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“Governments and NGOs should be aware of Planned Parenthood’s insidious plan to work with U.N. agencies and girls’ organizations in order to profit from encouraging kids to be sexually active.”  — Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women of America

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According to Bob Morris, a Republican representing Fort Wayne and the only member of the Indiana House who has refused to sign a resolution celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts, the group is a “radicalized organization” that “sexualizes” young girls and is becoming a “tactical arm” of Planned Parenthood.

In an open letter Morris wrote Saturday to Republican House colleagues, which was obtained by the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Morris also says the scouts have a “pro-abortion agenda” and promote “homosexual lifestyles.”

He expressed uneasiness with the fact that males who claim transgender status may be able to play with the females in the Girl Scout Troop, and also criticized Michelle Obama, the group’s honorary president, saying her involvement should “give each of us reason to pause.”

After learning all this, he wrote, he pulled his two daughters out of the Girl Scouts and instead put them in American Heritage Girls Little Flowers, a parent-run group best described as a center for recovering Girl Scouts.

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February 18, 2012

Members of the Republic Caucus

Dear Fellow Representatives:

This past week I was asked to sign a House Resolution recognizing the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts of America. After talking to some well-informed constituents, I did a small amount of web-based research, and what I found is disturbing. The Girl Scouts of America and their worldwide partner, World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), have entered into a close strategic affiliation with Planned Parenthood. You will not find evidence of this on the GSA/WAGGGS website—in fact, the websites of these two organizations explicitly deny funding Planned Parenthood.

Nonetheless, abundant evidence proves that the agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts, which is quickly becoming a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood instructional series and pamphlets are part of the core curriculum at GSA training seminars. Denver Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley of Denver last year warned parents that “membership in the Girl Scouts could carry the danger of making their daughters more receptive to the pro-abortion agenda.”

A Girl Scouts of America training program last year used the Planned Parenthood sex education pamphlet “Happy, Healthy, and Hot.” The pamphlet instructs young girls not to think of sex as “just about vaginal or anal intercourse.” “There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” it states. Although individual Girl Scout troops are not forced to follow this curriculum, many do. Liberal progressive troop-leaders will indoctrinate the girls in their troop according to the principles of Planned Parenthood, making Bishop Conley’s warning true.

Many parents are abandoning the Girl Scouts because they promote homosexual lifestyles. In fact, the Girl Scouts education seminar girls are directed to study the example of role models. Of the fifty role models listed, only three have a briefly-mentioned religious background – all the rest are feminists, lesbians, or Communists. World Net Daily, in a May 2009 article, states that Girl Scout Troops are no longer allowed to pray or sing traditional Christmas Carols.

Boys who decide to claim a “transgender” or cross-dressing life-style are permitted to become a member of a Girl Scout troop, performing crafts with the girls and participate in overnight and camping activities – just like any real girl. The fact that the Honorary President of Girl Scouts of America is Michelle Obama, and the Obama’s are radically pro-abortion and vigorously support the agenda of Planned Parenthood, should give each of us reason to pause before our individual or collective endorsement of the organization.

As members of the Indiana House of Representatives, we must be wise before we use the credibility and respect of the “Peoples’ House” to extend legitimacy to a radicalized organization. The Girl Scouts of America stand in a strong tradition that reflects with fidelity the traditional values of our homes and our families. The tradition extends from coast-to-coast and back through the past one hundred years. That said, I challenge each of you to examine these matters more closely before you extend your name and your reputation to endorse a group that has been subverted in the name of liberal progressive politics and the destruction of traditional American family values.

I have two daughters who have been active in the Girl Scouts of Limberlost Council in Northeastern Indiana. Now that I am aware of the influence of Planned Parenthood within GSA and other surprisingly radical policies of GSA, my two daughters will instead become active in American Heritage Girls Little Flowers organization. In this traditional group they will learn about values and principles that will not confuse their conservative Hoosier upbringing.

I have been told that, as of today, I am the only member not supporting the Girl Scout Resolution.

I challenge each of you to examine these matters and to decide carefully whether or not to sign the resolution.

Respectfully,

Bob Morris

 ***************

Michelle Tompkins, a spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts, responded to Morris’ assertions by stating: “Not only is Rep. Morris off the mark on his claims, it’s also unfortunate in his limited research that he failed to discover that, since 1917, every first lady has served as the honorary leader of Girl Scouts, including Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush.”

“We believe that leadership is about hearing from all sides of an issue before making up one’s mind,”   Tompkins said. “We only wish we had the chance to speak with the freshman representative before he distributed his letter.”

For its part, Planned Parenthood of Indiana called Morris’ comments “inflammatory, misleading, woefully inaccurate and harmful,” saying he’d insulted not only it but also the Girl Scouts and Obama.

“Planned Parenthood currently has no formal partnership with the Girl Scouts, but supports their mission and recognizes their century of contributions to our society,”  the organization said.

***************

Planned Parenthood blasts comments about Girl Scouts

Planned Parenthood of Indiana (PPIN) President and CEO Betty Cockrum issued the following statement Tuesday Feb. 22, in response to the letter written by Bob Morris:

“It was disappointing to read Rep. Morris’ inflammatory, misleading, woefully inaccurate and harmful words about Planned Parenthood, the Girl Scouts of America, and the President and First Lady.

PPIN does not produce nor distribute the materials Rep. Morris referenced. Planned Parenthood of Indiana is first and foremost a provider of affordable, high-quality health care, serving more than 100,000 Hoosiers across the state. Our nonprofit provides preventive services such as life-saving cancer screenings, Pap tests, birth control, testing and treatment for STDs, as well as sexual health education and health counseling. As part of our sexual education services, we offer a variety of age-appropriate education services developed by trained professionals.

On the national level, inflammatory and generally inaccurate claims about a partnership between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood have been promoted primarily by anti-choice lawmakers seeking to place pressure on organizations to disassociate or distance themselves from Planned Parenthood. As part of their campaign against the Girl Scouts, these groups are also attacking the Girl Scouts’ policies on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Planned Parenthood currently has no formal partnership with the Girl Scouts, but supports their mission and recognizes their century of contributions to our society.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana will continue working to fulfill our mission of providing affordable and quality care to Hoosiers who need it. At a time when Indiana’s families are struggling, it is disappointing to see legislators, such as Rep. Morris, focused on divisive social issues and restricting access to basic health care, rather than creating jobs and putting our neighbors back to work.”

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Okay, let’s shine some light on this and see where it takes us. There are 100 Reps in the House and he was the only one who refused to sign off on it. 100 to 1 is about the ratio of crooks in government to honest men and women. So with this guy’s bunch it looks like he could be it: the one incorruptible soul.  He looks decent and clean-cut enough…

Let’s see if we can manage to make any of those connections here though, so we can draw our own conclusions… 

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The Indictment

According to Bob Morris (and others?), the Girl Scouts:

1)  Is a “radicalized” organization

2)  “Sexualizes” young girls

3)  Promotes homosexual lifestyles

4)  Is becoming a “tactical arm” of Planned Parenthood

5)  Holds up almost strictly feminists, communists, and lesbians as role models

6)  Allows boys claiming trangendered and cross-dressing(?) status full access to the girls throughout all activities, including overnight camp-outs 

7)  Many other parents have been abandoning the Girl Scouts after becoming aware of these issues and concerned for the well-being of their daughters

***************

That’s a lot to look into, but the NWO agenda is painted liberally all over the allegations: the feminist/communist/corporatist conspiracy, and the current push for population reduction. Reduction — meaning some people need to go away. Now.

So we can really boil all this down to those two critical components:

1)  The ongoing sovietization of America

and,

2)  The current push for population reduction

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World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) is comprised of 145 member organizations, including Girl Scouts of the USA. WAGGGS not only unites all of its member organizations, but also promotes and establishes Girl Guiding/Girl Scouting organizations around the world. The goal of WAGGGS is to enable girls and young women to develop their fullest potential as responsible citizens of the world.

Headquartered at the World Bureau in London, WAGGGS also owns and operates four world centers. Girl Guides/Girl Scouts can visit these program centers in England, India, Mexico and Switzerland.

WAGGGS History

Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts in England in 1907. When girls showed up at a Boy Scout rally at Crystal Palace in 1909, Sir Robert decided that girls needed their own movement. In 1910 he and his sister, Agnes, founded the Girl Guide movement. In 1918, Sir Robert’s wife, Olave, became the United Kingdom’s Chief Guide, and the following year formed the International Council, which officially became the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in 1928.

Participation Around the World

The WAGGGS constitution requires that at least two women on its board be under 30 years old, and that all World Board committees include at least one woman under 30. WAGGGS member organizations offer girls a wide range of leadership experiences, which enable them to become competent and confident leaders.

WAGGGS has six teams at United Nations locations around the world—Geneva, Nairobi, New York, Paris, Rome and Vienna. Each team works with UN agencies to address issues that affect girls and young women globally. GSUSA works with the WAGGGS UN team in New York.

International Training Forums and Seminars

Each of the five WAGGGS regions (Africa, Asia/Pacific, Arab region, Europe and Western Hemisphere) hold training events focused on leadership development for young women. Since 1932, Juliette Low Seminarshave been held twice every triennium. The seminars provide international leadership training for young women from any member organization, and provide a platform for young women to:

Share their views and experiences

Develop a sense of universal citizenship

Enhance their leadership skills

Appreciate cultural differences

Broaden their international understanding and prepare for national and international leadership in World Association and at the United Nations.

WAGGGS Events

World Conference and Regional Conferences.

Each triennium, WAGGGS convenes a World Conference. The 2008 World Conference was held in South Africa. The 2011 World Conference will take place in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. In addition, each of the five WAGGGS regions—Africa, Asia/Pacific, Arab region, Europe and Western Hemisphere—hold triennium conferences.

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 What Are The Girl Scouts All About? 

This, from the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles website:

Welcome to Girl Scouts, where it’s great to be a girl.

“If you’re 5 to 17 years old, you can be part of the largest organization for girls on the planet!”

At Girl Scouts, you might explore the solar system, venture on a nature hike, become a weather watcher, write and star in a play, enjoy a scavenger hunt, or take an amazing trip.

And you’ll do it with other girls and caring adults who just might become your friends forever.

From the minute you share the Girl Scout Promise and Law — words girls have been saying for almost 100 years — you’ll Discover, Connect, and Take Action to:

Discover Yourself

Connect with Others

Take Action to Make the World Better

So if you’re ready to take on the challenge, Girl Scouts is here to inspire you to roll up your sleeves, help your community, earn badges and awards, and enjoy Girl Scout journeys, an exciting way to learn about leadership.

If you can think it, you can do it. Whatever your interest, Girl Scouts has it.

Learn about the Girl Scout Pathways – ways girls and volunteers participate that meet your needs and interest and fit your schedule and lifestyle.

Or, click here to find your local council contact, to get started on your Girl Scout Adventure!

Any girl in grades K-12 can become a Girl Scout by accepting the Girl Scout Promise and Law, paying the $12 annual membership dues and following safety guidelines. However, no girl will be denied membership in Girl Scouts for financial reasons. Click here for information about financial assistance.

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The Cookies Hit the Fan

In Crawford, Texas, some families are boycotting Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos and other Girl Scout cookies. Troop 7527 is down to just two members after the other girls were withdrawn by their parents. And Brownie Troop 7087 is no more.

Why are folks in this conservative Texas town where President Bush has his ranch so mad at the Girl Scout organization?

Planned Parenthood and sex education.

The furor was started a few weeks ago by the leader of the anti-abortion group Pro-Life Waco, who sent out e-mails and ran ads on a Christian radio station urging people to boycott Girl Scout cookies because of the “cozy relationship” between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood.

