Monday, January 11, 2010

Nickel and Dimed



Edition:
Holt Paperbacks (Paperback)
Author:
Barbara Ehrenreich
Published:
May 2002
Pages:
240
ISBN 10:
0805063897
New:
$2.19 (180)
Used:
$0.01 (2110)



INTRODUCTION: Getting Ready


The idea for this book evolved from a lunch meeting with Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper’s during a discussion of future articles. The conversation had drifted to poverty and welfare reform, which, at the time, had thrown approximately 4 million women into the “unskilled” labor market. How were these women, single mothers, going to be able to survive on $6 or $7 an hour? Lapham suggested that someone should initiate an investigative report on the subject—preferably after assuming the lifestyle and experiencing the hardships. That “someone” was to be his lunch partner, Barbara Ehrenreich.

Ehrenreich decided to approach the project in a scientific manner. As such, some ground rules had to be worked out:

She could not fall back on any skills from her past work or education in her quest for employment.
She had to take the highest paying job and do her best to hold it.
She had to find the least expensive shelter that provided safety and privacy.
To the best of her ability, she had to survive on the income earned from her employment.
Throughout her adventure/experience/investigation, Ehrenreich faithfully attempted to stick by these basic rules although all were bent or broken at particular times.

Ehrenreich’s first problem was how to present herself to potential employers. She solved the issue by describing herself as a divorced homemaker re-entering the job market. She used former housemates and a friend in Key West (her actual home community) as references and confined her education to 3 years of college, listing her real Alma Mater. Amazingly, no one questioned her fiction and only one employer out of a dozen bothered to check her references.

Finally, Ehrenreich set limits as to how much she would endure for the sake of the article or book:

She would always have a car, a "rent-a-wreck" obtained in each locality.

She ruled out homelessness as an option. (The idea was to spend a month in each setting, find a job, and earn enough for the next month. If she was paying by the week and ran out of money, she would end the experiment in that particular setting)
She would not go hungry.

She would begin with an initial bankroll of $1,500—a cushion totally outside the lifestyle she was about to assume.

Ehrenreich notes that she would be only visiting a world that millions of people live every day—most often for their entire lives. With all her real-life assets, there was no way she could realistically experience poverty in all of its ignoble glory. She acknowledges the undeniable advantages she brought with her: the fact that she was white, spoke English as a native, always had a vehicle, and was in a better state of health than many low-wage workers were.

She wore her usual clothes, make-up and hairstyle, and talked about real children and family relationships, understanding that for all intent and purpose, no matter what the employment, there wasn’t a way to “pretend” these parts of her life.

CHAPTER ONE: Serving in Florida

Ehrenreich began her low-wage life in Key West, Florida, where she actually lived as a writer. Initially, she was afraid someone from her “real” life would recognize her and she would have to explain her project. No one recognized her.

She found her first housing in an economy efficiency 30 miles (or 45 minutes, barring traffic) distant from the employment opportunities of Key West. Ruling out various occupations because of physical limitations or personality, she began filling out applications for jobs in such fields as housekeeping, grocery clerking, and fast food. After 3 days of job searching, one of the big discount hotel chains where she had applied for a housekeeping position contacted her. They inquired if she would be interested in waitressing at the attached family restaurant, which featured “Polish sausage and BBQ sauce.” Ehrenreich accepted and started her new job the next day, working the 2-10 p.m. shift and earning $2.43 per hour, plus tips. She learned that waitressing was not just taking orders and serving customers, but included all the “invisible” work—sweeping, filling condiment containers, or cleaning out the freezer.

Ehrenreich falls into the rhythm of living, leaning how the “other half” survives. She soon realizes that everyone around her is NOT making ends meet. After 2 weeks, she also realizes that she will not be able to meet her financial obligations for the next month. She obtains a second job at an even bigger well-known national restaurant chain that serviced three to four times the clientele as her first job. For two days she almost pulls it off but finds she cannot physically work the two positions. She quits her first job. To conserve her dwindling (and inadequate) finances, she relocates to a small trailer closer to Key West. It is so small that her knees rub against the shower stall when she sits on the toilet.

Still unable to financially support herself with a single job, Ehrenreich approaches the management of the hotel portion of the restaurant and applies for a housekeeping position on the assumption that it would be less strenuously physical. On her first, and consequently last, day as a housekeeper, she makes beds, folds towels, vacuums, and scrubs toilets from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. She rushes home to the tiny trailer where she showers and prepares for her shift at the restaurant. Once there, she becomes overwhelmed with an abundance of customers and a subsequent heated confrontation with the manager over her inadequacies.

Ehrenreich, who, up to this point, had mentally and physically immersed herself into her role, suddenly realized she was NOT trapped by circumstances and COULD just walk away without financial consequence. Although she did immediately walk out—leaving behind unfinished work, collectable tips, and final wages—Ehrenreich did suffer consequences. “I had gone into this venture in the spirit of science, to test a mathematical proportion, but somewhere along the line, in the tunnel vision imposed by long shifts and relentless concentration, it became a test of myself, and clearly I have failed.”

CHAPTER TWO: Scrubbing in Maine

Ehrenreich chose Maine for its whiteness. She had once been to the Portland area for a speaking engagement and had noticed the almost total lack people of color—in any walk of life. In addition to the population being primarily white, everyone spoke English (or some New England dialect thereof), and the Portland area employment base seemed anxious for new bodies.

Traveling by bus from Florida, Ehrenreich arrives in Portland August 24, nearly 2000 miles away from everything she is familiar with. Her personal inventory includes a suitcase of clothes, a tote stuffed with toiletries, books, and whatout to be useless hiking boots, and her laptop. She also has $1,000 in cash.

Her first surprise is that there are no low-rent apartments in Portland. Affordable housing seems to be clustered in an area about 30 minutes away. The following day she finds a tiny cottage in Old Orchard Beach for $120 a week—bed/living/kitchen area that includes linen and cable TV. It is now time to find a job.

Due to the ending of the tourist season, waitressing jobs are scarce. Clerical or office work is scrapped due to her wardrobe limitations. She calls about cleaning (both home and office), warehouse and nursing home work, and manufacturing. “It’s humbling, this business of applying for low-wage jobs, consisting as it does of offering yourself—your energy, your smile, your real or faked lifetime of experience—to a series of people for whom this is just not a very interesting package.”

“The main thing I learn from the job-hunting process is that, despite all the help-wanted ads and job fairs, Portland is just another $6-$7-an-hour town.” After two days of applications, employment tests, and interviews, Ehrenreich is offered two positions—a weekend dietary aide position at a nursing home for $7 an hour and a 40 hour per week maid position at $6.65 per hour.

As a former waitress, Ehrenreich assumes the aide position will be old hat—serving up pre-prepared menus and chatting up the residents. What she did not realize is that the residents reserved the right to make off-menu choices and that a dietary aide is not only responsible for serving the meal, but cleaning it up—clearing tables, scraping plates, loading (and re-loading) dishwashers, scrubbing pots, and vacuuming carpets. (Elderly people, along with palsied food loss are also incapable of picking said tossed food up off the floor).

Ehrenreich, having no experience as a professional maid, but having spent a lifetime picking up after other people (i.e. husband and children), is given a uniform (ill-fitting Kelly green pants and “a blinding sunflower-yellow polo shirt”) and the RULES: No smoking. No drinking, eating, or gum chewing. No obscenities. While waiting for her first assignment, Ehrenreich notes “…all but one of the others are female, with an average age I would guess in the late twenties, thought the range seems to go from prom-fresh to well into the Medicare years.”

Freelance maids in the area make an average of $15 an hour. Ehrenreich overhears her new employer telling a prospective client that the service charges $25 per person-hour. Her wage is $6.65 an hour. Some overhead. “..the only advantage of working here as opposed to freelancing is that you don’t need a clientele or even a car. You can arrive straight from welfare or, in my case, the bus station—fresh off the boat.”

The maids sort out into teams of 2 to 3 people and are dispatched to the scheduled houses. There is no guarantee that you will be assigned to the same team or even the same locations from day to day or week to week. The regulars leave (in green and yellow company cars) and Ehrenreich is led into a closet-sized room to learn the trade by videotape. The four tapes explain dusting, bathrooms, kitchens, and vacuuming—each starring an attractive, possibly Hispanic young woman, moving about serenely in obedience to a male voice over.

One video warns against oversoaking rags with cleaning solutions. The manager pauses the tape to point out that there is a danger of undersoaking as well. “Cleaning fluids are less expensive than your time. Good to know that SOMETHING is cheaper than her time.”

Life is never like the movies. The training tapes are all in slow motion. Maids, however, never walk. They run to the cars, run with buckets to doors, run through houses dusting, etc. Lisa, a team leader, explains that the teams are only given so many minutes per house—ranging from under 60 minutes for a 1 ½-bath apartment to 200 or more minutes for a multi-bathroom “first-timer” (a new client).

