Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

Destruction is the prime aim of Leftists. If they cannot achieve it through revolution, any white-anting from within will do

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

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

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

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

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

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

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

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

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

The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.

The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.

The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

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

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

Voting

On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places. That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony. ACORN's voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.

2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.

3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.

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

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

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

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

Mortgage Crisis

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

Much more here






Who just told Democrat Barack Obama to grow up?

Answer: Answer: Republican Gov. Matt Blunt of Missouri. His press release:

"St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

"What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

"This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson's thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

"Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society."

Source







Obama, Oprah, and the Guru: Malignant Narcissism

Grandiosity, more than anything else, is what characterizes Obama's character and campaign. Grandiosity is also, more than anything else, what characterizes narcissism, and Obama's narcissism has become obvious to many. Tony Blankley refers to Obama's posturing as the "height of hubris." Jeffrey Kuhner writes that Obama "is a self-absorbed narcissist who portrays himself as a political messiah -- the anointed one." David Limbaugh writes of the "unspeakably presumptuous extravaganzas as those [that] feted Mr. Obama at Berlin and Invesco Field."

In reference to Obama's narcissism, Charles Krauthammer asks, "[H]as there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?" Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, writes that "Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist," and offers a detailed explanation.

Obama's entire campaign is nothing more than a demand to be recognized as superior without commensurate accomplishments. For individual instances of the undistinguished senator's grandiosity, please see Barack Obama Audacity Watch.

Two other very reliable witnesses to Obama's narcissism are Oprah Winfrey and her guru, Eckhart Tolle, both themselves pathological narcissists. Delusions of grandeur interpersonally connect Obama, Oprah, and her guru. All three believe they can, even that that they must, change the world for the better, and that means garnering for themselves more and more adulation, what the psychologists call "narcissistic supply."

The public record shows this: First, within the minds of Barack and Michelle Obama resides the grandiose, even megalomaniacal notion that they have the power to make the world as-it-is into the world-as-it-should be. Second, the Obamas look to talk-show host, Oprah Winfrey, as their "global role model" to effect this change. Third, as the Obamas' model for change, Oprah relentlessly promotes the grandiose New Age religion of her guru, Eckhart Tolle.

A closer look at these three narcissists and their widely-ignored interconnections is in order

The Malignant Narcissism of Oprah's Guru

Oprah's guru Eckhart Tolle is a troubled and troubling individual. He claims to have experienced "a reincarnation as a spiritual teacher" through a self-admitted psychotic episode. He is a case study in the development of the mental illness of malignant narcissism. Like the original Narcissus, Tolle is obsessed with the two-dimensional reflection of himself. In his The Power of Now, Tolle writes about what he learns from viewing his own image in a mirror:

"If you accept the image, no matter what it is, if you become friendly toward it, it cannot not become friendly toward you. This is how you change the world."

Here, in a nutshell, Tolle expresses the fundamental delusion and extreme grandiosity of his own malignant narcissism. Tolle actually believes that he has become the greatest living spiritual teacher by overcoming "egoic delusion." But a mirror image is not true, but backwards. Tolle is not the greatest spiritual teacher in the world as he imagines, but one of the least competent. Such an enormous gap between presumption and reality is characteristic of malignant narcissism.

After Tolle made friends with his backwards image, his New Age doctrine began to jell, and as we might expect, it stands in stark contrast to the Judeo-Christian tradition. The God of the Old Testament is a mere projection of the human mind. Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather a "rare" human being. "The unconscious majority of the population" must "awaken" (to Tolle's teaching and greatness) and either "evolve or die." The Scriptures are only valid when interpreted by Tolle himself. That belief of his approaches the very ultimate in grandiose imaginings.

Beyond his backwards reflected image, Oprah's guru relies on something even more disturbing to change the world. It is a spirit or a force Tolle calls the "Source" which he claims resides within himself and Oprah, and within all those others who have learned through his teachings to "dissolve" their egos. That "Source" has told Tolle that the word of the God of the Bible is not reliable, that there is no death, and that he and Oprah both are as God, able to say of themselves "I Am That I Am." These things that the "Source" has told Oprah and Tolle are the exact same things the serpent told Eve in the ancient garden (Genesis 3:1-4, New International Version).

"I Am that I Am" is the Self-authenticating affirmation from God to Moses out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:13-15). In Hebrew, this is YHVH, or Yahweh, the sacred name of God that is "to be remembered throughout all generations" (Exodus 3:15). Tolle's appropriation of this Name to himself is the very ultimate in grandiose imaginings.