Parents were upset to learn that the local Girl Scout organization had given a “woman of distinction award” last year to a Planned Parenthood executive. And they were disturbed to find out that the Girl Scout organization has been giving its endorsement for years to a Planned Parenthood sex-ed program in which girls and boys are given literature on homosexuality, masturbation and condoms.

“It’s not that we’re a bunch of activists. We’re just a bunch of moms who care about their kids,”  said Lisa Aguilar, who took her 10-year-old daughter out of her eight-member Girl Scout troop. “For us, it’s the morality. Where is Girl Scouts going?”

The two troops in Crawford, population 700, decided not to deliver the cookie orders that they had already taken.

But cookie sales have skyrocketed this year as many people bought cases just to show their support for the Girl Scouts, said Becky Parker, a troop leader who is the cookie distributor for Waco-area troops.

“People thought the boycott was ridiculous and was one man’s extremist views,”  Parker said.

While the cookie boycott may have backfired, the furor prompted the parent leaders of the two Crawford troops to quit.

“You’re telling these girls to raise their fingers up to pledge to honor God and country, and yet you’re handing out materials saying homosexuality is OK,”  said Brownie leader Donna Coody, who disbanded her five-member troop.

Because of the uproar, the Bluebonnet Council of Girl Scouts, which oversees troops in the Waco area and 13 other counties, announced last week that it would not be affiliated with Planned Parenthood sex-education programs this year.

In an editorial in Friday’s Waco Tribune-Herald, Pam Smallwood, the Planned Parenthood of Central Texas executive director who was honored by the Girl Scouts last year, complained that Girl Scouts had thereby demonstrated that “bullying tactics are more effective than an informed democracy.”

The Waco-area Girl Scout organization has been putting its name and logo on brochures for the Planned Parenthood sex-education programs but said it does not contribute any money and does not send girls to attend.

Some 400 to 700 fifth- through ninth-graders attend the half-day Nobody’s Fool conference in Waco each July. The program never mentions abortion, according to Planned Parenthood. The youngsters receive a book with chapters on homosexuality and masturbation, as well as illustrations of couples having sex, people examining their naked bodies and a boy putting on a condom.

Some Girl Scout mothers called it soft-core porn.

“It embarrassed me to look at it with my husband,”  said parent Shannon Donaldson.

Pro-Life Waco director John Pisciotta, an economics professor at Baylor, the world’s largest Baptist university, said his call for a cookie boycott “was a way to bring attention to the issue and wasn’t really about cookies.”

The Girl Scouts national organization, which is based in New York and has 2.9 million girl members and 986,000 adult members, takes no position on sex education or abortion and has no national relationship with Planned Parenthood, according to the Bluebonnet Council.

The Crawford mothers are forming their own girls organization and will use a Christian-based curriculum. Beth Vivio, director of the Bluebonnett Council, declined to say if parents in any other troops had taken their daughters out.

Some parents decided to explain abortion to their girls. Others gave only a vague explanation about the uproar.

“Our girls have been through a lot these past three weeks,”  said Jennifer Smith, who quit as leader of Girl Scout Troop 7527 and removed her daughter. “After I told my 10-year-old daughter that they are supporting some things that are not morally right, she understood.”  (USA Today 3/3/2004)

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Official Policy Allows “Transgendered” Boys

A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Colorado boy’s desire to join the Girl Scouts — and the organisation’s reversal of his initial rejection — has put a spotlight on the Scouts’ little-known policy of supporting transgender kids, FOX News reported today.

The story of little Bobby Montoya came to light earlier this week, when his mother told a Denver TV station that Bobby’s request to join his older sister in the venerable all-girl organisation was denied. Felisha Archuleta says Bobby dresses in girls’ clothes and likes girls’ toys.

Ms Archuleta told KUSA-TV that a troop leader said “‘It doesn’t matter how he looks. He has boy parts, and he can’t be in Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts don’t allow that [and] I don’t want to be in trouble by parents or my supervisor.’”

But the local troop leader was apparently unaware of current policies within the organization.

The Girl Scouts of Colorado released a statement this week stating that they are an “inclusive organisation” and that little Bobby will be allowed to join if he wants to.

“We accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout,”  according to the statement.

Rachelle Trujillo, a spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of Colorado, said it is not a “black-and-white policy.”

She added that the troop leader’s confusion may have arisen when Ms Archuleta kept referring to Bobby as a boy when trying to sign the child up.

“We have reached out to Bobby’s mother, but she has said that her child does not feel comfortable joining that troop. So we spoke to her about having Bobby join another troop, but she has not gotten back to us.”

The Girl Scouts policy has won praise from transgender groups.

“If some little kid wants to do little kid things at the Girl Scouts, then they should be allowed to,”  said Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

But others think the Girl Scouts should be more steadfast in its policies, letting boys be boys and girls be girls.

To cross that line “is child sexual abuse, the violation of children’s genetic reality aided by a society that is reverting back to the dark,” said Judith A. Reisman, visiting professor of law at Liberty University School of Law.

“If he has male parts, he is a male,”  she said.  ( Fox News 10/29/2011)

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The Cookie Crumbles

In a 2000 National Review Online editorial titled “The Cookie Crumbles”, author Kathryn Jean Lopez cites the 1997 book “On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on Their Scouting Experience.” She said it is “filled with coming-of-age stories sparked by gay encounters in the Girl Scouts.”

“On My Honor” includes an essay titled “All I Really Need to Know About Being a Lesbian I Learned at Girl Scout Camp.” Lopez reported that “staffers writing in the book claim that roughly one in three of the Girls Scouts’ paid professional staff is lesbian.”

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Is the Girl Scouts a “Radicalized” Organization, with Communists, Feminists and Lesbians Cited as Role Models?

When many parents think of Girl Scouts, they imagine young girls in uniform selling Thin Mints and Tagalong cookies – not learning about stone labyrinths, world peace, global warming, yoga, avatars, smudging incense, Zen gardens and feminist, communist and lesbian role models.

But that’s exactly what many of 2.7 million Girl Scouts will learn about with a new curriculum called “Journeys” released last year.

Patti Garibay spent nearly two decades in Girl Scouts – six years as a girl member and 13 years as a volunteer. She was also a recruiter, camp coordinator and area delegate winning outstanding leader and volunteer in both councils in which she served. In Garibay’s words, she “bled green.”

But in 1993 when Girl Scouts USA decided to make God optional in its program at the national convention in Minneapolis, an idea known as “Proposal 3: Flexibility in Spiritual Wording,” Garibay chose to leave the organization.

“I had always used Girl Scouts as part of my life’s ministry, modeling my faith while serving girls,”  she said. “However as this change became policy, mandates were made against Christmas caroling, praying at meetings and singing hymns. I had a true moral dilemma and felt that I could not uphold the GSUSA’s rules and remain a Christian never denying my Lord.”

In the Girl Scout curriculum, the organization’s promise now includes an asterisk with the following disclaimer:

“Girl Scouts of the USA makes no attempt to define or interpret the word “God” in the Girl Scout Promise. It looks to individual members to establish for themselves the nature of their spiritual beliefs. When making the Girl Scout Promise, individuals may substitute wording appropriate to their own spiritual beliefs for the word “God.”

Garibay said it appears that Girl Scouts has taken a stance toward religion – the religion of the New Age – despite its proclaimed secular scouting program. WND asked Girl Scouts USA spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins if the organization is shifting its focus toward a New Age agenda.

“No, Girl Scouts isn’t headed into a New Age direction,” she said. “We’re just looking for new ways to get through to girls.”

WND reviewed the following books in the Girl Scouts’ new “Journeys” curriculum:

 Amaze: The Twists and Turns of Getting Along

When teens reach their junior and senior years in high school, they begin a Girl Scouts curriculum called “Your Voice Your World: The Power of Advocacy.” It encourages young women to begin “raising their voices as advocates” and follow the examples of other young people who are speaking out on causes such as global warming, universal health care, racism and child poverty.

One question asks, “What policies is our city putting in place to combat global warming?”

Teens are then asked to generate a list of causes they are passionate about. One example suggests girls “propose new environmental protection laws for waterways in your state.”

The text encourages Girl Scouts to take their ideas and list steps necessary to accomplish goals on advocacy charts. It provides the following suggestion for a cause:

I worry about all the waste in using plastic bags and how their use in my community contributes to global warming. One example is the supermarket – do we really need to be using all those plastic bags?

Girls are encouraged to read the bottom of each page to discover a “Voice for Good,” or female advocates who are meant to be role models. Of more than 50 women listed, only three are women who are known for their faith: Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Mother Teresa. Their religions are only briefly mentioned, if at all.

Many of the female role models mentioned are feminists, lesbians, existentialists, communists and Marxists. Examples include:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: labor leader, activist, feminist, founding member of ACLU and chairwoman of the American Communist Party

Luisa Moreno: labor leader, social activist, member of the Communist Party, married to delegate of the Socialist Party of America

Simone de Beauvoir: existentialist, French author of feminist books including “The Second Sex,” key player in France’s women’s liberation movement

Rigoberta Menchu: Guatemalan activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who joined Marxist guerrilla movement

Emily Greene Balch: writer, feminist, recipient of Nobel Peace Prize, pacifist who campaigned against U.S. involvement in World War I, former editor of The Nation

Billie Jean King: retired tennis champion, sued for palimony by lesbian girlfriend while she was still married, first prominent professional athlete to come out as homosexual

Jeanette Rankin: first woman elected to the House of Representatives, R-Montana, pacifist who voted against U.S. entry into World War I and World War II, founding vice-president of American Civil Liberties Union and founding member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Carrie Chapman Catt: feminist politician, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, founded the League of Women Voters, anti-war activist

Frances Perkins: teacher and U.S. secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945, first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet, helped write New Deal legislation including minimum-wage laws, allegedly had lesbian relationship with Mary Harriman Rumsey

Rachel Carson: marine biologist and nature writer, author of “Silent Spring” (1962), spurring a nationwide ban on DDT, inspiration from book led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, reported to have had lesbian relationship with Dorothy Freeman

Barbara Jordan: member of House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979, first black woman to deliver keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 1976, supported Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 requiring banks to lend to poor and minority communities. The Houston Chronicle reported Jordan had lesbian partner of more than 20 years named Nancy Earl

Ethel Mary Smyth: English composer, lesbian, leader of the women’s suffrage movement, member of Women’s Social and Political Union

Martina Navratilova: former World No. 1 women’s tennis champion from Czechoslovakia who fled communism, came out openly as a lesbian and admitted to having crushes on other female tennis players, spoke before the National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, was 2000 recipient of National Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign

Shirley Chisholm: member of the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1983, feminist, first black woman elected to Congress, first major-party black candidate for president of the United States, founding member of the National Organization of Women, helped pass Title IX, homosexual advocate

Pauli Murray: feminist, lawyer, writer, poet, teacher, ordained priest, author of the 1950 book “States’ Laws on Race and Color,” founder of the Women’s Rights Law Reporter, co-founder of the National Organization for Women. 

She continued, “I think the concept of change is incredibly radical, but it’s about making the world better and being conscious and respecting authority. There was a wide cross-section of women mentioned in the ‘Journeys’ that came about from the discussions.”

Readers will find very few men in the book, with the exception of a brief mention of Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations.

“Men are not seen favorably but, rather a force to diminish and avoid,”  Garibay said. “It alarmed me that women of faith were only mentioned in these few cases despite their many contributions. Not one pro-life woman was mentioned, nor was a missionary or conservative public figure.”

Tompkins said she doesn’t know why there are only three women of faith mentioned, but she said, “Girl Scouts isn’t a religious organization, so that could be part of it.”