“How poor are they, my co-workers?” Ehrenreich finds that while no one is homeless, most live with extended families or housemates. There are signs of real misery. Half-smoked cigarettes are returned to the pack. There are discussions about who will come up with 50 cents for the toll and whether a quick reimbursement can be counted on. One teammate, frantic about a painfully impacted wisdom tooth, makes phone calls from the houses, trying to locate free dental care. A scrubber is forgotten at the office and the team cannot put $2.00 together between the four of them to buy one at a convenience store. There are childcare problems, food problems (not enough), rent problems, vehicle problems…a never-ending cycle of sacrificing the solution to one problem to solve another, more desperate, issue.

Ehrenreich rushes home to the cottage at the end of the day, pulls down the blinds for privacy, strips off her uniform in the kitchen—the bathroom is too small—stands in the shower for a good 10 minutes, thinking all this water is MINE! She paid for it. She earned it. Her body is issuing no complaints because she is numb. If she can do one week, she can do another, which is a good thing because she hasn’t any free time to hunt for a different job. She rewards herself with a sunset walk on Old Orchard Beach. Walking back, she encounters a couple of Peruvian musicians playing on a grassy island in the street near the pier. The musicians wink and smile at each other as they play, and Ehrenreich imagines them as the secret emissaries of a worldwide lower-class conspiracy to snatch joy out of degradation and filth.

Ehrenreich initially gloated internally about her ability to keep up with and sometimes outwork women twenty or thirty years younger. One person’s infirmity can be a teammate’s extra burden. “So ours is a world of pain—managed by Excedrin and Advil, compensated for with cigarettes and, in one or two cases, and then only on weekends, with booze.” Her ability to work tirelessly hour after hour is a product of decades of better than average medical care, a high protein diet, and workouts in gyms that charge $400 to $500 a year. She realizes that she hasn’t been working, in any hard physical sense, long enough to have ruined her body. She makes a notation to herself: “Slow down and above all detach. If you can’t stand being around suffering people, than you have no business in the low-wage work world, as a journalist or anything else.”

Maids as an occupational group are not visible, and when they are seen, they are often sorry for it. Ehrenreich’s co-workers agree—maids are looked down upon, if they are seen at all. “We’re nothing to these people. We’re just maids.” Even convenience store clerks, who are $6-an-hour employees themselves, project attitudes of superiority.

Friday arrives. Ehrenreich discovers that, due to the management’s arbitrary decision that the tourist season was not quite over, the rent for her cottage is $200 per week, not the $120 off-season rate. This is complicated by the fact that her first paycheck from the maid service will not be forthcoming until the following Friday. She foresees a lean weekend and begins an investigation into alternative resources for the poor—food pantries and emergency aid.

The first call requires explanations of why she doesn’t have any money if she is employed; of why she did not find housing at a lower cost. Another “assistance” number is proffered. This contact advises Ehrenreich to travel to Biddeford (approximately 20 miles away) between the hours of 9 and 5. What is the assumption that the hungry are free all day to drive around visiting “community action centers” and other charitable organizations? She is given another number, which, upon reaching the new party, is told she is residing in the wrong county and is not eligible. She carefully reiterates her time and geographical constraints, underscoring that she works 7 days a week, 8 hours a day. No cash is offered but a food voucher is available. The choices are limited, however, as to what can be purchased: One box of spaghetti noodles and one jar of spaghetti sauce; or one can of vegetables and one can of baked beans; or one pound hamburger and one box hamburger helper; or a box of Tuna-Helper. No fresh fruit or vegetables, no chicken or cheese, and, oddly, no tuna to help the Helper! For breakfast she is allowed cereal with milk OR juice. Bottom line: $7.02 worth of food acquired in seventy minutes of calling and driving, minus $2.80 for the phone calls.

“If you hump away at menial jobs 360 plus days a year, does some kind of repetitive injury of the spirit set in? I don’t know and I don’t intend to find out. I can guess that one of the symptoms is a bad case of tunnel vision. Work fills the landscape, co-workers swell to the size of family members or serious foes. Slights loom large and a reprimand can reverberate into the night…Work is supposed to save you from being an “outcast”,…but what we do is an outcast’s work, invisible and even disgusting. Janitors, cleaning ladies, ditch diggers, changers of adult diapers—these are the untouchables of a supposedly caste free and democratic society. Or maybe it's low-wage work in general that makes you feel like a pariah.”

CHAPTER THREE: Selling in Minnesota
Despite thoughts of California, Ehrenreich’s next stop is Minnesota. “Don’t ask me why Minneapolis came to mind, maybe I just had a yearning for deciduous trees. It’s a relatively liberal state, I knew that, and more merciful than many to its welfare poor.” In addition, although the labor market was tight, entry-level jobs advertised at $8 or more an hour and studio apartments for $400 or less. “Call me gutless, but what I was looking for this time around was a comfortable correspondence between income and rent, a few mild adventures, a soft landing.”

Allowed a few days respite in the apartment of vacationing friends, Ehrenreich immediately sets out to find a job. “No waitressing, nursing homes, or housecleaning this time; I’m psyched for a change—retail, maybe, or factory work.”

“Friday evening: I’ve been in Minneapolis for just over fifteen hours, driven from the southern suburbs to the northern ones, dropped off a half dozen apps, and undergone two face-to-face interviews. Job searches take their toll, even in the case of totally honest applicants, and I am feeling particularly damaged. The personality tests, for example: the truth is I don’t much care if my fellow workers are getting high in the parking lot or even lifting the occasional retail item, and I certainly wouldn’t snitch if I did. Nor do I believe that management rules by divine right or the undiluted force of superior knowledge, as the “surveys” demand you acknowledge. It whittles you down to lie up to fifty times in the space of the fifteen minutes or so it takes to do a “survey,” even when there is a higher moral purpose to serve. Equally draining is the effort to look both perky and compliant at the same time, for half an hour or more at a stretch, because while you need to evince “initiative,” you don’t want to come across as someone who might initiate something like a union organizing drive. Then there is the threat of the drug tests, hanging over me like a fast-approaching SAT. It rankles—at some deep personal, physical level—to know that the many engaging qualities I believe I have to offer—friendliness, reliability, willingness to learn—can all be trumped by my pee.”

Ehrenreich is eventually hired by both Wal-Mart and Menards (a large-box building supply retailer), passing both the personality and drug tests and enduring their respective new-employee orientations. After discovering that Menards not only back stepped on the initial starting wage of $10 per hour but would demand 11-hour shifts, Ehrenreich opted to accept the Wal-Mart position, despite its lower wage scale. “There’s no intermediate point in the process in which you confront the potential employer as a free agent, entitled to cut your own deal. The intercalation of the drug test between application and hiring tilts the playing field even further, establishing that you, and not the employer, are the one who has something to prove. Even in the tightest labor market…the person who has precious labor to sell can be made to feel one down, way down, like a supplicant with her hand stretched out.”

Job in hand, Ehrenreich puts her energy into housing, a task that, despite her pre-move Internet research, proves daunting. The Internet-quoted median low-income housing rate of $400 or less a month does exist—those particular housing units are just not available in quantity. Several phone calls and apartment inspections later, she reluctantly accepts the fact that she will have to settle for a kitchenless motel room that rents by the week. Room 133 contains a bed, a chair, a chest of drawers, mouse droppings, fresh paint, and a TV fastened to the wall. The single small window does not have a screen and the room has no AC or fan. The curtain is transparent and the door has no bolt.

“Sometime around five in the morning it dawns on me that it’s not just that I’m a wimp. Poor women—perhaps especially single ones and even those who are just temporarily living among the poor for whatever reason—really do have more to fear than women who have houses with double locks and alarm systems and husbands or dogs. I must have known this theoretically or at least heard it stated, but now for the first time, the lesson takes hold…As far as I can tell, the place isn’t a nest of drug-dealers and prostitutes; these are just working people who don’t have the capital to rent a normal apartment. Even the teenagers who worried me at first seem to have mother figures attached to them, probably single mothers I hadn’t seen before because they have to work.”

Ehrenreich maintains her job at Wal-Mart on the 2:00 to 11:00 shift. The work is fast paced and unending. Wal-Mart shoppers, not particularly known for their education or “genteel” status, are notorious for popping something into their cart, deciding against it later in their stroll through the store, and simply unloading it on the rack or shelf (or floor) closest to them. Ehrenreich’s, and nearly every other Wal-Mart employee’s, primary function is to find and return these discards to their proper places.

“Why does anybody put up with the wages we’re paid?” Ehrenreich discovers that most of her co-workers also have second and sometimes third jobs. Don’t they get tired? Nah. It’s what they have always done. She takes the opportunity to ask a co-worker how she lives on $7 an hour. “The answer is that she lives with her grown daughter, who also works, plus the fact that she’s worked here (Wal-Mart) two years, during which her pay has shot up to $7.75 an hour. She counsels patience: it could happen to me.”

