Michelle Says, "Rice Is Wrong."

Unlike President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is not upset or offended by hearing the U.S. national anthem sung in Spanish.

Asked about the issue, which has become a topic of outrage on conservative talk radio stations, Rice said she had heard "The Star-Spangled Banner" sung in many different ways.

"I've heard the national anthem done in rap versions, country versions, classical versions. The individualization of the American national anthem is quite under way," she said on the CBS show "Face the Nation."

"From my point of view, people expressing themselves as wanting to be Americans is a good thing," she added. "I think what we need to focus on is an immigration policy that is comprehensive and that recognizes our laws and recognizes our humanity."

On Friday, Bush gave a different response to the same question. "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English," he said.

Her analysis:

Rice, unfortunately, is speaking from pure ignorance on this matter. "Nuestro Himno" is not merely a straight translation of the "Star-Spangled Banner" into Spanish. It's a politicized rewrite for the purposes of galvanizing pro-illegal alien amnesty forces. The song includes improvised rap from Latin pop stars trashing America's immigration laws as "mean." And the chant at the end brags: "We're Latinos, baby!"

Yeah, that bothers me too!

And Now (No Surprise Here) Bolivia, Too!

Well, it's no secret that Castro and Chavez have been cozying up to each other and to Iran (and its flunky, Hezbollah), and that the Tri-Border area (Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay) is a hotbed of Hezbollah activity, but now Bolivia's Evo Morales has made it official (hat tip: Voz de Aztlan):



Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia sign People's Trade Treaty

April 29, 2006

The presidents of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia have signed the People's Trade Treaty to counter a US-led drive to forge a Pan-American free trade area. Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Fidel Castro of Cuba signed the pact in Havana today to streamline commercial ties among the three governments. They are all opposed to US trade policies that they say overwhelmingly favour the United States. Castro described the accord as "an extraordinary document with profound humanitarian, social and economic content. Now, for the first time, there are three of us," Castro said. "I believe that, one day, all of Latin America can be here", Castro added.

Morales said upon arrival in Cuba on Friday: "It will be a great meeting of three generations of revolutionaries, of people representing the three revolutions that we still have to broaden." The Bolivian leader expressed confidence that the treaty would help promote "fair trade, trade that generates jobs, ensures living standards and defends human dignity".

The initiative promoted by Castro and Chavez is an attempt to circumvent US plans for the Free Trade Area of theAmericas (FTAA). The three presidents call the FTAA a US effort to annex Latin America.

Debra Feels Turned Off and Angry, and So Do I

"No kidding," you say. Most of the last blog entries have involved illegal immigration, migration, the Mexican government, and the strong-arm tactics of illegal immigrants, their organizers and backers, "How on earth could we tell that you are angry??"

Debra Saunders titles her essay "The Great American Turnoff. Let's hope that there are millions of other Americans that are similarly turned off and angry by the revelations about immigration during the past few months.

Go ahead and march. After tomorrow I'd love to be able to say to these people, "You blew it by overplaying your hand." The genie is out of the bottle and too many of us know too much to again feel sympathetic.

A Calm Voice in the Immigration Wilderness: "Immigration focus needs to be practical rather than idealistic:"

Who is technically protected by the Fourteenth Amendment? It's NOT who you think. While listening to overheated rhetoric on ALL sides, one can forget that the net winner of the argument must be the American people, not the millions who have surreptitiously crept in or" found themselves" overstaying their visas.

The problem, however, is that, say, equal protection rights -- from the Fourteenth Amendment -- have a constitutional origin. Illegal immigrants, as human beings, are certainly entitled to human rights. But illegal residents are not technically within the jurisdiction of the American political community and are thus not entitled to the protection of certain rights that are, by constitutional design, directed to people within the jurisdiction.

Why would a nation want, or even need, immigrants?

The case for immigration doesn't have to do as much with the Latino vote or civil rights. It should center instead on America's growth, competitiveness and dynamism.

Although some organizers would want us to believe so, the group demonimated "Latinos" is not a monolith; they have a variety of views, backgrounds, and opinions, and among different groups, there are "significant differences" regarding views on illegal immigrants.

Just as important is that Latinos have a variety of views, backgrounds and opinions. When it comes to illegal migrants, for instance, Latinos show significant differences. Another Pew Hispanic Survey found that although there's an overall positive perception about immigrants, different generations have different perceptions about undocumented workers. More foreign-born Latinos than American-born ones believe that illegal immigrants should be allowed to become citizens.
So rallies might give the impression that Latinos have a loud, unique and common voice. The group, however, is too broad and diverse to speak of common views or trends that will translate coherently into votes.

Then there are those who view immigration, and legalizing undocumented workers, as a matter of civil rights. In the immigrant-rights rally in Alabama, the Rev. Lawton Higgs -- a United Methodist minister and activist -- reportedly said that ```we've got to get back in touch with the civil rights movement, because that's what this is about.'' Similarly, when talking at one of the rallies, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., linked the immigration fight to the civil rights movement.

There is a misperception among immigrants and among Americans not thoroughly schooled in the implied applications of the Constitution that rights, such as equal protection given under the Fourteenth Amendment, are the same for citizens and non-citizens. Non-citizens "are not technically 'within the jurisdiction of the American political community and thus are not entitled to the protection of certain rights that are, by constitutional design, directed to people within the jurisdiction.' "
How, then, will migrants or immigrants gain these rights?

To come under the purview of constitutional rights, illegal immigrants would first have to become recognized members of the political community. So the questions are whether and why they should be able to become members; not whether they have the same political rights as members.

Moreover, those reverting to the 1960s civil rights movement are looking to the past, not the future -- which is where immigration belongs.

The influx of immigrants into the United States is a matter of practicality:

To come under the purview of constitutional rights, illegal immigrants would first have to become recognized members of the political community. So the questions are whether and why they should be able to become members; not whether they have the same political rights as members.

Moreover, those reverting to the 1960s civil rights movement are looking to the past, not the future -- which is where immigration belongs... the case for welcoming new guest-workers and regularizing the status of illegal immigrants is compelling. It has to do with growth and competitiveness.

But, and there always is a but! But America must be able to pick and choose from available applicants, and should not be blackmailed, extorted, or threatened into accepting those that have forced themselves onto American soil, especially those that refuse to cooperate.

This country is slowly sliding toward a balkanization that will require partition: hyphenation or emphasis on national origin, ethnicity, or religious identification under the guise of multiculturalism and diversity is to blame. It certainly would be helpful if all citizens of the United States would drop the devisive hyphenated mentality and join the rest. Regarding onesself as Latino American, Mexican American, Black American, Muslim American, of Irish descent, from the British Isles, or any other devisive appelation or derrivation is not helpful.

And one more thing. It would be well for all to remember: marchers, observers, legislators, and citizens, that illegal immigrants can not vote, but the rest of us can and will remember if legislators show that they are more impressed by the rights, needs, and of non-citizens than they are of franchised Americans that put them their present exalted positions.

Could it be that new citizens will be converted into new voters? Perhaps this is why some are so enthusiastic in their pandering.

Readers Weigh In on the Importance of Learning English and Other "Minor" Topics

You've heard enough from me lately. Here are some interesting letters posted over at vdare.com.

While we weren't watching.

The "American Dream"

day by day cartoon

These aren't "American Dreamers": They're colonists, hoping to extend their own culture and country into the territory of the United States.

The American Dream is something you build from a concept created over centuries. No one received the benefits of the American dream without the unpleasantness of struggle and heartache, and in most cases, fear and discrimination.

The American dream is more than hard work and paying taxs. The American dream is not handed over on a silver platter nor picked up off streets paved with gold. It always comes with a price: the recipients must joint the social order and accept the terms of the social contract that past generations of Americans devised for peaceful co-existence among diverse races, creeds, and ethnic groups to form something new.

Those that want to live beyond the pale of this social contract can't live the American dream for what they are doing is bring the pain, suffering, and the corruption of the old order with them, rather than living the dream.

Via: Captain's Quarters

"Great American Boycott" Revealed

Click on this link case you still have doubts about the goals and objectives of the "colonists." (Note: a .wav file will automatically download.)

That's right, they are not immigrants. An immigrant hopes to join another country or culture to make something new; a colonist brings his country and culture along with him, expecting to expand both culture and country. That's what the "Great American Boycott" is really about.

Finally, people are becoming really concerned.

An 8-Step Plan for America's Downfall

I just received this message from a good friend on my personal account:

Subject: Extremely important in light of the current debate


We know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado. In that context his thoughts are particularly poignant. Last week there was an immigration overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of American's finest minds and leaders. A brilliant college professor by the name of Victor Hansen Davis talked about his latest book, Mexifornia," explaining how immigration - both legal and illegal" was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The Ameri can Dream.

Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time.


Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'"

Here is how they do it," Lamm said:

"First, to destroy America, turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country." History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar, Seymour Lipset, put it this way: "The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy." Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, and Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.".

Lamm went on: Second, to destroy America, "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due solely to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.


Third, "We could make the United States an 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: "The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentricity and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together."


Lamm said, "I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America enforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities."

"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high. school."


"My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology.' I would get all minorities to think that their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population."

"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship, and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they are not killing each other. A diverse, pea ceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshipped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic games. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty Yet all these bonds were not strong enough to overcome two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions. Greece fell. "E. Pluribus Unum" -- From many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on the 'pluribus'. Instead of the 'Unum,' we will balkanize America as surely as Kosovo."

"Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits; make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century - that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'xenophobe' halt discussion and debate. Having made America a bilingual/bicultural country, having established multi-culturism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of 'Victimology,' I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra: That because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them."

In t he last minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped his brow. Profound silence followed. Finally he said,"Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America. deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book.".

There was no applause. A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous cloud above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today. Discussion is being suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the foundation of our educational system a nd national cohesiveness. Even barbaric cultures that practice female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate 'diversity.' American jobs are vanishing into the Third World as corporations create a Third World in. America - take note of California and other states - to date, ten million illegal aliens and growing fast. It is reminiscent of George Orwell's book "1984." In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building: "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength."

Governor Lamm walked back to his seat. It dawned on everyone at the conference that our nation and the future of this great democracy (REPUBLIC) is deeply in trouble and worsening fast. If we don't get this immigration monster stopped within three yea rs, it will rage like a California wildfire and destroy everything in its path, especially The American Dream.

Thought provoking?

God be with you.

All things considered, it seems that Governor Lamm's "Plan" is well on its way.

They Want "Their Rights" in the United States -"National Boycott Plans Creating a New Divide"

A "new national divide?" Damn straight! They say they "came to work" and that they "pay their taxes." Were they invited to come? Some were brought here illegally by cynical employers who knew that they and the migrants were now law breakers, others, as my grandmother would say, "volunteered," sneaking across the border or overstaying on a visa. How are they able to pay taxes? By using fake identification and fake social security cards, also a violation of the law. They are their law-breaking employers, especially those that recruited illegal employees directly or through agents, demand amnesty.

They way they "want their rights." What rights. As citizens they have no legal rights other than "human rights." For non-citizens there is nothing else. There is no right to be in the United States. There is no right to employment nor education nor health care at expense of the American taxpayers. Yes, some came to work, others came to exploit the system, to commit violent crimes, to run and sell drugs and human beings.

They demand to be allowed citizenship. How can they make such a demand when they are not willing to assimilate, learn English, jettison un-assimable cultural baggage, divided loyalties to people and forces in the old country, and so on. The reason for the extended citizenship process could be to weed out those that will become true Americans from those that would use citizenship as a convenience for a "better a life."

It is amazing to hear migrants say they come "to make a better life for themselves" as if coming to the United States to do so is a human right. There is no right available for non-citizens to a better life in the United States whether or not one cynically goes into labor with one toe across the border. That mother and that baby will not have a deep abiding love for this country, only a desire to use the resources and taxpayers to improve their lives.

The lawbreakers want to walk free and demonstrate that they have value to the economy. If they are not loyal nor care about improving this society, this culture, and this country rather than earning money to send home as remittance payments to improve their hometowns and uplift their families with loyalties place elsewhere, then they are not demonstrating a desire to become citizens of the United States.

The inappropriate "Nuestro Himno," or Latin version of the "Star-Spangled Banner" states: "Somos latinos, papa." It's "we are Latins," nor "we are Americans." A California junior high student stated when asked whether or not she would participate in the "Great American Boycott" told a reported that "missing one day of school is a small price to pay for a larger cause."

"I want to support my people," said Leon, whose family came to the United States illegally. Notice she didn't say I want to support America and the American people. No, she and most of the other marchers have the same mind set: they are Latinos first and foremost. Someday they may become citizens on paper but, because of their attitudes, will never become Americans.

Malkin- "This Is Our Anthem"

Michelle Malkin answers the Latin Lefties.

Latin America's Turn Left

It's a well-known fact that Americans know just a little about other parts of the world; they really haven't been interested in knowing more. Most know even less about their neighbors to the south. They should become familiar for seems that many of those neighbors are coming here and bring their politics of populism with them. Jorge Casteñada at Foreign Affairs is eager to tell us:

A TALE OF TWO LEFTS

Just over a decade ago, Latin America seemed poised to begin a virtuous cycle of economic progress and improved democratic governance, overseen by a growing number of centrist technocratic governments. In Mexico, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, buttressed by the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, was ready for his handpicked successor to win the next presidential election. Former Finance Minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso was about to beat out the radical labor leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for the presidency of Brazil. Argentine President Carlos Menem had pegged the peso to the dollar and put his populist Peronist legacy behind him. And at the invitation of President Bill Clinton, Latin American leaders were preparing to gather in Miami for the Summit of the Americas, signaling an almost unprecedented convergence between the southern and northern halves of the Western Hemisphere.

What a difference ten years can make. Although the region has just enjoyed its best two years of economic growth in a long time and real threats to democratic rule are few and far between, the landscape today is transformed. Latin America is swerving left, and distinct backlashes are under way against the predominant trends of the last 15 years: free-market reforms, agreement with the United States on a number of issues, and the consolidation of representative democracy. This reaction is more politics than policy, and more nuanced than it may appear. But it is real.

Starting with Hugo Chávez's victory in Venezuela eight years ago and poised to culminate in the possible election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico's July 2 presidential contest, a wave of leaders, parties, and movements generically labeled "leftist" have swept into power in one Latin American country after another. After Chávez, it was Lula and the Workers' Party in Brazil, then Néstor Kirchner in Argentina and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay, and then, earlier this year, Evo Morales in Bolivia. If the long shot Ollanta Humala wins the April presidential election in Peru and López Obrador wins in Mexico, it will seem as if a veritable left-wing tsunami has hit the region. Colombia and Central America are the only exceptions, but even in Nicaragua, the possibility of a win by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega cannot be dismissed.

The rest of the world has begun to take note of this left-wing resurgence, with concern and often more than a little hysteria. But understanding the reasons behind these developments requires recognizing that there is not one Latin American left today; there are two. One is modern, open-minded, reformist, and internationalist, and it springs, paradoxically, from the hard-core left of the past. The other, born of the great tradition of Latin American populism, is nationalist, strident, and close-minded. The first is well aware of its past mistakes (as well as those of its erstwhile role models in Cuba and the Soviet Union) and has changed accordingly. The second, unfortunately, has not.

UTOPIA REDEFINED

The reasons for Latin America's turn to the left are not hard to discern. Along with many other commentators and public intellectuals, I started detecting those reasons nearly fifteen years ago, and I recorded them in my book Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War, which made several points. The first was that the fall of the Soviet Union would help the Latin American left by removing its geopolitical stigma. Washington would no longer be able to accuse any left-of-center regime in the region of being a "Soviet beachhead" (as it had every such government since it fomented the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz's administration in Guatemala in 1954); left-wing governments would no longer have to choose between the United States and the Soviet Union, because the latter had simply disappeared.

The second point was that regardless of the success or failure of economic reforms in the 1990s and the discrediting of traditional Latin American economic policies, Latin America's extreme inequality (Latin America is the world's most unequal region), poverty, and concentration of wealth, income, power, and opportunity meant that it would have to be governed from the left of center. The combination of inequality and democracy tends to cause a movement to the left everywhere. This was true in western Europe from the end of the nineteenth century until after World War II; it is true today in Latin America. The impoverished masses vote for the type of policies that, they hope, will make them less poor.

Third, the advent of widespread democratization and the consolidation of democratic elections as the only road to power would, sooner or later, lead to victories for the left -- precisely because of the social, demographic, and ethnic configuration of the region. In other words, even without the other proximate causes, Latin America would almost certainly have tilted left.

Read the rest.

And here's a piece on Mexico's poltical system.

On the Slippery Slope of Corruption

"If you can't 'em, join 'em." The age old chestnut is being played out in front of our eyes. According to Thomas Baffy at The American Thinker, American society is being "Mexicanized." He doesn't mean racially or demographically, but in the way that the rule of law is being set aside in order to pander to the interests of certain segments of society.

He does not refer to the migrants flowing across the border as the problem: the are mere pawns. The flow could be stemmed at will ... if we choose to do so. The flow isn't stemmed because certain segments of American and Mexican society consider the mass migration beneficial. We know already how the Mexican elites benefit from the arrangement. How are Americans of the upper echelons and the middle class induced into ignoring the rule of law over the populism of a foreign country?

We all know that the rules are being ignored for the sake of international competition, for the sake of "cheap labor" and "cheap votes," for the sake of filling the pews of the Catholic Church, for the sake of nannies, maids, and gardeners for middle-class homes so that both parents can work or persue their own interests. We know these things because for over twenty years the harbingers of doom have told us all about them in article after article, book after book, and now the proverbial "chickens have come home to roost."

We are stuck with at least 12 million migrants who have no place to go. The are in fact: colonists. How did this happen? How was the rule of law abrogated?

The concept of equal rights for all Americans also revolves around the idea that our laws are applied equally to all of us.  When governments ignore certain laws, they are in effect repealing them. They have accomplished through fiat what no one could do in the legislatures or the courts. The Constitution is bypassed.

Once this idea becomes accepted, lodged into theory and practice, your rights as an American are subject to the whim of government officials.

By allowing certain law-breaking activities to go unpunished we send a clear message to everyone that it is acceptable to ignore laws that you do not agree with.  Once individual government officials establish the principle of deciding for themselves what laws will (or will not) be enforced, the “culture of corruption” will be established.  It will not matter which political party is in power. 

This creates the environment where government officials can be bought or coerced by “greasing the wheels” with a little influence money.  We will have given up a great, if flawed, tradition of rule of law, replacing it with rule of the strong and rich. It will take bribes and favors to get anything accomplished just as it sometimes does in the governments of some of our southern neighbors. 

The outcome is "a corrupt system that entrenches the wealthy and powerful lead (ing) to economic failure, as it has in Mexico and would in the United States. Our class structure would evolve toward Mexico's, with our middle class shrinking in the process."

According to Baffy, the antidote is to "insist that our government follow the rules and law without exception...Arbitrary or capricious disregard for the laws should be met with expulsion from office in all cases...Our elected official should be forced to go "on the record" if they want to change laws. Then we can register our verdict the next time they run for office."

Is it too late?

On Monday, May 1, 2006, the abrogation of the rule of law will be flaunted as migrants and their supporters will rub into the faces of Middle America the fact that they are here and in charge.

Who are they? They are the organizers of the event. They are the employers that are closing down or looking the other way if their employees decide to demonstrate rather than work. They are the school officials that will permit school skippers to march with the demonstrators. They are businesses, such as fruit and vegetable wholesalers, delivery services, and the like that will refuse service. They are the journalists that, copy-cat style, repeat the same "sensitive" immigrant sob story. And, this is unbelievable, they are members of legislatures that condone, or organize, or even march with the law migrant lawbreakers and support the rights of migrants over those of the citizen constituents. In their hearts, all of these are themselves, breakers of law: the amnesty isn't just for the migrants, its for the employers and the enabling legislators on that slippery slope. They are the voters that keep in office those officials that don't enforce the laws of the land. They are those of us that remain silent on the topic and accept the status quo. We are they and have only ourselves to blame.

Laws are not set in stone and can be changed. There's a lot at stake for America. Obviously with so many law breakers ignoring long-established laws they should be. Shouldn't they?

"Almost Made It"

In case you're not sure whether or not border security is necessary, read about the Guantanamo Detainee caught at the border and some other revealing border stories.

What Are Muslim Schools in the West Teaching?

Here is collecting created by Daniel Pipes. The first two contain internal links.

Subsidizing the Enemy"

What Are Islamic Schools Teaching?

Muslim students 'being taught to despise unbelievers as filth'

Are We Really A Nation of Immigrants?

In my view, "We are a nation of immigrants" is the slogan of haters of America and Anglo culture.

To say that America is a "nation of immigrants" is to imply that there has never been an actual American people apart from immigration. It is to put America out of existence as a historically existing nation that immigrants and their children joined by coming here, a country with its own right to exist and to determine its own sovereign destiny—a right that includes the right to permit immigration or not. No patriot, no decent person who loves this country, as distinct from loving some whacked-out, anti-national, leftist idea of this country, would call it a "nation of immigrants." Any elected official who utters the subversive canard that America is a "nation of immigrants" should, at the least, find his phone lines tied up with calls from irate constituents.

Of course, at first glance it seems indisputable that "we are a nation of immigrants," in the sense that all Americans, even including the American Indians, are either immigrants themselves or descendants of people who came here from other places. Given those facts, it would have been more accurate to say that we are "a nation of descendants of immigrants." But such a mundane assertion would fail to convey the thrilling idea conjured up by the phrase "nation of immigrants"—the idea that all of us, whether or not we are literally immigrants, are somehow "spiritually" immigrants, in the sense that the immigrant experience defines our character as Americans.

This friendly-sounding, inclusive sentiment—like so many others of its kind—turns out to be profoundly exclusive. For one thing, it implies that anyone who is not an immigrant, or who does not identify with immigration as a key aspect of his own being, is not a "real" American. It also suggests that newly arrived immigrants are more American than people whose ancestors have been here for generations. The public television essayist Richard Rodriguez spelled out these assumptions back in the 1990s when he declared, in his enervated, ominous tone: "Those of us who live in this country are not the point of America. The newcomers are the point of America." Certainly the illegal-alien demonstrators in Los Angeles last week agreed with him; America, they kept telling us, belongs to them, not to us.

In reality, we are not—even in a figurative sense—a nation of immigrants or even a nation of descendants of immigrants. As Chilton Williamson pointed out in The Immigration Mystique, the 80,000 mostly English and Scots-Irish settlers of colonial times, the ancestors of America’s historic Anglo-Saxon majority, had not transplanted themselves from one nation to another (which is what defines immigration), but from Britain and its territories to British colonies. They were not immigrants, but colonists. The immigrants of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to an American nation that had already been formed by those colonists and their descendants. Therefore to call America "a nation of immigrants" is to suggest that America, prior to the late nineteenth century wave of European immigration, was not America. It is to imply that George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant (descended from the original colonists) were not "real" Americans, but that Richard Rodriguez (descended from 20th century immigrants) and the anti-American demonstrators last week in Los Angeles, are.  
 
Apart from its politically correct function of diminishing the Anglo-Saxon Americans of the pre-Ellis Island period and their descendants, the "nation of immigrants" motto is meaningless in practical terms. Except for open-borders utopians (a group that has grown over the years until now it seems to constitute a majority of the Democratic Party), everyone knows that we must have some limits on immigration. The statement, "we are a nation of immigrants," gives us no guidance on what those limits should be. Two hundred thousand immigrants per year? Two million? Why not twenty million—since we’re a nation of immigrants? The slogan also doesn’t tell us, once we have decided on overall numbers, what the criterion of selection shall be among the people who want to come here. Do we choose on the basis of family ties to recent immigrants? Language? Income? Nationality? Race? Victim status? First come first served? Willingness to work for a lower wage than Americans work for? The "nation of immigrants" slogan cannot help us choose among these criteria because it doesn’t state any good that is to be achieved by immigration. It simply produces a blind emotional bias in favor of more immigration rather than less, making rational discussion of the issue impossible.

Read it all.

I suggest that today's immigrants, those that a flooding across the borders at the behest and by the incitement of other governments, think of themselves as new American pioneers, new American colonists coming to supplant the "old order," that's us in case you wonder. It is so obvious. One wonders why other don't get this!!!!

Chip me, please? A Chip in the Shoulder...

A while back I viewed an episode of CSI:Miami with a plot line that included wealthy club girls whose skimpy outfits couldn't accommodate even a credit card. At the time I believed this to be science fiction, chips in the shoulder loaded with financial and personal information to replace money, hard ID cards, and other paper records. It appears I was wrong. "Chip me please," no longer means a trip to the roulette or blackjack tables.

Radio frequency identity tags will be marketed as the “next thing you can’t live without.”

The Nazis used tattoos and paper cards and carried out the holocaust because they were carrr-rrrazy. We’re using the Global Positioning System and radio chips and are doing it to track the spread of bovine diseases and avian flu — not to mention injecting chips into pets so they don’t get lost. Microchipping babies is unthinkable, right?...

Not in Mexico, where a company called Solusat markets the rice-sized VeriChip to parents who fear their children will be abducted. Other uses include using the chip as a credit card or a storage device for medical information.
Proponents of chip-tracking technology like columnist Kirby Snell at the University of Evansville Crescent argue we have nothing to fear from chip technology and that there is nothing inherently wrong with implants that allow people to be tracked anywhere and everywhere at any time. Chips are good, they say.

Yeah, chips are good like a metal shackle around the throat.

First, the tags will be voluntary. The rich and the privileged will get the chips to make it fashionable and acceptable. Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson already has volunteered to get the chip implant.
Employers like surveillance company CityWatcher.com already have jumped to implement the technology. Some City Watcher.com employees already had chips injected into their arms.

Next the chip will be incorporated into everyday activities such as going to a theme park or shopping. Wannado City theme park in Florida has patrons wear wristbands that allow them to be tracked. Wal-Mart has been tracking consumer habits using radio frequency identity tags implanted into packaging of products like Gillette razors. General Motors’ OnStar system has been tracking drivers’ every moves for a decade.

After chipping people becomes normal, expect the crackdowns on people who refuse to submit. Laws will start being implemented requiring everyone to be chipped by de facto mandate. A chip will be needed to get a driver’s license or passport. Insurance companies can celebrate once again because without a chip, doctors won’t treat you, and insurance won’t cover you. Some aspiring politician will push for laws to require the lowlifes of society, pedophiles and child rapists, to be chipped for, we are told, “our own safety.”

Chips will be marketed as the next thing you can’t live without. For many people, as was the case with cell phones and iPods, the glitz, social pressure and promotions will outweigh the negatives like the loss of privacy and loss of unabated brain waves.

Speaking of brains, the tags act as little brains storing information about their carriers and can be accessed by those with the know-how. The tags act as brain manipulators without ever having to plug into the brain à la “The Matrix.” People with tags will condition themselves never to have a devious thought. The deeper self will be killed by the self...
It’s for your own good, we’re told. Without money, the world would fall into degenerative chaos, we’re told. Without war, there would be no peace. Without medication, we have no true emotions. And without radio frequency identity tags, our sense of personal freedom could never exist. The people and corporations in power tell us a lot of things to make it seem not so bad.

I know better. It’s bad enough to make one fade into the anonymous hillsides of Ireland or secretly travel the United States in a van that runs on vegetable oil. In this fight between savages and the tech-savvy world state, I’d rather be a savage.

I agree.

Peak Oil Panic

Is there really a crisis? What is behind the high prices?

The good news is that the peak oil doomsters are probably wrong that world oil production is about to decline forever. Most analysts believe that world petroleum supplies will meet projected demand at reasonable prices for at least another generation. The bad news is that much of the world’s oil reserves are in the custody of unstable and sometimes hostile regimes. But the oil producing nations would be the ultimate losers if they provoked an “oil crisis,” since that would spur industrialized countries to cut back on imports and develop alternative energy technologies.

To the world's oil producers and refiners: be careful what you wish for.

Read it all.

Hmmmm. How far can you drive on a bushel of corn?

Laissez Faire For Our Oil Companies Now!!!!!!

The following just came in as a letter to the editor from the Ayn Rand Institute. Understand this very short letter BEFORE the fascists have time to "fix" the oil companies.

If you saw Senator Durbin (D-Ill) on Neil Cavuto's program, 26 April, on Fox News Channel, you saw the fascist mentality in pure culture. Durbin was just drooling to sock it to the oil companies while completely gaffing off the role of incredible state and federal taxes and the fascistic regulatory meddling by government at all levels.

If people like Durbin, Schumer, and many others work their way, we will be in the "hurt locker" worse than you ever could conceive. We remember the gas lines under Nixon and shortages under Carter. The Congress was not so far fascistic then as it is now. Their "cure" will be worse than any disease.

There is no such thing as price gouging by private oil companies.

The term "price gouging" implies that oil companies and gas stations have an ability to forcibly inflict harm on us--but they do not. Any price we pay for a gallon of gasoline, we pay voluntarily, based on its value to us. If we think gasoline is too expensive, we are free to drive less, to buy more fuel-efficient cars, to use carpools or busses, or to travel by bicycle or on foot. Gas station owners cannot force us to buy gasoline; they can only offer us a trade, which we are free to accept or reject.

Since the prevailing price of gasoline is the result of trade, it reflects not the arbitrary "greed" of gas station owners, but the facts of the market: the producers' costs, competition, and what customers are willing to pay.

Oil company "greed" is not "hurting the nation"--it is making oil and gasoline available to all of us who are willing to pay market prices. We should be grateful for that.

Alex Epstein
Ayn Rand Institute




Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Op-eds, press releases and letters to the editor produced by the Ayn Rand Institute are submitted to hundreds of newspapers, radio stations and Web sites across the United States and abroad, and are made possible thanks to voluntary contributions.


The Ayn Rand Institute, 2121 Alton Pkwy, Ste 250, Irvine, CA 92606

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You: "Hezbollah, Illegal Immigration, and the Next 9/11"

Read the whole sobering report that includes many internal hyperlinks.

Radical Islam: Globalization for Losers

The "religion of peace," radical Islam could have learned a lot about peace from the anti-Vietnam "Peace" demostrators. During the era of the radical anti-Vietnam era, a few "peace" demonstrators marched, blew up buildings, and went to live in communes. "Make love, not war" was their motto. But radical Islam has nothing to do with peace, for in Islam, peace means "the absence of enemies."

Some young (and old) Muslims are going through an identity crisis. Instead of meditating, searching their psyches, and committing to non-violence, they are dedicated dedicated to retro-Jihad, going back to the Islam of the founders in which thousands were put to the sword or enslaved. Today they have an opportunity to make peace in Darfur, Sudan. Instead, they are dedicated to slaughtering the region's indigenous Muslim tribes as well as all that is non-Muslim in their global environment.