She continued, “I would imagine we keep everything open when it comes to faith. I know no doors are ever shut with us. It’s sort of like the way that God can never be taken out of the Girl Scout promise and law – in writing.”

“Your Voice Your World” finishes by encouraging teens who are bitten by the “advocacy bug” to pursue some of the following careers:

Ambassador, congressperson, artist, filmmaker, labor union organizer, fund raiser/grant writer, lawyer, lobbyist, mediator, professor, public affairs officer, researcher, religious leader, senator, web master, blogger, journalist…

Tompkins said a new “Journeys” book will be arriving this month called “It’s Your Planet, Love It.” She said the text has a strong environmental focus.

Other Controversy

At the 51st Girl Scout National Council Session and Convention last year, the organization did away with its traditional flag ceremony and the playing of the National Anthem. Flags of all nations were brought in to the tune of “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire.

The Girl Scouts also made headlines in recent years after it refused to adopt what it called “a discrimination policy” against homosexual leaders.

According to news reports, Planned Parenthood has also had some involvement with Girl Scouts in recent years.

In Waco, Texas in 2004, a Girl Scout council cosponsored a sex education program with Planned Parenthood and honored PP Executive Director Pam Smallwood.

On NBC’s Today Show in 2004, Kathy Cloninger, CEO of Girls Scouts USA, admitted that it “partners with Planned Parenthood across the country to bring information based sex education programs to girls.”

In response to the interview, American Life League’s STOPP International surveyed 350 councils to ask if they had any involvement with Planned Parenthood. While 80 percent refused to answer, 17 councils reportedly admitted to associating with Planned Parenthood, and 49 said they don’t.

Garibay said Girl Scouts USA is not the same program most women remember.

“Originally scouting was about citizenship, service and life skills,”  she said. “The founder, Juliette Lowe, wanted girls to do their duty to God and their country. She encouraged girls to activate, not meditate. Now the Girl Scouts want to move into self-discovery and lobbyist training.”  (World Net Daily  5/17/2009)

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 Training Girl Scouts to be “Happy, Healthy, and Hot”?

Sharon Slater, a mother of seven, innocently walked into a panel sponsored by the Girl Scouts USA at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women a few weeks ago. Almost immediately she was asked to leave. All non-Scout adults were kicked out of the room, which was packed with adolescent girls.

Her curiosity piqued, Slater lingered by the door and when the panel ended she went immediately back inside to look around. What she found has shocked her and shocked Girl Scout moms around the country. Slater found a stack of brochures produced by Planned Parenthood called “Healthy, Happy and Hot” that among other things explained to the girls, “Some people have sex when they have been drinking or using drugs. That is your choice.”

But it gets worse. The sex guide explains, “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse. But there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. Sex can include kissing, touching, licking, tickling, sucking and cuddling. Some people like to have aggressive sex, while others like to have soft sex and slow sex with their partners. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” It tells girls to explore the prostate. Remember, this was distributed in a panel for adolescent girls.

Besides advice about the prostate, the brochure, subtitled “Rights, Sexuality and Living with HIV,” also gives incorrect and even dangerous information about rights and responsibilities. It tells the kids that, “sexual and reproductive rights are recognized around the world.” Sexual rights are hardly recognized around the world. They are not even recognized here in the sexual paradise of the United States. The brochure tells the kids that their rights are violated when governments require them to tell their HIV status to their sex partners.

The Girl Scouts USA have offered various statements to outraged Scout leaders. First they denied they ever passed out the brochure. Then they denied the brochure was ever in the room and that Slater must have fished it out of the trash. Then they said a previous group might have left the brochure. Other users of that conference room on that day were the NAACP for a panel on climate change, the UN for an orientation meeting, and a Dutch poverty group for a panel on counter-terrorism. It is unlikely, to say the least, that the panels on climate change and counterterrorism would distribute Planned Parenthood sex guides for adolescents.

At the same UN meeting, which ended last Friday, the World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides produced a document saying young women “demand their sexual and reproductive rights including access to comprehensive sexuality education, and sexual and reproductive services including contraception and emergency contraception, in order to avoid unintended pregnancies” and also called for access to “safe abortion.”

While they have denied it was in their meeting, what the Girl Scout leadership has not done is distance themselves from the message of the brochure and from Planned Parenthood. But they would have a hard time doing that because they have a long time relationship with Planned Parenthood and have passed out brochures like this before.

At a Girl Scout conference in 2004, co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood, the Girl Scouts handed out a brochure to 700 grade-school girls with the title “It’s Perfectly Normal,” a guide that celebrated masturbation and that featured explicit drawings of couples having sex and a boy putting on a condom. It also listed, no surprise here, the top ten reasons for having an abortion.

The present day Girl Scouts are not your older sister’s Scouts, let alone your Moms. Not by a long shot. They seem to have joined up fully with the anything-goes-ethos of the left-wing sexual buccaneers and for it they are lauded at the UN. Compare that with the Boy Scouts who have remained true to their founding vision and to traditional values and for it they are banned from using public buildings.

Will this be the issue that gets the Girl Scouts back on track? Unlikely. Girl Scout leadership is very dug in on this. But, there is revolt brewing in Girl Scout Land. A group of Mothers in St. Louis intend to ask the St. Louis region to break with the national organization. There likely will be more.

Girl Scout cookies remain awfully tasty, but it seems the moral price to purchase them is getting higher and higher.

Austin Ruse is the President of the New York and Washington, D.C.-based Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a research institute that focuses exclusively on international social policy. (A  Washington Times  editorial commentary 3/18/2010)

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A Dirty Lowdown Exclusive!

View, download or print out an authentic original copy of the controversial booklet “Healthy, Happy and Hot” right here at The Dirty Lowdown! Just click on the following link:  Healthy, Happy and Hot

A PDF reader such as Adobe Reader is required. The download is 1.34 MB.

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What We’ve Learned So Far

Through reliable information delivered to us from reliable sources (ie: Fox News and USA Today ), we have discovered:

1)  Bob Morris is  far from alone in his beliefs and actions, other parents have in fact become concerned and have pulled their kids out. Not only that, but volunteer adult troop leaders have quit and shut their whole troops down over these very issues. This is  a cold, hard fact.

2)  Their is  an ongoing affiliation, informal or otherwise, between Planned Parenthood and the Girl Scouts, and Bob Morris is right: they’re not claiming it, just doing it.

3)   It is  official organizational policy to allow boys who identify as females – or just claim to — complete and unfettered access to the girls and all supported activities, including any overnighters.

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“There are so many people today that don’t think of themselves as feminists, they don’t even use that term. But their lives have been a direct result of the feminist culture… and the influence of feminism on their life, often without even knowing it.”  – Suzanne Venker, author of The Flipside of Feminism

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“Feminism, by grounding itself in the philosophy of Hegel and Marx, is condemning women to a new servitude: slavery to the state.” – Larry Anderson, writer and philosopher

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“Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism” – Catharine MacKinnon

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I’ve spent the last decade devoting myself heart, mind, body, and soul to three different middle-aged American women. The first one was my age — now 52. The second one was a decade older — now 62 — and the third and latest one was 15 years younger than me. and is now 38, having had a birthday in the interim. All three were American-born and raised.

Third time’s a charm. I don’t want another one. I’m cured.

After the last three back-to-back, whose ages spanned a 25-year range and who perceivably had nothing in common with each other whatsoever, I’ve decided to become a “confirmed batchelor”, either for the duration, or until I can find someone from somewhere else — outside of the country – where their women have not been corrupted irrevocably and irreparably by the insidious subversive programming our women have been plagued with and subjected to unceasingly over the last couple of generations — a feminist agenda.

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The Big Picture 

Right now your puppetmasters want two things and two things only:

1)  Total control, over YOU.

2)  Far less of YOU to control.

Your puppetmasters want you in an early grave.  If you could drop dead somewhere between 50 and 60 it would be mightily convenient. For a number of essential reasons, chief among them:

1)  They don’t have to pay you back all the money you’ve paid into Social Security all your life — they get to keep it!

2)  By the time you get up around 40-50 you’ve started wising up, and seeing through The Matrix. Up until then, everything’s pretty much revolved around that thing between your legs and holding down a steady job.

3)  At around 50 your “battery power” has dropped to around 50 percent — the point of diminishing returns. You’re producing less and less, while you’re requiring more and more maintenance. You’re no longer “cost-effective” to the state, and it’s time to start looking at replacement.

4)  The “powers that be” seriously  want to bring about a population reduction. Not just a cessation of any further population growth, but less people — up to 80 percent less, by some estimates. Yeah. So, they just need some people to start going away period. They’re not that particular who they are. If you’re warm and breathing you qualify.

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People, you need to wrap your heads around the fact that the truth of your condition is this: evil men you don’t even know exist are guiding your lives and you don’t even know it. Precisely where you are at today is the result of a whole lot of third-party intervention and manipulation you weren’t even aware was taking place around you.

But now we have the opportunity to become aware, and take a fresh and candid, objective (hopefully) look at some of these crucial issues affecting all of us equally today, and in a purely negative, destructive way I might add. You can’t correct a problem you don’t know exists or can’t get to the bottom of, can’t define. But once we bring the problem out into the light we can explore it and examine it and then come to some sensible conclusions.

First watch this short video so you can get a quick peek at just a part of what lies behind the Matrix  concerning these feminist issues. You’ll be amazed and glad you did… 

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This is a classic example of how crucial, sweeping, life-altering  changes in national culture and direction can be planned, set in motion and executed by just a handful of privileged men — and women — at the very top levels of power and control, travelling on an agenda that has their best interests in mind and not ours.  

This is how you are being controlled, and brainwashed, and manipulated, and exploited every day of your life by a few evil men at the top of the food chain that want what’s worst for you. They want to strip you of your essential connections and primary ties, inhibit your personal growth and development, and make you a totally dependent model drone they can control completely.

And they want to stop you from having babies if they can: through surreptitious chemical sterilization and subversive feminist programming. What babies do slip through under the wire they want to separate from you as quickly as possible so that they may be indoctrinated in the doctrine and the dogma of the state at as early and impressionable an age as possible. They’ve managed to whittle this process down from age 5 back in my day, to age 3 currently, and I think it’s just ridiculous.

But I envision a time in the-not-too distant future when the state will simply take the babies from their mothers in the delivery room, then you can basically kiss their whiny little narrow behinds good-bye. This is every fascist’s ultimate wet dream; the parents totally eliminated from the process of raising the child. 

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On the flip side of the feminism equation, think of all the mateless, unloved, and frustrated males spawned by this feminist process, who then just happen to fall into the profile of those the fascist state values most highly: baton swingers and cannon fodder — bereft of primary ties, individualized, with freedom an “unbearable burden” and something best escaped from, into the welcome arms of the state — the army, the secret police, the detention camp staff, etc. Here, we’ll fill the hole, fill the vacuum: take this uniform, we’ll give you a family, an identity. Here, take this machine gun, we’ll give your life purpose, direction… 

I keep coming back to this because this is what it’s all about, every bit of this — everything. The corporate state controlling you and every facet of your life — completely.  And about just how “under control” you really are even now, as we speak. If you only knew how many of your most crucial decisions were either actually made for you, manipulated or skewed by external programming and intervention, you’d come unglued. 

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Where the Boys Aren’t

About ten years ago they started phasing lesbian sexual influence into everything from print ads to Hollywood movies. In an ever-intensifying “in your face” kind of way, phasing it in and ratcheting it up by degrees. Within that decade every historical girl-girl first was made: the first girl-girl kiss on network TV, the first girl-girl romantic leads in a major Hollywood film, the first lesbian TV show, whatever. Then came the obligatory girl-girl sex scene stuck in the middle of every film, it seemed like, whether it belonged there or not, Then came an all-out mainstream media blitz, until by time the smoke cleared, it was everywhere you looked, interwoved into everything: sometimes subtly, usually not so subtly.