After several weeks, Ehrenreich’s natural tendency to question, rebel, and incite change overwhelms her. After being told that employee discounts are not valid for clearanced merchandise, she suggests the need for a union at an associate’s meeting. “…there’s something wrong when you’re not paid enough to buy a Wal-Mart shirt, a clearanced Wal-Mart shirt with a stain on it…Wal-Mart isn’t working for [it’s associates], if the goal is to make a living.”

Suddenly, her whole purpose has changed. Instead of just living as a low-wager, she will put forth an effort to raise the standards. Almost everyone is eager to talk to her and she becomes a walking repository of complaints. No one gets paid overtime at Wal-Mart although there is a lot of pressure to work it (Wal-Mart is currently being sued for forced, unpaid overtime), the health insurance is expensive and the benefits meager. There is frustration over schedules—they are often irregular, which prohibits scheduling a second job, and uncompromising in regards to outside obligations such as weddings, appointments, etc.

And there is always the abysmal wages. “Wal-Mart would rather just keep hiring new people than treating the ones it has decently…Wal-Mart’s appetite for human flesh is insatiable.” Ehrenreich admits she is not totally serious about the union, citing her own reservations about union’s effectiveness. “The truth, which I can’t avoid acknowledging when I’m in those vast, desertlike stretches between afternoon breaks, is that I’m just amusing myself…Someone has to puncture the prevailing fiction that we’re a “family” here, we “associates” and our “servant leaders,” (managers) held together solely by our commitment to the “guests.” (customers) After all, you’d need a lot stronger word than dysfunctional to describe a family where a few people get to eat at the table while the rest—the “associate” and all the dark-skinned seamstresses and factory workers worldwide who make the things we sell—lick up the drippings from the floor: psychotic would be closer to the mark.”

EVALUATION

“The first thing I discovered is that no job, no matter how lowly, is truly “unskilled.” Every job Ehrenreich took on during her sojourn as a low-wage worker required concentration, mastery of new terms, techniques, tools, and new skills. None of these things came as easily to her as she previously thought they would. “Whatever my accomplishments in the rest of my life, in the low-wage work world I was a person of average ability—capable of learning the job and also capable of screwing up.”

During the course of her investigation, Ehrenreich realized that just learning to do the job was not really the most important factor. “Each job presents a self-contained social world, with its own personalities, hierarchy, customs, and standards.” Although this is true in any work environment, white or blue collar, Ehrenreich notes that the low-wage worker treads on much thinner ice when dealing with these issues. Misinterpreting the particular social world of a job can have devastating results.

She displayed the traits deemed essential to job readiness: punctuality, cleanliness, cheerfulness, obedience. “These are the qualities that welfare-to-work job-training programs often seek to inculcate, though I suspect that most welfare recipients already possess them, or would if their child care and transportation problems were solved.

Ehrenreich real question to herself was not so much how well she performed her jobs, but how well she succeeded in survival. “In the rhetorical buildup to welfare reform, it was uniformly assumed that a job was the ticket out of poverty and that the only thing holding back welfare recipients was their reluctance to get out and get one.” She notes that despite a few ill-thought extravagances, she was fairly thrifty with her finances. Food was down to a science: “lots of chopped meat, beans, cheese, and noodles”,when she had a kitchen, and fast food when she did not. Her largest failure to balance income against expenses turned out to be housing—usually a factor outside of her control as evinced by the absence of “safe and affordable” housing in Minneapolis. She acknowledges that she came close in Portland, but that it was at the expense of working 7 days a week. Further, her cottage was rented at off-season rates. If she had truly been a low-wage worker, her rent would have increased fourfold the following summer.

“The problem of rents is easy for a noneconomist, even a sparsely educated low-wage worker, to grasp: it’s the market, stupid. When the rich and the poor compete for housing on the open market, the poor don’t stand a chance.” Ehrenreich points out that there seems to be a general complacency about the low-income housing crisis. “The reason for the disconnect between the actual housing nightmare of the poor and “poverty,” (the rate of which has remained static for years) as officially defined, is simple: the official poverty level is still calculated by the archaic method of taking the bare-bones cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying this number by three. Yet food is relatively inflation-proof, at least compared with rent.”

Ehrenreich goes on to explain that when the market system fails to provide (i.e. housing), it is usually suggested that the government step in to fill the gap as is done with healthcare. She notes that, unfortunately, this has not really happened in any significant way. “It did not escape my attention, as a temporarily low-income person, that the housing subsidy I normally receive in my real life—over $20,000 a year in the form of a mortgage-interest deduction—would have allowed a truly low-income family to live in relative splendor.”

Ehrenreich goes into great detail about low-wages, first arguing against the ‘official’ platform that wages ARE rising by stating that, yes, they are, but not at the percentage rate of increase of the costs of survival. She notes that one of the most obvious reasons for low wages is that employers resist wage increases through mollifying “freebies” (employee discounts, break room donuts, etc.).

“But the resistance of employers only raises a second and ultimately more intractable question: Why isn’t this resistance met by more effective counterpressure from the workers themselves?” Ehrenreich puts forth several explanations:

Low-wage people without cars are often dependent on others for transportation. A change in job could result in the loss of that transportation.

Low-wage people are not often well informed about their options. They do not have the luxury of intense research into wages/benefits/future when faced with the loss of a job or even a change in job.

Many low-wage people, through lack of education or experience, fall into the psychological traps devised by employers. The Maids boss, the only male, exerted a paternalistic kind of power. Wal-Mart employees are made to feel like “associates” through profit sharing plans (after several years service), meetings that are held as “pep rallies”.

Rules against “gossip” or even “talking” deter the building of personal relationships that may encourage the airing of grievances.

Those who step out of line often face little, unexplained punishments—schedules changed, assignment to the tasks no one else wants to do, or even termination. “When you enter the low-wage workplace—and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well—you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it supposedly stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration of the shift.”

Ehrenreich plainly states that most low-wage employers are essentially dictators. “Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you are treated as an untrustworthy person—a potential slacker [No talking directives], drug addict [employment drug testing], or thief [personality tests]—you may begin to feel less trustworthy yourself. If you are constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status…If you’re made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you’re paid is what you are actually worth.”

Ehrenreich concludes with a statistic. The Economic Policy Institute, after many studies, declared that a “living wage” was approximately $30,000 a year for a family of one adult and two children. This is not the minimum as it includes health insurance, telephone, and licensed childcare but not such luxuries as restaurant meals, Internet access, cigarettes, or alcohol. The “living wage” works out to be about $14 an hour. Unfortunately, over 60 percent of American workers earn less than that per hour—many less than half.

“It is common, among the nonpoor, to think of poverty as a sustainable condition—austere, perhaps, but they get by somehow, don’t they? They are “always with us.” What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The “home” that is also a car or a van. The illness or injury that must be “worked through,” with gritted teeth, because there’s no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day’s pay will mean no groceries for the next. These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situations. And that is how we should see the poverty of so many million of low-wage Americans—as a state of emergency.


Source: http://www.bookjive.com/wiki/Book:Nickel_and_Dimed:_On_(Not)_Getting_By_in_America
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Who is P. J. Crowley?

I constantly hear the name: P. J. Crowley.
Everytime the news is on they mention P. J. Crowley;




It seems like he's Hillary Clinton's alter ego.

I wonder who P. J. Crowley is?

Is that name like Peanut Butter and Jelly Crowley?
Or, like P.T. Barnum of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus?




After wondering for a long time; Let's do a google research for the facts:

Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley

Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary

Bureau of Public AffairsTerm of Appointment: 05/26/2009 to present

Philip J. (P.J.) Crowley previously served as a Senior Fellow and Director of Homeland Security at the Center for American Progress.


He has authored several studies on homeland and national security issues, including Safe at Home, a detailed strategy to protect the American homeland, improve national preparedness and rebuild U.S. standing in the world; Keeping Bombs Off Planes, an analysis of air cargo security requirements (with co-author Bruce Butterworth), and Time to Act, which outlined how to best implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Crowley has also testified before both the House and Senate on the need for stronger chemical security regulation.


P.J. is a frequent guest on network news programs, having appeared on the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Lehrer NewsHour, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Hardball with Chris Matthews and the O’Reilly Factor, as well as the Diane Rehm Show, On Point and Talk of the Nation on NPR. His opinion articles have been published in leading newspapers such as the Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, New York Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Washington Times.


During the Clinton administration, Crowley was Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs and served on the staff of the National Security Council. Prior to that, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Crowley served in the Air Force for 26 years, retiring at the rank of colonel in September 1999. He is a veteran of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. During the Kosovo conflict, he was temporarily assigned to work with then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.


Prior to joining the Center for American Progress, he served as vice president of the Insur­ance Information Institute, focusing on strategic industry issues that included the impact of terrorism on commercial insurance in the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy. A native of Massachusetts, P.J. is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross.* He is married to Paula E. Kougeas, also a retired Air Force colonel and now a teacher. They have two children and live in Alexandria, Virginia.
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Information: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/123741.htm
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P.S.*College of the Holy Cross - liberal arts, exclusively ...
A top liberal arts college the College of the Holy Cross is exclusively undergraduate, embraces a Catholic, Jesuit identity and was established in 1843.

