WASHINGTON, DC — North Korea stands at the top of a list of 50 countries where at least 215 million Christians faced the most severe persecution in 2017, resulting in 3,066 deaths and 1,020 rapes mainly targeting women, revealed Open Doors, an organization that monitors ill-treated Christians worldwide.
At the National Press Club on Wednesday, David Curry, the president and CEO of Open Doors, unveiled the 2018 World Wide List (WWL) of the top 50 “most dangerous” countries to worship Jesus. Referring to North Korea, he declared:
Imagine in your mind a leader that thinks he’s god but acts like an animal — devouring his own people with his teeth where people are forced to worship at the statute of Kim Jung Un and bow down and lay flowers at his feet as if he was a god.
Yet, [Kim] sets up controls mechanisms, neighborhood watches that surround communities rewarding citizens for spying on each other giving them more food if they find somebody who has a Bible and who purports to a be a Christian and that makes Christians the number one enemy of the state in North Korea and that’s why it is the number one on the world’s watchlist.
Open Doors pointed out that thousands of Christians are facing death worldwide for practicing their faith, particularly in North Korea.
According to the monitor group’s 2018 World Watch List (WWL), “215 million Christians experience high levels of persecution in the [50] countries on the World Watch List,” with the majority of them in North Korea, considered “the worst place for Christians” for 16 consecutive years since 2002.
Open Doors reported:
The primary driver of persecution in North Korea is the state. For three generations, everything in the country focused on idolizing the leading [Kim Jung Un] family. Christians are seen as hostile elements in society that have to be eradicated.
Due to the constant indoctrination permeating the whole country, neighbors and even family members are highly watchful and report any suspicious religious activity to the authorities…The situation for Christians is vulnerable and precarious. They face persecution from state authorities and their non-Christian family, friends and neighbors. Pray for their protection.
There are many Christians languishing, starving, and enduring hard labor in North Korea prisons for merely owning a Bible and having faith in Jesus Christ.
Since the U.S.-led war that started in Afghanistan soon after September 11, 2001, the United States has spent at least $877 billion on the war-devastated country, including on the promotion of religious freedoms.
Nevertheless, Afghanistan came in second place in the list of the top 50 worst countries in terms of persecution — where the cost of being a Christian can quickly turn into a nightmare and the last breath one ever takes.
During the 2017 reporting period covered by the latest World Watch List, persecutors killed 3,066 Christians, kidnapped 1,252, raped 1,020, and attacked 793 churches, noted Open Doors.
Of the top ten countries, eight are tormented by “Islamic Oppression,” which mainly refers to hostility against Christians. Eritrea and North Korea are the exceptions.
Meanwhile, persecution against Christians at the hands of “Hindu extremists” in India is on the rise, resulting in deaths and rape of Christian women.
“A shocking trend in the world watchlist I want to highlight for you today is the increase in persecution of Christian women,” stated Curry. “The data seems to prove that Christian women are the most vulnerable population today with sexual harassment and rape and forced marriage being prime tactics from extremists against the world against Christians.”
Pakistan, India’s regional enemy, has accused Hindu extremists of persecuting Christians and Muslims and forcing them to convert to their religion.
Hindu nationalist groups are reportedly affiliated with Indian President Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Pro-Hindu nationalism “President Modi only wants one religion,” proclaimed Curry.
Every day, Christian women reportedly face sexual harassment, rape, and forced marriage, all common in India, which is ranked 11 on the persecution list.
The justice for Christians in India is “poor,” determined Curry, noting that 635 Jesus followers were held and detained in the nation without trial last year alone, often called one of the largest democracies in the world.
Of the 50 nations on the Open Doors World Watch list, at least two Western Hemisphere countries made the cut joining the very few predominantly Christian nations on the list — Latin America’s Mexico (39th place) and Colombia (49th) where persecution is reportedly driven by “organized crime and corruption.”
The monitor group identifies North Korea’s communist and post-communist oppression as the primary source of persecution against Christians, which make up a little over 1 percent (300,000) of the 25.4 million population.
The assessment deems more than 60 percent of the persecution tactics employed by Kim as violent.
Liberals are the most racist and violent in the country.
Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, canceled a speaking engagement at a major technology industry event days before it was scheduled to place because of death threats, according to a report Thursday.
Two unnamed agency sources told Recode why Pai pulled the appearance at the annual Consumer Electronics Show Las Vegas on Jan. 9 one day after it was reported he had canceled.
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The report said that federal law enforcement had looked into the situation and other FCC offices would be briefed.