In the West, we tend to talk about globalization as if it's a euphemism for Americanization. But there are many competing forms of globalization. Even anti-globalization activists favor the "right" kind of globalization, one driven by the U.N. and "progressives" instead of corporations and markets.

Radical Islam is globalization for losers. It appeals to those left out of modernization, industrialization and prosperity, particularly to young men desperate for order, meaning and pride amid the chaos of globalization. Radical Islam provides it, but at a terrible price.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported the sad tale of the demise of Mak Yong, an ancient form of dance and theater in Southeast Asia drawn from pre-Islamic faiths, including Hinduism. But such traditional cultural influences are now considered "un-Islamic."

"Many Southeast Asian Muslims now navigate by guideposts from the Arab world," the Journal reported. "Young men in Indonesia are starting to wear turbans and grow beards. In Malaysia, Malays have adopted the Arab word for prayer, salat, to replace the Malay word, sembahyang, which literally means 'offer homage to the primal ancestor.'"

This is merely an extension of trends that have already transformed the Middle East. As Fareed Zakaria writes in "The Future of Freedom," until the 1970s most Middle Easterners "practiced a kind of village Islam that adapted itself to local cultures and to normal human desires. Pluralistic and tolerant, these villages often worshipped saints, went to shrines, sang religious hymns and cherished art - all technically disallowed in Islam." This indigenous form of Islam was bulldozed by urbanization and radicalization. The Iranian Revolution was a harbinger of the transformation toward a more "universal" Islam that was also more doctrinaire; "Islam of the high church as opposed to Islam of the street fair," Zakaria writes.

Reihan Salam, a co-author of one of the smartest blogs going right now, theamericanscene.com, is an American of Bengali descent who argues that the death of Mak Yong represents "globalization at its worst." He rightly notes that if the choice is between the globalization of "crass Arabization" and the globalization of "crass Westernization," then it should be no choice at all.

Although Western-style globalization may force certain technological and economic changes on indigenous cultures, it also provides those cultures with the tools and flexibility to keep much of their culture. The hard Islam coming out of Riyadh and Tehran offers no such freedom. Recall that Afghanistan was a Muslim country for centuries, but it wasn't until the jihadi thugs of the Taliban took over that the historic Bamiyan Buddhas were deemed an offense to Islam and destroyed.
Bin Laden's call to kill U.N. peacekeepers is consistent with the Islamist desire to impose a harsh, "one true Islam" across the Muslim world (and, someday, they hope, the non-Muslim world too.)

Too many intellectuals and commentators take the ignorant and condescending view that because jihadism is exotic, it is also "authentic." On the right, this often translates into the view that all strains of Islam are alike - and equally dangerous. And on the left, we get the usual knee-jerk defense of any seemingly "indigenous" foreign movement that casts America as a global villain. The reality is that in the war on terrorism, America is on the side of freedom and diversity. Bin Laden & Co. are the real crusaders.

Gas Prices Shouldn't Surprise Us.

Charles knows why:

1. Demand is up. That shouldn't be a surprise with all the new industries and new cars in garages all over the world.

China has come from nowhere to pass Japan as the number No. 2 oil consumer in the world. China and India -- between them home to eight times the U.S. population -- are industrializing and gobbling huge amounts of energy.

American demand is up because we've lived in a fool's paradise since the mid-1980s. Until then, beginning with the oil shocks in 1973, Americans had changed appliances and cars and habits and achieved astonishing energy conservation. Energy use per dollar of GDP was cut by 30 percent in little over a decade. Oil prices collapsed to about $10 a barrel.

Nothing has changed (since 1996). Except that since then, U.S. crude oil production has dropped an additional 12.3 percent.

2. Supply is down. This is more troubling.

Start with supply disruptions in Nigeria, decreased production in Iraq and the continuing loss of 5 percent of our national refining capacity because of Katrina and Rita damage. Add to that the mischief of idiotic new regulations. Last year's energy bill mandates arbitrary increases in blended ethanol use that so exceed current ethanol production that it is causing gasoline shortages and therefore huge price spikes.

Why don't we import the missing ethanol? Brazil makes a ton of it and very cheaply. Answer: The Iowa caucuses. Iowa grows corn and chooses presidents. So we have a ridiculously high 54-cent ethanol tariff and ethanol shortages.
Other regulation requires specific ("boutique'') gasoline blends for different cities depending on their air quality. Nice idea. But it introduces debilitating rigidities into the gasoline supply system. If Los Angeles runs short, you cannot just move supply in from Denver. You get shortages and more price spikes.

And don't get me started on the missing supply of might-have-been American crude. Arctic and Outer Continental Shelf oil that the politicians kill year after year would have provided us by now with a critical and totally secure supply cushion in times of tight markets.

In March 2000, the price of gas hit $1.80. Scandalized congressional Republicans shamelessly pushed for repeal of Bill Clinton's whopping 4.3-cent gas tax increase. Now that the president is a Republican, what do you think Senate Democrats are proposing? A 60-day suspension of the federal gas tax. It would cost $6 billion and counteract the only good thing that comes with high gas prices -- the incentive to conserve.

George Shultz once said, "Nothing ever gets settled in this town." But even Shultz, who has seen everything, must marvel at the perfect regularity, the utter predictability, of the bottomless cynicism of Washington in the grip of gasoline fever.

There's something wrong with this picture. How can be shown up by...Brazil? Don't we have more technology, a more educated population and "Yankee Ingenuity?"

What's Wrong With Mexico?

Maybe the problem lies in the fact that the elite chooses to feather their own nests rather than create job and programs that will uplift the population, and they would rather that the American taxpayer, the American educational system, the American health system, and employers do the job for them while using the United States as a safety value and a source of income as their migrant millions send home $20 million a year in remittance payments.

Could this be the reason why Delegates to the Mexican Congress express solidarity with their co-nationalists in the United States and why they lay claim to enfranchised Mexican Americans that have already taken the oath citizenship?

America needs immigrants that are hardworking ... and loyal only to her.

And we should be asking: What's wrong with this picture .... in Washington D.C.?

Birds of a Feather ...

If you haven't read David Horowitz's book Unholy Alliance (reviewed here), then get one today and get started. Time's a wastin', and I mean it.

May 1 is about to become Spring Halloween for all sorts of people, not the least of which will be lots of hand-holding vermin. Here is a perfect example, of many, of Horowitz's unholy alliance, and one that is as predictable as night and day. Here come the entitlementas latinos, Muslims, communists, and all of the anti-American rabble that can ambulate or be pushed. It will be like 31 October for all the goblins, ghosts, spirits, skeletons, and the like--only it won't be benign children this time. It will be corporeality of the cesspools of the earth manifesting.

INVASION USA
Muslims to join pro-illegals protest in L.A.--
Millions of activists expected to 'close' major cities May 1
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Mexica Movement activists protest in L.A.

Muslims in Los Angeles and elsewhere are being urged to join millions of Latino protesters in the streets May 1 to demonstrate in favor of leniency toward illegal aliens currently living in the United States unlawfully.

"In solidarity with immigration activists around the country, the Muslim Public Affairs Council as well as the Council on American-Islamic Relations - Los Angeles, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, the L.A. Latino Muslim Association, the Muslim American Society - Los Angeles, and the Muslim Students Association - West are calling on American Muslims to participate in a day of action on May 1, 2006," says a statement from the Muslim Public Affairs Council. "Islam's message is one of social justice, economic fairness, and fair treatment in the workplace. The Quran urges the proper treatment and respect of workers."

"American Muslim organizations are calling for a comprehensive immigration reform that includes provisions for a pathway to lawful permanent residence for the undocumented currently in the United States, a temporary worker program that matches willing workers with willing employers, and a reduction in the current backlogs in family-based immigration to the United States," said the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Choosing May 1, the day Communists worldwide celebrate the worker, activists have vowed to "close" major American cities as millions of Latinos, both legal and illegal, mark what some organizers are calling "a day without an immigrant" and others refer to as the "Great American Boycott." They are urging supporters not to go to work, school or spend money on that day.

"It is to show the amount of work, the purchasing power, the contributions that illegal and undocumented workers make on a daily basis," Chris Banks, a volunteer for ANSWER, or Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, told the Desert Dispatch in California...

Jorge Rodriguez is a union official who helped organize earlier pro-illegals rallies. "We want full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here (illegally)," Rodriguez told Reuters.

As WorldNetDaily reported, large protests held by pro-illegal-alien activists early this month actually had a negative effect on the demonstrators' cause, a poll found.

Now, why would all of these groups want open borders, amnesty for their illegality, an open door to massive extended families? Of course:

Long live the proletariat! Down with capitalism! Workers unite! All you have to lose is your chains! No wage slavery. We demand complete exemption from Gringo, infidel, and capitalist laws! It is October 1917--Go crazy! Take back our land! Replace the Constitution with shari'a. Revolution!

Michelle Malkin Exclusive - Illegal Alien Planning Day

In "Illegal Alien Planning Day," Michelle gives evidence that Mexican-Americans Are Urged to Arm Themselves in the belief that "European Americans Are Threatening Their Homes."

No kidding. As reported before, the extremist group "La Voz de Aztlan" has all sorts of plans for the United States. This time it appears that they may be suggesting armed rebellion:

From: la-voz-de-aztlan-admin@aztlan.net To: la-voz-de-aztlan@aztlan.net Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:27:37 -0700 Subject: [La Voz de Aztlan] URGENT ALERT: From The Revolutionary Council and Provisional Government of Aztlan

Dear La Voz de Aztlan Subscribers:
We have received the following communique from the
Minister of Information of the Nation of Aztlan. We rarely
receive any communiques from the "Revolutionary Council
and Provisional Government of Aztlan" so we must assume
that it is of upmost importance. We urge that you carefully
consider the information that it contains. Please pass this
to others in your network!
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
URGENT ALERT: From The Revolutionary Council and
Provisional Government of Aztlan
April 26, 2006
Estimada Raza de Aztlan and Beyond,
Our Director of Special Intelligence Services has brought
to our attention disturbing information that threatens the
safety of our families. This information requires that we
prepare a defense strategy to protect our communities.
Due to the recent large demonstrations of our people in
major cities in occupied Anahuac, extremist European
invaders are preparing violent actions against us.
They are expected to use physical violence in the upcoming
marches and rallies planned for May 1, 2006 and we must
take steps to protect our families.

The Director of Special Intelligence Services has reliable
information that anti-Mexican forces in Aztlan and in
certain other area of Anahuac, are preparing to utilize
explosives and snipers to kill our people. We urge our
community to arm themselves to protect our families. We
are also urging our soldiers presently serving In Iraq,
Afghanistan and other foreign lands to do everything
possible to return home and fight for your own. The
situation here is critical.

In addition, all political prisoners shall be in constant
alert and ready for action. Also, youth groups in our
barrios shall call truces and direct their energies against
the racist enemy that has vowed to annihilate our families.
Our Prime Minister is instructing every able bodied male to
arm himself to protect the women and children in his home.
We can not depend on local White law enforcement
authorities because in many cases they will join the
criminal elements and participate in the slaughter of our
people. Make sure you have weapons and plenty of
ammunition in your homes at the ready.

Criminal racist elements have already made death threats
against certain "occupation administrators" and they will
not stop at killing our civilians. We hope that the
massacres of Mexicans that the White criminals have vowed
to undertake are just the rantings of cowardly insane minds
but we must take these threats seriously.

Cuauhtli
Minister of Information
Nation of Aztlan

No one is advocating violence except for them. No one is advocating racist separatism and discrimination except for them. Americans are inviting those that are willing to join the mainstream as exactly that: mainstream Americans. It appears that this movement is not taking the invitation and is actually advocating something much different.

Don't forget to examine the other provocative information provided in this blog article, including the fact that the Mexican government is supporting the strike!

Smearing mainstream-Americans is fun and games for the Mexican media as reported in the article Neonazis van contra hispanos that equates those opposing millions of illegal immigrants as "racists," "white supremists," "Neo-Nazis," and those that "have declared 'open season' of hunting and harassment against immigrants and they attempt to utilize the migratory debate to stir up hate against Hispanics, particularly Mexicans..." Naturally Mexican citizens will believe this tripe...after all, it must be true, it's in the paper!!

No one is against immigrants that want come legally and join the mainstream; it's the racist, bigoted, violent, unassimilated immigrants that we don't want.

Meet Senor, Senora, et al, Entitlementas

May 1 is supposed to be the day when all the illegal aliens inside America emerge to show their strength. Their plan, according to sundry news reports, is to cripple America--well, for one day. They plan to show that they are a force to be reckoned with by not going to work and not buying anything Gringo.

Whatever they intend to show, they will show us the only side of the entitlement personality they can, the dark side. They will wallow in their imagined victimhood and act like baby birds who open their mouths as the adult bird arrives to the nest so that the adult bird can stuff nutrients into their gullets. Only these entitlement birds will not grow up and become independent adults.

Over and over we keep repeating the seemingly immortal words of Dr. Phil McGraw, famed television psychologist: People teach other people how to treat them. To see the difference we are stressing in this article, compare the following: (1.) people struggling to get to America illegally out of desperation, to take any job, to earn any money, to send back home, to support impoverished families in a country so corrupt that it makes a cesspool seem like clean drinking water; (2.) people struggling to get to America illegally because the American government doesn't care and they want to get their rewards, i.e., meet their "expectations."

Actually, both groups are meeting expectations, but they differ for each group.

The first group expects to find earning opportunities that make taking the risk of illegal entry worth taking. Anything else they can come by is pure gravy.

The second group expects to belly up to the welfare bar and be taken care of, at U. S. and state government expenses. This ALWAYS means at taxpayer expense since no government creates anything, thus earns nothing. Parasitizing from the conscripted earnings of productive citizens of a host country is always anathema to honorable men and women. This second group harbors no such scruples.

Listen to them and to their "leaders," and you will hear that this second group has "rights." That is correct: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT RIGHTS. What they mean is Rooseveltian Rights, not the Rights of Man. FDR, Mrs. FDR, and all Lefties then to now, stood for the "four freedoms" and their "logical" rights. For instance, freedom from hunger becomes the right to be fed. The freedom from the elements becomes the right to shelter, clothing, and by extension, on to health care and education. After all, does not the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights say the same thing? Yes, that disgraceful document does. These entitlement personalities are living the UN's UDHR.

Add to this all the decades of "compassionate leftism" and all the "compassionate conservatism," past to present, and you have two political parties, which sadly dominate American politics, giving away the farm. Some even declare this largess to be offered by "right." Our government taught them well, with the support of the government of Mexico.

Just a brief digression here in the interest of clarification. True rights are sanctions of ACTIONS and never the provision of materials and services. Your nature as a human being necessitates rights as freedoms of action to support and further yourself but not at the expense of others. Money, food, health care, education, etc., are items which must be supplied by someone--in this case, taxpayers. These are given by governments after taking money and property from citizens by force. The "four freedoms" of FDR and their derivative "rights" are pure Orwell-Speak. RIGHTS ARE NOT ENTITLEMENTS, AND ENTITLEMENTS ARE NOT RIGHTS.

What these Democrat and Republican policies, with presidential collusions, produced were masses of entitlement personalities, bellying up to your wallet to claim their "rights." Whereas the first group we cited tends to be grateful for opportunities and tries to make the most of them, the second group has no gratitude. The second group becomes petulant, demanding, passive aggressive, and passive dependent. After all, their own government of Mexico has contributed at least as much as the state and federal governments of the United States in cultivating the mass entitlement syndrome.

So, come May 1, expect to see masses of baby birds in the streets, all with mouths open, demanding to have THEIR entitlements stuffed into their gullets. Listen for all the corrupt "RIGHTS" that will be mentioned. And, do not forget what Dr. Phil said: We teach people how to treat us.

As for me, I intend to go shopping and observing. I could go shopping today or over the weekend, but I want to support the Rights of Man and its magnificent derivative, capitalism. And, I want to send a message by my actions to those who deserve my support and those who do not. I will also send a flurry of emails, etc., to the Cowards on the Potomac.

Enough!

The Hate-Filled "Lover of Angels:" "Muslims Will Rule The Earth..."

We are all trying to keep up with what is going on in the minds of those who would harm our country. Thanks to Elmer's Brother, there may be a significant "find."

This is the sort of material we see all the time written by those who would destroy our civilization. Normally, it would be just another hate-filled post written by another hate-filled Islamist proselytizing his hate-filled ideology.

I'm showing you this one, however, as a sample that is typical of what this blogger posts all the time. He calls himself "Lover of Angels." The reason it is more important than the average hate-filled junk that these people spew forth is because there appears to be some evidence that this guy may teach at one of our universities - "Lover of Angels" may well be the alter ego of Professor Julio Cesar Pino at Kent State University.

I am a strong proponant of free speech. We must understand what is meant by "free speech," however. It means that the government may NOT PROSECUTE someone simply because his views oppose its own. "Free speech" does NOT, however, mean that the government, via the taxpayer, is obligated to provide him with a podium for such views.

If this man is actually teaching at one of our universities, then that is precisely what is happening - the taxpayers are paying for his podium.

If these are his views, then he has every right to supply his own podium with his own resources and speak of them, free of any worry that he will be thrown in jail for doing so. He can even start his OWN university, and teach his views to people who volunteer to attend it.

THAT is what is meant by "freedom of speech." "Free speech" doesn't place upon us the burden of paying for him to speak.

So, here's a sample of his stuff; what do you think? If this guy is teaching at a tax-supported teaching institution, should he continue there, or should he have to provide his own soapbox?

If you think he should have to pay for his own soapbox, then please sign this petition protesting Dr. Pino's employment is here.

Here are some other sites where you can find writeups and sign the petition:

Conservative Central, A Conservative Realist, Democracy Frontline, Elmer's Brother, Infidel Bloggers Alliance, Moving Out Moving On, NeoCon Command Center and Soccer Mom Unplugged.


2006/4/23

Countdown: Islam and the End of History
by "Lover of Angels"


Life on earth will never come to an end except as described in the Book of Allaah and the Sunnah of His Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). The end of history will never occur before the emergence of all of the lesser and greater signs of the Hour. One of those signs is that there will be conflict between the people of truth, who are the Muslims, and the people of evil and falsehood, who are all of those who oppose the religion of truth, Islam, and strive to extinguish its light. There are two distinct features of this conflict which will occur before the end of life. The first is a conflict between the Muslims and the people of the cross, as is mentioned in the saheeh ahaadeeth which speak of the battles at the end of time.

The second is the battle between the Muslims at the time of the descent of Jesus (peace be upon him) with the Anti-Christ (Dajjaal) and his followers among the Jews. Then Ya’jooj and Ma’jooj (Gog and Magog-tw warring powers, enemies of Islam) will appear, and they will die as one.

Then the Muslims will rule the earth, then everyone in whose heart is faith equal to a grain of corn will die, when a cold wind blows that will take the souls of the believers. Then the Hour will begin soon after that and it will come upon the most evil of people who are scattered throughout the earth. The universe will not be destroyed when there is still one believer on earth, but when faith is gone it will be destroyed, because belief in Allaah is a reason for life to continue.

The point is that it is not permissible for a Muslim to believe that the end of the world will occur in a manner different to that which is mentioned in the proven texts of the Book of Allaah and the Sunnah of His Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).

May Day - And I Mean It In The Sense of "Emergency"

OK, folks, I know that most of us around here focus primarily on the threat posed by Islam. More and more, however, the threat posed by Islam is associated with the threat posed by our government's "open border" policy. This being the case, I am following both issues.

And if you think that our porous borders with Mexico (and Canada) are where the problem, ends, just take a look at "The UN's 'Borderless' World" by Joseph Klein over at FrontPageMagazine.

Here's the scoop on the plans by the illegals and their supporters for May Day.

First, the original e-mail from our friends at Voz de Aztlan. It is followed by a translantion (with gratitude to a friend) and than an AP article on the whole subject:

MEXICO:

"Nada Gringo" el 1 de Mayo El Universal Lunes 24 de abril de 2006 MONTERREY, NL.

La influyente Cámara de Comercio de Monterrey (Canaco) se sumará al boicot que realizarán diversas organizaciones civiles locales en apoyo a la protesta denominada "Un Día sin Latinos". Ésta se llevará a cabo el 1 de mayo en Estados Unidos.El próximo Día del Trabajo, dirigentes hispanos han convocado a un paro nacional, así como a diversas manifestaciones, para apoyar la legalización de los inmigrantes y han llamado a la población mexicana a que se solidarice al boicotear productos y servicios de Estados Unidos."

Unos días antes del 1 de mayo, haremos un llamado a la población para que no viaje a la frontera a comprar en los comercios de Laredo y McAllen", afirmó Jesús Marcos Giacomán, presidente de la Canaco.Según estadísticas de la Oficina de Impuestos de Texas, los mexicanos que compran en los comercios de McAllen y Laredo dejan una derrama de alrededor de 2 mil millones de dólares al año.

Para el presidente de los comerciantes de Monterrey, la salida de capitales que provocan los mexicanos al comprar en los comercios de Estados Unidos le hace un "gran daño" al país. "Por eso vamos a apoyar el boicot", precisó el líder de la Canaco que afilia alrededor de 10 mil negocios.Mencionó que han realizado encuestas entre la clase media de Monterrey, las cuales arrojan que las familias regias de clase media alta gastan entre 3 mil y 5 mil dólares en los comercios de McAllen, Texas."Y eso sucede porque actualmente el dólar es la mercancía más barata que tenemos en el país", subrayó Marcos Giacomán."

Por eso también estamos protestando por el aumento de la franquicia de 300 dólares para importar productos de Estos Unidos", concluyó el presidente de la Canaco.De esa manera el comercio organizado se suma a las agrupaciones civiles que ya están convocando a la población a que el 1 de mayo no realice llamadas, no consuma productos estadounidenses y se abstenga de viajar a ese país.´Clausura´ de supermercado"Ese día vamos a hacer el cierre simbólico de alguna tienda Wal-Mart", afirmó Ignacio Zapata, líder de la Unión de Usuarios de Servicios Públicos y regidor del ayuntamiento de Monterrey.

Ignacio Zapata y otras organizaciones civiles se reunieron recientemente con Ventura Gutiérrez, miembro de la Coalición Internacional 1 de Mayo."La dirección de la Coalición Internacional 1 de Mayo me asignó la tarea de ser el promotor principal del lado mexicano para que la población de este lado se solidarice con la protesta", aseguró Ventura Gutiérrez a los representantes de diversas instituciones.Ventura Gutiérrez es también presidente de la organización Braceroproa, la cual aglutina a 10 mil ex braceros que reclaman un fondo de retiro que nunca les fue devuelto y quienes también se sumarán al boicot contra Estados Unidos."Estamos solicitando a la población mexicana que ese día no hagan una sola llamada a Estados Unidos", precisó Gutiérrez.

Agregó que ese día no compren ningún producto de Estados Unidos y se abstengan de viajar a ese país."Queremos que el 1 de mayo dejen de tomar Coca-Cola y en su lugar consuman agua de horchata y jamaica", añadió el líder social."

Queremos que el 1 de mayo se preparen diversas acciones de protesta para solidarizarse con la que será la marcha más grande en la historia de Estados Unidos", concluyó Ventura Gutiérrez. Ignacio Zapata comentó que ese día también realizarán un mitin de protesta frente al consulado de Estados Unidos en Monterrey.* * * * * * * * * * La Voz de Aztlanhttp://www.aztlan.net/

And now, the translation of that e-mail:

"Nothing Gringo on May 1st" "El Universal" Monday 24, April, 2006

Commercial group "Camara de Comerciao de Monterrey" (Canaco) put together a summary of the boycott in which various local civil organizations are creating to support the protest called "A Day Without Latinos." This will take place on May 1st in the United States. The day after the meeting, participating Hispanics created a national work stoppage to be manifested in various ways in order to support the legalization of immigrants, and have requested that the population of Mexico boycott products and services that come from the United States."

A few days before May 1st, we will call on Mexicans to not travel to the border to do business in Laredo or McAllen," affirmed Jesús Marcos Giacomán, president of Canaco. According to statistics from the Tax Office of the State of Texas, Mexicans that do business in McAllen and Laredo spend about $2 million a year there.

The president of this Monterrey commercial group feels that encouraging Mexicans to do business in the United States damages Mexico. "For this reason we are going to support the boycott," said the leader of Canoco, a group that represents 10,000 businesses. He mentioned that polls taken of middle class families of Monterrey have shown that they spend between three to five million dollars in McAllen, Texas, businesses.

According to Marcos Giacomån, "This happens because the dollar is actually the 'cheapest product' we have in the country. For this reason we are also protesting the rise to $300 in the import charge of importing products into the United States," Canaco's president finally stated.

This is the summary of action plan made by Canaco to various civil groups that are mobilizing to support the boycott on May 1st: Don't make phone calls, don't use any products or services from the United States, and don't go there. Shut Down the Super Center. On this day we will make a symbolic gesture by closing all Wal-Marts," said Ignacio Zapata, leader of the Union of Public Services Users and governing body of Monterrey.

Ignacio Zapata and other civil organizations recently met with Ventura Gutiérrez, a member of the "International Coalition of May 1st." "The leaders of of the "Coalition of May Ist" made me the principal promoter on the Mexican side in charge of solidifying the protest in Mexico," Ventura Gutiérrez affirmed when he spoke to the representatives of the various organizations.

Ventura Gutiérrez is also president of "Braceroproa," an organization that joined together about 10 million ex-braceros that are involved in a suit to claim retirement funds that are owed but they never received. The members of this group will also participate in the boycott."We are asking Mexicans not to make a single phone call to the UnitedStates," said Gutiérrez.He added that no one should buy U.S. products nor travel to the UnitedStates."On May 1st, want them not to drink Coca-Cola, but instead, drink products made from " 'horchata,' i.e. almond syrup, and 'jamaica,' i.e. hibiscus flower juice, Gutiérrez added.

"We want May 1st to create solidarity as a prequel for various other protests that will culminate in the biggest march in the history of theUnited States," concluded Ventura Gutiérrez.

Ignacio Zapata commented that on this day there will also be a protest meeting in front of the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey.

And now, the AP article (hat tip: AOW) :

Activists plan one-day boycott of U.S. businesses

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- "The Great American Boycott" is spreading south of the border, as activists call for Mexicans to boycott U.S. businesses on May 1.

The protest is timed to coincide with a May 1 boycott of work and shopping in the United States that also has been dubbed "A Day Without Immigrants." The boycott, which grew out of huge pro-migrant marches across the United States, is designed to pressure Congress to legalize millions of undocumented people.

Mexican unions, political and community groups, newspaper columnists and even some Mexican government offices have joined the call in recent days.

"Remember, nothing gringo on May 1," advises one of the many e-mails being circulated among Internet users in Mexico.

"On May 1, people shouldn't buy anything from the interminable list of American businesses in Mexico," reads another. "That means no Dunkin' Donuts, no McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks, Sears, Krispy Kreme or Wal-Mart." For some it's a way to express anti-U.S. sentiment, while others see it as part of a cross-border, Mexican-power lobby.

In some cases, advocates incorrectly identified firms as American -- Sears stores in Mexico, for example, have been owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim since 1997. And ironically, the protest targets the U.S. business community, which is one of the strongest supporters of legalization or guest-worker programs. "At the end of the day, boycotting would only hurt corporations that are backing what people want done in the immigration bill," said Larry Rubin, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico. Rubin is encouraging people to write to their legislators instead of boycotting.

Roberto Vigil of the California-based immigrants rights group Hermandad Mexicana said his group has asked some of Mexico's largest labor unions to back the protest. Elias Bermudez, president of the Phoenix-based Immigrants Without Borders, is actively promoting the boycott in interviews with Mexican radio and television stations.

Mexican groups are responding. Pablo Gonzalez, spokesman for one of Mexico's largest labor unions, the Federation of Revolutionary Workers and Farmers, said his organization will support a boycott against "at least four of the most important U.S. firms, among them Wal-Mart," Mexico's largest retailer. Two other major labor groups -- the telephone workers' and auto workers' unions -- also are expected to join, Vigil said.

Even parts of the Mexican government have signed onto the protest.

"We are not going to be buying any products from the United States on May 1," said Lolita Parkinson, national coordinator for the National Board of State Offices on Attention for Migrants, which represents state government-run migrant aid offices.

For some, the boycott is fueled not just by debate on the immigration bill, but by long-standing resentment over the perceived mistreatment of Mexicans in the United States. "We want to show the power we have as Mexicans," said Carlos Chavez y Pacho, vice president of the chamber of commerce in Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass, Texas. Chavez y Pacho is also urging Mexicans not to shop in U.S. border cities on May 1, in part to protest what he calls arrogant behavior by U.S. customs officials and border officers.

Rafael Ruiz Harrell, who writes a column in the Mexico City newspaper Metro, predicted the boycott could give rise to a broader, pan-Latino movement. "If we could get all of Latin America, for one day, to leave the U.S. firms without customers, we would be sending the kind of clear message they seem incapable of understanding," he wrote.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/04/14/mexico.boycott.ap/index.html

American Soldiers with Sombreros?

It's not so much where you are from, ...it's your attitude that matters. Divided loyalties matter, a sense of entitlement matters, a desire to undercut to subvert fairness, and to create anarchy matter.

Globalization's New Underclass

In case you haven't noticed, you are probably competing with workers on the other side of the world, workers that are equally or probably better educated and, perhaps, more highly skilled, yet working for a much lower wage. Globalization, outsourcing, and the age of the internet are to blame.

Billed as the great equalizer between the rich and the poor, globalization has been anything but. An increasingly integrated global economy is facing the strains of widening income disparities - within countries and across countries. This has given rise to a new and rapidly expanding underclass that is redefining the political landscape. The growing risks of protectionism are an outgrowth of this ominous trend.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Globalization has long been portrayed as the rising tide that lifts all boats. The surprise is in the tide - a rapid surge of information-technology-enabled connectivity that has pushed the global labor arbitrage quickly up the value chain. Only the elite at the upper end of the occupational hierarchy have been spared the pressures of an increasingly brutal wage compression. The rich are, indeed, getting richer but the rest of the workforce is not. This spells mounting disparities in the distribution of income - for developed and developing countries, alike.

The United States and China exemplify the full range of pressures bearing down on the income distribution. With per capita incomes of US$38,000 and $1,700, respectively, the US and China are at opposite ends of the global income spectrum. Yet both countries have extreme disparities in the internal mix of their respective income distributions.