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Why You Should Turn Off Your Television


What's the best way to propagandise a nation? Television. Think about it: get a TV in every home, connect everyone to the hive mind, make them think they are being entertained/”informed” so they will willingly submit to the brainwashing and come back for more, night after night. How many households DON'T own at least one television set these days? Not many. The mass brainwashing via television has proven to be a great success.

But before you switch on that television set, you really need to ask yourself: who is behind your favourite TV channels and programmes? What agenda might they be pushing on you? What images and ideas are they transmitting into your mind, into your children's minds?

Watching TV puts you into a semi-hypnotic state, leaving you more susceptible to brainwashing and mind control. You might be able to choose from a limited range of channels, but once you've tuned in, you have no control over the images that are projected in super-fast sequence into your brain. Critical thought goes out the window; the box does the thinking for you. Watching TV might seem like a way to relax and wind down at the end of the day, but once you've been away from it for a while, the flashing images and noise starts to make you uncomfortable rather than relax you. I'm a hypersensitive person anyway, but now even televised verbal conflict makes me physically tense up (not to mention actual on-screen violence) whereas it never used to when I was a regular TV-zombie.

TV also disrupts family bonding time and serves as a poor substitute for genuine human interaction. Where families used to sit round the table at dinnertime and discuss their day, share their feelings, etc, they now slouch in front of the TV in silence. Where parents would once have entertained their children by playing games or spending time with them, they now stick them in front of the TV to keep them quiet. The influence of TV on children's impressionable young minds is particularly worrying to me, as it can't be natural or healthy to spend your formative years learning your morals and values from “role models” like Hannah Montana.

Furthermore, TV has redefined the concept of normalcy. Things that would once have been regarded as shocking are no longer seen as such, because people view it within the framework of what they have already seen on TV. TV (and all media) has literally created a mental box around people’s minds, and any ideas outside of this bubble are automatically dismissed. I often wonder: what kind of opinions/values/attitude to life would a person have if they had NOT been exposed to the influence of television?

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Let's take a look at some of the most popular types of TV programmes... TV dramas and soap operas (at least the ones in the UK) base their storylines on dysfunction, depravity and conflict, and feature only the lowest-common-denominator type characters. These kinds of shows send out the message: “Look, this is what normal people’s lives are like! This is how you’re meant to be. Emotional conflict, dysfunctional families and all kinds of depravity are normal and healthy!!” How do these shows, watched by millions of viewers, shape society? Does art imitate life...or does life imitate art? (Not that these types of shows can be classified as “art”!) Of course, they also serve to distract people from thinking too much – the masses care more about “who killed who” in Eastenders than about politics or anything more serious.

A lot of people feel they have to have their daily dose of news in order to know “what's going on in the world”. Well, who decides what makes the news and what doesn't? Who is behind it all? Can you trust them to tell you the truth about “what's going on in the world”? Can you be sure it isn't twisted or completely fabricated? And how does half of the "news" out there have any relevance to your life, right here, right now? Questions to ponder. Also be very aware of how you feel during and after watching the news. How has that stream of negativity affected you, eh? Does it make you depressed? Do you feel like the world is a hostile place? I wonder why 99% of the headlines are negative, neutral or downright depressing. You'd think there was no positivity left in the world at all.

Reality TV is the biggest joke ever. Have you seen Big Brother, or worse – The Hills? I defy anyone to watch that and NOT feel like they've had their brains sucked out. Again, the intent is to make people worship the false idol of celebrity and impress upon the masses that this is what life should be like, this is all there is to aspire to, don't strive for anything better, conform etc etc.

What about comedy? If it makes you laugh, it must be good, right? Hmm. A lot of the comedy out there is very base humour, or it's inane, or it's at other people's expense, or it tries too hard to be edgy & irreverent and piss off as many people as possible, but it's all so contrived. They usually pick easy targets to mock – puppet politicians, religion, conspiracy theorists, etc – but they don't dare touch on anything too risky or reveal any profound truths about our world. If they did, they wouldn't be on TV now would they. ;)

Finally consider advertising. TV advertising works, or else companies wouldn't pay millions to get their 2-minute slot between shows. How does it work? By using clever images and slogans to convince people they NEED to buy this or that to make them happier, or richer, or more beautiful, or more successful with the opposite sex, etc. etc. It exploits human psychology, but it's not difficult to figure out. If you have a break from TV and advertising you will begin to see through the lame techniques used by companies to brainwash people into buying their products, and you will laugh at it. It's ridiculous. It's condescending. It drives this materialistic consumer society. Switch it off!

I've heard a lot of people complain that they never have enough time to do the things they really want to do, yet I later find out they spend 2 hours a night watching television. There's a whole world of activity going on out there, stop sitting indoors staring at a little screen and go explore it. :) And in case you're worried about being bored if you stop watching TV: I haven't watched it regularly for years and I am NEVER bored. I've taken up new hobbies and pastimes which are infinitely more worthwhile and fun than watching television ever was: I read, I write, I research, I knit, I exercise, I cook, I volunteer, I surf the internet (better than TV because you control to a greater extent the information that enters your mind).

You might have read this far and still have no inclination to reduce your TV habit. That's fine. I just ask that you try this: when watching TV, become conscious and aware of yourself and the situation. Avoid slipping into the mild hypnotic sleep that TV can lull you into. Notice what physical sensations you feel as you are watching, what thoughts (if any) come to mind, what information/words/images/ideas you are absorbing from the television. Is the effect of television on your being and state of mind positive, negative, or neutral? You might feel it's “not as fun” to watch TV in this critical, alert way. That's because the main appeal of TV is its power to switch off your brain so it feels like it's making you relaxed, when really it's just making you stupid ;). So try unplugging from the hive mind once in a while. You won't regret it.
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Catholic presence at Copenhagen enviro conference


Jacques Haers
Professor of Theology at K.U.Leuven
Bruxelles-Capitale, Belgique



Catholic presence at Copenhagen enviro conference

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

by Martin Barillas


There is a notable Catholic presence at the current UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen.

Two Jesuits from OCIPE (the Jesuits' European office) in Brussels, José Ignacio Garcia (CAS) and Jacques Haers (BSE), are at the COP15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen as NGO observers, part of a team of Franciscans International.

They are blogging in English and in Spanish, and reflect their personal reflections and experiences. This blog can be visited at: ignatianeconet.wordpress.com.

The Vatican is also represented at conference. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, is leading the five-person Vatican delegation at the Copenhagen conference. He is scheduled to speak to the UN during the Dec. 7-18 conference.

The delegation included climate expert Marcus Wandinger, and Paolo Conversi, an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State who teaches human ecology at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University. Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella organization for more than 150 Catholic charities, will also be represented. The Vatican has called for "effective and binding agreement in Copenhagen" that is based on several essential criteria:

A commitment by developed countries to pledge at least $195 billion in public financing per year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

-- An international commitment to keep global warming well below 2 degrees C (about 3.6 degrees F), and to reach a peak in greenhouse gas emissions in the period 2013-2017.

-- Agreement by developed countries to a greenhouse gas emissions target of more than 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, to be reached mainly by domestic emission reductions.

-- That Copenhagen outcomes be legally binding and enforceable.

Martin Barillas is a former US

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Catholic presence at Copenhagen enviro conference

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Source:http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?idarticle=23919
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Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory


Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory
Dethroning the Self

Series: Modern European Philosophy
Warren Breckman
University of Pennsylvania
Paperback (ISBN-13: 9780521003803 ISBN-10: 0521003806)

Also available in Hardback

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Please note local prices may apply

This is the first major study of Marx and the Young Hegelians in twenty years. The book offers a new interpretation of Marx’s early development, the political dimension of Young Hegelianism, and that movement’s relationship to political and intellectual currents in early nineteenth-century Germany. Warren Breckman challenges the orthodox distinction drawn between the exclusively religious concerns of Hegelians in the 1830s and the sociopolitical preoccupations of the 1840s. He shows that there are inextricable connections between the theological, political and social discourses of the Hegelians in the 1830s. The book draws together an account of major figures such as Feuerbach and Marx, with discussions of lesser-known but significant figures such as Eduard Gans, August Cieszkowski, Moses Hess, F. W. J. Schelling as well as such movements as French Saint-Simonianism and ‘positive philosophy’. Wide-ranging in scope and synthetic in approach, this is an important book for historians of philosophy, theology, political theory and nineteenth-century ideas.

