| Saturday, November 16, 2002 - 02:27 pm In Spring of 2001 we aired and published a story about a strange group that was luring tenants into taking harmful actions. This group was called the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals. http://rentwars.com/springsup/falserads.htm We also noted the unusual behavior of the Brooklyn Public Library regarding the group's attempt to eject a reporter from apublic event: http://rentwars.com/springsup/lawless.htm Believing the group to be a new Slumlord offensive or a con artist scam we prompted, on the air and on the web, "Information Wanted!!!!", "Do you know who we are? Do you know what we're hiding from the press?" Months later tidbits of information began trickling in. The first of which mentioned Stalin!?! I assigned the matter to some of our volunteers and nothing happened. At the time I was heavily engaged in preparing for the RWR premiere. Afterwards I did some of my own research into the matter and came up with the framework that appears below. Once again I was unable to personally detail the story and assigned it to volunteers. Again no action. This time I dug deep personally and read that the group targets librarys, law firms, paralegal operations, media, and other non-profit groups!! I also read that they use techniques such as sleep deprivation and force members to become dependent upon them by engineering economic disaster and then offering the hapless victims food and shelter at a cult headquarters. Ouch! No wonder they wouldn't want press about their help seminars. It seems that one of the women whose mug graces our website and TV report may be the cult's current leader, Margaret Ribar. Apparently this group's real name is the National Labor Federation, NATLFED, also known as the Provisional Party of Communists, a listed Stalinist terrorist cult that has the front group Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals noted as a front since the 80's! In 1996 members were arrested for an arsenal, complete with tunnels, right here in Brooklyn! So soon after their arrests for terrorism related activity it is very disturbing to see that they have State Peace Officers available to threaten and make arrests at their bidding. This was not the group's first time. At several of my classes and meetings some students would try to plug the CCLP as a group where tenants can go to get assistance, which I quickly advised against. Earlier this year I was summarily attacked and banned from a forum for paralegals after inviting paralegals to share their opinions on this forum. Again, a lightbulb flashed, this cult has had decades to infiltrate the legal support professions, and has advocated such infiltration since the 70's. To some of the volunteers I mentioned that I wanted to have fun with the story and do a skit called "Tenant Zombies" with some actors zombie-walking in front of the Brooklyn Public Library. I still intend to do the broadcast report. Throughout all of this the website has suffered continuous attacks (which rarely affected availability due to some helpful people), some of which I now believe could be the work of the cult. There have been other strange and unusual events and it has become clear that some of our volunteers are probably cult members 'infiltrating' Rent Wars. A few days ago I reissued my call for volunteers to work on the cult story, this time broadcasting the request to all volunteers simultaneously. Today a person banned from this Forum, and believed to be a member of the group, bypassed the Forum security blocks to post information attacking Rent Wars and me personally, and to deplete resources. As a result I have to freeze the Forum until the security breach is found and repaired. Here is more information about the cult from the following sources, many of which contain links to news articles about the group- including articles by the New York Times, The Village Voice, the Daily News, and more: Anti-Defamation League- listed militia http://www.adl.org/presrele/Militi_71/2853_71.asp XNatlFed- Ex-member of Group http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed/ Freedom of Mind Resource Center- Cult Deprogramming http://www.freedomofmind.com/groups/natlfed/natlfed.htm http://www.freedomofmind.com/groups/natlfed/bestwhitnack.htm Rick Ross- Cult Expert http://www.rickross.com/groups/natlfed.html American Family Foundation http://www.csj.org/infoserv_links/group_categories/grp_type_political.htm FACTNET http://www.factnet.org/CultGroups.html Anti-Fascism.org http://www.anti-fascism.org/page-cults-af.html This is a temporary page. A regular webpage will be created at a later date, hopefully with some more links to more resources.
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