LimitsToGrowth Archive

 

August 2005
 

Peoria: Local Latinos Earn GED's in Spanish   [8/31/05]
If the Illinois Spanish GEDs are like the California ones, then there is no indication on the certificate that the the high school equivalency was not achieved in English. Joe Guzzardi noted this deficiency in "Abolishing America (contd.): Another Step To Spanish-Only Enclaves":

    When I urged my students to stay in my class to hone their English skills, my thinking was that no employer would be interested in a GED taken in Spanish. What proof would it provide that the prospective employee could read and understand English?
        Imagine my surprise then when one of the defectors came around last week to show off his GED certificate made out completely in English — without any clue that the test he took had been in Spanish!
    Of course the Peoria article cheerfully describes how learning in Spanish makes the foreigners more "comfortable" and able to deal with their "fear factor."
    Americans, on the other hand, are being forced to accommodate the languages of foreigners rather than require immigrants to assimilate; a recent example was the Dallas school principals who now must learn Spanish in three years or presumably lose their jobs.
    "This is part of a frightening trend, where English-speaking Americans are being asked to learn a foreign language, while nothing is expected out of non-English-speaking immigrants to America," says Mujica, an immigrant from Chile whose office is one block from the White House.

•   •   •  

Fox unveils aid program for Mexico's poor   [8/31/05]
It's getting late in el Presidente Fox's term, so perhaps he's thinking about his "legacy." Or perhaps he wants to distract from his failure to restore law and order in Nuevo Laredo. His main strategy to "help" Mexico's poor is to encourage them to emigrate illegally to the United States and send back lots of remittance money. At any rate, the planned measures are tiny in comparison to the need.

    MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- President Vicente Fox announced a sweeping assistance program to bring electricity, water, health services, educational opportunities and new highways to Mexico's 50 poorest communities.
        The Strategy for Indian Development, which will reach poor Indian villages throughout the country, is the "most ambitious action by the federal government to attend to the social demands in those areas of Mexico with the greatest needs," a news release from the president's office said Tuesday.
        The plan involves an investment of millions of pesos to bring electricity to isolated communities in nine states, stoves and materials to replace wood fires and earth floors in 100,000 homes, a massive expansion of water services and expanded education, medical and nutrition services for poor Indian families, the government said.
        "Never again a Mexico without its communities," Fox said during a ceremony to announce the program. "Never again a Mexico with first- and second-class citizens. Never again a Mexico without justice or liberties."
        The president, battered by criticism that he has failed to achieve any of the major reforms he promised when he took office in 2000, has spent the weeks leading up to his fifth and last state-of-the-nation address on Thursday showcasing his efforts to promote and protect Mexico's developing democracy.
    "Millions of pesos" is chump change in wealthy Mexico. Placing stoves in 100,000 homes is nothing when 50 million Mexicans live in poverty. Of course, the ultra rich still "live like maharajahs" as reported by Lou Dobbs Tonight last April:
    Nearly half of Mexico's population lives in poverty. Ten percent are indigent, existing on a dollar a day. Yet the nation has vast wealth. Mexico has more "Forbes" billionaires, 11, than all but eight other nations. It has more billionaires than Saudi Arabia, Switzerland or Taiwan. It also has more than 85,000 millionaires.
        GEORGE W. GRAYSON, COLLEGE OF WILLIAM & MARY: There is a small economic elite who live like maharajas, and there's a political elite that protects them. Our border provides an escape valve which really lets the Mexican political and economic elite off the hook in terms of providing opportunities for their own people.
        WIAN (on camera): About 10 percent of Mexico's 105 million people live here in the United States. They're called national heroes by President Vicente Fox because this year they'll send home about $16 billion, more than any Mexican industry except oil.
        (voice-over): The country sits on oil reserves worth about $400 billion, but Mexico's state-owned oil company, Pemex, doesn't have the investment funds to tap those reserves, and Mexico's Congress refuses to allow foreign investment in Pemex.
        Mexico's outdated tax system is plagued by widespread tax evasion. It collects taxes at less than half the rate of the United States. As a result, Mexico's public-school and health-care systems suffer.
    It was reported just today that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim recommended "Mexico should sell stakes in the petrochemicals and refinery units of Petroleos Mexicanos [Pemex] to private investors to raise cash and boost output." Suggesting capitalism in Mexico is actually pretty revolutionary.

•   •   •  

Pope meets controversial critic of Islam   [8/30/05]
That critic is Oriana Fallaci, the take-no-prisoners author, who has lately been battling cancer and facing a ridiculous court case in Italy for defaming Islam. She remains more or less in hiding because sons of Allah would love to see her dead.

    Based in the United States where she is being treated for cancer, Fallaci once said in a newspaper interview that she was comforted by the writings of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became pope after the death of John Paul II.
        "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense," Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal on June 23.
        "Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty," she said.
        "I feel less alone when I read Ratzinger's books," the journalist added.
        But writing in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera three weeks later, she said integrating Muslims in Western society was a "nightmare" and criticised the pope's call for dialogue with Muslim leaders after the July 7 London suicide bombings.
        Before becoming pope, Ratzinger outlined his opposition to Turkey joining the European Union and his concerns about the West's "inner disarray" at a time when "history's soul is awakening once again".
        But he has since rejected the clash-of-civilisations scenario and this month met a Muslim delegation at the Catholic World Youth Day celebrations in Cologne.
    Hopefully she told him to snap out of it, since Sam Huntington's clash-of-civilizations view has looked more prescient than ever.

•   •   •  

Two New CIS Reports about Terrorism:   Keeping Extremists Out and Immigration Benefits and Terrorism   [8/30/05]
Here are two serious and lengthy reports from the Center for Immigration Studies, designed to refocus attention on the overlooked terrorism dimension of open borders and lax immigration enforcement. The full title of the first listed is "Keeping Extremists Out: The History of Ideological Exclusion, and the Need for Its Revival" and was written by James R. Edwards, Jr.
    Far from being a rarity, radicalism imported via immigration has a long history in the U.S., including Jacobinism, anarchism, communism, fascism, and now Islamism. In the past, the government had legislative powers to remove people here to destroy the country, but now, when the threat is strong, the power of ideological exclusion is no longer available, having been gutted after the end of the Cold War.
    The other paper, "Immigration and Terrorism: Moving Beyond the 9/11 Staff Report on Terrorist Travel" was written by Janice L. Kephart, who was a staffer on the 9/11 Commission. She testified before Congress on the subject of "Border Security and Enforcement" on March 14 of this year. (To download the 241-page "9/11 and Terrorist Travel" Staff Report, open the Staff monographs page of the 9/11 Commission and scroll down to "Monograph on 9/11 and Terrorist Travel" to get the PDF.)
    Here are a few points from Kephart's study:

    •   Of the 94 foreign-born terrorists who operated in the United States, the study found that about two-thirds (59) committed immigration fraud prior to or in conjunction with taking part in terrorist activity.
    •   Of the 59 terrorists who violated the law, many committed multiple immigration violations -- 79 instances in all.
    •   Temporary visas were a common means of entering; 18 terrorists had student visas and another four had applications approved to study in the United States. At least 17 terrorists used a visitor visa -- either tourist (B2) or business (B1).
    •   There were 11 instances of passport fraud and 10 instances of visa fraud; in total 34 individuals were charged with making false statements to an immigration official.
    Here's the AP story about the CIS reports.

•   •   •  

Arizona residents grow weary of dealing with illegal immigration   [8/30/05]
There's little reporting about the real victims of border anarchy, namely the citizens who live among the chaos on a daily basis. Here's a rare exception. Joe Coates lives 28 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border and seven miles west of the Sasabe Highway, a common transit route.

    The groups of immigrants walking past his house at breakfast time have grown from pairs to a dozen or more at a time.
        Coates says he sympathizes. And he helps them when he can. But he doesn't agree with humanitarian groups like No More Deaths that search out migrants and even transport them to medical facilities.
        "If I'm going to hand them water, I'm going to have my cellphone in the other hand calling the Border Patrol," he said.
        Many of his neighbors in this town of 5,248 residents feel the same way, he said.
        They say they're tired of the trash in this part of the Sonoran Desert, where empty water jugs and scraps of clothing are as common as saguaro and mesquite. And they're frustrated with border policy and a government that can't better control the flow of people entering the country. [...]
        Rancher Frank Williams, 46, of Arivaca, Ariz., said he won't give anyone water unless the person is dying. The trash and deaths are the worst he's seen in the 30 years his family has lived along the border. He's found three dead people on his property since March.
        "If they come to your home, you don't offer water," he said. Otherwise, "You might as well open a store for Mexicans. You'd spend all the time doing it."

•   •   •  

Topless virgins vie for king in AIDS-hit Swaziland   [8/29/05]
The monarch of the Swazis remains attached to his nation's traditions, and doubtless believes the Mel Brooks' line, "It's good to be the king."

    Swaziland, Aug 29 (Reuters) - More than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to become the King of Swaziland's 13th wife on Monday in a ceremony which critics say ill befits a country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS rate.
        King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, arrived dressed in a leopard-skin loincloth to watch the Reed Dance ceremony, which he has used since 1999 to pluck new brides from the girls dressed in little more than beaded mini-skirts.
        Wielding machetes and singing tributes to the king and queen mother, also known as the Great She-Elephant, the girls danced around the royal stadium in the hope of catching the eye of the 37-year-old monarch. "I want to live a nice life, have money, be rich, have a BMW and cellphone," said one dancer, 16-year-old Zodwa Mamba, who wore a traditional brightly coloured tasselled scarf.
        Critics say Mswati, who has courted controversy for his lavish lifestyle while two thirds of his subjects live in abject poverty, sets a bad example by encouraging polygamy and teenage sex in a country where 40 percent of adults live with HIV.
        Some say the Reed Dance, traditionally meant to celebrate womanhood and virginity, has become little more than a showcase for the king's young would-be brides.
    But the Swazis have been miffed by the negative attention from outsiders: "Swazi irritated by foreign ridicule."
    Tsk. Most people don't know the half of it. As explained on the occasion of an earlier wife-choosing extravaganza, the actual marriage is a series of degrading acts against the young woman, presumably so she will know her place. Also, the father of the current king had more than 50 wives and nearly 300 children.
    Now that's diversity!

•   •   •  

California Assembly Speaker Salutes Mexico   [8/28/05] Fabian Nunez salutes Mexican flag

This fascinating photo is of California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as he visited Mexico a few days back. He appears to be making a rather curious salute, an action explained unclearly in the AP caption:

    California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, left, salutes towards the flag while listening to the national anthem as he stands with Beatriz Paredes, who hopes to become the candidate for Mexico City Mayor under her party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in Mexico City, Mexico on Friday Aug. 26, 2005.
Nunez's fascist-style salute makes it obvious that he is not saluting the American flag but the Mexican one; however AP confuses the issue by use of the word "the" (as in "the" national anthem). Nunez's unAmerican gesture reveals an agenda inappropriate for an important elected official from the state of California.
    Imagine the outrage if an American politician used the Nazi salute in Berlin in the mid-1930s. But visibly disloyal behavior is normal among many California elected hispanics, whose allegiance has gone south, if it ever left.

•   •   •  

Mexicans long for U.S. — and a future   [8/28/05]
The recent Pew poll finding that 46 percent of Mexicans would leave if they could continues to inspire analysis. This one is thoughtful and worth a read; however, the author does not recognize that immigration as a pressure release valve for Mexico adds enormously to the country's dysfunction. If the border were shut tight, Mexicans would be forced to face their many problems rather than dump them on us.

    Although Mexico is more democratic than it was 10 years ago, it also is more unequal. Broad swaths of the population -- 28.5 percent -- don't finish high school. Forty percent of the population still lives below the poverty line. And the old elites remain, locked inside their gated communities, fending off the poor, whom they have no incentive to empower, because plentiful, cheap labor is so beneficial to those who employ it.
        More worrisome for the long term is that governments that work this way live on borrowed time. Natural resources like oil can't support countries indefinitely. And more fundamentally, these governments produce skin-deep democracies in which people have a vote but don't really have a stake. They create clients instead of citizens, recipients instead of participants. They create people who live with their hands held out instead of their heads held high.