• The first major study of Marx and Hegelianism in 20 years • Considers major figures such as Feuerbach and Marx as well as lesser-known significant figures • An important chapter in modern intellectual history for philosophers, historians of ideas, political theorists, and theologians

Contents
Introduction; 1. At the end of idealism: from 'nihilism' to 'positive philosophy'; 2. The transcendent sovereign and the political theology of restoration; 3. Ludwig Feuerbach and Christian civil society; 4. The social and political discourse of personality, 1835–1840; 5. Pantheism, social question and the third age; 6. Arnold Ruge: radical democracy and the politics of personhood, 1838–1843; 7. Karl Marx: from social republicanism to communism; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography.
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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Compass Direct News’ Top 10 Stories of 2009


Omar Khalafe
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LOS ANGELES, January 8 (CDN) — The revelation that Islamic militants in Somalia sought out at least 15 Christians, including women and children, and killed them for their faith headed the list of Compass’s top 10 stories in 2009. Following the Somali militants’ ruthless bid to rid the country of all non-Islamic faiths on the Compass list was an Islamist fire assault on a Christian community in Pakistan, the death of four Christians in Eritrean prisons, an historical crackdown in Iran that included the detention of two Christian women, and China again detaining and torturing Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng. The complete list follows.

1 – Islamic Extremists in Somalia Hunt Down Christians
Islamic militants in Somalia sought out at least 15 Christians, including women and children, and killed them for their faith in a ruthless bid to rid the country of all non-Muslim faiths in 2009. Two of the victims were children taken from their mother and beheaded when the Islamic rebels could not find their father, an underground church leader. On Nov. 14, Islamic extremists controlling part of the Somali capital of Mogadishu executed a 23-year-old Christian they accused of trying to convert a 15-year-old Muslim to Christianity. Members of the Islamic extremist group al Shabaab had taken Mumin Abdikarim Yusuf into custody on Oct. 28 after the 15-year-old boy reported him to the militants. Before Yusuf was executed by two shots to the head, reports filtered in that he had been badly beaten and his fingers broken as the Islamists tried to extract incriminating evidence against him and information about other Christians. The source later learned that Yusuf’s body showed signs of torture; all of his front teeth were gone, and some of his fingers were broken, he said.

On Oct. 19 in Galkayo, in Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region, three masked members of another militant Islamist group in Somalia killed a Somali woman who declined to wear a veil as prescribed by Muslim custom. Members of the comparatively “moderate” Suna Waljameca group killed Amina Muse Ali, 45, in her home; she had said members of the group had long monitored her movements because they suspected she was a Christian. Suna Waljameca is considered “moderate” in comparison with al Shabaab, which it has fought against for control over areas of Somalia; it is one of several Islamic groups in the country championing adoption of a strict interpretation of sharia (Islamic law). Along with al Shabaab, said to have links with al Qaeda, another group vying for power is the Hisbul Islam political party. Compass discovered an underground network of 224 believers not previously known in 2009, in addition to 74 known Christians. Somali Christians are in danger from both extremist groups and Somali law. While proclaiming himself a moderate, President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has embraced a version of sharia that mandates the death penalty for those who leave Islam.

On Sept. 28, a leader of Islamic extremist al Shabaab militia in Lower Juba identified only as Sheikh Arbow shot to death 46-year-old Mariam Muhina Hussein in Marerey village after discovering she had six Bibles. On Sept. 15, al Shabaab militants shot 69-year-old Omar Khalafe at a checkpoint they controlled 10 kilometers (six miles) from Merca after discovering that he was transporting Bibles. On Aug. 18 al Shabaab extremists shot and killed 41-year-old Ahmed Matan in Bulahawa, near the Somali border with Kenya. In Mahadday Weyne, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Mogadishu, al Shabaab Islamists on July 20 shot to death another convert from Islam, Mohammed Sheikh Abdiraman. On Feb. 21 al Shabaab militants beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader. The extremists also reportedly beheaded seven Christians on July 10; Reuters reported that they were killed in Baidoa for being Christians and “spies.”

*** A photo of Omar Khalafe is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

2 – Islamists Assault Christian Colony in Pakistan with Impunity
Islamic assailants in Pakistan acting on a false rumor of “blasphemy” of the Quran and whipped into frenzy by local imams attacked a Christian colony in Gojra, Punjab Province, burning at least seven Christians to death, injuring 19 others, looting more than 100 houses and setting fire to 50 of them. The dead included women and children. The attack came amid a protest by thousands of Muslim Islamists – including members of banned militant groups – that resulted in another six people dying when participants shot at police and officers responded with tear gas and gunfire. The same rumor of desecration of the Quran that led to the massive protest and attack in Gojra, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Faisalabad, also prompted an arson assault by Islamists on July 30 on the village of Korian, seven miles from Gojra, that gutted 60 houses.

Two Christians in Gojra who allegedly fired warning shots as the Islamist mob approached on Aug. 1 told Compass they were tortured after police arrested them. Naveed Masih, 32, and his 25-year-old brother Nauman Masih were arrested on Sept. 2 and Sept. 7 respectively for “rioting with deadly weapons and spreading terror with firing,” while only one Muslim was arrested following the massive assault. Naveed Masih, accused of killing one of the assailants in the Gojra attacks, has been released on bail, as has his brother Nauman Masih. The brothers gave shelter to 300 people during the attacks and were said to have been arrested at the behest of Islamists seeking retaliation for their statements as key witnesses against the assailants.

The attacks came amid deteriorating security as Taliban Islamists wreaked havoc on the country, and as spurious accusations against Christians under Pakistan’s notorious “blasphemy” laws spread at feverish rate. A 22-year-old Christian was allegedly tortured to death while in custody in Sialkot on a charge of blaspheming the Quran. Area Christians suspect police killed Robert Danish, nicknamed “Fanish” or “Falish” by friends, by torturing him to death on Sept. 15 after the mother of his Muslim girlfriend contrived a charge against him of desecrating Islam’s scripture. The allegation led to calls from mosque loudspeakers to punish Christians, prompting an Islamic mob to attack a church building in Jathikai village on Sept. 11 and the beating of several of the 30 families forced to flee their homes. Jathikai was Danish’s native village. Eyewitnesses at the funeral in Christian Town, Sialkot, said police fired shots directly at the Christians, injuring three, when mourners began to move the coffin toward nearby Jathikai. Three prison officials were reportedly suspended after Danish died in custody.

*** Photos of Robert Danish, Naveed Masih and Nauman Masih are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

3 – Four Eritrean Christians Die in Prison for their Faith
Four Christians were known to have died in prison in Eritrea in 2009 after refusing to recant their faith. At the Mitire Military Confinement Center in the country’s northeast, 37-year-old Mogos Hagos Kiflom was said to have died from torture in early January. On Jan. 16, Mehari Gebreneguse Asgedom, 42, died in solitary confinement at the Mitire camp from torture and complications from diabetes, according to Christian support group Open Doors.

Sources told Netherlands-based Open Doors that Yemane Kahasay Andom, 43, died on July 23 at the same prison. A member of the Kale-Hiwot church in Mendefera, Andom was said to be secretly buried in the camp. Weakened by continuous torture, Andom was suffering from a severe case of malaria. “He was allegedly further weakened by continuous physical torture and solitary confinement in an underground cell the two weeks prior to his death for his refusal to sign a recantation form,” the organization said in a statement. “It is not clear what the contents of the recantation form were, but most Christians interpret the signing of such a form as the denouncement of their faith in Christ.” Andom had spent the past 18 months at the Mitire camp.

In September, at least seven prisoners held at Wi’a Military camp died in an outbreak of meningitis, including one Christian, according to the organization. Mesfin Gebrekristos died on Sept. 3 after spending a year imprisoned for his evangelical faith. He left behind a wife and two children.

The Eritrean government in May 2002 outlawed all religious groups except Islam and the Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran churches. The government of President Isaias Afwerki has stepped up its campaign against churches it has outlawed, once again earning it a spot on the U.S. Department of State’s latest list of worst violators of religious freedom. Eritrean officials have routinely denied that religious oppression exists in the country, saying the government is only enforcing laws against unregistered churches. The government has denied all efforts by independent Protestant churches to register, and people caught worshipping outside the four recognized religious institutions, even in private homes, suffer arrest, torture and severe pressure to deny their faith. The Eritrean Orthodox Church and its flourishing renewal movement have also been subject to government raids.

4 – Iran Detains Two Christian Women amid Historical Crackdown
In a growing climate of fear as Iran cracked down on dissidents following disputed elections, authorities detained two Christian women for nine months and pressured them to recant their faith. Maryam Rostampour, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, 30, were held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison after their arrest on March 5 for “acting against state security” and “taking part in illegal gatherings.” On Aug. 9, they appeared before a judge who asked them if they would deny their faith and return to Islam; both women refused, and the judge sent them back to their prison cells “to think about it,” according to a source who spoke with family members. “This is something we say in Iran,” said the source. “It means, ‘Since you’re not sorry, you’ll stay in jail for a long time, and maybe you’ll change your mind.’”

