With the Arab world’s civil unrest in the periphery, many China critics believe the arrest of Ai Weiwei (pronounced EYE-Way-Way) is part of a recent crackdown on Chinese dissidents to stop any climate of protest from migrating into their borders. For nearly two-months, China has been arresting well known writers, human rights lawyers, and activists – making some completely vanish within their penal system. With well over a billion people under their governance, China’s leaders should fear demonstrations given their abysmal free speech and human rights record.

But the arrest of Ai Weiwei is markedly significant for one simple reason – he is one of their most prolific artists. Ai Weiwei was the “creative consultant” for the country’s iconic Beijing National Stadium – or what many refer to as China’s Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium. With the arrest of such a prominent figure, the country has sent the message to their people that no one, no matter how internationally heralded, is safe if they openly critique the government. And Ai Weiwei has done his share of criticizing.

In 2008, the country experienced a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province that killed by some estimates 68,000 people, while leaving millions homeless. That people died during an earthquake is not necessarily a state crime – many people have perished around the world during similar natural disasters. But in the case of Sichuan province, some parents claimed the government-erected buildings collapsed due to shoddy construction. And most troubling were how many of these fallen buildings were grade schools – killing thousands of children in the process. But even with the outcry of their parents, the government wouldn’t investigate for corruption.

Ai Weiwei took up the cause, asking the government to provide the names of the children that were killed in the quake. When he faced resistance, he began what he called a “citizen investigation” with his volunteers going door to door to acquire the names of the students. In May 2009 he created an art installation, of sorts, by listing on his studio wall for press photo-ops the more than 5,000 dead student’s names that his volunteers gathered – an enormously risky endeavor for a Chinese citizen. Then while attempting to attend the trial of a volunteer arrested for “subversion” related to their investigation, Ai Weiwei’s hotel room was raided in the early morning hours by police. They beat him over the head – but Ai Weiwei audio recorded the incident.

A month later he traveled to Munich where he created an art installation on the walls of the Haus der Kunst (or “House of Art”) using thousands of colored backpacks – the item that he found widely dispersed within the rubble of Sichuan province, indicating the large loss of young life. He used the backpacks to spell out a quote from a mourning Sichuan mother about her fallen daughter. The quote read, “She lived happily for seven years in this world.”

While in Munich he was rushed to the hospital due to a brain hemorrhage resulting from the police beating weeks earlier. The doctors said he would have died if they didn’t drill holes into his skull to drain the fluid.

Over the past two years, the man who helped design (arguably) China’s second most recognizable national monument has been placed under house arrest; his studio has been demolished due to the government’s claim that he lacked the proper permits to build it; video cameras have been installed outside of his studio; his blog posts have been repeatedly deleted and his name has been literally wiped clean from Chinese websites apparently by web police; law enforcement has followed him everywhere he goes with video cameras; he’s been beaten; and at times he’s been barred from leaving the country. But yet he bravely has continued to express his form of free speech and citizen journalism. Why? As he stated in a UK Guardian interview: “I have to speak for people who are afraid.”

The international outcry has been swift and widespread, with calls by his supporters to sign petitions demanding his release. But no amount of names on a “Free Weiwei” petition will change China’s long history of disdain for free speech.

However, one act can get their attention, and it wouldn’t take the hand of big government to employ it. It would be a peaceful act, and not one Chinese citizen would have to risk their lives by taking to the streets. And that act is for US consumers to avoid purchasing Made In China products until their government makes measurable advances to its free speech policies. I am not typically one to advocate for boycotts. They are too often used to indirectly target politicians for political purposes. But in the case of free speech in China, freeing a citizen journalist, and simultaneously creating a fair playing field for American jobs and products here at home, I see no other way.

And this is where my request to you, Mr. Trump, comes in. You have been right sir. China is a problem for the US. They are laughing at us. Their government is taking our money to rebuild their country – and, if I may add, oppressing their people in the process. In some part, it’s because of China’s economic success that the dissidents of their country can be persecuted by their government without repercussion and made to literally vanish from the sight of their families. The disappearance of this respected artist and brave citizen journalist is a brazen act by the Chinese government – an act that is being witnessed by the entire world. Nothing the US, UK, or EU says will change China’s position on free speech. No statements from politicians or names on a petition will pressure them to alter their liberty policies. But by hitting them in their pocketbook, they may rethink their position.

