LimitsToGrowth Archive

 

April 2005
 

The Arabization of Europe   [4/30/05]
This piece is a concise review of the book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. It gets off to a good start

    How is it that ten percent of France is Muslim, 15% of Denmark is Muslim and close to half of the births in the next generation will be Muslim? Imperious mosques and lawless Muslim neighborhoods dot the landscape of major European cities. And Spain willingly and meekly chose to acknowledge its Islamic past, and that pro-Arab opinion is rampant and anti-Israeli sentiment vitriolic.
        European appeasement apparently did not end in Munich in 1938.
Yes, the practice of fearful compromise is evidently a part of the European character.

Governor signals he'd welcome Minutemen on California border   [4/30/05]
The furor over Schwarzenegger's remarks about border security continues unabated. In fact, yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle had as its main headline Governor endorses Minutemen on border.
    Has the Gov finally figured out that California's budget problems can never be solved as long as taxpayers are forced to shovel billions of dollars annually into the black hole of services for illegal aliens? (A recent analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that the state pays nearly $9 billion annually for illegal aliens even after their taxes have been counted.)
    You can hear Gov. Schwarzenegger's remarks on the Thursday John and Ken Show here.

FYI: Veterans for Secure Borders   [4/29/05] NM billboard
The billboard is located at mile marker 194 on I-40, about 35 miles east of Albuquerque, NM, east face, right hand read, daily effective circulation 14,645.

Governor endorses Minutemen on border   [4/29/05]
Arnold Schwarzenegger's brief interview on the John and Ken Show, noted here yesterday, has become news, particularly his praise of the Minuteman Project:

    "They've done a terrific job. And they have cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants by a huge percentage." [...]
        "Our federal government is not doing their job," Schwarzenegger said. "It's a shame that the private citizen has to go in there and start patrolling our borders."
The Sacramento Mexicans have already begun howling in disapproval, like State Democratic Party Chair Art Torres who remarked, "It is illegal to interfere with law enforcement, and if the governor is promoting that, then maybe we should think of bringing action against him."
    Remember that in 1995 Torres said, "[Proposition] 187 was the last gasp of white America in California."
    Will Arnold retreat and apologize as he did a few days ago when he merely said the border should be "closed"? We'll see.

LA billboard LA in Mexico   [4/28/05]
The anger continues to roil over the Spanish-language billboard making Los Angeles a part of Mexico as an ad for a local TV station. (For a larger photo, see here and another individual billboard here and one more here. I've put a picture with a lot of background on the front page to show it's for real. Plus Lou Dobbs had a filmed shot of it the other day with trees blowing in the breeze clearly visible.) Not only was the word "California" marked out and replaced with "Mexico" but a famous monument from Mexico City was photoshopped into the LA skyline.

    "This is almost a poster-board for illegal immigration," said Peter Amundson, a volunteer with the California Republican Assembly. "This is America. We're a land of immigrants — legal immigrants. This is not Mexico. This is the United States."
        Amundson, who first saw one of the billboards last week near Irwindale, said that crossing out California and replacing it with Mexico was "a slap in the face to Californians and a pretty blatant one."
And apparently there are 75 more of this billboard being erected throughout LA County and beyond.
    The Spanish-language station is owned by Liberman Broadcasting located at 1845 W. Empire Ave., Burbank, CA 91504. The company phone number is 818-563-5722; fax is 818-567-1062.
    Update: Listen to an interview on KFI with John Ziegler on 4/28 with owner of Spanish broadcasting business Lenard Liberman: Part 1 and Part 2. Polite but of questionable integrity. Liberman claims never to have heard of Mexican reconquista. Sure.
    Update: Gov. Schwarzenegger was interviewed around 4:30 on the John and Ken Show on KFI in LA to speak about the controversial billboard. He was clearly disturbed by the sign, which he called "divisive" and "the last thing we need in Los Angeles." He also said the billboard "promotes illegal aliens to come in here." He was positive about the Minuteman Project and recognized the need for the feds to get a grip on the illegal immigration chaos. It was his strongest pro-border statement to date, definitely.
    And: more about Arnold's comments from the Save Our State folks, including additional contact info about the billboard.

Texas Anglers at Odds with Mexican Officials   [4/28/05]
President Bush still brags on what great pals he is with el Presidente Fox, but GWB has gotten nothing for his servile posture toward the narco-republic to the south. One long-standing rip-off is Mexico's refusal to honor a water treaty it signed in 1944.
    As a result, American farmers and businesses connected with sport fishing have lost millions of dollars. Last year, a group of Rio Grande farmers filed a claim under NAFTA to get $500 million from the Mexican government for the water losses. Citizens have been demanding for years that Washington push hard on this issue to get the water to which the U.S. is entitled, but Bush remains the submissive partner in the relationship with Mexico.
    Bush won't even demand the extradition of cop-killers (in the case of David March), so it's unlikely he will bother over a few hundred thousand acre-feet of water.

This and That...   [4/27/05]
Listen to a country-western song with a close-the-borders theme: Red White and Black, found on Vdare right above my recent posting about the Sierra Club election. And here is the website of the musician, W.C. Edgar.
    Don't forget to sign the online petition, a team effort from Fox News guy Bill O'Reilly and NumbersUSA. It takes less than a minute and urges President Bush to "Secure Our Borders Immediately." The response has been phenomenal, with more than 240,000 signers in just a couple days.

Former PM: Fortuyn would have won election   [4/27/05]
Wim Kok was Prime Minister of the Netherlands when Pim Fortuyn ran for the office in 2002 and was assassinated just nine days before the election. In a new book, Kok now says that Fortuyn would have won if he had lived.