Oprah's Malignant Narcissism

Oprah welcomes Tolle's preposterous claims with uncritical glee because they justify the adoration of her own backwards and exalted mirror image on her altar of self-worship. That Oprah is self-obsessed should be obvious. Her image has appeared on every cover of her monthly magazine since it was founded eight years ago. She prays to herself, asking how she can be used "to serve the greater calling that is my life?" She gives thanks for "the life that I have created now." Her giving is always a public production, ultimately about herself and the "good" she is doing. Even when she says she doesn't want to make it about her, it's about her.

Like her guru, Oprah mocks the Judeo-Christian tradition, insisting that "God is a feeling experience, not a believing experience. If God for you is still about a belief, then it's not truly God." Spirituality to Oprah is not God-centered, but self-centered. She says that spirituality "is about paying attention to your life -- always asking, in every moment, `What can I learn from this?'" Oprah is as delusional as her guru, believing that by spreading Tolle's doctrine and creating a global "new kind of tribe" which looks to her and her guru as saviors, she is "putting [her] ego in check." In reality, Oprah is doing nothing more than promoting a how-to book for latent narcissists.

In March of this year, Oprah intensified her efforts to make the world as it is the world as it should be by kicking off her ten-week global Internet online class touting Tolle's book, A New Earth, and its importance in raising everyone's "awareness." The interactive Web cast reached 500,000 people in more than 139 countries. Since that time, according to Oprah's Web site, millions more have downloaded Oprah's and Tolle's teachings, helping "human beings, all over the world, bring about a shift in consciousness."

Barack Obama's Malignant Narcissism

On May 20, two months after Oprah's global Internet kickoff, Time magazine published Michelle Obama's tribute to Oprah as part of its 100 most influential people of 2008. It read in part: "Oprah is a wonderful friend and an incredible force. Her friendship and support have meant so much to Barack and me . . . Using her platform to serve as a global role model, she challenges us [Barack and me] to make the world as it is the world as it should be. And she is always the first to show us how it can be done." What else could Michelle be referring to here but Oprah's most focused project, her global Internet campaign promoting the anti-Christian teachings of her pathologically narcissistic guru?

Three months later, in August, the overlooked imperious theme of Michelle Obama's convention speech looped right back to her Oprah tribute. That theme, entwined with much family fluff, was "the world as it should be." Mrs. Obama used that phrase four times, emphasizing that she and Barack are "committed" to "building the world as it should be." Michelle Obama's own carefully considered words, written in Time magazine, tell us that she and her husband imagine that they are going to effect this change by using Oprah Winfrey as their guide, inspiration, and "global role model."

When Barack speaks of himself as "a fellow citizen of the world," is he visualizing world peace becoming a reality through Oprah's expanding tribe? Don't doubt it. Michelle introduced Oprah in Iowa prior to Oprah's introducing Obama, gushing that the talk-show queen "touches the souls of so many of us" and "empowers us all." Michelle's "us" included Barack. In his Berlin speech, pretentiously entitled, "A World that Stands as One," the Oprah-empowered Barack said that the "walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down." That is exactly what Oprah is all about: promoting the lunacy that Tolle's teaching transcends and unites all religions. Once the Christians, Muslims, and Jews join Oprah's tribe and accept Oprah's guru as their chief prophet, then Presto: world peace!

Like Oprah and her guru, Barack Obama also mocks the Judeo-Christian tradition, claiming to be a "committed Christian" all the while welcoming Oprah's global anti-Christian crusade as a model to follow. (For more on Obama's fake Christianity, see "Obama's Faith, Family and Variable Values Tour" by Jan LaRue").

Let's review the connection between the narcissists: Barack Obama looks to Oprah Winfrey as his "global role model" for change. To effect this worldwide change, Oprah, in turn, relies on the "infallible" teachings of her guru, Eckhart Tolle. Tolle, in turn, looks in the mirror and makes friends with the backwards image of himself, thus enabling him, and others who see themselves in the same backwards way (Obama and Oprah), to "change the world." All three mock the Judeo-Christian tradition. All three are determined to remake the world "as it should be."

This is downright insanity, a malignantly narcissistic folie a trois. Counting Michelle Obama, it is a folie a quatre.

Best-selling author Dr. M. Scott Peck referred to malignant narcissists in his book title as The People of the Lie. Lying is what makes Tolle's, Oprah's, and Obama's narcissism malignant, or evil. True and false, right and wrong, do not have the same meaning to malignant narcissists as they do to sane people. What is true and right to the narcissist is whatever brings adoration and respect to his or her backwards, glorious, and depthless image. What is false and wrong is whatever harms that image.