We need your tough talk Mr. Trump – your brash megaphone – to inform the American people of China’s bad behavior, as you have been doing for some time now. We need you to explain to Americans how China is hurting people like Ai Weiwei, and through their unfair policies, hurting the people of this country as well. We need you, in your special way Mr. Trump, to make the American people aware of their power, and that with one act they can improve human rights in China and economic prospects here in the US, without wasting any energy on talking to our leaders in Washington. With your persuasive gift, US consumers can take a stand and make China feel our will by simply avoiding their products until their government changes its tune.

But if you haven’t thought of the labor movement as a cerebral bunch, think again. Meet Peter Dreier, Donald Cohen, Nelson Lichtenstein, and their syndicate of progressive university professors – the “intellectual infrastructure” of the progressive labor movement.

It is no secret that progressives have created a self-cloning machine by hijacking our educational system. Their indoctrination efforts are well documented. But we rarely think of research institutions as propaganda factories. A Request for Proposal (RFP) — see document above — recently obtained by Big Journalism gives us a rare look at how progressives and labor unions attempt to manipulate the national media narrative.

And their process? you may ask. Use the credibility and resources of the American higher education system to create researchprop – biased collegial research papers that serve as propaganda to support political policies.

Entitled Cry Wolf, the RFP proclaims a desire to look “for faculty and graduate students… interested in writing short (2,000 word) policy briefs” that “construct a counter narrative that demonstrates the falsity or exaggeration” of conservative claims. Writers of briefs selected by the project coordinators will receive 100,000 pennies for their thoughts.

Their hopes with this researchprop is for these papers to “become the basis for opinion pieces designed to run in the mainstream media, on line, on the air, or in the press,” with the end outcome of building the following narrative in the public consciousness: that conservative objections to their policies are just the old dirty tricks of the right-wing.

If executed successfully, the “first reaction of millions of people, as well as opinion leaders, will be, ‘there they go again’,” reads the RFP – a clear attempt to label any right-leaning objection to progressive policy as another case of crying wolf.

This is what our higher education system has become – a publicly funded amplifier of progressive ideology.

If this Cry Wolf program were just limited to a few faculty members at a limited number of universities, it would be of little concern. But the project reaches into some of the most prestigious public and private schools of higher learning in the U.S., including MIT, Yale, Harvard, USC, Columbia, Rutgers, UC Santa Barbara, University of Pennsylvania, and President Obama’s alma mater – Occidental College.

Distributed by Peter Dreier, Professor of Politics and Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College, the request for proposal asks for help “in an important project in the battle with conservative ideas.” Drier is a frequent collaborator with the California AFL-CIO and the infamous ACORN.

The project’s union and progressive ties are seen throughout the bios of its coordinators and advisory board. It is sponsored by the Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego based non-profit headed by co-founder and Cry Wolf project coordinator Donald Cohen – a 25-year community organizing veteran and former Political Director for a division of San Diego’s AFL-CIO.

In fact, every person associated with this project has either spent a lifetime glorifying the work of labor unions through their writings, or has published work that supports the policies that further Big Labor’s agenda.

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy — and “America’s foremost Wal-Mart expert” — is also a Cry Wolf project coordinator. He is the author of numerous books designed to raise the awareness of the labor cause. While at the University of Virginia, Lichtenstein was involved in an organization known as Labor Action Group. “Our task was to insert and raise the labor question into the consciousness and politics of the university,” wrote Lichtenstein in the preface of his book State of the Union: A Century of American Labor.

Lichtenstein

Gerald Markowitz, Professor of History at CUNY’s John Jay College, and David Rosner, Professor of History and Public Health at Columbia University, are both on the advisory board of Cry Wolf. They have co-authored various books on occupational health and in their book, Dying for Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America, they wrote:

We begin with the premise that the exploitation of labor is measured not only in long hours of work and lost dollars but also in shortened lives, high disease rates, and painful injuries.

Project advisor Janice Fine, Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers, has worked as a community, labor and electoral organizer for more than twenty-five years prior to teaching at Rutgers, and has even contributed to AFL-CIO’s website.