    "Looking back, I must say that we stressed for too long that the problems with ethnic minorities were primarily due to social-economic issues rather than social-cultural factors," [Kok] said.
That's putting it mildly. The Netherlands was paralyzed with political correctness about Muslim immigrants until Professor Pim broke up the logjam by declaring ideas like, "I say multicultural society doesn't work."
    Imagine if a socially liberal gay man who uncompromisingly stated that Islamic culture was incompatible with Dutch society had become the Prime Minister. The political atmosphere in Europe might have been quite different now. But we'll never know.

Frist derailed bill to keep illegal immigrants off airplanes   [4/27/05]
Advisor-to-everyone Dick Morris is often on the weaselly side, but he is accurate here in saying that the safety of the nation is compromised in Congress to keep the cheap-labor pipeline wide open and flowing. In this case the guilty party is the Senate Republican Leader, but he is not much different from many others.

    Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist may have just killed his hopes to be the Republican nominee for president in 2008 — by coming out against a proposal to bar illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses. [...]
        By blocking efforts to attach the license ban to the defense appropriation, Frist is siding with those who put profit ahead of national security.
Another recent truth-teller was 9/11 family member Peter Gadiel who said on Lou Dobbs Tonight (4/13) that many in Congress "consider the people who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the flights, the 3,000 dead are just a cost of doing business for them and their associates who exploit illegal labor."
    In a less politically correct age, "treason" would be the correct accusation for the undermining of American security for money, but we shrink from such judgmental language today.

Rally at Lafayette Park   [4/26/05] Lafayette Park Rally
For more photos of Monday's close-the-borders demo, see the Team America page with pix of the crowd and speakers.

Muslim Man Convicted of Urging Holy War   [4/26/05]
Ali al-Timimi, a resident of Alexandria, Virginia, could spend the rest of his life in jail after being found guilty on all 10 counts of charges against him. The case is one of several connected with so-called paintball jihad.

    Five days after Sept. 11, al-Timimi addressed a small group of his followers in a secret meeting and warned that the attacks were a harbinger of a final apocalyptic battle between Muslims and non-believers. He said they were required as Muslims to defend the Taliban from a looming U.S. invasion, according to the government.
        While nobody ever joined the Taliban, four of the defendant's followers subsequently traveled to Pakistan in late September 2001 and trained with a militant group called Lashkar-e-Taiba.
        Three of them testified that their intention had been to use the training they received from the group to join the Taliban and fight in Afghanistan, and that it was al-Timimi's speech that inspired them to do so.
        The evidence included a 2003 e-mail in which al-Timimi described the Columbia shuttle disaster as "a good omen" that "Western supremacy (especially that of America) that began 500 years ago is coming to an end, God willing."
        "By his treasonous criminal acts, he has proven himself to be a kingpin of hate against America," U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said in a statement. "He not only wanted Americans to die, he recruited others to his cause at a time when our country was mourning the loss of more than 3,000 people who were murdered in a heinous act of terrorism."
What's disturbing is that this fellow was born and raised in the United States, yet hates America and western civilization. Islam is that effective in brainwashing.
    Al-Timimi is scheduled to be sentenced in July.

Sierra Club Members Vote to Stay Neutral in the Immigration Debate   [4/26/05]
It's sad to see the Sierra Club be completely corrupted by money and politics, but there's no other way to explain the skewed Board of Director election. The immigration initiative was clobbered, and none of the population candidates came even close.
    Once again, the machinations of the leftist MoveOn.org appear to have been very effective in destroying reform. They apparently sent out millions of emails warning of a "hostile takeover" by "right-wing anti-immigrant groups." (In 2004, MoveOn's email list was estimated to have 2.2 million members.) How else can you explain the discrepancy between the 2005 vote on a common-sense immigration initiative that received only 16 percent of the vote and the 1998 election, free of the meddling MoveOn.org, in which the immigration question got 40 percent? (History of recent Sierra election results.) MoveOn.org has received millions of dollars from leftist billionaire George Soros who was obsessed with defeating George Bush.
    Furthermore, the corrupt Sierra management couldn't even compose a fair ballot: each of the proposals was followed by the Board's recommendation in bold type. It's like an election in the old Soviet Union.
    Remember that the Sierra Club has been essentially bought by Wall Street investor David Gelbaum for "donations" totaling over $100 million, on the condition that immigration not be mentioned. (More details below, on 4/24.)

Rally at Lafayette Park   [4/25/05] Lafayette Park Rally

Here are activists Lupe Moreno and D.A. King this morning at a rally right across from the White House. They are part of the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" week of Washington lobbying by pro-borders citizens, organized by radio host Roger Hedgecock.
    For more photos, including Terry Anderson, Peter Gadiel and Bay Buchanan, see this page.

Spies in the Next Cube   [4/25/05]
American high-tech companies, particularly those in Silicon Valley, think they are saving money by hiring exploitable foreign workers, but when the businesses figure in the cost of loss through espionage, the balance sheet looks very different. Companies don't like to discuss the problem, and much tech theft is kept quiet.

    When it comes to cross-border theft of trade secrets, there are more foreigners spying on U.S. corporations than ever, according to Todd Davis, an FBI supervisor in Sacramento.
        "Corporate America ought to be darned worried," Davis said. "If you are a major corporation with very sensitive technology, you have been targeted. Somebody is spying on you right now."
No mention whether companies have reconsidered the obvious advantage to hiring Americans.