•   •   •  

Muslims in Lodi believe mystery man who spoke of jihad was a federal mole in terror investigation   [8/27/05]
Apparently the terror-cell Muslims of Lodi described their murderous fantasies of jihad to the wrong fellow. At least that's what they believe. Heh.

    In the days after federal agents arrested five residents of Lodi in a terror investigation in June, a clean-cut young man who had befriended the suspects and had spent nights at their homes vanished.
        He hasn't been seen in town since, and now members of Lodi's Muslim community suspect they know why: The man, who called himself Nasim Khan, was a government mole, they believe, an informer whose surreptitious tape recordings of one of the suspects are at the heart of the federal probe.
        Community members said Khan, who is in his early 30s, sometimes spoke of "jihad" in what they now believe was an attempt to get others to express radical sentiments.

•   •   •  

Why Mexicans Make MADD Mad   [8/26/05]
Economist and ace numbers cruncher Ed Rubinstein presents a thorough and well documented article on the danger of increasing numbers of drunk Mexican drivers on the road. Unlike Americans, Mexicans have not yet grasped the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) message that piloting a vehicle while inebriated is not acceptable behavior. On the contrary, many Mexicans believe that downing mass quantities of alcohol and driving is a fine macho thing to do. (I explored the cultural component in "Diversity Is Strength! It's Also... Drunk Driving")
    Indeed, many of the victims honored on ImmigrationsHumanCost.org were struck down on American highways by illegal aliens, often Mexican and massively drunk.

•   •   •  

Somali family can't afford to live in New Hampshire   [8/26/05]
The social and financial costs of importing tens of thousands of tribal people are evident in this article. Because of their primitive culture, Somalis as a whole will never be able to support themselves in this country. Tribal people like the Bantu should be resettled in similar societies, not thrust into our very complex modern country, where you need a college degree to operate your appliances.
    And would it be insensitive to suggest that if you can't support the children you have, perhaps creating more is not the best idea? (Here's another version of the story, one with photos.)

    Besides his meager income as a landscaper, a Somali man has relied on food stamps to support his seven children and his pregnant wife. But there's little left for things like soap, diapers, utilities -- and rent.
        Next week, against his family's wishes, Mohamed Mohamed plans to move everyone to Maine, where he's heard that life is cheaper and easier for Somali immigrants. They've been in Concord for 10 months.
        His is not an isolated case, said Nasir Arush, a Somali translator who assists the family and other members of the Bantu communities in Concord and Manchester. A persecuted minority in Somalia, the Bantus fled to refugee camps in Kenya after civil war erupted in 1991. Many adults had no education and their children had lived in refugee-camp tents. [...]
        More and more Bantu refugees are telling Arush they dream of life in Lewiston, Maine -- a Somali destination that, they have heard, offers cheaper living, more public immigrant aid and shorter waiting lists for Section 8 rental assistance.
    Lewiston, Maine, is not dreaming of additional Somalis; of that we can be sure. The town's complaints of being financially overwhelmed by hundreds of Somali refugees needing expensive social services received national attention a couple years ago, along with some undeserved accusations of racism against city officials who had to balance a tight budget.
    Update August 31: Here is an excellent letter in response.

•   •   •  

How CAIR Cows Critics   [8/26/05]
The Council for American Islamic Relations works relentlessly to shut down any negative remarks about Islam, regardless of their accuracy. The recent firing of radio talk show host Michael Graham was largely due to CAIR's efforts.

    Though there is some disagreement between WMAL Radio and fired mid-morning host Michael Graham over the details of his termination, one thing is not in dispute: The big winner is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which called for his ouster, yet has never specifically condemned Islamic terrorist organizations, such as Hamas or Hezbollah.
        In a year that started with it blasting away at the Fox television show "24" — because it had terrorists who were Muslims — CAIR has garnered more attention than ever before. Now, with the firing of Mr. Graham, it has achieved perhaps its greatest feat yet — at least in perception, which is typically tantamount to reality.
        And a stronger CAIR almost inevitably means a weakened spirit of free speech.
    More on the Michael Graham controversy from Diana West.
    For another horror story, see "I was a tool of Satan", describing how in 2002 cartoonist Doug Marlette got the CAIR treatment of 20,000 emails, including death threats, for a cartoon captioned "What Would Mohammed Drive?".
    Finally, Daniel Pipes recently listed "five current or former CAIR affiliates arrested, convicted, or deported on terrorism-related charges" in his article, "CAIR Founded by 'Islamic Terrorists'?"

•   •   •  

One Reporter's Opinion - Fighting Immigration Anarchy   [8/26/05]
Long-time radio broadcaster George Putnam reviews the important new book Fighting Immigration Anarchy in glowing terms.

    It is this reporter's opinion that Daniel Sheehy's new book, "Fighting Immigration Anarchy: American Patriots Battle to Save the Nation" is a modern "Profiles in Courage." Fighting Immigration Anarchy celebrates the grit of rare individuals who have been willing, against all odds, to put their reputations, assets, and prospects on the line for what they believe.
        The heroes of Sheehy's story are stubborn rocks, when pitted against a chorus of defeatism that declares the battle against the illegal alien invasion is a losing battle - that the odds against reversing open borders momentum are too formidable, that mass immigration is unstoppable. These heroes are mostly unheralded citizens who made the future of our nation their top priority.

•   •   •  

Line in the Sand   [8/26/05]
Here's a trailer for a new film about the border crisis, with familiar faces like Glenn Spencer, Chris Simcox and Rep. Tom Tancredo. The clip looks very interesting and worth your attention. You can order the DVD with information available at this link.

    The United States government has refused to effectively protect the southern border with Mexico for 40 years.
        Average American citizens are now banding together to stand up against a government they feel no longer represents their interests, forming one of the largest ongoing civil protests in recent American history: The Minuteman Project.

•   •   •  

Britain to expel for hate speech   [8/25/05]
This is a really terrible headline: so-called "hate speech" has nothing to do with sedition, the attempt to overthrow by illegal means the government in power. The point must be that immigration is not a suicide pact.

    Officials said the Blair government's rules are intended to clarify powers that the home secretary already possesses under Britain's 1971 Immigration Act.
        While Mr. Clarke's list formalized the rules, the tough new crackdown already had started, with the government's announcement earlier this month that it intended to deport 10 detained foreign nationals it suspected of posing a threat to national security.
    Meanwhile, plain-spoken officials in the Australian government have made it clear to jihadis residing there that they can get on home.
    Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament.
        "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television.
        "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false.
        "If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practises it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said.
        Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked move to the other country.
    It would be nice to hear a statement like that from President Bush. Just a thought.

•   •   •  

Tourism with Gun Guards   [8/25/05]
Just how violent has Mexican border town Nuevo Laredo become? Tourists get armed guards in order to make them feel safe enough to shop — that's how violent.

    A Mexican city plagued by a drug war is trying to win back jittery tourist day trippers by offering free bus tours with an armed police escort.
        "The aim is to shake off the bad image that we have and give a boost to the craft markets and restaurants in the centre, where business is almost nil," said Ramon Garza, Nuevo Laredo's tourism director.
    Yes, cartel wars complete with bazookas and rocket-propelled grenades in the city streets do give a "bad image."

•   •   •  

Denver Library Nixes 4 Spanish Book Series   [8/25/05]
The Denver Library is trying to recover after the scandal of reports that Spanish-language comic book porn was widely and openly available on local shelves. (Details on what happened and photos of material.) The "novelas" are full of graphic sex and violence against women, but hispanics have been demanding that the porn remain in libraries.

    "That does make it look as if they are discriminating against the Spanish-language part, not the content," said Estevan Flores, executive director of the Latino/a Research & Policy Center. "As long as they are in the adult section, I don't know what the problem is."
    A hispanic representative Peter Flores appeared on Fox News this morning debating the controversy with talk radio host Peter Boyles. When asked whether he considers the novelas to be porn, Flores clearly answered "No."

•   •   •  

Whither social progress in India?   [8/24/05]
Many in India are unduly positive about their nation's improvements, seeing employment gains in IT as heralding the Indian century. But one writer at least has noticed that India remains mired in superstition and social injustice, and even suggests that the country was more tolerant 50 years ago.

    Even as we pursue modernity in economics, it would be good to see some initiative and activism on the part of government in social and institutional matters.
        And issues there are by the dozen - child labour, gay rights, stem cell research, caste discrimination, gender discrimination. [...]
        Somewhere between 10.25% and 19.90% of all Indian children between the ages of nine and 15 are labourers.

•   •   •  

'Jihadists' like Nazis   [8/24/05]
British conservative leadership hopeful David Cameron is laying down a strong line about the radical Islamist threat, warning against appeasement of any kind which could be construed as weakness.

    Mr Cameron, in a speech to the Foreign Policy Centre in London, said some Islamic thinkers had argued that the "simple explanation" for the decline in the Arab world's power and prestige was its "abandonment of true Islam".
        Some, including Osama bin Laden, "have argued for a jihad to purge the Arab world".
        The Tory frontbencher went on: "Jihadism, like Nazism and Communism before it, often bewitches the minds of gifted and educated young men.
        "Just like the Nazis of 1930s Germany, they want to purge corrupt cosmopolitan influences.
        "The parallels with the rise of Nazism go further. Just as there were figures in the 1930s who misunderstood the totalitarian wickedness of Nazism and argued that Hitler had a rational set of limited political demands, so there are people today who try to explain Jihadist violence with reference to a limited set of political goals.
    Read the full text of Cameron's speech here.

•   •   •  

Prison Cell to Terror Cell   [8/24/05]
The publication Investor's Business Daily is notable for its intelligent editorial forays into the areas of immigration, cultural cohesion and national security. Today's paper takes on the continuing refusal of prison officials to oversee Muslim chaplains conducting terror recruitment in the jails. Many Islamic prison chaplains are of the extremist Wahhabi sect and are backed by Saudi sources. But prison officials are neglecting to bring this very dangerous situation under control.

    Muslim chaplains employed by U.S. prisons are converting inmates by the cell block, swelling their ranks beyond 250,000. Yet officials are doing next to nothing to defuse this potential powder keg.
        Last week brought news that the FBI is working a new homegrown terrorism case in Los Angeles involving blacks converted to Islam while in California prison. They allegedly plotted to attack National Guard facilities and other targets next month on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.
        This should be a major wake-up call to prison boards. According to investigators, U.S. prisons are the No. 1 recruiting ground for al-Qaida as the terror network tries to lower its Arab profile and attract less security scrutiny for future attacks.
        Yet the news apparently hasn't reached prison officials. They still operate on pre-9-11 footing and do a poor job of monitoring the activities of Muslim chaplains and their converts.
        Sermons and prayer sessions are conducted partly in Arabic. And even if guards spoke Arabic, which they don't, they wouldn't know what they're up to. That's because guards are rarely posted in chapels, and they don't conduct remote audio monitoring. There's essentially no supervision. [...]
        In one case, a Muslim chaplain got glowing job evaluations even though he repeatedly gave hate-filled sermons against Jews and Christians. Only after the press revealed he applauded the 9-11 attack and called the hijackers "martyrs" did he lose his job.

•   •   •  

Warner urged to declare emergency in illegals crisis   [8/24/05]
Virginia has been getting hit with a lot of crime from illegal aliens, but the big complaint being voiced in this article is the cost in dollars and cents.

    Virginia Delegate David B. Albo, who authored the public benefits and license laws, said declaring a state of emergency could help the state.
        "If New Mexico and Arizona qualify, certainly Northern Virginia would," the Fairfax County Republican said. "The amount of money that we are spending on illegal aliens is monstrous. Any way that we can get the federal government to help us fix the problem they've created I'm sure would go over 100 percent with 100 percent approval from the caucus."
        Mr. Albo said illegals are attracted to Northern Virginia because the low unemployment rate means many jobs for those seeking temporary work.
        These comments come one week after Herndon approved a formal day-laborer center on town property, putting immigration at the forefront of the Nov. 8 election, in which voters will elect a new governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all 100 House delegates.