While the FBI did not immediately respond to Recode, a spokesperson for the Consumer Technology Association, which hosts the event, declined to comment, and an FCC spokesman for Pai said the agency does “not comment on security measures or concerns.”
The nature of the threats are unclear, but it is the second time in recent weeks Pai has dealt with imminent security concerns.
The FCC briefly halted its meeting in December and evacuated the room in response to a security scare as the commissioners were about to vote to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality rules.
Within minutes the meeting reconvened and the agency successfully killed the Internet regulations on a party-line vote, despite a great deal of opposition from Democrats, consumers, and technology giants.
Pai, who spearheaded the repeal effort, also received death threats during the public comment period.
The Ayatollah and Black Lives Matter make a great team. However all this happened under Obama Idiot.
They are on their way to college I’m sure. The The Ayatollah might want to rethink this BS tweet.
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei evoked the radical Black Lives Matter movement last week in a tweet slamming the United States for committing supposed “oppression” of “black women, men, & children for no justifiable reason.”
In a tweet sent from his account, Khamenei wrote, “The U.S. gov. commits oppression inside the U.S., too. U.S. police murder black women, men, & children for no justifiable reason, and the murderers are acquitted in U.S. courts. This is their judicial system! And they slam other countries’ and our country’s judicial system. #BLM“:
The U.S. gov. commits oppression inside the U.S., too. U.S. police murder black women, men, & children for no justifiable reason, and the murderers are acquitted in U.S. courts. This is their judicial system! And they slam other countries’ and our country’s judicial system. #BLM
This is not Khamenei’s first time commenting on the incident that originated in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 when Michael Brown was shot and killed. The police officer responsible did not receive criminal charges.
In 2014, Khamenei tweeted, “#Jesus endured sufferings to oppose tyrants who had put humans in hell in this world& the hereafter while he backed the oppressed. #Ferguson“:
#Jesus endured sufferings to oppose tyrants who had put humans in hell in this world& the hereafter while he backed the oppressed. #Ferguson
Earlier that same year, he tweeted, “Today like previous years, African-Americans are still under pressure, oppressed and subjected to discrimination. #Ferguson“:
#Jesus endured sufferings to oppose tyrants who had put humans in hell in this world& the hereafter while he backed the oppressed. #Ferguson
In a Christmas Eve tweet, he compared the Ferguson shooting to the Palestinian people in Gaza, writing, “If #Jesus were among us today he wouldn’t spare a second to fight the arrogants&support the oppressed.#Ferguson#Gaza“:
If #Jesus were among us today he wouldn’t spare a second to fight the arrogants&support the oppressed.#Ferguson#Gaza
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It is not uncommon for Islamists to align with left-wing groups and ideologies.
Iran has a track record of not providing its political prisoners with fair trials or access to proper defense attorneys. It is also known for its egregious human rights abuses and discriminating against minorities, including members of the LGBT community, Christians, Baha’is, and Jews.
Iran is the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism, funding Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi rebels in Syria, to name a few.
Breitbart News documented a list of the chaos and terror the Iranian regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have reaped in the Middle East region since it came to power in 1979 after Iran’s late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced with radical Islamic hardliner Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” on Thursday, which will repeal the agency’s 2015 net neutrality regulation.
Chairman Pai told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday, “I think what net neutrality repealed would actually mean is we once again have a free and open Internet. The government would not be regulating how anyone in the Internet service providers, how anyone else in the internet economy manages their networks.”
The FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom order will reclassify the Internet as an “information service” compared to the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality order, which regulated the Internet as a public monopoly. The order will also require Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast or Verizon to release transparency reports detailing their practices towards consumers and businesses.
The FCC’s net neutrality repeal order will also restore the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) traditional authority and expertise to regulate and litigate unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive telecommunications practices without onerous regulations and increased cost.
On Monday the FCC and the FTC agreed to share the responsibility to police unfair ISP practices regarding unfair or deceptive practices to block, throttle, or promote web content.
Chairman Pai explained in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal why repealing net neutrality will preserve a free and open internet.
Pai wrote:
We have proof that markets work: For almost two decades, the U.S. had a free and open internet without these heavy-handed rules. There was no market failure before 2015. Americans weren’t living in a digital dystopia before the FCC seized power. To the contrary, millions enjoyed an online economy that was the envy of the world. They experienced the most powerful platform ever seen for permission-less innovation and expression. Next month, I hope the FCC will choose to return to the common-sense policies that helped the online world transform the physical one.
The FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order and Breitbart News’s Allum Bokhari argued that under net neutrality content providers such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have censored the internet, stifled conservative and alternative voices, and serve as a greater threat to free speech compared to ISPs.
Pai charged in a recent speech that Facebook, Twitter, and Google serve as a greater threat to free speech and an open internet.
“I love Twitter, and I use it all the time,” said Pai. “But let’s not kid ourselves; when it comes to an open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem. The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”
In further comments, the FCC chairman specifically called out the censorship of Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s pro-life ad, which was blocked by Twitter for “inflammatory speech.”
Pai charged, “Two months ago, Twitter blocked Representative Marsha Blackburn from advertising her Senate campaign launch video because it featured a pro-life message. Before that, during the so-called Day of Action, Twitter warned users that a link to a statement by one company on the topic of Internet regulation ‘may be unsafe.’”
FCC Chairman Pai previously referenced Robert McChesney, the founder of Free Press, who remains a staunch supporter of net neutrality. Pai explained that McChesney openly bragged about taking over the internet. McChesney said, “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But, the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
Robert McChesney even said, “In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”
To put McChesney’s influence on net neutrality in context, he was cited 46 times in the Obama net neutrality order.
Democrats and Silicon Valley companies argued that content providers cannot compete on an even playing field without net neutrality.
Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA) said on Tuesday, “All you have to do is look at what went on over the last 10 or 15 years to see how the [internet service providers] repeatedly sought to crush potential competitors and challenged the FCC’s previous net neutrality rules in court to understand why the Open Internet Order was needed — and to see what will happen if the Open Internet Order is repealed.”
Net neutrality protesters gathered outside the FCC on Thursday morning to rally against the FCC’s repeal of the agency’s 2015 Open Internet Order.
At the FCC meeting Pai charged:
This bipartisan policy worked. Encouraged by light-touch regulation, the private sector invested over $1.5 trillion to build out fixed and mobile networks throughout the United States. 28.8k modems gave way to gigabit fiber connections. Innovators and entrepreneurs grew startups into global giants. America’s Internet economy became the envy of the world.
And this light-touch approach was good for consumers, too. In a free market full of permissionless innovation, online services blossomed. Within a generation, we’ve gone from email as the killer app to high-definition video streaming. Entrepreneurs and innovators guided the Internet far better than the clumsy hand of government ever could have.
Fellow Republican Commissioner Michael O’Reilly said, “No one can label more than a handful of examples of why we need this regulation.”
“Please take a deep breath. This decision will not break the Internet,” O’Reilly added.
Republican Commision Brendan Carr argued, “Americans will have robust Internet consumer protections.”
Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said at the FCC meeting, “Net neutrality is internet freedom. I support that freedom. I dissent from this rash decision to roll back net neutrality rules.”
Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn announced that next Tuesday she will host a town hall meeting to discuss the future of net neutrality.
Chairman Pai and FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly have argued that Congres should enact a permanent, legislative solution to the issue of net neutrality.
Pai explained:
I think the best solution would be for Congress to tell us what they want the rules of the road to be for the FCC and the country when it comes to the digital world. Part of the problem is that we are consistently looking at 1934 laws and 1996 laws then we try to shoehorn our modern marketplace to some of those paradigms that frankly we didn’t anticipate a marketplace as dynamic as the internet. I really think that Congress, ideally looking at all the opinions, and all the constituencies they can come to a consensus. Because again as Commissioner O’Reilly pointed out we don’t want the regulatory winds to keep shifting every four or eight years we want to provide some level of consistency to the marketplace so that consumers and companies alike can enjoy the digital revolution.
Pai concluded his remarks at the FCC meeting, “Many words have been spoken during this debate but the time has come for action. It is time for the Internet once again to be driven by engineers and entrepreneurs and consumers, rather than lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats. It is time for us to act to bring faster, better, and cheaper Internet access to all Americans. It is time for us to return to the bipartisan regulatory framework under which the Internet flourished prior to 2015, it is time for us to restore Internet freedom.”
Congress to vote on Trump- and NRA-backed bill to remove local gun restrictions
Legislation would force all states to recognize gun-carrying permits from any other state and faces challenges in the Senate, but is expected to pass the House
On the day of an annual vigil in Washington DC that honors the victims of American gun violence, congressional Republicans are expected to vote on a Trump-endorsed bill that would eviscerate local gun restrictions, removing states’ power to control who is allowed to carry a concealed, loaded handguns in their streets.