Then there is Jennifer Klein of Yale who has written extensively on labor unions and the struggle for employer-based health care. And William Forbath of the University of Texas, who’s written about the legal struggles of the labor movement. And Tom Sugrue, Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who won the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award. Sugrue isn’t the only recipient of this labor history award. Lizabeth Cohen, a Cry Wolf advisory board member and chair of the History Department at Harvard, also received the award for her 1990 book Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago.

These professors’ ties to the labor movement and the glorification of its struggles are indisputable – which is fine, being that their interests reside in that area. But it does lead to the question: Should these professors be allowed to use our higher education system to push their progressive political ideologies in the guise of disinterested academics?

I think most would answer simply: no. Our publicly funded schools should be institutions of unbiased research, not propaganda vehicles for a particular ideology — especially one with longstanding and well-documented ties to the Communist movement.

James P. Cannon (center) and friends

Indeed, all colleges and universities are funded by tax dollars, whether public or private institutions. Public institutions receive 80% to 90% of their funding from public sources, according to Inside Higher Education. However, private institutions are not private in the same sense as private industry – they also receive substantial public funding, especially in research areas.

In addition to the federal gift that non-profit status brings in the form of no real estate taxes and no taxes on gains (including the billions in earnings on endowments), students who attend private institutions receive federally subsidized loans for college tuition, set at an arbitrarily high price. Additionally, private institutions receive billions (upon billions) in federal research grants from the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, et al. Private and public universities exist because of public funding – they are both a public trust.

Our higher education system should be used as a battleground for competing ideas – not a fifth column for biased political talking points. Unbiased research must be its cornerstone; without valid, unbiased studies, our society cannot make grounded, well-founded decisions about public policy.

Entirely neutralizing bias in research is likely an impossible endeavor given the nature of the human mind. But an RFP of this nature, sent out from a group of educators – using publicly funded networks and the prestige of their schools – to students and faculty of publicly funded institutions, is an exercise in educational malpractice. It gives politically biased professors a rationale for a one-sided curriculum, and teaches students that it’s acceptable to infuse ideology into research.

This attempt to use our higher educational system “to give substance and scholarly integrity to this ‘crying wolf’ argument,” as stated in the RFP, is intellectual and moral subversion. The creation of this intellectual network within our school system is specifically for the purpose of constructing leftist policy “narratives.”

In a 2009 article that affixes the entire blame of the 2008 financial crisis on the failure of the free market system, Donald Cohen, sponsor of the Cry Wolf project, wrote that their network is in place to effectively push their reform policies:

Fortunately, the progressive intellectual infrastructure, more developed and more capable than even just a few years ago, is ready to drive a new New deal.

Do these prestigious institutions know that they have become part of the progressive labor movement’s “intellectual infrastructure” to create biased research? Let’s hope that if they are oblivious, they will take the appropriate action to be removed from this effort.

Stay tuned.

Please follow the ongoing “Cry Wolf” expose at Big Journalism.

In crunch time, preserving stability trumps all other roles of the state.

It is through this lens that we should look at the response to Arizona’s brave action in addressing illegal immigration. Regardless of one’s feelings towards fairness and the rule of law, 12 million illegal immigrants will never be deported. Never. Their voices will grow louder, and fueled by politician’s desire to use them as political weapons, this group’s megaphone will eventually become a billy club – ultimately making the situation unstable enough to force government to act in their favor. The coming instability caused by illegal immigration is as sure a fact as death and taxes. Our foreign visitors will eventually win citizenship because the government has done little to decrease the power that has come with their numbers.

Politicians that desire to have any relevance in the foreseeable future, who want their party to have a voice in public policy, and ultimately have the numbers to make their policy law, must win the hearts and minds of this community. As abrasive as the thought feels of succumbing to the demands of those in this country illegally, they must be embraced as long-term allies.

I say this as an American of Mexican decent that agrees with the intentions of the recent Arizona immigration law. I’m on the team of those that understand the undeniable prosperity that is unleashed by a government that limits its intrusion on its people. But this philosophy will fall to a pro-government growth, entitlement ideology if proponents of limited government do not end up on the winning side of the immigration debate.

Our federal government has put us in this position. By failing to secure our borders, allowing illegal immigrants to exploit the 14^th Amendment through the “anchor baby” phenomenon, and failing to provide a clear and swift path to citizenship, this voice has steadily grown to a point where it can and will demand a place at the table.