Narcissus was an actor, as are all who succumb to his malady of self-obsession. Obama, Oprah, and even Tolle, are now star players on the world stage. The more grandiose the narcissist's image, the bigger the lies required to protect it. Oprah, her guru, and Obama all tell the same huge, egregiously reprehensible lie in different words. In a Christian nation, they cannot allow themselves to be seen as anti-Christian. That is why Oprah's website introduces her guru's virulently anti-Christian doctrine by asserting that it "is not for or against any religion." Not against Christianity? If the Scriptures appeared in front of Oprah and Tolle on baked clay tablets, they'd be taking sledgehammers to them. Obama would join right in. Referring to himself as a "committed Christian" is essentially the same huge lie Oprah and Tolle tell.

It is significant that Obama, Oprah, and Tolle all mock the Judeo-Christian tradition, because that tradition carries with it a standard of truth and conduct. According to the Ten Commandments, for example, idol worship and lying are wrong. Tolle, Oprah, and Obama, violate those commandments by worshiping their own images and lying to protect the imagined integrity of those images. Malignant narcissists cannot tolerate a spiritual or religious system of absolute standards. All morality must be self-referential. Thus, it wasn't the truth that led Oprah to endorse Obama but rather what she called "my own truth." Eckhart Tolle is Oprah's guru only because his mentally deranged worldview validates Oprah's "own truth."

In their efforts to remake our planet, Obama, Oprah, and Tolle are not looking toward a world that glorifies God or Christ. They look to be part of the reign of a different savior. According to Oprah, not only does Obama always tell the truth, he also knows how "to be the truth," a straightforward messianic reference. Obama's, Oprah's, and Tolle's "world as it should be" will be one that glorifies the two-dimensional, backwards, grandiose, greedy idol-images of themselves.

Within that morally upside-down world, the walls protecting our republican government and our Judeo-Christian values will crumble -- just as Obama said in Berlin that they must -- and our people will be sacrificed to the false god of malignant narcissism. May the True God, our Creator, forbid such a dreadful future!

Source







Chicago Sun Times Continues to Examine Obama

Investigative reporters from Chicago's Sun Times continue to examine the record of former Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. A new story emerged there yesterday. In a September 25 article entitled "Obama grant being probed," Sun Times' reporters Chris Fusco and Dave McKinney wrote:

A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.

The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business.

The Sun Times uncovered the story when, on August 12, the office of the state's Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FIA) request for information. At that time, a recently "discovered" 52 pages of information was added to a May FIA request from the Sun Times. The article also notes that:

The relationship between Smith and Obama dates to at least 1997, when Obama wrote a letter that Smith used to help the housing association win city funding for an affordable-housing development near the garden site. Plans called for more than 50 homes; a dozen ultimately were built. Smith also has donated $550 to Obama campaign funds.

This story has not so far appeared in the New York Times.

Source





Obama's Trade Trickery

An Obama ad implies that a Pennsylvania plant sent jobs overseas and says that McCain is to blame. That's wrong.

An Obama-Biden ad ties McCain to the closing of a plant in Pennsylvania. Its assertions are misleading and false:

The ad says McCain "sold ... out" workers whose factory closed. But there was nothing McCain, or anyone could have done. The factory was making parts for televisions that are becoming obsolete. The company in question has called the ad "misleading."

It implies jobs were sent to China by saying that workers were paid to "disassemble the plant and ship the equipment to China" and that McCain "supported tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas." But the only things shipped to China were the parts.

It's misleading to imply that McCain's support for the tax code in question is to blame for companies sending jobs overseas, as we've said before. The Obama-Biden campaign refers to a dynamic of U.S. tax code that allows companies to defer paying corporate income taxes on money they earn overseas and leave overseas. But the relationship to lost jobs is tenuous.

The ad says a Corning manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania closed and "hundreds los(t) their jobs. Then the workers are rehired to disassemble the plant and ship the equipment to China." That's all correct. But then the ad goes astray by saying that "Washington sold them out with the help of people like John McCain."

When the plant closed in 2004, it wasn't politicians or trade practices that "sold them out." Rather, the culprit is that unforgiving foe: new technology. The plant was closed because it made cathode ray tubes, which are used in conventional televisions. But the cathode ray tube is a dying technology, and Corning no longer makes it. Conventional TVs are being displaced by new plasma and LCD televisions as the prices of these products decrease.

More here

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)