Many Sierra Club Insurgencies!   [4/24/05]
Your humble correspondent has been a member of the Sierra Club since 1984 and has worked to return the organization to domestic population responsibility. In fact, my wake-up call around the issue of immigration was an environmental one, when on March 19, 1996, I heard Rep Tony Beilenson (D-CA) say the following on the floor of the House of Representatives:

    "Middle range Census Bureau projections show our population rising to nearly 400 million by the year 2050, an increase the equivalent of adding 40 cities the size of Los Angeles. But many demographers believe it will actually be much worse, and alternative Census Bureau projections agree: if current immigration trends continue, the population will exceed half a billion by the middle of the next century."
Up to that point, I had no idea that immigration's effect on population growth was so extreme. That knowledge got me activated.
    Included in my Sierra Club efforts has been a series of Vdare.com articles blowing the whistle on the organization's retreat from genuine environmentalism. Vdare.com has been the only news outlet to expose at length the Sierra Club's Enron-level scandal of the $100 million "donation" on the condition that immigration not be mentioned:
    But [investor David Gelbaum] said Pope long had known where he stood on the contentious issue. "I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me."     [Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 2004, "The Man behind the Land"]
This year's Sierra Board of Directors election results will be announced Monday, April 25. The reform candidates are competing against MoveOn.org's stealth campaign of fear which warns against a "hostile takeover" in thousands of emails, funded by leftist billionaire George Soros.
    A combination of leftist politics and the desire for more Gelbaum millions has turned Sierra elections into a farce. The official printed ballot contains the (Old Guard-dominated) Board of Directors' recommendations on how to vote — what kind of democracy is that?
    Anyway, Happy Belated Earth Day.

Ancient papyrus decoded using infrared light (NPR sound file)   [4/24/05]
LTG is deeply fond of western civilization, so the discovery of how to read the massive collection of ancient manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus Egypt is great news indeed. The use of infrared light has revealed ancient writing under more recent scribblings. The manuscripts include works by Sophocles, Euripedes and Hesiod, as well as ordinary papers from daily life.

'Keep hammering at immigration' is Bush guru's advice for Howard   [4/24/05]
You can't make this stuff up. President I-love-open-borders Bush's media spin guy has told the British conservative candidate for Prime Minister, Michael Howard, that immigration is a winning issue:

    Michael Howard should continue to hammer home his message on immigration and ignore detractors who criticise him for supposedly running as a single-issue candidate, President George W Bush's media guru has told The Telegraph.
        "It is better to be identified strongly with one issue than with none or too many," said Mark McKinnon, in an exclusive interview about the general election campaign.
        "Immigration is an extremely powerful and volatile issue in an election. I've seen candidates use it to great effect to make up a lot of ground."
Just so there's no misunderstanding, Mr. Howard has recently been campaigning on the idea that a Tory government would "stop people abusing Britain's generosity" regarding immigration.
    And in a discouraging sign of Brit culture made stupid by multiculturalism, Calling someone an immigrant can be a racial slur, court rules.
    Using the word "immigrant" can justify treating an assault as racially aggravated, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.
So will use of the word "immigrant" become a hate crime in the UK? And what if someone voices the term "illegal alien"? The UK lacks free speech protection comparable to our First Amendment, which is a serious deficiency with the cancerous spread of multicultural ideology.

Raising a Flag, and a Divisive Issue   [4/23/05] Red China flag in Los Angeles
The LA Times is concerned that Chinese Americans who support democratic Taiwan might be miffed at seeing the flag of Red China flying over Los Angeles. There's no thought that American Americans could be angered by the symbol of a communist nation openly displayed in a major US city.
    Remember that in 1996 a Chinese general threatened to vaporize Los Angeles with nuclear missiles. But that's ancient history to the Times and unimportant in the post-national world of globalized trade it supports.

IDs Sold to Illegal Immigrants   [4/23/05]
Sixty Minutes did a segment on illegal aliens in the heartland on April 20, and how they buy identification to work unlawfully in American businesses. Talk show host Terry Anderson got a sit-down interview plus some clips of his LA-based radio show.
    Curiously, the show transcript leaves out one of Anderson's strongest quotes, when he mentioned his testimony twice before Congressional committees (in 1999 and 2003), where he asked lawmakers...

        "Which laws can I as an American citizen break, and I have never gotten an answer. Why are these people allowed to break our laws?"
You can watch the included 3-minute video to hear the line, as well as watch the initial part of the segment.

Protecting New Yorkers from Opinions   [4/23/05]
For a country that revels in its free speech, the recent fearfulness about touchy ideas is discouraging. Worse, the belief that foreigners should enter the USA through legal means is considered controversial. Interestingly, the queen bee of politically correct speech, the New York Times, has a decent commentary favoring robust debate.

    Who would have suspected that Sept. 11 turned New Yorkers into sissies? And here we fancied ourselves as tough guys. It turns out that we are nothing but delicate flowers, too fragile to withstand a sharp word or two without reaching for the smelling salts. [...]
        When a group called Project USA put up anti-immigration billboards along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, local politicians screamed. The billboards, owned by Infinity Outdoor Signage, came down. There was nothing threatening about the messages. They merely questioned the wisdom of mass immigration. But that is not a terribly popular notion in New York. For all the standard blather here about how much we glory in diversity, some opinions are apparently less equal than others.
Now, if only the editorial board of the Times actually embraced a diversity in opinion about immigration....

Latino MoveOn.org Started   [4/17/05]
The lying leftist political organization now has a knock-off with a Mexican flavor. BlueLatino follows the left penchant for shutting down free speech: its first project is to get Lou Dobbs off the air.