This can be seen in their so-called Gini coefficients - a statistical measure of the dispersion of income shares within a country. A Gini index (the Gini coefficient multiplied by 100) of zero represents perfect equality, with each segment of the income distribution accounting for a proportionate share of total income. Conversely, a reading of 100 represents perfect inequality, with the bulk of a nation's overall personal income being concentrated at the upper end of the distribution spectrum. In other words, the higher the Gini index, the more unequal the income distribution. The latest Gini index readings for the US (41) and China (45) are among the highest of all the major economies in the world - pointing to a much greater incidence of inequality than in economies with more homogeneous distributions of income, such as Japan (25), Europe (32), and even India (33).

Read the rest.

US Approves Second Dubai Deal

Uh, oh. Here we go again.

This time for Dubal International Capital to take over the British firm Doncasters, a precision-engineering company that--get this--makes engines for our military aircraft and parts for tanks. Their projects include the Stealth Joint Fight Striker.
In buying Doncasters, the Arab Islamist country, which also does business with Iran, takes possession of operations in nine U.S. locations and manufactures precision parts for defense contractors such as Boeing, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric.

Perhaps, because of worries about a Nuclear Iran, the Battle of Iraq, and high gas prices, that we forgot about these...or perhaps they hoped we wouldn't care:

US to Clear Doncasters for Dubai

Something Rotten in Dubai: The Ports Deal, the President's Bro, Homeland Non-Security & Ice.

U.S. Probes Second UAE Deal

Timeline: United Arab Emirates

Dubai's Formidable New Ruler

Al Qaeda's Gold: Following the Trail to Dubai

Dubai Ports -Strategic Implications

HEY GRINGO, PACK YOUR BAGS AND GET OUT

Hey, Gringo!

Well, for sure, the MSM doesn't publish THIS kind of detail. Very interesting, and don't forget, the May 1st activity will be conducted with Muslims living here in a joint effort. No wonder - they have much in common with each other - they don't want to assimilate, they want to take over, and they want to destroy us.

Display your American flag on May 1.

Oh, and by the way, please note the states that are printed on the back of this T-shirt; they include the ones with all that shale oil.

Here's the article:

By Investigative Reporter John Taft
April 25, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

“You (gringos) have spilled enough of our blood, now it’s your turn to bleed, you [expletive] sub-human beasts.” So said an editorial in the University of California Irvine’s Hispanic LaVoz Mestiza. Professor Gutierrez, employed by the University of Texas, founder of La Raza said, “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."

Now that isn’t very neighborly.

A Chicano organization called MEChA wants to take over much of the US Southwest, an area they call Aztlan said, "For the race everything. For those outside the race, nothing."

Another “D” for a bad attitude.

Other similar groups include: The La Raza Unida Party, Brown Berets de Aztlan, OLA (Organization for the Liberation of Aztlan), and the Nation of Aztlan. These are radical organizations that can be found in many American high schools and most colleges. They hate America and love its enemies. They are brimming over with race hatred, anti-Semitism, and a history of communist leanings and communist support. They have an irrational anger aimed at their stupid benefactors. Recent mass marches have emboldened these people who do pose a real threat to this nation. Many are illegals and profess their allegiance not to the United States where they live, but to the authoritarian corrupt state of Mexico.

Why are these Chicano groups willing to use violence, kill the gringo, and steal his home and land? Here is what Lou Dobbs has to say: “There are some Mexican citizens and some Mexican-Americans who want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the southwestern United States given over to Mexico. These groups call it the reconquista, Spanish for reconquest.” The word “some” Dobbs uses runs into the hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions judging by the recent filling of streets with anti US Mexican flag wavers. A revolution is taking place while the spectators watch.

The Enemy Within

MEChA has declared war on the United States, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. So far it has done this with impunity with the help of treacherous senators, congressmen and university officials , along with the enemies of this nation. MEChA is bold and aggressive using this nation’s economy, welfare programs, and its educational system. While filling their bellies and needs at the expense of the American taxpayer, they’re plotting the overthrow of this republic in broad daylight. MEChA is nurtured and protected by the University of California at Irvine. MEChA has spread its venomous rhetoric through an estimated 300 chapters in universities and schools across the United States.

Their plan EL PLAN DE AZTLÁN is available for all to read. It’s full of race hated, threats, and the use of their bodies for war and their youth to commit revolutionary acts of violence against this nation and its people.

MEChA is appealing to all Hispanics to join their so- called revolution. The illegal aliens and lack of national border control are issues that are developing into a life or death struggle determining whether this republic shall endure as we have know it for the past 230 years. This is a threat with a potential that rivals Iran and radical Islam and it’s in our communities and cities across the nation. Our national leaders are turning their backs to this threat while smiling and looking for Hispanic votes. The illegal aliens are the grunts for an army of guerrilla fighters MEChA and other Chicano groups would like to create. Amnesty will make no difference to them, for the beat of their drums will continue. With amnesty, millions more of Mexico’s poor and hungry will attempt to enter the US for a free ride on the backs of US taxpayers.

There are large numbers of Hispanics who are not integrating into this society. They are not learning English as shown by the number of Spanish radio stations, businesses that tell you to push one for Spanish or two for English, and bilingual schools. Whole communities, like Maywood, California, in Los Angeles are nearly 100 percent Hispanic. And their allegiance to a corrupt Mexico, though hard to understand, is obvious. This was demonstrated visually when Hispanics legal and illegals filled American streets with protestors wanting open borders, and amnesty for illegals, while waving Mexican flags. There was a backlash to the Mexican flag waving, so now they wave American flags thinking to fool the watchers, thus making them hypocrites and deceivers.

Demonstrations like this don’t happen in Mexico where Mexican authorities rape, rob, and beat illegals passing through their county as documented in the linked article. Mexico supports illegal aliens leaving Mexico and illegally crossing our border but doesn’t want illegals entering Mexico.

MEChA’s Plan to Seize the southwestern United States

MEChA says in the Plan, “A nation autonomous and free - culturally, socially, economically, and politically- will make its own decisions on the usage of our lands, the taxation of our goods, the utilization of our bodies for war, the determination of justice (reward and punishment), and the profit of our sweat.” The “our lands” is the land owned by American citizens. How does MEChA propose to obtain this land of the southwestern states? Their Plan indicates they will use violence with physical force to remove the gringo from his property. Let’s look at the following statements from the Plan:

“EDUCATION must be relative to our people, i.e., history, culture, bilingual education, contributions, etc. Community control of our schools, our teachers, our administrators, our counselors, and our programs.”

“POLITICAL LIBERATION can only come through independent action on our part, since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feed from the same trough. Where we are a majority, we will control; where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group; nationally, we will represent one party: La Familia de La Raza!”

“El Plan de Aztlán is the plan of liberation! Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as acts of liberation and for La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.”

“We must insure that our writers, poets, musicians, and artists produce literature and art that is appealing to our people and relates to our revolutionary culture.”

One could reasonably ask why MEChA doesn’t make Mexico an economic powerhouse. The answer is easy; they are having so much success in the US, and they want to steal, like thieves in the night, the wealth of someone else’s hard work. The goose that lays the golden egg is in danger.

There is nothing cheap about illegals.

California taxpayers paid an extra $9 billion in taxes to support illegals according to a 2004 report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C. organization that endorses stricter immigration policies. Contributing to this expense are education at around $8 thousand per illegal child or those born to illegal parents, medical care, and prison costs. A similar study in 2004 by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. claimed that illegal aliens cost the federal government $10 billion more than is collected in taxes from them.

That includes $2.2 billion for medical care for uninsured illegal aliens. Another $1.9 billion goes to food assistance programs like food stamps and school lunch programs. Illegal immigrant children cost taxpayers $1.4 billion in aid to schools to help pay their costs. The states’ taxpayers carry the major part of the cost to care for the millions of illegals in this country. When schools ask for more money, ask how many illegals are in the classroom and if the citizenship of the parents and child was checked. The costs mentioned are disputed by others who claim the costs of illegals aliens is much higher.

Illegals and Crime in the United States

Illegals are creating a huge crime wave all across the United States. Here is what Russell Pearce, representing Arizona’s 18th district says on his website, “Perhaps as high as 80% of the violent crime in the Phoenix area involves illegal aliens (according to Phoenix Chief Hurt and Mesa police violent crimes response team). Over 4000 homicide warrants were issued by the Border States to suspects who are believed to have fled south of the border into Mexico. Maricopa County Hospital loses over $2 million weekly on uncompensated care (largely do to illegal aliens). In 2003, 77 border hospitals filed for bankruptcy.”

The US is a big candy land for the uneducated, criminals, and often sick illegal aliens. The illegals aliens have found there is a free lunch, free medical care, free education, and there really is a Santos Claus, a big, stupid, pale-faced gringo. Hispanic Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez at the University of Texas describes the gringo as, “Our Devil with pale skin and blue eyes.” This pale-faced gringo sounds more like a fool than a devil. And guess who the all day sucker is; it’s none other than John Q. Taxpayer. He’s represented in congress by a bunch of enablers called congressmen and senators including Sen. John McCain and company. Jack Abramoff isn’t the only guy that should be behind bars.

Congress Readies Broad New Digital Copyright Bill

Anyone who does anything on line should become thoroughly aware of the contents of this bill. There is too much complex stuff to put in one small post.

Katrina and Chna's Whirlwind Growth...and China's

If you haven't read the essayist "Robert Spengler" of AsiaTimesOnline you are in for a treat. Focused on culture and demographics, Spengler relates how Hurricane Katrina was not the "ill wind that blew no one good," but the agent of change, miraculous lifting hundreds of thousands out of he poverty in which they had been trapped for centuries. In the case of Katrina they were forced by the weather to move to better circumstances. China's peasants were moved by government fiat.

Starting from the inspiration of the New York Times' "Katrina's Tide Carries Many to Hopeful Shores,", April 23, 2006, he then makes a parallel argument for the improvement of the lives of China's unlettered, rural peasants that have been moved by fiat of the Chinese government. Though not mentioned in the essay, one could easily substitute the word "Mexican peasants" for Chinese and Katrina victims to understand how their lives have improved by displacement into more prosperous areas. The argument can be made implicating that government's active and passive behaviors that had the same result: mass movement of population to more enterprising areas.

Concentrating only on the displaced millions, Spengler's essay stops there, not mentioning the costs of and effect of the influx of these millions has had on the populations already there. He does compare the futility of the movement of migrants to refugee camps such as the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Shi'ite Muslims that were left stranded in tent camps on the Iraqi-Jordanian border with no hope and "no culture of enterprise in the Arab world to which these unfortunates might repair." Other hopeless migrations come to mind: the Vietnamese boat people whose flight often landed them in similar camps; the refugees of Darfur and the Balkans, the Horn of Africa, and other war-torn areas. Staying alive is their enterprise.

The best way to improve the lot of poor people is to move them out of poor regions into rich regions. Rich regions offer a culture of enterprise that easily assimilates new entrants, while poor regions labor under a cultural of poverty that stifles their most promising residents. Merely displacing people from poor regions, of course, does not necessarily improve their lot. The grossest act of ethnic cleansing in years passed unnoticed last week when Shi'ite militias drove 35,000 Palestinians from their homes in Baghdad, leaving thousands stranded in tent camps on the Iraqi-Jordanian border. There is no culture of enterprise in the Arab world to which these unfortunates might repair.

But in the case of China, peasants arriving in cities improve their living standards manifold even with the humblest employment in an urban economy, and rapidly acquire skills that give them upward mobility. The same appears to be true for the refugees from Katrina.

That is the source of China's economic miracle. China's cities held only 135 million people in 1995, but will burgeon to 800 million by 2050, according to United Nations population forecasts. Peasants who spent their lives in rural poverty without hope of betterment are joining the global economy. At a 10% economic growth rate, China's output will double every seven years. It can sustain this growth rate as long as it can transfer people from low-productivity subsistence agriculture to high-productivity manufacturing. China's urban-rural population ratio now stands at about 1:2, but by mid-century will shift to 2:1.

The US long since accomplished the great transition from farm to city, but pockets of immiserated rural culture remain in the great cities. New Orleans notoriously enclosed the poorest black population in the United States. The city produced nothing of note, hosted no great financial institutions, attracted no entrepreneurs in the emerging technology industries, but offered an urban theme park to tourists attracted by the garish carnival, jazz funerals, decaying 19th-century architecture, Creole cooking, an officially tolerated sex industry - in short, the lurid slop of Anne Rice novels.

The former residents of New Orleans slums, meanwhile, find themselves in the promised land of shopping malls and suburban subdivisions. As the cited New York Times story says of Atlanta,

Now quoting from The Times,

Growth is the region's secular religion. A half-century ago, Atlanta was a second-string province the size of Birmingham, Alabama. Now it is home to 4 million people and the world's busiest airport, with a prosperity that crosses color lines. Compared with blacks nationwide, the black population of Greater Atlanta is much better paid, much better educated and much more likely to be raising children with two parents at home.

Spengler views the passing away of cultures and languages as a matter of course.

Of course, the traditional culture of New Orleans will disappear, like most of the traditional cultures of the world. But the people of New Orleans are better off without it. Full disclosure: I never visited the city nor intended to, in part because I detest New Orleans jazz, but mostly because the ambience of louche hedonism annoys me. I read with indifference the innumerate eulogies to New Orleans culture.

Eulogies of this kind are becoming more frequent. Perhaps 90% of the world's languages will disappear during the next century. One is more likely to encounter KFC chicken or Domino's pizza in downtown Shanghai than the recondite and elegant cuisine that bears the name of the city.

Many beautiful things will disappear because poor people no longer will suffer to make them. One simply cannot find decent Mexican food in the United States, in part because traditional Mexican cuisine requires vast amounts of labor. Machine-made corn tortillas never will hold the savor of the hand-made article, but Mexicans migrate to the US precisely to escape a life of making tortillas by hand.

Atlanta, for readers whose main association with the Georgia state capital might be Gone With the Wind, has metamorphosed into an expanse of steel and glass surrounded by ticky-tacky housing developments, an emblem for the sort of urban sprawl that Europeans disdain. "I love New Orleans, don't get me wrong," one of the Katrina refugees told the New York Times. "But I thank God we are in Atlanta."

This argument is also given in the UN's "Borderless" World.. Instead of internal migration, the UN envisions regional and international migration from poor to rich, less developed to more developed as a human right.

The United Nations sees the matter differently. Its bureaucrats envision a “borderless” world where immigration is treated as an international human rights issue and used as a global development tool to encourage free movement of the developing countries’ poor to developed nations. This philosophy underlies their preparations for the United Nations High Level Dialogue concerning international migration and development, scheduled to take place in conjunction with the fall 2006 General Assembly session. They want the agenda for this Dialogue to center on the relationship between international migration and the economic and social development of the poorer countries in the world.

The UN bureaucrats’ aggressive push into the immigration debate fits in with their dogmatic belief that international treaties should trump national sovereignty prerogatives – in this case, a UN treaty that codifies the internationalization of immigration policy called the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. This Convention was adopted by the General Assembly in 1990 but went into effect in 2003 after the twentieth signing country formally ratified it. It is heavily biased against countries like the United States which receive the lion’s share of illegal aliens.
Indeed, the Convention goes so far as to use the term ‘irregular’ as a euphemism for illegal aliens and would require their destination countries to provide them with an array of benefits and justiciable rights. This explains why the ratifying countries are the ones who are effectively exporting their economic problems to the United States and other destination countries, and why the destination countries in turn have not signed on.

The United Nations wants to change all that by seeking to position the right to freely migrate from poor to richer lands as a fundamental human right deserving of universal recognition. Indeed, they view internationally managed migration as an effective means to socially engineer the end of wealth disparities existing between the world’s most developed countries and the world’s developing countries. “Migration must become an integral part of global development strategies”, said a report prepared last fall by the Global Commission on International Migration set up with Kofi Annan’s assistance to help prepare the way for this fall’s United Nations High Level Dialogue. Using the euphemism ‘irregular migration’ to refer to illegal aliens, the Commission warned that restrictive national policies are “neither desirable nor feasible, and may jeopardize the rights of migrants and refugees.”

The United Nations and many others in the world, as well as in the United States, see borders and nationalities in Front Page Magazine. Some proponents of amnesty argue that to oppose open borders is to retreat into isolationism. Yet, it is the left-wing groups organizing the "open border" rallies who desire to see a withdrawal of U.S. power from the outside world and a collapse of America's global influence, which they consider to be the manifestations of an evil empire.

My favorite banner was a large one carried by six marchers which read, in both English and Spanish, "For A World Without Borders And Law." It is commonly heard that "9/11 changed everything." For the large and well-organized immigrant rights community, which is heavily funded by left-wing foundations like Ford, Soros and MacArthur, this has meant a more active drive to keep the borders open, if not disappear all together. Their aim is not just to legalize the "undocumented" horde that is already here, but to make sure the flow continues.

This what we are up against. Ordinary people don't have the luxury to see forest, only the individual trees in our copse or neck of the woods. We can't easily envision the scope and make predictions that academics, politicians, diplomats, and bureaucrats armed with statistics from countless studies. We only know the effect on our little corner of the world is presently adversely affected by their decisions. Have they made the right decisions that will ultimately lead to an improvement in OUR lives or are they only concerned with the legacies they leave on the world stage, the drama of the effect on large populations regardless of the sacrifices we have to make? Is no one looking out for us?

D.C. Watson: Mohammedans, about your public image

Recent polls are telling an interesting tale. A tale that reflects the results of the unacceptable behavior coming out of the Islamic world, and the results of Muslim militants wearing expensive suits, trotting around the Western world, attempting to subversively undercut the legal systems of democratic nations, aiming to persuade dimwitted politicians to pass hate speech laws, and playing the media for the fools that they are. All of this is geared toward one goal: The implementing of Islamic law around the world.

Simultaneously, they play a bogus race card against people who refuse to buy into what they're peddling: That all they want is to peacefully co-exist with all of us, but are the poor, oppressed victims of "Islamophobia." Slowly but surely, however, Americans are becoming increasingly aware of this game.

The tale continues with the same Muslim militants reading poll results that indicate a public relations nightmare for them, as the perception of Islam continues to plummet. Again, because Americans are on to their game.

Here are some suggestions for all of you Mohammedans that may help you with your dilemma of having a public image that's in the dumper:

Learn about, and respect the sacrifices that have been made by American citizens and American soldiers throughout the past 230 years that made the United States of America the wonderful country that it is, and kept it that way.

Understand that the Americans will not be told what to do by anyone, and that includes you, as you so stringently adhere to the fighting words of Muhammad.

For anyone who still seeks answers about the sensational Islamic prophet, you can read more about him here.

Stop murdering your sisters for adopting the Western lifestyle, wearing make up, and dating non-Muslim men.

Stop strapping bomb belts to your torsos with the intent to kill as many innocent people as you can while you blow your bowels all over a bus or street.

Stop cutting off the heads of live, outnumbered, bound, innocent civilians, as you yell "Allahu Akbar."

Is it really necessary for you cavemen to lop off someone's hand or foot with a sword for stealing? Especially if it's food so they can eat, or feed their families?

Stop rallying around Islamist toilet bugs like Sami Al-Arian, yet another Muslim living in America who attempted to present himself as mild mannered in public, yet when surrounded by his brethren, behaved somewhat differently. Like many before him, he has finally admitted his involvement with a terrorist organization, and the nation will smell that much better after he's deported.

Public stoning. Most of us used to throw rocks, when we were seven.

How about keeping your oversized polyester trousers zipped up, and stop raping Western women.

The Muhammad cartoon riots. Quite possibly the stupidest thing you've done thus far during your lifetime. However, if you're young, there's no doubt that you'll try to top it.

Rioting in your non-Islamic host nations, destroying thousands of vehicles, dousing a handicapped woman with petrol and then setting her on fire, and eventually causing a couple hundred million dollars in damages will not endear you to the citizens of these countries.

Stop burning down churches, temples, and synagogues? If you don't change your ways, and fast, rest assured that you'll be seeing plenty of fire where you'll be going.

Stop migrating to non-Muslim countries and then complaining about the national past times and traditions that they practice in their own lands. And you honestly wonder why so many people think that you're out of your minds?

Stop pushing for Muslim holidays, and prayer rooms in American public schools. What have you prima donnas done to deserve special treatment that is not afforded to those who follow other religions?

Stop speaking to our students in American public schools about the “similarities” between Islam and Christianity, and telling them that the United States is a Judeo-Christian-Muslim nation according to the beliefs of our founding fathers. In other words, stop worming your way into American schools and lying to our kids.

Beards are not a requirement in Islam. You know this, and so do we. So, stop filing lawsuits in an attempt to obtain special treatment. If your job requires you to not wear a beard, then do what you're required to do, or go find another line of work.

Do you mutilate your own genitals? No? Then stop forcing little Muslim girls to go through the brutal practice of female genital mutilation.

Stop chanting death to America and burning American flags, and then whining when America cuts off your financial aid after you vote in a terrorist network to govern you.

For God's sake, will you stop beating on burning cars with your shoes?

Stop blaming television and movie producers for Islam's negative image and start looking inward toward your own co-religionists.

Organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations feel that education is the "key to improving public perceptions of Islam."

With their own words and actions, Mohammedans around the world have provided the necessary education to give anyone with even one eye open the ability to arrive at the correct conclusions.

It should be quite simple, Mohammedans. If you move to non-Islamic lands, despite what your Imam may tell you in the mosque, or what your friendly neighborhood Muslim civil rights organization may encourage you to do, it is not your duty to disrupt free society while you hide behind a religious drape. It is, however, your duty to adhere to the laws of the lands to which you've migrated, and to respect the citizens of your host nations. Your beliefs do not override the national laws of free societies, nor should they ever.

The West offers all of you freedoms that you could never imagine having back in Qur'an land. You have an opportunity to live a peaceful, quiet life. So, instead of beating your little pigeon chests every time you feel that someone insults your beloved "prophet" or your "holy" Qur'an, you should either learn tolerance, and try to work and play well with others, or you should voluntarily remove yourselves from the civilized world, and move back to where you came from, where knuckle draggers are welcomed with open arms.

Is Amnesty Inevitable? Mexicans Believe It is.

They name their babies Johnny and Leslie, so certain are they that their kids' future lies in the United States. Returning migrants sprinkle English into their speech as they talk knowingly about job markets in U.S. towns.

Mexico's economy, society and political system are built around the assumption that migration and amnesties for undocumented migrants will continue — and that the $20 billion they send home every year will keep coming, and almost certainly grow.
In fact, the government is counting on continued cash from a Mexican-born U.S. population it predicts will rise from 11 million to between 17.9 million and 20.4 million by 2030.

"There have been amnesties and reforms before, and they will continue to occur periodically," said Jesus Cervantes, director of statistics for Mexico's Central Bank.

President Vicente Fox is one of many Mexican who considers the migrants "heroes," because they send money to their impoverished home villages, and in some cases risk death walking into America in pitiless desert sun.
There are various proposals up for adoption.

Bush's Plan

Bush has not formalized his concepts into legislation, but some specific points he favors have been made public:

He wants Congress to approve a three-pronged approach that calls for tougher border security, aggressive interior enforcement and a temporary guest-worker program.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has said undocumented residents should be allowed to participate in a temporary worker program after paying "substantial" fines.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has ruled out mass deportation, saying it would cost billions of dollars and cause enormous legal and logistical complications.

The administration wants to add border agents and expand detention space and high-tech border surveillance but not put a fence along the full length of the border.

House Plan

Passed Dec. 16, 239-182, after the House rejected inclusion of a guest-worker program. Some key features:
Tougher penalties on illegal immigrants and businesses that employ them.

The creation of a 700-mile fence in parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas at a cost of $2.2 billion.
Increased penalties for smuggling and for gang members.

More border agents, expanded detention space and high-tech border surveillance.

Reimbursement for sheriffs in 29 border counties for enforcing immigration laws and detaining illegal immigrants.
Deportation of legal immigrants convicted of multiple drunken-driving offenses.

A requirement that all Border Patrol uniforms, many of which have been made in Mexico, be U.S.-made.

An 18-month deadline after enactment for the Homeland Security Department to secure operational control of the border.

Senate Proposals

The Senate resumes debate this week on bills that include a guest-worker plan and legalization of undocumented immigrants and a separate enforcement-oriented measure. Differences between whatever passes the Senate and the bill passed by the House will have to be worked out in a conference committee.

Senate proposals: Illegal immigrants in the U.S. as of January 2004 could apply for a six-year visa. They must work, show good character, pay $2,000 and pass background checks to get green cards after six years.

After getting their green cards, they could apply for citizenship in five years.

Border patrols, inspectors and detainment facilities would increase.

Boost penalties and expand high-tech surveillance.

Expand and replace fences in sections along the Arizona border.

Something needs to be done. A report in the Charlotte Observer notes that the consequences of no action has put us at risk:

• Illegal workers have received taxpayer money to help build N.C. roads, with neither the federal government nor state agencies requiring contractors to verify workers' documents.

• The IRS and Social Security Administration know of possibly millions of cases in which illegal workers use someone else's Social Security number to get a job -- but they don't let you know if it's your number being used and don't use that information to crack down on the workers.

• The IRS and SSA also don't act upon information that tells them which employers are the most egregious in submitting fraudulent Social Security wage reports -- including one company that used the same Social Security number for 2,580 worker reports.

• Local enforcement officials say they arrest an average of one document counterfeiter every three weeks, and they say there could be hundreds of counterfeit operations in the Charlotte region -- some selling Social Security numbers for as little as $30.

All of which was supposed to be prevented in fall 1986, when House and Senate leaders revived a fragile immigration package just days before Congress adjourned.

The Immigrant Reform and Control Act was historic legislation, supporters said, a responsible mix of open arms and closed doors. Signed quickly by President Ronald Reagan, the law tightened border security while legalizing 3 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

It was, the bill's sponsor believed, the last amnesty this country would need.

Now, Congress is again confronting an immigration system most everyone thinks is flawed -- from Latino advocates who point to decade-long waits to legally enter the U.S., to businesses that point to jobs needing to be filled, to citizens who chafe at the financial strain immigrants put on public schools and social services.

Except now, 20 years have been added to immigration's issues -- two decades of accumulated impatience that is fueling a debate as raw and divisive as ever.

This has happened because 1986 Immigration bills created a "large loophole" followed by the "weak political will of the 1990s."

As a young lawyer in Park County, Wyo., Alan Simpson watched as federal agents rounded up people who looked Mexican beginning in the 1950s as part of a raid called "Operation Wetback." Simpson represented some of the arrested illegal immigrants. The employers, he said, "went their merry way."By 1986, Simpson was chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on immigration and refugee policy, and he co-authored the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act -- the first law to punish employers for hiring illegal immigrants.

He was proud, and is now, that the legislation was the first to penalize employers and not just the illegal immigrants they hired. He was proud of the amnesty that allowed longtime and trouble-free workers to stop fearing the next knock at the door.

"I am very proud of the fact that we brought 2.9 million out of the dark," Simpson said.

Along with border security, the law's primary aim was to dry up jobs for illegal immigrants by penalizing employers who hired them. But like most legislation, IRCA was the product of strategic weakening, as compromises softened those employer sanctions to appease business and Latino advocates.

Also removed from the bill was anything resembling a federal ID system, which immigration groups blasted as discriminatory and civil liberties groups characterized as invasive.

Said one Kentucky representative then of the finished product: "It's the least imperfect bill on the horizon."

To some, IRCA's most significant flaw was an element that hardly had been debated: Employers were required to ask job applicants for documentation proving their legality, but employers did not have to verify that the documents were legitimate.
"In the end, that's how (employers) shield themselves," said immigration lawyer Linda Monsaur. "They hide behind: `Well, we didn't know the Social Security number was fake. It's not our job to check the validity of the Social Security number.' "

That loophole also prompted a cottage industry of fraudulent Social Security numbers, which soon poured into the Social Security Administration as employers sent in annual W2 wage reports. The reports allow the government to track workers' career earnings, which are used to calculate retirement and disability benefits.

The reports also provided a ready-made registry of potential illegal workers, but agencies haven't acted on the information they have.

Instead, Social Security sets aside wage reports that contain names and numbers that don't match its master files. Created in the 1930s, the Earnings Suspense File contains 255 million wage reports that are inaccurate due to mistakes and misuse of Social Security numbers by immigrants and others.

The file ballooned during the 1990s as illegal immigrants poured into the United States, and it represents about $520 billion in earnings paid to workers.

Taxes paid on those earnings help pay Social Security and Medicare benefits.

"They're filling our coffers," said Vincent Gawronski, an immigration expert and political science professor at Birmingham-Southern College. "It's all about the money. The government doesn't want to stop that flow. (Illegal workers) are paying into the system, not drawing down on it."

Unauthorized workers are driving the growth of the suspense file -- which provides a boon for the government because illegal immigrants pay taxes on their earnings but can't, by law, later claim benefits.

Officials say they are trying to reduce the suspense file by helping employers collect accurate information from workers. Social Security offers free verification services for companies striving to help ensure that numbers match the workers. Officials also have pleaded with Congress for help, including earlier this year, when SSA Inspector General Patrick O'Carroll placed the blame for immigration issues bluntly at the doorstep of the Internal Revenue Service.

O'Carroll said the IRS declines to sanction employers who hire workers that are clearly undocumented, and that the SSA is forbidden from sharing information on illegal immigrants with employers and other agencies, such as Homeland Security.
"The information is at our fingertips," O'Carroll told the House Ways and Means Committee in February. "We can identify the most egregious employers with respect to wage reporting irregularities, but no action is taken against them by the IRS."
In turn, IRS officials say a study of those employers showed that most could say they didn't knowingly violate hiring laws -- a claim difficult to disprove given that employers are asked to do little under current law to verify worker documents.

Pursuing those employers would yield little in significant penalties, IRS commissioner Mark Everson told Congress in February. Such an enforcement effort might also frighten companies and employees into doing more business underground. "At least now," Everson said, "we are collecting some taxes in these areas, and we are working to collect more."

But this week, in the wake of a new wave of workplace raids, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he would like his agency to have access to IRS and SSA wage reports, which include names and addresses of invalid users of Social Security numbers. That authority, as well as other changes in immigration law, can only come through Congress.

1990s: Weak political will

In the first two weeks of May 1998 -- the heart of the $70 million Vidalia onion harvest in Georgia -- dozens of federal officers descended on the southeast corner of the state in a hunt for illegal immigrants. The scene was chaotic, with workers scattering from the onion fields, farmers demanding the gun-carrying INS agents get off their land.