Officials in New York and Los Angeles warn that the legislation would allow an unknown numbers of tourists – perhaps hundreds of thousands each year – to carry concealed handguns into America’s densest urban areas, including Times Square and the New York City subway. Big city police chiefs across the county have spoken out against the bill, calling it a law enforcement enforcement nightmare.
The bill, which is the National Rifle Association’s “number one legislative priority” has prompted a renewed battle over states’ rights, with Democrats for once arguing against the power of the federal government, and Republicans hoping to use that federal power to undermine local control.
The NRA-backed legislation would force all states to recognize gun-carrying permits from any other state, including the dozen states that generally do not require any training or permit to carry a gun, a policy called “constitutional carry”.
West Virginia’s choice to allow “constitutional carry” of concealed handguns “might be fine for West Virginia, but it’s not fine for New York City”, said Cy Vance, Manhattan’s district attorney. “I wouldn’t presume to tell West Virginia, as a New Yorker, what West Virginia’s laws should be with regard to gun possession. Can you imagine how mad they’d be?”
Donald Trump endorsed the legislation during his campaign last year.
The bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate, but it expected to pass the Republican-controlled House easily on Wednesday, the same day that gun violence survivors, including residents of Newtown, Connecticut, will be visiting congressional offices to ask politicians, once again, to take some action on gun control.
Nearly five years after the 2012 Newtown school shooting, which left 26 children and educators dead, Congress has yet to pass any gun control laws.
“We have nothing but heartache and compassion for the victims of Sandy Hook, but concealed carry reciprocity has nothing to do with this tragedy,” said Tatum Gibson, a spokesperson for Richard Hudson, the North Carolina Republican congressman who introduced the legislation, said in a statement when asked about the timing of the vote.
“I don’t know that putting the NRA’s agenda on the floor of the House is the right way to mark five years since Sandy Hook,” Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, one of the leading Democratic gun control advocates, told the Guardian. “It is heartbreaking to think as we come up to the fifth anniversary of Newtown, Republicans in the House are pushing through a bill to make our country less safe.”
Republicans’ attempt to tear down local restrictions on gun carrying comes just weeks after two of America’s deadliest mass shootings, at a country music concert in Las Vegas and a tiny church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The move highlights the stark divide in Americans’ opinions on guns, with some conservatives seeing increased civilian gun carrying as a way to prevent or lessen the toll of mass shootings, even as many other Americans are trying to fight against America’s gun-carrying culture and get guns off the street.
Under current law, states have dramatically different standards for who is allowed to carry a concealed, loaded weapon. A handful of more liberal states give law enforcement officials discretion when granting a carry permit and some require that applicants demonstrate a specific need for self-defense. But the majority of states make it easy for citizens to get a carry license. While some states require that permit holders demonstrate proficiency with a gun at a firing range, others only require some kind of gun safety course. In Virginia, applicants don’t even need to leave the house: it’s possible to get a concealed carry license after taking a gun safety course online.
Many states currently recognize each other’s carry permits, in the same way states recognize each other’s driver’s licenses, but some states pick and choose which licenses they will honor, and a few states, including New York, recognize no outside permits at all.
Gun rights advocates say the current patchwork of state laws governing gun carrying is confusing for law-abiding gun owners, and that American states and cities with the toughest gun control laws are violating Americans’ constitutional right to carry firearms for self defense.
Opponents of the legislation say the right way to fix the confusion over differing regulations is to create a uniform national standard for training and eligibility, not simply force the states with the toughest gun control regulations to allow the most untrained, unvetted gun carriers to walk their streets.
Adam Winkler, a gun law expert at the University of California Los Angeles, said the legislation the House is currently considering would also allow local residents in cites with tough restrictions to do an end run around local laws, and get their permit to carry a gun from another state with weaker laws. One of the proposed Democratic amendments to the bill would close that loophole.
An estimated three million Americans report carrying a loaded handgun on a daily basis, and an estimated nine million report doing so on a monthly basis, according to a recent study based on a survey conducted by Harvard and Northeastern researchers.
New York City has 46 million domestic visitors a year, said Vance, Manhattan’s district attorney. If the legislation passed and even a small percentage of those tourists brought their guns with them, “We’re talking about a likelihood of hundreds of thousands of guns coming into New York City each year from states with little or no requirements for gun ownership.”
If passed, the legislation “would escalate the danger for residents every day,” Los Angeles city attorney Mike Feuer said.