        The site was launched on March 14 and its first project is a petition to fire CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, whose coverage of immigrant issues has been, according to Quinonez, especially egregious.
        "Dobbs portrays all immigrants as lawbreakers and many people in the Hispanic community watch in awe and can't believe what he is saying."
The last quote is a total lie. Lou Dobbs supports legal immigration, but thinks the anarchy on the border must be stopped and that the government must enforce its immigration laws to protect American citizens.

Wiping Stereotypes of India Off the Books   [4/17/05]
The politically correct rewrite gang in on the move in Fairfax County Virginia. Sandhya Kumar was shocked that local school textbooks did not present a properly positive view of her home country. "I thought the American children will think India is some Third World country with pagan beliefs and backward thinking, not a forward-thinking country," she stated.
    India has gotten mostly a free ride from cultural critics. While Islamic societies are rightly slammed for their brutality toward women, India has been overlooked even though it is nearly as bad in the misogyny department.
    • Estimates of the number of "missing women" in India range from 50 to 100 million. Males are valued, and females are killed off via sex-selection abortion and infanticide.
    • According to a New York Times article, Indian immigrants have brought sex-selection abortion with them to America, despite the fact that they can have as many children here as they want.
    • The 2001 film Maya exposes the practice of enslaving young girls into the grasp of a religion in which they are ritually raped by the priests while the family enjoys a feast. The girls are eventually sold as prostitutes. Known as Devadasi and Jogini, the custom is officially outlawed in India but still occurs in rural areas.
    • Dowry deaths are apparently in the increase in India. Some men find it profitable to murder their wives to get the dowry money, then remarry and repeat the process. The numbers of women killed in this fashion are estimated at 15,000 to 25,000 annually.
    • Dog marriage, i.e. the wedding of a child to a canine occurs among some ethnicities when a baby is born with a certain dental abnormality.
    Yet many boosters of the Subcontinent believe that this will be India's Century. Right.

Diversity Watch: Rights groups want Latino media to end gay pranks, on-air ridicule   [4/16/05]
Apparently Spanish-language radio has been harrassing individual gay people on-air, a charge which has gotten the FCC involved after gay-rights groups complained. In addition, some stations have advocated that gays be beaten up, and physical violence has resulted.

    "Spanish-language radio and television to some extent reflects the mores and cultural values of the country of origin," [Iván Román, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists] said, noting that some shows are beamed in from countries that are "way behind the curve" when it comes to fair treatment of gays and lesbians.
Román also said, "It's seen as perfectly normal to ridicule gays and lesbians, to see them as less than human."
    The FCC has only one Spanish speaker in the enforcement division and uses translation services to keep an ear on hate-spewing Hispanic media.

Heather MacDonald Testimony   [4/16/05]
On April 13, the Manhattan Institute fellow presented her expert opinion before the House Immigration Subcommittee on the subject of "Immigration and the Alien Gang Epidemic."

    Sanctuary laws are a serious impediment to stemming gang violence and other crime. Moreover, they are a perfect symbol of this country's topsy-turvy stance towards illegal immigration. [...]
        Sanctuary laws violate everything we have learned about policing in the 1990s. Police departments across the country discovered that utilizing every law enforcement tool in their tool chest against criminals yielded enormous gains. Getting criminals off the streets for seemingly "minor" crimes such as turnstile jumping or graffiti saved lives. Gang crime, which exploded 50% from 1999 to 2002, is too serious a problem to ignore this lesson. [...]
        • A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations. It commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
        • Immigration and Customs Enforcement conservatively puts the number of illegals in Mara Salvatrucha as a "majority;" police officers, by contrast, assert that the gang is overwhelmingly illegal.
Other witnesses written statements are here.

Kilroy attacks 'liberal fascism'   [4/14/05]
Robert Kilroy-Silk is a British MP to the EU and a former talk show host. He has the grit to say that multiculturalism is BS, and that western culture is genuinely superior to third world societies entering through immigration:

    "We do not and we will not, and we will say that openly so that people will have the confidence to know that all cultures are not equal — they are not.
        "There are some that are reprehensible are not entitled to respect and we should say so."
Kilroy must have noticed the terrible social standing which women face in non-western societies. He may have heard about Somalis with their 98 percent prevalence of the most brutal form of female genital mutilation. Or perhaps he had in mind the virtual slavery of women in the Arab world, where polygamy and other forms of disrespect treat them as interchangeable parts. Kilroy's political group Veritas has voiced opposition to forced marriage and honor killings — more cultural diversity imported to the west through inappropriate immigration.
    You can have multiculturalism or you can have women's equality: you can't have both.

Interview with Paul Sperry, Author of "Infiltration"   [4/13/05]
Frontpage quizzes investigative journalist Paul Sperry about his new book, the full title of which is Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington. His argument is that Washington is enthralled with the false idea that the "moderate Muslim" will step up to the plate of Islamic reform. Unlikely.
    As expert Robert Spencer points out often on JihadWatch, the directives against infidels are written throughout the Koran. So murderous jihadists are not on the fringe, but are following the recommendations of the Prophet. But instead of educating law enforcement to these important facts, Washington is conducting police sensitivity training so jihadists' tender feelings won't be hurt:

    You'd think PC would have died out with the last flames at Ground Zero, but it's still alive and well here in Washington. I cite a number of examples of how various security agencies are committing politically correct suicide in the section of the book called IN ALLAH WE TRUST, but the FBI is the most egregious example. Director Bob Mueller is so politically correct he's cut a deal with Muslim pressure groups to never use "Islamic" and "terrorism" in the same sentence. Muslim leaders don't want the link made for obvious reasons, and he's gone along with their whitewashing. But Mueller's own agents feel demoralized by his pandering. They wonder how they can defeat Islamic terrorists when their own boss can't even talk honestly about what's motivating them.
Important throughout and worth your attention.