Quickly, word of the raids spread to nearby onion farms, and migrant workers began to depart in groups, leaving growers with onions that might soon spoil in the spring sun. The farmers' complaints quickly reached the Georgia congressional delegation, which promptly confronted the INS and sent letters to the secretaries of labor and agriculture.

The result: an unprecedented handshake agreement in which the INS said it would look the other way, temporarily, if the growers would follow immigration law in the future.

The compromise is widely seen as a turning point in immigration, a moment when the INS threw up its hands and stopped aggressively enforcing hiring laws. "The opposition to enforcement was so great that it changed the direction the INS took," said Gordon Hanson, immigrant expert and economics professor at the University of California-San Diego.
Said Doris Meissner, INS commissioner from 1993 to 2000: "Those things affect an agency's morale. You go out of your way to make it work, then it comes to nothing. Very demoralizing."

The onion raids also illustrated the radioactivity of the immigration debate -- and how political will can dissolve when legislators find themselves facing business constituents who want plentiful and inexpensive labor.

"This is an issue where there is no way to pass anything comprehensive without really making somebody mad," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "And politicians love not making people mad."

That sentiment was evident throughout the 1990s, as Congress tried to grapple with an out-of-control immigration system. Its best opportunity for change came in 1996, when legislators were armed with a new solution -- a bill including a federal pilot program that required employers to place a simple, toll-free phone call to verify driver's licenses.

But Republican leaders knew a new bill would pass only with the blessing of small business -- and that any support would vanish if any employers were required to verify that their potentially illegal employees were, in fact, illegal.

When that 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act went to the floor for vote, it included a late change: The pilot verification program would not be mandatory for employers. The bill passed easily.

Former business lobbyist Grover Norquist, a force behind the verification weakening, said: "The idea was that our job is to enforce the present rules that don't work -- rather than change the rules."

U.S. immigration rules don't allow enough people to enter the country to meet job demands, he said. And so "if the door is too small, everybody is coming in through the windows, and nobody gets their IDs checked. Make the door bigger."

In Georgia, Republican Rep. Jack Kingston understands why business is averse to tighter immigration rules. "Employers in roofing and poultry and other areas will say, `Immigrants will work longer and harder,' " he said. Still, he has moved from being one of the 1998 defenders of the onion growers -- "For us, it was just constituent work," he said -- to becoming an outspoken proponent of get-tough immigrant proposals.

Legislative inactivity, he said, has led to rising anger in local communities everywhere as immigrants seek treatment in emergency rooms and send their children to public schools. Now, he said he believes businesses should be required to verify an employee's legal status. He also is in favor of harsher penalties for employers who violate immigration laws.

He doesn't, however, think such sanctions will be part of any new bill.

"The business lobby," he said, "is too strong."

The legislators named in this report are not the only ones who made decisions with apparently unintended consequences. Rocco DiPippo reported on the legislation of Barney Franks who sought to prevent ideology to be the reason for exclusion from the United States.

Big Business Used Immigrant Labor and Now Servicing Immigrants Has Become Big Business.

immigrants are turning to worker centers to help them with problems such as those with employers, landlords, finding shelter and other services, even winning them $1 million dollars in back wages. They have become the immigrants' safety net. It seems that there a lot of lawyers that have hitched their wagons to immigrants' causes.

Naturally politicians are looking to corral the loyalty of new voters that would come about as tens of millions are legalized and "given the opportunity to become citizens."

Voters they would get, but ten to fifteen million mostly low paid immigrants won't add much to the tax base. In fact they will have access to programs that should be reserved for citizens: Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Scholarships, and so on. It is too soon to determine whether or not this new wave of immigrants will be a net gain for the United States as most are uneducated and without the technical and other skills the United States needs to compete. The question is: are we importing poverty and creating a new underclass? The net gain winner will be the Mexico, a country that will receive the benefit of remittance payments and citizens that will hold dual citizenship in Mexico and the United States.

As Healther MacDonald at City Journal puts it:

You have to admire the Mexican elites. They have a clear-sighted understanding of their country’s national interest—which lies above all in getting as many Mexican citizens as possible into the U.S. for their billions of dollars in remittances—and they’re unapologetic about pursuing it. Mass demonstrations that include illegal residents demanding that Mexico override its laws to accommodate them wouldn’t cow those elites for an instant. Too bad American officials can’t summon the same commitment to the wishes of the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose the rewarding of law breaking. The U.S. government isn’t about to deport the thousands of illegals who will be exploiting the American right to protest today, but it should at least not be swayed by their mass show of force.

Islamic States Press for Limitations on Free Expression

Write your legislators. The UN and Muslim lobbies are attempting institute legal ways to curb free speech.


Any day now the thought police created by the United Nations will sweep in an silence us all. That is the goal of Islamic groups and governments that are "pressing ahead with a campaign to have international organizations take steps, including legal ones, to provide protection for their religion in the wake of the Mohammed cartoon controversy.

In a drive pursued largely away from the headlines, the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) is promoting the issue at the United Nations and European Union, and having some success.

The executive council of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) this month approved an agenda item entitled "respect for freedom of expression, sacred beliefs, values and religious and cultural symbols."

Introduced by more than 30 Islamic states and the subject of considerable debate, the motion explicitly tied freedom of expression to " respect for cultural diversity, religious beliefs and religious symbols."

It also directed UNESCO's director-general to carry out a "comprehensive study of all existing relevant international instruments."

What is causing this furor? Why the cartoons, of course.

The publication of caricatures of the Prophet of Islam has caused deep and widespread
offense and indignation within the Muslim community around the world," the note said, adding that respect for religious symbols and beliefs and freedom of expression were "indissociable."

 "Given the importance of religion to peoples and to dignity and the way of life in different cultures, respect for different religious beliefs is essential to international peace and security and to the progress of human civilizations," it said.

 The Saudi-based OIC secretariat is spearheading the international campaign of response to what it has called "wanton provocation and reckless, blasphemous libertarianism cowering behind so-called freedom of the press."

And they want to put teeth into the prohibition:

"OIC efforts at the international level to tackle the repercussions of the caricature crisis and to meet the expectations of the Muslim world continue," it said in a recent statement.

 The matter was being taken up in exchanges with the E.U., " as well as with various international and regional intergovernmental organizations and NGOs."

 The OIC said it was pursuing a "strategy to take initiatives at various international organs to contribute to the formation of an international legal framework" aimed at preventing a recurrence of the cartoon crisis. The action at UNESCO was a component of this strategy.

The movement is protect Islam and the sensibilities of Muslims. Nothing was said about the protection of other religions, those without religion, and non-Muslims. Nothing was said about the feelings and sensibilities of other groups.

The Islamic campaign has won sympathetic responses from some senior U.N. and E.U. figures.

 "Your anguish over the publication of insulting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed is clear and understandable," Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message read on his behalf at an OIC gathering in Istanbul this month.


 While he said all should speak up for freedom of worship and freedom of speech, he added: "We must exercise great sensitivity when dealing with symbols and traditions that are sacred to other people."

 Addressing a meeting of European imams in Vienna, Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik of Austria - the current E.U. president - also referred to the cartoons. "Freedoms do have limits that should not be overstepped," she told 300 Muslim religious leaders from across the continent.

 At the same gathering, the head of the E.U.'s official anti-racism body bemoaned what she said was a "dangerously high" level of anti-Muslim discrimination in Europe.


 Beate Winkler, head of the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, said E.U. governments should provide time for religious programs on public broadcasters and support mosque construction.

 Participant Turfa Bagaghati of the European Network Against Racism -- an E.U.-funded NGO -- told Islam Online it was time Muslims pressed "for their rights, like enacting laws banning aggression on Islam."


 E.U. external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner also addressed the Vienna meeting, saying that both freedom of religion and freedom of expression were "non-negotiable."


 But she added a qualifier only in the case of freedom of expression, saying "it does come with responsibilities and should be exercised with the necessary sensitivity to others."

Aren't we getting tired of hearing what is offensive to Muslims. In the light that Muslims are actively discriminating against non-Muslims in the Muslim world and in the rapidly Islamizing Europe, aren't such complaints hypocrisy.

It is troubling that the mainstream media has not reported the activities of this group and warned us that such a movement is afoot. Perhaps they are hoping that we would wake up to find that these measures are already passed with the thought police in place, ready to sweep in and haul us away to jail or to a civil court for blasphemy, slandering the prophet, xenophobia, racism, or some other bogus charge.

The Fence

For those who may be interested in following the progress of the Minutman-sponsored effort to protect our national sovereignty, go to the Minuteman site.

Ultimatum to Bush: 'Build fence or Minutemen will'

Associated Press
Apr. 19, 2006 06:12 PM (pacific)

TUCSON- Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox has a message for President Bush: Build new security fencing along the border with Mexico or private citizens will.

Simcox said Wednesday that he's sending an ultimatum to the president, through the media, of course - "You can't get through to the president any other way" - to deploy military reserves and the National Guard to the Arizona border by May 25.

Or, Simcox said, by the Memorial Day weekend Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers and supporters will break ground to start erecting fencing privately.

"We have had landowners approach," Simcox said in an interview. "We've been working on this idea for a while. We're going to show the federal government how easy it is to build these security fences, how inexpensively they can be built when built by private people and free enterprise."

Simcox said a half-dozen landowners along the Arizona-Mexico border have said they will allow fencing to be placed on their borderlands, and others in California, Texas and New Mexico have agreed to do so as well.

"Certainly, as with everything else, we're only able to cover a small portion of the border," Simcox said. "The state and federal government have bought up most of the land around the border. I suspect that's why we'll never get control of the border."

But he said the plan is to put up secure fencing that truly will be an effective deterrent, and to show how easily it can be accomplished.

Simcox gave this description of the envisioned barrier-and-fencing complex:

Start with a 6-foot deep trench so a vehicle can't crash through; behind it, roll of concertina (coiled, razor-edged barbed wire), in front of a 15-foot high heavy-gauge steel mesh fence angled outward at the top.

Behind the fence will be a 60- to 70-foot wide unpaved but graded dirt road, along with inexpensive, mounted video cameras that can be monitored from home computers. On the other side of the road will be a second, 15-foot fence, with more concertina wire on its outside.

"It's a very simple, effective design based on feedback we've had from Border Patrol and the military," Simcox said. "It's a fence that can be built on the cheap, effective and secure."

Simcox said supporters will try to build the fencing with volunteer labor. Surveyors and contractors have offered to help with the design and survey work, he said, and some have said they will provide heavy equipment.

Simcox said those involved in the planning hope to keep costs to between $125 and $150 a foot.

Access to land literally on the border is an issue because so much is state-leased trust property or federally owned, he said.

"You may have to deal with a situation where private property owners erect their own fences and may be faced with the president sending the National Guard to prevent them from protecting their private property," Simcox said.

He said the Minuteman plan is "to keep turning up the heat" until President Bush has to respond somehow.

Hope for Shale Oil?

There are definitely people who know much more than I about oil who have very different ideas about how hopeful we can afford to be about producing more oil here at home.

It's possible that due to 1) lack of expertise and 2) wishful thinking, I tend to gravitate towards the idea that somewhere between the reality of Islamic hostility towards the infidel (that would be us, and everyone else in the world who isn't a Muslim), especially nut jobs like Ahmedinejad with his millenial psychosis, and our own ingenuity, there lies hope for our energy future.

While I firmly believe in the ingenuity angle, in the relative short term, we will have to find more oil and/or use it more wisely.

With a hat tip to Mathew, here is an article that feeds my short term fantasy:


Shell's ingenious approach to oil shale is pretty slick


Linda Seebach

September 2, 2005

When oil prices last touched record highs - actually, after adjusting for inflation we're not there yet, but given the effects of Hurricane Katrina, we probably will be soon - politicians' response was more hype than hope. Oil shale in Colorado! Tar sands in Alberta! OPEC be damned!

Remember the Carter-era Synfuels Corp. debacle? It was a response to the '70s energy shortages, closed down in 1985 after accomplishing essentially nothing at great expense, which is pretty much a description of what usually happens when the government tries to take over something that the private sector can do better. Private actors are, after all, spending their own money.

Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. Judging by the presentation the Rocky Mountain News heard this week, they think they've got it.

Shell's method, which it calls "in situ conversion," is simplicity itself in concept but exquisitely ingenious in execution. Terry O'Connor, a vice president for external and regulatory affairs at Shell Exploration and Production, explained how it's done (and they have done it, in several test projects):

Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.

Please note, you don't have to go looking for oil fields when you're brewing your own.

On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. "Product" - about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude - began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.

While we were trying to do the math, O'Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.

Wow.

They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.

And we've hardly gotten to the really ingenious part yet. While the rock is cooking, at about 650 or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, how do you keep the hydrocarbons from contaminating ground water? Why, you build an ice wall around the whole thing. As O'Connor said, it's counterintuitive.

But ice is impermeable to water. So around the perimeter of the productive site, you drill lots more shafts, only 8 to 12 feet apart, put in piping, and pump refrigerants through it. The water in the ground around the shafts freezes, and eventually forms a 20- to 30-foot ice barrier around the site.

Next you take the water out of the ground inside the ice wall, turn up the heat, and then sit back and harvest the oil until it stops coming in useful quantities. When production drops, it falls off rather quickly.

That's an advantage over ordinary wells, which very gradually get less productive as they age.

Then you pump the water back in. (Well, not necessarily the same water, which has moved on to other uses.) It's hot down there so the water flashes into steam, picking up loose chemicals in the process. Collect the steam, strip the gunk out of it, repeat until the water comes out clean. Then you can turn off the heaters and the chillers and move on to the next plot (even saving one or two of the sides of the ice wall, if you want to be thrifty about it).

Most of the best territory for this astonishing process is on land under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. Shell has applied for a research and development lease on 160 acres of BLM land, which could be approved by February. That project would be on a large enough scale so design of a commercial facility could begin.

The 2005 energy bill altered some provisions of the 1920 Minerals Leasing Act that were a deterrent to large-scale development, and also laid out a 30-month timetable for establishing federal regulations governing commercial leasing.

Shell has been deliberately low-key about their R&D, wanting to avoid the hype, and the disappointment, that surrounded the last oil-shale boom. But O'Connor said the results have been sufficiently encouraging they are gradually getting more open. Starting next week, they will be holding public hearings in northwest Colorado.

I'll say it again. Wow.



Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the News. She can be reached by telephone at (303) 892-2519 or by e-mail at seebach@RockyMountainNews.com.

About Linda Seebach:

Before starting her career in journalism, Linda Seebach was a college mathematics professor, the owner of a small printing business catering to the antique-car hobby and an English teacher at a university in Shanghai. She moved into journalism by way of the Minnesota Daily, the independent student paper at the University of Minnesota, where she did graduate work in linguistics. She later was an editorial writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News and editorial page editor of the Valley Times in Pleasanton, Calif.

If You're Planning a Vacation in Mexico, Don't Forget To Write to Vincente Fox

Hat tip: Minuteman

To the President and Government of Mexico:

I'm about to plan a little trip with my family, and I would like to ask you to assist me. I'm going to walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and I need to make a few arrangements. I know you can help with this. I plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here. So, I will be expecting the following:

Free medical care for my entire family.

English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need.

All government forms need to be printed in English.

I want my kids to be taught by English-speaking teachers.

Schools need to include classes on American culture and history.

I want my kids to see the American flag flying over the Mexican flag at their school.

Please plan to feed my kids at school for both breakfast and lunch.

I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.

I do not plan to have any car insurance, and I won't make any effort to learn local traffic laws.

In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from Pres. Fox to leave me alone, please be sure that all police officers speak English.

I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes.

Please tell all the people in the country to be extremely nice and never say a critical word about me, or about the strain I might place on the economy.

I know this is an easy request because you are good neighbors to the U.S.

Thank you so much for your kind help.

Walter Williams Strikes Thor's Anvil AGAIN!

In Teutonic mythology, the god Thor (a.k.a., Vulcan) took his hammer and struck his anvil to make the clouds part and give us a beautiful sunny day, with a clear view for miles. In the obfuscatory world of Washington and academia, they do the anti-Thor maneuver: They grab the foghorns to summon fog.

When it comes to economics, no Democrat or Republican can be trusted to tell the truth. He or she is too busy working the foghorn.

Well, here is one of THE MOST IMPORTANT AND UTTERLY PAINLESS LESSONS IN CLEARING ECONOMIC FOG, from a real hero, Dr. Walter E. Williams.

We get fed b.s. until it runs out of our ears by government and non-government "experts" on the FEDERAL DEFICIT. What they tell us is b.s. and nothing more. Please read this crystal clear and short article by Dr. Williams and see if you don't walk away feeling like Thor Williams just struck that anvil.

Let's push back the frontiers of ignorance about the federal deficit. To simplify things, I'll use round numbers that are fairly close to the actual numbers.

The nation's 2005 gross domestic product (GDP), what the American people produced, totaled $13 trillion. The federal government consumed $2.4 trillion, but it only received $2 trillion in tax revenues, leaving us with what's said to be a $.4 trillion budget deficit.

By the way, it's sheer constitutional ignorance to say that President Bush spends or lowers taxes. Article I, Sections 7 and 8, of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress authority to spend and tax. The president only has veto power that Congress can override.

Getting back to deficits, my question to you is this: Is there truly a deficit? The short answer is yes, but only in an accounting sense -- not in any meaningful economic sense. Let's look at it. If Congress spends $2.4 trillion but only takes in $2 trillion in taxes, who makes up that $.4 trillion shortfall that we call the budget deficit? Neither the Tooth Fairy, Santa nor the Easter Bunny makes up the difference between what's spent in 2005 and what's taxed in 2005.


Some might be tempted to answer that it's future generations who will pay. That's untrue. If the federal government consumes $2.4 trillion of what Americans produced in 2005, it must find ways to force us to spend $2.4 trillion less privately in 2005. In other words, the federal government can't spend today what's going to be produced in the future.

One method to force us to spend less privately is through taxation, but that's not the only way. Another way is to enter the bond market. Government borrowing drives the interest rate to a level that it otherwise wouldn't be without government borrowing. That higher interest puts the squeeze on private investment in homes and businesses, thereby forcing us to spend less privately.

Another way to force us to spend less privately is to inflate the currency. Theoretically, Congress can consume what we produce without enacting a single tax law; they could simply print money. The rising prices, which would curtail our real spending, would act as a tax. Of course, an important side effect of doing so would be economic havoc.

Some Americans have called for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution as a method to rein in a prolific Congress. A balanced budget is no panacea. For example, suppose Congress spent $6 trillion and taxed us $6 trillion. We'd have a balanced budget, but we'd be far freer with today's unbalanced budget. The fact of business is that the true measure of the impact of government on our lives is not the taxes we pay but the level of spending.

The founders of our nation would be horrified by today's level of American servitude to their government. From 1787 to the Roaring '20s, federal government spending, as a percentage of GDP, never exceeded 4 percent, except in wartime, compared to today's 20 percent.

The average taxpayer, depending on the state in which he lives, works from Jan. 1 to May 3 to pay federal, state and local taxes. That means someone else decides how four months' worth of the fruits of the average taxpayer's labor will be spent. The taxpayer is forcibly used to serve the purposes of others -- whether it's farm or business handouts, food stamps or other government programs where the earnings of one American are taken and given to another.

This situation differs only in degree, but not in kind, from slavery. After all, a working description of slavery is the process where one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. The difference is a slave has no rights to what he produces each year, instead of just four months.


Since 1980, Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics.

Another take-home lesson: Capitalism is clear; mixed economy-ism is fog.

Yet MORE From the Horse's Ass!

Friends,

I don't often publish even as much as once a week, but in the last few days I have had to join those of you who are really getting HOT over what's happening! This just came to my attention, and I would like to call it to yours!

Here, once again unedited in any way, is information from Aztlan:

MUSLIM AMERICANS TO JOIN 5/1 IMMIGRATION
MARCHES NATIONWIDE


(Los Angeles - 4/19/06) -- In solidarity with immigration activists around the country, the Muslim Public Affairs Council as well as the Council on American-Islamic Relations - Los Angeles (CAIR-LA), the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, the L.A. Latino Muslim Association, the Muslim American Society - Los Angeles, and the Muslim Students Association - West (MSA West) are calling on American Muslims to participate in a day of action on May 1, 2006.

On that day, the Multi-ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network (MIWON) is holding a march near downtown Los Angeles in support of immigration reform and worker's rights. MPAC is coordinating Muslim American participation in this important event, which affects Americans of all ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. Similar events will be taking place across the country.

WHAT: International Worker's Day Immigration March

WHERE: McArthur Park (7th & Alvarado near Downtown LA)

WHEN: Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 4:00 p.m.

CO-SPONSORS: Muslim Public Affairs Council, Council on American-Islamic Relations - Los Angeles (CAIR-LA), Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, L.A. Latino Muslim Association (LALMA), MSA West, Muslim American Society - Los Angeles (MAS-LA), Multi-ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network (MIWON) - http://thistuesday.org/node/127

WHY SHOULD MUSLIMS GET INVOLVED?

Islam's message is one of social justice, economic fairness, and fair treatment in the workplace. The Qur'an urges the proper treatment and respect of workers. Several Muslim leaders discussed the relevance of the Qur'an to the struggle for dignity in the workplace with union leaders and other religious leaders during the "Islam and Labor: Forging Partnerships Conference," held November 10, 2001 in Washington, DC. Co-convened by the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the conference sought to build relationships between Muslims, interfaith committees and labor communities. As the Prophet Muhammad is quoted as saying, "None of you has faith unless you love for your brother what you love for yourself."

It is against this backdrop that American Muslim organizations are calling for a comprehensive immigration reform that includes provisions for a pathway to lawful permanent residence for the undocumented currently in the United States, a temporary worker program that matches willing workers with willing employers, and a reduction in the current backlogs in family-based immigration to the United States.

HOW DO WE VIEW IMMIGRATION REFORM?


The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, but today the country has more than 33 million foreign-born residents, the largest number since the U.S. Census started keeping such statistics in 1850. In 2003, foreign-born residents made up 11.7 percent of the population, the highest percentage since 1910. And over the past 16 years, the newcomers, many of them undocumented, have poured into places in the South and Midwest that have not seen sizeable numbers of new immigrants in generations.

On December 16, 2005, the House of Representatives passed
HR 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal
Immigration Control Act of 2005. The bill was introduced by
Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI). The
Sensenbrenner bill is an inadequate enforcement-only bill
that fails to address comprehensive immigration reform. In
particular, it does not include any provision for a guest
worker program, an earned legalization program, nor a
reduction in the backlogs for family-based immigration.
Instead, the bill criminalizes undocumented people for
unlawful presence in the United States, and criminalizes
people who work or volunteer with faith-based organizations
for helping someone in need, who turns out to be
undocumented.

For more information, see: http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/action.html.



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La Voz de Aztlan
http://www.aztlan.net

More From The Horse's Ass

Well, the Reconquistadors are planning a really Big Bash for May Day! Here's some more unedited material from the Horse's Ass!

Gee - Anyone planning on going to Mexico for a vacation any time soon?


May 1 strike plans include truckers

by
Jill Dunn

Independent owner-operator Armando Gonzales was among the truckers who shut down in 2004 to protest fuel price increases. On May 1, he and other truckers plan to shut down their trucks again, as part of a larger effort to protest a federal immigration bill.

The resident of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., is among those calling for a general nationwide "Day Without An Immigrant" strike, across all industries, to protest HR 4437, which the U.S. House approved in December. The bill would make being in the country illegally, or assisting an illegal immigrant, a felony. A softer version of the bill stalled in the U.S. Senate earlier this month.

"The pulse of the population is right for this," Gonzales said. "It's a really hot time. HR 4437 is an attack against Hispanics in general."

A group of truckers calling itself the Los Angeles Troquero Collective ("troquero" is Spanish for trucker) advocates the strike in hopes of bringing about immigrant amnesty, the right of all truckers to unionize and a 25 percent salary increase.

The collective has distributed fliers asking truckers to shut down and gather at ports, rail facilities and truck stops May 1. A large trucker protest, for example, is scheduled for May 1 in Banning Park in Wilmington, Calif., near the Port of Los Angeles.

Most of the truckers planning to participate in the May 1 shutdown are Hispanic owner-operators, said Gonzalez, a line-haul trucker who said he was among those arrested in 2004 for blocking a California freeway with parked trucks. He plans to join other truckers May 1 at the Citadel outlet mall in Commerce, Calif.

Ernesto Nevarez, a Wilmington, Calif., tax preparer whose clients include many truckers, said it's important that all drivers have a sense of solidarity "rather than having truck drivers split along racial lines." Nevarez said he has supported years of trucker shutdowns.


* * * * * * * * * *
La Voz de Aztlan
http://www.aztlan.net

Latino Pop Stars Record the 'Star-Spangled Banner' IN SPANISH!!!

How can expect immigrants to assimilate when they refuse to jettison cultural baggage and loyalty to the old country? Here is an example of that divided loyalty. Instead of learning English, some Latinos have gone as far as to translate the 'Star-Spangled Banner' to Spanish.

Mexican pop diva Gloria Trevi, Puerto Rican reggaeton star Don Omar and other Latino artists have recorded a bilingual version of the U.S. national anthem in a show of support for migrants in the United States.

The Latino-oriented record label Urban Box Office (UBO) said Friday it would put the new Spanish-English version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" on the market Monday to coincide with the U.S. Senate's debate on immigration legislation.

Congressional debate over immigration bills proposing everything from toughened border security to the legalization of undocumented migrants in America have triggered huge demonstrations across the United States in recent weeks.

"We decided to re-record 'The Star-Spangled Banner' to show our solidarity with the undocumented migrants," said UBO President Adam Kidron. "Today we are Americans and 'The-Star Spangled Banner' represents everything to us."

The recording, dubbed "Nuestro Himno" or "Our Anthem," is set to "urban Latino rhythms" but respects the song's traditional structure, UBO said in a news release. Each artist decided whether to sing in Spanish or English.

The "Nuestro Himno" record will be sold for $10, with a portion going to Washington-based National Capital Immigration Coalition, UBO said. Besides Trevi and Don Omar, other artists on the record are Ivy Queen, Reik, Voz a Voz, Franco De Vita and Kalimba.

The record company said the lyrics would be released on Sunday.

Notice that they changed the tempo to "urban Latino rhythms" and included at least one artist that isn't even an American citizen. Don Omar and Ivy Queen are Puerto Rican, Reik is a band form Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, and Gloria Trevi is a controversial Mexican singer that was jailed for kidnapping and abuse charges. for Franco De Vita is Venezuelan. No difinitive information is given about Kalimba or Voz a Voz. What business do non-citizens have for singing the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' and how dare they translate the words to another language. The participation of Mexican artists is yet example of that country's meddling in internal American affairs.

The title "Nuestro Himno" means "Our Hymn." Again, this is an "ours" vs. "theirs" mentality. The motto for a leading Spanish-language network is "Lo Nuestro," or "Our thing" that broadcasts "Nuestra Lengua," "Our Language." In other words, they have no intention of accepting the invitation to become part of America, joining us as have past immigrants. They prefer the "us vs. them" confrontational mode. Many are accusing those that are adverse the legalization of 12 million illegal aliens of racism. What they don't understand that most Americans are adverse to the cultural changes that these 12 million will bring about. The Spanish-language 'Star-Spangled Banner' is an example of those changes that we don't want.

Here's Michelle Malkin's report.

Speaking About China and America...How Great Powers Become Great, and How They Fall

Bombastic and controversial Pat Buchanan is capable of the cutting through the rhetorical dross. In this case he has a few pertinent observations about China...and America:

America's consumers want quality goods at the cheapest price. American businesses want to maximize profit by producing at the lowest cost. China accommodates both, by providing efficient and reliable workers at a tenth of the wages an American needs to support his family.

The plaque inside our Statue of Liberty reads, "Send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free." Beijing says: "Send us your jobs, factories and technology, and we will produce your goods at a far lower price than your own people."

What the U.S. transnational corporation seeks is to retain its privileged access to American consumers, while getting rid of its American workers. China is delighted to accommodate.

Thus, it was our capitalists who were the first and most enthusiastic hosts of Chinese President Hu Jintao on his visit to America. But what does Beijing want?

In China the consumer does not come first. Nor do the voters decide policy, for there are no voters. The regime, state and nation come first. China's leaders want to make her first in manufacturing and high-technology, to become the primary producers for the world, and to displace the United States as the dominant power in Asia and the world.

The story of China and America is the story of the ants and the grasshopper. We spend every dime we earn. The Chinese are forced by the regime to sacrifice the present for a future their leaders envision.

In 2005, China ran up a $203 million trade surplus with us, selling us seven times as much as she bought from us. That trade surplus with America is responsible for 100 percent of her economic growth. China literally produces for the American market. As a result, her dollar reserves are the largest on earth, approaching $1 trillion.

What does Beijing use the money for?

First, she uses the dollars to create ties of dependency in Free Asia by buying more from these nations than she sells to them. Australia, whose natural resources are pouring into China, is becoming dependent for her prosperity on China.
Second, she invests her dollars strategically in energy projects outside of China and in nations America has declared off-limits: Sudan, Iran, Burma.

Third, she buys weapons and weapons technology from Russia, Israel and Europe to modernize her armed forces. And while her GDP growth was 10 percent last year, her defense budget has been steadily rising by more than 10 percent a year.
"Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment (in her military)?" asks Donald Rumsfeld.
Good question. The configuration of China's forces gives us the answer. China has implanted 600 missiles opposite Taiwan, which can have only two plausible purposes: to intimidate Taiwan, or to attack Taiwan.

China is also investing in warships, submarines, modern fighter-bombers and space technology. As there is only one great air and sea power out there, there is no doubt at whom this buildup is directed.

Diplomatically, Beijing is drawing to her side all the nations that are on the outs with George Bush's America -- from Russia to Burma to Iran to Sudan to Venezuela to the new nations of Central Asia.

China today calls to mind the Kaiser's Germany. As the Kaiser's Germany built a High Seas Fleet to rival the Royal Navy, so China builds up a military to rival ours in Asia. As the Kaiser saw British-backed plots to isolate and surround her, so China sees the United States organizing Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the old Russian provinces of Central Asia against her. Encirclement -- in her eyes.

There is no greater work for today's statesmen than ensuring that what happened to Germany and Britain in the first half of the 20th century is not replicated by America and China in the first half of the 21st.

Although there is much more than can be said, Buchanan gives us plenty to think about in one sitting.

When asked, "Why do you attack them?, Mohammed replied: "The must accept Islam."