“The fact that the same people who promote states’ rights and local control would be trying to ramrod this bill through Congress – this bill that undermines states’ rights at every turn, that eviscerates common sense protections in states throughout the United States – it’s the height of hypocrisy.”
Birmingham, ALABAMA — An organization partnered with a George Soros-financed group and led by a radical leftist who is the half-brother of the infamous controversial Rev. Al Sharpton has been diligently working over the past few weeks to register convicted felons across Alabama.
The aim of the effort has been to get as many felons as possible on the roster before last Monday, the deadline to register in order to vote in Alabama’s Dec. 12 senate special election that pits Republican Roy Moore against Democratic challenger Doug Jones. The man spearheading the campaign has stated outright that his effort is meant to ensure a Democratic victory in Alabama.
The thousands of felons reportedly newly registered over the past few weeks were most likely not included in any recent polling on the Alabama senate race put out by major firms.
Jones himself is tied to some of the specific organizations associated with the drive to register felons here. Indeed, as Breitbart News first reported, Jones spearheaded a project for a massively Soros-financed legal activist group demanding full voting rights be given to felons released from prison, including those convicted of murder, rape and other violent crimes.
AL.com reported that Pastor Kenneth Glasgow has been at the forefront of the statewide effort, which has successfully registered thousands of felons across Alabama in recent weeks. Glasgow has been aided in his efforts here by other Soros-financed groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The Village Voice previously described Glasgow, Sharpton’s half-brother, as an “ex-con and recovering crackhead turned street preacher.”
Glasgow is currently president of a group he founded in 1999 calling itself The Ordinary People Society (TOPS). And he is a former leader of another organization, the radical Free Alabama Movement (FAM), which has for years been making inroads into Alabama’s prison population.
Glasgow told AL.com that in the last month alone “I think we registered at least five- to ten-thousand people all over the state” – referring to his efforts here in Alabama.
“I’ve got people all over the state registering people with my TOPS branches in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Montgomery, Enterprise, Dothan, Abbeville, Geneva, Gordon, Bessemer, we have a lot,” he added.
Speaking on his radio program, Glasgow charged that “swarming the polls” with newly registered convicts could swing the vote, pointing as a template to the Virginia governor’s race. In that state, Gov. Terry McAuliffe used his executive power in April to restore voting rights for over 200,000 felons.
“We have the chance to do the same thing they did in Virginia,” Glasgow stated. “We can turn it blue. Well not blue, but we can add some color. Make it pink or purple.”
Glasgow has been taking advantage of a change made last May, when Alabama’s Gov. Kay Ivey signed a law that defined a clause in the State constitution denying the right to vote to anyone who has committed a crime that demonstrates “moral turpitude.”
The new law generated a list of about 50 crimes that fit under the “moral turpitude” banner, including murder, kidnapping and sexual abuse. Glasgow was involved in the activism promoting the law.
This means that Glasgow is free to register felons whose crimes do not fit under the state’s definition of a “moral turpitude” conviction.
Glasgow’s activism is intended to fill the void left by Alabama’s legal refusal to actively notify potentially tens of thousands of former felons that they regained their voting rights. A federal judge in July sided with Alabama, affirming that the state does not need to make such notifications after Ivey signed the law restoring rights to some felons.
A Soros-funded group called the Campaign Legal Center filed the lawsuit against Alabama last year calling for a public educational campaign to inform felons of their regained right to vote. The litigation is still ongoing.
“This is not a Democratic or Republican issue; it’s a democracy issue with a lower case d,” Danielle Lang, a Campaign Legal Center lawyer, stated after spending a week earlier this month in Alabama holding educational clinics on the matter.
Besides funding from Soros, the Campaign Legal Center documents that it receives financing from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation and from the Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice.
Doug Jones himself has spearheaded numerous Brennan projects, including one seeking full voting rights nationwide be given to all felons released from prison regardless of their crimes.
The Brennan Center has been the recipient of numerous grants from Soros’s Open Society Foundations totaling over $7,466,000 from 2000 to 2010 alone.
The Soros-funded ACLU of Alabama also filed a lawsuit seeking to force the state of Alabama to inform convicted felons that they can vote.
The ACLU has also worked with Glasgow’s TOPS to register felons. The groups co-hosted a Voter Rights Restoration training session in Selma, Alabama in July, after the law was first changed. The ACLU dedicated a special section of its website to getting supporters to register for the Alabama senate race. The organization has used its Twitter account in recent days to promote the voter registration drive in Alabama.
The Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center has released an Alabama Voting Rights Restoration Toolkit aiding felons in registering to vote. Soros’s Open Society is listed as a donor to the group.
The League of Women Voters of Alabama has also been advocating for voter turnout. Soros’s Open Society has donated to the League of Women Voters Education Fund.
The Soros-financed MoveOn.org, which advocates for voting restoration to felons, has been heavily active in Alabama, where they claim they have 43,000 members.
In October, Glasgow dismissed a lawsuit against Alabama state officials after they agreed to sign documents indicating they should not have prevented him from entering prisons for the purpose of registering felons. His lawsuit was facilitated by the NAACP, which is financed by Soros.
Earlier this week, Think Progress, a project of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, suggested that “tens of thousands of newly registered felons could swing (the) Alabama Senate election.”
Glasgow’s TOPS, which has been registering the Alabama felons, is financed by the Open Philanthropy Project, a non-profit financed by Cari Tuna and her husband, Dustin Moskovitz, co-founders of Facebook and Asana.
TOPS is openly partnered with the Soros-financed Drug Policy Alliance, which seeks to decriminalize drug offenses. The Alliance’s main aim, according to its website, is to create a world in which people “are no longer punished for what they put into their own bodies but only for crimes committed against others.”
Soros’s Open Society Foundations gave a whopping $50 million to the Alliance to aid its decriminalization efforts.
Breitbart News previously reported that Jones pushed reduced sentencing for drug offenders in an effort he spearheaded for the Soros-funded Brennan Center. Jones’s project sought to fundamentally transform the role of U.S. Attorneys from one of prosecuting criminals to activists that enact a so-called progressive criminal justice agenda.
Glasgow, meanwhile, has been petitioning for voting rights for felons in Alabama for over a decade, including in 2008 when he used TOPS to push for changes in law. “There would be a lot of difference in our legislators, our elected officials and our presidents that we’ve had,” he said at the time, referring to the possibility of felons voting. “It would definitely change the political spectrum of Alabama.”
Glasgow has been cited by the news media as the spokesperson for the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), a radical network that has been leading activism, including prison strikes, within Alabama’s prison population for years. FAM itself calls Glasgow its “outside” spokesman.
GAM has been advocating for the repeal of Alabama’s three strikes law. The group also demands a re-write of Alabama’s “drive-by-shooting law” to apply only to gang-related activity.
Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, a founder of the FAM, has peddled conspiracy theories about the 13th amendment, which allows for “involuntary servitude” as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Ra-Sun claimed the U.S. uses the 13th amendment “to maintain control” of “black people as tools or machines of production.” Glasgow has also repeatedly preached against the 13th amendment.
Last year, CNN reported on a national inmate strike that began in September 2016 organized by Glasgow’s FAM. Glasgow claimed to the news network that an inmate who had previously gone on a hunger strike was being denied water because of his activism, a charge refuted by the Alabama Department of Corrections. Glasgow told CNN the case drew the attention of activist lawyer Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.
The Equal Justice Initiative is financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Breitbart News previously reported that the Initiative is listed with five other groups on Doug Jones’s personal website as among organizations that Jones advocates for supporters to “get involved” with on “matters of justice and equality.”
Glasgow’s FAM has worked with the radical Industrial Workers of the World, as well as a slew of other far-left groups such as the Anarchist Black Cross Federation, the Black Autonomy Federation, the Black Militia Nation and the National Lawyers Guild.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is famous for defending protesters from extremist groups who get arrested during disruption campaigns. A notable former member of the National Lawyers Guild is Bernardine Dohrn, the NLG’s first national student organizer. Dohrn was a leader of the Weather Underground anti-American domestic terrorist group along with her husband, former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
Doug Jones is currently listed on the Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) information page of the Soros-financed Brennan Center’s website as among the “Groups and Individuals who support the DRA,” which calls for voting to be restored to convicted felons. Listed alongside Jones is the National Lawyers Guild.
Glasgow has been involved with his half-brother Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN). Glasgow keynoted a Montgomery, Alabama NAN anti-police demonstration in April 2013 over the Trayvon Martin case. The event was co-sponsored by TOPS.
In 2014, Sharpton opened a NAN office in Birmingham. “We will, out of this office, coordinate our work throughout the South against those new measures that have been designed to suppress the vote,” Sharpton said. “Make no mistake about it, these are designed to suppress the vote and we are here to fight against voter suppression.”
Sharpton’s national group boasts that it is involved in efforts to “support” voter registration while “fighting voter suppression” in numerous states, including Alabama.