Illegal Workers Raise Security Concerns   [4/13/05]
The feds arrested 57 illegal aliens last month working in airports and other security-sensitive facilities. Still? Nearly four years after 911 and the government can't keep these people out of work environments that must be secure? This is inexcusable and is caused by the lack of "homeland" in security. Too much of available resources have gone overseas, and businesses addicted to cheap exploitable labor run the government, to the detriment of everyone's safety.

    In one example, a Peruvian was hired as an airplane mechanic in Greensboro, N.C., using a fake Social Security card he bought for $70 on a soccer field, according to court documents. In another, a Florida power plant was alerted to a Mexican working at its nuclear facility only after being tipped off by labor union employees, company officials said.
        None of those arrested appear to have terrorism ties. Nearly all used fraudulent or altered driver's licenses and Social Security cards to obtain security clearances. All worked in security-sensitive areas - whether beyond passenger screening checkpoints at airports or in close proximity to nuclear reactors - federal authorities say.
Please. The danger isn't only that the employees themselves might be terrorists, it's that the illegal aliens are totally susceptible to blackmail because of their status.

Culture shock, poverty plague Hmong in Michigan   [4/12/05]
The MSM continues to be surprised that stone-age cultures have difficulty assimilating to 21st century America. Why is that? Let's parachute-drop some editors into a headhunter village in Borneo and see how well they do with root gathering and arrow construction.
    We in America do the Hmong no favors by removing them from their primitive lifestyles and arrogantly assuming they will be happier with our way of life. They are not. Families are torn apart across generations as children grow up American and grandparents remain in the old ways.

    Some of these immigrants, unable to speak English or read their own language, struggle with the simplest parts of modern life — flicking a light switch, turning a faucet.
        "It's very hard to adjust to a new community," said Nhia Yang, 45, a Hmong who lives in Sterling Heights. "Many don't have hope anymore."
Do-gooders who are concerned about the conditions of the poor worldwide should support microlending in the home country. The numbers alone of poor on the planet mean that immigration cannot alleviate poverty. Furthermore, refugee policies that welcome culturally incompatible groups only add more poor people to those already here.
    On the six-billion-person planet, the poor need realistic development where they live, since they can't all relocate to the first world. Microlending is a positive alternative to immigration, because the program has actually been effective in economic improvement across many cultures, plus espousing values of democracy, environmentalism and women's empowerment.

And Dhimmitude For All   [4/11/05]
Robert Spencer's new collection of essays "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims" is reviewed here. The book contains a substantial 63 essays in 593 pages and covers both contemporary and historical topics.

    Western failure to recognize this subservient condition, much less its historical or contemporary results, has put democratic civilization in danger. Organizations have been founded to promote jihad and dhimmitude through the imposition of the Sharia. The International Institute of Islamic Thought, for example, was established in 1981 to Islamify Western history and thought. Similarly, the Organization of Islamic Conference ruled in 1990 that the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam — implementing the Sharia — supersedes the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Howard stands firm in migrants storm   [4/11/05]
The Conservative party in Britain under John Howard is pressing the immigration issue because the public there is fed up with the UK's version of open borders. Of course the simple call for law and sovereignty has the globalist gang shreiking about racism and calling Howard an extreme right winger, despite citizens' desire for less immigration. How familiar.

    As he prepared for the launch today of the Tory election manifesto, Mr Howard denied his plans for an annual limit on immigration — to be set by Parliament — and a quota for asylum seekers were "racist".
        "It is not racist to want to limit the numbers. It is just plain common sense," he said.
The Telegraph also reported a Jewish MP and war veterans being pelted with eggs during a war memorial service, apparently by young Muslims. An 89-year-old vet was struck.
    Clearly angry, she [MP Oona King] said: "I think they were aimed at me but the sheer ignorance never mind the lack of respect is shocking. They have no idea where their freedom came from and who gave it to them.
        "They don't know they are lucky to be here. That is truly one of the saddest things that I have ever seen. There were people who helped save this country, having eggs pelted at them at a time when they are remembering those they had lost. It is disgusting."
        The incident demonstrated how high feelings are running in the east London constituency, which has 55,000 Bangladeshi Muslims, more than half its electorate, most of whom bitterly opposed the war in Iraq.
Such is the state of diversity today in the United Kingdom.

Sierra Club members vote on restricting immigration   [4/10/05]
The annual Sierra Club Board of Directors election is currently taking place via snail mail and the internet, with voting to end at noon April 25. Once again the Old Guard of the formerly environmental organization is protecting its power by using an array of weapons available to leftist groups, who lately have very deep pockets due to the generosity of billionaire George Soros.
    Soros-funded (to the tune of $5 million) MoveOn.org has sent around one of its famous alerts, posted here, warning about the terrible people who think that domestic overpopulation is an environmental issue. MoveOn.org operates as an arm of the Democratic Party, which sees illegal aliens as future Dem voters.
    What's disappointing is how little a major scandal has been used in the Sierra election by the reform candidates: the LA Times revealed last year that the Sierra Club had accepted over $100 million from Wall Street investor David Gelbaum on the condition that it not mention immigration. Gelbaum was quoted in the Oct. 27, 2004, article, "The Man behind the Land."