The two women were released on Nov. 18 without having to post bail amid an international campaign calling for their freedom. They still could face charges of proselytizing and “apostasy,” or leaving Islam. An article mandating death for apostates in accordance with sharia (Islamic law) reportedly had been stricken from a draft penal code, but experts on Iran say The Council of Guardians and Iran’s Supreme Leader still have the final say on who receives capital punishment for leaving Islam.

Their ordeal came amid waves of arrests of Christians throughout the year. Public allegations that detainees have been tortured, abused, killed and raped in custody fueled unusually public fury in Iran this year. Iranian sources said a long-standing government rift between liberal and conservative factions is widening and becoming more apparent. “We have never had such a thing,” an Iranian source told Compass. “All these old problems that were inside the government between liberals and fundamentalists are coming out, and we can see them on TV, radio, newspaper, the public media in the country.” A sense among government officials of having lost control contributed to the uptick in arrests of people of minority religions, including Christians, the source said.

*** A photo of Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

5 – China Again Tortures Key Christian Human Rights Attorney
In a year of such a marked clampdown on house churches that even mainstream media took note, Chinese authorities again arranged for state-sponsored thugs to abduct and torture Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng. Early in 2009 Gao authorized advocacy group China Aid Association (CAA) to release his account of 50 days of torture by state-sponsored thugs in September and October of 2007. He had written the account in November 2007 while under house arrest in Beijing after prolonged beatings and electric shocks on his mouth and genitals. “Every time when I was tortured,” Gao wrote, “I was always repeatedly threatened that if I spelled out later what had happened to me, I would be tortured again, but I was told, ‘This time it will happen in front of your wife and children.’”

On Jan. 9, before state security agents in his home village in Shaanxi Province abducted him on Feb. 4, Gao’s family members began their escape from China. Gao’s wife, Geng He, along with 16-year-old daughter Geng Ge and 5-year-old son Gao Tianyu, arrived on foot to Thailand and eventually were whisked to the United States. They arrived in Los Angeles on March 11 and were transferred to New York on March 14. In his 2007 account, Gao had written that those who captured and tortured him warned that if he revealed their ill treatment of him, he would be killed. On March 25 CAA launched a campaign urging the international community to take action on his behalf. By year’s end his whereabouts were still unknown, although a family member reportedly had telephone contact in which Gao indicated he was suffering intensely.

Gao has defended house church Christians and coal miners as well as members of the banned Falun Gong, which fuses Buddhist-inspired teachings with forms of meditation. Gao’s suffering in 2007 followed an open letter he wrote to the U.S. Congress describing China’s torture of Falun Gong members. Persecution of Christian house churches in towns and villages is “no different from the disaster suffered by Falun Gong practitioners,” he wrote. “In my hometown, a small county, the number of arrested, detained, and robbed family church members each year is far beyond persecuted Falun Gong practitioners, and this illegal persecution has been going on for a long time.”

The abduction of Gao came amid one of the most severe crackdowns in recent years, advocacy groups said. Bypassing the court system, on Nov. 30 China arbitrarily sentenced five leaders of the Fushan Church in Linfen City, Shanxi Province to re-education labor camps for two years, according to CAA. The five leaders were accused of “gathering people to disturb the public order” after they organized a prayer rally of 1,000 people the day after military police and others attacked their church members and building on Sept. 13.

On Nov. 25 a Chinese court sentenced five house church leaders to three to seven years in prison after they were arrested en route to Beijing to file a complaint about an attack on their church. The Sept. 13 attack on the Fushan Church branch congregation in Linfen involved some 400 uniformed police and civilians bearing shovels, batons, bricks, iron hooks and other weapons beating members of the church who were sleeping at the nearly finished factory building used as a worship site. With several Fushan County officials involved in the attack, more than 30 Christians were seriously injured among the 100 Christians who were hurt, CAA reported. The five pastors sentenced on Nov. 25 were arrested on Sept. 25 without a warrant, according to CAA. Yang Rongli was sent to prison for seven years for “illegally occupying farming land” and “disturbing transportation order by gathering masses.” She and four other pastors were sentenced at the People’s Court of Raodu district, Linfen City, Shanxi Province. Yang’s husband, Wang Xiaoguang, was handed a sentence of three years on the charge of “illegally occupying farming land.” Cui Jiaxing was sentenced to four and half years, and Yang Xuan to three and half years, on the same charge; Zhang Huamei received four years of prison for “disturbing transportation order by gathering masses.”

*** A photo of the demolished factory used as worship site is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.


6 – Egyptian Muslims Mount Brazen, Large-Scale Attacks on Christians
Societal and official oppression of Christians came to a head in Egypt in 2009 with especially brazen attacks on Christians by Islamic extremists. In one gruesome attack on Sept. 16, Galal Nasr el-Dardiri, 35, mutilated 63-year-old Abdu Georgy in front of the victim’s shop in Behnay village. Other Copts watched in horror as El-Dardiri stabbed Georgy five times in the back, according to newspaper Al-Youm al-Sabeh. As Georgy fell to the ground, El-Dardiri stabbed him four times in the stomach. He then disemboweled him, slit his throat and began sawing off his head. The Rev. Stephanos Aazer, a Coptic priest who knew Georgy and saw photographs of his mutilated body, said the victim’s head was attached to the body only by a small piece of flesh. El-Dardiri then allegedly went to a nearby town and stabbed Coptic shopkeeper Boils Eid Messiha, 40, leaving him in critical condition; he then went to Mit Afif and attacked another Copt, Hany Barsom Soliman, who suffered lacerations to his arms.

El-Dardiri was arrested on Sept. 17 in Cairo and charged with murder. Ibrahim Habib, chairman of United Copts Great Britain, said Egypt has encouraged the type of “radicalization” that has led to such attacks. “It is the Egyptian government’s responsibility now to stop the persecution and victimization of its Coptic minority by Islamic fundamentalists,” he said. “The persecution and victimization of the Christians in Egypt has been persistent for three decades and recently escalated to a worrying tempo.”

Official oppression of Christians in 2009 included the rejection of a second convert’s attempt to change his identification card’s religious status from Muslim to Christian and the slaughter of the nation’s pigs, crippling the livelihood of thousands of swine breeders, nearly all Coptic Christians. The World Health Organization criticized the measure as unnecessary for fighting the H1-N1 flu strain, as no cases of “swine flu” had been reported in Egypt, when the government ordered the slaughter at the end of April. An estimated 250,000 mainly poor Christians in Cairo made their living from collecting garbage and raising pigs in slum areas. The government’s decision to destroy as many as 400,000 pigs was also lambasted by the United Nations as having little or no warrant, fueling speculation that the directive was motivated by the Islamic prohibition of pig consumption and the fact that Egypt’s pork industry is run almost entirely by Copts. A U.S.-based Coptic rights group condemned the slaughter as a deliberate targeting of defenseless Christians and a continuation of a long campaign of discrimination against the Coptic community.

On June 13, a court rejected an Egyptian convert’s attempt to change his identification card’s religious status from Muslim to Christian, the second failed attempt to exercise constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom by a Muslim-born convert to Christianity. Maher El-Gohary was attacked on the street, subjected to death threats and driven into hiding as a result of opening his case. “I am disappointed with what happened and shocked with the decision, because I went to great lengths and through a great deal of hardship,” he said. El-Gohary followed Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy as only the second Muslim-born convert in Egypt to request such a change.

7 – Islamic Sect in Nigeria Mounts Sharia Offensive
An Islamic sect opposed to Western education in northern Nigeria’s Borno state killed at least 12 Christians, including three pastors, among hundreds of others slain in an offensive to impose a strict version of Islamic law on the country. The Boko Haram sect initially attacked police and government bases. Rampaging members burned 20 churches before police captured and killed Boko Haram’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf. Police say Yusuf was killed “while trying to escape,” but he was widely thought to have been executed after being arrested alive in his hideout.

Violence started on July 26, when armed sect members attacked a police station in Bauchi state that set off a firestorm of violence spreading to Borno, Kano and Yobe states. Those killed in Borno include Pastor Sabo Yakubu of Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN), the Rev. Sylvester Akpan of National Evangelical Mission and the Rev. George Orji of Good News of Christ Church International, Inc. Church buildings burned in Borno included five branches of the COCIN denomination, two Catholic churches, two Deeper Life Church buildings, two EYN (Church of the Brethren in Nigeria) buildings, and buildings of the National Evangelical Mission, Celestial Church of Christ, Elijah Apostolic Church, The Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Revival Ministries, Assemblies of God Church, Redeemed Christian Church of God, Christ for All Nations, Baptist Church and Anglican Church, all in different parts of the state.

Samuel Salifu, national secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), said the association had lost confidence in the government’s ability to safeguard the lives and property of Christians. Accusing Borno Gov. Ali Modu Sheriff of complicity in the emergence of Boku Haram, Salifu voiced concern that the sect would perceive Christianity as a Western religion and therefore as something to be eliminated. The governor’s press director, Usman Ciroma, dismissed CAN’s claim of complicity by Gov. Sheriff, and the governor denied any relationship with the Islamic sect.