Proponents of Arizona’s action find the pill of amnesty impossible to swallow. It becomes even harder to align with this community when one of its spokesman, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, states that his government “will do everything in its power to defend the rights of Mexicans who are affected by this legislation” – a statement made in the wake of a Mexican police chief decapitation and the killing of another Mexican deputy police chief, both near the US/Mexico border. This brutality routinely happens on his watch.

That said, the opposition to aligning with our foreign visitors must be resisted due to the simple fact that it is a losing political strategy with catastrophic long-term consequences. This is a truth that President George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush have understood. Appearing adversarial to this minority group helps build a narrative that is ultimately false, but nevertheless effective. This narrative was on full display this weekend.

“I would never say, and I have never said because it’s not true, that Republicans, all Republicans are racists. That would be silly and wrong,” said Bill Maher on Sunday’s This Week. He continued, “but nowadays if you are a racist, you are probably a Republican.”

In this one statement Maher captured his team’s long and effective African-American retention strategy. And with Arizona’s new immigration law, his team is now looking to indefinitely capture the Latin-American community with the same game plan.<

Let’s not let that happen.

In its quest to pass health care reform, being cornered is the plight of the virtual organism we call The Administration.

We don’t know the intricacies of the current Senate bill being drafted behind closed doors. But what we do know is that one of its cornerstones is government imposed, individual mandates for health insurance. If this element is left in the bill, our government will be given the power to force individuals into purchasing health insurance, or else be fined – giving new meaning to the term cost of living.

You may recall, however, the head of this Administration pointedly attacking his opponent’s position on health insurance mandates during the primary campaign. In an effort to differentiate himself, candidate Obama attacked the Clinton plan of requiring citizens to purchase health insurance stating that people do not have health insurance not because they don’t want it, but because they can’t afford it. Mandating health insurance, in his view, would further burden the individual with fines and in the end the person would still not have health insurance. He called it a “substantive difference” with Clinton on the issue and made that point very clear here:

Now if that were the only time his opposition to mandates was mentioned, we could chalk it up to standard campaign rhetoric. But it wasn’t. He also stated it here – and then again here.

But he didn’t stop there. His campaign went as far as sending out mailers to potential primary voters highlighting Senator Clinton’s position – claiming that under her plan citizens would be “forced” to purchase insurance. Candidate Obama explains the rationale behind the mailer here:

Obama Answers Latest Attack By Clinton on Healthcare & Nafta – The best home videos are here

Now I’m not a constitutional lawyer, nor an economist, so speaking on the validity of such a mandate in the realms of those disciplines will not come from me at this point. But what I can speak to are ideas and the survival mechanism of the virtual organism. If the Obama Administration backs this provision it would be a drastic change from the position of the Obama Campaign and would point to one of two things – either the Obama Campaign was wrong or the Obama Administration is cornered and will do what it takes to survive.

The question for us will be which virtual organism are we to believe?

“What did the White House do wrong,” he asked.

“The White House attempted to use federal agencies for political gain,” I blurted out.

President Obama with former NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant

And that is The Big Truth in a nutshell. A moment of clarity hit me, and as with most eureka moments, a path of how to explain this big truth came into sight. The full story needed to be told – including possible collusion, the White House’s novel mode of operation, and the eventual cover-up – to fully understand and illuminate the government’s intention with their arts effort.

Up until now, I have not discussed Sergant’s former job in the White House Office of Public Engagement, where Buffy Wicks currently resides, because the story had to develop to understand the significance. I also haven’t discussed the email that I received from Michael Skolnik, the moderator of the call, immediately after the publication of the original conference call article – an email that attempted to revise history and the role of the NEA and the White House in the meeting. And what has yet to be discussed is the White House’s recent ability to set up an ArtistCorps, brought into existence with less than 20 words in the Serve America Act. (more…)

Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally?

That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?”

The question still requires debate but the facts do not.

The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable.

President Obama with the NEA’s Yosi Sergant

But some have claimed that the invite and passages, pulled from the conference call that inspired the article, were taken out of context. Context is what I intend to establish here.

On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama’s arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster. (more…)