Social engineering through subversive programming.

Now, about eight years into that process, I’ve got my 20 year-old stepdaughter confessing to me that, after her dorm room mate at the college she had gone away to study at and her get done with their homework assignments each night, they unwind by smoking pot and engaging in sex with each other.

That will stick in my head ’til the day I die.   

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Media-Fueled Social Engineering For Dummies

This, from GizmoDiva:

Remember the famous public lip lock between Madonna and Britney? Well, the effects of such celebrity lip locks are not just limited to creating media frenzy and publicity. These lip locks have apparently started off a new trend among young middle class girls who think it’s fashionable to kiss each other. More and more young girls are imitating and experimenting with their sexuality to be like their favorite celebs. This social trend of faux lesbianism has become so common and popular that it is now commonly recognized as LUGs, or Lesbian until Graduation! It is definitely alarming and disturbing to see young girls trying to act like lipstick lesbians. When asked the reason behind such behavior, one girl replied, “Much of it is to do with impressing boys, and some of it is just showing off, but also that there is an element of imitating female celebrities.”

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This stunt, pulled off by what were arguably the two biggest and most influential female names in the business, the accompanying media frenzy, and all the supportive environmental programming did what it was intended to do: put a whole generation of females in each other’s arms, lips locked, tongues tango-ing.

Introduce role models, exhibit preferred behavior (stimulous) — monkey see, monkey do (response). This progamming is called conditioning, or associative learning.  It won’t stick to all of them but it’ll stick to some, and the corruption will spread from there… and act to foster the transfer of the breeding-age female’s sexual interest away from the male and onto other breeding-age females.

And even within the ones it doesn’t stick to initially it can plant seeds of dissention that can germinate down the road and act to destroy a viable male-female love relation or family unit. 

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Let’s say this particular programming venture had managed to achieve a 100% success rate, and a whole entire generation of 100% vagina-worshipping, “girl-power” chanting, card-carrying lesbians was successfully created. Where the hell are we going to go from there? You tell me. I’m particularly concerned, considering I’m one of the 3 -4 billion horny guys left out in the cold, frustrated and pissed off. And about that time, I’m sure I’ll be looking at the average female as an object of contempt, and now looking suspiciously like “the enemy”. What are the only viable options left me now? Celibacy, rape or homosexuality. I don’t particularly like the sound of any of them…

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Have You Been Programmed to Fail?

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Yes I Take It Personally

I really do. And the primary reason why is it affects me personally.  Because it’s thrust in my face now everywhere I go. The current emasculation of, attack on, and just general blatent disregard for the male. It’s very real as far as I’m concerned, and I feel it’s effects every day. The pervasive subversion of the feminist agenda. Real men are stuck on the butt end of all this, and I am one. And it’s caused some very real and catastrophic consequences in some of my intimate personal relationships along the way.

I think that there’s never been a worse time in history to be a male, I feel like I’m discriminated against and disrespected all the time, for both my age and my gender, and sometimes my race too, in a myriad of little insidious ways that serve to attack my self-esteem and might easily leave me feeling “less than”. 

This in turn, tends to skew my own attitude toward women in a general negative direction — where I don’t want it to go, and where it shouldn’t be.

Where my wrath should be appropriately focused is on the programmers and the programming. The women affected by it are simply victims, same as me and all the other men. 

All this is covered in the videos below… 

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You’ll Know a Junior Feminazi is Sleeping Next to You When:

1)  “Dominate or Terminate” sums up her whole relational approach.

2)  She finds a way to see you as inferior, no matter what it takes.

3)  Suddenly one day you’ll think of  her as a “Princess” — and you’ll never stop.

4)  You discover she might like sexy young big-breasted webcam models even more than you do.

5)  She tells you she’s finally found her soulmate: and it’s not you, but her BFF.

6)  If she’s not humping you, she’s dumping you.

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Trending Now…

“All across America young single women are cutting ties with their Craigslist roommates and taking out a lease of their own… and experiencing the joys of flying solo!” – MSNBC headline homepage news article

When my homepage popped up the morning after Valentine’s Day, this is what I found staring me in the face, along with a stock photograph of an attractive 30-something female, obviously home alone in nice digs and having the time of her life.

This is literally thrust in my face, I cannot avoid it, My subconscious mind has absorbed it already, taking in every detail and filing it away who knows where, to be used later on who knows how.

I’ve just been successfully programmed, whether I like it or not…

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Anatomy of a Brainwashing Ploy

Let’s break this apart and take a closer look at how it works…

First off, I look at the MSNBC homepage as a tremendous real-time resource of what the global elite wants to program into somebody’s head, right now — whether it be the women, the children, whoever, or just the public at large. It’s an NWO propaganda machine.

I’d been wondering where Bill Gates was hiding throughout all this, but it seems like he’s finally come out: for vaccines and population reduction. That’s all I needed to hear.

Well Bill, if you really think the population needs to be reduced, why don’t you go first and lead us by example. We’ll follow you… ; )

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Now on to the programming ploy… Oh, I meant “news article”… sorry…

First off this programming effort wasn’t aimed at me. The target demographic is “young single women”.

So this is who the NWO are out to influence, right now: younger, single, females — the “dating pool”,  the “baby-makers”, the “breeders”. A little deeper investigation revealed that this particular piece was only the tip of the iceberg, part of a larger on-going effort that’s been on the front burner for awhile now.

Okay, we’re out to reach them. What do we want them to do:

1)  Cut their primary ties to their existing emotional and financial support mechanisms (See Fromm).

2)  “Individualize” themselves through increasing social isolation and emotional detachment. This is how a fascist drone, totally dependent on the state for all things large and small, is created (See Fromm).

3)  Live alone.

Why do we want them to live alone? See numbers one and two. That’s why.

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It amazes me that this is what it always comes back to — and it always does: the stripping of the free and sovereign individual of everything that makes them and keeps them strong and happy and joyous and free;  of everything good, and right, and loving, and meaningful, and lasting, in order to create a vacuum in you that draws you to them inexorably… that makes your very freedom seem an unbearable burden, something better escaped from, into the loving tentacles of the fascist state. To be absorbed…

This is how all evil organizations are created: from street gangs, to entire fascist nations with populations of hundreds of millions: break down the family, sever the primary ties, isolate and individualize the individual, absorb her into the fold.

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Our female dating pool is now actively being encouraged to cut their primary ties, and in the real world this translates into far more than simply “letting go their Craigslist roommates”. Friends, lovers, and who knows who are getting caught in the crossfire as well, as our female breeding stock just suddenly packs up and trots out the door, to march off like lemmings to the sea and vacant apartments of their own. To isolate themselves off in their own corner alone…  

No, I forgot: “to experience all the joys of flying solo!” 

This thing runs deep, it’s a significant and growing problem, with more gas thrown on the fire every day by the NWO social programmers.

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There are actually a myriad of advantages to the NWO to have this happen: it helps reduce the population, it funnels more money into the corporate state, as you now have another whole separate rent bill, cable bill, water bill, electric bill, all that.

Every adult in the country living alone in separate residences would be the corporate state’s ultimate wet dream come true, as there would be a separate billing account and monthly payment to bank on for every single individual for every single essential service, from monthly rent to internet service. They get to fill double the amount of apartment and condo vacancies, all that.

If you watched the Aaron Russo clip you will see how these people think. They think like this I just outlined. First and foremost they are “businessmen” — more or less. They run mega-corporations. They run central banks, world banks  and even governments. They do not play. They thrive on cash and enough is never enough. They’re into “zeros” man, and to them you’re looking like one.

They own the garbage collection service she’ll have to now pay for monthly. They own the utility companies, the cable companies, the ISP companies, and all the companies this person “cutting ties” and flying solo” will now have to establish a separate billing account with and pay for separately.  They own the cheap flat she’ll live in and the strip mall she’ll shop at. Their only interest is her complete and total exploitation.  

So yeah, if they can just take any two or more people who are sharing accomodations together for any reason whatsoever, and split them up into separate households for each… oh man would they ever be ecstatic! A whole new mailbox to send a whole new crop of monthly bills to every thirty days.

So now they’ve gone from forcing the woman out of the house and into the workplace through the phony “women’s lib” ploy, in order to double the tax base, to forcing her out of the home entirely, and to pay for everything herself ; to foot all the bills entirely, with no assistance from anyone, with the exception of the corporate state.

She’s now a total dependent. A completely autonomous, individualized, producing, consuming, biological tax-paying organism. She’s been liberated! She’s…

Free!

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Let’s go back to the programming piece: the image may be the most important element, weighed against the whole body of text. The viewer may not even read the article, But the image is what is thrust straight into the face involuntarily and left enblazoned onto the subconscious mind. So let’s look at that…

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Images of Single Young Women Home Alone We’re Shown

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Images of Single Young Women Home Alone We’re Not Shown

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So we are progammed to associate being young, single and female and living alone with bright, pleasant upscale surroundings, having a blast just sitting around doing nothing, being secure and “in charge”, and deriving the greatest enjoyment from the lowliest of mundane chores.

But the truth is everything’s more special when you have someone special to share it with. And the typical condition of the typical young single when typically home alone in reality is actually this:

1)  Lonely

2)  Horny

3)  Bored

And sometimes, even:

4)  Depressed

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The All-Essential Buzz-Term

So now we need a tag line to go with the pic, because that’s what’s going to get lodged in the brain along with the visual. It needs to be something brief, catchy, and repeatable. In this case: “flying solo”, “the joy of flying solo”, or “experiencing the joys of flying solo”. I like the middle one: “the joy of flying solo”.

I wrote ads for a living for a couple of years (amongst other things), so, I have got to tell you this masterstroke flying solo thing has me wanting to bow down to its inventor and worship him or her as my personal marketing guru. It’s sheer genius. You’re not “living alone”, that sounds much too dull and even a little risky, if you stop to think about it, and you may…

You’re Flying Solo!

I love this because it genuinely cracks me up every time I go over it again! Really, every single time…

So, not living alone: lonely, horny and bored, vulnerable to intruders, having to foot every bill yourself, perform every tedious and nasty chore yourself, and just kind of generally going through life as the perennial third wheel and wishing you had someone special to give you backrubs and foot massages and cuddle and snuggle with and you know it gets way better, but:

Experiencing …

Joy …

Flying …

Solo!!!

I don’t have the article in front of me but I can guarantee you the phrase “living alone” never appears in it once. Because no one in their right mind wants to live alone. Everyone wants and needs someone.

But “flying solo!” – now that does  sound like fun!  

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This is a growing problem we’re starting to hear about every day now it seems like …

…The Rockford Register Star reports police and two witnesses gave conflicting accounts of the events leading up to the shooting at the House of Grace Daycare and Preschool. Police said Mark Anthony Barmore was killed after he fought with an officer for his service weapon inside a classroom.

Two day-care operators said there was no struggle over a gun. They said Barmore was shot multiple times after he emerged from a dark boiler room with his hands up.

Marissa Brown, 17, the daughter of day-care operator Sheila Brown, said she witnessed the shooting.

“The officer shined his flashlight into the boiler room and told him to come out. He came out real slow with his hands up and his head down, and they shot him.

“He fell over into the sink. He tried to get back up, and they shot him again. A heavy-set officer was the one who was shooting him while he was on the ground.”

Sheila Brown said she witnessed the shootings after Barmore was on the ground. She said the officers fired as many as eight rounds into Barmore including at least one shot into his head.