Osama bin Laden is just latest in a long string of Jihadists that are fulfilling the Muslim obligation of bending the population of the Earth to their will. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind of the undeniable fact that, although they may disagree with his tactics, Muslims everywhere agree with the outcome: the Islamization of all the world's people and submission to Allah. Andrew G. Bostom gives yet another compelling explanation in his essay "The Global Jihad" at FrontPage in which he critiques Professor Efraim Karsh, author and professor of Middle East studies.

As Karsh emphasizes, September 622 C.E. marks a defining event in Islam—the hijra. Muhammad and a coterie of followers persecuted by fellow Banu Quraysh tribesmen, fled from Mecca to Yathrib, later known as Medina. The Muslim sources described Yathrib as having been a Jewish city founded by a Palestinian diaspora population which had survived the revolt against the Romans. The Jews of the north Arabian peninsula were highly productive oasis farmers. These Jews were eventually joined by itinerant Arab tribes from southern Arabia who settled adjacent to them and transitioned to a sedentary existence.
 
Following Muhammad's arrival, he re-ordered Medinan society. The Jewish tribes were isolated, some were then expelled, and the remainder attacked and exterminated. Muhammad distributed among his followers as "booty" the vanquished Jews property—plantations, fields, and houses—using this “booty” to establish a well-equipped jihadist cavalry corps. For example, within a year after the massacre (in 627) of the Jewish tribe the Banu Qurayzah, Muhammad, according to a summary of sacralized Muslim sources,
 
. . . waited for some act of aggression on the part of the Jews of Khaybar, whose fertile lands and villages he had destined for his followers . . . to furnish an excuse for an attack.
 
But, no such opportunity offering, he resolved in the autumn of this year [i.e., 628], on a sudden and unprovoked invasion of their territory. Ali (later, the fourth “Rightly Guided Caliph”, and especially revered by Shi’ite Muslims) asked Muhammad why the Jews of Khaybar were being attacked, since they were peaceful farmers, tending their oasis, and was told by Muhammad he must compel them to submit to Islamic Law. The renowned early 20th century scholar of Islam, David Margoliouth, observed aptly:
 
Now the fact that a community was idolatrous, or Jewish, or anything but Mohammedan, warranted a murderous attack upon it.”
 
Muhammad's subsequent interactions with the Christians of northern Arabia followed a similar pattern, noted by the scholar of Islam’s origins, Richard Bell. The “relationship with the Christians ended as that with the Jews (ended)- in war”, because Islam as presented by Muhammad was a divine truth, and unless Christians accepted this formulation, which included Muhammad's authority, “conflict was inevitable, and there could have been no real peace while he [Muhammad] lived.”
 
The modern Muslim scholar Ali Dashti's biography of Muhammad 23 Years:  A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad has also chronicled Muhammad’s “changed course” at Medina, where the Muslim prophet begins to “issue orders for war” in multiple and repeated Koranic revelations (chapter [Sura] 9 being composed almost entirely of such war proclamations—permanent injunctions against pagans, Jews, and Christians). Prior to enumerating the numerous assassinations Muhammad ordered, Ali Dashti observes:
 
Thus Islam was gradually transformed from a purely spiritual mission into a militant and punitive organization whose progress depended on booty from raids and [tax] revenue….The Prophet’s steps in the decade after the hejra [emigration from Mecca to Medina] were directed to the end of establishing and consolidating a religion-based state. Some of the deeds done on his command [were] killings of prisoners and political assassinations…
 

Fretting Westerners can wonder "Why they hate us" until the cows come home. The answer will always be the same: bin Laden and his ilk as well as the majority of the world's Muslims hold non-Muslims in contempt, show disrespect and disdain simply for one reason: we are not Muslim. Everything else is a peripheral supporting reason.

Many Westerners remain unconvinced that Jihad means more than terror warfare. Jihad is striving or struggling for Islam, using any means necessary. Thus Jihad is economic warfare, warfare using education, Da'wa, or the struggle to convince through reason, jihad is warfare through jurisprudence and sociology, or the law and the courts and social changes. Jihad is these and many more practices that a slowly eating away at the fabric of our lives.

Read it all with supporting internal links.

Pipes Wonders: What Does CAIR's Dropping Lawsuit Against Whitehead's Anti-CAIR Website Imply?

In a "stunning setback, the Council on American-Islamic Relations' defamation suit against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR has been dismissed with prejudice."

CAIR initially filed suit in a Virginia Circuit Court on March 31, 2004, claiming six of Whitehead’s statements were false, that Whitehead made them “with knowledge of their falsity,” and that the statements were actionable because “they impute the commission of a criminal offense.” CAIR further claimed injury to its “standing and reputation throughout the United States and elsewhere,” and sought $1 million in compensatory damages, $350,000 in punitive damages, plus legal fees and interest.  It did so despite Whitehead’s telling a reporter “I haven't got any [money].”
 
The original five statements as quoted in CAIR’s complaint were:   

·        “Let their [sic] be no doubt that CAIR is a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded by terrorists, and that CAIR wishes nothing more than the implementation of Sharia law in America.”

·        CAIR is an “organization founded by Hamas supporters which seeks to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States and replace it with an Islamist theocracy using our own Constitution as protection.”

·        “ACAIR reminds our readers that CAIR was started by Hamas members and is supported by terrorist supporting individuals, groups and countries.”

·        “Why oppose CAIR? CAIR has proven links to, and was founded by, Islamic terrorists. CAIR is not in the United States to promote the civil rights of Muslims. CAIR is here to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United States and convert our country into an Islamic theocracy along the lines of Iran. In addition, CAIR has managed, through the adroit manipulation of the popular media, to present itself as the ‘moderate’ face of Islam in the United States. CAIR succeeded to the point that the majority of its members are not aware that CAIR actively supports terrorists and terrorist supporting groups and nations. In addition, CAIR receives direct funding from Islamic terrorists supporting countries.”

·        “CAIR is a fundamentalist organization dedicated to the overthrow of the United States Constitution and the installation of an Islamic theocracy in America.”

Read it all with original internal links.

Straight From The Horse's Ass

Folks, here, for your reading pleasure, is the latest from Aztlan, unedited in any way:


May 1st Pro-Immigrant Boycott
Gaining Extraordinary Momentum

Large sectors of Mexico to participate

by
Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - April 20, 2006 - (ACN) The upcoming "Gran Boicot" being organized by a diverse coalition of pro-immigrant groups is destined to make history. Like "La Gran Marcha", where over 700,000 marched and rallied in downtown Los Angeles on March 25th, the boycott which is calling for "No Work - No School - No Purchases" on Monday May 1st is also going to surprise the USA and the world. The "Immigrant Human Rights Movement" has now taken a life of its own with no one leader or one organization directing it.

With ten days left until May 1st, more and more community leaders, student groups, heads of national organizations and elected government officials are joining the international effort that will paralyze the USA economy. The economic losses will be incalculable and this hopefully will send a strong message to the stubborn nativists, racists and bigots who by and large refuse to recognize the contributions that Mexican and other immigrants of color are making to the USA economy. These crass xenophobes will also be forced to learn the meaning of the word "respect".

The power of the new immigrant movement, mostly Brown, is already creating acute panic among the mostly White descendants of immigrants from England and Europe who have held sway in the USA ever since the landing of the Mayflower near Plymouth Rock. The nature of the White panic is being manifested by their reactions to the mass rallies and marches that have been held in major cities since over 300,000 rallied in Chicago on March 10. These reactions are taking many forms. Among them, and most serious, are death threats against those that the White racists perceive to be the leaders of the "Immigrant Human Rights Movement" . Since March 25th, Mayor Antonio Villargairosa of Los Angeles has received a number of death threats and he was told that he has been placed on a "assassination hit list" simply because he is of Mexican descent and because he chose to address the over 700, 000 pro-immigrant crowd that gathered around City Hall on March 25th.

In an April 14 news article, journalist Jazmín Ortega of the Spanish language newspaper "La Opinion" reported that, in addition to the death threats against Mayor Villargairosa, that death threats have also been made against Professor Armando Navarro of the University of California at Riverside. Dr. Navarro is the Coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights (NAHR) that sponsored the now historic "Mexicano/Latino Leadership Immigration Summit" on February 11 and that "sparked" the present "Immigrant Human Rights Movement" throughout Aztlan and beyond. Another leader that has received death threats, according to journalist Ortega, is Nativo Lopez of Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana. Nativo Lopez has been very vocal in the media concerning the human rights of immigrants. Other leaders who have received a series of death threats and racist hateful messages through telephone and e-mail are Vice Mayor Felipe Aguirre of Maywood, California, Juan Jose Gutierrez of "El Movimiento Latino USA" and Ollin Tezcatlipoca, leader of the Mexica Movement. These death threats against Mayor Antonio Villargairosa and the other
leaders, including death threats against the staff of La Voz de Aztlan, are now being investigated by our own security organizations.

These irrational and criminal reactions by racist nativists to the "awakening of the sleeping giant" will only backfire on them. These cowardly acts by White bigots such as the burning of a Mexican restaurant in San Diego on April 10 and the many other anti-Mexican hate crimes, which among these is the decapitation of three Mexican undocumented children in Baltimore, Maryland, will only stiffen the resolve of the Mexican and other Latino people to fight back. In light of these threats and hate crimes, it is imperative that every Mexicano, every Latino, every immigrant and every progressive person here and abroad join the economic boycott on May 1st.

On Monday May 1st, the leaders of "El Gran Boicot" are asking that every worker not go to work. Call in sick. Tell your employer that you came down with the flu. Take the day off and join a rally or march in your area. There has been word that some racist employers will be retaliating against Mexican or Latino workers who are absent on May 1st.

Leaders are presently developing a plan on how to mitigate this problem. They would like to have a list of those employers who retaliate so that they will pay a price for doing so. They are also developing a plan to immediately place the workers in other employment and to assist the families financially who are retaliated against.

On Monday May 1st, the leaders of "El Gran Boicot" are asking that every student, who has the support of their parents, not go to school. Take the day off and plan an activity together with parents who will be boycotting work. Leaders are presently planning activities in many cities in which students and parents can participate and university and college student organizations, such as MEChA, are also planning activities on their campuses.

On Monday May 1st, the leaders of "El Gran Boicot" are asking that no one purchase anything. Essentials like gasoline and food should be bought days before. In the days before and after May 1st, be conscious of what brand purchases you make and who you do business with. For example, do not buy Kimberly-Clark products such as HUGGIES,KLEENEX, SCOTT, KIMBIES, PULL-UPS, DEPEND, TECNOL and KIMWIPES. Congressman James Sensenbrenner, the sponsor of the anti-immigrant HH4437, is the heir of
Kimberly-Clark. Another example, in Alta California, would be to buy your groceries at "Gigante" instead of at "Ralphs". The essential principal is to buy only from
immigrant friendly stores and businesses and avoid those that have supported racist and anti-immigrant causes such as those business that advertise on the many racist radio talk shows and tv programs.

The leaders of "El Gran Boicot" want you to know that you are not alone. Millions of others around the globe will be participating, in one way or another, in this historic boycott. In Mexico, especially in Mexico City and the border region, many sectors of society will be participating in the economic boycott . Throughout Mexico , labor unions, political parties, elected government officials, the media, celebrities and some agencies of the Mexican government have joined the boycott in the last few days. Their motto is "Recuerden, nada gringo el 1o de mayo", and the word has now spread far and wide. The message being disseminated through newspapers, radio and television is, "Lo que solicitan es que el 1o de mayo no se compre nada gringo en el país ni se consuma nada en franquicias americanas, esto quiere decir: No Dunkin Donuts, Mc Donald's, Burger King, Starbucks, Sears, Crispy Cream, Walmart, Seven-Eleven y otras de la interminable lista de empresas norteamericanas en México". The losses will be tremendous in Mexico alone and this same strategy will be utilized in Central and South American countries. The leaders of "El Gran Boicot" are now seeing signs that the massive action is spreading across the sea as well.

The leaders of "El Gran Boicot" are asking that everyone who will be participating in marches, rallies and other demonstrations on May 1st, do so in a peaceful and
non-violent way. Be careful not to confront police authorities or be provoked by the many racist bigots who will be out to do their dirty work. There are now
indications that a "COINTELPRO" type effort is being implemented to destroy the movement. We are now seeing many infiltrators within our organizations that are attempting to divide the leadership. "Vendidos" and "Malinchistas" are being planted within our ranks. Already, the enemy has twisted the arms of some of the leaders of certain of our national organizations by threatening to withhold their funds and grants. Even Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles is now changing his tune because the Jews are threatening him with bringing up more cases involving his pedophile
child abusing priests. We do not need organizations that are led by "coconuts" or compromisedinstitutions to defeat our enemy. Remember, "No Work - No School - No Purchases" on Monday May 1st !


* * * * * * * * * *
La Voz de Aztlan
http://www.aztlan.net

No Place for 'Reconquista'

It received little coverage in the mainstream news dailies, but many bloggers highlighted the significant influence of “Reconquista” advocates and concepts in the recent pro-immigration marches across the country. Reconquista aims must be honestly confronted by all sides if the immigration debate is to be honestly conducted and credibly resolved.

The first thing to understand about Reconquista is that while it is perhaps not the official policy of Mexico, it might as well be. Current and former top Mexican government officials and advisers, for example, along with leaders of U.S. groups like the National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, routinely co-host seminars of the Foundation for Solidarity of Mexico and America, according to Hector Carreon of the Aztlan Communications Network. The basic aim of FSMA, which is a key convergence point of open-borders advocacy in both countries, is uninterrupted immigration from Mexico to the U.S.

“Aztlan” is the ancient Aztec word for the lands of California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, which more radical Hispanic activists have long claimed were stolen by “gringos” from Europe and that are now to be retaken via massive immigration that eventually produces Hispanic majorities at all levels of governance. But whether expressed more moderately by groups such as FSMA or more radically by explicitly separatist voices like MEChA, Aztlan is the animating spirit of the Reconquista movement. That spirit is reflected in remarks like this by a former California state secretary of health, education and welfare: “California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn’t like it should leave.”

Behind such calls looms the dismal Mexican economy, which, as author and historian Victor Davis Hanson notes in the latest Claremont Review of Books, desperately needs the flow of workers to the U.S. because they send an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion back home annually. Plus, there are the immense costs shifted from Mexico to our education, health care and law enforcement systems that must serve the needs of the waves of immigrants, legal and illegal. Those of us living north of the border are thus subsidizing corruption south of the border that enables Mexican politicians and their wealthy friends and family members to live the good life without being held accountable for the millions of Mexicans who suffer grinding poverty and hopelessness.

President Bush should call upon President Vicente Fox and other Mexican political leaders to disavow the Reconquista movement explicitly and to adopt much-needed reforms to expand economic opportunity and spread the wealth more widely in their nation. And Congress should reiterate in law and regulation that, while we will always welcome the world’s huddled masses, those who immigrate to America are expected to become Americans.
To do otherwise is to risk growing in the U.S. precisely the same sort of fevered separatism that now racks France and Germany.

Folks, contrary to opposing claims, this is a dangerous movement. The movement is small now. What would happen if all those millions of immigrants decide that, yes, joining the movement would be a good idea? Perhaps Washington is toopreoccupied with the "War on Terrorism," the "War on Iraq," the "War on Drugs," etc., etc., to notice. Let them know what you think.

Are We The "New Middle East"?

Oh, boy. Oil has hit over $70.00 a barrel, and gas is $3.00 a gallon in many places. Demand in China is speeding up at a ferocious rate.

We're in for it.

Or are we?

Hey, folks, guess what? Right here in the good ol' U.S. of A., in our own west,we have more oil than all other proven reserves on the planet - more than a TRILLION barrels. Senator Orrin Hatch has said "The amounts of oil are staggering. Who would hae guessed that in just Colorado and Utah, there is more recoverable oil than in the Middle East?"

All this oil lies beneath the Green River Formation, a barren stretch of land in portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.

The Rand Corporation, a public policy think tank, says that this small region can produce three million barrels of oil per day, and that's a conservative estimate. The U.S. Department of Energy thinks that the eventual output could be ten million barrels a day.

Just for the fun of it, here are some comparative figures between what we have and what some other countries have:

1) 8 times as much as Saudi Arabia
2) 18 times as much as Iraq
3) 21 times as much as Kuwait
4) 22 times as much as Iran
5) 500 times as much as Yemen

Now isn't that special!

All this oil is trapped in oil shale under 16,000 square miles of rock and sand. When heated, crude oil bubbles out.

There are other places that also have oil shale, but they are few and far between; China, for example, has been using oil shale since 1929. Estonia's economy is dependent on oil shale - over 90% of its electricity is powered by shale oil, and it is one of that country's chief exports. In 1991, Brazil built the world's largest oil shale facility, and they've already produced more than 1.5 million tons of oil to make high quality transportation fuels. Jordan, Morocco, and Australia have recently announced plans to utilize their shale oil resources. Alberta, Canada, has some shale oil too, and is currently extracting it. The "shale oil age" is about to begin, and the good ol' USA need no longer make nice with the enemy.

Here are some 2005 oil shale resource figures from the U.S. Department of Energy:

1) U.S. - 72.0% of the world supply of oil shale
2) Brazil - 5.4%
3) Jordan - 4.2%
4) Morocco - 3.5%
5) Australia - 2.1%
6) China - 1.5%
7) Estonia - 1.1%
8) Israel - 0.3%


Now, that's REALLY special!

Extracting the oil out of this reserve hasn't been economically feasible until recently, so the government - which owns 80% of the land it's in - has kept it for a "rainy day."

Well, when oil hit $50.00 a barrel and no end to price increases was in sight, the rainy day had finally arrived. On August 8th, 2005, President Bush signed into law a mandate to extract it: The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which calls for the opening phases of extraction. Of the two trillion barrels of proven oil in the Green River Formation, between 800 billion and 1.2 trillion barrels are recoverable - the amount we can get out and use with current technology.

The beauty of the whole thing is that just as oil prices were hitting all-time highs, the extraction technology had drastically improved, making extraction almost cheap. Until now, the cost was prohibitive compared to buying Middle East etc. oil. For the past five years, one experimental extraction method has been able to produce oil for about $25.00/barrel.

When President Bush signed The Energy Policy Act of 2005, dozens of companies came forth with plans; six were ultimately selected to be given 160 acres of land each to test their oil shale extraction methods for commercial production. Today, three remain in the running.

The U.S. Federal News Service says that the winning company wiould be responsible for launching America's first commercial oil shale operation and production, "...leading the way to more than two trillion barrels of oil shale deposits in the Green River Formation."

Now here are some more delicious figures from the U.S. Department of Energy for the total oil reserves from all sources in some countries:

1) Saudi Arabia - 261.8 billion barrels
2) Iraq - 112.5 billion
3) UAE - 97.8 billion
4) Kuwait - 96.5 billion
5) Iran: - 89.7 Billion
6) Qatar - 15.2 billion
7) Oman - 5.5 billion
7) Yemen - 4.0 billion
8) Syria - 2.5 billion

TOTAL: 685.5 billion

Now for the U.S:

1) Shale oil - 1000.00 billion barrels
2) Coal oil - 500.00 billion
3) Pet. coke - 0.15 billion
4) oil reserves - 22.7 billion
5) EOR oil - 32.0 billion

TOTAL: 1.6 trillion


Up to now, we've had the impression that we were at the mercy of the likes of the Middle East, Hugo Chavez (CITGO is his property, just in case you feel like boycotting something), and Vincente Fox.

I guess not, huh?

Maybe we can invite all our "Oil Friends" to a performance of Toby Keith singing his great song, "How Do You Like Me Now?"

I confess, the thought gives me an enormous amount of petty pleasure!

China's "Fear of Freedom"

Social Harmony is the ultimate Chinese virtue that is impossible to achieve when people are unhappy with their government. The Chinese are fearful of demonstrating that the present government has failed in achieving what Mao (and other Communists) believed would happen with the equalization of income, property, and status after centuries of corruption and inequality under the emperor system. Communism rose and fell in other parts of the world because that form of government turned out to be just as corrupt and inequitable as the systems that were replaced. Unfortunately corruption and inequality is a product of human nature, but that doesn't mean that we should accept flagrant abuses under any system.

China is pretending that the totalitarian rule of Communism is still a more perfect form than others, and wants to sweep under the carpet the suppressed seething unrest that is found in all sections and all walks of life.

The Communist leaders understand human nature all too well: a free China would throw the bums out in a spectacular fashion.

Communist China has fixation with Taiwan, the province that rubs their noses in the fact that Chinese can be prosperous and self-governing.

From: China's Fear of Freedom

The fixation of Hu and his predecessors began when the people of Taiwan started to have a say in their government. The Taiwanese have eloquently refuted the myth that democracy is somehow incompatible with Chinese society. In fact, the Taiwanese have taken to self-government the way they’ve embraced capitalism.
Beijing doesn’t care if its subjects make money, accumulate property and acquire middle-class trappings. In fact, it understands the wealth being generated by the hard-work and entrepreneurial abilities of the Chinese people can be used to increase the regime’s power (witness that $203 billion trade surplus and those double-digit annual increases in military spending).

What absolutely terrifies it is the prospect of 1 billion Chinese getting ideas about basic human rights and self-government.

The thought of a billion people exercising their rights is a scary proposition. As China has hundreds of minority groups and factions, it is likely that the breakup and competition among them for power would not be bloodless.

Government Orders Dismantling of Tsunami Project

Via: JIhad/DhimmiWatch.org

What happened to the money given to the victims of the tsunami? Tiny references have been made to the slowness of reconstruction and to the infighting among governments and NGOs over how the money should be spent. Here in an example that might make one not want to contribute at the next natural disaster in the Muslim world.

The government ordered an indoor marketplace in Haa Dhaal, Kulhudhuffushi to be dismantled last week because the building was donated by “people in opposition to the government” and “Christians.”

The $70,000 marketplace was built by Tracy Structures, a UK construction company, and facilitated by Maldives Aid, a UK-based tsunami charity.

The building, part of Maldives Aid’s tsunami relief work, is designed to allow locals to buy and sell fish and other produce. It was finished in March and was due to be handed over to the island community in an opening ceremony this month.

The largest post-tsunami construction project in the atoll looks in jeopardy, though, after the Minister for Fisheries, Abdullah Kamaluddeen, ordered the Kulhudhuffushi Island Chief to destroy the building for political reasons.

“AK visited the island a few weeks ago. He told the Island Chief ‘this building has to come down.’ When the Island Chief asked why, AK said ‘this was built by people opposed to the government… they cause trouble… and the building is not good for this purpose,’” Maldives Aid coordinator Mariyam Seena told Minivan News.

The Kulhudhuffushi Island Chief, Moosa Ali, added that central government sees the steel building as a ploy to “spread evil principles in Maldives.”

Maldives Aid is the sister organization of UK-based Friends of Maldives (FOM), a pressure group that campaigns against human rights abuses in Maldives.

Although the two organizations are officially separate, the government has bent over backwards to make Maldives Aid’s work difficult - impounding tsunami aid, obstructing projects and refusing the NGO registration.

At the end of the article is another interesting tidbit of information:

Although dead-set against the Kulhudhuffushi marketplace, Abdullah Kamaluddeen is more relaxed about receiving money for his own personal use.

The minister was shamed in January following revelations in Adduvas magazine that he embezzled over Rf.1 million of public funds in the ‘soft loans’ scandal.

Imagine that. I wonder how much of the donated money is lining someone's pocket rather than being used for the purpose the money was donated.

Even though he has taken bribes, Kamaluddeen claims he is "humble man" who is being bullied by the press.

Minister for Fisheries and Agriculture Abdullah Kamaluddeen (AK) has admitted accepting over one million Ruffiya of public funds from President Gayoom over the last five years. AK denied doing anything wrong, though, and claimed he was “a humble man."

In a scandal that has gripped the country, a number of cabinet ministers and other regime loyalists stand accused of accepting huge payments from the president, payments the opposition say are tantamount to bribes.

In an interview with Minivan on Tuesday, AK confessed to receiving large payments through the Maldives Monetary Authority. “First I took Rf 500,000… even then I told the government that it would not be sufficient, that I would need more… upon request again I was given Rf 750,000.”

Bribery is how things are done in most of the world...uh, sometimes even in Washington, D.C. and other Western capitals. It is refreshing to note that the Maldivans are "outraged" that their officials have been found to take bribes. The issue here isn't that they make and take bribes in other parts of the world. The issue is that monies offered for charity should not be used for that purpose.

Your tax burden is bigger than Tax Day (by John Stossel Apr 19, 2006)

Townhall.com :: Your tax burden is bigger than Tax Day by John Stossel Apr 19, 2006

Apr 19, 2006

How was your Monday? Did you file your tax return with a smile, looking forward to the refund check from Washington and forgetting that it was your money in the first place? Even if you wrote a big check, I bet you don't recognize just how heavy your tax burden is.

In 1904, government, federal and state, cost every citizen $20 per year, according to a 1999 Tax Foundation study. Don't blame inflation --that only brought it to $340. For more than 150 years after we declared independence, we spent less than $1,000 each on government. Yet by 1999, government cost every man, woman and child an average of more than $10,000 per year -- more than housing and health care combined. The price went down a little after that, but then it started climbing again.

You probably don't know how much you pay, because the government is sneaky about how it taxes you. Paying withholding taxes each pay period dulls the pain of the income tax -- it's money you earned, but it's never in your hands -- and a hundred other taxes are hidden. For my TV special "John Stossel Goes to Washington," we followed St. Louis construction worker Bill Thurston and totaled the little-known taxes he paid daily. It started with the tax on the electricity that powered the alarm clock that woke him. Bill paid two taxes on his toothpaste. He paid a tax on water to get it into his home, and a sewer fee so it would go out. Daring to drive to work cost him more: He paid personal property tax on his truck; he had to pay sales tax when he bought it. And when he bought the gas, there was a county gas tax, a state gas tax and a federal gas tax.

At work, Bill gets stuck with local income tax, state income tax, federal income tax, Social Security tax and Medicare tax. Bill's boss needs two employees just to calculate how much to withhold from paychecks, and while their salaries don't go to the government (except for local income tax, state income tax, and so on), that's money Bill's employer can't spend on developing his business or giving Bill a raise.

Because Bill's wife works, the Thurstons pay a marriage tax of $1,000 a year. Then there's the grocery tax, property tax, utility tax, FCC tax and a county tax on the cable TV, and a whole bunch of different taxes on the phone. And if after paying all these taxes Bill and his wife want to relax with beer or cigarettes, there are sin taxes on those.

Why should government cost us more than shelter? Political scientist James L. Payne examined the record of 14 congressional appropriations hearings and found that of 1,060 witnesses who testified, only seven spoke against spending money, while more than a thousand testified that the spending -- whatever it was -- was necessary. Even a politician who believes in limited government has a tough time resisting a constant onslaught of "needy" people saying, "This program is crucial!"

The testimony is lopsided because of the "concentrated benefits-diffuse costs" problem: The benefits of any given government program go to a few, but the costs are spread among many. If sheep and goat ranchers get $200 million in handouts, it costs each of us less than $1. What are you going to do about that? Go to Washington and protest? For a buck, you probably won't even write your congressman, let alone take him out to dinner or give him a $2,000 campaign contribution. Yet the sheep ranchers have an incentive to spend $199 million lobbying if it gets them a $200 million subsidy back. Economists call it rent-seeking.

Of course, even the sheep ranchers would be better off if the government stuck to its basic purposes. But it makes no sense for them to pay for everyone else's programs and not demand their own.

The big bill came Monday. But see if you can catch all the taxes you paid today.

Award-winning news correspondent John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News "20/20" and author of "Give Me a Break."

Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com
Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/JohnStossel/2006/04/19/194213.html

The Living Meaning of the Kelo Decision--in China

Yesterday afternoon, I happened to catch Brit Hume's Fox News Channel news show. One small story gave me the willies, and I hope it will do the same for you.

The story was a bit of outstanding television journalism, from Sky News, with which Fox News has an affiliation.

First, read the story, then go to the Sky News site and look at the video. You cannot afford to miss this one.

China Land Grab Exclusive
Updated: 12:55, Thursday April 13, 2006

China's economy is booming, but at what cost to its people?

In an exclusive report Sky's Dominic Waghorn meets the families who have been evicted from their homes to make way for new development.

Our Asia correspondent spoke to a couple who have been living in a tent all winter after the government seized their home and demolished it.

Sky's Dominic Waghorn reports

"The government is eating our flesh and drinking our blood," they said, huddled in their tent as temperatures dropped well below freezing.

All the couple want is enough money in compensation to be able to buy a new home.

Secretly filmed footage shows the Chinese authorities ruthlessly evicting an elderly couple.

An old man was dragged out by police, followed by a woman who was still in her sick bed.

Discontent in China's slums

"The poor have no human rights, no way of surviving," one evicted woman told the Sky correspondent.

Meanwhile government officials and property developers are making untold millions from the seized land.

In a rare glimpse into life in a Chinese slum, Dominic Waghorn faces a crowd of people waiting to show him evidence of human rights abuses in their country.

A demand for human rights

Their banners and photos protest against corruption, police brutality and sons killed in detention.

One man with burn scars, sustained in a previous protest, holds aloft a placard reading "human rights are more important than living".

With the power the Chinese government has over the country's media, the downtrodden have little opportunity to share their discontent.

But our correspondent reveals the unequal struggle that is taking place between the poor and the powerful.

The government's own figures put the number of protests last year at 70,000, said Waghorn.

In our blog header and "masthead," we quote famous 17th century English intellectual, Lord Bolingbroke: "History is philosophy teaching by example." Well, here is about the clearest example we have seen in a long time.

The government of Red China is seizing the property of persons in order to give it to developers to develop into big money makers, which greatly enrich both the government and developers. Now, let's drop back to the Supreme Court of the United States of America, to a decision issued 25 June 2005 and called the Kelo Decision. The Supreme Court authorized governments to seize property of individuals to turn over to developers to build enriching edifices.

Red China has no property rights, and has no respect for any of the Rights of Man, from the Right to Life, on through the Rights to Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, and the Property. It initiates force to steal from those who are not physically powerful enough to resist the guns, clubs, and killings.

The Supreme Court of the United States of America fully abrogated the Right to Property with its Kelo Decision, and many local governments have moved in for the kill, with the "force of law," which makes the bloody physicalism of Red China unnecessary.

When a government abrogates any one of the four fundamental Rights of Man, it effectively abrogates them all. Property is how people support their right to life, exercise the right to liberty to pursue what they choose--which is ensured by the right to property, and exercise their right to pursue happiness by their own means and determination, using property as their primary anchor to reality. OUR Supreme Court opened the door for governments, from local to federal, to act just like Red China. And they will.