•   •   •  

Mexico Clears Road for Used Cars   [8/23/05]
Mexico officially cleared the way to import used autos from the U.S. and Canada, a move that may raise used car prices in this country, incidentally. But the LA Times makes no mention of the boon to thieves the change will be — not that there is anything that could be called law enforcement in Mexico as it is. (See "Despite New Attitude, Corruption Alive and Well".)
    For the real-world view of Mexican auto theft against Americans, you have to read the Freepers' remarks on the subject:

    •   I've seen convoys of used cars and trucks headed south to Mexico for years! I guess now they will be legal. Sounds like the Mexican government wants a piece of the pie?
    •   One of my friends told me of being so proud of his first new car and driving it home to Mexico to show his family and having it taken from him. His mother told him later that the Mayor drove it in a parade.
    •   I'm reminded of a story about a man who, while watching the local news here in San Diego, saw his stolen SUV being used by the Mexican Federales.
        They were moving from the jail to the courthouse the man who assassinated Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in 1994. The San Diego viewer saw what he knew was his stolen vehicle and he knew it because it still had his California license plates.
        He called the local TV station and reported what he had seen. They went south to investigate and the feds told them they had bought the vehicle at a local Mexican auction. Without any papers!?
    This just in — California tops in car theft.

•   •   •  

Why a booming economy feels flat   [8/23/05]
President Bush often cites the overall economic growth rate as proof that everything is moving along nicely in that area. However, many Americans' living standards are dropping as a result of immigration and outsourcing: Wall Street increasingly has less relevance to Main Street.

    Only 37 percent of the public thinks the national economy is in good shape, according to a June poll by the Pew Research Center poll. That's higher than two years ago, but down from 2004. Perhaps more ominously, the percentage of the public rating their own financial situation positively fell to 44 percent, down from 51 percent in January. Sixty percent say jobs are too scarce in their community. [...]
        "It's hard for me to see this as a good economy," says Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "It's doing better than it had been," but given that the nation went for four years without creating any jobs to speak of, "we have a lot of ground to make up."

•   •   •  

Muslim festival off to good start   [8/23/05]
Cleveland's 40,000 Muslims are happy so far with celebrating themselves in the first SalaamFest.

    The festival, which got a strong turnout despite scattered showers, grew out of a series of town hall meetings at Cleveland State University last year. Those discussions centered on the need to show the outside world - as well as Muslims themselves - that their religion is not the rigid, humorless dogma often portrayed in the media and popular culture.
        To that end, games included "Pin the Black Stone on the Kaba," a new version of an old children's game.
        Instead of using a donkey and tail, contestants try their luck placing the divine meteorite in the correct spot in the Kaba, the central shrine of Islam. The day even concluded with a Muslim comedy troupe called Allah Made Me Funny.
        "A lot of people feel threatened by our religion, and a lot of Muslims are afraid of their own identity," said Hadele Banna of the Concerned Muslims of Greater Cleveland.
    Yep, pin the stone on the Kaaba, what a knee-slapper! And why would anyone feel threatened by Islam? Its disdain for free speech perhaps, e.g. the Council on American-Islamic Relations' pressure on radio host Michael Graham, which resulted in his being fired?
    Or maybe non-Muslims are put off by the accumulating deaths from explosives, small arms fire and headchopping in the name of Allah. Possibly?

•   •   •  

The people problem: Will anyone take up Gaylord Nelson's fight against overpopulation?   [8/22/05]
Gaylord Nelson's memorial service (televised on C-span and still available for viewing) several weeks ago was a huge affair, with numerous luminary politicians telling stories about Nelson's bi-partisan environmental leadership and his love for America's natural treasures. But no one mentioned the "I" word or noted that Nelson never forgot the immigration-overpopulation connection in a haze of political correctness, as many of his environmental contemporaries have.
    The article in hand seeks to remind readers of Gaylord Nelson's real intellectual legacy, that of overpopulation and its local stepchild, immigration.

    Christofferson says he once asked Nelson why, if overpopulation was a global problem, he thought controlling immigration in the United States was so crucial.
        Nelson then related an argument put forth by famed environmentalist Garrett Hardin, which he called the "global pothole problem," Christofferson says.

        "He said, 'That's like saying if you can't fix every pothole in the world, there's no sense in trying to fill the one right in front of your house.'"
    My obituary of Sen. Nelson did not forget the immigration component of his message.
    Update August 23:
Part 2 of the Gaylord Nelson piece.

•   •   •  

The woman who just says no   [8/22/05]
That woman is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, unsurprisingly, the Somali immigrant who became a member of the Dutch Parliament, and she says "no" to the continuing oppression of women by Islam. A Toronto columnist reports on Ms Ali's visit to the Canadian city.

    "I am here because I think the rights of Muslim women in the West are threatened," she says. The threat comes from two directions. One is a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, which declares that women must submit to both God and men. The other is the Western multiculturalist trap, which declares that group rights are more important than individual rights, and that all cultures are equal.
    But it's worse than that: western women's rights and safety are also threatened by Muslim immigration to Europe, Canada and America. As the blogger Fjordman has researched, rapes of Scandinavian women by Muslim men have skyrocketed with increasing immigration, a fact which the media and politicians have ignored.
    See also Fjordman's assessment of the damage Islamic immigration has done to the fabric of Norwegian society, a list of symptoms which many Americans will find familiar.

•   •   •  

Secret witness tapes in Lodi prosecutions: Terror-probe suspect swore he'd go to jihad, prosecutors say   [8/22/05]
More details are coming out concerning the Lodi, California, terror cell.

    Prosecutors R. Steven Lapham and F. Robert Tice-Raskin also allege in the filing that Hamid Hayat admitted to federal agents during a June 4 interrogation that he attended a camp in Pakistan for three to six months starting in 2003. He was arrested just days after returning from Pakistan.
        Prosecutors say Hamid Hayat admitted that he went to a second camp for three days in 2000.
        "He described, with fair detail, the location of the second camp and layout of the same," Lapham and Tice-Raskin's filing states. "The purpose of both camps was to train for jihad and to teach people to kill those who work against Muslims."
    Vdare.com writer Joe Guzzardi asks why Lodi Muslims insist upon building an Islamic school which would only increase separatism and prevent assimilation.

•   •   •  

Robert Spencer on Foxnews -- "'Moderate' Muslims Want to Replace Constitution by Koran"   [8/22/05]
Listen to a sound file of a brief interview with the author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam" as he blows the whistle on what a fifth column the Muslim community is. Not that all want a violent revolution to institute a Caliphate (a favorite theme of Osama), but many so-called "moderates" hope for an eventual change of America into an Islamic state, nutty as that may sound.
    Of course, Americans are not interested in an ideology that hasn't progressed since the seventh century, and it is ridiculous for our immigration policy to continue to welcome people whose basic beliefs are antithetical to everything we value — individual liberty, gender equality and rational inquiry.

•   •   •  

Richardson: Border Fence is Anti-Immigrant   [8/21/05]
Just a few days ago the governor of New Mexico called for a state of emergency in the border counties of his state in order to free up money for more police protection there. But a fence would be too much: that would be excessive law enforcement according to Gov. Richardson.

    Gov. Bill Richardson, who won plaudits this week from foes of illegal immigration after he declared a state of emergency along New Mexico's southern border, said Sunday that plans to construct a border fence are anti-immigrant.
        "A fence at the border is not going to work because, first of all, they're easily porous, and that sends a message that America is a nation that is not valuing immigrants," Richardson told ABC's "This Week."
    But as Mark Krikorian recently pointed out, Democratic politicians and affiliated groups have a terrible record on immigration enforcement for the most part. (Unlike D-registered voters, the majority of whom want border anarchy to end.)
    If the Democrats were serious about pursuing Republican-leaning voters dissatisfied with the immigration blather from the White House, you might see a productive bidding war between the parties to see who could better reflect the public's long-ignored desire to control immigration. Unfortunately, they're just doing a two-step, weaving fairy tales for broad public consumption, while telling the truth to their real constituency. Hillary, for instance, has earned a D- from Americans for Better Immigration for her utterly conventional positions in support of amnesty, etc. The southwestern governors, for their part, have taken every opportunity to facilitate illegal immigration; Richardson recently approved a bill to provide illegal aliens with in-state tuition at New Mexico state colleges, while Napolitano earlier his year vetoed a bill reaffirming the authority of state and local cops to enforce immigration law.
    See the House and Senate members sorted by grade — only a handful of Democrats get 'A's.

•   •   •  

Man Denied Asylum Returns to Asia   [8/21/05]
How dysfunctional is America's immigration system? How quickly can clear mistakes be rectified? In this case, it took 10 years to deport an admitted torturer.

    A former Bangladeshi army officer who admitted torturing villagers there is returning to his native land, ending a nearly 10-year battle to remove him from this country, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Wednesday.
    In a better known case, Kelbessa Negewo, a torturing Ethiopian army officer was finally ordered repatriated. Apparently there are hundreds more like him living in the United States.
    Ms. Brown said Kelbessa's removal is the latest accomplishment as part of the "No Safe Haven Programme," ICE's ongoing initiative to identify, apprehend, prosecute and remove human rights violators.
        She said ICE attorneys are tracking and litigating more than 900 cases nationwide involving human rights violators from more than 85 countries.

•   •   •  

Illegals dying at record rate in Arizona desert   [8/20/05]
Illegal aliens as victims is a popular theme in the press and such stories are easy to write: reporters feel no need to provide "balance" since of course there is no one who favors Mexicans dying in the desert.
    At the same time, such articles have no reflection that these individuals die (201 in Arizona this fiscal year) as a direct result of Mexico's policy to send as many as possible Mexicans to join the remittance brigade. For that sort of honest analysis, you have to read Investor's Business Daily recent opinion, "Mexico Isn't Halting Illegal Flow...

    Illegal immigration, always a fact along the border, has become a key instrument of Mexican economic policy during the presidency of Vicente Fox.
        The government makes no bones of the fact that it wants workers to enter the U.S., legally or not, so that they can send sorely needed remittances (expected to hit $20 billion this year, according to the Bank of Mexico) back home.
        The Washington Times reported Thursday that a Mexican government-funded humanitarian organization, Grupo Beta, maintains a number of aid stations for migrants along the border.
        The paper also said that Grupo Beta worked with federal and Sonoran state police in April to help steer migrants away from areas on the Arizona border being patrolled at the time by Minuteman Project volunteers.
        Mexico isn't exactly shame-faced about such activities. A spokesman for its embassy told the Times that the government "has a duty and obligation by law to protect Mexican citizens at home and abroad."
        And the Mexican Foreign Relations Secretariat criticized Richardson's declaration, saying it did not "jibe with the spirit of cooperation and understanding."
        Fox has long made a point of pushing for migrant rights and amnesty for illegals in the U.S. He has also sung the praises of Mexicans working north of the border, both for their contributions to Mexico's wealth and — in comments he later said were misinterpreted — for doing jobs that "even blacks" won't do.
        His government has also made it clear from time to time that it frowns on tough U.S. border enforcement. After Congress in May passed the Real ID Act, which extended a border barrier south of San Diego and set legal residency requirements for drivers' licenses, Fox lodged a diplomatic complaint and Mexico's Interior Secretary blasted Real ID as "negative, inconvenient and obstructionist."

•   •   •  

Tebbit attacks 'unreformed' Islam   [8/19/05]
The one-time British Conservative chairman (retired, of course) has added his name to the growing list of those who find the ideology of multiculturalism ridiculous, as well as noting the obvious about Islam.

    Lord Tebbit said multicultural society was "an impossibility" because if there were two cultures there would also be two societies.
        "A society is defined by its culture. It is not defined by its race, it is not a matter of skin colour or ethnicity, it is a matter of culture.
        "If you have two societies in the same place then you are going to have problems, like the kind we saw on 7 July, sooner or later," he said.
        He warned London was "sinking into the same abyss that Londonderry and Belfast sank".
        On Islam holding back progress Lord Tebbit said: "The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years."

•   •   •  

State lawmaker says border wall at top of her list   [8/19/05]
Arizona legislators have been forging ahead on border control measures since the success of Prop 200 last year. In this instance, State Representative Pamela Gorman has proposed building a real fence to replace the pathetic few strings of barbed wire. The details of a better structure have been discussed at length by Vdare.com and Parapundit.
    In addition, Rep. Gorman is considering a taxation strategy, one proposed in 2002 by your humble correspondent that remittances be taxed.

    Gorman says she and her colleagues are considering taxing wire transfers to Mexico. Illegal immigrants from Mexico living here send an estimated 16 billion dollars home every year.

•   •   •  

Worker charged in attack on teen   [8/18/05]
The few details provided are not pretty: the "construction worker" is an illegal alien and he severely beat up a 15-year-old girl who ignored his rude whistle.

    The suspect, 28-year-old Jose D. Ramirez of Prince William County, was charged with aggravated malicious wounding and abduction with the intent to defile. He was placed in the Rappahannock Regional Jail under no bond. Both charges carry potential life sentences.
        Kocher said the incident occurred about 7:15 p.m. in the 200 block of Olde Greenwich Drive in Spotsylvania, near the Fredericksburg city limits. Ramirez, who police said is an illegal alien from El Salvador, was working on a townhouse there as part of a construction crew, Kocher said.
        Police said he whistled at the girl as she walked by, then became enraged after the girl did not respond. Ramirez is accused of then running after the girl and pummeling her in the face and head, Kocher said.
        According to authorities, the attacker then tried to drag the victim, fleeing into some woods only after a co-worker yelled for him to stop.
  Attacks of this sort will surely increase as the United States becomes more demographically Latinized, given the misogyny of hispanic culture.

•   •   •  

Jihad in America Continues   [8/18/05]
JihadWatch honcho and author Robert Spencer enumerates many examples of how the Islamic fifth column works unceasingly within this country to undermine the democratic government of the United States. Here are a few from his list:

    •   Working from information discovered in the investigation of Washington and Patterson, Los Angeles officials arrested a Pakistani named Hammad Riaz Samana. He seems to have been involved in terror plots targeting, among other places, the Israeli Consulate and the California National Guard.
    •   Lodi, California imam Shabbir Ahmed agreed to accept deportation to his native Pakistan on immigration charges. However, this case was not all about immigration: Ahmed and several others in Lodi allegedly planned to establish a madrassa, or Islamic school, there that would be used, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, "to recruit individuals to engage in jihad." When asked if he believed that Ahmed was involved in planning a terrorist attack, agent Gary Schaaf responded: "That's some of the information that has been provided to us."
    •   A document leaked from the New York State Office of Homeland Security and published in the Times of London last Sunday revealed that "Al Qaeda leaders plan to employ various types of fuel trucks as vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) in an effort to cause mass casualties in the US (and London), prior to 19 September. Attacks are planned specifically for New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It is unclear whether the attacks will occur simultaneously or be spread over a period of time. The stated goal is the collapse of the US economy."
    •   A map of the Washington Metro subway system was posted last Thursday on an Internet site that has been linked to Al-Qaeda. The poster noted that a chemical weapons attack in the Washington subways would bring "amazing results" and advocated attacks in the U.S. on the scale of the one executed by Muhammad Atta.
   There has been a flurry of unduly positive claptrap in the media about America's happily integrated Muslims, e.g. "Assimilated U.S. Muslims less likely terror recruits, experts say." On the contrary, the idea is that America doesn't have to worry about terrorists because it assimilates immigrants better than Europe is a dangerous arrogance. One example is the Buffalo Six, young born-in-America Muslims who went abroad to learn terrorism. Another is Hamid Hayat, one of the accused Lodi terrorists, who was born and raised in this country but preferred the jihadist way.
    For another enlightening compendium of those "arrested, convicted, deported, or still at large" for terrorist activity in the U.S., see DC Watson's Updated List.
    See my list on Vdare.com, "America Infiltrated By Jihadi Terrorists: Box Score."

•   •   •  

Want a Wal-Mart job? Join the crowd: 11,000 apply for 400 openings at retailer's new Oakland store   [8/17/05]
The open borders crowd keeps shreiking that America needs more workers and therefore must have a so-called "guest worker" program to ease the entrance of millions more exploitable Mexicans. Even many otherwise sensible proponents of immigration enforcement believe this country needs foreign workers, and this huge turn-out for poverty-level jobs shows that many citizens are desperate for a paycheck.

    Stephen Levy, an economist for the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, said the pent-up demand for work reflects the Bay Area's slow recovery from the dot-com crash.
        "There's still a lot of people who were put out of work in the last four years who still don't have a job," Levy said. The unemployment rate in Alameda and Contra Costa counties climbed to 5.1 percent in June, up from 4.6 percent the month before but still below the state's unemployment rate of 5.4 percent, according to the latest statistics from the California Employment Development Department.
        But some economists say those numbers do not tell the full story about the job market. To be counted as unemployed, a person must have sought a job within the past four weeks and must be completely out of work. Wanting a job but not looking for one takes a person out of the labor force and out of the unemployment-rate calculation.
        The Bay Area also has lost hundreds of jobs to outsourcing and offshoring, compounded by all the jobs that never came back after the local economy collapsed.
        "It's not about Wal-Mart -- it's about the rest of the labor market," Levy said. "If the rest of the labor market was strong, you wouldn't have 11,000 people applying for 400 jobs."

•   •   •  

U.S. Hispanics Divided on Immigrant Issues   [8/16/05]
A Pew poll has more bad news. Half of Mexico wants to come here — that's 50 million people.

    The Pew study also looked at how Mexicans feel about trying to get into the United States.
        Almost half of Mexicans, 46 percent, surveyed in May said they would go to the U.S. if they could. About two in five said they would be inclined to go live and work in the U.S. without authorization.
    More on the report at Pew Hispanic Center.

•   •   •  

Mob justice in rural Guatemala   [8/16/05]
Writer Sam Quinones has observed that lynching in Mexico and Central America is not an uncommon event. The BBC concurs, in its usual diversity-appreciative way:

    Lynching has become something of a phenomenon in Guatemala and only a tiny percentage of cases get to court.
        Figures compiled by the UN show there were more than 400 cases of lynching between 1996 and 2002, resulting in more than 200 deaths. Since then, things are believed to have improved.
        But, according to one Guatemalan human rights organisation, there were 27 incidents in the first six months of this year - roughly one a week.
        Maria Cristina Fernandez Garcia, a Guatemalan judge who last year compiled a study on lynching at Harvard University, is at pains to deny that lynching is a traditional means of dispensing justice in Guatemala's indigenous communities.

•   •   •  

Violence takes toll on Nuevo Laredo   [8/16/05]
The breakdown of Mexican society due to the inability of its government to maintain order is not a pretty picture down at ground level where innocent Mexicans are suffering terribly.

    Later that day, just down the street on Paseo Colon, an assassin with deadly accuracy ambushed Juan Resendez Jasso, firing at least 14 shots as the 33-year-old businessman drove his white Silverado pickup with Texas plates after buying a takeout order of tacos.
        The impact of such killings extends far beyond the victims and their families. With each killing, Nuevo Laredo itself is slowly dying, some residents say.
        "There are 500,000 souls here, and we're all undergoing a slow collective psychological breakdown," said Heriberto Cantu Deandar, editorial page editor of El Manana newspaper. "They're killing us spiritually, morally, emotionally, economically, bleeding us slowly, day by day. What's worst is there is no endgame here, no date to begin reconstructing our lives, or our businesses. It's a slow time bomb."
        So far this year, 111 people have been killed in the city, shattering 2004's total of 77. Nationwide, the death toll in the violent turf war by rival drug cartels stands at more than 850, with 14 killed during the weekend.
        Authorities on both sides of the border predict the killing will continue — if not worsen — in the weeks to come, particularly in Nuevo Laredo, where rival cartels are battling for the lucrative Interstate 35 corridor and control of a $40 billion illegal drug trade. Neither side seems ready to back down.
    As noted in this space before, the violence is spreading through Mexico and into the United States.

•   •   •  

Unfree Under Islam: Shariah endangers women's rights, from Iraq to Canada.   [8/16/05]
Member of the Dutch Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been a courageous voice against the oppression of Islam against women, an undeniable fact which multiculturalists prefer to overlook. Wherever Muslims go in the world, women's rights and safety suffer a decline, such as the "Muslim Rape Epidemic in Sweden and Norway". Ms. Ali discusses the aspirations of Muslim women like herself.

    In every society where family affairs are regulated according to instructions derived from the Shariah or Islamic law, women are disadvantaged. The injustices these women are exposed to in the name of Islam vary from extreme cruelty (forced marriages; imprisonment or death after rape) to grossly unfair treatment in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance.
        Muslim women across the world are caught in a terrible predicament. They aspire to live by their faith as best they can, but their faith robs them of their rights. Some women have found a way out of this dilemma in the principle of separation of organized religion and state affairs. They fight an uphill battle to achieve and hold on to their basic rights. Two cases demonstrate just how difficult that struggle can be, in the context of new as well as established democracies.
        The first is the draft constitution of Iraq, now due next week. Iraqi women like Naghem Khadim, demonstrating on the streets of Najaf, are fighting to prevent an article from being put in the constitution that would establish that the legislature may make no laws that contradict Shariah edicts. The second case is the province of Ontario, in Canada. There, Muslim women led by Homa Arjomand, an activist of Iranian origin, are fighting--using the Canadian Charter of Rights--to keep Shariah from being applied as family law through a so-called Arbitration Act passed as law in Ontario in 1992.
    Update 8/17: Blogger, screenwriter and novelist Roger L. Simon has some excellent comments, "In Praise of Hirsi Ali"...
    Women's rights are the very center of the War on Terror. In fact I would argue Islamofascism at its core is more than anything else an expression of rage against women and that Islam itself is not much better on that score. That is why to me Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the great positive figures of our time, a modern Joan of Arc who surpasses the original Joan in a moral sense and is at least her equal in pure guts.
        I have blogged on several occasions on my irritation (to put it mildly) with my Hollywood community for having ignored Ms. Ali and her now assassinated film collaborator Theo Van Gogh. This seemingly willful ignorance is one source of my alienation from what passes for "liberalism" in our society.

•   •   •  

Mexican presidential spokesman says violence makes accord urgent   [8/15/05]
Mexico is melting down in cartel violence, and that's supposed to be a good reason for America to open the borders to still more millions of unwanted Mexicans? What are they smoking in Mexico City?

    MEXICO CITY - A surge in violence along the U.S. border makes the need for a migration accord with the United States more urgent, a spokesman for Mexican President Vicente Fox said Monday.
        Violence has claimed many lives along the border this year, including 110 in Nuevo Laredo, a city of 350,000 people across the border from Laredo, Texas. Much of the violence stems from a war between two powerful drug cartels for control of smuggling routes, officials say.
        "The situation of security should bring advances more quickly in a migration accord; an accord that allows an orderly flow, a flow with respect for human rights that assures the security of the United States as much as Mexico," presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told a news conference.
    There's more...
    Mexico's national security is not at risk, Aguilar said Monday.
        "The public security of some cities and some regions of the country are at stake, but national security is not at stake," Aguilar said.
    Incidentally, Mexico is now #1 — in smuggling drugs into the U.S.
    Today, the Mexicans have taken over and are running the organized crime, and getting the bulk of the money," says John Walters, the White House drug czar, in a phone interview. "The Colombians have pulled back."
        One consequence of the new dominance of Mexican cartels is a spike in violence, especially along the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border where rival cartels are warring not only against Mexican and US authorities, but also against one another for control of the lucrative transit corridors.

•   •   •  

Run for the Border: Democrats try to outflank the GOP on immigration.   [8/15/05]
Ah, politics — what an entertaining tap dance it can be! NM Governor Bill Richardson (a Hispanic) is acting like a Jerry Brown Democrat, who famously recommended, "Paddle to the left, paddle to the right." Richardson has sniffed the political winds and is repositioning himself on immigration issues by recently declaring the border a disaster area and meeting with Minuteman founder Chris Simcox.
    A Democrat taking action against border chaos — imagine that!
    Not that the issue shouldn't be a Democratic one, since the majority of Dem voters want immigration to be legal, controlled and reduced. Immigration anarchy negatively affects several important Democrat constituencies: open borders destroy the environment; a flooded labor market lowers wages of workers (particularly for minorities); and the misogynous cultures of aliens threaten women's rights and safety. But the Democratic leadership has been brain dead in this area, more open to noisy ethnic separatists than to rank and file voters. No wonder Democrats have been losing elections at every level.
    However, Richardson's commitment to enforcement may be less than his tough talk du jour indicates.

    He now blasts the federal government for not showing "the commitment or the leadership to deal with border issues." He is demanding that officials on the Mexican side bulldoze an abandoned town on the border that serves "as a staging area for illegal drugs and illegal aliens." But Mr. Richardson sang a different tune in late 2003, when he showed up at a rally for the "Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride" and told them, "Viva la raza!... Thank you for coming to Santa Fe. Know that New Mexico is your home. We will protect you. You have rights here." Jaime Becerril, one of the organizers of the freedom ride, told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the participants favored a new amnesty program. He called immigration "a byproduct of colonialism and capitalism."
        Further evidence of the governor's zigzag policy on immigration came in April when he vetoed a "No Fear" bill, which would have prohibited state and local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal authorities to detect or apprehend people based solely on immigration status. But then he quietly issued an executive order that had much the same effect. Earlier this year, he also signed legislation giving some illegal aliens the right to in-state tuition rates at public universities.
        "The governor is all puff and no cigar," says David Pfeffer, a Santa Fe city councilman who abandoned the Democratic Party this past March when he concluded its members "were closer to Michael Moore than to me." He expects the governor "to run for national office while saying one thing while he does something else back home."
    At any rate, even the short-term prospect of border security has many in New Mexico singing the Governor's praises.
    Further south, Old Mexico experienced a "firestorm" over the news that an American state would be exercising a degree of sovereignty. Mexico is melting down into a failed state of the Colombia style, but they expect the United States to provide an open-borders excape hatch for all their troubles.
    An interesting article on the historical importance of security in cities names the invasion of unfriendly cultures as being highly destabilizing, causing the original inhabitants to pack up and leave. This situation is certainly the case in many U.S. cities where Americans are fleeing the massive influx of foreigners, who often bring crime and a disinclination to assimilate.
    Many of the earliest cities of antiquity -- in places as dispersed as Mesopotamia, China, India and Mesoamerica -- shrank and ultimately disappeared after being overrun by more violent but often far less civilized peoples. As is the case today, the greatest damage was often inflicted not by organized states, but by nomadic peoples or even small bands of brigands who either detested urban civilization or had little use for its arts.

•   •   •  

Deportation surge leaves void in Brooklyn's Little Pakistan   [8/14/05]
Poor Shafiq Ul Hassan! The New York shopkeeper is now forced to sell "American food" in the United States.

    Business in his modest grocery store in Brooklyn's Little Pakistan has gone down so much that Shafiq Ul Hassan has started stocking what he calls "American foods" in a desperate attempt to attract different customers. Across from the baby goat meat and the pungent ingredients for curry powder, the immigrant shopkeeper has placed candy bars and loaves of white bread.
        "You see how empty the store is. This would normally be packed with Pakistani people," Hassan said, sighing. "A lot of people have left. Most have gone back home or another state. You just don't see people anymore."
        Many of Hassan's Pakistani customers, and possibly 20 percent or more of the neighborhood's residents, have disappeared as a result of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants that the federal government has waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
    Pakistan has long been a "hotbed for terror recruits", so we should ask why any illegal Pakis were allowed to reside in the United States. Remember that several Pakistanis in Lodi California were recently arrested and charged with working to set up terror cells there under the leadership of Osama bin Laden.

•   •   •  

Gang wars plague Mexican drugs hub   [8/14/05]
Despite the best efforts of el Presidente Fox, the violence in Nuevo Laredo is only getting worse. Fifteen police officers have been killed so far this year, including the chief who was assassinated just hours after being sworn in.

    "The level of violence is just incredible, and the level of corruption in the local law enforcement is significant, so local criminal groups pretty much control what is going on," says Patrick Patterson, the regional FBI agent in charge in San Antonio, Texas.
    It was recently reported that the narco-violence has spread to Acapulco, the popular tourist destination. If Fox could turn off the spigot of criminality in one of his nation's prime vacation spots, he would. But he can't.
    Not that Fox would want to end ALL drug trafficking in his country: UT Latin America Studies Prof Hector Dominguez estimates that "as much as 20 percent of Mexico's economy depends on drug trafficking."

•   •   •  

Watch Carlsbad Townhall   [8/13/05]
See Rep. Tom Tancredo (CO), Assemblyman Ray Haynes (CA), Councilman Robert Vasquez (Canyon Co., Idaho) and several others speak against open borders. Articles about the event have appeared in the Rocky Mountain News, and the San Diego Union-Tribune. See a side show at this link.
    Rep. Tancredo was in particulary fine form at the Carlsbad meeting — perhaps the standing ovation he received upon being introduced fired him up. For a more sedate situation, listen to the interview of Tancredo by Rick Oltman, guest-hosting on the Laurie Roth Show. Rep. Tancredo speaks in the second half of the hour, following Peter Gadiel.

•   •   •  

For illegals, a spreading backlash   [8/12/05]
This is a curious headline, which shows how conflicted the MSM is about reporting fairly on the issue that will determine, more than any other, the kind of nation we leave to future generations.
    Why a "backlash"? If there had been a rash of home robberies in an area, would neighbors experience a "backlash" against robbers? Of course not. They would simply demand that police knuckle down and catch the thieves, and the press would report accordingly. But illegal immigration, the issue, is played by different rules, so even a decent article is corrupted.
    At any rate, there are interesting new polling results:

    A new CBS poll finds that two-thirds of Americans oppose guest-worker permits for those who are now here illegally. And in a June Gallup survey, 70 percent said the US shouldn't make it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens.
    Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. Foreign nationals enter unlawfully to take American jobs to which they are not entitled, thereby putting a citizen out of work in each instance. To get those jobs, aliens purchase false identity papers and Social Security numbers, the latter being a felony.
    The taxpayer is the biggest victim, and that is all of us citizens who are paying more and getting less. In California, the worst impacted state, "Our budget deficit today is, by and large, created by covering services for illegal immigrants," according to Assembly Member Ray Haynes. The cost to state taxpayers is estimated at $10 billion annually (as reported on Lou Dobbs Tonight May 7).

•   •   •  

Entrenched Epidemic: Wife-Beatings in Africa   [8/11/05]
Here's a rare statement of the politically incorrect in the New York Times, noting that women's lives in Africa are far more violent than elsewhere.

    Women suffer from violence in every society. In few places, however, is the abuse more entrenched, and accepted, than in sub-Saharan Africa. One in three Nigerian women reported having been physically abused by a male partner, according to the latest study, conducted in 1993. The wife of the deputy governor of a northern Nigerian province told reporters last year that her husband beat her incessantly, in part because she watched television movies. One of President Olusegun Obasanjo's appointees to a national anticorruption commission was allegedly killed by her husband in 2000, two days after she asked the state police commissioner to protect her.
        "It is like it is a normal thing for women to be treated by their husbands as punching bags," Obong Rita Akpan, until last month Nigeria's minister for women's affairs, said in an interview here. "The Nigerian man thinks that a woman is his inferior. Right from childhood, right from infancy, the boy is preferred to the girl. Even when they marry out of love, they still think the woman is below them and they do whatever they want."
    With such brutal and endemic sexism, why does Washington continue to welcome and even encourage immigration from parts of Africa ["More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery"]? In fact, the Diversity Visa program allows generous slots for immigrants from Sudan, where the brutal practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is common. (FGM stats for African countries here.) Many new African immigrants are from Nigeria, where the majority inflict FGM on their daughters.
    The government investigates the history of individuals to keep out criminals, yet allows entire societies whose cultural norms are illegal, such as Somalia where FGM prevalence is 98 percent. Not only are Somalis permitted, many thousands are given the red carpet treatment as refugees with taxpayer-funded welfare benefits quickly bestowed.
    Immigration policy still supports multiculturalism, even though the failed ideology is rapidly falling in favor. All cultures are NOT morally equal, particularly in the area of women's rights and safety.

•   •   •  

Texas Town Is Unnerved by Violence in Mexico   [8/11/05]
The New York Times has noticed the violence in Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from the Texas community with the similar name. To its credit, the paper describes American citizen victims of the uncontrolled crime nearby, including a photo of William Slemaker, the stepfather of Yvette Martinez who was kidnapped several months ago just a few hundred feet from the border. Yvette and her friend Brenda Cisneros had gone across the border to hear music at a club and never made it home.

    William Slemaker and Pablo Cisneros haunt the border searching for clues and awaiting news of their kidnapped and long-missing daughters.
    See the website of the victims' families at LaredosMissing.com
    Mexican authorities are unable to contain the violence between warring drug cartels, despite sending in the army. It's one of the symptoms of the Mexico Meltdown as the country decomposes into a failed state, unable to provide even the most basic level of law and order.
    For an interesting analysis of the problem, see the opening page of The Failed States Index in the journal Foreign Policy, which says, "About 2 billion people live in countries that are in danger of collapse." noting that "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones."
    An interactive Failed States Index is available at the Fund for Peace which has ratings based on 12 indicators, e.g. "Chronic and Sustained Human Flight" and "Mounting Demographic Pressures."
    The chart is international relations wonkistry at its finest, but encourages comparisons among nations and general poking around.

•   •   •  

VIEW: Dithering at the crossroads   [8/11/05]
Pakistani columnist Kamran Shafi lays out the common sense perspective on what thoughtless multiculturalism has created in the UK.

    When I hear the so-called Muslims who live in the Western democracies, particularly Britain, protest the coming hard times when they will be looked at through a veritable microscope, when many of them will be kicked out of the countries where they went as asylum (in most cases fake) seekers and economic migrants, and sent back to the filth of their villages and towns back in the Land of the Pure and other such I can only say: "Serve you jolly right, ingrates!"
        For it was self-same lot that so isolated themselves from the societies they lived in, despite the fact that they depended for their livelihood on the goodwill and the generosity of their hosts. The very vast majority of them had nothing to recommend them other than their poverty and the fact that they were willing to do many of the menial jobs the locals would not touch.
        So what in God's name made them so arrogant that they actually began to plot against the very country(ies) that gave them succour and shelter in the first place? Part of the blame rests with the Western democracies themselves in that they gave these immigrants too many inches if you know what I mean; without a thought about what sort of closed and oppressive societies they were coming from.
    "Too many inches" — how true!

•   •   •  

Texas Now a Majority-Minority State   [8/11/05] USA map

Open borders, nonenforcement of immigration laws and the high fertility of hispanic immigrants continue to increase the population of beginners with no history of American traditions and culture. Furthermore, recent events in London and elsewhere have demonstrated that "diversity" comprised of foreigners is a time bomb, not a blessing.

    Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Hispanics moving to the state.
        According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.
       Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations — with Hispanics the largest group in every state but Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.
        Five other states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — aren't far behind, with about 40 percent minorities.
    Mexican author Jorge Ramos like to brag that America will be majority hispanic in a few generations.
    Ramos' numbers tell the tale: There are 40 million Hispanics in the U.S., maybe 10 million more "illegals" with one million entering the country every year. Since Hispanics are reproducing at the rate of 3.2 kids a family, there will 100 million Hispanics in 50 years. Hispanics will be a majority of the country some decades after that.
    See the animated map showing hispanic population growth in Los Angeles County 1940-2000 to understand how rapidly a community can change fundamentally.
    Another example is Chicago, where "Latinos Drive Growth":
    If the trend continues, the metropolitan area will likely become within a decade what demographers call a "majority-minority" region, where racial and ethnic groups, when combined, outnumber non-Hispanic whites.

•   •   •  

Lou Dobbs Tonight   [8/10/05]
The indispensible news show reports on the stunning level of fraud occurring as the home sales industry turns to illegal aliens as another market.

    CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Colorado, this home and this one bought by illegal aliens with fake documents and federally-backed loans. Colorado investigators say this realtor placed Spanish language ads offering no money down and cash back on closing. And with the help of these loan officers manufactured fake documents to secure FHA insured low-interest loans.
        SCOTT STOREY, D.A., JEFFERSON CITY, COLORADO: The movers and shakers in this whole criminal enterprise, in my mind, were the realtors and the loan officers. And they'd get large commissions from their efforts, and the home buyer would then have a house that he or she did not have to put any money down on, that he or she could not qualify for if you went through the legitimate loan process.
        ROMANS: Sixteen million dollars in fraudulent loans uncovered in Denver so far. Investigators say thousands of area homes were likely acquired illegally.
        BOB BROWN, COLORADO BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: It's the realtor, it's the mortgage broker, it's the processor, it's the underwriter, it's the homeowner themselves, the illegal alien. They know when they go to closing that the documents that are referred to in closing are fictitious.
        ROMANS: In Kansas City last month, this man and an accomplice pleaded guilty to securing 24 FHA loans for illegal aliens. And in Utah, the state attorney general says illegal aliens used stolen Social Security numbers to buy 87 homes, costing the government $2.5 million.
        ROY COLE, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: One word: money. It comes down to the almighty dollar. The people I'm dealing with were selling these loans to these Hispanics and these other illegals. They just don't care. It's a matter of, hey, look, here's some -- here's another market to exploit.
        ROMANS: In Colorado, investigators say they suspect the scope of the trend nationwide is staggering.
    Tuesday's show reported that "one state, Illinois, is spending $15 million to help illegal aliens buy homes."
    Why does anyone bother to follow the law at all any more? This sort of spreading corruption will only infect more of American society with the idea that cheating and lawbreaking are no big deal.

•   •   •  

Closing door on illegal immigrants   [8/10/05]
Prof. George Grayson is an expert on Mexican politics and has turned his attention on the 2008 election in our own country, with an eye toward how the issue of immigration will play out.

    NEW HAMPSHIRE holds the first presidential primary every four years, and a candidate's showing there can make or break his or her bid for the White House. Now this small state may be at the forefront of a trend that will change national policy toward illegal immigrants.
        Some large cities such as Los Angeles and New York grant "sanctuary" to illegal immigrants. This means local police do not turn over to the feds those who have committed minor crimes.
        In contrast, W. Garrett Chamberlain, police chief of New Ipswich, N.H., has garnered widespread attention by arresting them even when politically correct jurisdictions turn a blind eye to their presence.
        Specifically, he charges them with "criminal trespass." New Hampshire law states that "a person is guilty of criminal trespass if, knowing he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he enters or remains in any place." Conviction carries a fine of up to $1,000.
        In response to his action, the police chief has received an avalanche of positive communications from soldiers and law enforcement personnel around the world.

•   •   •  

FBI: Lodi Cleric Connected To Bin Laden   [8/10/05]
Lodi California (pop. 62,000) is a central valley town, 83 miles from San Francisco and 42 miles from Sacramento. Apparently the Sons of Allah thought it a fine place to grow a terror cell away from FBI eyes in the big cities but still within striking distance. Disturbing details were revealed in court today, showing the close relationship the Lodi Muslims had with bin Laden and their intention to establish a sort of central California madrassah for the purpose of organizing terror and murder. There are around 2,000 Pakistani Muslims who reside in Lodi.

    The FBI is now drawing a link between their terror investigation in Lodi and Osama bin Laden. The government believes al Qaeda was trying to set up a school in Lodi to recruit terrorists.
        The accusations from the FBI came Tuesday morning during an immigration hearing for Shabbir Ahmed. He's the 39-year-old religious leader of the Lodi mosque -- one of five men connected to the mosque that have been arrested on immigration charges. Today the government drew links to all five and then to Osama bin Laden.
        The FBI says it has information that two of the religious leaders at this Lodi mosque were acting as intermediaries for Osama bin Laden.
        Agents say Hamid Hayat and his father Umer Hayat confessed after being arrested in June.
        Agents say Hamid Hayat admitted attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and his father admitted financing his son's trip. And both named Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammed Adil Kahn and as part of the al qaeda chain of command.
    Nice that the judge was bright enough to figure out a flight risk standing in front of him ["Lodi Imam Denied Bond"].
    In addition, long-time author and investigator John Loftus believes that a terror cell connected to the London bombers is active in Orange County.

•   •   •  

Saudi men, women learn separately in courses at Virginia Tech   [8/9/05]
More diversity in America, as Saudis bring their vile sexism with them, and an American college complies in submissive dhimmitude.

    BLACKSBURG, Va. About 60 faculty members from a Saudi Arabian university are all taking the same courses at Virginia Tech this summer, but the men are in separate classes from the women.
        Virginia Tech's faculty are instructing the professors from King Abdulaziz University on English instruction, communications, developing online courses and other subjects during the six-week program.
        Tech officials say the Saudi administrators want the men and women separated to mirror classroom settings at their home institution, and add that they don't want to impose American culture on the class participants. Several Saudi faculty members say that they do mingle together outside of class.
    Update, August 11: Professors are complaining about the gender segregation at the state-supported school.
    Eloise Coupey (search), an associate professor of marketing at the Virginia Tech, filed a complaint with the school Tuesday alleging the single-sex classes created a hostile environment for women.
        "The presence of these segregated classes on campus indicates to me that the university doesn't place a strong enough value on women's rights," Coupey said Wednesday. "This makes me feel that the university holds me in less regard than my male counterparts."

•   •   •  

New-wave Imams   [8/9/05]
More PCBS from the MSM, trying to portray Islam as "cool."

    There's a new imam in town who criticizes forced arranged marriages, insists Muslim nations need to become democracies and says it's OK to drink an ice-cold martini - if you're dying of thirst in the desert. And he uses the Quran to back him up.
        He's Mohammed Abdul Azeez of SALAM Islamic Center, and he's tall, hip and handsome.
        Like most of America's imams, Azeez, 29, is an immigrant - he comes from Egypt. And like most devout Muslim men, he has a beard, though his facial hair is more GQ than Yasser Arafat.
    Now LTG would like nothing better than to see a genuine Islamic reformation, and supports the efforts of courageous people like Irshad Manji and Asra Nomani. But the change required is not stylistic, it is fundamental. A hip demeanor and a few concessions to democratic ideals are not going to convince the many millions of Muslims who see any change to Islam as treachery. Azeez may have already been threatened as a result of the Sacramento Bee article. Irshad Manji has to have bodyguards when she speaks in public.
    For a more realistic assessment of Islam's capacity to modernize and interact with other groups, see The Myth of Islam Busted, a review of Robert Spencer's recent book, "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance."
    As for those fantasies of intercultural harmony entertained by many Western multiculturalists, consider this verse from the Qur'an: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turn to them (for friendship) is of them." As Spencer reminds us, "This is the Qur'an that pious Muslims cherish and memorize in its entirety; it is for them their primary guide to understanding how they should make their way in the world and deal with other people."

•   •   •  

Investor's Business Daily: Profile CAIR   [8/8/05]
The independently minded IBD takes on the powerful fifth-column organization, the Council for American Islamic Relations, and names names.

    CAIR should know better than anyone who does fit the terrorist profile. Three of its own officials were recently convicted of terror-related crimes. One even worked for Hooper. He's now in prison for conspiring to kill Americans.
        A lawsuit filed against CAIR by the family of former FBI official John P. O'Neill, who was killed on 9-11, charges that the group, which evolved from a known Hamas front, is "a key player in international terrorism."
        Congress is investigating CAIR and has repeatedly invited its executive director to deny the mounting terror charges under oath. But Nihad Awad, a Palestinian American, refuses. If CAIR is not tied to terrorism, why not clear the air at a televised hearing?
    The "John O'Neill" mentioned in the article was the hard-driving FBI agent profiled in PBS/Frontline episode, "The Man Who Knew."
    He had the Osama threat figured out long before most of the suits in the FBI got a clue. But after being dissed many times, he quit the agency to take a job as security chief for the World Trade Center, where he died.
    You can watch the O'Neill episode online. In one of the most compelling Frontlines ever, many viewers will wonder, "If only the FBI higher-ups had listened to O'Neill..."

•   •   •  

Cultures aren't equal   [8/8/05]
Columnist Michael Barone has been one of the biggest boosters of multicultural immigration, having stated that Mexicans are "the new Italians" in his 2001 book "The New Americans." His remarks dissing diversity are therefore a little surprising, since he is speaking as a pro-immigration conservative.

    Anyone who has been keeping up with British opinion since the July 7 bombings will have noticed that "multiculturalism" is under sharp attack.
        Multiculturalism preaches that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate their own culture apart from the national culture. Society should be not a melting pot but, in the phrase of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, "a gorgeous mosaic." That mosaic, of course, looks less gorgeous as people surveyed the work of the British-born-and-raised bombers. [...]
        Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures, but in certain specific times and places -- mostly in Britain and America, but also in various parts of Europe.
    Of course it's easy to knock Islamic immigration as the terror attacks and corpses accumulate. Elites in Europe have been bashing multiculturalism in increasing numbers, particularly since the murder of Theo van Gogh. The idea that an artist could be killed on an Amsterdam street for engaging in free speech shocked many, in a way that the thousands killed on 9/11 couldn't. But as Stalin correctly observed about human psychology: "One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
    Still, it's always good to read a moral disapproval of multiculturalism. One hopes that in future writing, Mr. Barone's criticisms will go beyond the easy targets of head-chopping Islamofascists, and will object to immigrants whose cultures are reprehensible in less flamboyant ways, e.g. Somalis who universally practice the child torture known as female genital mutilation and polygamous Hmong.

•   •   •  

Illegal immigrants: The truth   [8/7/05]
Kudos to law enforcement officer Maggie Finneran for describing the unPC reality from the front lines of crime.

    As a law enforcement officer, statistically, more than 50 percent of all cases I investigate involve illegals as either suspects or victims. Unfortunately this is not distinguishable on reported statistics because we can't discriminate among those we help.
        Most of these cases are child sex crimes and identity theft. Many convicted sex offenders are illegals that were not deported after conviction, or who have sneaked back across the border. And most of my rape and child sex cases are perpetrated by illegals.
        Identity theft and financial crimes have become a nightmare to investigate. Real estate fraud is king with the housing market and interest rates what they are. Everyone involved stands to get rich, from the real estate agent/broker, notary, buyer and seller. It's far more lucrative than peddling methamphetamine. Why run the risk of arrest when you can waltz away with $100,000 in proceeds on a sale, all in someone else's name?
        In the last six months, in every single high-dollar fraud case I investigated, the suspect was an illegal alien. And if that doesn't sting, you should see the Hummers, Navigators and Escalades these people are driving. And who ends up responsible for the loss? Surely not someone who doesn't have a peso to his name anyway. [...]
        So the next time a citizen has to wait six hours for a cop to take a burglary report on his house, he'll be understanding when he knows the officers are tied up finding and arresting Tio Juan, who just raped his 5-year-old niece.
    This opinion piece is welcome insight from someone who has seen firsthand what open borders have done. It would be great to hear more from police officers about what they experience.

•   •   •  

Islamic radicals warn of city riots   [8/7/05]
The buzzards are coming home to roost in Britain, where one of the more extreme Islamic groups now issues thinly veiled threats of violence in the streets.

    A radical Islamic group declared yesterday it would resist all attempts by Tony Blair to ban the organisation. [Full text of the prime minister's statement on anti-terror measures]
        Officials of Hizb ut-Tahrir warned that the government's proposals would be interpreted by the Muslim community as part of an 'anti-Islamic' agenda and could trigger civil unrest.
        Speakers for the Islamic political party announced they had begun seeking legal advice to fight any attempts to ban the organisation, which has existed in Britain for more than 50 years. The announcement coincided with fresh warnings that Britain's deteriorating race relations could lead to a repeat of the inner-city riots in the Eighties.
    In addition, Britain experienced numerous riots between Muslims and British in the towns of Oldham, Bradford and Burnley in the summer of 2001.
    The group Hizb ut-Tahrir was recently infiltrated by a reporter who found the radicals to be remarkably open about their seditious activities.
    I expected Hizb ut-Tahrir to be highly secretive and closed. But after a month of negotiations, the leadership committee decided to grant me exclusive access to the organisation's inner sanctum. I was going to be allowed to sit in on one of their indoctrination cells, or "study circles" as they call them.
    After years of being given a free rein by the British authorities, what did terrorist groups have to fear?
    For more frightful warnings, see "Intelligence chiefs warn Blair of home-grown 'insurgency'" of militarily trained Islamist fighters.
    Intelligence chiefs are warning Tony Blair that Britain faces a full-blown Islamist insurgency, sustained by thousands of young Muslim men with military training now resident in this country.
        The grim possibility that the two London attacks were not simply a sporadic terror campaign is being discussed at the highest levels in Whitehall. Fears of a third strike remain high this weekend, based on concrete evidence supplied by an intercepted text message and the interrogation of a terror suspect being held outside Britain, say US reports.

•   •   •  

Pinole residents fed up with city's gang element   [8/7/05]
Pinole, California, a town of around 20,000, is located about 20 miles northeast of San Francisco and has been experiencing a hispanic influx with a corresponding growth in Mexican gangs. It used to be a quiet community where Americans could live peacefully and raise their children.

    PINOLE - Residents are urging officials to snap out of a state of denial and acknowledge that gangs pervade the city's fabric.
        At a discussion of Saturday's double homicide at the edge of Fernandez Park, a last-minute addition to Tuesday's City Council meeting agenda, many residents said they no longer use the park. And some said they think of moving out of town. [...]
        Many blamed a rise in overall delinquency on out-of-town residents who favor Fernandez Park because of its convenience and a perception of sporadic and non-proactive policing.
    Note the political correctness in blaming "out-of-town residents" for the rise in violent crime. Two citizens were shot down in cold blood in a public park, yet the Contra Costa Times doesn't want to speak ill of illegal aliens, hispanic gangs or Mexicans' cultural fondness for criminals.
    Interestingly, the San Francisco Chronicle was somewhat more direct in its coverage of the double murders, in which gang member Daniel Ruiz randomly shot an American for wearing red.
    Ruiz had been carrying a photograph of a Sureño member who had been killed recently and appears to have killed Gregory and Kretchmar -- who were strangers -- in retaliation, Jewett said.
        "I'm pissed. I'm furious. I can't believe it," Kretchmar's sister, Diana Basham, said Tuesday. "He walked through the park and randomly chose who he was going to kill that day."
        Sureños, or southerners, and Norteños, or northerners, are offshoots and loose affiliates of two Latino prison gangs that have been at war since the late 1960s. Each of the victims in Pinole was white.

•   •   •  

Dean: GOP Will Try to Scapegoat Immigrants   [8/6/05]
Dem Party Chairman Howard Dean has a screw loose if he thinks that pandering to hispanics will help his floudering party. As Steve Sailer has demonstrated, the media myth of hispanic Republicans is so much hot air, and pitching to citizens remains the winning strategy. At this demographic point, there are simply not enough hispanic voters for either party to worry about except in a few Congressional districts carved out to assure an ethnic rep. Even citizen Latinos show less interest in the voting booth than European-descended Americans. It's a cultural thing.
    Dean attacked Rep. Tancredo viciously, although all the Colorado congressman has ever done is work to make immigration legal, controlled and reduced, a situation which citizens across the political spectrum greatly desire. For example, in 2003 76 percent of Democrats said "we should restrict and control people coming into the country to live more than we do now."

    "Do you know who the scapegoats are going to be? Immigrants," he said. "In Colorado, the chairman of the Republican Party endorsed Tom Tancredo for re-election. That is morally reprehensible. The governor of California, a supposed moderate Republican, invited the Minutemen to visit California. We do not need vigilante justice."
        Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., has drawn the ire of Hispanic groups in calling for tougher immigration enforcement and a proposal to tax some of the money immigrants send home. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a radio interview in April, said the civilian border patrols known as the Minutemen "have done a terrific job."
    The real corker, though, was the following:
    "A strong Mexico means a strong America, and our ties must not be based on the petulance of the president of the United States," Dean said
    If the United States needed to depend on a "strong" Mexico, this country would be in sad shape indeed. (See "Mexico Meltdown Watch" to examine that nation's rapid descent into a full-blown narco-state.) Mexico recently became #1 in a new category — kidnapping.

•   •   •  

Deportation not fair, says extremist (on benefits)   [8/6/05]
Here is the kind of vile creature whom Britain has actually been supporting with welfare: Sheik Omar Bakri has received benefits worth at least £300,000, as he has been preaching the destruction of western civilization to be replaced by a global caliphate.

    He has praised the September 11 terrorists as 'magnificent', called Israel 'a cancer' and said homosexuals should be 'thrown from Big Ben'.
        In January, he declared that Britain had become a 'land of war', and called on Muslims to unite behind Al Qaeda. He has supported suicide bombings and urged his followers to kill non-Muslims ' wherever, whenever'.
    Bakri gets additional attention in the undercover piece, "Inside the sect that loves terror" which mentions that the sheik referred to the 7/7 bombers as the "fantastic four." He is not alone in being a welfare queen.
    The Saviour Sect was established 10 months ago when its predecessor group Al-Muhajiroun was disbanded after coming under close scrutiny by the authorities. Its members meet in secret in halls, followersı homes and parks. They are so opposed to the British state that they see it as their duty to make no economic contribution to the nation. One member warned our undercover reporter against getting a job because it would be contributing to the kuffar (non-Muslim) system.
        Instead, the young follower, Nasser, who receives £44 job seekers' allowance a week, said it was permissible to "live off benefits", just as the prophet Mohammed had lived off the state while attacking it at the same time. Even paying car insurance was seen as supporting the system. "All the (Saviour Sect) brothers drive without insurance," he said.
        The reporter became a member of the sect three weeks before the July 7 bombings. From the start he was taught that it was his duty to destroy the kuffar. Moderate Muslims who did not believe in the overthrow of the British government and its replacement by an Islamic state were held in equal disdain.

•   •   •  

PC War on Terror   [8/5/05]
The always interesting Diana West remarks on the public's desire to put political correctness aside and face reality as it is.

    But getting back to the best thing that's happened of late: Maybe all the side-stepping euphemisms, from struggle to fatwa, don't matter as much any more. Elites on the left and the right, in the government and in the media, can persist in their PC babble, all of which seems to translate to "Better Dead Than Rude" (slogan attributed to John Derbyshire). But maybe some people — the ones Ronald Reagan always trusted and Abraham Lincoln said you couldn't always fool — are starting to figure things out, and without the help of elites. There is intriguing anecdotal evidence that non-pol, non-pundit citizens are looking for the kind of debate that is beyond the ken of the most prominent officials and journalists.

•   •   •  

Mexico: High-powered weapons fueling bloody drug battles come from U.S.   [8/5/05]
Interesting that el Presidente Fox thought the provenance of the weaponry (machine guns, grenades, bazookas and rocket launders) currently turning Nuevo Laredo into Baghdad East was somehow important.

    "The volume of high-technology weapons that enter Mexico and are in the hands of drug traffickers and other professional criminals are those that come from the United States," Ruben Aguilar said at his daily briefing. [...]
        More than 100 people have been killed in Nuevo Laredo this year, including nearly 20 police officers. Authorities on both sides of the border say Mexico's two main drug gangs are fighting for control of the area's smuggling routes into U.S. territory. The violence has continued largely unabated, even after Fox sent federal agents and soldiers to restore order.
    Some might opine that the failure of the Mexican army to quell the violence of the city was the important issue. (See "Mexico Meltdown Watch".) Americans should regard the complete breakdown of law in a city bordering the United States as a serious security problem because the violence will not stay there.
    For more on the situation in Nuevo Laredo, see Fox News recent front-line reporting from Steve Harrigan, who calls the situation "open warfare." In addition to the fighting between the two cartels, 43 American citizens have been kidnapped there in the last year.
    Also, the Telegraph (UK) has "My wife thought I was crazy to take this job, says police chief"

•   •   •  

'Sheik' quip lands banker in sensitivity training   [8/5/05]
The seditious Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Canadian branch in this case, continues to spin its evil web, insisting that even an imaginary ill mention of Islam requires the speaker to undergo a humiliating reeducation camp experience to ensure proper political correctness:

    In April, [economist Jeff Rubin] predicted that oil prices would double by 2010. Demand will outstrip supply because "this time around there won't be any tap that some appeased mullah or sheik can suddenly turn back on," he wrote
    Jeff Rubin was forced to confess that "in hindsight, the comments were insensitive." CAIR devotes an enormous amount of energy suppressing speech critical of Islam. Daniel Pipes devoted an entire chapter of his book "Militant Islam Reaches America" to CAIR's anti-free-speech activities.
    Why doesn't some conservative or just plain reason-based group offer an alternative to "sensitivity training" that would present the facts of history relating to Islam to persons afflicted with political correctness?
    The program could be called "reality training" and would posit that the truth is more important than sensitivity.
    Too radical?
    Update: For a recent example of CAIR's campaign to squelch free speech, see this link where CAIR denounces this cartoon by Arizona artist Steve Benson. (Another by Benson.)

•   •   •  

The View from the Activist Front Lines: A Review of "Fighting Immigration Anarchy"   [8/4/05]
Vdare.com publishes Brenda Walker's review of the new book by Dan Sheehy.

•   •   •  

Cracks Found in Medicaid Verification   [8/4/05]
Down where the rubber meets the road, the government is not protecting the taxpayer from the illegal alien invasion. Furthermore, the foreigner has dozens of open-borders organizations (e.g. the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative) helping him game the system to rip off government programs. Just a few decades ago, legal immigrants were required to prove that they would not be a public charge before they were allowed to enter the country. Today the whole array of benefits is offered to anyone who breaks in.

    A majority of states don't verify claims of U.S. citizenship by those seeking Medicaid, which creates the potential for illegal immigrants to access the health care program, an inspector general's report has found.
        "The quality assurance checks aren't there. That's how we see it," said Jodi Nudelman, an acting regional inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services. "And it's our sense the people may not be aware of that."
        Federal law says that, with a few exceptions, a person must be a citizen to receive Medicaid benefits. States can accept a signed declaration as proof of U.S. citizenship. Forty-six states do.
        Only Montana, New York, New Hampshire and Texas require applicants to submit documents verifying citizenship.

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Gang Violence   [8/4/05]
You know that gangs have kicked up a notch in public consciousness when the PBS Newshour notices them, though they are called "international gangs," so no "immigrant" will suffer diminished self-esteem. At least PBS makes clear the extreme violence of the Maras and similar gangs:

    JEFFREY KAYE: Twenty-eight people dead and 14 wounded -- that was the toll from an assault on a public bus in Honduras last December. The attackers, who sprayed the bus with automatic weapons, were members of a street gang called Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. The gang, spread throughout Central America and the United States, has earned a reputation for ruthlessness.
        MS-13 was born 20 years ago in Los Angeles, in a neighborhood of Central American refugees. It's an area where gang violence remains epidemic. In the past five years, LA has seen more than 23,000 violent crimes attributed to gangs, according to police.
        In neighborhoods often marked with graffiti, MS-13 members extort money from prostitutes and drug dealers. Police say MS-13 stands out for its viciousness, often victimizing law-abiding residents and merchants, such as flower seller Susana Antillon.
        SUSANA ANTILLON (Translated): At about 11:00 every night in my neighborhood, they gather together in cars and then they head out to graffiti different places, do robberies, assault people, break windows. It's a disaster, just a disaster.
    You can watch the segment using RealPlayer.
    On the same subject, USA Today writes that "U.S. gang membership may be higher than reported".
    A recent Justice Department report on the threat posed by gangs underestimated the number of gang members nationwide because thousands of police agencies refused to provide information about their jurisdictions.
        The surprising lack of cooperation by police agencies means the Justice Department's estimate of more than 700,000 gang members nationwide could be too low by at least 200,000, said Patrick Word, vice chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, a group that helps collect data for the Justice Department.

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Library's Spanish outreach criticized   [8/3/05]
Denver's public libraries have been extreme in promoting a bi-lingual agenda, and that is bad enough. But responsible citizens have discovered the most reprehensible sort of Spanish-language porn comic books on library shelves, readily available for children. Denver talk-radio host Peter Boyles has been blowing the whistle on this horror. More info also here.
    Remember, diversity is our strength!
    But seriously, Mexican violence against women is deeply rooted in culture, as I wrote recently in Mexican Sexual Diversity. For example, the custom of kidnapping for sex remains legal in Oaxaca, and was even called harmless and "romantic" by a leading Mexican legislator there.
    For a disturbing look at how hateful and misogynous Mexican comic books can be, see The Trouble with White Women — NOT for children!

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Racism Rears Its Ugly Head in Mexico   [8/3/05]
The controversy over the Mexican comic character Memin, a Sambo-esque creature beloved in Mexico, is still boiling along. Cinnamon Stillwell adds a welcome historical perspective, including Mexico's 300 years of African slavery.

    It turns out that racism in Mexico, both against blacks and dark-skinned indigenous Indians, has a long history. Mexico's colonial past has left its mark on modern-day society. Prejudice toward "pureblood" Indians from those who are "mixed-blood" (Spanish and Indian) is rife. Almost uniformly, people who are darker-skinned and of Indian descent make up the peasantry and working classes, while lighter-skinned, Spanish-descent Mexicans are in the ruling elite. Fox himself comes from that background, as his appearance makes evident.
        This inequality may explain in part why the majority of immigrants coming into the United States fall into the darker-skinned category. Beyond the failure of the Mexican government to sustain a decent economy, darker-skinned Mexicans have a difficult time getting work because of job discrimination. According to the Web site IndigenousPeople.net, "sixty percent of Indians over 12 years of age are already unemployed, and of those who work, most earn less than the minimum wage of about $2.50 a day." The same story notes that Mexico City's top restaurants don't allow patrons to bring along Indian domestic workers for fear of tarnishing their business image. [...]
        Although the study of slavery tends to focus exclusively on the United States, it was widely practiced in the ancient world and later by various people around the world, including of course Europe. It was the Spanish slave trade that first brought Africans to Mexico, as early as 1520. Although slaves were initially treated more like personal servants and Christianized before their arrival, the Spanish crown soon expanded the practice into a full-blown slave trade. The population of blacks grew to outnumber the Spanish and eventually reached 200,000. With Mexico's independence in 1829, slavery was finally abolished after almost 300 years.

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Multicultural Britain is not working, says Tory   [8/3/05]
It's good to see at least some conservatives are speaking out against the continuing political correctness in Britain, epitomized recently by the policy that police must exhibit absurd politeness toward possible terrorists. "Stop and search: A tough choice" revealed that arresting officers should leave their shoes outside, not use dogs and not raid before dawn in order to coddle Muslim sensibilities. Tippy-toeing around imaginary hurt feelings does not result in good police work.
    Anyway, the important point is that the failed ideology of multiculturalism is being discussed by politicians in a factual manner. Tony Blair should wake up and smell the reality.

    Muslims must start integrating into mainstream British society, says David Davis, the shadow home secretary and front-runner to take over the Conservative leadership.
        Writing in The Daily Telegraph today, Mr Davis signalled a significant shift away from the policy of multi-culturalism, which allows people of different faiths and cultures to settle without expecting them to integrate.
        "Often, the authorities have seemed more concerned with encouraging distinctive identities rather than promoting the common values of nationhood," Mr Davis writes. [...]
        Mr Davis's call for an end to multiculturalism is an indication of a fundamental rethink under way within the political parties and government over relations with the Muslim community after last month's suicide bomb attacks in London.
    David Davis' opinion piece is "Why Cultural Tolerance Cuts Both Ways". A related editorial in the same paper is "Obsessive correctness betrays all of us".
    Readers' comments about multiculturalism are available on the online BBC.

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Nabbing Illegals   [8/3/05]
A sensible editorial remarks on ICE's arrest of 1000 gang members. It's certainly a good point, made a bit too kindly, that the line between so-called "good" illegal aliens and criminal ones is not all that clear, since all illegals commit more crimes than merely crossing the border unlawfully. In addition to the misbehaviors mentioned, nearly all illegals procure a fake Social Security number, a felony.

    Originally intended to dismantle only the MS-13 gang, ICE's anti-gang initiative, Operation Community Shield, extended its mission in May to track more than 80 violent street gangs in 30 states. Almost all of these gangs consist of illegal aliens from Central and Latin American, though a few, like the Asian Boyz and the Jamaican Posse, reveal that the problem is global. Of the 1,000 gang members who have been arrested this year, 90 percent have been illegal aliens. Suspects were caught in nearly every major U.S. city, as well as in the rural areas of Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska. "We're just getting started," said Marcy Forman, ICE's director of investigations. Let's hope so. Street gangs now account for 93 percent of all homicides in which organized crime is the suspected cause, according to the FBI.
        The problem also casts a dark shadow over immigration policies, although we needed no further evidence. Immigration enthusiasts often argue that the majority of illegal aliens come to this country to find honest work. The problem is that while most are not associated with criminal organizations like MS-13, many are indebted to them. The influence of such gangs begins in Central and Latin America, where the strongest control the migration routes north to the United States. Honest immigrants often must cooperate with them to enter the country; young illegals who can't find work often turn to their violent benefactors. Many of Monday's suspects had prior arrests or had already been deported.
        The influence MS-13 wields in border crossings has led to speculation of a connection to the al Qaeda terror network. As Jerry Seper reported last fall in this paper, a top al Qaeda lieutenant is believed to have met with MS-13 officials to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border. In February, former Homeland Security Deputy Secretary James Loy suggested to a Senate committee that al Qaeda may have targeted the MS-13's smuggling operations to gain entry to this country.

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France's Polygamy Problem   [8/2/05]
France has between 150,000 and 400,000 persons living in polygamous situations, despite the fact that the practice was made illegal in 1993. The government offically is against polygamy, but its actions are weak and show a lack of resolve. Presumably it doesn't want to seem negative about non-western cultural activities.
    However, the practice of having multiple wives is harmful to women. If multiple spouses were so great, then polyandry (having more than one husband) would be common rather than extremely rare.

    Parliamentarian Chantal Brunel has taken up the issue and would like the government to be more aggressive in dealing with it. "I think we have to send a strong message to other countries and to foreigners who live here and don't respect the laws on our soil. Polygamy is completely illegal in France, and yet it exists."
        Brunel sponsored legislation last year calling for state tutors to manage the welfare benefits of polygamous families. Though the bill didn't pass, she did manage to draw attention to the issue of polygamy and continued to lobby her colleagues for more action in tackling it. There's now a growing sense that France's current policy isn't working, and that the country needs to take a tougher stance if it wants polygamy to become a thing of the past.
    For a subject not unrelated, see "France a Nation of Losers".

•   •   •  

Mexicans sending more money home   [8/2/05]
Remittances sent "home" to Mexico by its citizens have soared 18 percent from last year, and will likely reach $20 billion this year. The cash is a major reason why Vicente Fox et al are determined to open the border even wider, in fact to create a political union between the U.S. and Mexico similar to the EU, an arrangement that would harm America enormously.

    The remittances have helped underpin Mexico's economy and are the main source of income in many poor areas. Around one in five Mexicans receives money from a relative working in the United States.
        Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean have doubled in the past five years as the number of migrant workers grows and they gain better access to education and higher-paying jobs.
        The Mexican government says there are nearly 10.2 million Mexicans living in the United States and another 16 million there who are descended from Mexican origin.
    Without the easy money of remittances, Mexicans would demand long-overdue political and economic reform. The current corrupt situation keeps the top segment of Mexican society very wealthy, living "like maharajahs" according to Prof. George Grayson. Mexico is one of the lowest-taxed nations in Latin America (half the rate of Brazil), a fact which El Presidente Fox has readily admitted.
    Bottom line, Mexico Is Rich, and has the highest GDP in all of Latin America. It could easily afford to take better care of its own people, rather than dump them on the American taxpayer.

•   •   •  

Perilous infectious diseases rise in county   [8/2/05]
Even ritzy Palm Beach is not safe from the infectious diseases which open borders have welcomed from the third world. In fact, the "cheap" labor that the rich are hiring to cook their food and care for their children turns out to be very expensive in terms of health.

    Tuberculosis is up almost 25 percent from 1998 in Palm Beach County; during the past year alone, the number of TB cases here increased 14 percent. Increases also were reported in Martin and Miami-Dade counties. But most other urban areas in Florida reported decreases last year, including a 22 percent drop in Broward and a 38 percent drop in Pinellas. [...]
        "Some people get scared to death by these things," said Dr. Jean Malecki, the county health director. "There is something very shocking about these diseases in a community so many people associate with the height of affluence. But you have to remember that Palm Beach County is a study in contrasts: extreme wealth right next to extreme poverty, old line society employing the most recent immigrants in their back yard. Lots of diversity." [...]
        Medical investigators say the increase in communicable disease here is fueled, in part, by the number of immigrants, legal and not, arriving in South Florida in record numbers. The last census estimate indicated that one in five county residents is foreign-born, and almost half of those have arrived since 1990. That does not include the tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants living here, many of whom are afraid to seek medical care for fear of being deported.
    The article describes people who would seem unlikely to contract tuberculosis — home-grown Americans who were unlucky enough to be near persons carrying contagious TB.

•   •   •  

If you ever feel like killing your neighbour, a chimp can tell you why   [8/1/05]
The tribal instinct is buried deeply within our nature, and no amount of sensitivity training or celebrating diversity will change that fact. Human beings feel safer around people similar to themselves, who share their values and language.

    Racism is not instinctive — the different human races evolved too recently for that instinct to have developed — but group loyalties are deeply felt, and this experiment shows that both black and white Americans have learnt to treat the other race as a different group, and that while we humans easily forgive members of our own group their transgressions, we treat the transgressions of members of other groups as casi belli.
        The psychologist Judith Rich, in her book The Nurture Assumption, explained how separate group identities are maintained when different cultures share the same urban space. It is a matter of critical mass. When a single Muslim family, say, inhabits a northern town, it acclimatises to northern culture, chip butties and all. But once a school contains sufficient numbers of Muslim children, they forge their own separate, potentially paranoid, identity.
        The lesson of science is that a heterogeneous society aspiring to internal peace must follow the melting pot and induct all children into a common culture. That may involve flag worship and other embarrassing ceremonies, but the celebration of diversity may be, biologically, a mistake.
    The mention of "flag worship" is odd: perhaps the author means the persistent fondness which Americans have for their patriotic symbols. The writer, Terence Kealey, is a British academic, a fact which may explain the curious remark.
    At any rate, the points Dr. Kealey makes about diversity are important because they are presented within a scientific framework. Sociological research is showing the unPC truth that humans quickly develop a group identity based on defense against the Other.
    It would be nice if public policy were based on a realistic assessment of human nature, not an enforced kumbaya of utopian fantasies. For example, the multiple race riots between blacks and hispanics in Los Angeles high schools last spring were entirely predictable, despite the enforced diversity ideology throughout California schools.

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