    "I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me."
What a waste of a great issue.
    Read candidates' statements on various environmental topics.
    The statement from the population-aware SustainableSierra.org explaining why the United States must limit (though not end) immigration for environmental reasons is here.
    The Sierra Club voting recommendations from the environmentalists at SustainableSierra.org are as follows: Sustainable Sierra recommendations

Set America Free   [4/10/05]
Frank Gaffney has rounded up a group of security-minded folks, including Middle East expert Daniel Pipes and former CIA chief James Woolsey, to campaign for an energy-independent America. Gaffney reminds us, "We are funding terrorists with our petrodollars. We are paying them to kill us."
    If America were energy independent, we could get out of the Middle East and let the Saudis et al stew in their own dysfunctional juices. As it is, our cash is being funneled into madrassas around the world that teach jihad against the west, particularly the USA. Since oil is a non-renewable resource, the world will need new energy solutions anyway. Sooner is certainly better than later.

Reading between the Lines   [4/10/05]
If there is one thing America does not need, it is more illiterate foreign single mothers. But the Minneapolis Star-Tribune loves its PC multicultural stories, so Somali food-stamp magnet Ilhan Mohamed stars in a jumbled immigrant story that tries to be hopeful against all reason. She's been in America five years and although she can speak English, she cannot read or write at all. Ms. Mohamed attended high school — that's where her "water broke" we learn — but literacy seems to have escaped her. But the Star-Trib wants us to know that she has a wonderful complexion and a swell fashion sense:

    She knows that it is important to look confident and together. With enormous doe-like eyes, luminous skin and hair knotted in a fashionable scarf at the back of her head, she does.
In this story of moderate length, how a pregnant Mogadishu teenager of 14 came to America by herself is rather sketchy: her Minnesota-residing brother and sister "brought" her here, that's all. But why bother with legalistic details when there are emotions to be manipulated and diversity to be celebrated?

Denmark: No More Immigrants, Major Towns Demand   [4/10/05]
The excellent Fjordman blog keeps an eye on Islamic immigration in Scandinavia, often translating press articles into English. There are several items in the link above indicating increasing crime, social breakdown and parents withdrawing their children from public schools. As ever, the threats to women's rights and safety from Muslim immigration are growing.

Accessory charge in slashing   [4/09/05]
Here's some diversity near the home office. The daughter of a prominent Muslim has been charged as an accessory in the Berkeley throat slashing of a 75-year-old woman. Hamaseh Kianfar was employed by Alameda Co. as a mental health worker and was apparently ministering in some way to her client as the teenaged girl executed the actual throat slitting. After some self-serving versions of what happened, Kianfar admitted that she drove her client from the crime scene after the attempted murder. How social work has changed.

    Witnesses had described the getaway car as a light-blue convertible. Records from the state Department of Motor Vehicles show that Kianfar owns a 2003 Mazda Miata.
The crime was shocking because of its brutal nature and the normally tranquil location, the Berkeley Rose Garden. Kianfar was freed on bond of $15,000, which seems low for such a savage crime though it's apparently standard for an accessory charge. She is on paid administrative leave from her job.
    There have been a number of curiosities associated with the case, including the deference given to the getaway driver:
    For unknown reasons, Kianfar was not booked, finger printed or photographed by Oakland police Wednesday, authorities said. She was also given a May 6 court date, which is too far out for a felony count. Felony suspects are generally required to appear in court within 48 hours.
        Why Kianfar surrendered to Oakland police instead of Berkeley police was not known late Wednesday.
        Prosecutors charged Kianfar as an accessory after the fact because she did not call police or give aid to the bleeding Berkeley woman and then misled police about why she was with the teen.
Is Kianfar being cut slack because she is a Muslim and the DA doesn't want dozens of seething demonstrators in front of his office? Inquiring minds would like to know.

The Language of Law   [4/08/05]
One of the hidden costs of opening America to virtually anyone who wants to come here is the increasing bill for court interpreters. Consider the state of Minnesota and the nine-fold increase in expenditures over just 10 years for that service:

    The influx of Latinos, Somalis, Hmong and other immigrant groups has posed a variety of challenges for the court system, some of them financial. Statewide, the budget for legal interpreter services ballooned from $300,000 in 1994 to $2.7 million in 2004.
Speaking of the Land of 10,000 Lakes, here's another incidental expense chalked up to the glory of diversity: $150,000 from the feds to combat human trafficking in the sex trade focused on aliens coming to Minnesota.

Harvesting Illegals   [4/08/05]
Mark Krikorian explains how the AgJobs amnesty bill about to be decided in the Senate is a doorway to massive fraud, even worse than the highly corrupt 1986 amnesty.

    There was a farmworker component of that 1986 amnesty, too, which turned out to be possibly the most fraud-ridden government program in history. ... In the end, the number of "farmworkers" legalized exceeded the total number of actual farmworkers in the whole country.  
        We would be guaranteed more of the same this time, because the Craig-Kennedy amnesty has even fewer safeguards than the 1986 amnesty.

Heard on Lou Dobbs Tonight...   [4/07/05]
From reader mail, Ron in Earlville, New York:

    "Please explain how Pancho Villa and his band of pistoleros attacking, harassing and killing Americans along the border in 1915-1917 is different than the modern day Mexican gangs like MS-13 which is a Central American gang by the way killing, kidnapping and raping Americans along the border."