The names of the officers were not released.

School was in session at House of Grace Daycare and Preschool, 518 N. Court St., but none of the children or staff members were injured…

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These guys are all too often just exterminating suspects now, in broad daylight right out in the middle of main street in front of God and everybody –in a trending “shoot to kill now, ask questions later” movement that I think reflects an unhealthy shift in attitude toward the general public by the police. 

But then again, America is now a lawful “battleground”  and the police now militarized, as American citizens (the ones who cut their paychecks, ironically enough, as taxpayers) have been stripped of some of their most basic civil liberties and protections by recent unjust and unconstitutional legislation, and designated unprecedentedly as “enemy combatants”, and the most patriotic among them labeled “right-wing extremists” and “homegrown terrorists”.

Maybe we’re starting to see some of the effects of all that in the real world, with this latest round of flagrant exterminations.

What happened to: “to protect and serve”? To: “I went 30 years and drew my gun twice, fired it once, and missed”? To: all these non-lethal weapons these guys were issued that were all over the news here not too long ago? 

Why aren’t they shooting people with rubber bullets or bean bags or the Spider Man Net Gun or just a taser or something?  Instead of going out into the streets looking like a firing squad, and unloading full magazines into suspects until they’re left DOA over the slightest provocation and without any hesitation whatsoever, in what’s starting to look suspiciously like a preconditioned response?

What happened to pumping a round into a suspect’s leg or shoulder in order to incapacitate him so that he (or she) may be “properly subdued”?

In the examples fully illustrated here, clearly the intent was not to incapacitate, but to exterminate. So we’re no longer looking at a subduer here stuck to the butt end of of that service pistol, but an executioner. Look out Judge Dredd, here we come…  

Wrong.

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It was fully my intention to execute a couple of men I can think of off the top of my head while I write this, one was an individual I caught dead-bang breaking into a warehouse that belonged to an associate, the other was a man I’d been tracking off and on for months, who kept barely getting away from me at every close encounter, mainly because at that time he had much faster car. 

Not long before this happened my own smoker had blown a cam lobe and  bent a connecting rod, and I had it laid-up at the time dropping a fresh stage two engine into it. So at that point my Achille’s Heel was where the rubber met the road, and I was handicapped for speed…

Anyway, his name was Ricky and he’d managed to chop his uncle’s ear off with a machete amongst other noteworthy assorted anti-social diversions, and had been generally wreaking havoc on society the whole time I had his file. By all accounts bar none he had no right to life whatsoever. Even his own mama said so. And I found that rather significant.

I tried every trick in the book ’til I finally found one that paid off, and put me right behind him on a deserted country road on the outskirts of town one day…

Somehow, I intuitively knew that this was it — it was now or never. If I blew it this time I’d never get another shot at it, I’d never see him again and months of effort would just go down the drain. And he’d still be left out on the street. And somehow I was right: after that day I never even got close to him — I blew him out entirely…

When it happened and we finally converged on each other it happened real fast and kinda out of the blue, and he narrowly managed to wriggle out of my best attempt to block him off so that a heads-up car chase I knew I couldn’t win wouldn’t happen.

But it did happen, he was good and known for it, and as his faster car began receding into the distance ahead of me and I knew I was fixin’ to get left behind, I exercised the final option: I hung a pistol out the window and started firing at his car.

Now I was in a rolling gun store, but like I said, this kinda happened fast and a little unexpectedly, and the only thing I could drive and put my hands on was a little .380 backup I kept tucked behind my back in the waistband of my pants. Everything else was out of sight, out of reach, whatever.

Somehow I managed to stop him, and honestly I don’t remember how precisely. But there’s a handful of things I’ve always done particularly well, and one of them is drive. So, he met his match that day in me, and sometimes superior driving skills win out over sheer horsepower…

Okay, we were coming up on a “T” and running out of road fast and he somehow actually managed to spin-out. And as he tried to get properly aimed back the way we’d come I maneuvered him off the road… But he stopped. He came to a stop of his own free will. Technically he could have powered out, but he didn’t.

So I’ve got him pulled over beside the road, kinda hemmed-in beside a ditch, right in front of somebody’s house. His car’s facing one way, mine the other, driver’s side to driver’s side. I’ve got the .380 pointed at him, jumping out, screaming at him to put his hands on the wheel, he’s under arrest, whatever, the usual…

And he’s looking hard at me, taking me all in, sizing me up, his left hand on the wheel; now he’s looking straight ahead at the open road, and then it happened: I saw his eyes flick down and to the right to the seat beside him, and saw his right hand was not on the wheel. It was at that point I realized he had his hand on a 9mm that previous intel had placed in his possession.

I brought the .380 up, and pointed it squarely at his head. I had him dead-bang.

After his eyes flicked downward he looked straight ahead, and he never looked back at me again. Neither of us spoke a single word throughout it all. I could read his tiny mind as he had one hand on the wheel and the other on the gun, one foot on the brake and the other on the gas., the viens at his left temple bulging. It was the moment of truth. Do or die time. And either way, I was standing alone, wide-open out in the middle of the road and fully exposed.

After what seemed like a long, drawn-out second or two, his overheated brain selected flight over fight, as he slammed the vehicle’s accelerator to the floorboard. In that split-second while the rear tires grabbed nothing but scree, and before the car could properly lurch forward and leave me standing in a cloud of dust empty-handed…

I crossed the line…

And I pulled the trigger…

And the gun just went “click”…

It was empty.

As I listened to his engine’s roar and watched his Trans Am fade into the sunset, it sank in I’d played that whole scenario out with an unloaded gun after emptying the magazine during the car chase phase. And that if his final decision had simply gone the other way, I would have bled my life out, right there on that spot.

But the fat lady hadn’t nearly sang yet, as far as I was concerned. After all, we were both still left alive. And he was getting away. My engine was still running, and I jumped in, grabbed a .44 I had on the back seat (or somewhere), and took off to try and find him…

And promptly blew a radiator hose at the top of the next hill.

Some things were just not meant to be…

And I never did see him again, or even come close after that event.

Murphy’s law prevailed that day, and just about everything that could go wrong did. But they weren’t all like that, gratefully. On the other hand, any tracker says he brought in everyone he’s ever gone after is a liar… 

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I actually hung my guns up not long after that. I was a tracker, not a killer. That just wasn’t me. So when I got to the point where it all conspired to morph me into one, I hung the guns up and walked away. Before and not after I was left with any ghosts on my conscience. And now I have never taken the life of another human being, and that’s something I actually rejoice about — particularly given my upbringing and my background.

So, I know how this happens. I know how it works. I know how it feels. Because I’ve been there. I’ve stood where these rogue cops, these killer cops, have stood. And I’ve held that gun. And I understood, that when it comes to that, it’s time to walk away. You’re finished. The saga is over, and it’s time to move on with your life… before you take someone else’s unnecessarily… even someone’s like Ricky’s.

It was not my role to judge whether that man lives or dies, just to see that he has his day in court and is safely off the street until then. Then, according to the law and the system we live under, let a judge and a jury of his peers decide his fate.. the way it’s supposed to be.

Now I had a license to kill and probably would have gotten clean away with executing that boy. I think under the circumstances I would have faced a grand jury indictment and a “No Bill”. Who knows, given who we’re talking about I may have even gotten my own parade and a key to the city from the mayor. Ricky was a real scourge. But I’ll go to my grave grateful that it happened the way it did… 

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As retailers crawl out of the worst recession in decades, many realize that they overbuilt and have too many stores. Declining sales have forced several chains to pare down their number of outlets and, in some cases, file for bankruptcy.

U.S. chains announced roughly 3,000 store closings in 2011, down from the 5,000-plus announced in 2010, according to Retail Traffic, a trade publication that tracks retail real-estate trends. One result is that the nation’s malls and shopping centers are reporting near-record vacancy rates as anchor tenants retrench.

Sears, the nation’s biggest seller of household appliances, is struggling. Department store chains like Macy’s and J.C. Penney are treading water, while apparel retailers like Gap and Talbots have fallen victim to changing fashion preferences.

And while the job market is improving and consumer credit is easier to get, a renewed spike in store closings can’t be ruled out in 2012, according to Retail Traffic. Especially vulnerable are consumer electronics chains, which are under intense price pressure from Wal-Mart Stores and don’t have many hot new products coming to market. Meantime, store openings will likely come from discounters like Family Dollar Stores, Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart.

“The ‘extreme-value guys’ are where the growth is,”  says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of retail consultant Davidowitz & Associates.

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“What happens when you tell the truth is… you piss everybody off.” – William “Bill” Cooper

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“If you don’t stand for something, you’re good for nothing.” – John Dilligent

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Columbian Catholic Priests Hire Hitmen to Kill Themselves

Three weeks ago, two Roman Catholic priests, Rev. Rafael Reatiga (36),  and Rev. Richard Piffano (37), were found shot to death in a car in Bogota, Columbia.

Initially police suspected robbery. But now Colombian prosecutors say the two Catholic priests hired hitmen to kill them when at least one of them was diagnosed with AIDS.

The alleged hitmen were located through phone numbers the priests had called from their cell phones days before their deaths.

Prosecutors said the priests paid about $8,500 for the hit. They had originally planned to commit suicide by throwing themselves into a canyon but couldn’t bring themselves to jump. Medical tests showed that Reatiga, 36, had AIDS.

He also had syphilis and had been seen visiting places frequented by gay men in Bogota.

Two of the four assassins have been arrested. They face up to 40 years in prison if convicted.

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There has been a wedge… driven between us and everything good. Everything right. Everything pure, and real, and loving, and lasting, and significant. We have been disconnected: from God, the environment, each other, and even ourselves. We don’t know who we are, where we came from, where we’re going, what we’re doing. And most of us don’t even care. All that matters is filling the hole.

Is this what we want, really?  A world where the priest that gives your daughter communion is frequenting gloryholes and catching AIDS and committing suicide? What kind of model relationship to God and community is that?

Do we really want a world where the middle-aged soccer mom next door is spending what little alone time she has available masturbating to “barely-legal” girl-girl porn and placing anonymous ads on Craigslist for an experienced, agressive lesbian to discreetly sneak over and put her out of her bi-curious misery, “turn her out”, and “show her the ropes”, while her kids are at school, and her husband is working and ain’t got a clue?

If that’s not a problem,  let’s swap her out for the woman sleeping next to you (or man, in reverse, if you’re a girl — it works both ways). What now?

Is this really okay? Is this the world we want, where this type of behavior is considered the norm — the standard?  Where anything goes and just damn the consequences? Let the chips fall where they may? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, right now I’m doing me… filling the hole? Where there’s no perceived payoff for the exercise of proper restraint?

Where we have to worry about Bobby’s single twenty-something eighth-grade teacher Ms. Lindsay possibly having sex with Bobby? Or his P.E. coach Mr. Ridner trying to play “drop the soap” with him in the showers after class? Because we now live in an essentially immoral society where “anything goes” and no one’s ever accountable for their actions? It’s always someone else’s fault… everything is, all the time?  

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Basically I’ve always been a “different strokes for different folks, whatever gets you throught the night, if it feels good do it” kinda guy. After all, isn’t that what freedom is all about? And probably — at least in my glory days (the dinosaur era) — I was certifiably the wildest one among you. Hands-down, bar-none.