Give them time.

History is philosophy, teaching by example.

The Plot to Shut Down L.A.

Via: Michelle Malkin

I wouldn't leave the house on May 1, 2006 if you're anywhere near L.A. Illegal aliens have co-opted the Communist Intern day of celebration as day of boycott for "immigrant rights." The effect is focused on one community, in the state with an economy larger than those of most countries, but the planning is nationwide. Some are even calling for a national boycott or work AND school stoppage, or mass walkout for that day. Naturally forces in Mexico are in favor, and are planning a "Nothing Gringo Day," with accusation of The Hijacking of Mexican Immigrants and Dreams.

A.N.S.W.E.R. calls it A Day Without an Immigrant. Those "rallying" with A.N.S.W.E.R. are "Marching with Stalinists.

Others are getting on bandwagon. Guatemala will boycott US products, Spanish language broadcasters are spreading the word. Protesters need to be careful as some actually lost their jobs after the last "rally."

Black leaders declare solidarity with immigrant workers, and a Cardinal of the Catholic Church in the United States is urging immigration supporters to avoid the May 1 boycott in contrast to religious and business leaders in Mexican border cities.

Here is a forwarded message posted at Michelle Malkin:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:34:59 -0700
Subject: [nohr4437] Two major May Day boycott/strike actions in LA
The taxi drivers are planning to shut down LAX on May, and the troqueros are planning to close the harbor and rally in Banning Park. There is also a May Day march sponsored by MIWON (Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network) on the evening of May 1 starting from Olympic and Broadway. MIWON includes a number of Asian, Mexican and Central American organizations and has marched on May 1 for the past 6 years.--Michael

From: 
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 11:22 PM
Cc: layouthcollective@lists.riseup.net; dope_x_resistancela@yahoogroups.com; la-anarchists@lists.mutualaid.org; antiwarsmc@yahoogroups.com; stopcoalition@lists.riseup.net; copwatch@agitatorindex.org; anarchist-poc@yahoogroups.com; a-infos-en@ainfos.ca; socalicollectivenetwork@lists.riseup.net; mujeres_libres@lists.riseup.net; scaf@lists.riseup.net; lalaborcollective@lists.mutualaid.org
Subject: SUPPORT THE TRUCKERS' STRIKE AT THE PORT OF LA, CAB DRIVERS'
STRIKE AT LAX

I'm a member of Southern California Students / Movement for a Democratic
Society (SDS/MDS ) and putting out a call for students, non-students, community members and members of other organizations to support the truckers at the Port Los Angeles and the cab drivers at LAX who will strike and shut down ( totally shut down ) the Port of Los Angeles and LAX before, on and after May Day.

In 2004, the Truckers shut down the Port of L.A. and can and will do it again !

Both truckers and taxi cab drivers are asking for support for possible rallies, pickets, vigils and leafleting at rail yards, freight depots, the Port , LAX taxi cab holding lot , Metropolitan Detention Center and local campuses around the May Day Strike.
This is a opportunity to support DIRECT ACTION as opposed to symbolic protest and demonstrations/marches.
It's time we move up to a new level!!

To quote Michelle: "Forewarned is forearmed."

One wonders what they will do IF the boycott doesn't produce the desired results! Will this action make you more or less sympathetic to their cause?

If Rumsfeld Goes, Who Might Fill His Slot?

Despite reports to the contrary and Bush's "steadfast" support, Donald Rumsfeld might eventually be replace. Named in a report in the Asia Times are:

Ambassador to Germany Dan Coates; Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner; and former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage (who last week called for direct negotiations with Iran) - are considered "realists". While conservative, they are much more inclined to defer to the uniformed military and their State Department colleagues.

The only exception among potential Rumsfeld replacements is Senator Joseph Lieberman, a strongly pro-Israel Democrat who favors a policy of confrontation with Tehran.

Read it all.

Also: Why Rumsfeld's time is up and General reveals rift with Rumsfeld on insurgents.

These are to gather information, not to promote a point of view.

Another Dubai deal, another security row

Here we go again:

In a deal similar to one that led to the Dubai ports furor in the US earlier this year, Dubai International Capital has purchased for US$1.24 billion Doncasters Group Ltd, a private British aerospace manufacturer that works on sensitive weapons programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).

The administration of US President George W Bush is conducting a security review of the takeover, and then it will present its findings to Congress, where many of the same factions that expressed concern and outrage over the ports deal are beginning to grumble about the Doncasters takeover.

While not yet garnering much attention in the media, certain Congress members have challenged the proposed Doncasters deal. Two members of the House Armed Services Committee, Democrats John Barrow and Ike Skelton, have raised questions about national security.

"I'm not against foreigners investing in this country as long as we don't sell them something we are not supposed to sell them," Barrow said. "But I am concerned about selling off our national-security infrastructure. We are selling off the military-industrial complex bit by bit."

The $250 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is intended to create a next-generation stealth fighter that would replace several current strike aircraft. While most of the jets will be used by the United States, other countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Turkey and Norway also intend to purchase the aircraft. The JSF is scheduled to be operational by 2009.

Read it all.

At the same site, read about Dubai's and money laundering: An underworld paved with gold.

Why China Loves Seattle

Why does China love Seattle? Isn't it obvious: Boeing and Microsoft...and maybe Starbucks.

Read it all.

Muslim Brotherhood Children's Website - What the Muslim World Teaches Children About Us

Via: LGF

American public-school curriculum about Islam teaches about the Five Pillars, a smattering of information on the life Mohammed and some basic cultural information about Muslim countries although there has been a push to make the curriculum more meaningful and comprehensive. Compare that curriculum to what children are taught in the Muslim world about the non-Muslim world, about America and about Jews.

"America Aspires to Control the Muslim World - & Our Role Is to Prepare Ourselves for Jihad Against the Enemies of Allah; Murdering Children Is Part of Judaism."

The home page of the website of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, http://www.ikhwanonline.com, links to the children's website, http://www.awladnaa.net ("Our Children"). This site contains various sections on different subjects, including praise for jihad against infidels in general and against America in particular, and antisemitic writings explaining to young readers how the Jews murdered 25 prophets of Allah and that Jews habitually murder children. Other pages contain texts referring to Seville and Andalusia as part of the greater Muslim homeland, and discussing the long period of prosperity that these lands experienced under Muslim rule.

We Ask Allah to Give Our Brothers, the Mujahideen, Martyrdom for His Sake, and to Bring Victory to Islam
Among the postings for children on www.awladnaa.net are articles praising jihad. On the page titled "General Knowledge" appears an article titled "The Jihad-Waging Prophet," which states: "The Prophet waged jihad against the infidels and the hypocrites, and admonished them. Hell is their place of refuge, and how evil is their fate!"

The site also posts articles praising the resistance in Afghanistan and in Iraq. In a review of various parts of the Muslim world, on the section titled "My Great Homeland," it states that Afghanistan is "currently under the oppressive American occupation that is now aspiring to control the Muslim world. [This occupation] began with Afghanistan, and then [moved on] to our beloved land Iraq; and lo, it now threatens Syria and so on. [U.S. President Bush] has declared a Crusade against the Muslim world, and our role is to prepare ourselves for jihad against the enemies of Allah."

About Iraq, the site states: "Currently, the Iraqi resistance is the most beautiful example of the struggle for independence and the elimination of America's aggression. We ask Allah that its elimination will be at the hands of our mujahideen brothers, [and] that Allah will give them martyrdom for His sake, will bring victory to Islam and strengthen the Muslims, and will protect the blood of our brothers everywhere."

The Jews Murdered Allah's Prophets, Murder Children, and Conspire Against the Islamic Countries

Along with postings praising jihad and the resistance, the site also features postings with antisemitic content. For example, the "General Knowledge" page features a posting on Jews along with postings on various other topics such as the Suez Canal, oranges, hummus, and apricots. Titled "Did You Know?"

Andalusia is Part of the Great Islamic Homeland

The "My Great Homeland" section depicts Seville and Andalusia as part of the Muslim homeland, along with Egypt, Damascus, the Al-Aqsa mosque, Istanbul, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Maldives. Under "Andalusia," it states: "There are now 700,000 Muslims in Spain. Of these, 200,000 were born [there] and have Spanish citizenship. Most of the Muslims live in the big cities, such as Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia. Spain has some 300 mosques and [Muslim] houses of worship, and a third of these are in the capital.

"The Islamic Cultural Center is considered the main source of authority for Muslims [in Spain] in most matters of religion. It provides many major services required by the Muslim in this country, which prospered for a long period under Islamic rule."

And in case we've forgotten, Muslims tend to find reasons why every footfall of a Muslim creates a divine right to that territory, including that of the United States.

Within the Western world, there is great struggle to introduce Islam into the curriculum. Instead of offering "just the basics," Muslims constantly push on the door to make over education and society in their image.

From: The Council on Islamic Education
"Curriculum Falls Short:"

Although teaching about religion is required in nearly every state, this does not ensure that it will be well taught. An effective curricular vehicle must carry the content.

The experiences of Council on Islamic Education reviewers in teacher training, textbook review, and standards development have exposed us to several faulty models for teaching about religion that fall short of the guidelines. The most common faulty approach is to provide a thumbnail sketch of each world faith that creates more stereotypes than useful understandings. Another flawed method limits historical coverage to a period thousands of years ago, leaving the impression that religions are quaint artifacts of bygone eras. For example, many state mandates end their coverage of Hinduism with ancient India, Buddhism with Asoka, and Judaism with the time of Jesus.

Such inadequate teaching about religion may encourage students to apply rudimentary knowledge of others’ beliefs to understanding contemporary non-Western societies. If students haven’t learned about change in religious thought and practice over time, they may imagine that nothing in other cultures has changed for centuries and assume that they can apply the ancient or medieval stencil to understanding complex contemporary societies. This faulty approach would fail to help them understand the student sitting at the next desk, the neighbor, the future colleague, or the world at large.

What about finding the time? The answer is: make time.

How can schools find the necessary time to teach about religion? First, curriculum planners must build in the necessary time for world studies in general...schools must provide time and a sound academic framework for building courses.

Structuring the world history curriculum around a chronological framework based on eras is the soundest available model because religions and other topics are covered continuously throughout the course.

Planners need to be creative in embedding the study of religions where appropriate. In civics, teaching about religion illuminates the ideals on which people base their systems of governance. In geography and cultural studies, learning how people all over the world have articulated their beliefs enhances understanding of common values and alternative ways of meeting needs and solving problems. The study of religious tolerance and intolerance in history—validation and acceptance of those unlike ourselves or rejection and demonization—brings to the surface the most vital elements of civil society, beyond sterile descriptions of administration and laws.

Sometimes the applied curriculum is controversial as in this activity in seventh-grade unit, "Become a Muslim Warrior During the Crusades or During An Ancient Jihad." The directions instruction students to "fight mock battles of Jihad against 'Christian crusaders' and other assorted 'infidels.' Upon gaining victory, students were to 'Praise Allah.' "

An example of how working Islam into the curriculum as described by Daniel Pipesis given below. It is disheartening to know that this is only one of many:

The Interaction unit contains many other controversial elements. It has students adopt a Muslim name ("Abdallah," "Karima," etc.). It has them wear Islamic clothing: For girls this means a long-sleeved dress and the head covered by a scarf. Students unwilling to wear Islamic clothes must sit mutely in the back of the class, seemingly punished for remaining Westerners.

Interaction calls for many Islamic activities: taking off shoes, washing hands, sitting on prayer rugs, and practicing Arabic calligraphy.

Students study the Koran, recite from it, design a title page for it, and write verses of it on a banner. They act out Islam's Five Pillars of Faith, including giving zakat (Islamic alms) and going on the pilgrimage to Mecca. They also build a replica of the "sacred Kaaba" in Mecca or another holy building.

It goes on. Seventh graders adopt the speech of pious believers, greeting each other with "assalam aleikoom, fellow Muslims" and using phrases such as "God willing" and "Allah has power over all things."

They pronounce the militant Islamic war-cry, Allahu akbar ("God is great.") They must even adopt Muslim mannerisms: "Try a typical Muslim gesture where the right hand moves solemnly... across the heart to express sincerity."

In the same pious spirit, the curriculum presents matters of Islamic faith as historical fact. The Kaaba, "originally built by Adam," it announces, "was later rebuilt by Abraham and his son Ismail." Really? That is Islamic belief, not verifiable history. In the year 610, Interaction goes on, "while Prophet Muhammad meditated in a cave ... the angel Gabriel visited him" and revealed to him God's Message" (yes, that's Message with a capital "M.") The curriculum sometimes lapses into referring to "we" Muslims and even prompts students to ask if they should "worship Prophet Muhammad, God, or both."

This unit was slammed by well-known textbook reviewer William J. Bennetta as a "fraud and a religious-indoctrination device:"

ISLAM: A Simulation has no educational purpose, and it can serve no educational function. From beginning to end, it is nothing but a Muslim religious publication, produced by writers who seek to exploit classroom teachers for propagating Islam.

From beginning to end, ISLAM: A Simulation directs teachers to deceive their students and to boost Islam by disseminating lies and by falsifying history. From beginning to end, ISLAM: A Simulation requires teachers to indoctrinate their students by feeding them servings of "information" in which historical facts are insidiously intermixed with Muslim myths and Muslim woo-woo. From beginning to end, ISLAM: A Simulation directs teachers to present facts, myths and woo-woo as equivalent, equipotent items. From beginning to end, ISLAM: A Simulation requires teachers and students alike to abandon rationality, to shun analytical thinking, and to embrace the view that any claim about anything -- no matter how fatuous the claim may be -- must be accepted as true.

There's that word again, deception. Islam is based on deception. Children in the Muslim world are deceived about non-Muslims and Islamic apologists and enablers are attempting to deceive American school children through campaigns to capture and train, first their teachers, and then the students themselves.

Gate Crasher

Cox & Forkhum

Via: LGF

Terrorists Recruiting 'White Muslims'

Of course we knew there are 'white Muslims,' the majority being the result of Islamic invasion into Eastern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula and the capture and enslavement of thousands of coastal Europeans by Muslim raiding parties, a fact forgotten by most Europeans and, until recently, totally unknown to Americans.

Terrorists have been working to recruit non-Arab sympathizers — so-called "white Muslims" with Western features who theoretically could more easily blend into European cities and execute attacks — according to classified intelligence documents obtained by The Associated Press.

A 252-page confidential report jointly compiled by Croatian and U.S. intelligence on potentially dangerous Islamic groups in Bosnia suggests the recruitment drive may have begun as long as four years ago, when Arab militants ran up against tough post-9/11 security obstacles.

"They judge that it is high time that their job on this territory should be taken over by new local forces ... people who are born here and live here have an advantage which would make their job easier. By their appearance, they are less obvious," the report reads.

Arabs, it adds, "have become too obvious, which has made their job difficult."

Bosnia's minister of security, Barisa Colak, acknowledged the existence of the intelligence report but said authorities had no concrete evidence that recruitment efforts are widespread. There are no known cases of a Balkan "white Muslim" recruit being involved in an actual attack.

No attack? Not yet.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, evidence has emerged that extremists have been trying to carve out a beachhead in the Balkans. The region is home to 8 million Muslims, roughly a third of Europe's Islamic faithful, and arms and explosives are easily obtained in what Lukac calls "a kind of El Dorado" for criminals.

Several Islamic militants who fought in the former Yugoslavia went to Spain, bringing back new military skills and expertise as well as access to contacts throughout Europe, a Western diplomatic official with intimate knowledge of counterterrorism measures in Spain told the AP on condition of anonymity.
"Yugoslavia was a meeting point," he said.

Among the Islamic leaders Bosnian authorities are monitoring closely is Nezim Halilovic, chief mufti of the King Fahd Cultural Center. The mosque, one of dozens being built around Sarajevo with Saudi donations, can accommodate 5,000 people and is part of a $9 million complex that includes a library, a sports hall, restaurants and classrooms for studying Arabic and the Quran.

Its imam has repeatedly has been accused of using his sermons to preach violence in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Israel, Iraq and Kashmir. Nothing like that was heard at one of his recent noon prayer sermons; addressing throngs of heavily bearded men and burqa-clad women, he spoke proudly of "bringing Bosnian Muslims back to Islam."

Halilovic denies he is a radical and insisted Bektasevic and the others arrested last autumn were the victims of an elaborate setup.

"This is just a trick played on the Muslims," he said in an interview. "They were framed to bring the world's attention on Bosnia-Herzegovina as a 'terrorist country.' Europe and the whole world should not be afraid of Bosnian Muslims."

Not a threat? Through time, this has been the standard disclaimer.

Islam is an ideology, not a race nor ethnicity. Islam has become "universal," but is not for everyone. Some claim that GLOBAL ISLAM IS THE FUTURE whether we like it or not, and there is nothing we can do to stop the forward progress of the movement.

Islam has been, and always will be, the greatest threat to mankind. The "struggle" will continue until there is an "absence of enemies," which, in Islamic jargon means: everyone has capitulated or has been eliminated.

Getting a Head Start on Amnesty

The more things change, the more they stay the same... Right, exactly. There is no permanent that a guest-worker program and the hopes of thousands now rushing toward the border and the millions here already.

(Graphic via Michelle Malkin; article via Captain's Quarters)

'We want to try our luck.

One of them is Ramirez, a 30-year-old who earned about $80 a week at a rebar factory in Mexico’s central state of Michoacan.
He spent an entire night walking through the Arizona desert with his wife, Edith Mondragon, 29. When her legs cramped, their guide abandoned them and the couple turned themselves in to U.S. authorities. They were deported.

But they said they would try again when they regained their strength.

“We want to try our luck up there,” Mondragon said. “We can’t go back to Michoacan because there is no future there.”
Ramirez said the draw was not only the prospect of work in Minnesota, where two of his brothers milk cows on a ranch. He was also excited about the idea he might be able to do it legally.

Many of the migrants also are being driven by a desire to get into the United States before the likelihood that lawmakers further fortify the border.

How will they "further their luck" is the question:

Ten of thousands of gang members were re-patriated to Central America where they are wreaking havoc. They have links to an estimated 8,000-10,000 members in more than 30 U.S. states, posing a transnational threat that sets them apart from other street gangs.

At the hub of the crisis are El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Societies brutalized by decades of civil war and poverty, they are now home to the greatest concentration of ''mareros," or gang members and among the highest murder rates in the world -- as much as 10 times higher than in the United States.

This year, all three countries have turned to soldiers to reinforce antigang operations, raising fears about a reliance on militaries guilty of wartime human rights atrocities. Early this month, a re-commissioned battalion of soldiers in olive-drab uniforms began patrolling the streets of Guatemala City.

By most accounts, maras, whose moniker refers to a deadly species of ant, were spawned in Los Angeles. Mara 18 began as the 18th Street Gang in the 1960s, which accepted Hispanic immigrants excluded from Mexican gangs. Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, was founded by Central Americans who fled wars at home in the 1980s, and landed in US ghettos without work or protection from existing gangs.

In recent years, the two major gangs have become far more vicious and sophisticated, forming alliances with organized crime in prison and shuttling operatives between the United States and their home countries. Their trademark beheadings, mutilations, and torture-killings of rival gangsters, informants, and other victims have made them a top priority of the FBI's criminal enterprise branch.

In Central America, governments have experimented with get-tough laws, only to see crime worsen every year. Violence and extortion -- from petty ''taxes" levied on bus drivers and corner shopkeepers to tens of thousands of dollars demanded of a major soda company in El Salvador -- have scared off investors, shaving regional gross domestic product by some 25 percent, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

Although other criminals surely have a hand in rising violence, gangs have become the gnawing preoccupation of the public and politicians here. Police and judicial systems are ill-equipped to fight criminal networks, prisons are overcrowded, and social service budgets are too small to offer attractive alternatives to idle youth.

Salvadoran President Tony Saca was voted into power in 2004 on a law-and-order platform promoting ''mano super dura" (or ''ultra-hard hand") antigang tactics, including arresting youth for sporting tattoos or gang-style clothing (a measure since ruled unconstitutional). More than 16,000 suspects have been arrested since the summer of 2004; one in four of those ended up in jail, officials say.

But gangsters have adapted, said Oscar Bonilla, president of Salvador's National Council on Security. ''They have reduced their tattooing, changed their style of dress, and had fewer open confrontations with other gangs," while maintaining criminal activity.

A US official working on regional antigang programs who spoke on condition of anonymity called mano dura policies ''ineffective," saying they had a ''cucharacha effect" of making gangsters scatter like cockroaches, and come out when authorities aren't looking.

Hard-line arrest policies ''have overloaded the judicial system. . .and created a revolving door," the US official said. ''This has given gang members a feeling of omnipotence, because they were in [jail] and out three days later, taking reprisals against anyone who opposed them."

Could increasing tax revenue by creating new tax payers be a reason for the importation and legalization of more workers into the system?

But now that the U.S. Senate is considering a broad proposal that could lead to citizenship for migrants who have lived here for at least two years, there is a greater incentive to file a tax return. Some are pulling out their W-2s and heading to the nearest tax office — not just to pay this year's bill but to catch up on back taxes. In interviews, many said they wanted to prove how long they had lived in the United States and that they would be good citizens.

"It's important for all of us to pay our taxes, to have proof that we are working in this country," said Efrain Santa Cruz, 44, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who recently filed his return, "so someday maybe they will give us papers."

Secure the border first before taking other actions and ask less confusing questions about Amnesty.

The Retreat of the Western World?

Are we in retreat? The the well-known blogger, Fjordman, posted at Gates of Vienna, gives several possible scenarios:

1. Another Atlantic/Western century

2. Another American century

3. The Asian/Chinese century

4. The Pacific century

5. The Anglosphere - Indian century

6. The Global Civil War - Neo-Barbarism

The world is always in upheaval, in a state of flux in which roiling tensions among groups boil over into conflict. However, as pointed out by Samuel Huntington and by Fitzgerald, Spender, Alexander, Ye'or, Blankley, Bostom and a host of scholars and authors, Islam was born out of strife and has always had the stated intention of world domination. Today Islam, whether in Persian Iran, the Far East of Indonesia, the Arab States, Pakistan, India, France, Britain, and even the United States, has stated that the West must fall and Islam will prevail regardless of local sentiments.

I concur with Fjordman. Islam is the spoiler, perhaps setting up conditions for the ascendency of other groups.

Read it all.

Dining Out in Saudi Arabia a Police Matter

Via: JihadWatch

I can't imagine living this way:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - I was still looking over the menu when the commotion began. The waiter sprinted in and shut off the TV that was airing a female pop singer's video clip. Another waiter hastily put up a wooden partition to screen me from the male diners.

Saudi Arabia's religious police were on the prowl.

Eating out in Riyadh is an unusual experience, apt on occasion to give the diner indigestion. The restaurants are trendy and serve all manner of local and foreign delicacies. But they are subject to the austere mores of an Islamic kingdom — no unmarried men and women together, no pop music, not even service with a smile.

Saudis in the capital take the extremes of the muttawa, or religious police, in stride. But among expatriates, they're a favorite topic of conversation.

They tell of the inspector who tried to yank the TV set's wires out of the wall because the Lebanese singer Maria was on the TV screen sitting in a bathtub full of milk and cocoa puffs singing "Play, Play."

And the waiter who was made to rinse the gel out of his hair because he was suspected of trying to look good for the ladies. And another whose sin was to serve dishes directly to women. He was marched to the inspector's car and made to sign a pledge to hand meals to the diners from behind a screen.

That's not all. Restaurants and cafes must shut their doors for prayers, five times a day for 30 minutes at a stretch.

I once found myself sitting on the steps of a coffee shop with two women — an American and a Canadian — after being ordered out during the prayer break. We found it interesting that in a country that takes extreme measures to shield the sexes during meals, we were being made to eat on the street.

Read it all.

Where is the purported "beauty" of Islam? How are women being honored and protected by being forced to eat behind screens or in the street. Once again the practical application of Islam demonstrates that the highblown claims and flowery words are a sham.

We DO Need a Fence!

We already know that we are being flooded with people sneaking across our borders and straining local economies to the breaking point. In the California prison system alone, about 40% of prisoners are illegal aliens. Many of us think that, instead of demonstrating in our streets to make it easier for illegals to come here and stay, they should be in their own countries, demonstrating and otherwise putting pressure on their own governments to pressure them to allow the growth of conditions that attract them here.

By allowing illegals unlimited access to our country is simply to prolong the agony of the people they leave behind, and to enable their oppressors.

But is that all there is to the border problem?

We are fighting terrorists overseas; that is far better than fighting it here, in our own country. But how good a job are we doing at keeping the terrorists out of our country? Not a very good one, according to one source:

Illegal immigration into the United States is out of control, particularly across our southern border.

Several members of Congress and Governors have declared states of emergency. The problem is not merely the number of illegal immigrants. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from Central and South America, there are several hundreds, perhaps thousands, of illegal aliens from countries that sponsor terrorism or harbor terrorists entering the United States each year across our border with Mexico.

A secure, state-of-the-art border fence must be one element of any comprehensive effort to address the illegal immigration problem. Similar fences in Israel have reduced terrorist attacks by up to 95%. Until the border is secured and the tide of illegal immigration is stemmed, proposals to adjust immigration quotas, whether up or down, are doomed to ineffectiveness.

A border fence is entirely compatible with a guest worker program. In fact, a guest worker program would be reduced to irrelevance without such a fence.

Professor Jan C. Ting, Former Assistant Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services, is a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. He says “…even as we fret about trying to protect our ports, power supply, mass transit and every other possible target against every conceivable terrorist threat at any time 24/7, it is supremely ironic that four years after 9/11 our national borders remain open and uncontrolled, and our government seems unconcerned. The simple reality is that tonight, four years after 9/11, and every night of the year, thousands of foreigners covertly enter the United States, and we have no idea who they are. Every night. Thousands. Who are they? Can it possibly be true that ... there’s nothing we can do to stop people from walking across our borders into the United States? I think there’s plenty that we could do if only we had the political will to do so. And I think it’s remarkable that four years after 9/11 we still don’t have the political will to do so. Are we not capable of building a fence like the one the Israelis have found effective in preventing terrorists from entering Israel?"

Estimates of illegal immigrants living in the United States:

1) Up to 20,000,000 (Bear Stearns Report, January 2005)
2) 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 2005)
3) 11,000,000 (Pew Hispanic Research Center, 2005)
4) 10,000,000 (Center for immigration Studies, 2004)

The rate of illegal immigration is increasing; 1990's, 700,000 to 800,000 annually; 2000 - 2004, over 1,000,000 annually, and climbing (CIS) . The number of illegal immigrants in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia increased almost 70% from an estimated 300,000 in 2000 to 500,000 in 2004 (PHRC).

"Other Than Mexican" illegal immigrants pose a national security risk to the U.S. The serious national security threat posed by "Other Than Mexicans" is not widely understood. Approximately 100,000 illegal immigrants entering the United States from Mexico each year are not Mexicans. The Border Patrol refers to these persons as "OTM's" - "Other Than Mexicans"

Within the last year, over 450 OTM's have been apprehended illegally entering the United States from such officially-designated "special interest" countries as:

1) Afghanistan
2) Angola
3) Jordan
4) Qatar
5) Pakistan
6) Yemen

Two border state governors have declared "states of emergency" over illegal immigration;
Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona.

Illegal immigration is expensive - forcing citizens' taxes higherIn California alone, the annual estimated cost burden of providing education, health care and incarceration for illegal immigrants is over $10 billion:

1) Education. Californians spend approximately $7.7 billion annually on education for illegal immigrant children. Nearly 15 percent of the K-12 public school students in California are children of illegal aliens.
2) Health care. Uncompensated medical outlays for health care provided to the state's illegal alien population amount to about $1.4 billion a year.
3) Incarceration. The cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in California's prisons and jails amounts to about $1.4 billion a year (not including related law enforcement and judicial expenditures or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to their incarceration).

... WE NEED A FENCE! Securing our borders is the first step in any serious immigration reform plan. The first priority of the federal government is national security. National security is inherently incomplete if it does not include border security. Technology and the rise of internationally organized terrorism have made it possible for individuals to carry small weapons that can produce devastation on a scale that previously required armies, missiles or squadrons of aircraft.

We are a nation of immigrants, and it would be contrary to our history and cherished American values if we were to close our borders to legal immigration. However, illegal immigration is another matter, constituting a threat to both our national security and our economy. The border with Mexico must be secured first. That's where the biggest problem is.

The Canadian border is about 1,000 miles longer than the Mexican border, yet the vast majority of illegal immigration occurs across the Mexican border. It is not unreasonable to think about the need for a northern security fence once a southern security fence is in place and working. An effective border security fence is not a Berlin-type wall. The Berlin wall was designed to keep people prisoners in their own nation, not from illegally entering another nation.

The Israeli West Bank security fence is a better example of the state-of-the-art in border security. Many people have seen photographs and television images showing it to be a concrete wall. Those pictures are deceptive. The concrete wall portion of the barrier is roughly four percent of its overall length. Most of it is a fifty yard wide multi-layered composite obstacle comprised of several elements:

1) A ditch
2) Coils of barbed wire
3) Two tall, sturdy wire fences, with sensors to warn of any incursion.
4) A patrol path for vehicles between the fences
5) A smoothed strip of sand that runs parallel to the fence, to detect footprints.
6) Closed circuit TV cameras and motion detectors.

A barrier is an essential component of any effort to secure our borders; additional manpower alone cannot do the job.

Simply adding more border agents won't work unless there is one every hundred yards or so along the entire border. That would require between 150,000 and 200,000 agents and support personnel, rather than the 11,000 at present, and an annual budget of five to ten billion dollars. The cost of a modern border security fence is in line with its national security priority: roughly the cost of 4 B-2 bombers.

A 2,000 mile state-of-the-art border fence has been estimated to cost between four and eight billion dollars. That is roughly equivalent to four B-2 bombers or Virginia class submarines.

Such a fence could be designed with up to two hundred legal crossing points to accommodate commerce, tourism and legitimate commuting. Although expensive in terms of initial outlay, in the long term it is both less expensive and more effective than any other solution currently being proposed.

China and the Art of (Standards) War

Yes I do; sometimes I shop at Wal-Mart where prices are low and almost everything is made in China. In fact, the ubiquitous "Made in China" sticker is so common place that one wonders if anything made in the U.S.

What the U.S. does make is Standards, rules and regulations. China is developing its own rules and regulations for technological products, banking on the fact that the internal market is so large that the rest of the world will eventually be forced to tag along.