Sign of the Times... Bob Park and sign
Here's Arizonan Bob Park and a couple of signs he has created to educate and stimulate his fellow citizens. (The one on the left reads, "Terrorists 'heart' Open Borders".)

English learners face hurdles   [4/07/05]
Here's another hand-wringing, politically correct study from PPIC recommending more taxpayer money be spent to educate the millions of little foreign kiddies in California.

    Spanish- and Hmong-speaking students often take longer to master English than some other groups, probably because many lack qualified teachers and wealthy parents, according to a study scheduled for release today.
Of course, plenty of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant kids do very well in school and learn English quickly because their families value education and urge youngsters to study hard. Mexican parents routinely discourage scholarship and want their teenagers to go out and get jobs. Incidentally, a recent student newspaper column saying "Hispanics lag behind Asians academically because they lack parent support" caused an uproar that extended to the MSM.

Yahoo Photo Slideshow of Minuteman Project   [4/06/05]
Up to 93 pix, at this writing.

Deliveryman rescue raises immigration issues   [4/06/05] Illegal Alien Deliveryman
How pathetic is this? The "deliveryman" who received front-page publicity for being stuck in an elevator for three days is an illegal alien, and no one in authority will act to deport this brazen lawbreaker. A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Marc A. Raimondi, said the case was not a priority.
    New York Mayor Bloomberg sniffed, "It would be in direct violation of the executive order I signed," referring to NYC's sanctuary policy regarding illegal aliens.
    The Mayor has a short memory for the sort of criminals he has been enabling with his sanctuary criminal-protection program. In 2002 there was a horrendous gang-rape in Flushing Meadows committed by illegal aliens, and several of the men charged had lengthy arrest histories and should have been deported earlier.
    There's no indication that the wayward deliveryman is a violent criminal, but the highly public wink and nod toward a well known illegal alien is another shovel of dirt on this country's shrivelling sovereignty and system of equal rights under the law. In addition, this case will be a fine reminder in Red China that America is as stupid as ever, and an advertisement that people should support their local snakeheads.

Market closes in Redwood City   [4/06/05]
A popular neighborhood grocery in California has been forced to close because of dozens of "day laborers" lurking nearby who frightened away customers. The owner had requested assistance from the city government to do something about the illegal aliens, but with no success. So an American business has been shut down, and customers must now drive further to shop for food, thanks to government irresponsibility at all levels.

"Awards" handed out for US pork barrel spending   [4/06/05]
The annual Pork Book is out, noting that Congress' pork-barrel spending includes $25,000 for the study of mariachi music in Nevada schools.
    Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) remarked, "Republicans for years ridiculed Democrats for their pork, and rightly so. But we have come into power and made it worse."
    The Nation Debt Clock shows this country nearly $7.8 trillion in the red, yet our conservative Republican Congress spends like drunken sailors. But that remark defames drunken sailors everywhere. Sorry.
    The good news is that the book's website has a section on immigration; the bad news is that there is almost nothing in it.

Muslims Denied Swiss Citizenship   [4/06/05]
In a nation of seven million persons, 1.5 million are not citizens, and that includes people who were born there, because Swiss citizenship laws are tough. Granting citizenship occurs partially on a local level, in which a town votes whether the individual foreigners have adequately become part of the community.
    The situation has possibilties as a reality tv show, in which immigrant contestants compete to prove their assimilation bona fides. Such a program would be at least as entertaining as the Spanish-language tv show Gana La Verde in which illegal aliens performed disgusting acts like eating worms to win billable hours with an immigration attorney.

Triple-pronged Jihad   [4/06/05]
The author of Eurabia, Bat Ye'or, responds to questions about recent European history, in which political leaders, beginning with de Gaulle, deliberately pursued a pro-Arab policy with disastrous results. Now the continent has a tiger by the ears, in terms of Islamic immigration transforming Europe. Yet many Europeans don't understand what is happening and how they are losing everything.

    There is so much hatred now in Europe, so many lies, so much confusion, that people don't know where they are going. They don't understand what is happening. They don't understand why they have to hate America, Israel and why they have to hate themselves. They have no view of the future except the economic extension of the EU. Our leaders commend that every effort should be made to integrate the foreign immigrants. [...]
        I don't see a solution. Europeans are not reproducing. Soon, the 60- and 70-year-olds will die. And there are no Europeans to replace them. Suddenly, millions of Europeans won't be there any more. And against that loss is a mounting immigrant population, which refuses totally to integrate into a society many hate.
        In some schools, the new generation rejects the curriculum, under the pretext that it is not an Islamic history or culture, or that it is a Judeo-Christian perspective. In a few years they will be adults and have political power. Laws and institutions will change, already there are pressures in schools and hospitals for sex segregation. Polygamy is unofficially tolerated.

Amnesty by any other name   [4/05/05]
Frank Gaffney explains how Congress continues to drop the ball on protecting the country, in particular by the Senate's AgJobs bill which makes the President's amnesty scam look almost tough in comparison. If an illegal alien has ever held a hoe in the U.S., he and his whole family get green cards: just 100 days of ag work qualifies the foreigner for keys to the kingdom. Ridiculous, and the potential for fraud is obvious.