8 – U.S. Christian Assassinated in Mauritania
The presence of an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group in the North African country of Mauritania emerged in greater force in 2009. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, North African unit of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, claimed responsibility for the murder of Christopher Leggett, 39, killed on June 23 in front of the language and computer school he operated in the capital city of Nouakchott. A North African al-Qaeda spokesman aired a statement on an Arab TV station saying the group killed Leggett because he was speaking to Muslims of Christianity.


Advocacy organization Middle East Concern reported that Leggett “resisted what appeared to be an attempt to kidnap him and was then shot in the head several times by his two assailants.” Leggett, his wife and four children lived for seven years in Mauritania, where he directed an aid agency that provided training in computer skills, sewing and literacy, and he also ran a micro-finance program. His efforts to better the lives of people in Mauritania were widely appreciated, with Mauritania’s minister of justice saying that his death “was a great loss to Mauritania.” Mauritania’s National Foundation for the Defense of Democracy called for the killers to be brought to justice.

Leggett, who grew up in Cleveland, Tenn., taught at a center specializing in computer science and languages in El Kasr, a lower-class neighborhood in Nouakchott. He was a member of First Baptist Church of Cleveland for many years and most recently was a member of Michigan Avenue Baptist Church of Cleveland. The last previously known activity of al-Qaeda in Mauritania occurred in December 2007, when gunmen believed to be linked to al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch killed four French tourists picnicking near Aleg, east of Nouakchott.


9 – Intimidation Tactics Eclipse Justice following Violence in India
Christians in India were disappointed in the prosecution of those accused of three months of violence in Orissa state the previous year. Christian leaders in India called for a special investigations team to counter what they called shoddy or corrupt police investigations into violence that killed more than 100 people – mostly hacked to death or burned alive – and which incinerated more than 4,500 houses, over 250 churches and 13 educational institutions. Of the 100 cases handled by two-fast track courts, 32 had been heard as of Nov. 30, resulting in 48 convictions and more than 164 acquittals.

Among those exonerated “for lack of evidence” was Manoj Pradhan, a legislator from the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who was acquitted of murder on Nov. 24. He was accused of killing Trinath Digal of Tiangia village on Aug. 25, 2008. Pradhan was cleared in six of 14 cases against him. He was arrested and jailed in October 2008 and was elected as BJP Member of the Legislative Assembly from the G. Udayagiri constituency while in jail.

The number of cases registered total 787. “Christians are extremely shocked by this travesty of justice in Orissa,” attorney Bibhu Dutta Das told Compass. The government of Orissa set up two fast-track courts in Kandhamal district headquarters for cases related to the violence that began after the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his disciples in Jalespetta on Aug. 23, 2008. The chief minister of Orissa state has admitted that Hindu extremist umbrella group Sangh Parivar was involved in the anti-Christian violence. Attorneys said acquittals have resulted from police investigations that were intentionally defective to cover up for Hindu extremist attackers. In many cases, for example, police have fraudulently misrepresented the ages of suspects so they would not match with those denoted in the victims’ First Information Reports, leaving the court no option but to let the alleged culprits go.

Additionally, an estimated half of the 50,000 Christians who fled to refugee camps have been unable to return home. “Many cannot, as they have been told they have to convert to Hinduism before they will be accepted in the villages,” said Dr. John Dayal of the All India Christian Council. “The threats and coercion continue till today.” He added that most of the more than 5,000 houses destroyed in December 2007 and August-October 2008 mayhem have yet to be rebuilt.

10 – Mexican Supreme Court Frees 29 Accused in Acteal Massacre
After years of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court of Mexico on Nov. 4 and Aug. 12 ordered the release of 29 prisoners and retrials for 22 others accused in the Acteal massacre of December 1997. The court ruled that federal authorities had used “invented proofs and witnesses” in convicting the men, many of them evangelical Christians supportive of the then-ruling party who had land disputes and other conflicts with their accusers – mainly Roman Catholics sympathetic to the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army. The 22 men to be retried, plus at least six others, remained in prison.

The rulings brought to an end more than a decade of struggle by relatives and other supporters of the men. The court ruled that prosecutors violated legal process, fabricated evidence and false testimonies, formulated non-existent crimes and provided no concrete argument establishing culpability of the men. Supreme Court Justice José Ramón Cossío Diaz said the decision to free them was not a declaration of innocence but recognition of “a lack of impugning evidence” against them in the Dec. 22, 1997 massacre, in which 45 people were killed, including women and children.

Controversy over who killed the 45 people has revolved around whether there was a “massacre” by numerous “paramilitary” villagers or a “confrontation” between a handful of neighboring peasants and Zapatista rebels. Historian Héctor Aguilar Camín has argued that there was both a confrontation and a massacre, with some overlap between each, but that they were largely separate incidents. Five confessed killers have testified that they and four others engaged only Zapatista militia to avenge the death of a relative, while the federal attorney general’s office charged that at least 50 pro-government “paramilitaries” descended on a relief camp hermitage full of displaced peasants bent on killing and robbing them.

The testimonies of the five confessed killers – the four others remain at large – agree that the nine avengers were the only ones involved in the firefights, and that the decision to attack the Zapatistas was a private family decision made with no involvement from government authorities. They also agree that the sole motive was to avenge the assassination of a relative – the latest of 18 unprosecuted murders by Zapatistas over the previous three months, according to Aguilar Camín. Government prosecutors unduly dismissed much of the testimony of the five confessed avengers, Aguilar Camín wrote in a 2007 article for Nexos, and over the years judges critical of the hasty convictions were mysteriously transferred to other courts and cases.


*** Photos of some of the Acteal prisoners are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

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Bill Clinton & George W. Bush



April 19, 1995


Oklahoma City, Oklahoma


President Bill (William J.) Clinton




September 11, 2001


New York City, New York; Washington, District of Columbia, & Pennsylvania


President George W. Bush


The Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995


OMNIBUS COUNTERTERRORISM ACT OF 1995--MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (H. DOC. NO. 104-31) (House of Representatives - February 09, 1995)

[Page: H1530]



The SPEAKER pro tempore laid before the House the following message from the President of the United States; which was read and, together with accompanying papers, referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and ordered to be printed:

To the Congress of the United States:

I am pleased to transmit today for your immediate consideration and enactment the `Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995.' Also transmitted is a section-by-section analysis. This legislative proposal is part of my Administration's comprehensive effort to strengthen the ability of the United States to deter terrorist acts and punish those who aid or abet any international terrorist activity in the United States. It corrects deficiencies and gaps in current law.

Some of the most significant provisions of the bill will:

--Provide clear Federal criminal jurisdiction for any international terrorist attack that might occur in the United States;

--Provide Federal criminal jurisdiction over terrorists who use the United States as the place from which to plan terrorist attacks overseas;

--Provide a workable mechanism, utilizing U.S. District Court Judges appointed by the Chief Justice, to deport expeditiously alien terrorists without risking the disclosure of national security information or techniques;

--Provide a new mechanism for preventing fund-raising in the United States that supports international terrorist activities overseas; and

--Implement an international treaty requiring the insertion of a chemical agent into plastic explosives when manufactured to make them detectable.

The fund-raising provision includes a licensing mechanism under which funds can only be transferred based on a strict showing that the money will be used exclusively for religious, charitable, literary, or educational purposes and will not be diverted for terrorist activity. The bill also includes numerous relatively technical, but highly important, provisions that will facilitate investigations and prosecutions of terrorist crimes.

It is the Administration's intent that section 101 of the bill confer Federal jurisdiction only over international terrorism offenses. The Administration will work with Members of Congress to ensure that the language in the bill is consistent with that intent.

I urge the prompt and favorable consideration of this legislative proposal by the Congress.

William J. Clinton.

The White House, February 9, 1995.


[TIME: 1830]

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Oklahoma City Bombing



Oklahoma City Bombing
By , About.com Guide


Historical Importance of the Oklahoma City Bombing:

The Oklahoma City bombing was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil until the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attack.

Dates of the Oklahoma City Bombing:
9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995

Also Known As: Oklahoma City Tragedy; Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Bombing

Overview of the Oklahoma City Bombing:

On April 19, 1993, the standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidian cult (led by David Koresh) at the Davidian compound in Waco, Texas ended in a fiery tragedy. When the FBI tried to end the standoff by gassing the complex, the entire compound went up in fire, claiming the lives of 75 followers, including many young children. The death toll was high and many people blamed the U.S. government for the tragedy. One such person was Timothy McVeigh.

McVeigh, angered by the Waco tragedy, decided to enact retribution to those he felt responsible -- the federal government, especially the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). In downtown Oklahoma City, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building held numerous federal agency offices, including those of the ATF.