In the afternoon of January 10, Huang Ju, China's vice premier, made a videophone call from the Science and Technology Innovation Achievements Exhibition that was then being held in Beijing. For the residents of Bijie county, to whom this call was made, it was a simple call from the vice premier that conveyed New Year greetings. But for the global telecom industry, it was an end to several years of anxious waiting. 

"I am impressed with the quality of the call," Huang said, and with those words he put the Chinese government's official stamp of approval on the locally developed third-generation (3G) technology that was used for the demonstration. China's operators and global equipment makers had been waiting for years for Beijing to roll out 3G licenses and make a final decision on the technology that it would use for 3G services, expected to start in mid-2006.

The video call also ended another uncertainty: whether China would adopt its "home-grown" 3G technology standard, known as time division-synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA), and not the globally accepted and European-backed wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) or the US-backed CDMA-2000. According to global technology experts who assisted China in developing TD-SCDMA, "development of this technology was a prestige issue".

On its face, this statement might seem curious. There are many sources of prestige for countries - strong economies, five-star hotels, powerful militaries, gold medals at the Olympics - but technical electronics standards, which are mostly invisible to the devices' users? After all, what difference does it make whether a mobile phone is GSM (global system for mobile communications), CDMA or some other standard, as long as it works?

Clearly, something important is going on here, because the TD-SCDMA case is not an isolated example. Over the past several years, China has been making a systematic effort to develop its own standards in a host of other areas ranging from mobile phones to next-generation digital video discs (DVDs) to digital television to nanotechnology, and even trying to wrest control of the personal-computer (PC) operating system standard away from Microsoft by openly supporting Linux.

Evidently, China's government considers the development of indigenous technical standards a strategic priority. To understand why, we have to discuss two business concepts: first-mover advantage, and the experience curve.

First-mover advantage refers to the fact that the first company to develop a new product or technology has the greatest chance of becoming the dominant player as that industry develops and consolidates - basically because it has a head-start both in terms of the product or technology itself and in terms of consumer identification. While being first certainly does not assure long-term success (how many MITS Altair computers have you seen on the market lately?), empirically, first movers have a greater chance of hanging around for the long haul than their imitators...

There is another factor as well: license fees for intellectual property rights (IPR). Although it would be easy enough, in most cases, for a country to reverse engineer and copy standardized technology from abroad, the world trade system makes it difficult for countries that do this to export the products to the country where the technology originated. And modern production technology is so efficient that IPR fees can make up a shockingly high percentage of the cost of the product.

Read it all.

The Frightening Truth of Why Iran Wants a Bomb

Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed "the nuclear club", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into "grand occultation" in 941.

According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or "nails", whose presence, hammered into mankind's existence, prevents the universe from "falling off". Although the "nails" are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmad-inejad's more passionate admirers insist that he is a "nail", a claim he has not discouraged. For example, he has claimed that last September, as he addressed the United Nations' General Assembly in New York, the "Hidden Imam drenched the place in a sweet light".

Last year, it was after another khalvat that Ahmadinejad announced his intention to stand for president. Now, he boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a "clash of civilisations" in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the "infidel" West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.

In Ahmadinejad's analysis, the rising Islamic "superpower" has decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim "ghazis" (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has four-fifths of the world's oil reserves, and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. More importantly, the US, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by most other nations.

According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad's strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the "Dr Kissinger of Islam", President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have "run away". Iran's current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by "divine coincidence", corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.

Moments after Ahmadinejad announced "the atomic miracle", the head of the Iranian nuclear project, Ghulamreza Aghazadeh, unveiled plans for manufacturing 54,000 centrifuges, to enrich enough uranium for hundreds of nuclear warheads. "We are going into mass production," he boasted.

The Iranian plan is simple: playing the diplomatic game for another two years until Bush becomes a "lame-duck", unable to take military action against the mullahs, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons.

Thus do not be surprised if, by the end of the 12 days still left of the United Nations' Security Council "deadline", Ahmadinejad announces a "temporary suspension" of uranium enrichment as a "confidence building measure". Also, don't be surprised if some time in June he agrees to ask the Majlis (the Islamic parliament) to consider signing the additional protocols of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Such manoeuvres would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director, Muhammad El-Baradei, and Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to congratulate Iran for its "positive gestures" and denounce talk of sanctions, let alone military action. The confidence building measures would never amount to anything, but their announcement would be enough to prevent the G8 summit, hosted by Russia in July, from moving against Iran.

While waiting Bush out, the Islamic Republic is intent on doing all it can to consolidate its gains in the region. Regime changes in Kabul and Baghdad have altered the status quo in the Middle East. While Bush is determined to create a Middle East that is democratic and pro-Western, Ahmadinejad is equally determined that the region should remain Islamic but pro-Iranian. Iran is now the strongest presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, after the US. It has turned Syria and Lebanon into its outer defences, which means that, for the first time since the 7th century, Iran is militarily present on the coast of the Mediterranean. In a massive political jamboree in Teheran last week, Ahmadinejad also assumed control of the "Jerusalem Cause", which includes annihilating Israel "in one storm", while launching a take-over bid for the cash-starved Hamas government in the West Bank and Gaza.

Read the Rest.

New Muhammad Comic Printed

Via: Michelle Malkin --- Posted at Marta Salazar

Will car bombs be detonated in Rome? Will editors and cartoonists lose their jobs? Hmmm. Notice that Muhammad isn't shown. However other cartoons that allude to Muhammad have precipitated death threats. In fact, Muhammad took a dim view of poets that lampooned him. His response, was, of course, death, compelling Muslims through time to inflict the same sentence on anyone that "slanders or defames" Muhammad.

An Italian magazine close to the influential Catholic conservative Opus Dei group has published a cartoon showing the prophet Muhammad in hell, sparking outrage among Muslim associations here.

The drawing in Studi Cattolici's March issue shows the poets Dante Alighieri and Virgil on the edge of a circle of flames looking down on Muhammad, whose body is cut in half down to his buttocks, according to a description by the Italian news agency ANSA.

 "Isn't that Muhammad?" Virgil is shown asking Dante.

 "Yes, and he's cut in two because he has brought division to society," Dante replies.

Opus Dei distanced itself from the magazine, with spokesman Giuseppe Corigliano telling ANSA that Studi Cattolici is not an official publication of the group even though it is edited by an Opus Dei member.

However, he said Opus Dei members "are free to have all the opinions they want."

Studi Cattolici editor Cesare Cavalleri told ANSA: "I hope the publication of this drawing won't lead to attacks, because if that happened it would only prove the idiotic positions" of Islamic extremists.

Cartoons by 12 artists first published in a Danish newspaper in September and later reprinted in a number of other mainly European dailies sparked Muslim riots worldwide.

"Sometimes a politically incorrect satirical cartoon can do some good. It's only a reference to a passage in [Dante's] Divine Comedy," Mr. Cavalleri said.

"In any case, Muhammad was sent to hell by Dante, one of the greatest Italian poets," he added.

The previously-drawn cartoons are still causing havoc all over the world, including in the United States where people are losing their jobs in a growing atmosphere of fear.

Update: Opus Dei caved in, capitualted, backed down. Thanks to Marta Salazar.

Religions and their symbols should be respected and religious sensibilities should not be subjected to ridicule. The only road to peace and brotherhood is respect for others' convictions and practices. Such respect cannot remain at the level of theory, but should be expressed in concrete gestures and actions. Marc Carroggio Rome Office of Communications.

Opus Dei's capitulation is a sad example of how threats of violence by the Muslim world has cowed many of the rest of us.

"Religions and their symbols should be respected and religious sensibilities should not be subjected to ridicule." Respect and the caring for the feelings and sensibilities is a two-way street or a multi-lane highway. There is no respect coming this way from the Muslim world that ridicules and disdains Jews and Christians. Jews and Christians are openly persecuted and murdered in Muslim-majority countries and hate speech is circulated in mosques, during Friday services, and among Muslims in private conversations.

We can also bring up the virulently hateful, anti-Semetic political cartoons and anti-American cartoons that are published daily in Muslim newspapers and the fradulent Elders of Zion that depicts Jews as conniving baby killers. The charge of not being solicitous of Muslim sensibilities is thus hypocritical and self serving.

Of course Italian Muslims are winding up to throw a tantrum.

Hu Welcome Dinner at Gates House, Not White House

On April 18, 2006, "the FIRST lavish dinner of China President Hu Jintao's historic visit to the United States will be in a big, secure house in Washington where the host is one of he world's most powerful men." The dinner won't be held in the White House or in Washington D.C., but in Seattle Washington at the $100 million lakeside mansion of Microsoft Corporation founder and the world's richest man, Bill Gates.

The guest list at the lodge-style, 66,000 square-foot home overlooking Lake Washington is impressive, with 100 or so of the who's who in the U.S. Pacific Northwest power elite, including Starbucks Corporation Chairman Howard Shultz and Washington state Governor Christine Gregoire. With its reported seven bedrooms, six kitchens, 24 bathrooms, a domed library, a reception hall and an artificial estuary stocked with salmon a trout, the home is setting fit for a financial king and the luminaries come to celebrate and, of course, to make deals.

At least Bill Gates is getting some from China:

Like any good dinner guest, President Hu will not come empty handed. The Chinese government issued a decree two weeks ago that all PCs will need to have a licensed operating system software installed before leaving the factory gates in an effort to crack down on piracy.

As a result, three Chinese PC manufacturers announced plans to buy a total of over $400 million worth of Microsoft Windows operating system software over the next three years and Lenovo Group Ltd., China's largest PC maker, is expected to announce a similar deal on Monday, organizers said.

We wonder what other kinds of deals will be made at this illustrious party and what else will be on the agenda in later talks.

U.S. Firms Recruit Cheap Labor in Mexico

Pedro Lopez Vazuez crossed illegally into the United via a smuggler paid for by his employer according to this report:

His story is not unusual. A growing number of U.S. employers and migrants are tapping into an underground employment network that matches one with the other, often before the migrants leave home.

A true statement of the nature of the problem:

"It continues to become clear who controls immigration: It's not governments, but rather the market," said Jorge Santibanez, director of the Tijuana-based think-tank Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

As debate over immigration heats up in the United States, more and more U.S. companies in need of cheap labor are turning to undocumented employees to recruit friends and relatives back home, and to smugglers to find job seekers.

Darcy Tromanhauser, of the nonprofit law project Nebraska Appleseed, said companies in need of workers rely on the networks to "pass along the information more effectively than billboards."

"It started out more explicitly, where (meatpacking) companies used to have buses to transport people to come up, and they would advertise directly in Mexico," she said. "Now I think that happens more informally."

At the same time, it has become less risky for companies to recruit illegal migrants. Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. prosecution of employers who hire such workers has dwindled to a trickle as the government puts its resources toward national security.

The few cases that are prosecuted, however, highlight how lucrative a business recruiting undocumented workers has become. In one case, a single smuggler allegedly earned $900,000 over 15 months placing 6,000 migrants in jobs at Chinese restaurants across the upper Midwest.

And they aren't all from Mexico:

Yu sent a recruiter with Spanish interpreters to find migrants in Dallas willing to be fry cooks and dishwashers, Hilzendager said. A team made up mostly of illegal Chinese immigrants rented cars and drove them up.

Yu allegedly charged a $150 finder's fee for each migrant while the drivers earned $300 per worker. Restaurant owners deducted the $450 from workers' first-month paychecks of $1,000.

"It was just so easy," Hilzendager said.

Nick Chase, assistant U.S. attorney in North Dakota, said Yu even offered to replace workers free of charge if one left within two weeks of starting.

"It was a 2-for-1 special — like a pizza," Chase said. "Everything about it was ugly."

According to a report of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, after the September 11 attacks, work site inspections by U.S. immigration officials plummeted as they focused on national security cases. Anecdotal reports by individuals reflects that most investigative energy is also channeled to national security cases.

Cheap labor is both good and bad for the nation. Prices are kept down and some very needy people from abroad are given employment. These are tough and, often very smart, but uneducated people that are doing some jobs that most Americans wouldn't want at a very low wage. But they are also taking other jobs as well.

Once these were jobs for high school and college students attempting to pay their way. In today's market we find many idle young people adrift, standing on corners, at play, alienated, feeling useless, unable to find employment.

Employers complain that immigrants are more steady and more dependable as workers. Probably true, but how are America's youth to learn a work ethic as jobs once they would fill are now given over to immigrant laborers? America's unskilled and uneducated are also denied jobs in the niches they once filled as day laborers.

Cheap labor may be good for business, but the unintended social consequences certainly are questionable for the nation.

Terrorists Seen Turning to Campuses for Skills

Whether it's flight school, skills in laboratories for the production of biological agents, engineering, or even economics, and other technologies, the ultimate irony for the West is that we are educating agents of our own destruction.

A cell of Moroccan students "accused of studying electronics, computer technology and telecommunications in the service of North African terrorist group allied with Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "They oriented their scientific studies to learn terrorist techniques," a senior French anti-terrorism official said. "As people like this acquire knowledge and advance in the scientific community, they could become very hard for the police to detect. It was all quite sophisticated."

A number of top figures in Al Qaeda have academic backgrounds in the sciences. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, is an engineering graduate, as were Mohamed Atta and other members of the Hamburg cell that produced pilots for the attacks. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the convicted ringleader of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, is another engineer-turned-militant.

In a recent book titled "The Next Attack," two former National Security Council experts say that militants remain obsessed with developing technological capacity. The book describes bomb makers using Internet forums to reach out to academics for advice about electronics and chemistry.

The "responses suggest jihadists are able to draw on a wide range of highly skilled experts and that a significant number of Muslim scientists are prepared to help," Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon write.

Certainly large numbers of Muslim academics have been found to be conspiring with the Islamist movement.

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that Muslims believe that they should be "in control over the affairs of men."

Friends of the suspects here question some of the evidence against them, including their alleged level of technical expertise. Nonetheless, the friends agree that extremist activity has grown at the University of Montpellier, where the approximately 1,100 Moroccan students are the biggest contingent of foreigners.

"There is no question there is recruitment, especially at the science faculty," said a Moroccan student leader who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I think it's because the science students are more naive. And at the same time, they are useful."

The suspect students arrived in Montpellier in 2002 to find an immigrant community that is warm, welcoming and relaxed about class distinctions. Investigators say the students befriended Moroccan laborers involved in hard-core radicalism. At soccer games, prayers and traditional meals, the group coalesced around a key figure: Hamza Safi, a 21-year-old house painter and agricultural worker.

Three of the students were Hakil Chraibi, 23, son of a French-Dutch mother and a Moroccan doctor who had also studied here; Reda Barrazouk, 24, from an upper-middle-class Casablanca family; and Youcef Bouzzag, 21, also of Casablanca, whose father works for an international oil company.

A study has shown that on the whole, terrorists are better educated than their peers and better educated than most of their adversaries.

In fact, many seem an unlikely candidate to be an agent of mass murder. (Via: JihadWatch.org)

Are they moles or sleeper cells? No. According to a Stratfor Analysis (requires a subscription), a sleeper cell is a small group of agents operating under a very deep cover, sometimes waiting years or decades before activating operations against their host country that attacks strategically, often upon a prearranged signal, requiring "great vision, sophisticated planning and deep reservoirs of patience. The kinds of cells most often encountered are really "grassroots" groups that are part of the Islamist movement that is sweeping across the world.

Ahmadinejad's Demons

We will never truly understand what makes this man tick Here is a backgrounder.

Via: The Belmont Club.

Iran Extravaganza Postat The Adventures of Chester has an interesting glimpse of "powerful leaders" provided by David Ronfeldt at the RAND site: Bewae the Hubris-Nemis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis.

In the years ahead, the United States will assuredly find itself in new international crises involving nations or groups that have powerful leaders. In some cases, these leaders may have a special, dangerous mindset that is the result of a "hubris-nemesis complex."

This complex involves a combination of hubris (a pretension toward an arrogant form of godliness) and nemesis (a vengeful desire to confront, defeat, humiliate, and punish an adversary, especially one that can be accused of hubris). The combination has strange dynamics that may lead to destructive, high-risk behavior. Attempts to deter, compel or negotiate with a leader who has a hubris-nemesis complex can be ineffectual or even disastrously counterproductive when those attempts are based on concepts better suited to dealing with more normal leaders.

What are some of the attributes of the complex?
- a destructive-constructive messianism;
-high, moralizing ideals that justify violence;

-a demand for absolute power, loyalty and attention;

-a fierce sense of struggle that may turn self-sacrificial;

Chester Adds:

The study goes on to list some leaders who exhibit this complex: Castro, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Khadafi, Khomeini, and probably Slobodan Milosevic, Kim Il Sung, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Some who are unsavory but nonetheless have different personalities are: Lenin, Stalin, and Mao and a mention of fictional examples: Captain Ahab in Moby Dick and Satan in Paradise Lost.

The Plan

OK, here's the plan:

1) Build a barrier.

"They" say "fences don't work." "They" are just wrong - barriers work very nicely, and they always have. "They" say the cost would be outrageous. "They" are wrong again; the cost of a nice barrier, along the full length of the border with Mexico (not just the sissy 700 mile fence they keep talking about) would cost about the same as the reconstruction of a stretch of highway that was damaged in an earthquake in Seattle a few years back. If we still think we can't undertake it for some reason, outsource the damned thing to the Israelis.

2) Get the IRS in on it.

Tell employers of illegal aliens that unless the Social Security numbers of the people they hire match the names, they - the employers - won't be able to claim the salaries as a deduction as a business expense.

3) Make English the official language of the U.S.

All government documents, including road signs, will be printed in English only; English will be the language in which classes will be taught (with the exception of foreign language courses and schools which use "immersion" as a means of teaching a foreign language). If translations of any government documents are needed by legal visitors to this country, they will be their responsibility, and not produced at taxpayer expense. Proficiency in English will be required of all candidates for United States citizenship.

4) Withdraw all welfare benefits to illegal aliens.

Any illegal aliens appearing at a hospital emergency room will be treated, and when stable, will be deported; no other taxpayer expenses, including: in-state tuition at colleges and universities, attendence at tax-supported pre-schools through twelve, food stamps, rent subsidies, mortgages, etc. will be incurred.

5) Amend the Constitution to disallow "anchor babies."

6) Deport illegal aliens.

As illegal aliens appear at various locations, determine their status and deport them. This shall include illegal aliens currently in our prisons, who shall be deported as soon as they have completed their sentences, and will be permanently identified as "persona non grata" with respect to re-entry into this country.

7) Deputize citizen volunteers to work with the Border Patrol.


There; how's that? Any other suggestions?

The April 2006 Edition of 6th Column Against Jihad Is Out

6th Column Against Jihad offers NEW FOR APRIL 2006

• From Cubed, A Recipe: How to Make a Muslim (Part 8 of the Education and Jihad Series)





• From Charles Martel, An Objectivist's Response to Muhammad Cartoon Controversy





• From Portia, Immigrating Terror: Why Immigration Officials Couldn't Exclude Jihadists and Anti-American Anyone Prior to 9/11 and Teddy's Terror Loophole





• 
  From Jane Scully, Hatred of the Angels, Chapter 4, Brotherhoods




• 
  From Jacob Thomas, Turkey: A Case Study in Failure to Secularize , Denial: A Characteristic of the Islamic Mind, and Human Rights Violations in Arab Prisons

• 
  From The Objective Standard, Introducing The Objective Standard (and excellent panoramic summary of Objectivsm)

GETTING IT!

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Rights of British America, 1774)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America (121)


(Courtesty of The Patriot Post, Founders' Quote Daily)

If We Are Not Exploiting These, Why Not?

Destroying Iran from inside is far superior to any other alternative, particularly nuclear war. This article is another in A LONG STRING of articles pointing to severe instability in Iran, just waiting to be exploited.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - April 12, 2006, 07:31 PM, Postcard from Iran

Wave of Strikes Shakes Tehran

...[T]he Iranian government also has an internal crisis on its hands. The country's high level of poverty has triggered a series of intense social struggles.

Increasing dissatisfaction about economic conditions in Iran is placing additional pressure on the regime in Tehran. Despite a ban on strikes in the country, the number of workers protesting poor conditions is increasing across Iran.

Angered by unpaid salaries and generally low wages, workers in the northern Iranian provincial capital Rasht blocked streets and protested in front of government offices a fortnight ago brandishing banners that read: "We are hungry!" It wasn't the first time that thousands of employees at the country's largest state-owned textile factory had laid down their tools. But this time they were joined by dam workers in the western province of Elam and employees of a pharmaceutical factory in Tehran.

Recently, workers have also gone on strike against harsh work conditions and impending layoffs in mines and petrochemical plants across the country, with hundreds of coal miners from the northern province of Gilan protesting the fact that they have not been paid for 13 months. Workers were also on strike in the car factories of the Iran-Khodro company, already the site of a massive work stoppage on last year's Day of Social Welfare and Securities (July 16), when strikers demanded the introduction of a minimum wage.

...[M]ore than 50 percent of the Iranian population continues to live under the poverty line, according to official estimates provided by the Iranian Central Bank.

The current strike wave was initiated by Tehran bus drivers in January, and it immediately provoked a harsh response from the government. Several hundred bus drivers were arrested within a few hours of the beginning of the strike. The strike's leaders -- Mansur Hayat-Gheibi and Mansoor Ossanlou -- have been held ever since in Tehran's notorious Evin prison for, among other reasons, violating the national ban on unions by creating the "Wahed" organization of bus drivers. Hayat-Gheibi went on a hunger strike two weeks ago that is now being closely watched throughout Iran.

Although I have little confidence in the Bushies any longer, it may be possible that the USA is exploiting these and fomenting revolution in Iran. Had the Bushies any recognition of the value of ideas in the war with Islam, I could sit back somewhat satisfied that highly classified work is going on in Iran right now.

Another Reason for No Nuke for Iran: Nuke Plants in a Quake Zone

Over the past century or so, Iran has experienced more earthquakes than any other part of the globe - at least one tremor each day. Last week's earthquake in the south-central province of Lorestan is the latest reminder of that fact.

Since Iran started properly recording earthquakes in the late 1940s, it has suffered at least one "big one" every decade: Torud (1950s), Boein-Zahra (1960s), Tabas-Golshan (1970s), Qazvin (1980s), Rudbar-Tarom (1990s) and Bam (December 2003). By official estimates, these earthquakes claimed the lives of 126,000 people, injured a further 800,000 and made 1.8 million people homeless. At times, the damage from one quake amounted to more than 7 percent of the nation's GDP...

The project was 75 percent complete when the revolt of the mullahs began in Iran in 1978. The Germans abandoned the work, and Iraqi airstrikes destroyed what had already been built in the 1980s.

When the program was revived in 1989, it was the turn of Tehran University's Geophysical Centre to raise concerns on grounds of safety. A study was commissioned by then-President Hashemi Rafsanjani in 1993 and completed in 1995. It has never been published, but parts have leaked - warning that the plant, as designed, might not withstand tremors of 7 or more on the Richter scale.

An official Iranian government report at a 2005 international conference in Kobe, Japan, puts the area where the nuclear plant is located at the center of the country's most active earthquake zone.

Thus, even building a plant for the production of electricity using nuclear fuel would be a disaster waiting to happen.
Read it all.

A More Merciful Sharia? - The Development of Amputation Machines

Via: LGF

... the amputation machines are imported from Saudi Arabia. Well, of course! Where else would they come from?

Some sources say that these machines resemble “crude guillotines”. But, no matter how crude they are, you can bet that Saudi Arabia doesn’t actually make them. Saudi Arabia doesn’t make anything but trouble for the rest of the world.

It could be that those machines were originally designed and built in Jamaica, for cutting sugar cane. Or in Taiwan, for cutting up livestock carcasses. But the Saudis applied their native ingenuity to the situation, sized up the African market, and resold the machines to the Hisba. {of Nigeria where they are being used to implement Sharia.}

"The 'ultimate irony' is that most of the brainpower and sweat back in the 1930s and '40s that went into the invention of atomic weapons was Jewish. All those Jewish scientists, came to America to escape Hitler and the gas chamber.

Today the West is being threatened by Islam, using their own technology: automatic weapons, weaponized WMDs, and nuclear bombs. THAT is the ultimate irony.

The Three T's

It was easy to overlook other worthy items during the excitement of the Immigration "Rallies."

Via: Michelle Malkin

See the explanation of each panel at Cox&Forkum.

A History of the Car Bomb - The Poor Man's Air Force

The scourge of the world began in an attack in the United States against financier J.P. Morgan.

"You have shown no pity to us! We will do likewise. We will dynamite you!"
- anarchist warning (1919)

On a warm September day in 1920 in New York, a few months after the arrest of his comrades Sacco and Vanzetti, a vengeful Italian anarchist named Mario Buda parked his horse-drawn wagon near the corner of Wall and Broad streets, directly across from J P Morgan Company. He nonchalantly climbed down and disappeared, unnoticed, into the lunchtime crowd.

A few blocks away, a startled postal worker found strange leaflets warning: "Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death for all of you!" They were signed: "American anarchist fighters". The bells of nearby Trinity Church began to toll at noon. When they stopped, the wagon - packed with dynamite and iron slugs - exploded in a fireball of shrapnel.

"The horse and wagon were blown to bits," wrote Paul Avrich, the celebrated historian of US anarchism who uncovered the true story. "Glass showered down from office windows, and awnings 12 stories above the street burst into flames. People fled in terror as a great cloud of dust enveloped the area. In Morgan's offices, Thomas Joyce of the securities department fell dead on his desk amid a rubble of plaster and walls. Outside, scores of bodies littered the streets."

Buda was undoubtedly disappointed when he learned that J P Morgan was not among the 40 dead and more than 200 wounded - the great robber baron was away in Scotland at his hunting lodge. Nonetheless, a poor immigrant with some stolen dynamite, a pile of scrap metal and an old horse had managed to bring unprecedented terror to the inner sanctum of US capitalism.

His Wall Street bomb was the culmination of a half-century of anarchist fantasies about avenging angels made of dynamite; but it was also an invention, like Charles Babbage's difference engine, far ahead of the imagination of its time. Only after the barbarism of strategic bombing had become commonplace, and when air forces routinely pursued insurgents into the labyrinths of poor cities, would the truly radical potential of Buda's "infernal machine" be fully realized.

Buda's wagon was, in essence, the prototype car bomb: the first use of an inconspicuous vehicle, anonymous in almost any urban setting, to transport large quantities of high explosive into precise range of a high-value target. It was not replicated, as far as I have been able to determine, until January 12, 1947, when the Stern Gang drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station in Haifa, Palestine, killing four and injuring 140. The Stern Gang (a pro-fascist splinter group led by Avraham Stern that broke away from the right-wing Zionist paramilitary Irgun) would soon use truck and car bombs to kill Palestinians as well: a creative atrocity immediately reciprocated by British deserters fighting on the side of Palestinian nationalists.

Vehicle bombs thereafter were used sporadically - producing notable massacres in Saigon (1952), Algiers (1962) and Palermo (1963) - but the gates of hell were only truly opened in 1972, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army accidentally, so the legend goes, improvised the first ammonium nitrate-fuel oil (ANFO) car bomb. These new-generation bombs, requiring only ordinary industrial ingredients and synthetic fertilizer, were cheap to fabricate and astonishingly powerful: they elevated urban terrorism from the artisanal to the industrial level, and made possible sustained blitzes against entire city centers as well as the complete destruction of ferro-concrete skyscrapers and residential blocks.

The car bomb, in other words, suddenly became a semi-strategic weapon that, under certain circumstances, was comparable to air power in its ability to knock out critical urban nodes and headquarters as well as terrorize the populations of entire cities. Indeed, the suicide truck bombs that devastated the US Embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 prevailed - at least in a geopolitical sense - over the combined firepower of the fighter-bombers and battleships of the US 6th Fleet and forced the administration of president Ronald Reagan to retreat from Lebanon.

Read the rest of part 1. (As of this post, part 2 has not been published .)

Illegal Immigration? No Problem!

Brush up your Spanish, fire up the barbie, "It's fiesta time!" Plans to "Annex Mexico" seem to be popping up everywhere. Here is more humorous version than the one I wrote.

Could this have been the plan all along? The experience has been so bizarre isn't anything possible? ¿Quién sabe?

EU lexicon to shun term "Islamic terrorism"

The European Union, tiptoeing through a minefield of religious and cultural sensitivities, is discreetly reviewing the language it uses to describe terrorists who claim to act in the name of Islam.

EU officials are working on what they call a "lexicon" for public communication on terrorism and Islam, designed to make clear that there is nothing in the religion to justify outrages like the September 11 attacks or the bombings of Madrid and London.

The lexicon would set down guidelines for EU officials and politicians.
"Certainly 'Islamic terrorism' is something we will not use ... we talk about 'terrorists who abusively invoke Islam'," an EU official told Reuters.

Other terms being considered by the review include "Islamist", "fundamentalist" and "jihad". The latter, for example, is often used by al Qaeda and some other groups to mean warfare against infidels, but for most Muslims indicates a spiritual struggle.

"Jihad means something for you and me, it means something else for a Muslim. Jihad is a perfectly positive concept of trying to fight evil within yourself," said the official, speaking anonymously because the review is an internal one that is not expected to be made public.

EU counter-terrorism chief Gijs de Vries told Reuters that terrorism was not inherent to any religion, and praised moderate Muslims for opposing attempts to hijack Islam.

"They have been increasingly active in isolating the radicals who abuse Islam for political purposes, and they deserve everyone's support. And that includes the choice of language that makes clear that we are talking about a murderous fringe that is abusing a religion and does not represent it."

Steyn - "Facing Down Iran"

Via: LGF

Excellent, a must read:

Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:

1. contempt for the most basic international conventions; 
2. long-reach extraterritoriality; 
3. effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism; 
4. a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama); 
5. an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.

Yet the Europeans remain in denial. Iran was supposedly the Middle Eastern state they could work with. And the chancellors and foreign ministers jetted in to court the mullahs so assiduously that they’re reluctant to give up on the strategy just because a relatively peripheral figure like the, er, head of state is sounding off about Armageddon.

Instead, Western analysts tend to go all Kremlinological. There are, after all, many factions within Iran’s ruling class. What the country’s quick-on-the-nuke president says may not be the final word on the regime’s position. Likewise, what the school of nuclear theologians in Qom says. Likewise, what former president Khatami says. Likewise, what Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, says.

But, given that they’re all in favor of the country having nukes, the point seems somewhat moot. The question then arises, what do they want them for?

I think I know.

Read the whole thing.

Annex Mexico?