    The agricultural sector of the U.S. economy needs cheap labor. So, let's legalize the presence in this country of anyone who can claim to have once worked for a little more than three months in that sector.
        If that were not bad enough, their families would be allowed to become legal residents, too, even if they are not now in the United States. The same would apply for illegals who had ostensibly been agricultural workers here in the past, but who have gone home.
Ag workers typically stay at picker jobs for just a few years before moving on to better paying jobs in the blue-collar sector, often working at lower wages than Americans can afford to accept. That turnover is why agribusiness needs an endless supply of exploitable slave-lite workers.
    Now is the time to pick up the phone and call your Senators with objections to the amnesty. Dial 877-762-8762, ask for your Senator's office, and start with, "I'm calling to express my objection to the AgJobs amnesty, S. 359, either as a stand-alone or attached to the Iraq spending bill." Then explain why it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Poll: 14 percent in U.S. are anti-Semitic   [4/05/05]
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has just released a survey of attitudes and beliefs about Jews. Of interest is the information that shows foreign-born Hispanics as having significantly higher anti-Semitic attitudes than US-born Latinos and Americans in general.

    Regarding one of the most significant and fastest growing segments of the American population, Hispanics, there continues to be an extraordinary gap between those born in the United States and those born abroad, though somewhat less than in 2002. The survey revealed that 35% of foreign-born Hispanics hold hardcore anti-Semitic beliefs, (down from 44%) while 19% of Hispanics born in the U.S. fall into the same category (down from 20%). The anti-Semitic propensities of Hispanics were significantly above the national average — 29% for Hispanics; 14% for all Americans.

"After this movie, there may be hate crimes committed"   [4/04/05]
The sons of Allah are in shriek mode about the upcoming Ridley Scott film about the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven, which opens May 6. (See trailer.) But as Robert Spencer notes in Dhimmi Watch, the problem isn't historical accuracy but political correctness, which has reached new extremes among the defenders of militant jihad.
    Remember that the terrorists in the Tom Clancy film "The Sum of All Fears" were changed from Arabs to neo-Nazis because the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised a stink: Muslim terrorists were too stereotypic, they claimed, pre-911. More recently, CAIR harrassed the Fox Network into broadcasting a disclaimer about the sleeper-cell Muslims portrayed in its hit action show 24, again complaining about stereotypes. CAIR is known for using American free speech protections to advance its cause of radical Islam.

Courts hear all tongues   [4/04/05]
There's no escaping diversity in America these days. Even small towns in Wisconsin now need court interpreters because of rapid demographic changes wrought by immoderate immigration.

    "Ten years ago many residents of Barron, Wis., might have had trouble pinpointing the nation of Somalia on a map," [State Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley ] Abrahamson told the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee. "Today, 12 percent of that city's residents are natives of Somalia," she said.
        "Ten years ago you did not hear much Spanish spoken in Green Bay. Today the St. Norbert Abby in DePere reports that Hispanic families comprise half of the parishioners in some local parishes; churches offer multiple weekly masses in Spanish."
        This year Wisconsin expects to resettle more than 3,000 Hmong and 300 other refugees, and that's more than 10 times the normal arrival rate, the chief justice said.
No mention is made of the tax dollars required just for court interpreters, but as mentioned here previously, certified translators in California make $265 per day.
    Furthermore, those courts will likely (hopefully!) be hearing cases where social norms of these cultures will be properly prosecuted as crimes, e.g. the child torture known as female genital mutilation (98 percent prevalence in Somalia, according to the World Health Organization) and polygamy (an accepted lifestyle choice among Hmong despite the fact that it is a felony in most states). Diversity isn't free, you know.

Migrant Stumbles Into U.S. Militia 'Hornet's Nest'   [4/03/05]
While mousing around for stories on the Minuteman Project, I ran across the above Reuters headline which I thought unduly snarly. Reading further, I found the headline quoted friend of LTG Fred Elbel!

    "He inadvertently wandered into the hornets' nest," Minuteman spokesman Fred Elbel told Reuters.
        "But it turned out to be his lucky day," he added. "He was tired and dehydrated and we gave him medical attention, food and drink before handing him over to the Border Patrol."
Worth a read is the Christian Science Monitor's piece about the sort of people who are participating.
    Kerry Morales, who came from Laredo, Texas, says she gets 200 illegals a day across her 80-acre ranch. Bands of illegals have broken into her house, attacked her numerous times, and damaged her property by leaving gates open, letting horses escape. Two dozen child abductions have been reported in Laredo in recent years, she says, with cross-border Mexicans demanding ransoms of $10,000 to $20,000.
        "I want to bring attention that for people like me, there is physical danger," says Ms. Morales, who is married to a Hispanic. "The fact that our opponents are calling us racist and extremist is completely untrue."
The Minuteman site has a photo page, which appears to be updated daily.
    "Americans doing the jobs Congress won't do!"

Mexico's Southern Flank   [4/01/05]
Prof. George Grayson has written before about conditions in southern Mexico, particularly the egregious abuses suffered by illegal aliens (e.g. Guatemalans, Salvadorans, etc.) there. In the current piece, Prof. Grayson considers it national security folly that Washington leaders should be planning a continental security system, given the crime and corruption of Mexico. He wraps up with the big picture:

        (1) Guest-worker programs and amnesties serve to expand, not decrease, illegal immigration.
        (2) While the introduction of more personnel and sophisticated surveillance equipment at borders is vital, such moves will only bear fruit in conjunction with the concerted prosecution of those employers who hire unlawful workers.
        (3) Americans and other legal residents are willing to perform hard, difficult labor, provided that the pay is reasonable and the working environment safe.
        (4) Mexico, which is a remarkably rich country, should not be allowed to use the U.S. border as an "escape valve" when its politicians refuse to enact the fiscal, energy, labor, and judicial reforms that are crucial to achieving the sustained development required to create opportunities for their fellow citizens.

 

© 2005 Brenda Walker All rights reserved.