pattern!   Everywhere is a crisis!   Those wanting to change the way we live, change our towns,  change our country, change our government, change the world must first tell us there is a crisis.    Our economy is in crisis, Africa is in crisis, the Middle East is in crisis, if they aren’t in crisis someone is going to generate a crisis.  It looks like that’s what this Crisis group is all about—create and chronicle crisis.  Then we need a mythical character, Obama (?), to swoop in and save the day!

We’ve all fallen for this strategy from time to time, I know I have with the economic so-called “crisis,” but I think we need to start resisting.   How about if conservatives instead of defensively fighting back the Lefts “change” agenda  took up positions that were optimistic initiatives.   Imagine a group called something like “America is O.K. (and will continue to be O.K.)”   I think that would send a powerful  message to voters the  next time around.  Afterall, isn’t that what we found so appealing about President Reagan—his profound love of all things American, that we were fundamentally a good people.

For more on the International Crisis Group, see Discover the Networks here.

For more on crisis=change check out my Alinsky calendar here.

Endnote:  When I looked at all the foundations funding the International Crisis Group, I note that many are the same foundations funding the environmental movement in the US—-you know those groups spreading fear (crisis!) about global warming.  They are such fear-mongers those leftwingers aren’t they?

Alinskyism (Day 15)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For anyone wondering how a man like Obama is about to be sworn in as President of the United States, I implore readers to read two books.   Read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and Obama’s (ghostwritten?) “Dreams from my Father.” 

And, for conservatives now gnashing teeth over issues:  bailouts, taxes, gun control, welfare, immigration etc. etc.,  Obama did not win on issues, he won by employing tactics that many conservatives do not grasp. It was all about some elusive “change” that community organizers strive for—not change in issues or policies, just change for change’s sake.   I know if your mind sees things in black and white, as mine does, it’s hard to imagine this.

But, if conservatives want to survive, they must now wrap their minds around the “community organizer” concept.   Although I find it distasteful and not a tactic I would feel comfortable employing because it’s basically a cynical way of pulling people in, really devoid of goals (remember the ends justify the means), but one doesn’t tell people what the end is because the “organizer” doesn’t know that for sure either.  It is all about change!

In a chapter entitled, “The education of an organizer,” Alinsky lists the characteristics required for a community organizer working for change.  Here is one: 

A free and open mind, and political relativity.  The organizer in his way of life, with his curiousity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, distrust of dogma, his self-organization [by the way, these characteristics are not described earlier in the chapter in ways conservatives might recognize], his understanding of the irrationality of much of human behavior, becomes a flexible personality, not a rigid structure that breaks when something unexpected happens.  Having his own identity, he has no need for the security of an ideology or a panacea.  He knows life is a quest for uncertainty; that the only certain fact of life is uncertainty; and he can live with it.  He knows that all values are relative, in a world of political relativity.  Because of these qualities he is unlikely to disintegrate into cynicism and disillusionment, for he does not depend on illusion.

Finally, the organizer is constantly creating the new out of the old.  He knows all new ideas arise out of conflict; that every time man has had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged.

The conflict leads to change, literally for change’s sake.  This is creativity.  This is how one determines the meaning of life.   This is how Alinsky and his followers find joy.  This is what life is about for them.  This is the goal—simply bringing about change (masked with some moral sounding supposed aim like beating the “Haves” in the battle with the “Have-nots”).  If you are now thinking, what the heck is she talking about, I don’t blame you.  My world view is built around right and wrong, good and evil, so it’s hard for me to get this, but you too must read Alinksy and Obama and know what we have elected.

It can’t be beaten by fine-tuning conservatives’ positions on issues, it will require some brains sharper than mine to craft a strategy to beat them.