But isn’t there a breaking point here where it really does all rise to the legitimate level of “collective insanity”? I think so. I really do. I think there’s a limit there, somewhere, where the lack of collective “moral restraint” has a detrimental effect — a point of diminishing returns — on everyone involved (ie: all of us). And I believe we have arrived. Or if we’re not at the right street address we’re at least in the neighborhood…

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Now a lot of people might say using something that happened in Columbia is a bad example to feature here. But I don’t think so. Sure, an American story would have worked better. But I wouldn’t have had far to look to find one, and ya’ll know I’m right. We look at this all day every day, so much that it’s just a blur at this point, we’re immune to it — jaded…

This bit just happened to be in the right place at the right time, but the problems we’re facing really are global in scope, they’re not just confined to our nation alone. It’s an all-out global assault, and people all over the world are going through what we are and worse, in many instances.

But I tell you what, let’s grab ten quick headlines from around the nation today, to illustrate the “bigger-picture” principles I’m trying to illustrate here. And everyone will recognize this stuff as stuff we see so much of on a daily basis now, we don’t even really stop to think about it anymore. We’re now immune to it — jaded…

1)  Chicago Cops Nabbed in FBI Shakedown Sting

2)  Mother Accused of Drowning Children May Be Mentally Ill, Police Say

3)  LAPD Detective Begged to Have Sex, Victim’s Husband Testifies

4)  Hundreds Come to Service for 2 Boys Burned to Death by Father

5)  Two Teens Accused of Setting Classmate on Fire Get Prison Time

6)  Florida Executes Killer of St. Petersburg Mother

7)  Firefighter Accused of Putting Poison in Colleague’s Canteen

8)  Businessman Convicted of Raping Woman at Plaza Hotel

9)  Woman’s Body is Found in Bag in a Vacant Lot in Brooklyn

10)  Two Arrested in Madison, WI Child Torture Case  

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On top of everything else, in the interest of our further demoralization and the even greater deterioration of the fabric of our society, as well as a brilliant maneuver in the interest of population control and reduction I might add (an ultra high-priority issue), there has been an ongoing subversive programming campaign being carried out not only in this country but around the world, for at least the past decade, to foster a pandemic explosion in homosexuality and other deviant sexual practices (Cougar-Cub, Bestiality, etc.) which are counter-productive to the health, general welfare, and even the very continued existence of, the traditional family unit.

So…

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The Goals Are Simple:

1)  Weaken the nation.

2)  Control and reduce the population.

3)  Keep everyone individualized and at odds with each other — divide and conquer: “A house divided cannot stand”.

4)  Neutralize and subvert the individual through covet means, through chemical means, and through continual greed/fear reinforcement programming.

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Let me put it another way:

The basic goal of our puppetmasters is to break the collective will of the people, and to get us to willingly accept the yoke of ever greater tyrannical fascist oppression. 

With an emphasis on willingly…

And so far, they’ve been doing a really first-class job.

These people want to take us without firing a single shot if they can. Nobody wants room-to-room urban warfare in America — nobody. That’s a very large part of what’s kept us invasion-free all these many years: we’ve all got guns and we know how to use them.

Now, I may lose some friends here but that’s okay. My belief is if you don’t stand for something you’re good for nothing. Bill Cooper once said that what happens when you tell the truth is, you piss everybody off.

If it’s “all about you”, if you have no “moral compass”,  then you’re no better than an animal. That’s why I call this type of person a “crab in the bucket”. Because they exist on a purely animal level fueled by greed and fear. They are the center of their own universe and everything revolves around them. They perceive events, the world, and others strictly in terms of what the benefit or cost to them would be, could be or should be. What it means to them. How it affects them — whoever or whatever it is — and how they think and feel about it.  When the smoke clears, they’re all that matters. A crab in the bucket…

Unfortunately that includes a whole lot of people (ie: the masses) and their numbers are increasing daily. This is the mindset spun-off by the NWO programming: crab in a bucket mentality. 

These people spend every night watching television, getting high, surfing the internet and having sex — or trying to. They are no threat to the NWO and have been effectively neutralized. Their heads are stuck up their own butts so far they’ll never see a hint of daylight, and they’ll never see the train that hits them.

This is by design: the creation of a totally disenfranchised, demoralized, and individualized 
society — a vacuous, brutal race. It is this type of society that Hitler the fascist dictator envisioned, and that is most readily taken into the fold of the fascist police state.

This, from Fromm:

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How a Fascist Totalitarian Regime Takes Hold

One explanation comes from Erich Fromm, a German psychologist who left Germany after the Nazi takeover. In his book “Escape from Freedom,” published in 1941, he postulated five basic needs:

Relatedness – having relationships with others, care, respect, knowledge

Transcendence – creativity, develop a loving and interesting life

Rootedness – a feeling of belonging

Sense of Identity – seeing oneself both as a unique person and part of a social group

A frame of orientation – understanding the world and our place in it

Fromm said that each of the above needs may be satisfied not only in the positive ways listed above, but, in other (bad) circumstances, in negative ways. For example, the need to transcend, if not satisfied by active creation, may be alternatively satisfied by destruction.

Here, Fromm speaks of an “escape from freedom.” The “individualized man” he mentions is bereft of “primary ties” (for example, to nature or family):

“There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual…

However, if the economic, social and political conditions… do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom.”

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Those meagre few — the 3% or so — who are awake and alert, see the self-seeking sleepwalkers as they truly are: crabs in a bucket;  that they offer no real contribution to society beyond that of simple producers and consumers and taxpayers — serfs — and pose no real threat to the fascist agenda.

They can and will offer up a threat to the Patriot agenda, however, as historically around half will collaborate with the enemy while the other half just hunkers down and tries to stay out of the way ’til the shooting stops. Then the latter will line-up to blow the winners — whoever they may be. 

The NWO sees them as human batteries — crops —  just like in The Matrix.  Human beings produce — or generate — energy,  like a battery. That’s what they do — their function. That energy can be harnessed and exploited for profit, or gain.  At some point the battery life runs out and the battery becomes drained and useless. Then its time to throw the old battery away or recycle it, and replace it with a new one.

This is what you are to the puppetmasters and nothing more. Free-range cattle. Crops. Money-changers. Energy producers and exchangers. Batteries… To use, drain, discard, and replace when dead. 

All the time you are being drained you are existing in an artificial construct, a prison for your mind… a Matrix, if you will. We find this Matrix  mentioned in the work of Ingo Swann and in conjunction with the CIA’s remote-viewing programs. In that mode, not only are you contained and controlled, you are exploited cruelly and mercilessly. And the whole time you’re totally unaware you’re a clueless slave… a prisoner, held behind bars of illusion and self-delusion.

This is the truth of your existence. So wake up, get up, and get over it. Do something with yourself and your life. Something significant. Make a difference. Change the world. You can, you know…

You just have to pull your head out of your own ass, where it’s been stuck from the cradle, making you look like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand (how dumb is that?), and take a good look around you at what’s really been going on the whole time you’ve been locked up in your room getting high and masturbating yourself with you. And that it’s just not all about you.  It isn’t.

It’s about us. 

At this given point in time, and considering where we’re at today, currently under threat of losing it all: our sovereignty, our heritage, and even our very freedom; when inaction literally translates into attrition… if you are not actively a part of the solution, you are  the problem. 

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Being Part of the Solution Means Being:

1)  Alert

2)  Aware

3)  Open-Minded

4)  Informed

5)  Educated

6)  Ethical / Moral / Virtuous

7)  Involved

8)  Selfless (Selflessness doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less)

9)  Humble

10)  Loving / Generous / Kind

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This one’s for you, Cindy…

Looks like another American Icon is biting the dust: The Avon Girl. 

Not our Avon girls, man… say it ain’t so!  But soon there’ll be far fewer Avon sales representatives ringing doorbells to sell the company’s cosmetics directly to consumers.

Cosmetics giant Avon Products reported a fourth-quarter net loss Tuesday amid declining sales and rising commodity costs. Chief Executive Officer Andrea Jung said the company doesn’t expect its margins — the revenue the company keeps after paying all of its costs — to improve this year.

The downbeat forecast comes amid a Bloomberg News report with the help of consulting firm McKinsey. On a conference call with investors Tuesday, executives said they see “immediate” potential savings through reducing headcount, which likely means fewer door-to-door sales representatives in the not-too-distant future.

That would surely hurt a company that markets itself as the world’s leading direct seller. Avon markets to women in 100 countries through a network of 6.5 million independent sales representatives, according to information on the company’s website.

Once a thriving cosmetics company, Avon is now seeking to right the ship of its sinking operations after years of tepid earnings and declining profit.

In December it announced the departure of longtime Chief Executive Jung as soon as a replacement could be found. Additionally, Avon has been hurt by an internal bribery investigation that began in China, and its stock has come under pressure over the past year because of the company’s poor performance in countries like Brazil.

Shares of Avon have declined some 60 percent since hitting a high in 2004

Bloomberg News reports that a company overhaul will include cutting costs in Avon’s North American unit, where sales have dropped every year since 2007 and slid about 7 percent in the third quarter.

Bloomberg interviewed one analyst who was skeptical of the plan’s potential success.

“This is a rudderless ship right now, and trying to turn it massively may not get you anywhere,”  said Ali Dibadj, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York. “The problem with Avon isn’t that it needs a restructuring, it’s that it has been in perpetual restructuring, literally for the past 15 years.”

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The Value of Hard Work and Tenacity 

But while Avon may be a called a rudderless ship, Andrea Jung — its Chief Executive Officer since 1999 – is anything but. A sleek, chic, and glamorous 53, Jung is perennially to be found in the Top Ten of Fortune’s  annual 50 Most Powerful Women, and is a living testamonial to the value of hard work, focus, discipline and tenacity, having started out as a manager trainee at Bloomingdale’s.

Jung, who grew up in a traditional Chinese-American family with a tremendous amount of discipline, had made her way to Princeton and wanted to go into the Peace Corps. But her parents didn’t have a lot of money, so they insisted she take a more conventional path.

When Jung called them about quitting that first job at Bloomingdale’s, “the reaction was fast and furious,” she recalls. Her parents told her: “You are not quitting. You start at the bottom and you work your way to the top.”

“So, I didn’t quit,”  Jung says. “I persevered, and it ended up being a really terrific run in retail.”

She traded retail — Bloomingdale’s and then Neiman Marcus — for the beauty industry, moving to Avon in 1994. Jung was assigned to create a global Avon brand and did that so impressively that she was considered for the top job three years later.

But she got passed over. And though she felt tempted to quit, she stayed. Two years later, she got the CEO job and became the youngest female chief executive in the Fortune 500.

“Bloom where you’re planted,”  says Jung. “And follow your compass, not your clock,”  she adds, preaching patience in any career.

She has certainly demonstrated that. Now at the helm for 12 years, Jung is Number 5 on the 2010 Fortune 50 Most Powerful Women list, and the longest-serving among the female Fortune 500 CEOs.

“I feel like the wise old woman CEO, trying to pave the path for a lot more after me,”  she says.

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The Biography of Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO of Avon Products

Nationality: American.

Born: 1959, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Education: Princeton University, BA, 1979.

Family: Daughter of Hong Kong–born father (architect) and Shanghai-born mother (pianist and chemical engineer); married Michael Gould (CEO of Bloomingdale’s; separated); children: two.

Career: Bloomingdale’s, 1979–1985, vice president and merchandising manager; J. W. Robinson’s, 1985–1987, general merchandising manager; I. Magnin, 1987–1991, senior vice president and general merchandising manager; Neiman Marcus, 1991–1994, executive vice president; Avon, 1994–1996, president, product marketing; 1996–1997, president of global marketing; 1997–1998, executive vice president and president of global marketing; 1998–1999, president and chief operating officer; 1999–, chief executive officer; 2001–, chairman.

Address: Avon Products, Inc., 1345 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10105

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Andrea Jung was a trailblazer. One of only two women CEOs of a Fortune 500 company, she was also the highest-ranking Chinese American in corporate America.

