LimitsToGrowth Archive

 

September 2006
 

Saudi Arabia to Construct an Iraqi Border Fence   [9/30/06]
While constructing a fence on our southern border is still up in the air, practical people elsewhere understand that fences work.

    Riyad, 28 Sept. (AKI) - Saudi Arabia has announced that it is pushing ahead with plans to build a fence along its border with Iraq. The 900 kilometre fence will be build to improve security and bar terrorists from crossing into Iraq, as well as to prevent smuggling. The barricade will cost an estimated 12 billion dollars, and will take between five to six years to construct. A Saudi security adviser, Nawaf Obaid, said: "The main issue is to seal the border on the Iraqi side since there has been almost no [Iraqi security] presence since the US invasion".
        Iraqi officials have repeatedly complained about millitants crossing into Iraq from neighbouring countries, to conduct operations against the US-led coallotion forces. Saudi Arabia wants to stop drug smugglers, weapon dealers, and illegal migrants from crossing into the country from Iraq.
The security fence built by Israel to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers has been a tremendous success.

•   •   •  

Effort Aims To Push Muslims To the Polls   [9/29/06]
Who donated the money for this? The Saudi royal family? Keep in mind that the Saudi have sent $50 million to improve Islam's image in the US, so there is plenty of money for project like this.
    And how secure can an ATM voter registration machine be?

    National Muslim civic leaders announced a new push yesterday to get the country's estimated 2.2 million registered Muslim voters to the polls, unveiling a Web site that spells out key races of "Muslim interest" and ATM-like voter registration machines that will be put in mosques and Islamic student centers.
        The campaign by the Washington-based Muslim American Society is a continuation of an effort that has been underway since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to increase American Muslims' involvement in the political process. A 2005 survey by the Muslim American Political Action Committee said 84 percent of registered Muslims voted in the November 2004 election, compared to 41 percent in 2000.
Here's the special Muzzie voting site.

•   •   •  

China Tried To Blind U.S. Sats With Laser   [9/28/06]
This story was discussed on Wednesday's Lou Dobbs show. It is a reminder of what a terrible position that business elites have placed this country in their pursuit of creating a globalized economy, beyond the reach of citizens and elected governments to effect. China has never been a friend, but they supply near-slave labor at 20 cents an hour, so business interests have insisted that we have open trade with them.

    China has fired high-power lasers at U.S. spy satellites flying over its territory in what experts see as a test of Chinese ability to blind the spacecraft, according to sources.
        It remains unclear how many times a ground-based laser was tested against U.S. spacecraft or whether it was successful.
        But the combination of China's efforts and advances in Russian satellite-jamming capabilities that illustrate vulnerabilities to the U.S. space network are driving U.S. Air Force plans to develop new space architectures and highly classified systems, according to sources. [...]
        Pentagon officials, however, have kept quiet about China's efforts as part of a Bush administration policy to not anger Beijing, which is a leading U.S. trading partner and seen as key to dealing with North Korea and Iran.
The following is from the Dobbs transcript.
    ROMANS: In its annual report to Congress, the Pentagon briefly mentioned the threat, quote, "At least one of China's satellite attack systems appears to be a ground-based laser designed to damage or blind imaging satellites."
        What's new here is that according to "Defense News," China has been using them, showcasing serious weaknesses in America's intelligence gathering and space defense.
        RICHARD FISHER, INT'L. ASSESSMENT & STRATEGY CTR.: By my estimation, China has had the capability to do significant damage to our satellites for about a decade. And what is to stop them from putting high energy lasers in Cuba or potentially in Venezuela.
        ROMANS: Security experts say China quietly building a ground-based laser system, with its own military engineers, Russian hardware, and likely stolen or black market U.S. technology. All aimed, security experts say, to freeze out the U.S. in any conflict in the region.
        ROMANS: Richard Fisher says it's a national scandal that Washington is downplaying this threat from China. "Defense News" says the Pentagon is keeping quiet on this as part of a White House policy to avoid angering the Chinese because Beijing is needed to help with Iran and North Korea -- and because -- of the very important trading relationship the United States has with China. Don't want to make the Chinese mad.
        DOBBS: No, you would not want the Communist Chinese to get upset in any way, and diminish that more than $200 billion trade deficit we have with them each year.

•   •   •  

Top-flight colleges fail civics, study says   [9/27/06]
Should anyone be surprised that college seniors know very little about the history of the United States and the civic basis of our democracy? Today's leftist curricula emphasize anti-American ideas and nutty utopianism rather than the traditional education once taught to college students. Notice that it is the "top" universities that do the worst.

    Seniors at UC Berkeley, the nation's premier public university, got an F in their basic knowledge of American history, government and politics in a new national survey, and students at Stanford University didn't do much better, getting a D.
        Out of 50 schools surveyed, Cal ranked 49th and Stanford 31st in how well they are increasing student knowledge about American history and civics between the freshman and senior years. And they're not alone among major universities in being fitted for a civics dunce cap.
        Other poor performers in the study were Yale, Duke, Brown and Cornell universities. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was the tail-ender behind Cal, ranking 50th. The No. 1 ranking went to unpretentious Rhodes College in Memphis. [...]
        But he said, it is true that Stanford focuses more on teaching theory and critical-thinking skills than facts. The teaching of facts and historical dates is considered "old-fashioned" in academe, he said.
That's it — "facts" are just plain unfashionable among today's academic elite!
    More details at the Crisis in Citizenship, including an executive summary and a brief sample quiz.

•   •   •  

Violent crime called 'biggest threat' to Latin America   [9/27/06]
The recent remarks of the Colombian vice-president are worth noting, since so much of Latin America is moving north. Francisco Santos believes the plague of gang crime has spread beyond his country to the entire continent.

    "Crime is the biggest problem of the next decade," he said. "It will hinder tourism, investment and threaten democracy.
        "In most countries, you have very weak judicial and police systems. If governments do not act they will lose control of the streets." [...]
        "Look at what happened in Sao Paulo," said Mr Santos, referring to attacks on police and commuters by gangs protesting when one of their leaders was moved to a different prison.
        Street gangs have proliferated throughout Central America in the 15 years since the end of civil wars. Guatemala has called in United Nations crimefighters in an admission that its own police forces cannot cope.
In Brazil, a shockingly high murder of 150 per day rate was recently compared with that of a war zone.
    These days, illegal alien gangsters from Latin America can be found infesting small American towns, e.g. the Salvadoran arrested Monday in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, a town of around 22,000 residents.
    And in the District of Columbia, a gangster trial has highlighted the core beliefs of the group. MS-13's Primary Goal Is Killing, Prosecutor Says: "Members of the MS-13 street gang live by the motto 'We kill, we rape, we control.' "

•   •   •  

What do you do with all the farmers?   [9/27/06]
Here in America, we can forget that much of the world has not yet made the transition from an agricultural economy. In fact, around half of the workers in the non-industrialized world are still engaged in farming, and their integration is fraught with difficulty for both them and the first world.

    Mexico's present political crisis is a case in point. The left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has refused to accept defeat in the recent elections, encamped hundreds of thousands of followers in the capital, and formed an alternative cabinet. Because Lopez Obrador controls the police force of Mexico City, where he was governor, he cannot be chased away, leaving Mexico in a predicament of dual power. The impoverished half of the Mexican people have little to lose, leaving Mexico's long-term prospects doubtful. The United States already has taken in perhaps 20 million economic refugees from its southern neighbor, so many that immigration dominates the political agenda in many states, repeating, as it were, the role the US played with respect to Europe during the 19th century. If the US were to restrict immigration, Mexico's safety valve would close and the political situation might worsen.
        During the 1930s, Mexico's post-revolutionary leaders imported Josef Stalin's collective-farm model to keep peasants on the land and out of trouble. This policy left half or more of Mexicans in unrelieved rural misery. Now the lid has blown off the pot.
        As Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos told the London Financial Times on September 19, violent crime is the greatest threat to most of Latin America. Caracas is now the world's most dangerous city, despite (or because of) the populism of Hugo Chavez, just ahead of Sao Paolo. The street price of cocaine has fallen from US$250 a gram in the late 1980s to as little as $50 today despite US-sponsored efforts to suppress coca production, because there are too many farmers. Latin American cities already are in collapse and cannot absorb more people from the countryside. Short of starving out several million farmers in Peru and Colombia, there is no way to suppress cocaine traffic. That is the sort of thing Stalin was happy to do, but not George Bush.

•   •   •  

Intimidating the West, from Rushdie to Benedict   [9/26/06]
Daniel Pipes again uses a list to good effect, showing a pattern of growing jihadist behavior over time. Interestingly, Pipes does not consider the acceleration of Islamic violence to be a "conspiracy" although he recognizes that in the cartoon jihad case, the anger was purposely spread by Danish imams across the Muslim world, including some fake cartoons added.
    Okay, the riots weren't a "conspiracy" because the activity was in the open, but the spread of jihad violence against infidels was planned and organized by Islamic leaders.

    •   1989 - Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses prompted Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death edict against him and his publishers, on the grounds that the book "is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran." Subsequent rioting led to over 20 deaths, mostly in India.
    •   1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court refused to remove a 1930s frieze showing Muhammad as lawgiver that decorates the main court chamber; the Council on American-Islamic Relations made an issue of this, leading to riots and injuries in India.
    •   2002 - The American evangelical leader Jerry Falwell calls Muhammad a "terrorist," leading to church burnings and at least 10 deaths in India.
    •   2005 - An incorrect story in Newsweek, reporting that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet," is picked up by the famous Pakistani cricketer, Imran Khan, and prompts protests around the Muslim world, leading to at least 15 deaths..
    •   February 2006 - The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes twelve cartoons of Muhammad, spurring a Palestinian Arab imam in Copenhagen, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, to excite Muslim opinion against the Danish government. He succeeds so well, hundreds die, mostly in Nigeria.
    •   September 2006 - Pope Benedict XVI quotes a Byzantine emperor's views that what is new in Islam is "evil and inhuman," prompting the firebombing of churches and the murder of several Christians.
For an interesting historical view of the Islamic war against the west, scroll down to the YouTube video here.

•   •   •  

The environmental load of 300 million: How heavy?   [9/26/06]
The Christian Science Monitor has been running a weekly series on America at 300 million. Like many such, it does the good news/ bad news tapdance, saying that increased regulation has improved the environment, as indeed it has in many ways. But technological and regulatory solutions are only temporary when powerful elites want endless population growth.

    The danger, experts say, is that the US may simply have postponed the day of reckoning. Major environmental problems remain, and some are getting worse - all of them in one way or another connected to US population growth, which is expected to hit 400 million around midcentury. Some experts put the average American's "ecological footprint" - the amount of land and water needed to support an individual and absorb his or her waste - at 24 acres. By that calculation, the long-term "carrying capacity" of the US would sustain less than half of the nation's current population.
Actually, the 400 million mark will be hit much earlier than "midcentury" unless the headlong growth is stopped. For example, if the 1990-2000 growth rate of 13.1 percent continues, the year 2030 would see 407 million residents and 2050 would have 520 million.

•   •   •  

Here Come the Iraqi Restaurants!   [9/25/06]
Mark Krikorian noticed a New York Times letter warning of millions of Iraqi refugees.

    "Iraq's Endangered Journalists," by Ali Fadhil (Op-Ed, Sept. 6), evokes a third-rail issue that receives little public attention: the accommodation of refugees and asylum seekers who are victims of political upheavals, including civil war. These are grounds under United States statutes for the resettlement of as many as two million Iraqi refugees who are associated with American operations in Iraq.
        Our commitment to the principles of global humanitarian response dictates their rescue, as we have done in the past for Hungarians, Cubans and Vietnamese, among others.
        As American withdrawal nears, our legislators need to think twice about reckless changes to the Patriot Act, which has amended the Immigration and Naturalization Act to preclude people with terrorist histories and tendencies from slipping into the United States under a refugee cover.
       
        Robert Lockwood, Williamsburg, Va., Sept. 6, 2006
        The writer is a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Islamic immigration is up to an alarming degree, yet Washington seems unable to close the doors to enemies.

•   •   •  

Officer Down in Houston   [9/25/06]
Houston Officer Rodney Johnson Officer Rodney Johnson has entered the tragic list of police killed by illegal aliens. Mr. Johnson will likely be well remembered, because Houston supports sanctuary for unlawful foreigners, a fact which may have factored into this case.

•   •   •  

India-Born American Battles Visa Program   [9/25/06]
The attack against American workers by information technology employers continues, as shown by the attempts of a naturalized citizen born in India to get a job here.

    Sona Shah didn't need flow charts or fancy diagrams to make her point during a U.S. Senate subcommittee briefing earlier this year.
        She just needed her cell phone.
        First, she dialed the number listed in a "Help Wanted" ad for a computer programmer. Then she let everyone listen to the ensuing conversation.
        "I said, 'Hi. I'm an American citizen. I'm looking for a job,"' Shah recalled. "They said, 'No, that job's been set aside for an H-1B employee."'
        The staffers at the legislative briefing were stunned. "There were audible gasps," Shah said.
        That is the kind of tactic the 34-year-old Montclair, N.J., woman has used in her crusade to reform the H-1B visa classification, which she says U.S. employers have used to turn Indian immigrants into underpaid indentured servants -- and to deny American citizens jobs.

•   •   •  

NAFTA highway or new silk road?   [9/24/06]
The treasonous North American Union has gotten little attention from the MSM, so this article in the Washington Times is welcome. The author emphasizes the rejiggering of the American transportation system to facilitate China as the accepted manufacturer of goods. One element is the Kansas City interior "port."

    The final terminus of the planned transport network is the Kansas City, Mo., SmartPort. Its Web site proclaims, "The idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but... that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality."
        The Chinese firm Hutchison Whampoa has partnered with Wal-Mart in a $300 million expansion of Lazaro Cardenas to handle perhaps 2 million containers annually by the end of the decade. The American Chamber of Commerce in Guangdong, China, has held seminars promoting this Mexican port. Punta Colonet, about 150 miles south of Tijuana, is also eyed for expansion to offload millions of additional containers filled with Asian imports. Kansas City Southern railway has bought the Mexican rail links and the State of Texas is negotiating with a Spanish firm to build a corridor of toll roads from the border heading north.
Lou Dobbs discussed the reason for this strategy in August. America's transportation infrastructure grew up around US manufacturing. Now that everything is made in China, the West Coast ports can't keep up, so Mexico will take part of the transportation burden. That's the scheme of the globalist elite, who include plans for Chinese and Mexican employment, but nothing for Americans.
    BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): America's ports are crowded with volume expected to double over the next 14 years. Worse, our ports are inefficient compared to ports in Europe and Asia which move five to seven times as many containers as ours. And we are not investing in our ports by building more or improving the way the goods get moved off of our ports.
        The ports that are being built to supply the United States are being built in Mexico. There are three ports that already serve the American market, and a fourth is now being planned in Punta Colonet.
        GARY HUFBAUER, INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS: This is a wonderful opportunity for Mexico to develop alternative ports that will serve not only California, but the whole United States.
The map tells the story. NAFTA superhighway for the North American Union

•   •   •  

'Border baby' boom strains S. Texas   [9/24/06]
Why is this illegal alien smiling? Socorro Gonzalez is holding jackpot baby #4, whose medical costs for birth were paid by the US taxpayer. ''I don't see why they should deny a medical service if we're here struggling for this country," she said. Socorro Gonzalez with jackpot baby #4
    We taxpayers remain the unwilling HMO for Mexico, particularly when it comes to birthing babies.

    Rising numbers of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America are streaming into Texas to give birth, straining hospitals and costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, health officials say.
        Doctors and health officials say they are overwhelmed by both the new arrivals and those immigrant mothers who already are in the state. Even Houston's feeling the pinch. An estimated 70 percent to 80 percent of the 10,587 births at Ben Taub General Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital last year were to undocumented immigrants, administrators say.
        Also feeling the strain is Starr County, an already poor South Texas county that has the region's only taxpayer-supported hospital district.
        Immigrants "want a U.S.-born baby" and know that emergency room staffers don't collect any money up front, said Dr. Mario Rodriguez, an obstetrician in Starr County.
        "The word is out: Come to Starr County and get delivered for free. Why pay $1,000 in Mexico when you can get it for free?" Rodriguez said.
Why indeed? Particularly when a US-born infant is a jackpot baby, a little citizen meal-ticket that can bring a pile of welfare goodies into the illegal alien household.
    And here's another heart-warming story about foreigners using Uncle Sucker's generous medical services: Father of sick boy spared from jail time. A Peruvian family moved here illegally, the father committed a felony (having a fraudulant Social Security number) yet the kid gets an apparently free bone marrow transplant (worth about $250,000) on the taxpayer's tab.
    A former human resources manager at an insurance company in Peru, Onetti came to Orlando on vacation with his family in 2001. While there, Brenertt fell ill and was diagnosed with leukemia.
        The family returned to Peru but left because the medical treatment was inadequate. Onetti and his wife, Silvia Patricia Lozada de Onetti, returned with their son to Orlando on a tourist visa, but overstayed. Onetti took a job cleaning as a janitor, and his son began receiving treatment.
The whole world knows they can come here for their ultra-expensive organ transplants, kidney dialysis and whatever else they want. Another famous case was that of Jesica Santillan, an illegal alien teen whose family brought her to American to get free medical care, specifically a heart transplant, which turned into two after the first one failed.

•   •   •  

Cartels push Mexican governor to limit   [9/23/06]
Is the Mexican government finally admitting that their drug cartel problem is pushing them down the road of becoming the new Colombia? Investors are now thinking twice about sinking cash into the increasingly lawless state.
    Not that there is much the Mexicans can do about the crime meltdown, since the army, police force and goverment officials are on the payroll of the cartels.
    But one politician thinks he can make a change. Or at least get media coverage for talking about it.

    "Drug traffickers represent a threat for both Nuevo Leon and Texas, and not just for northern border communities, but for entire societies, whether Mexico or the United States," [Gov. Natividad] Gonzalez said in an interview. "It's like a wild plant growing out of hand and [that] becomes rooted in society."
        Crime is affecting trade and tourism with Texas. In the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Texas tourism has dropped by as much as 60 percent in the last two years.
        But in a country where the federal government — not state governors — has jurisdiction over drug crimes, Mr. González is a maverick.
        Fed up with a crime wave that has claimed the lives of three Nuevo Leon police chiefs and the state's top crime investigator this year, Mr. Gonzalez took the rare step of pushing states and the federal government to adopt new anti-crime models, including the use of high technology, expanded intelligence gathering, and greater cooperation with the U.S. [...]
        Nuevo Leon, with a reputation among American business leaders as being one of the richest and safest states, has become one of Mexico's newest killing fields as drug violence moves south from traditional border strongholds.
        "Impunity, corruption and the spread of organized crime is so fast that some states like Nuevo Leon can no longer sit still and wait for the federal government to act," said Jose Antonio Yanez, a national security expert at the National Institute for Criminal Law. "Governor Gonzalez is the first to come forward and say, 'Hey, enough is enough.' "
Update: This just in. More than 50 federal agents battle drug traffickers in violent Mexican border city.
    MEXICO CITY - More than 50 federal agents battled alleged drug traffickers in a shootout in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, officials said Saturday, the latest incident a wave of violence that has sparked criticism from the U.S. government.
        Several people were killed in the gunbattle late Friday, said a spokeswoman with the federal attorney general's office. She could not confirm the number and requested anonymity because the agency was waiting to issue a formal statement on the incident.
        Officers with the Federal Preventative Police were involved in the shootout, which lasted 40 minutes, according to an official with the agency who also requested anonymity.
        On Saturday morning, federal agents in ski masks and body armor and six military humvees packed with soldiers sealed off the scene of the shootout and refused to let journalists enter.
Oh, and el Presidente Fox says crime worse in U.S. than in Mexico. That's no surprise since he practically ships his criminals north. Thirty percent of federal prisoners are foreign born and a sizeable number of those are Mexican nationals.

•   •   •  

Racist Rev Row   [9/23/06]
To see the future of America under the Mexican invasion, you look at southern California. To see the future of America under Muslim immigration, one should consider Britain.
    Today's meditation: a man was jailed and fined for operating his car in a racist manner.

    A DRIVER spent two nights in jail after being accused of "revving his car in a racist manner".
        Mechanic Ronnie Hutton, 49, yesterday described his court ordeal which finally ended when prosecutors dropped the allegation of racism.
        But he was still convicted of a breach of the peace for revving the engine of his £25,000 Lotus.
        Witnesses claimed he had been trying to intimidate a Libyan couple on the pavement. Ronnie, of Stirling, claims he was only revving the powerful V8 engine to avoid another £15,000 repair bill. [...]
        In court, Mr Maigel, 28, then a student at Stirling Uni, said: "The driver came alongside and was trying to annoy us by revving his engine very, very loudly."
        Using an interpreter, Hana Saad, 23, said he had degraded them "maybe because we are Muslim".
In other fawning dhimmitude, a British multi-faith cemetery will be arranged to face Mecca in order to keep the appearance "tidy."
    In today's secular society you could be forgiven for not knowing which direction Christian graves face.
        Ancient tradition shows they should look east in anticipation of the second coming of Jesus Christ.
        But all headstones at the new £2.5m High Wood Cemetery in Bulwell will be plotted to face north-east, in line with Islamic faith.
        Muslims believe the dead look over their shoulder towards Mecca, towards the south-east.
        Despite there being separate sections at the cemetery in Low Wood Road for different faiths, the council wanted to give a tidy, linear appearance.
        Only on special request can families have graves with headstones facing in a different direction.
        The controversial decision was taken after consultation with the city's Cemeteries Consultative Committee.

•   •   •  

Pakistanis protest, cleric says Pope should be crucified   [9/22/06]
Frenzied Muslims are now calling for the Pope to be murdered in a particularly dreadful way.

    ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Hundreds of Pakistani Islamists held street protests to condemn Pope Benedict XVI for remarks they regard as anti-Islamic, with one leader saying the pontiff should be crucified.
        Demonstrators Friday poured out of mosques after the main weekly Muslim prayers in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, the eastern city of Lahore, the capital Islamabad and other urban centres.
        "If the pope comes here we will hang him on the Cross," Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior leader of Pakistan's main alliance of radical parties, told around 200 noisy demonstrators in Islamabad.

•   •   •  

Bush ready to OK border barrier   [9/22/06]
No bill is law until it is signed by the President. But the border fence is moving along nicely, and shows that the continued pressure of citizens on members of Congress can have an effect. The fence was considered a fringe issue but became politically acceptable when Congress heard from angry constituents.
    Even the open-borders President now grudgingly accepts that he may have to sign the fence bill, and that is sweet.

    On Wednesday night, Mr. Bush told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he would sign the bill if approved by the Senate, which spent the past two days debating whether they should even consider the fence bill.
        Late yesterday, Democrats finally agreed to allow the bill to be taken up.
        The House, meanwhile, approved a slew of new bills to speed the deportation of illegal aliens, outlaw tunneling under the border and close loopholes that allow criminal aliens to be released into the U.S.
The problem remains with funding, however.
    SEN. JEFF SESSIONS, (R) ALABAMA: I think there's a concentrated effort by a group of people in this Congress to give the appearance of voting for barriers at the border, while at the same time undermining the reality of that situation.
        SYLVESTER: There are concerns that even with the new fencing law, it could be years before groundbreaking because of insufficient funding and environmental concerns.
        JACK MARTIN, FED. FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM: The environmental concern is basically a point of leverage to try to keep a wall or a fence from ever even being built. SYLVESTER: For now the United States is left with a virtual fence that some say is an invisible fence.
        SYLVESTER: The Senate approved nearly $2 billion to construct a new fence. But according to Senator Jeff Sessions congressional negotiators are already talking of cutting that figure, and moving the money to other DHS projects. So the U.S. Congress could end up passing a fence bill with absolutely no funding -- Lou.
To keep track of immigration legislation, see NumbersUSA's helpful page.
    Also, check out the country-western song So Long Texas, Hello Mexico.

•   •   •  

Pakistani clerics demand pope's removal   [9/21/06]
You can't make this stuff up. Will someone explain to the seething Muslims that the Pope has tenure?

    LAHORE, Pakistan -- About 1,000 Muslim clerics and religious scholars meeting Thursday in eastern Pakistan demanded the removal of Pope Benedict XVI for making what they called "insulting remarks" against Islam.
        Benedict "should be removed from his position immediately for encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths" and "making insulting remarks" against Islam, said a joint statement issued by the clerics and scholars at the end of their one-day convention.
        The "pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). ... If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences," it said.
In other recent brilliance from the Religion of Peace: Alleged Indonesian terror chief says naked women worse than Bali bombings.
    JAKARTA, Indonesia - Alleged terror leader Abu Bakar Bashir said TV shows featuring scantily clad women were more harmful than the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, the state news agency reported.
        The remarks were likely to anger Australia, which lost 88 citizens in the attacks on two crowded nightclubs.

•   •   •  

2 Sentenced to Life in 3 Youths' Murders   [9/21/06]
The horrific murder of three young children living in Baltimore has finally been resolved. The first trial of illegal aliens ended in a hung jury in August 2005. Three Baltimore murder victims

    BALTIMORE -- Two men were sentenced to life in prison for the near-decapitation murders of three of their young relatives, slayings the judge said were meant to send a message to their families.
        The sentences for the children's uncle Policarpio Espinoza, 24, and cousin Adan Canela, 19, allowed no possibility of parole.
        The two were convicted last month of the May 2004 slayings of Lucero Espinoza, 8; her brother Ricardo Espinoza Jr., 9; and their 10-year-old male cousin, Alexis Espejo Quezada.
        Prosecutors could never define a clear motive but suggested that family members knew more than they let on about the mysterious case, which sickened even hardened detectives in a city that perennially has one of the nation's highest homicide rates.
        Police said the boys were strangled and the girl was hit in the head with a baseball bat before their necks were cut within inches of decapitation.
The two trials were messier than most because of the family connections and left many questions unanswered. The motive suggested was unpaid an smuggling bill on the part of the parents -- who are illegal aliens, like everyone else in the case. But one thing is sure, that open-borders anarchy leads to expanding web of other crimes.
    It would be nice if the parents and other relatives were rounded up and sent home now that the trial is over, but how likely is that?

•   •   •  

Tancredo to pope: 'Hang in there'   [9/20/06]
It's nice to see some spine in an elected official, though Congressman Tom Tancredo has made a career of speaking unpleasant truths.
    In this case, Rep. Tancredo has encouraged the Pope to resist calls for more apologies to Islamists, since his original one was not deemed grovelly enough by many Sons of Allah. Begging forgiveness just empowers the jihadis and, if there's any apologizing to be done, it should be the Allah boys to us in the West.

    Tancredo was raised Roman Catholic but now is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. He often has spoken about what he sees as a "clash of civilizations" between Islamic radicals and western societies.
        Tancredo drew worldwide ire in 2005 when, in response to a hypothetical question, he told an interviewer that the United States could threaten to bomb the holy site of Mecca in the event of terrorist attacks.
        In Wednesday's letter, Tancredo cited four quotations from The Koran that he believes prove the point the Pope was making, including calls to "smite" unbelievers and "slay the idolaters wherever you find them."
You can read the letter in PDF here.

•   •   •  

Arrest made in gruesome murder   [9/20/06]
Jose Luis Rubi-Nava Denver Dragging Killer Denver has been shocked by a recent brutal crime in which a woman was dragged behind a truck for over a mile to her death. After being mangled on the roadway for so far, the victim's face was unrecognizable, and the woman's identity has not been formally confirmed. An autopsy revealed that she was alive while being dragged.
    The alleged killer has been arrested, and he is an illegal alien who worked in construction.

    During the Wednesday morning press conference, Weaver also said the suspect, Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, 36 of Glendale, was being held on first degree murder charges. Weaver added that "a detainer has been placed" on Rubi-Nava from Immigration Customs Enforcement due to the fact that he is believed to be in the country illegally.
        He is currently being held at the Douglas County jail on a no-bond hold.
Update: The accused was arrested on April 21 and charged with false identification, no driver's license and no proof of insurance. However, those charges were later dismissed and he was released.

•   •   •  

The Church — Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?   [9/20/06]
Part of this Fjordman article is a catalogue of recent acts of jihad against the West, some of which are not well known. He also details the area of sharia law by which non-Muslims living in Islamic societies are treated as dhimmis or second-class citizens. Keep in mind that Islam means submission and is a complete system of totalitarianism masquerading as religion.
    Fjordman is disappointed in the many silly Christians who fail to see the danger Islam presents both to their faith and to civilization generally. Perhaps the recent Pope fracas will wake up some (like the former Archbishop of Canterbury).

    Meanwhile, in Indonesia, about 10,000 Christians have been killed between 1998 and 2003 and about 1,000 churches have been burnt down by Muslim mobs. The radicals want Indonesia to be the foundation of a Southeast Asian caliphate that will launch Jihad against other nations such as Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Australia until they submit to Islam. In the Indonesian province Aceh, where sharia law officially prevails, Muslim mobs razed a church in response to a forged (by a Muslim) advertisement inviting Muslims to a Christian revival service. Witnesses said there were over 100 Muslim men present, many of them carrying swords. They poured gasoline over the building and set fire to it.
        Why this aggressive reaction? According to Islamic law, Christians and Jews (not other religious groups) can live in an area dominated by Muslims, but only if they accept their status as second-rate citizens, dhimmis. This implies many restrictions, such as never trying to convert or preach to Muslims, never to have a relationship with a Muslim woman and never to say anything insulting about Islam or Muhammad. If even one single person breaches any of these conditions, the entire dhimmi community will be punished, and Jihad resumes. Notice that while Muslims, following each case of Islamic terrorism, are quick to say that not all Muslims should be punished for the actions of a few, this is precisely what sharia proscribes for non-Muslims.

•   •   •  

As US nears milestone, a rising mix of immigrants   [9/19/06]
As the 300 Million Americans marker gets closer, expect more articles like this one which celebrates growth uber alles. The fact that Americans are being displaced for jobs is of little importance to the Christian Science Monitor, which has done much better coverage of immigration than this.

    Immigration is not only boosting America's numbers, it's changing the face of the country. That 300 millionth new person, expected in a few weeks, is just as likely to fly in from China (or wade across the Rio Grande from Mexico) as he or she is to be born here. To put it another way: Every 31 seconds another person from abroad is added to the US population roll.
        The rise in newcomers - nearly quadruple the number in 1970 - has fueled a widespread backlash against illegal immigrants. That's half the story. The less familiar but also important trend is the influx of highly skilled workers and highly motivated entrepreneurs who have helped the US economy grow.

•   •   •  

Wisconsin Democrat Party Press Release: "Sensenbrenner Finds Support Among Hate Groups"   [9/19/06]
Many among the Democrat elites are still living under the delusion that only right wingers want borders protected and immigration anarchy to stop. To that end, Wisconsin Dems have made pathetic charges against the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, Rep Sensenbrenner, who has been a leader in safeguarding American sovereignty.
    The Democrats' press release says that "White Power Groups, Neo-Nazis Praise Republican Congressman."

    Michael Murphy, Executive Director of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, says he is not surprised that hate groups would rally around the kind of immigration proposals touted by Sensenbrenner.
        "Sensenbrenner's immigration legislation is so extreme that the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate won't even support it," Murphy said. "When you pander to fear and bigotry like Jim Sensenbrenner has, you embolden racists and hate-mongers."
But the facts are quite different. To prove these shocking accusations, the Dems quote a Milwaukee weekly, The Shepherd Express which argues that "White Supremacists Rally Behind Sensenbrenner."
    However, the article cites just two online postings and one email expressing support for the legislative actions of Mr. Sensenbrenner.
    That's it. That's the shocking "rally" of hate groups for immigration enforcement -- a total of three electronic messages that are not at all hateful.
    Someone should tell the Democrats that Americans across the political spectrum, including many in their own party, want immigration to be legal, controlled and reduced. A Wisconsin Democratic icon, the late Senator Gaylord Nelson, favored immigration restriction for the good of the nation, particularly for environmental reasons.
    Finally, in the recent vote for a 700-mile border fence, Sixty-four Democrats joined 219 Republicans in voting for the fence.

•   •   •  

Londoners told - Pope must die   [9/18/06]
At least one member of The Religion of Peace has called for the execution of Pope Benedict.

    A notorious Muslim extremist told a demonstration in London yesterday that the Pope should face execution.
        Anjem Choudary said those who insulted Islam would be 'subject to capital punishment'.
        His remarks came during a protest outside Westminster Cathedral on a day that worldwide anger among Muslim hardliners towards Pope Benedict XVI appeared to deepen.
You can watch a video report at Little Green Footballs: British Islamists Call for Pope's Execution .
    See also the video at HotAir that has a brief recap of Muslim "rage" over the last few years as part of their plans to conquer the West.
    Is there a single good reason to continue Muslim immigration to America?

•   •   •  

Modern Chattel   [9/18/06]
Unsurprisingly, the useless and corrupt United Nations thinks that "migration" is a fine way to redistribute wealth from the nasty (and successful) first world and give it to the third. Investors Business Daily recognizes that mass immigration and the resulting remittance dependence create negative policy consequences in the home countries. hand with money

    In other words, emigration substitutes for economic opportunity, and bad governments enjoy the incoming cash as a reward for irresponsible governance. Remittances beef up their foreign reserves, giving the effect of export and tourism earnings, or foreign investment. It also lets them spend freely.
        That's why in places like Mexico remittances have reached record highs, often exceeding foreign investment, and siphoned off the best and brightest from their countries.
        In both Mexico and the Philippines, governments hail overseas workers as "heroes."
        Alone, Mexico is on course to take in $24 billion in remittances in 2006, a 20% increase from 2005, from about 5 million immigrants sending cash back.
        That's great, as far as the Mexican government's concerned. "We're going to live with these increases for the next few years because for many Mexicans it's very attractive to emigrate to the U.S.," said Foreign Minister Ernesto Derbez.
        The Philippines is expected to take in almost $12 billion in remittances from 8 million emigres, 11% higher than last year. Congratulating itself, the central bank attributed the rise to better-educated workers leaving the country and sending their earnings back — something known as brain drain. A survey showed one in three Filipinos want to emigrate, and 21% consider their government "totally hopeless."

•   •   •  

Dalrymple on Decadence, Europe, America and Islam..   [9/18/06]
Brussels Journal presents a wide-ranging interview with Theodore Dalrymple, the pen name of recently retired British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels. He discussed the West's real and imagined decadence in Europe and America, emphasizing the importance of having a shared purpose in life among the members of a culture.

    TD: It is better in the United States. It is not that the pathology where it exists is not severe — and it is very severe in parts of America as well. The difference is that in America it has not entered the core of the population. There is more resistance to it. I think, and this is very important, that Americans still believe in their own country. Americans believe that they are part of a larger project — that is that of the United States. This can sometimes have bad as well as good effects, but it does actually keep the civilization together. I think the United States is more civilized than Europe now.
Dalrymple believes that the main attraction of Islam for men is its control over women, which makes perfect sense. When a culture is as backward as the Islamic one, the appeal for a man of being the lord of his castle at home is obvious. Achmed may get no respect in his dead-end job as a janitor in London, but he can still beat his wives and daughters, thanks to Mohammed.
    There are large numbers of Muslims in British prisons today. I have noticed that their behaviour is not that of religious persons. They are not interested in hallal meat, they are not interested in praying five times a day, they are not interested in keeping ramadan (except as a reason not to go to court), but they are very interested in preventing their sisters from going out with a boy of their own choosing. Furthermore, if you go into the center of British towns with large Muslim populations you will see young Muslim men partaking in what I would say are generally pretty disgusting activities of popular culture, but you won¹t see any women. And finally in my work I used to see a lot of young Muslim women who had attempted suicide, or made a gesture of suicide in order to avoid a forced marriage, say a marriage with a first cousin 'back home' — someone they had not met, who was less educated than they and whom they did not wish to marry. They knew perfectly well they have no choice in the matter; some of them might even be killed if they did not accept the marriage. You do not see young men trying to commit suicide because of forced marriages, even though they are partaking in those kinds of marriages as well. Hence, it is very different for the men than the women. If you put all these things together you could conclude that the main interest for Islam for these young men is the control over women.

•   •   •  

Just outside Westminster Cathedral today...   [9/17/06]
London anti-Pope demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral Imagine exiting church on Sunday morning and facing dozens of hateful, threatening creatures like these. That's what happened today in London.
    The affront was part of the growing Islamic attack on western values of free speech and liberty generally that began on Friday with another overblown case of offended Muslim sensibilities.
    Part of the carnage was the murder of an old lady, a medical nun ministering to the poor, who was shot in the back in Somalia, apparently a reaction to the absurd Pope controversy [Nun shot dead as Pope fails to calm militant Muslims].

    AN ITALIAN nun was killed by gunmen at a children's hospital in Somalia yesterday in an apparent revenge attack for the Pope's speech about Islam last week.
        Sister Leonella Sgorbati, 65, left, was shot four times in the back by two men at the entrance to the hospital in the capital, Mogadishu. Her bodyguard was also killed. The Vatican said that it hoped that the "horrible tragedy" was an isolated incident.
        The killing came after Benedict XVI expressed deep regret yesterday at the furious reaction to his remarks on Islam and holy war, saying that the text he quoted last week did not reflect his personal opinion.
        Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, deputy head of security at the Islamic Courts in Somalia, which control the capital, said that there was a "concrete possibility" that the murder of Sister Leonella at the Austrian-run hospital in the north of the capital was "a reprisal for the Pope's remarks on Islam". One person had been arrested.
In addition, churches in the West Bank and Gaza have been firebombed since the most recent controversy kicked in. (The website Cartoon Body Count puts the number killed by the Danish cartoon jihad at 139, so we may be only at the beginning.)

•   •   •  

Talk of 'stolen continent' and white racists offensive to hear   [9/17/06]
Maywood California Mexicans
It's good to find a major newspaper (the Houston Chronicle) printing the truth about the vile racism and anti-American sentiment that are common at Mexican "immigration" rallies, particularly in southern California. A brave reporter got a firsthand look of what "diversity" has become in Maywood, California, where Americans were threatened, tires were slashed and a Mexican flag was run up the local Post Office flagpole. Another day in Mexifornia.

    Immigration proponents have been trying to pass off reconquista claims — the belief that immigrants want to take back "Aztlan" — as paranoid, but these protesters weren't helping. One sign proclaimed "Stolen continent" — yet displayed two continents, North and South America. "White racists this is our continent" read one sign. Another said, "We will never live in peace until we get the European squatters off our lands."
        I squatted in the middle of the counter-protesters for a couple of hours, reading their literature, listening to them talk, trotting next to protesters trying to circumvent police lines and confronting a fleet of motorcycle cops on the next side street over.
        What I witnessed was nothing less than vicious and hate-filled. This is where intelligent discourse flies out the window, and people start drawing territorial lines within communities.
        A couple of times, unwelcome people came into the counter-protesting crowd to take photos or video, and were quickly surrounded by an angry crowd and pelted with water bottles and debris. Shouts of "you little white b--" were directed at a blond woman; a man yelled, "Get out of here, this is our town" through a bullhorn to others.
        Some wearing lucha libre masks and some with bandannas obscuring their faces, counter-protesters tried to get close to the SOS demonstrators by cutting down side streets and were angry when the cops were already there. Others manned the front lines with signs depicting California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Nazi, chanting, "Minutemen! Resist! They're the real terrorists."
Demography is destiny, as they say. Maywood California statistics

•   •   •  

Undocumented government workers   [9/17/06]
Here is more news about corruption in government regarding illegal immigration, in this case from columnist Debra Saunders. Just how much faith can we have in government when officials don't even check on whether new employees are legal residents?

    WORKING from his Woodland Hills home office, gadfly Carl Olson is on a mission that should not be as impossible as it seems: He wants local and state governments to follow the law.
        Olson, of the watchdog group State Department Watch, has been showing up at board meetings for government entities -- the Ventura County Board of Education, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Los Angeles Community College District -- and asking board members what they are doing to prevent hiring illegal immigrants. Specifically, he wants to know if they use the free federal Basic Pilot program, which private employers can use to see if job applicants are authorized to work in the United States.
        So far, Olson has come up empty. When I called these groups, I got nada, too.
        Still, Olson believes California voters are plenty angry about illegal immigration, so it is only a matter of time before local politicians "feel the heat or see the light."
        And: "Elected officials are supposed to be the first bulwark in defense of our rights and liberties here. If they aren't going to defend us, who is?"
Basic Pilot is easy to use, according to Congressional testimony from earlier this year.
    How Basic Pilot Works. Participating employers must electronically verify the status of all newly-hired workers within three days of hire, using information that a new hire is already required to provide on the Form I-9. Employers key data into a simple form accessible on the DHS web site and transmit it to DHS. DHS then transmits the information to SSA, which checks the validity of the Social Security number, name, date of birth, and citizenship provided by the worker. The data on non-citizens is confirmed by SSA, and then referred back to DHS to verify work authorization according to that agency's immigration records. Most employers receive verification within 24 hours. If DHS cannot immediately verify status, the query is referred to other DHS offices in the field that process immigration applications, in case the non-citizen has very recently been approved to work.

•   •   •  

Migrant deaths have doubled in the last decade   [9/16/06]
Beyond the human tragedy of lives unnecessarily lost, the increasing numbers of border deaths reveal the failure of Washington to fulfill the prime directive of national government, to secure the perimeter of the state from foreign incursion.

    WASHINGTON - The number of illegal immigrants dying each year as they try to cross from Mexico into the United States has more than doubled in the past decade, according to a report issued Thursday.
        More and more, the dead are women, the report said. And more migrants are dying from exposure in the desert than from other causes.
        The report, by the Government Accountability Office, also questioned how well the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is collecting data on the deaths. It said the agency needs to get a better handle on how well its agents are preventing these deaths.
        In 1998, for example, 254 migrants died trying to cross the southwest border, the report said. That number jumped to 472 in 2005, even though there's been no correlated increase in the number of illegal immigrants overall.
        A decade ago, 9 percent of those who died trying to cross were women, according to the report. Last year, women made up 21 percent of the deaths. Nearly all the increase stemmed from deaths in eastern Arizona, where migrants traverse desert and rural Native American reservations.
Most of the dead are Mexicans, from the millions of economic refugees fleeing Latin America's wealthiest country, the 12th largest economy on earth.

•   •   •  

Editorial: Fraud goes unchecked as foreigners game federal immigration system   [9/15/06]
The degree of fraud that goes on in LEGAL immigration is truly over the top.
    For example, in 2003 Paul Nachman asked Prof Jan Ting, the former Assistant Commissioner of the INS, "Is it true that 90 percent of asylum and refugee cases are fraudulent?" and Ting responded, "95 percent."
    The 9/14 Examiner editorial is fact heavy and deserves attention.

    On April 6, former USCIS Director of Security Michael Maxwell told stunned members of Congress that only six personnel security experts at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — which awards coveted green cards, work permits and Social Security numbers — were detailed to handle a crushing backlog of 11,000 employee background investigations and 2,771 internal affairs complaints that touched every office except the director himself, including 528 serious criminal allegations of bribery, document fraud, extortion, money laundering and espionage.
More on the same topic in today's Bush Administration Lets Its Guard Down.
    A recent AP-Ipsos poll found that more than half of the residents of New York and Washington are afraid they will be attacked again. Such fears are hardly unwarranted. The federal government's lackadaisical approach to border control allows more unlawful immigrants to enter our country than law enforcement officers can hope to catch.
        Meanwhile, federal officials have been handing out legal immigration benefits without performing the due diligence expected by the American public, which is essential to national security. In order to accommodate their "customers," employees of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services routinely waive fingerprint requirements, approving applications without checking them against the terrorist watch list, even neglecting to compare current photographs of those seeking political asylum with originals stored in the Image Storage and Retrieval System.
You can read the transcript of the entire hearing.

•   •   •  

Combative Writer Oriana Fallaci Dies   [9/15/06]
The free world is diminished today with the death of Oriana Fallaci. The one-time resistance fighter in the Second World War had evolved from being a passionate journalist of the left to a fearless defender of traditional western values. Orianna Fallaci
    She was well known for her provocative interviews with the famous, from Henry Kissinger to the Ayatollah Khomeini. She outraged the Iranian cleric by accusing Islam of brutality toward women and discarding the chador she had worn, calling it a "stupid, medieval rag."
    She died in her home town of Florence after fighting cancer for several years, and had lived for years in New York. She was in the city at the time of the 9/11 attacks and was so infuriated that she wrote "The Rage and the Pride" which was filled with anger about the Islamic invasion of Europe and Muslims' war against the west. Though condemned by the politically correct, the book was a best-seller in Italy and Europe.
    In 2005, she was accused in an Italian court of the villification of Islam for writing against the religion in another book The Force of Reason. But she could not stop being a modern Cassandra.

Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "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. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty." [...]
    "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci's. She is in a black gloom about Europe and its future: "The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom." [Prophet of Decline, Opinion Journal 6/23/05]
Last summer, Fallaci, a self-described atheist Christian, met with the Pope, about whom she remarked, "I feel less alone when I read Ratzinger's books."
    Unfortunately, we who share Fallaci's concerns about the future of the west do feel more alone today, as well as being more alarmed at the increase of Islamic immigration to America.
    The current invasion, Fallaci went on to say, is not carried out only by the "terrorists who blow up themselves along with skyscrapers or buses" but also by "the immigrants who settle in our home, and who, with no respect for our laws, impose their ideas, their customs, their God."

•   •   •  

Ting claims win in GOP Senate primary in Delaware   [9/14/06]
Jan Ting for US Senate Jan Ting has gotten almost no media attention, which is mysterious because he is an attractive fellow and has a compelling personal story.

    Ting, the son of Chinese immigrants, served three years as an assistant commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1990 to 1993. He has decried the flood of illegal immigrants into the United States and has called for the construction of a 2,000-mile fence along the southern U.S. border.
        Ting's tough stance on immigration resonated with primary voter James Carr, 25, a mechanic who lives in Cheswold. "I think something needs to be done about that," he said Tuesday.
Jan Ting for Senate website here. He is a Professor of Law at Temple University in Philadelphia where he teaches courses in taxation, immigration, and national security. He testified before the 9/11 Commission in 2003.
    To read a brief example of his thoughts, see an opinion piece from last December, Border fence too essential to ignore.
    President Bush, Sen. John McCain, and other politicians have proposed guest-worker programs that would legalize illegal aliens already here while effectively leaving the border open to additional entrants, who are already being attracted by the promise of "amnesty." The sponsors deny their proposals amount to amnesty since they don't provide immediate U.S. citizenship. But that's not the test!
        An amnesty is any proposal that gives illegal entrants an advantage over law-abiders who wait in their home countries for permission to enter the United States. Millions of qualified legal immigrants have waited and do wait. But to satisfy the cheap labor lobby in Washington, President Bush, Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and other politicians want America to talk tough on immigration, but actually reward lawbreakers with legal status and make fools of those who wait their turn.

•   •   •  

Long-nosed bats evict a covey of aliens   [9/14/06]
This story highlights the damage being done to plants and animals in the border areas where millions of garbage-dumping aliens tromp through every year.

    Years of border-control efforts to the east and west have funneled illegal aliens straight into southern Arizona and across its three wildlife refuges, national forest and park land, an Air Force bombing range and the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation.
        It's a fragile ecosystem where car tracks or even walking trails can remain for decades after they are last used. And aliens leave behind abandoned vehicles and millions of pounds of garbage -- estimates run between 5 and 8 pounds per illegal crosser.
        "Some areas are so polluted by trash and human waste that the cleanup has to be contracted to professional companies with employees outfitted with haz-mat suits," said Roger DiRosa, Cabeza Prieta's manager.
        The conflict can also be dangerous. One-third of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which neighbors Cabeza Prieta and shares a 30-mile border with Mexico, is now off-limits to visitors because authorities do not feel they can provide adequate protection. [...]
        At Cabeza Prieta, the bat cave isn't the only fight. The endangered Sonoran pronghorn, a deerlike creature that has the distinction of being the fastest land animal in North America, is caught in the middle of both a drought and the wave of illegal immigration.
        In 2001, the population dropped from about 150 animals down to 19.

•   •   •  

GOP calls 'elite' out of touch on immigration   [9/13/06]
Yesterday's forum in the Republican Policy Committee about the House immigration field hearings (watch online video here) was impressive for its seriousness. Speaker Hastert was there for the entire three hours and asked pertinent questions which showed genuine concern and knowledge.
    There was discussion of the real state of the southern border -- the lawlessness and growing power of the Mexican drug cartels. Rep. Ed Royce emphasized the ease by which terrorists can enter through open borders and that hundreds of Hezbollah agents already have. Rep. Steve Pearce lamented the loss of large areas of national parks to drug smugglers and growers, e.g. one third of Organ Pipe National Monument is a no-go area for hikers because of the danger.

    House Republicans, returning from a month of field hearings on illegal immigration, yesterday warned of a gaping disconnect between American voters and many "elite" lawmakers.
        "I have never seen such a disconnect between the American people and the elite," said Rep. Peter T. King, the New York Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee and held two hearings last month.
        Mr. King said securing the border this year is a cornerstone to national security and the war on terrorism. He called for more Border Patrol agents, more detention facilities for captured illegals and more unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the border.

•   •   •  

All About America in 3 Days   [9/13/06]
Somali assimilation class
Importing Somalis. Can the government get any stupider? You couldn't choose a worse group to move to America, except perhaps headhunters from the South Pacific.
    Somalis are primitive tribal people who need to be taught how to use doorknobs and lightswitches. They don't speak English and have little or no education. They are Muslims, whose cultural norms include polygamy, wife-beating and female genital mutilation. (According to the World Health Organization, 98 percent of Somalis practice FGM, a crime in this country.)

    Coming from a country without government or law, the idea that help is only a phone call away amazed Yussuf, whose parents were killed and who is traveling to the U.S. alone. "So if anyone bothers me, I just call 911 and the police come and beat them?" she asked. "Life must be very easy."
        Immigrants also heard about U.S. laws. Beating your wife and children is illegal, they were told, and so is chewing khat, the leafy amphetamine-like stimulant popular in Somalia. Performing genital excision on young girls is prohibited.
        "If I can't beat my wife, how will she know that I love her?" Abrone asked, seated next to his silent teenage bride.
        Monogamy was equally unpopular with some men, who said their religion permitted four wives. But Kassim shut down the debate. "It doesn't matter," he told them. "In the U.S. you'll barely be able to afford one wife, anyway."
But if refugees could adjust easily into increasingly complicated modern life, then they wouldn't need the assistance of well paid "experts" from the Refugee Industrial Complex helping them get settled. So groups like the churches clamor for needy refugees to keep a place at the resettlement gravy train.
    Some of the refugees are from Mogadishu, so it would not be impossible that some were part of the militias that killed 18 American soldiers in the infamous Blackhawk down incident during the 1993 relief operation that went terribly awry.
    Furthermore, the article notes briefly that suicide is a problem among Somali refugees, due to various sorts of culture shock. Rather than wasting piles of taxpayer money we don't have on refugees we don't want, it would be kinder to all concerned if the refugees were resettled in Africa where the cultures are similar.

•   •   •  

GOP inaction on illegal immigration gives Democrats an opportunity   [9/12/06]
Froma Harrop has been a fine editorial writer for years on the subject of immigration, often focusing on issues that reach across the political spectrum, e.g. sprawl and the environment.
    She also understands that Democrats have as much reason as Republicans to toughen up borders and immigration enforcement, particularly because poor and blue collar workers have been hammered by the immigrant-flooded labor market. Many Dems are apparently too dim to realize that their base is being seriously harmed by open borders. Or maybe they are too busy pandering to noisy ethnic groups.

    Democrats who vow to enforce employer sanctions are drawing broad support in other races. In Woodstock, Conn., a registered Republican told Democrat Ned Lamont that he had just one question: How would the senatorial candidate address illegal immigration? Lamont's response was that the government should crack down on people who hire illegal workers. The Republican said he liked that answer.
        All the tough-at-the-border talk, perfected by the Bush administration, is fooling nobody. It has become code for "we're not going to do anything to inconvenience companies that hire illegal immigrants."
        Build a wall two miles high along the entire border with Mexico, and illegal aliens will dig under it, fly over it or sail past it into New Orleans or Newark. They will enter as tourists and overstay visas. They will come if they think there's a job for them in the United States. The story is that simple, and everyone in America knows it, including the politicians who pretend otherwise.
Yep, all good points and true. If anything, Ds should be stronger that Rs in protecting the American worker. Sadly, the voting record shows otherwise. (See report cards for politicians' votes.) Democrats overall have supported amnesties, benefits for illegal aliens and open borders generally. It's the Republicans getting the A grades and Democrats failing.
    Furthermore, there are almost no Democrats who understand that outsourcing a job or insourcing an immigrant worker are no different in effect on the embattled American trying to make a living.

•   •   •  

Found: migrants with the mostest   [9/12/06]
In Britain, like America, culture is a great determinant of education and therefore economic success.

    ARMENIAN immigrants and their descendants are the most successful ethnic group in the country, according to an analysis of "melting pot" Britain.
        They are followed by the Japanese, Dutch and Greek Cypriots among the groups who are economically and socially most successful. Bangladeshi Muslims and migrants from Sierra Leone and Syria have fared worst.

•   •   •  

Protesters Conduct Mock Bin Laden Hanging   [9/11/06]
In Culver City, some patriotic Americans from the United American Committee, including Ted Hayes, got creative with their protesting. They assembled near a major mosque, and proceeded to hang a representation of Osama bin Laden. Interestingly, the Muslims reacted negatively.

    The protest near the King Fahd Mosque was organized by the United American Committee, a group that says it promotes awareness of internal threats facing America.
        About 70 counter-protesters described the mosque as a peaceful center for area Muslims and yelled "Racists go home!" during the ritual. A group of clergy joined hands with some of the mosque's worshippers and stood in a circle in front of the mosque.
        "I think it's crazy," said mosque spokesman Usman Madha. "We have never encouraged extremism. We were the first mosque that condemned the Sept. 11 atrocities and we kicked out a few people that protested that condemnation."
Robert Spencer had some questions to ask...
    Now wait a minute. This jihad business is supposed to be coming from a tiny minority of extremists who have hijacked Islam, and who aren't even true Muslims at all, right? Isn't that what has been dinned into our ears for five years now, and has been reinforced this week in an avalanche of 9/11 commemorative articles in which American Muslims complain about being profiled and identified as terrorists?
        So then why is it that when the United American Committee hanged Osama in effigy, the members of the King Fahd mosque didn't eagerly join in, happy for the chance to show that they're patriotic Americans who are outraged at what bin Laden and his ilk have done to their faith? Why instead did they mount counter-protests crying racism?
Update: More photos at the moonbattish Indymedia LA

•   •   •  

Muslims feel sting of distrust   [9/10/06]
America is now remembering the five-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks which killed 3000 of our friends and neighbors. The 19 hijackers followed the Koran, which directs the faithful to murder infidels. Islam will dominate - britain
    Much of the media, however, wants to spin stories about Muslim suffering at the hands of cruel Americans. Poor Achmed, he is pulled aside for extra checking when he boards an airplane (like every American I know). Muslim complaints of poor treatment by Americans are encouraged by fifth-columnist groups like the Council for American Islamic Relations, which is particularly relentless in beating the victim drum.
    The article highlighted here is standard victimhood propaganda. Muslims were not rounded up and lynched after the murder of 3000 Americans by jihadists screaming "Allahu ackbar" (Allah is the greatest) when the hijacked planes went down. So the alleged victimhood being flogged is of the most trivial sort.

    Evidence of intolerance abounds. A Quinnipiac University poll Aug. 29 revealed that American voters say, by 60 percent to 30 percent, that authorities should single out people who look "Middle Eastern" for security measures. Only 6 percent of Americans have a positive first impression of Muslims, according to a poll conducted last year for the Council on American Islamic Relations Research Center, and about 20 percent admit to being intolerant of Muslims.
        Anecdotes also are plentiful. Taxi drivers of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent in Metro Detroit describe the scorn and derision of passengers, who sometimes holler epithets at them and refuse to pay fares.
Scorn, derision, epithets — the horror!
    In fact, hundreds of Muslims have been convicted and/or deported of terrorism charges all around the country in the past five years. But the cases are covered mainly by local media, so there is no broad recognition that there is a serious terror infiltration problem in this country caused by foolish immigration policies.
    Yet the liberal press has been obsessed with Muslim "victims" in America (which are largely imaginary) rather than the real danger to the country posed by Islamic fascism and open borders.
    And how horrible can America be to Muslims when they continue to immigrate here in increasing numbers? [Just in Time for 9/11 — Muslim Immigration Up]
    Or perhaps Islamic immigrants believe Americans are too weakened by multicultural propaganda to react to the growing numbers of Muslims.
    Update:Here's another fine example of media looniness toward the Sons of Allah: 'They think if you're a Muslim, you're a terrorist'.

•   •   •  

More Muslims Arrive in U.S., After 9/11 Dip   [9/9/06]
Blood pressure alert: the New York Times cheerfully reports an increase in Muslim immigration over the last couple years, after a decrease following the jihadist attacks on 9/11.

    But five years later, as the United States wrestles with questions of terrorism, civil liberties and immigration control, Muslims appear to be moving here again in surprising numbers, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Homeland Security and the Census Bureau.
        Immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia are planting new roots in states from Virginia to Texas to California.
        In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades. More than 40,000 of them were admitted last year, the highest annual number since the terrorist attacks, according to data on 22 countries provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
Note that Muslims are "moving" here, with no apparent extra scrutiny by immigration authorities who should be investigating these people up and down.

•   •   •  

Metro Muslims building a legacy   [9/9/06]
The Minneapolis Star Tribune remains an unrepentant purveyor of the failed ideology of multiculturalism. Friday's sermon concerned a new mosque being built and how that increased Minnesota's wonderful diversity. And in the Trib's kumbaya worldview, immigrants and foreigners are always "colorful" rather than "murderous."

    Siddiqui said about 100,000 to 150,000 Muslims live in Minnesota, many of them immigrants from Somalia. He said a sign of the community's growth is the mostly Somali-funded Abuubakar As-Sadique Center, which went from renting space near the University of Minnesota to its own building at 2834 13th Av. S.
        Abdul Sugule, spokesman for Abbuubakar, said about 1,200 worshipers raised $2.5 million over seven years -- even during troubling times after the Sept. 11 attacks -- to convert a former 95,000-square-foot warehouse this spring into a site filled with colorful, lush rooms for prayers, meetings and ceremonies.
Minneapolis mosque and first minaret
The article notes in passing, "the mosque will feature a minaret, the slender tower from which the call to prayer is issued."
    In Hamtramck, an Islamic call to prayer was pushed through the city council against the desires of American citizens, even though it violates both noise ordinances and Constitutional protections against one religion being advanced in the public square. The "call to prayer" actually IS a prayer, beginning "Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah."
    Incidentally, a public call to prayer is not necessary in these modern times. An inexpensive time-keeping device may be purchased that alerts devout Muslims of pray-time. Muslim insistence on 8th century customs is an auditory form of marking territory.
    Americans should realize that some Muslims are here to advance worldwide Islam. They make no secret of their long range plans
    "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant," CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad once told a Muslim audience in Fremont, Ca. "The Quran should be the highest authority in America."

•   •   •  

House GOP Makes Border Security Its Priority   [9/8/06]
Speaker Dennis Hastert is talking strong words about the border since Congress reconvened, and they are most welcome.

    House Republican leaders announced Thursday that rather than negotiate the type of sweeping overhaul of immigration law that President Bush had called for, they instead would hold an unusual hearing next week to help fashion a tightly focused "border security package." [...]
        "We will quickly do border security legislation before we leave" for Congress' preelection recess, said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "Congress can't wait to act on this issue. The border is a sieve. We're at war, and we certainly need to act like we are at war and close our borders."

•   •   •  

My Uncle's 'Accident' -- Pride and Shame Hide Taboo Topics in California's 'Little Kabul'   [9/8/06]
"Little Kabul" is part of Fremont and is now populated with superstitious tribal people from a nation that must be considered backward even by Third World standards. In primitive Afghanistan, spirits and curses have more currency than western medicine.

    Suicide is a sin in Islam, and mental illness is taboo in Afghan culture. Often, those who have mental disorders are frowned upon. They are called "daywana," a foul word for insane. Antidepressants are considered pills that Western doctors give patients to make them crazy. Anxiety attacks are defined as occurrences where evil Jin -- spirits -- take over the body.
It's curious then how the Afghan community rushed to the insanity defense when a possibly psychologically unbalanced immigrant, Omeed Aziz Popal, killed one and injured 18 others in the "SUV Jihad in San Francisco?". The latest from the case is that the defense attorney has rescinded his client's not guilty plea and requested more psychological testing.

•   •   •  

Women's Rights Lawyer Quits, Says She Feels Threatened   [9/7/06]
In Germany, a lawyer who fought against forced marriage for Muslim immigrant women has quit her work because of increasing death threats. German lawyer Seyran Ates

    A prominent Berlin women's rights lawyer and critic of Islam has closed her practice, saying her life is in danger and the state has failed to protect her.
        For years, Seyran Ates has been a prominent figure in Germany on account of her books and public engagements reinforcing her fight against forced marriage, headscarves, so-called honor killings, domestic violence and the subjugation of women in many Turkish and Kurdish families.
        The 43-year-old German-Turkish lawyer, who was shot at by a Muslim man 20 years ago in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood, has received numerous prizes over the years. Last year, Ates was named Germany's woman of the year for her unstinting battle for the rights of mainly Muslim women.
        Given her reputation for toughness and bravery, Ates' recent announcement that she was closing her practice because she felt threatened has sent shockwaves through the German capital.
Muslim immigration endangers women's rights, as this situation indicates. More details on this particular case at Western Resistance.

•   •   •  

Border security on tap for GOP   [9/7/06]
The House Republicans are going to try once last time to smack some sense into the Senate.

    House Republicans will make a final push to get border-security legislation on President Bush's desk before November's elections, senior aides told The Washington Times yesterday.
        Top Republicans are planning a series of tough new border-security measures that they hope can get through the Senate, which in the past has opposed border-security legislation unless it has included a guest-worker program and grants citizenship rights to the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens already here.
        Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, said yesterday it would be "next to impossible" to approve such comprehensive immigration reform, but several key senators said they are willing to consider a border-security-only approach.
        "If our only options are a half a loaf or no loaf, then I'd be inclined to take half a loaf," said Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who for years has been a leading advocate of comprehensive immigration reform that secures the borders. [...]
        The sticking point for border-security legislation has been a handful of Senate Republicans who sided with most Democrats to oppose any immigration bill that doesn't include a guest-worker program and provisions to grant citizenship to the majority of the illegal alien population.
        Some, however, are having second thoughts as the November midterm elections near. [...]
        Such legislation could also pick up a few Democrats. A handful already have expressed public support for a straight border-security bill. And yesterday, Sen. Mark Pryor, the Arkansas Democrat who has supported comprehensive legislation, said yesterday he would consider a border bill.
Have a few Senators deigned to listen to voters? Is such a thing possible?

•   •   •  

The American Eleven - A Values Led Plan for Victory in November   [9/7/06]
LTG appreciates a good list, and Newt Gingrich has compiled suggestions on how the Republicans might win the hearts of American voters (and avoid an amnesty-favoring Democratic House).

    1. Make English the Official Language of Government. The House should pass a bill making English the official language of government, abolishing multilingual ballots and reaffirming that new citizens should be required to pass a test on American history in English. The Rasmussen poll reported that support for English as the official language was 85%. The Zogby poll had it at 84%. Why do Republican leaders find it so hard to side with more than four out of every five Americans? How many liberal Democrats who currently assume they are unbeatable would suddenly have a hard time explaining a series of votes against English to their constituents? Remember, at 85%, there are no anti-English congressional districts no matter what the elite media says.
    2. Control the Borders. The House should pass a narrowly focused bill to ensure that the United States can control the border. The current Senate bill is a disaster. It is impossible to pass a "comprehensive" immigration bill in the next two months. The American people overwhelmingly want the borders controlled and every act of terrorism reminds us that having the borders uncontrolled makes us more vulnerable to attack. The House should immediately pass a border-control bill and conservative Republican senators should move every day to bring it up in the Senate. Let Democrats and elitist Republicans block controlling the border and make that a referendum test for Election Day.
There are nine others that are mostly pretty good.

•   •   •  

Pot farms ravaging park land   [9/6/06]
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Point Reyes National Seashore is an absolute gem of natural beauty less than an hour's drive from the city. The park includes hiking trails of amazing variety, with sights ranging from dense woods to hidden lakes, bird-friendly landscapes, a lighthouse known for whale-watching and a beach waterfall.
    Now this precious place has been violated and damaged by pot growers, very likely the Mexican drug cartels that have trashed many other American parklands.

    The discovery of 22,740 marijuana plants growing in and around Point Reyes National Seashore last week wasn't only the biggest pot seizure ever made in Marin County. It was an environmental mess that will take several months and tens of thousands of dollars to clean up. [...]
        Federal officials believe as much as 80 percent of the marijuana on public land is grown by Mexican drug cartels that have turned to places like Point Reyes National Seashore, Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park and Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in this era of tightened border security; growing the drug here is far easier than smuggling it in. The plants found in Point Reyes last week were valued at around $50 million, Dell'Osso said. [...]
        Lt. Scott Anderson of the Marin County Sheriff's Department said the pot farm's similarities to those found in other national parks suggests it was the work of a Mexican cartel that probably employed undocumented immigrants.
A 2003 Christian Science Monitor report on the invasion of Mexican organized crime had an astute quote [Drug cartels thrive in US national parks]:
    "This is massive-scale agriculture that is threatening the very mission of the national parks, which is to preserve the natural environment in perpetuity and provide for safe public recreation," says Bill Tweed, chief naturalist at Sequoia National Park. "[Growers] are killing wildlife, diverting streams, introducing nonnative plants, creating fire and pollution hazards, and bringing the specter of violence. For the moment, we are failing both parts of our mission, and that is tragic."
This destruction is another result of Washington's treasonous failure to enforce the borders: Mexican criminals freely destroy our protected lands with no interference from American law enforcement. We should remember the terrible murder in 2002 of Park Ranger Kris Eggle by a Mexican drug smuggler in Organ Pipe National Monument as a warning: going for an outing in nature is no longer an escape from immigration anarchy.

•   •   •  

For Conservative Muslims, Goal of Isolation a Challenge   [9/5/06]
The Washington Post has been shamefully publishing the most monstrous pro-jihad propaganda as we approach the five-year anniversary of 9/11. This is from today's paper.

    The utopian vision of an all-Islamic oasis within the United States' secular society has taken seed in College Park's Dar-us-Salaam congregation. Its one-story, red-brick building sits at the end of a narrow, tree-lined street of compact homes built in the early 1950s off Route 1, a few blocks from an IHOP and a Dunkin' Donuts.
        A sign in a corner of the parking lot underscores its strict gender segregation.
        "Sisters Only," it reads.
        Inside is the congregation's prayer room — divided by a tall barrier so men and women cannot see one another during worship— and classrooms for Al-Huda School's 300 to 400 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Here, too, is Muslim Link, a community newspaper published by Dar-us-Salaam.
Apparently the sort of diversity in which women are treated as second class is perfectly fine with the Post. And if Muslim fundies wanted to set up a separatist group, why didn't they do it in an Islamic nation, of which there are MANY.
    In addition, as Little Green Footballs noted, "The Al-Huda school mentioned in this article was the home of third-grade teacher Ali Asad Chandia, recently convicted of terrorism." No mention of that important fact by the Post.
    Yesterday, the Post printed Young U.S. Muslims Strive for Harmony, a similar example of fawning dhimmitude.
    Immediately after the terrorist attacks, Muslims began to feel the heat. Women in hijab became targets of hostile remarks; mosques were sprayed with graffiti and vandalized. Some Muslim immigrants were required to register with the government, and families got unexpected knocks on the door from immigration and FBI officers.
        In some communities, resentment swelled as Muslim men disappeared, deported to their home countries or swallowed into a law enforcement system many Muslims felt had convicted them of ill-defined crimes. The United States went to war, first in one Muslim country, then another.
If "resentment swelled" it was because Muslims were made to be accountable to the law, including immigration. They are complaining about having to answer a few question from the FBI and some rude remarks from Americans who object to importing misogyny? Please!
    Can we hear about the real victims of 9/11 from the MSM? You know, the Americans who died?
    Meanwhile, in Denmark nearly half of Danes polled believe that Islam is not compatible with democracy.

•   •   •  

Saudi Prince's Wife Charged With Enslaving 2 Women   [9/5/06]
More slavery diversity in the USA resulting from Muslim immigration, this from Winchester, Mass.

    A Saudi woman will plead guilty in court on Tuesday for allegedly forcing two Indonesian women to be her domestic servants in Winchester.
        Hana Al Jader will acknowledge she violated federal laws, according to her lawyer, Joseph Balliro Sr.
        Al Jader faces six counts of forced labor and four counts of violating immigration laws. Her lawyer would not say what counts the 41-year-old will plead guilty to.
Gateway Pundit wrote about the original arrest in 2005 and included this little nugget from news coverage at the time.
    Neighbors told the Herald the two maids wore mint green smocks and were spit upon by Jader's five sons, who would arrive home from school and toss their backpacks in the garden for "Tri'' and "Ro'' to fetch. The children are 11 and older.
Americans should remember that 'Slavery is a part of Islam' according to a leading Saudi cleric. Indeed, Saudi Arabia officially ended slavery only in 1962. And when convicted slaver Homaidan al-Turki was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison in Colorado, he blamed "anti-Muslim sentiment", since apparently Muslims believe they are above the laws of mere infidels.

•   •   •  

Throwaway workers: Dangerous jobs take toll on illegal immigrants   [9/4/06]
The Chicago Tribune presents a sniffler about the lack of job safety for border-hopping foreigners, and it's a fine meditation for Labor Day to show yet another corruption which immigration anarchy has spawned. Yep, wetback workers are exploited to the max, including injury and death. Sam Gompers
    But that's the system that elites including the press want — a massive neo-slavery labor pool in which the last century of progress for workers has been eliminated by opening the border. Labor leaders of earlier times, such as Samuel Gompers (shown), rejected mass immigration as being harmful to American workers.
    The Trib has written sympathetically about illegal aliens generally and lately given much attention to convicted felon Elvira Arellano who has been squatting in a Chicago church to avoid lawful repatriation.

    Over the last decade, Latino workers' fatality rates have soared, outstripping their share of the workforce. With more Latinos on the job, many suffer a hefty dose of injuries from some of the most dangerous jobs, according to government statistics and interviews with union, workplace safety and public health experts, as well as workers.
        They are vulnerable because many are immigrants who are illiterate in English, have little understanding of American culture and are grateful for any job, no matter how dangerous. And because many are undocumented immigrants, afraid of being deported, they often don't ask questions and don't challenge the boss.
See also Labor Day through the Looking Glass.

•   •   •  

9/11: Five years later: Typecasting Muslims as a Race   [9/3/06]
We are getting close to the five-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, and apparently the MSM thinks the way to commemorate the event is to focus on alleged unfairness toward Muslims.
    The media is so twisted by liberalism that it can't resist victimology and its addiction to fawning covererage of those considered oppressed. The press should tell the truth about the ideology of Islam, which calls on its followers to kill infidels unless they submit and become Muslims. Instead, we read insults like the following:

    "Muslims are the new Jews," said Paul Silverstein, an anthropology professor at Reed College in Oregon who studies the intersection of race, immigration and Islam. "They're the object of a series of stereotypes, caricatures and fears which are not based in a reality and are independent of a person's experience with Muslims."
If you need a reminder of the true nature of the Muslim faith read Top 10 Reasons Why Islam Isn't Exactly a Religion of Peace.

•   •   •  

Millions in 9/11 Payments, but No Green Cards   [9/3/06]
Leave it to the New York Times to forge new trails in depraved "immigrant" sob stories. The latest sniffle objects are illegal alien 9/11 victims, who are also millionaires, thanks to the sovereignty-averse bureaucrat (Kenneth Feinberg) who handed out piles of cash from the Compensation Fund. But the Times spin is that these people are suffering because they cannot spend their ill-gotten gains in America.

    One widow has more than $2 million but walks or rides the bus everywhere, terrified of drawing attention. Another millionaire widow stopped going to 9/11 support groups because she feared that families of police officers and firefighters might betray her. A widower has enough money to start a business building houses, but cannot buy himself a home.
        All three lost a husband or a wife when the World Trade Center collapsed. Like thousands of others, they were beneficiaries of the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which awarded millions of dollars to families whose loved ones died in the attacks.
        But a secret sets these three apart. Like their spouses who died, each is in the country illegally. Even though the government compensated them richly for their losses, making them wealthier than they ever dreamed, the money did not change their immigration status. They fear they could be deported any day.
Sentimental slop like this insults the reader's intelligence. The aliens can easily return to their countries of citizenship and live like kings! There are plenty of cars and servants and education for the kiddies available in third world nations for anyone who has the cash. But the Times suggests the foreigners believe an amnesty is in the near future, an idea perhaps pushed by financial "advisors" who may gain from the millionaires' continued presence.

•   •   •  

Mark Steyn on C-SPAN (Video added)   [9/3/06]
For five minutes of witty commentary on the press, Eurabia, and post-9/11 mosque drive-by (aka sensitivity toward Mooslims), watch this clip of the Canadian writer, gleaned from Friday's Washington Journal on C-SPAN.

•   •   •  

A Sore (Loser) That Won't Heal   [9/2/06]
Investor's Business Daily had some interesting insights about the Lopez-Obrador demonstrations in Mexico City regarding the "remittance culture" which funds it.

    Third, the remittance culture that permits many Mexicans to spend their days on picket lines must be discouraged. Mexico will take in a record $24 billion in remittances this year, and most of it will go to Lopez Obrador states. Discouraging illegal immigration is critical to drying up the existing private welfare system of remittances, which may be encouraging protests.

•   •   •  

Mexico's Drug Wars Heat Up   [9/2/06]
Cartel violence is getting so bad in Mexico that the business community and press are beginning to pay attention. While once limited to scruffy border regions, drug killings have moved into cities and tourist areas. A Dallas investor recently changed his mind about putting $40 million into a project near Zihuatanejo because of the "dire situation" of growing violent lawlessness.

    In the once-chic beach resort of Acapulco, the severed heads of two police officers who had been clamping down on drug traffickers were found a few months ago with a note attached: "So that you learn to respect." The grisly method soon caught on. In August alone, four more heads accompanied by threatening notes appeared in the central Mexican state of Michoacan.
        In Mexico City, gunmen strode into an upscale restaurant on Aug. 16 and shot a businessman in the head. A few miles away, two federal judges were gunned down in the past few weeks, one of them days after he limited the visitation rights of a notorious jailed drug kingpin.
        For years, Mexico's drug cartels have shot it out among themselves, usually in rough cities along the U.S. border or on the Pacific coast, where most of the cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine consumed by Americans enters the U.S. But a bloody turf war among traffickers is spreading the violence to cities that have rarely seen it before.
        Now they are targeting police and judges in response to the government crackdown. "The Mexican government is engaged in an unprecedented, all-out fight against drug traffickers," Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told reporters on Aug. 23. "The decapitations are a sign of the violence that these groups are showing because we have them cornered." Cornered, perhaps, but far from being vanquished.
That's bravado from the Mexican government official. Violence is worsening in Nuevo Laredo, a once prosperous border city that benefited from many American shoppers on day trips. Now the Americans stay away because they don't want to be shot, and at least 40 and perhaps 100 businesses have closed as a result.

•   •   •  

Mexican lawmakers block Fox's address   [9/2/06]
Mexico legislature whistlers In Mexico City, left-wing politicians in the legislature raised such a ruckus with whistles and shouting that el Presidente Vicente Fox could not give his farewell State of the Nation address, the first ever executive to be so prevented.
    The insult was part of the national split over the July 2 Presidential vote which was very close, and the loser leftist Lopez-Obrador has refused to accept defeat even after a recent court ruling (the final ruling will be given on Sept. 5). The streets of Mexico City have been filled with pro-Lopez-Obrador supporters who threaten to set up a shadow government.

    The incident deepened an ongoing political crisis in Mexico, where the dispute over the election to replace Fox has brought huge protests and chaos to Mexico City's downtown. More than any event in the past two months, the congressional takeover seemed to signal that Lopez Obrador could create an effective opposition that would make life miserable for Felipe Calderon, the candidate from Fox's party who has apparently won the presidency by a narrow margin.
        The night's strange events were also sure to add to the checkered legacy of Fox, who improved the transparency of government but failed to achieve the economic gains that he had hoped for after ending seven decades of one-party rule in Mexico with his victory in 2000.
Interestingly, el Presidente Fox responded by declaring, "Whoever attacks our laws and institutions also attacks our history and Mexico."
    Mexico is a nation of laws? Who knew? It looks more like a nation of anarchy, and it's coming this way.

•   •   •  

Why this immigrant rights march is brought to you by Miller   [9/1/06]
Insulting your customers and promoting the invasion of the country where your company is located are not the best approaches to marketing. Yet the nation's #2 brewer has seen fit to sponsor an illegal alien march in a major city, Chicago.

    Marchers had to duck into fast-food restaurants for water when they first took to Chicago's streets in support of illegal immigrants five months ago. At the next two marches, family-owned grocery stores offered free bottled water from trucks emblazoned with their names.
        This time, as demonstrators march from Chinatown to House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-Ill.) Batavia office this weekend, they will have Miller Brewing Co., as a sponsor. The brewer has paid more than $30,000 for a planning convention, materials and newspaper ads publicizing the event.
        The support of a major corporation for a controversial political cause shows how fierce the competition has become to woo the growing market of Latino consumers.
        For Miller, the march offered a special chance to catch up. This spring the brewer drew the ire of pro-immigrant forces over contributions to U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who sponsored legislation that would crack down on illegal immigrants. That prompted a short-lived boycott by some Latino groups.
Miller is worried about a little Mexican boycott? Instead, they ought to be concerned about infuriating patriotic NASCAR Americans, whom the company still attempts to attract.
    You can send an email to the company to express any objections you might have to Miller's Hispandering. Other corporate contact information can be found here, including the phone (414-931-2000) and fax (414-931-3735) numbers.
    In other pandering news, the city of Chicago intends to honor a Mexican holiday: Skyline to catch the glow of Mexico's independence. The plan is that around 20 buildings and landmarks will be lit up in Mexico's national colors of red, white and green to celebrate Mexican independence for four days in mid September.
    Can you remember a Mexican city honoring America by getting lit up in red, white and blue, or in any other way? In fact, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mexico was conspicuous among the world's nations for having no official memorial ceremony or mass vigil. Any "friendship" between the two countries is purely a delusion on the part of Americans.
    Update: Miller denies financing march.
    Miller Brewing Co. on Friday denied providing financial help for a planned march in Chicago supporting illegal immigrants, but a newspaper report of the firm's involvement in a controversial political issue could create marketing headaches for the Milwaukee brewer.

•   •   •  

 

© 2006 Brenda Walker All rights reserved.