Posted on 10/08/2007 8:37:55 AM PDT by ConservativeMajority
ping
Classic smear line....
That right there is nothing but Gannon trying to put a spin on the group. Who are these "many" that he's quoting?
And is the AFSC really "at the center of the Hard Left's network," or is that just more spin?
I'm no fan of the Quaker left, but this is abysmal writing by Gannon. It's almost ... leftist in its scurrilosity.
Get educated. From DiscovertheNetworks.org
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6172
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was founded by Quakers in 1917 “to provide young Quakers and other conscientious objectors an opportunity to serve those in need instead of fighting during World War I.” AFSC is “committed to the principles of nonviolence and justice” in the face of any and all external threats, confident that “the transforming power of love, human and divine” will ultimately cause aggressors to lay down their weapons and permit peaceful reconciliation to prevail. Following what it calls “the radical thrust of the early Christian witness,” AFSC members affirm that they “regard no person as our enemy.”
The AFSC worldview is founded on the belief that evil does not exist within individuals, who are endowed only with goodness by their divine Creator; that evil exists only outside of the individual, in societal institutions which often cause people to do terrible things that are inconsistent with their inherent goodness. Thus AFSC “seek[s] to understand and address the root causes of poverty, injustice, and war … [and] to confront, nonviolently, powerful institutions of violence, evil, oppression, and injustice.” According to AFSC, the chief exploiter of other nations, and consequently the primary agent of evil on earth, is the United States.
AFSC has actively assisted Communist nations in their quests to achieve economic prosperity. In the 1920’s the organization sent Jessica Smith to Russia to “determine famine relief needs.” A Communist herself, Smith was married to Harold Ware, a Communist cell leader in Washington, D.C. (After Ware’s death in 1935, Smith married John Abt, General Counsel to the Communist Party USA and a member of CPUSA’s political committee beginning in the 1950s.) As AFSC author Ruth Anna Brown explains, “We have helped, or are helping, Communist countries reach the amount of economic growth and development necessary for them to allow a degree of relaxed domestic control.”
Quaker author Jerry Frost recalls that in the 1930s “the AFSC refused publicly to criticize the Soviet Union because building up cultural and personal contacts seemed the only way open to defuse hostilities.” In the eyes of AFSC, the real threat to world stability at that time (and after) was the United States.
In the 1970s John McAuliffe, who then headed AFSC’s Indochina program, initially characterized the news of Cambodian massacres under Pol Pot as an American “misinformation campaign,” and lauded the Pol Pot regime as “the example of an alternative model of development and social organization.” AFSC also distributed a printed defense of the Khmer Rouge well after the genocide in Cambodia had been exposed. At that time McAuliffe said “all reliable sources indicate that the [Marxist] Vietnamese are carrying out the task of reconstruction with extraordinary humaneness.” When McAuliffe and AFSC finally recognized the horrors of Pol Pot’s regime, they placed the blame squarely on the United States.
In recent decades AFSC has agitated for the unilateral disarmament of the United States. Terry Provence, Director of AFSC’s 1970s-era Disarmament Program, was a founding member of the U.S. Peace Council and a member of the Soviet-oriented World Peace Council. Along with fellow Communists Nico Schouten and Walter Rumpel, he led the 1979 “Mobilization For Survival” rally in Washington. A recent pamphlet distributed by AFSC says that the “solution” to international strife is “to disarm America and have it withdraw economically and militarily from the globe.” Today AFSC is a member organization of the Abolition 2000, Win Without War, and United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalitions.
AFSC, which recently formed an alliance with the radical group MECha, strongly opposes laws that would apprehend and punish illegal immigrants in the United States. It has denounced Operation Gatekeeper, a government initiative implemented in October 1994 with the aim of securing — by means of increased border patrol agents, fencing, lighting, and underground sensors — the San Diego border with Mexico, which was then the busiest illegal alien crossing point in America. AFSC views such measures as “brutal” affronts to the human dignity of “undocumented” immigrants.
In March 2005 AFSC complained that “the U.S. denies immigrant workers the most fundamental labor rights,” and called for the protection of “the rights and dignity of all people, regardless of legal immigration status.” AFSC has posted on its website a detailed list of strategies for illegal aliens to use in the event that they are interrogated, detained, or arrested by immigration authorities or police. The organization advises that such individuals “not answer questions” about their birthplace or legal status; “refuse to allow immigration authorities or police to enter your house without a search warrant”; “ask for and receive a list of agencies who provide free or low cost legal immigration services”; and “appeal [any unfavorable] decision of the judge in front of a higher court, saying you don’t accept the decision.”
AFSC was a signatory to a November 1, 2001 document characterizing the 9/11 attacks as a legal matter to be addressed by criminal-justice procedures rather than military means. Ascribing the hijackers’ motives to alleged social injustices against which they were protesting, this document called on the United States “to promote fundamental rights around the world.”
AFSC was also a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter exhorting members of the U.S. Congress “to oppose ... ‘Patriot [Act] II’” on grounds that it “contain[ed] a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers ... that would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights.” In addition, AFSC has given its organizational endorsement to the Community Resolution to Protect Civil Liberties campaign, which tries to influence city councils to pass resolutions of non-compliance with the provisions of the Patriot Act.
AFSC opposes Israel’s construction of an anti-terrorism security fence, which it depicts as an illegal “apartheid wall” that violates the civil and human rights of Palestinians. AFSC has been a leader in promoting the U.S. speaking engagements of Israeli “refuseniks,” or conscientious objectors, who refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Force on grounds of Israel’s alleged oppression of Palestinians. One notable refusenik whose lecture tours have been sponsored by AFSC is Noam Bahat.
Another AFSC priority is to help turn public opinion against capital punishment. “We’re working to get doubts into the public consciousness,” says AFSC, “so those eligible for jury duty in capital cases will understand that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment.”
The General Secretary of AFSC, responsible for the administration of the organization’s U.S. and international programs, is Mary Ellen McNish. McNish previously worked for numerous other non-profit organizations, including the YWCA and Planned Parenthood.
AFSC has received grants from the Blue Moon Fund, the Columbia Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Public Welfare Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and numerous others.
In 1947 AFSC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
AFSC has been on the side of Communism and America haters for a long time.
There may have been a time when the organization had a good mission, but that has long since passed.
Its interesting to see that they have some financial irregularities but when ideology rules the day the rules go out the door.
As I said, I'm no fan of theirs -- never claimed they were anything other than leftists. But Gannon's spinning, not making a responsible argument.
When the investigation and prosecution gain momentum, look at the organizations that start screaming. Then come back and claim that AFSC isn’t ‘at the center of’ anything.
They get funded by other organizations -- hardly characteristic of being "at the center."
Somebody like Mr. Soros, who throws in tens of millions of bucks -- he is an example of "at the center of."
They sound more like useful idiots and fellow travelers to me. Gannon, for whatever reason, is trying to make them out as much more important than they really are.
BUMP
The Quakers.
From the establishment of the first colonies, the Quakers were genertors of dissent and anti-social activities.
During the French and Indian War, the refused to vote funds to provide for the defense of frontier colonists in Pennsylvania against attacks by Indians. During the Revolution they refused to provide supplies to the Continental army but sold them for a pretty penny to the British. Today, they are anti-war activists, anti-gun activists and in the forefront of the “Sanctuary” movements.
Quakers. The traitors in our midst who should have been expelled back in 1783.
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