After becoming Avon’s first female CEO, she began transforming the company. To become the global powerhouse that Jung envisioned, Avon needed to entice younger customers while still retaining middle-aged buyers.

After three years at the company’s helm, Jung had managed to retain core customers and sales reps while reaching out to a new generation of buyers and sellers. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Jung earned respect from both industry peers and the Avon direct sales force comprised largely of suburban mothers.

Jung led one of the world’s largest sellers of cosmetics, an operation with sales of $6.8 billion in 2003 and a presence in about 137 countries.

Destined For Success

Jung’s parents were highly accomplished, first-generation immigrants from China who moved to the United States for their children’s education. Her father, born in Hong Kong, received a master’s degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her mother, born in Shanghai, was a chemical engineer and later an accomplished pianist.

Jung grew up in Massachusetts in a household that placed a high priority on achievement, and she responded with resolute drive. She once recalled coveting a box of colored pencils as a school child: “My mother said to me that if I got a set of perfect marks I could have that box. I got the box”  ( Financial Times , November 6, 2003).

Jung embraced her parents’ high standards. Academically she earned high marks, learned classical piano, and became fluent in Mandarin. Her heritage was a source of pride that she brought to work each day.

“My father was worried that raising me as a respectful Chinese daughter would be a barrier to what he perceived as the cut-throat traits of an American CEO. So, it has been interesting for me to marry my cultural background with succeeding in a tough business world”  (London Times, June 29, 2002).

Jung began her career as a management trainee for Bloomingdale’s, and she quickly revealed her drive to succeed. She became second in command at I. Magnin & Company in her late twenties and was in charge of all women’s apparel for Neiman Marcus by age 32.

Along the way, she developed key relationships, befriending such notable fashion executives as the designer Donna Karan and Anne Sutherland Fuchs, then publisher of Vogue . Jung even brought work home with her, marrying Michael Gould, CEO of Bloomingdale’s, in 1993.

Jung began to develop a keen sense of the importance her image could play. After moving to Manhattan, New York, she and her husband became regular fixtures in local newspapers’ society pages.

A New Addition Shakes Up An Old Company

Jung left her job at Neiman Marcus and joined Avon in 1994. Immediately she made her mark. In one of her first contributions to the company, she unified Avon’s assortment of disparate regional brands into powerful global lines like Avon Color. She fired Avon’s ad agency and oversaw a complete packaging redesign.

Her decisiveness caught the eye of then CEO James E. Preston, who appreciated her bold take on the business. Said Preston, “We looked at the market through one set of glasses. She had a fresh take on what Avon could be” ( BusinessWeek , September 18, 2000).

Preston became her mentor and ally, asking her to speak at board meetings and increasing her exposure to upper management, ensuring a quick climb up the corporate ladder. Just three years after joining the company, Jung was named head of global marketing at age 37.

In 1997 the Avon board began a search for Preston’s successor, and Jung was temporarily passed over due to her lack of experience in operations and overseas business. But the board had noticed her talent, and she was promoted to COO in 1998.

Some thought she was ascending the corporate ladder too quickly. Preston recalls the senior manager with 25 years of experience protesting her promotion, complaining that she would never be accepted overseas.

He reversed his position after Jung earned high marks on a two-day visit to Latin America. As COO, Jung got the necessary grooming required to become the leader of Avon.

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Reaching Out To Avon Reps

But embracing these new distribution channels was not without risk. Ever since the first Avon representative, armed with makeup samples and catalogs, knocked on her neighbor’s doors, direct salespeople had been the backbone of the company. The danger of alienating those reps became painfully clear with the advent of the Web.

In the late 1990s, Avon printed its Web site on catalogs, only to find that its outraged reps covered them up with their own stickers. Additional criticism followed Avon’s decision to sell online while prohibiting sales reps from setting up their own sites.

Until Jung found a way to resolve those issues and integrate the reps into her new vision for the company, Avon’s future would rest on a precarious foundation. Jung noted, “If we don’t include them in everything we do, then we’re just another retail brand, just another Internet site, and I don’t see the world needing more of those”  ( BusinessWeek , September 18, 2000).

To that end, Jung announced her decision to invest $60 million to build a Web site that would involve, not alienate, Avon’s reps. Reps could sign up to become “e-representatives” for $15 a month, earning commissions of 20 to 25 percent on orders shipped directly or 30 to 50 percent for orders they delivered to customers themselves.

The initiative promised additional income for Avon reps as well as considerable savings for the company. The cost of processing an order from the Web is 30 cents, or roughly one-third the cost of processing the paper order. The site gave customers the option of shopping with Avon directly or with the help of an e-representative in their zip code.

Said Jung of the new opportunities for an Avon rep, “She can actually sell at retail in a licensed way, she can have a kiosk in a mall today. She has an Internet opportunity to have her own Web site” ( The Early Show , CBS, July 26, 2001).

Avon reps responded enthusiastically to Jung’s initiatives, made all the more remarkable by how little in common the CEO had with the suburban moms who sell Avon’s products. Jung wore Chanel and pearl chokers. Her colleagues joked that she was allergic to casual wear. Yet Avon reps routinely waited in long lines for photo ops with Jung.

The Avon executive Brian C. Connolly observed, “Four years ago, I saw an extremely private, incredibly brilliant person. Now I see a leader who’s willing to tell the story of her heritage, her grandmother, her daughter. She’s more comfortable in herself” ( BusinessWeek , September 18, 2000).

Expanding Product Lines

In the early 21st century, Jung expanded Avon’s lines of cosmetics, jewelry, and clothing by adding nutritional supplements and vitamins manufactured by Roche Holding, a line that the company said could generate $300 million in five years.

Taking a cue from the Avon competitor Mary Kay, Jung launched Beauty Advisor, a program that turned Avon reps into beauty consultants who help customers choose the clothing and makeup that work best for them. She even floated the possibility of offering financial and legal services to women.

Throughout Jung’s ambitious expansion, her management style was to emphasize open communication, goal orientation, and feedback from her sales force.

To that end, she set up a CEO advisory council of 10 top salespeople from every level of the company internationally. In addition, she brought panels of Avon representatives to New York City to share their concerns and react to her ideas. She even enlisted as an Avon lady in New York City. “I was terrible,”  she said (London Times, June 29, 2002).

In the first half of 2000 Jung received an auspicious report card—sales and earnings were up 9 percent and 40 percent respectively. The investor Robert Hagstrom, senior vice president of Legg Mason Fund Manager and director of Legg Mason’s Focus Capital, remarked, “She bit off a lot. The challenges are great. But at this point, it would be very hard to give her anything less than A’s” ( BusinessWeek , September 18, 2000).

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Buoyed by a Recession

The dismal economy of the early 21st century gave Avon a new relevance. Sales reps who were unable to find employment in the traditional job market flocked to the company, as did customers who were turned off by the high prices and non-existent service indigenous to department stores.

In 2002 Avon’s sales force grew by about 10 percent to nearly four million, and unit sales rose 13 percent worldwide. In Russia and other parts of eastern Europe, sales spiked 40 percent. Such fashion arbiters as Allure and Marie Claire even began mentioning Avon’s products in their magazine pages.

According to Thomson First Call, in early 2003 Avon had the strongest buy recommendations of companies that sold personal care products. Said one analyst with Goldman Sachs, “This is one of the highest-quality growth stocks that I cover”  ( New York Times , June 1, 2003).

Still, investors remained cautious about Avon’s diversification efforts, especially since so many of its attempts under previous CEOs had failed.

Some of Jung’s own attempts also lost money. Only a few months after she signed a deal allowing JC Penney to carry a new Avon line of mid-priced cosmetics, the department store pulled the brand. A Penney spokeswoman said, “We wouldn’t have given up a product that was profitable”  ( New York Times , June 1, 2003).

Jung blamed the failure on Penney, saying that the company failed to provide enough support, and wrote off the venture as a learning experience.

Concurrent with the global recession that started in March 2001, it remained to be seen whether sales reps would seek other jobs once the economy turned around.

Allan G. Mottus, a consultant to the beauty industry and publisher of The Informationist , a trade publication, remarked that “Avon does well in a recession, because it provides low-cost items that are sold by women who cannot move up in the workplace. In a full economy, a lot of good people are going to defect”  ( New York Times , June 1, 2003).

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A Role Model For Women In Business

 

Jung’s own career trajectory also contributed to the company’s newfound relevance. “We have all of these three and half million representatives and the whole Avon story is about being able to make it — to make dreams come true. And I know that certainly they look at me and say, ‘Well, at Avon, you really can do anything. You can start as a child of Chinese immigrants and go all the way to the top’”  ( The Early Show , CBS, July 26, 2001).

 

As a frequent speaker at women’s leadership events, Jung expressed optimism that other females would soon be joining her in the corner offices of corporate America.

 

For her own part, she encouraged flexible work schedules at Avon and even conceded that family sometimes takes precedence over work. When asked for her advice for balancing family and work, she replied in a speech that she learned that she cannot be everywhere at once. “Eliminate 10 out of 20 things you don’t have to do, and pick the 10 most important things for your family. Some days the company loses”  ( Akron Beacon Journal , November 1, 2002).

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Adding Gloss To An Old Brand

 

Jung’s underlying goal was to build a global name. In 2001 Avon was listed for the first time in the BusinessWeek annual survey of the world’s 100 leading global brands.

 

As with many multinationals, China factored largely in Avon’s global strategy. The Chinese market had the potential to dovetail effectively with Jung’s Chinese heritage.

 

In 1998, after the Chinese government banned direct selling, Avon began opening standalone franchised stores; the company planned to open 500 stores a year for the foreseeable future.

 

Jung was also working on a plan to launch a wellness program in China and planned to resume direct selling in China by 2005 (China was required to reverse the ban in order to gain entry into the World Trade Organization).

 

But Russia remains the company’s fastest growing market; in 2003 sales grew $100 million from the $140 million base of 2002.

In order to achieve Jung’s stated goal of enticing younger customers while retaining middle-aged buyers, Avon began to offer new products, such as vitamins, weight-control programs, and other “wellness” offerings aimed at women 35 and older.

Jung launched Mark. cosmetics—the punctuation is meant to emphasize women making their mark—a line that is used and sold by younger women. (Just a few months after the 2003 launch, Avon had recruited about 20,000 sales reps; sales of the line contributed one point of growth to the third-quarter sales in the United States.)

Ever conscious of the power of image, Jung also gave Avon’s brochures a modern makeover, printing them on glossier paper and featuring the tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams. An Avon spa joined Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The average age of Avon’s typical customer proved that Jung was on the right track. When Jung became the first woman to head Avon in 1999, the typical customer was 43; as of 2003 she was 37.

Personal Values Focus a Company’s Philanthropy

CEOs of leading multinationals frequently use charitable giving to further their business goals. Jung was no exception. Most fashion-related companies have been major supporters of the fight against breast cancer and AIDS, two diseases that have taken heavy tolls on fashion.

In a true nexus of her own values and corporate citizenship, Jung personally led Avon’s philanthropic efforts in the area of breast cancer. Her grandmother died of the disease at age 63 when Jung was 14.

 This loss had a deep effect on Jung, who recalled, “It was the early Seventies, and the C-word was forbidden in our house. She didn’t want us around her in case it was contagious. There was such fear about the subject”  (London Times, June 29, 2002).

In September 2002 Avon announced that it was making $30 million in grants to fight breast cancer. The grants were announced at the first-ever Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer Concert & Awards at Avery Fisher Hall.

Natalie Cole headlined the concert, which itself raised more than $2 million for the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade. The campaign focused on funding five critical areas: breast cancer biomedical research, clinical care, support services, education, and early detection programs.

The motivation for Jung’s corporate largesse transcended her empathy for breast cancer victims; she saw philanthropy as the duty of a corporate citizenry. “The new generation of leaders have to be committed to giving back more. Corporations have a responsibility to the communities where they do business” (London Times, June 29, 2002).

But even Jung would not shy away from the positive publicity her charitable commitments brought to her company. Philanthropy is just good business.

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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all…

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The original pledge was written by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931) and was originally published by The Youth’s Companion, a Boston magazine.

The National Flag Conferences of the American Legion expanded the original wording in 1923 and 1924.

In 1942, Congress made the pledge part of its code for the use of the flag.

In 1954, it added the words “under God.”

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Mind control will be a primary focus of neuro-weaponry, which is expected to reshape warfare, neuroscientists confirm.

Emerging technologies will give birth to highly sophisticated adversarial applications centered on brain science; conventional battlefield methodology could soon fade into history.

“We are approaching a time when brain science will be critical to our national security,”  confirmed James Forsythe of Sandia National Laboratories

According to James Giordano of Georgetown University and the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and colleague Rachel Warzman at Georgetown University, the battlefields of the future will be shaped by advances in neuroscience focused for military purposes.

“Major breakthroughs (in brain science) relevant to national security are both viable and imminently achievable,”  Giordano suggested at a recent neuroscience conference.

The result would be an “arsenal of neuro-weapons,”  concluded Jonathan Marks at Penn State University.

Such an arsenal could include “drugs, microbiological agents and toxins from nature,”  explained Jonathan Moreno at the University of Pennsylvania.

In addition to the use of “brain-machine interfaces,” the hormone oxytocin could be used to make prisoners more co-operative in divulging sensitive military information. Other substances would make soldiers forget atrocities they might have committed.

According to Forsythe and Giordano, adversarial elements could include: “nanoparticles engineered to affect specific brain processes,” “super soldiers created through pharmaceuticals and/or brain stimulation” and “brain imaging for interrogation-lie detection” as well as the use of “intelligent machines.”

Other possibilities being considered by military strategists include an aerosolized shellfish neurotoxin fatal to humans in a few minutes, hallucination-causing bacteria and organisms that access and destroy human brains by crawling up the olfactory nerves.

Such technologies would have been unimaginable not so long ago, but the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency has been focusing on the military applications of brain science, Moreno confirmed.

Some of its projects, posted on its website, include “neuroscience for intelligence analysts” and “accelerated learning.”

For the past several years, DARPA, the military research and development agency tasked with maintaining U.S. military technology superiority, “has engaged in research on direct neurological control,”  confirmed Stephen White at Cornell Law School.

But such a dramatic alteration in the way warfare is waged has legal implications, analysts suggest.

According to White, there are concerns with regard to “criminal responsibility for war crimes.”

“Science and technology should never be used to do bad things,” Giordano pointed out, cautioning that history shows scientists often generate information misused for unintended military purposes.

White noted that international law has no “per se prohibition” with regard to the direction that neuro-weaponry appears to be taking.

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Special thanks to the Winnipeg Free Press Print Edition

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“God help us if the labor-management relations being developed in China become the new low standard for the rest of the world.”  – Charles Kernaghan, Director of the NLC

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“Almost all the workers who have tried to organize… have been arrested.” — Elisabeth Tang, Chief Executive of the HKCTU

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This is fascism at work. This is what it looks like. You hear the terms fascism, communism, socialism, whatever-ism,  but they all mean the same thing and this is it.

My belief is they basically have China in mind as the model for us, more or less. An over-bloated central government runs everything, just like you see these guys wanting to do here now — slowly trying to take over everything, infiltrate and corrupt everything, control and surveil and probe and license and tax and seize everything that is and isn’t nailed down, everything  they can get their greedy hands on, if it moves they want to know what it is and who’s moving it, and they want their cut.

And if they don’t get their cut, some guys are going to be manning some machines in the prison sweatshop for 40 cents an hour, 40 hours a week, for the next 15 years, doing their part to bring in an average of around a publicized $850 million a year in the federal prison system alone. And I say publicized, because these guys always have all kinds of illegitimate kickback schemes going on and who knows what. There’s no more corrupt an entity than any variety of prison.  

Now we already have a state-run, mandatory, criminalized health care and insurance racket in place, with the state already having taken up “equity stakes” in some of the largest national and international corporations and financial institutions, and we now have laws on the books concentrating power into the hands of the executive branch (dictator-military-secret police-detention system), as well as other laws circumventing the Constitution and stripping the sovereign American citizen of his or her basic protections, freedoms, and civil liberties.

This is fascism at work. This is what it looks like. You hear the terms fascism, communism, socialism, whatever-ism,  but they all mean the same thing and this is it.

In the immortal words of the WWII Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

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On February 5, 2009, Charles Kernaghan and the National Labor Committee (NLC), a Pittsburgh-based human rights group which campaigns for workers across the globe, released a 60-page report, High Tech Misery in China, documenting the grueling hours, low wages and draconian disciplinary measures at the Meitai factory in southern China. The 2,000  workers — mostly young women — produce keyboards and other equipment for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM. Along with worker interviews, photographs of primitive factory and dorm conditions and extensive internal company documents were smuggled out of the factory.

Workers sit on hard wooden stools as 500 computer keyboards an hour move down the assembly line, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with just two days off a month. The workers have 1.1 seconds to snap on each key, an operation repeated 3,250 times an hour, 35,750 a day, 250,250 a week and over one million times a month. The pace is relentless.

Workers are paid 1/50th of a cent for each operation they complete.

Workers cannot talk, listen to music or even lift their heads to look around. They must “periodically trim their nails,” or be fined.

Workers needing to use the bathroom must learn to hold it until there is a break. Security guards spy on the workers, who are prohibited from putting their hands in their pockets and are searched when they leave the factory.

All overtime is mandatory and workers are at the factory up to 87 hours a week, while earning a take-home wage of just 41 cents an hour. Workers are being cheated of up to 19 percent of the wages due them.

Ten to twelve workers share each overcrowded dorm room, sleeping on metal bunk beds and draping old sheets over their cubicles for privacy.

Workers bathe using small plastic buckets and must walk down several flights of stairs to fetch hot water.

Workers are locked in the factory compound four days a week and prohibited from even taking a walk.

For breakfast the workers receive a thin rice gruel. On Fridays they receive a small chicken leg and foot to symbolize “their improving life.”

Workers are instructed to “love the company like your home”…”continuously striving for perfection” …and to spy on and “actively monitor each other.”

One Metai worker summed up the general feeling in the factory: “I feel like I am serving a prison sentence… The factory is forever pressing down on our heads and will not tolerate even the tiniest mistake. When working, we work continuously. When we eat, we have to eat with lightning speed… The security guards are like policemen watching over prisoners. We’re really livestock and shouldn’t be called workers.”

Charles Kernaghan, director of the NLC commented, “God help us if the labor-management relations being developed in China become the new low standard for the rest of the world. The $200 personal computer and $22.99 keyboard may seem like a great bargain. But they come at a terrible cost. The low wages and lack of worker rights protections in China are leading the race to the bottom in the global sweatshop economy, where there are no winners.”

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Photos of female workers, their heads resting in their arms while on what passes for their “break”, were smuggled out of the KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China, in April, 2010, as part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee.

According to the report, KYE, who manufactures products for Microsoft, recruits hundreds of “work-study” students 16 and 17 years of age, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week, making webcams and accessories.

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“Like Something Out of a Horror Movie”

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A passing tourist, who stopped at the Jiaersi Green Construction Material Chemical Factory, located in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang to ask for some water to drink, was Shanghied and enslaved for over 2 years. Forced to toil every day with a tin bowl of noodles and a beating his only compensation, he twice tried to escape, only to be captured, returned, and flogged mercilessly for his efforts.

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According to Chinese state media and Global Times  reports from mid-December, 2010, at least 11 workers, including eight intellectually disabled people, were sold to the same building materials factory to work without pay.

The state media reports also cited authorities as saying that the workers were given no protective gear and were given the same food as the factory manager’s dogs. and that they had been confined to the factory, living in the most deplorable conditions imaginable and toiling like galley slaves, for at least three years.

China has had many previous cases of mentally ill people being abused as laborers. For instance, in May 2009, police in the eastern province of Anhui arrested 10 men for enslaving more than 30 mentally handicapped people who were forced to work at brick kilns. Hundreds of brick kiln slaves, many of them handicapped, were freed in raids in 2007 in northern China.

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The 2007 Chinese slave scandal

The 2007 Chinese slave scandal, also known as  the “Shanxi Black Brick Kiln Incident”, was a series of forced labor cases in Shanxi, China. Thousands of Chinese people including children had been forced to work as slaves in illegal brickyards (kilns), and tortured by the owners of the brickyards. In June 2007 alone, approximately 550 people were rescued from such situations.

Shanxi is located in the Loess Plateau in northern China, which is known for its rich clay deposits which are easier and cheaper to mine than coal. Through corrupt relationships with officials, slave “bosses” opened illegal brickyards. Due to the scarcity of labor in Shanxi, some factories outsourced production to middlemen who recruited workers from other provinces, making huge profits for the bosses. 

The existence of illegal brickyards was first reported to authorities in 1998 by a laborer who had escaped from one. The escapee also wrote to the chairman of the Shanxi People’s Congress. As a result, slave rescue operations were carried out by provincial government authorities without notifying local officials. Over 150 slaves, three of them child laborers, were freed from the illegal brickyards as a result. 

There have been continuing reports of cruelty committed at these illegal brickyards. In May of 2007, Henan TV Metro Channel reported the case of five minors around sixteen years old who had disappeared from the environs of Zhengzhou Railway Station. Having heard of earlier instances of child laborers being kidnapped for brickyards in Shanxi, their parents suspected their children might be found there.

 Two months later these five were among fifty minors from Henan who were found at an illegal brickyard. Human traffickers had sold them to the brickyards for 500 Yuan each. The slaves included children as young as eight years old.

Moreover, brickyard owners hired guards and wolfdogs to watch their slaves. These slaves were forced to work over sixteen hours every day and any mistakes were punished by brutal torture.

One teenager who was rescued from an illegal brickyard said that, during his slavery, he had been taken to another brickyard by his boss to watch another slave being fed to a meat grinder.

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Sweatshop Hall of Shame 2010

The Sweatshop Hall of Shame 2010 highlights apparel and textile companies that use sweatshops in their global production. Hall of Shame inductees are responsible for evading fair labor standards and often are slow to respond or provide no response at all to any attempts by the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), workers, or others to improve working conditions.

I wasn’t able to find any results for 2012 — which seems reasonable — or for 2011 either for that matter, which has me wondering, but what can you do. So…

The official inductees of the 2010 Sweatshop Hall of Shame are:

Abercrombie and Fitch

Gymboree

Hanes

Ikea

Kohl’s

LL Bean

Pier 1 Imports

Propper International

Walmart

This list also includes an Honorable Mention to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, a national trade association representing apparel and footwear companies. This association has exhibited a flagrant disregard for workers’ rights by primarily focusing on maintaining trade with Honduras in the middle of a military coup.

Most of the companies listed employ laborers who toil for long hours under dangerous working conditions for poverty wages. When these workers attempt to form a union to voice their collective concerns, they face threats from management and risk being fired, beaten… or even worse.

Many of 2010′s inductees used suppliers that practiced illegal tactics to suppress workers’ rights to organize. Some of the companies mentioned weave shame into their clothing by continuing to use cotton sourced from Uzbekistan where harvesting is accomplished through forced child labor.

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