Planning his revenge for the second anniversary of the Waco disaster, McVeigh enlisted his friend Terry Nichols and several others to help him pull off his plan. In September 1994, McVeigh purchased large amounts of fertilizer (ammonium nitrate) and then stored it in a rented shed in Herington, Kansas. The ammonium nitrate was the main ingredient for the bomb. McVeigh and Nichols stole other supplies needed to complete the bomb from a quarry in Marion, Kansas.

On April 17, 1995, McVeigh rented a Ryder truck and then McVeigh and Nichols loaded the Ryder truck with approximately 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. On the morning of April 19th, McVeigh drove the Ryder truck to the Murrah Federal Building, lit the bomb's fuse, parked in front of the building, left the keys inside the truck and locked the door, then walked across the parking lot to an alley, then started to jog.

On the morning of April 19, 1995, most employees of the Murrah Federal Building had already arrived at work and children had already been dropped off at the daycare center when the huge explosion tore through the building at 9:02 a.m. Nearly the entire north face of the 9-story building was pulverized into dust and rubble.

In took weeks of sorting through debris to find the victims. In all, 168 people were killed in the explosion, which included 19 children. One nurse was also killed during the rescue operation.

Ninety minutes after the explosion, McVeigh was pulled over by a highway patrol officer for driving without a license plate but when the officer discovered that McVeigh had an unregistered gun, he arrested him on a firearms charge. Before McVeigh was released, his ties to the explosion were discovered. Unfortunately for McVeigh, almost all his purchases and rental agreements related to the bombing could be traced back to him after the explosion. On June 3, 1997, McVeigh was convicted of murder and conspiracy and on August 15, 1997 he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. On June 11, 2001, McVeigh was executed.

Nichols was brought in for questioning two days after the blast and then arrested for his role in McVeigh's plan. On December 24, 1997, a federal jury found Nichols guilty and on June 5, 1998 Nichols was sentenced to life in prison. In March 2004, Nichols went on trial for murder charges by the state of Oklahoma.

A third accomplice, Michael Fortier, who testified against McVeigh and Nichols, received a 12-year prison sentence and was fined $200,000 on May 27, 1998 for knowing about the plan but not informing authorities before the explosion.

What little remained of the Murrah Federal Building was demolished on May 23, 1995. In 2000, a memorial was built on the location to remember the tragedy of the Oklahoma City Bombing.
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The Reichstag Burns



The Reichstag Burns

Adolf Hitler, the new Chancellor of Germany, had no intention of abiding by the rules of democracy. He intended only to use those rules to legally establish himself as dictator as quickly as possible then begin the Nazi revolution.

Even before he was sworn in, he was at work to accomplish that goal by demanding new elections. While Hindenburg waited impatiently in another room, Hitler argued with conservative leader Hugenberg, who vehemently opposed the idea. Hitler's plan was to establish a majority of elected Nazis in the Reichstag which would become a rubber stamp, passing whatever laws he desired while making it all perfectly legal.

On his first day as chancellor, Hitler manipulated Hindenburg into dissolving the Reichstag and calling for the new elections he had wanted - to be held on March 5, 1933.

That evening, Hitler attended a dinner with the German General Staff and told them Germany would re-arm as a first step toward regaining its former position in the world. He also gave them a strong hint of things to come by telling them there would be conquest of the lands to the east and ruthless Germanization of conquered territories.


Hitler also reassured the generals there would be no attempt to replace the regular army with an army of SA storm troopers. For years this had been a big concern of the generals who wanted to preserve their own positions of power and keep the traditional military intact.

Hitler's storm troopers were about to reach new heights of power of their own and begin a reign of terror that would last as long as the Reich.

President Hindenburg had fallen under Hitler's spell and was signing just about anything put in front of him. He signed an emergency decree that put the German state of Prussia into the hands of Hitler confidant, Vice Chancellor Papen. Göring as Minister of the Interior for Prussia took control of the police. Prussia was Germany's biggest and most important state and included the capital of Berlin.

Göring immediately replaced hundreds of police officials loyal to the republic with Nazi officials loyal to Hitler. He also ordered the police not to interfere with the SA and SS under any circumstances. This meant that anybody being harassed, beaten, or even murdered by Nazis, had nobody to turn to for help.

Göring then ordered the police to show no mercy to those deemed hostile to the State, meaning those hostile to Hitler, especially Communists.

"Police officers who use weapons in carrying out their duties will be covered by me. Whoever misguidedly fails in this duty can expect disciplinary action." - Order of Hermann Göring to Prussian Police, February 1933.

On February 22, Göring set up an auxiliary police force of 50,000 men, composed mostly of members of the SA and SS. The vulgar, brawling, murderous Nazi storm troopers now had the power of police.

Two days later, they raided Communist headquarters in Berlin. Göring falsely claimed he had uncovered plans for a Communist uprising in the raid. But he actually uncovered the membership list of the Communist party and intended to arrest every one of the four thousand members.

Göring and Goebbels, with Hitler's approval, then hatched a plan to cause panic by burning the Reichstag building and blaming the Communists. The Reichstag was the building in Berlin where the elected members of the republic met to conduct the daily business of government.

By a weird coincidence, there was also in Berlin a deranged Communist conducting a one-man uprising. An arsonist named Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, from Holland, had been wandering around Berlin for a week attempting to burn government buildings to protest capitalism and start a revolt. On February 27, he decided to burn the Reichstag building.

Carrying incendiary devices, he spent all day lurking around the building, before breaking in around 9 p.m. He took off his shirt, lit it on fire, then went to work using it as his torch.

The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Göring were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Göring's residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries, then hurried back through the tunnel.

The deep red glow of the burning Reichstag caught the eye of President Hindenburg and Vice-Chancellor Papen who were dining at a club facing the building. Papen put the elderly Hindenburg in his own car and took him to the scene.

Hitler was at Goebbels' apartment having dinner. They rushed to the scene where they met Göring who was already screaming false charges and making threats against the Communists.

At first glance, Hitler described the fire as a beacon from heaven.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in German history...This fire is the beginning," Hitler told a news reporter at the scene.

After viewing the damage, an emergency meeting of government leaders was held. When told of the arrest of the Communist arsonist, Van der Lubbe, Hitler became deliberately enraged.

"The German people have been soft too long. Every Communist official must be shot. All Communist deputies must be hanged this very night. All friends of the Communists must be locked up. And that goes for the Social Democrats and the Reichsbanner as well!"

Hitler left the fire scene and went straight to the offices of his newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, to oversee its coverage of the fire. He stayed up all night with Goebbels putting together a paper full of tales of a Communist plot to violently seize power in Berlin.

At a cabinet meeting held later in the morning, February 28, Chancellor Hitler demanded an emergency decree to overcome the crisis. He met little resistance from his largely non-Nazi cabinet. That evening, Hitler and Papen went to Hindenburg and the befuddled old man signed the decree "for the Protection of the people and the State."

The Emergency Decree stated: "Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."

Immediately, there followed the first big Nazi roundup as truckloads of SA and SS roared through the streets bursting in on known Communist hangouts and barging into private homes. Thousands of Communists as well as Social Democrats and liberals were taken away into 'protective custody' to SA barracks where they were beaten and tortured.

"I don't have to worry about justice; my mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!" - Hermann Göring, March 3, 1933.

Fifty one anti-Nazis were murdered. The Nazis suppressed all political activity, meetings and publications of non-Nazi parties. The very act of campaigning against the Nazis was in effect made illegal.

"Every bullet which leaves the barrel of a police pistol now is my bullet. If one calls this murder, then I have murdered. I ordered this. I back it up. I assume the responsibility, and I am not afraid to do so." - Hermann Göring.

Nazi newspapers continued to print false evidence of Communist conspiracies, claiming that only Hitler and the Nazis could prevent a Communist takeover. Joseph Goebbels now had control of the State-run radio and broadcast Nazi propaganda and Hitler's speeches all across the nation.

The Nazis now turned their attention to election day, March 5.

All of the resources of the government necessary for a big win were placed at the disposal of Joseph Goebbels. The big industrialists who had helped Hitler into power gladly coughed up three million marks. Representatives from Krupp munitions and I. G. Farben were among those reaching into their pockets at Göring's insistence.

"The sacrifice we ask is easier to bear if you realize that the elections will certainly be the last for the next ten years, probably for the next hundred years," Göring told them.

With no money problems and the power of the State behind them, the Nazis campaigned furiously to get Hitler the majority he wanted.

On March 5, the last free elections were held. But the people denied Hitler his majority, giving the Nazis only 44 per cent of the total vote, 17, 277,180. Despite massive propaganda and the brutal crackdown, the other parties held their own. The Center Party got over four million and the Social Democrats over seven million. The Communists lost votes but still got over four million.

The goal of a legally established dictatorship was now within reach. But the lack of the necessary two thirds majority in the Reichstag was an obstacle. For Hitler and his ruthless inner circle, it was obstacle that was soon to be overcome.

As for Van der Lubbe, the Communist arsonist, he was tried and convicted, then beheaded.

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Source:http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm
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