Here's an interesting proposition. Instead of worrying about the invasion of Mexico, perhaps Mexico should worry about being absorbed into the United States.

Ten percent of the total Mexican population now lives in the United States. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita for Mexico is $9,600 and is "all but flat over the past five years," but the US GDP per capita is $40,100 and "has risen consistently over the years." (Via: Riehl World View.)

The existing Mexican economic structurefavors the few already economically well off at the sacrifice of the masses.

Let me start by putting on the table a central thesis: I think, and my party thinks, that the economic strategy that has been in place for the last 18 years is not delivering for the majority of the people in Mexico. The structural adjustment policies and trade liberalization policies have sharpened inequality and income disparity in Mexico. These policies have benefited only a small circle of economic agents of corporations, mostly those already connected to the international economy, to the detriment of the majority of micro and small and medium businesses, workers and the average Mexican citizen. So when people say that the fundamentals are sound, that the economy is performing well, the relevant question up front is for whom? It reminds me of the saying by our Brazilian friends, when people describe the macroeconomic outlook in Brazil as working very well, they say the Brazilian economy is doing fine, it's just most Brazilians that are suffering.

Getting back to the technology industry discussion referenced above, had Mexico invested over the years in education and technology infrastructure, right now they could be experiencing a tremendous boom. The low wage workers we see marching in our streets today could be living comfortably while developing software for a world and especially a US market far more easily and conveniently than does, say India or China and a number of other countries increasingly coming on line in that respect.

Sadly, rather than invest in such endeavors, the Fox government that would lecture us on what it is our immigration policies should be, is ignoring incredible opportunities for his own nation and peoples at our expense, opting to export poverty to the US instead of addressing it prudently at home.

To a good extent, Mexico's powerful, including its politicians line their pockets and leave their own people to wander through the desert hoping to find a living wage in America. And to date, the same American politicians so baffled by today's immigrations issues have not done one serious thing to make the Mexican government shape up. Until that happens, only a wall is going to keep throngs of impoverished Mexicans seeking an escape.

Is Mexico to become the "New South?" Would Mexican politicians move to Washington to impose these policies on the U.S. masses, thus ruining it for everyone? A "broadening of the middle class" occurs when the wages of laborers are raised while at the same time wages of "educated" laborers are lowered because of an influx of educated foreigners who will work for less. Only those will investment capital will truly prosper. After all a pie can be divided only so many times before the pieces cease to nourish anyone.

Perhaps turning the tables on Mexico has been the plan by politicians and business concerns all along. After all: we have a more numerous population, a larger and more powerful army, and a stronger economy. We would have plenty of oil and a vast numbers of cheap laborers. The downside would be that many would be born and educated in the United States.
Only time will tell which government, which culture, and which class will get the last laugh. I'm sure it won't be the MIDDLE class.

"Slouching toward France"

Is the French entitlement program the upcoming model for the U.S.?

"This much is certain: The welfare state as we know it cannot survive." So Charles Murray writes in The Wall Street Journal in an article on his new book, "In Our Hands."

"No serious student of entitlements thinks that we can let federal spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid rise from its current 9 percent of gross domestic product to the 28 percent of GDP that it will consume in 2050 if past growth rates continue."

You can quibble about the numbers, but the overall trend is clear: We're on a collision course. On the one hand, we have a private-sector economy that is vibrant, creative, continually transforming itself and producing millions and millions of new jobs -- overcoming the stagflation of the late 1970s, the sharp recession of the early 1980s, the savings and loan bailout of the early 1990s and the trauma of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On the other hand, we have a public sector that is threatening to gobble up more and more of that economy as time goes on.

We know what things look like somewhere down the road: France. As students, union members and public employees riot in the streets against the outrageous notion that people should not be given lifetime jobs until age 26, France seems immobilized.
It is not that France does not have a vibrant private sector. "Private-sector France," says the Economist, "is marching brazenly wherever globalization allows." But at home, the French private sector is getting squeezed out. Certainly it is not interested in creating new jobs in France with generous pay and benefits and lifetime tenure.

We can see something of France in Michigan. Delphi, spun off from General Motors in 1999, is in bankruptcy and threatening to drag its parent down with it. The problem is overgenerous pay and benefits and lifetime tenure (GM has a jobs bank that pays laid-off workers not to work). High costs have hampered Delphi and GM in competing in the marketplace. They tend to produce second-rate stuff that can bring in enough cash to meet the payroll.

Delphi and GM workers don't have public employees and students rioting in the streets to protect their jobs, and many will lose what they were told were entitlements. It's a sad human story. But surely we don't want to see the whole country end up like France or Delphi.

But at the moment, we don't have anyone working to stop it -- not the Republicans, not the Democrats. In the late 1990s, President Bill Clinton seemed ready to work with Sen. Pat Moynihan to put an investment component in Social Security and with Sen. John Breaux to institute market reforms in Medicare. But Clinton, at the behest of the liberals who rescued him by opposing his impeachment, pulled back, even though the political stars were otherwise aligned.

George W. Bush came to office with plans for reform in Social Security and health-care finance. Remember that "the President proposes and Congress disposes."

Meanwhile...

"... presidential candidates aren't addressing these issues as much as did Bush in 2000 or even Clinton in 1992. Some Democrats want us to move toward the model of France, and many Republicans calculate that any long-term gain is not worth the short-term political price. Bad news if we don't want our grandchildren to live in a country more like today's France than today's United States."

Sowell on "Immigration 'Solutions' "

Prolific author and scholar Thomas Sowell comments on the mess we are in:

Activists who are organizing mass marches and demonstrations in cities across America may well be congratulating themselves on the huge numbers of people they can get to turn out to protest efforts in Congress to reduce illegal immigration.

No doubt that will impress many in the media and intimidate many politicians. But how these marches will be seen by millions of other Americans is another question entirely.

The Mexican flags and the strident assertions of a right to violate American laws are a danger signal to this society, as they would be to any society.

The releasing of children from schools to take part in these marches and the support of the marchers' goals by some religious leaders demonstrate that this contempt for the laws of the land has spread well beyond immigrant communities.
For some, this is just another extension of their general anti-establishment attitudes and activities. They are ready to protest virtually anything at any time.

At the other end of the political spectrum are staid and sober representatives of business interests who simply want a continuing supply of cheap labor. They don't march, they lobby politicians.

Both liberals and free-market libertarians often see this as an abstract issue about poor people being hindered from moving to jobs by an arbitrary border drawn across the southwest desert.

Intellectuals' ability to think of people in the abstract is a dangerous talent in a world where people differ in all the ways that make them people. The cultures and surrounding circumstances of those people are crucial for understanding what they are likely to do and what the consequences are likely to be.

Some free-market advocates argue that the same principle which justifies free international trade in commodities should justify the free movement of people as well. But this ignores the fact that people have consequences that go far beyond the consequences of commodities.

Commodities are used up and vanish. People generate more people, who become a permanent and expanding part of the country's population and electorate.

It is an irreversible process -- and a potentially dangerous process, as Europeans have discovered with their "guest worker" programs that have brought in many Muslims who are fundamentally hostile to the culture and the people that welcomed them.

Unlike commodities, people in a welfare state have legal claims on other people's tax dollars and expensive services in schools and hospitals, not to mention the high cost of imprisoning many of them who commit crimes.

Immigrants in past centuries came here to become Americans, not to remain foreigners, much less to proclaim the rights of their homelands to reclaim American soil, as some of the Mexican activist groups have done.

In the wars that this country fought, immigrant groups were among the most patriotic volunteers, earning the respect of American citizens on the battlefield with their blood and their lives.

Today, immigrant spokesmen promote grievances, not gratitude, much less patriotism. Moreover, many native-born Americans also promote a sense of separatism and grievance and, through "multi-culturalism," strive to keep immigrants foreign and disaffected.

This is not to say that all or most of the illegal immigrants themselves share this anti-establishment or anti-American bias of many of their spokesmen or supporters. Most are probably here to make a buck and have little time for ideology.

Hispanic activists themselves recognize that many of the immigrants from Mexico -- legal or illegal -- would assimilate into American society in the absence of these activists' efforts to keep them a separate constituency. But these efforts are widespread and unrelenting, a fact that cannot be ignored.

I keep hitting the same point: No Assimilation, No Nation.

Whatever is said or done in the immigration debate, no one should insult the American people's intelligence by talking or acting as if this is a question about the movement of abstract people across an abstract line.

What is likely to be done? A pretense of reducing illegal immigration and a reality of amnesty under some other name.

The elite have created this problem for the rest of us. (Some of the rest of us are assimilated immigrants.)

Here is Part II.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: The Carbuncle on Our National Derriere

This whole "immigration kerfuffle" has been allowed to become an issue because our inept, incompetent, and constipated federal government, since 1965, has let it fester. They stuck their heads into the sand, a la ostriches, and let this mess happen.

Imagine a tiny under-the-dermis sore spot on your butt, like a pimple, but one that is getting bigger. Well, if you are not overly modernized to the point where you can no longer think simply and appropriately, you might head to the doctor for a quick diagnosis and lots of "16 inch gun" antibiotics. Or, you might try hot water compresses which raise the local temperature in the sore above 106 degrees F, thereby killing the organisms, and not mutating your bodily flora so that you cannot treat them at some later point. Either way, the little sore goes away, and you can forget about it.

Now, how would the government handle such a sore? First, they would immediately stop looking at it, and evade thinking about it. In fact, they would pass regulations forbidding anyone else to look at the pimple or talk about it. Out of mind, out of body, right? Wrong, because the little sore progresses under such care into a boil, and it is hurting to sit down. No longer able to ignore it, the government would decide to turn the other cheek, so to speak, and call this a solution. Eventually, the boil would become a nasty, very large carbuncle, with all sorts of satellite boils, precluding sitting, standing, or finding a comfortable position anywhere in the universe. The government would now admit itself to the hospital and take itself to surgery after plying itself with very expensive antibiotics. Under anesthesia, its designees would open the carbuncle, debride it, install drains and irrigation catheters, and pack it open to heal in the slowest possible way because the healing now must come from the bottom up. I could go on to say that the silly goose government now develops necrotizing fasciitis, but that really would not add to the metaphor.

Here we are, with some 13 - 14 million ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, by the latest estimates seen on television news, and they are DEMONSTRATING for what they call their RIGHTS, as though they are American citizens. Meanwhile very corrupt people in the Senate want to give them another round of AMNESTY, because they say, no one can deal with a problem this large. BULL S---T to all of this!

Some representative of some so-called “Council for Immigrant Rights and Social Justice,” a group trying to cash-in to grab power in one city’s “demonstrations” for today, Monday, 10 April, bleated on the radio all sorts of befogging verbiage that is typical of all of those trying to cash in. “Immigrant rights” means to them ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, because to them LEGAL IMMIGRANT is the same as ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT. No, this defies logic, but like all postmoderns, these cashers-in are manipulating language to be their weapons. You can bet your bottom dollar that any time you hear the buzz phrase, “social justice,” you can be assured that you are dealing with socialists who are after you to harness to their plans. What are all of these demonstrators playing to? They are playing to the EMOTIONS of the legislators and executives in governments, from local through federal. Just look at the shift today in their tactics, from Mexican flags to American flags. Sincerity? How about opportunism and manipulation!

There is a great statement in Atlas Shrugged about James Taggart who archetypically represents most of the Senate, all of the State Department, and so many in the Executive Branch that one loses count. Confronted with anything that should make him want to summon thinking, James Taggart called on his emotions as though blowing on a fog horn, but one used to "summon the fog."

Let's make a number of things clear and contextual. First, I am concerned herein with ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS only. I am not anti-immigrant in any way. I am anti-individual only for those legal immigrants who use subterfuge to get into America with the intent on doing harm, even if they are naturalized citizens. Otherwise, I welcome LEGAL immigrants.

ILLEGAL immigrants pose huge problems, but they can be dealt with quite effectively. Indeed, the lazy, those working agendas, and all the fog-summoners think otherwise. They come up with such stuff like the hackneyed claim that these illegals do the work that Americans will not do. People like Teddy Kennedy and all that support a minimum wage are the ones that created this situation. Plenty of people will work these jobs, but too few employers can afford minimum wage for grunt work.

ILLEGAL immigrants operate beneath our proper detection and surveillance. We, the citizens of America acting as the nation of America, have delegated to the government of America the use of force in order to protect our rights as citizens. To that end, we have the Constitution of the United States. We have the right and need to know who is in our country, why, and where they are at all times.

One pie-in-the-sky, divorced-from-reality article advocating open borders recently spent considerable space going over rights, and how all men and women on earth have rights, even the illegal immigrants. True, but ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO THE PROTECTION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES WHEN THEY ENTER OUR COUNTRY ILLEGALLY. That point was never addressed in the article.

We are at WAR, another fact glossed over by that article. We must know who enters our country, why, and where they are at all times. We have abundant evidence of jihadists, for example, waltzing into America with our destruction as their intentions, and our constipated government does not even know where most are. We have Muslims here on expired student visas and other expired authorizations, preaching sedition, and funneling money to HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH, etc. The Muslim Brotherhood operates with only a fig leaf for a cover. NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO BE IN AMERCA ILLEGALLY.

Those supporting the RIGHTS OF ILLEGALS go so far as to make every effort to the illegals welfare, health care, housing, food stamps, and in-state tuition if they get charged at all. How can anyone in government provide these bogus rights? Because they forcibly take money through taxation from legal Americans and redistribute it a la socialism to those who are--at a minimum--criminal, because they entered the country illegally. It is making Americans very, very sore--this watching the boil become a carbuncle.

What about a “guest worker” program? Fine, as long as there is full tracking and accountability, and the program is temporary for each worker who signs up.

What to do? Border control is number one, but that takes time. Meanwhile, start cracking down inside America, using existing laws. E.g., start in Maine, because it is the farthest from the Mexican border. CUT OFF ALL WELFARE TO ILLEGALS ABRUPTLY. Start rounding them up and deporting them. Put them in holding pens in the Nevada desert briefly until they can be deported. Do not penalize employers for their hiring illegals--that would be truly immoral, but remove ALL TAX BREAKS EMPLOYERS GET FOR THESE WORKERS.

Now then, as the word spreads, watch a growing human tsunami moving toward the southern border (and some into Canada). Let them through, to reenter Mexico, and use whatever force is required to interdict the Federales who will attempt to block the exodus. As the enforcement continues, illegals who came from south of the border will flood back south across the border from all parts of the country. A big problem will shrink progressively into a much more manageable problem. Hard core illegals won't leave, so there will still be the need to detect and deport them.

Now then again, start in Florida rounding up illegal Muslims, in the same way. Illegal Muslims will repeat just what they did after 9-11, when millions flooded into Canada, fearing detection and deportation. Just you watch all the Toweltop-and Burqa Charter Jet airlines leaving the USA full, faster than the bin Ladens and the Saudis blew out of here after 9-11. The human tsunami going south will cross the human tsunami going north. Once more, a very big problem will shrink into something much more manageable.

Under no circumstances grant amnesty. Amnesty is an egregious insult to the concept of rights, our laws, and the Constitutional system. Furthermore, amnesty is morally disgusting: It is mercy, an anti-moral concept. What is needed here is justice. Far too many people came to America the right way, and those who followed legal procedures must not be slapped in the face by giving the illegal and undeserving an unearned amnesty. Nor should we slap the face of every American by ignoring the Constitution.

Abolish the minimum wage immediately. Let wages become market determined so that all can work, and then see just who does what jobs.

There is much, much more, like abolishing all welfare, but that would take too long here.

Legal immigrants strengthen America. New legal immigrants should be identified, properly educated to the proper principles of America, and be tracked until they become full citizens. As legal immigrants, before citizenship becomes formal, they deserve full protection of their Rights of Man the same as American citizens. Few Americans would oppose. This is how you keep a pimple from becoming a carbuncle or progressing to necrotizing fasciitis.

Today We March; Tomorrow We Vote.

Illegal immigrants have been chanting "today we march; tomorrow we vote" as they parade through the streets of various American cities. Sounds like a idle threat, but in the past the INS in parts of the country "engaged in a 'systematic' program of speeding aliends through the citizenship process in an effort to enhance Democratic turnout on election day (2000 Election), according to a legal watchdog organization as reported in World Net Daily.

Obviously persons that are aliens one day and then U.S. citizens the next, without an opportunity to form a bond of allegiance to the United States 'descecrate' not only the citizenship process but the franchise.

Muslims for Open Borders

March 27 illegal alien protest in Detroit. Marchers carry a bnner for the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services. Background here.

Via: Michelle Malkin who is always up to the minute:

Via: The Christian Science Monitor

"If you watch TV and read the papers, you would think this [immigration reform] is primarily an issue only for Latinos or only illegals or only poor immigrants. [Monday] will show differently," predicts Abdul Malik Mujahid, a Chicago-based Islamic cleric who says 7,000 Muslims will march there Monday to protest the "climate of fear" since 9/11.

Here's Mujahid's bio:

Mujahid is the President and Director of Sound Vision Foundation Inc. He is an Imam in the Chicago area. A graduate of Darul Uloom Shah Waliullah in Islamic Studies and the University of Chicago in Political Science, he has learned television production as director and producer at the Chicago Access Corporation. He is the producer of Sound Vision's programs. He was also responsible for the concept and design of Al-Qari, the leading Quran learning multimedia software. Mujahid has served as the National Coordinator of Bosnia Task Force, USA. It was in this capacity that he initiated the formation of the Islamic Shura Council of North America. He also serves as National Coordinator of Kosova Task Force, USA, an alliance of 10 national organizations of Muslims in America. Mr. Mujahid also serves at the executive committee of the Council for a World Parliament of World Religions.

Info about Sound Vision.

As Michelle reminds us: "Lest you bury your heads in the sand about the radical sabotage of our immigration laws embraced by CAIR - La Raza- A.N.S.W.E.R. - SEIU - Big Business Alliance, I am poting as a reminder the deadly result of our open borders policies -- summarized by Steve Camorata of the Center for Immigration Studies:

*Foreign-born militant Islamic terrorists have used almost every conceivable means of entering the country. They have come as students, tourists, and business visitors. They have also been Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) and naturalized U.S. citizens. They have snuck across the border illegally, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted amnesty. Terrorists have even used America’s humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum.

*At the time they committed their crimes, 16, or one-third, of the 48 terrorists in the study were on temporary visas (primarily tourist visas), another 17 were Lawful Permanent Residents or naturalized U.S. citizens, 12, or one-fourth, were illegal aliens, and three of the 48 had applications for asylum pending.

*Although the 9/11 hijackers entered on temporary visas, LPRs as well as naturalized U.S. citizens have played key roles in terrorism on U.S. soil. For example, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, ringleader of the plot to bomb New York City landmarks in 1993, is an LPR, and Ali Mohammed, who wrote al Qaeda’s terrorist handbook on how to operate in the West, is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

*The nation’s humanitarian tradition of offering refuge to those fleeing persecution has also been exploited by a number of terrorists. In addition to the three terrorists who had asylum claims pending when they committed their crimes, three other terrorists, such as Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, who tried to bomb the Brooklyn borough subway in 1997, used a false asylum claim to prevent deportation prior to taking part in terrorism.

*Violations of immigration laws are very common among terrorists. Not only were 12 of the 48 terrorists illegal aliens when they committed their crimes, at least five others had lived in the country illegally at some point prior to taking part in terrorism. At least five others had committed significant violations of immigration laws prior to their taking part. For those that were illegal aliens, most entered legally on temporary visas and then overstayed. However, some snuck across the northern border, such as Abdel Hakim Tizegha, who was involved in the Millennium plot.

*In addition to overstaying a visa, terrorists have violated immigration laws in a number of different ways. Some terrorists have engaged in fraudulent marriages to American citizens, such as Fadil Abdelgani, who took part in the plot to bomb New York City landmarks, and Khalid Abu al Dahab, who raised money and helped recruit new members for al Qaeda from within the United States.

*Terrorists also violated immigration laws by providing false information on their applications for permanent residence, such as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who inspired several terrorist plots.

* Still other terrorists have violated the law by working illegally in the United States. At least eight terrorists held jobs for extended periods while living in the country illegally before taking part in terrorism, including those involved in the 1993 Trade Center attack, the plot to bomb New York landmarks, and the Millennium plot.

* A lack of detention space has allowed several terrorists who had no legal right to be in the country to be released into the country. For example, Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center Attack, did not have a visa to enter the country, but he applied for asylum when he arrived at JFK airport and because of a lack of detention space he was paroled into the country.

* Past amnesties for illegal aliens have facilitated terrorism. Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 Trade Center bombing, was legalized as a seasonal agricultural worker as part of the 1986 amnesty. Only after he was legalized was he able to travel outside of the country, including several trips to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, where he received the terrorist training he used in the bombing.

* Past amnesties have not hindered terrorism. Mohammed Salameh, another conspirator in the 1993 Trade Center bombing, applied for the same amnesty as Abouhalima and was denied. But, because there is no mechanism in place to force people who are denied permanent residency to leave the country, he continued to live and work in the United States illegally and ultimately took part in the 1993 attack.

* Several terrorists should probably have been denied temporary visas because they had characteristics that made it likely they would overstay their visa and try to live in the United States illegally. Under Section 214(b) of immigration law, individuals who are young, unmarried, have little income, or otherwise lack strong attachment to a residence overseas are to be denied temporary visas. Several of the 9/11 hijackers, including the plot’s leader Mohammed Atta, fit these criteria.

* The visa waiver program, which allows individuals from some countries to visit the United States without a visa, has been exploited by terrorists. French-born Zacarias Moussaoui, who may have been the intended 20th hijacker on 9/11, entered the country using the visa waiver program. Other terrorists such as Ahmed Ajaj, Ramzi Yousef, and Ahmed Ressam attempted to use false passports from visa waiver countries to enter the United States.

* The vast majority of terrorists in the study (41 of 48) were approved for visas by an American consulate overseas prior to entering the country. Of the seven who did not have visas, three snuck into the country and four arrived at a port of entry without a visa.

* At least two terrorists, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and Ali Mohammed, should have been denied visas because they were on the watch list of suspected terrorists.

Read it all.

Check out Debbie Schlussel for more.

Domestic Terrorist Group Behind Immigrant Rallies

At: http://www.gopusa.com/theloft -

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a front for the communist/socialist Workers World Party, which was identified by former FBI Director Louis Freeh as a “domestic terrorist group,” is behind the immigrant rallies taking place around the nation.

ANSWER provided logistics (signs) for the immigrant rally in L.A. on March 25. ANSWER claims credit for organizing that rally.



Here is a professional ANSWER protester at the anti-war rally in L.A. on March 18.


Here is the same professional ANSWER protester at the immigration rally in L.A. on March 25.


The Party for Socialism and Liberation is one of the Steering Committee organizations that make up ANSWER.


FACTS ABOUT ANSWER

A.N.S.W.E.R. is a cover up for the Workers World Party, a Stalinist organization. According to Stephen Zunes, chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco,”Basically, A.N.S.W.E.R. is dominated by the IAC, which is largely a front for the Workers World Party.” David Corn, a writer for the liberal publication Common Dreams, stated, “A.N.S.W.E.R. is run by W.W.P. activists, to such an extent that it seems fair to dub it a W.W.P. front.”

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s director, Ramsey Clark, has served as the spokesman for the W.W.P since the early 1990s. Ramsey Clark is currently part of the legal defense team for Saddam Hussein, and was part of the legal defense team for Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in the International Criminal Court. Another director of A.N.S.W.E.R., Brian Becker, is part of the W.W.P. Secretariat.

The former FBI Director under President Clinton, Louis Freeh, included W.W.P. in a talk about “domestic terrorist groups” on May 10, 2001 when speaking to Senate committees. He also denounced “Anarchists and extremist socialist groups - many of which, such as the Workers World Party, have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States.”

The W.W.P. does not want to participate within the American political system, it wants to overthrow our democratic form of government and eliminate private property. LeiLani Dowell of the W.W.P. said at their conference in November, 2004, “I think that these elections proved to many that there is no choice between Democratic and Republican–and essentially no choice for working people under capitalism.”
A document on the A.N.S.W.E.R. website entitled “Who is the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition” states, “The global anti-war movement must be a movement of international solidarity against the U.S. empire.”

A.N.S.W.E.R. supports the Iraqi resistance against US troops. “Having achieved their victory [the US in Iraq], however, the occupiers now confront a people who have a long and proud history of resistance. The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance.” Richard Becker, A.N.S.W.E.R. Steering Committee, Downloadable flyer on “Counter-revolution and Resistance in Iraq,” May 2003. A recent Workers World editorial stated, “Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s steering committee and endorsers include the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist-Leninist organization, and the Freedom Sociality Party, a Trotskyite group. A.N.S.W.E.R. supports Fidel Castro and communist Cuba.

A.N.S.W.E.R. sends its professional demonstrators to rallies in order to further its own agenda, not the agenda of the participants. Students were warned by the University of Michigan Daily about the real force behind a January 2003 anti-war rally put on by A.N.S.W.E.R. - “many who read about the rally afterward will assume the crowd showed up to support A.N.S.W.E.R.’s agenda rather than to learn about or participate in the anti-war movement.”

The W.W.P. supports the Chinese communist government, and encouraged its use of tanks against students demonstrating in favor of democracy in Tiannamen Square in 1989, where many died. In the past, it defended Soviet suppression of worker rebellions in eastern European countries, and in 1991 supported the KGB coup against former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The W.W.P. is a staunch advocate of Kim Jong II.

And those are the facts, Jack!

Like appeasement, amnesty, whether euphemistically term "legalization," will lead to more of the same

A June 2004 report by Matt Hayes at the occasion of the death of President Reagan's death, gives an inkling of how long proponents of open borders and amnesty have been scheming to get their way:

In 1986, there were about 2.5 million illegal aliens in the US. who Congress and the Reagan administration regarded as being "safe"--that is, not having committed serious crimes or otherwise being dangerous, and having sufficient ties to American life to be allowed to remain here. Many members of Congress, chiefly Democratic members, regarded the amnesty of these illegal aliens a sine qua non, (An essential condition or element; an indispensable thing) of any attempt to reform our immigration laws. Reagan recognized this, and, being the optimist that he was, saw something humane and profitable in affording this relatively small group of illegal aliens legal status.

In exchange for legal status for the group, Reagan insisted that the magnet attracting illegal aliens to the United States be removed by extinguishing any incentive for U.S. employers to hire illegal aliens. In tandem wit the amnesty, Reagan campaigned for employer sanctions for hiring illegal aliens, sanctions so stringent that many at the time regarded them as draconian.

Reagan reasoned that if an employer were fined for hiring an illegal alien (as much as $1 million in the worst cases), any payroll savings achieved by the hiring would be wiped out by the fine. In effect, it would be more expensive to hire illegal aliens than to hire Americans or lawful permanent residents. The few illegal aliens who continued to take the gamble and cross the border would be intercepted by a robust and more generously funded Border Patrol.

While Reagan’s 1986 immigration reforms (search) can at least be called rational, they were a failure. Today, there are between 8 million and 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. The majority of them crossed our southern border and has found employment — illegal employment, but employment nonetheless. This is attributed to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s eventual gutting of the enforcement mechanism for Reagan's employer sanctions, and successive administrations refusing to give our Border Patrol the resources it needs to achieve its mission.

Actually Reagan did not advocate amnesty, his proposal stipulated temporary residency.

Problems we are having with illegal immigrants started years ago and are the result of the stupidity and cupidity of many members of Congress of both parties as well as in the business community.

Democrats Ted Kennedy and Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois’ 4th District have sponsored the Safe, Orderly, Legal Visas & Enforcement Act, or SOLVE Act (search) (HR 4262). Long on visas and short on any actual enforcement, the law would give a visa, and eventually a green card, to any illegal alien who has worked an aggregate 24 months in the U.S. at any time.

The AgJOBS (search) bill (HR 3142), which has 62 co-sponsors in the Senate alone, is the Republican version of an amnesty bill. It is somewhat more modest in its employment requirement, though, giving green card eligibility to any illegal alien who can demonstrate 100 days of agricultural employment before Aug. 31, 2003.

One of the AgJOBS bill’s co-sponsors is Sen. John Ensign of Nevada. I (Matt Hayes, author of this quoted reported), asked his office if the senator detected any tension between President Reagan’s outlawing of employment for illegal aliens and AgJOBS’ affirmative requirement that an illegal alien be employed in the U.S. before he is eligible for the amnesty.

According to January 9, 2004 report filed by Louis Uchitelle, Reagan's reforms actually "increased the flow" of illegal immigrants.

But foreigners saw in the 1986 act an invitation, not a deterrent, said Stephen Trejo, a labor economist and immigration expert at the University of Texas. "The biggest long-term impact of the 1986 law was the idea that maybe there will be periodic amnesties, and even if I come to the United States illegally, there is a good chance I'll be able to legalize my status while I am there," Mr. Trejo said.

Why wouldn't they? Since 1986 there have been a series of 7 past amnesties. Other legislation is pending or about to be proposed:

Votes on Amnesties that have
not become law:

S. 778 - the Section 245(i) Extension Act of 2001,would have allowed for a one year extension of the Section 245(i) amnesty by extending the filing deadline until April 30, 2002. The eligibility requirement to apply for a Section 245(i) adjustment of status under S. 778 is January 14, 1998.

S. 778 passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a voice vote

H.R. 1885 - Introduced by Rep. George Gekas (R-PA), H.R. 1885 would have again extended the reinstatement of Section 245(i) that was included in the LIFE Act of 2000 four months past the current deadline of April 30, 2001.

H.R. 1885 passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 336 - 43 in May, 2001.

H. Res. 365 - is a version of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 that originally passed the House of Representatives as H.R. 3525 in December of 2001. But under heavy pressure from the Bush Administration, an extension of the Section 245(i) amnesty was added to the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 and it was again voted on as H. Res. 365. would extend the Section 245(i) amnesty until November 30, 2002, with an eligibility cut off date of August 15, 2001.

H. Res. 365 passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 275 - 137.

Farr amendment to H.R. 4775 - Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) introduced the Farr Amendment to H.R. 4775, a supplemental appropriations bill. The Farr Amendment would have re-instated the Section 245(i) amnesty for four months, with the same provisions as those contained in H. Res. 365. Rep. Farr's amendment was offered as a substitute amendment to the Serrano Amendment for a permanent 245(i) extenstion.

The House Appropriations Committee voted against the Farr Amendment by a vote of 27 - 32.

(From numbersusa.com)

Amnesty by any other name has cost us and costs will continue to rise. Few realize that legal status will give ten million or more instant access to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps,