3 MILLION MORE ILLEGALS AND CRIMINALS TO ENTER U.S. UNABATED!
Chertoff’s Virtually Useless Border Security System is a huge government boondoggle, and has already cost taxpayers $15 million, and the remaining $5 million had been withheld. Members of Congress began questioning Boeing about the expensive, ineffective border security mess called “Project 28,” and its faulty equipment. Last week Chertoff said the system was approved for service and the money was released.The Department of Homeland Security announced they discovered 19 underground tunnels in 2007 along the U.S.-Mexico border used by international drug cartels to transport tons and tons of illegal narcotics into our country. An incredible 73 of these LaRaza smuggling tunnels have been found since 1990, and half of all these known drug tunnels were built after September 11, 2001.
Now today the Washington Post reports that “The Bush administration has scaled back plans to quickly build a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border, delaying completion of the first phase of the project by at least three years and shifting away from a network of tower-mounted sensors and surveillance gear, federal officials said.”
Do they know what they are doing? Do they think this constant campaign of misinformation secures the border? Do they believe that blue sky and hope will protect us from Al-Qaeda terrorists training in South America and crossing the U.S.- Mexican border?
Remember the real 700 miles of Border Fence that President Bush and Chertoff promised to build. The funds for that have never been released and likely never will.
What is wrong with this Congress? Do they really believe that just a camera will stop illegal aliens and drug cartels? Just this week the Border Patrol released surveillance camera footage from a border crossing point in Naco, AZ. It showed a group of 20 illegals getting into a van just 30 feet from agents and getting away. They only went after the coyote that was leading the group allowing 20 more illegals to enter the U.S.
The camera’s caught all the action and the illegal’s got away.
The money should be used to put real people on duty at the border. We need more agents and the National Guard redeployed.
Now Our government intends to “secure” 28 more miles of our embattled Southern Borders with the same flawed, virtual fencing technology, that they have admitted contains “software glitches” and will at best provide, “marginal functionality.”
Chertoff is proud of this new technology that can distinguish between a COW and a HUMAN.
Unbelieveable, $15 million to do something that a 5 year old child can do and the system is just as likely to run down criminals and illegals as that same 5 year old.
This “virtual” fencing is virtually useless. We need a real fence. It does NOTHING to stop the over 2,000 terrorists, drug dealers, rapists, and MS-13 gang members who violate our porous borders on a daily basis with the intent on harming YOUR families.
Chertoff also says he want taxpayers to believe that “one size will not fit all”. Translation, MORE TAX MONEY WILL BE WASTED on faulty technology and put into some bill somewhere as pork.
ACT NOW to forcefully remind these Washington elites that American citizens will no longer tolerate government “leaders” who use smoke and mirrors rather than build the 700 miles of physical border fencing that was promised in 2006.
Do not be fooled by the false concerns of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss), Chairman of the U.S. House’s Homeland Security Committee that make him appear to be watching. Last year he wrote Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff and cited numerous problems with Boeing’s virtual fence system in a letter which explained his reasons for not providing final payment to Boeing
The letter states, “we have received recent reports from the field that strongly suggest that the "final" Project 28 product will provide the Border Patrol little, if any, functionality it did not already possess. Yet he says, “I strongly support the use of technology to secure our border.”
Washington lawmakers continue to bicker, months and maybe years over the $20 million awarded to Boeing, our borders remain unsecured and overworked Border Patrol agents continue undermanned attempting to apprehend 20,000,000 illegal aliens.
So Congress lets the illegal alien invasion continue and Minuteman volunteers must continue to do the job our government refuses to do. Volunteer now to participate in monthly border watch operations
Virtual fencing alone will never provide the necessary deterrence to the coyotes, international drug cartels and Al-Qaeda members.
Lawmakers will eventually ignore the will of legal citizens, with a sneak attack if we don’t prepare to fight them now! Please select here to ensure we have the resources to remind our lawmakers that border security demands we build physical fencing.
In the U.S. House, Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) has recently introduced the SAVE ACT Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007(H.R. 4088) otherwise known as the SAVE ACT.
In the U. S. Senate, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) recently introduced a measure that will prevent licenses from being granted to illegal aliens. His bill will keep the City of San Francisco and eight states from causing irreparable harm to our nations.
Make a difference by helping us to do the job our government refuses to do!
Send the message that the average American still understands the difference between “illegal” and “legal” — even if our corrupt elites do not.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Farrakhan Praises Obama
A Spry Farrakhan Sings Obama's Praises
By SOPHIA TAREEN – 17 hours ago
CHICAGO (AP) — In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better.
The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator.
"This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."
Farrakhan compared Obama to the religion's founder, Fard Muhammad, who also had a white mother and black father.
"A black man with a white mother became a savior to us," he told the crowd of mostly followers. "A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall."
Farrakhan also leveled small jabs at Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, suggesting that she represents the politics of the past and has been engaging in dirty politics.
Said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton: "Sen. Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan's past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister's support."
Farrakhan rebuilt the Nation of Islam, which promotes black empowerment and nationalism, in the late 1970s after W.D. Mohammed, the son of longtime leader Elijah Mohammed, moved his followers toward mainstream Islam.
Farrakhan has drawn attention for calling Judaism a "gutter religion" and suggesting crack cocaine might have been a CIA plot to enslave blacks.
In recent years, however, officials with the Nation of Islam have promoted unity and tolerance among religions. Farrakhan now often quotes the texts of other religions, such as the Bible, in his speeches.
Farrakhan's keynote address at McCormick Place, the city's convention center, wrapped up three days of events geared at unifying followers and targeting youth.
It had a different tone from a year ago, when Farrakhan made what was called his final public address at a Saviours' Day event in Detroit. The 74-year-old was recovering from complications from prostate cancer and months earlier had temporarily passed on leadership duties of the organization's day-to-day activities to an executive board.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By SOPHIA TAREEN – 17 hours ago
CHICAGO (AP) — In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better.
The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator.
"This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."
Farrakhan compared Obama to the religion's founder, Fard Muhammad, who also had a white mother and black father.
"A black man with a white mother became a savior to us," he told the crowd of mostly followers. "A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall."
Farrakhan also leveled small jabs at Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, suggesting that she represents the politics of the past and has been engaging in dirty politics.
Said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton: "Sen. Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan's past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister's support."
Farrakhan rebuilt the Nation of Islam, which promotes black empowerment and nationalism, in the late 1970s after W.D. Mohammed, the son of longtime leader Elijah Mohammed, moved his followers toward mainstream Islam.
Farrakhan has drawn attention for calling Judaism a "gutter religion" and suggesting crack cocaine might have been a CIA plot to enslave blacks.
In recent years, however, officials with the Nation of Islam have promoted unity and tolerance among religions. Farrakhan now often quotes the texts of other religions, such as the Bible, in his speeches.
Farrakhan's keynote address at McCormick Place, the city's convention center, wrapped up three days of events geared at unifying followers and targeting youth.
It had a different tone from a year ago, when Farrakhan made what was called his final public address at a Saviours' Day event in Detroit. The 74-year-old was recovering from complications from prostate cancer and months earlier had temporarily passed on leadership duties of the organization's day-to-day activities to an executive board.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Think About It
A close friend of mine got this note from Usama Dakdok, in response to a question she asked him to clarify. Please pass it along, as people have been terribly deceived.
For those of you who do not know Usama, he is an Egyptian Christian, educated in Egypt, fluent in Arabic, and a graduate of the Southern Baptist Seminary in New Orleans.
For more information go to his website www.thestraightway.org
Subject: Usama's note
A Truth To Know
I called The United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, where Senator Obama is a member. I doubted that he was indeed a Christian for if he were Muslim and left the religion of Islam, according to Islamic law, he would be subject to a death warrant by Islam itself. Many such murders take place around this world to Muslims who have left Islam. However in this case the Muslims are joyously happy to think that we would have a Muslim President in the White House.
Obama is deceiving America. Muslims would not be endorsing a Muslim who left Islam to become a Christian. It is important to note that I had four witnesses to this conversation with Obama's church on the phone. The dates and time and the length of conversation can be verified by phone records.
The following is the conversation I had with the church regarding membership in the church. 'My name is Usama, and I am from Egypt. I want to join the church.' 'I need to ask you some questions please.' They connected me to the membership department. I proceeded to ask questions that only a Muslim would ask. 'What is the difference between Baptist and your church?' She answered, 'We believe exactly what Baptists believe.' My second question was, 'How big is your church and what kind of church is it?' Her answer was, 'We are a Black African American church and we have 6000 members. I asked her, 'Do I have to attend Sunday school classes and other meetings to be a member?' She said, 'No, that is not necessary.' I asked, 'Do I have to be baptized to join the church?' Her answer was 'NO.' I asked, 'Do I have to give money to join the church?' She answered 'NO.' I went on to ask her how do I join the church?...she replied, ' You need to attend two Sunday school membership classes in a row and then you need to walk the aisle.' I said, 'That sounds easy.' 'Now one last question please.' 'IF I AM A MUSLIM AND I BELIEVE IN PROPHET MOHAMMED, PEACE BE UPON HIM, AND I ALSO BELIEVE IN JESUS, PEACE BE UPON HIM, DO I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY ISLAMIC FAITH TO BE A MEMBER IN YOUR CHURCH?' SHE REPLIED, 'NO, WE HAVE MANY MEMBERS IN OUR CHURCH WHO ARE MUSLIM.'I ASKED HER, 'IS THAT HOW SENATOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA BECAME A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH?' THERE WAS A DEAD SILENT MOMENT. AND THEN I SAID THAT I KNEW HIS FATHER AND STEPFATHER ARE MUSLIM: HIS GRANDFATHERS AND GRANDMOTHERS ARE MUSLIMS: HIS UNCLES AND AUNTS, NEPHEWS AND NIECES AND COUSINS ARE MUSLIM. EVERYONE IN HIS FAMILY IN KENYA ARE MUSLIMS. She replied to me, 'I am sorry I cannot answer this question for you.' I could sense she was uncomfortable to go on further with me. I ended the conversation by saying to her, 'YOUR CHURCH HAS DONE GREAT HARM TO THIS COUNTRY BY COVERING A WOLF IN SHEEPS CLOTHING, AND THAT WOLF IS SENATOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA.'
End of phone call...........
I ASK YOU FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION OF THIS FRAUD TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA... Please let as many people as you can know about this information For all who mourn, he will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, and praise instead of despair. Isaiah 61:3
For those of you who do not know Usama, he is an Egyptian Christian, educated in Egypt, fluent in Arabic, and a graduate of the Southern Baptist Seminary in New Orleans.
For more information go to his website www.thestraightway.org
Subject: Usama's note
A Truth To Know
I called The United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, where Senator Obama is a member. I doubted that he was indeed a Christian for if he were Muslim and left the religion of Islam, according to Islamic law, he would be subject to a death warrant by Islam itself. Many such murders take place around this world to Muslims who have left Islam. However in this case the Muslims are joyously happy to think that we would have a Muslim President in the White House.
Obama is deceiving America. Muslims would not be endorsing a Muslim who left Islam to become a Christian. It is important to note that I had four witnesses to this conversation with Obama's church on the phone. The dates and time and the length of conversation can be verified by phone records.
The following is the conversation I had with the church regarding membership in the church. 'My name is Usama, and I am from Egypt. I want to join the church.' 'I need to ask you some questions please.' They connected me to the membership department. I proceeded to ask questions that only a Muslim would ask. 'What is the difference between Baptist and your church?' She answered, 'We believe exactly what Baptists believe.' My second question was, 'How big is your church and what kind of church is it?' Her answer was, 'We are a Black African American church and we have 6000 members. I asked her, 'Do I have to attend Sunday school classes and other meetings to be a member?' She said, 'No, that is not necessary.' I asked, 'Do I have to be baptized to join the church?' Her answer was 'NO.' I asked, 'Do I have to give money to join the church?' She answered 'NO.' I went on to ask her how do I join the church?...she replied, ' You need to attend two Sunday school membership classes in a row and then you need to walk the aisle.' I said, 'That sounds easy.' 'Now one last question please.' 'IF I AM A MUSLIM AND I BELIEVE IN PROPHET MOHAMMED, PEACE BE UPON HIM, AND I ALSO BELIEVE IN JESUS, PEACE BE UPON HIM, DO I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY ISLAMIC FAITH TO BE A MEMBER IN YOUR CHURCH?' SHE REPLIED, 'NO, WE HAVE MANY MEMBERS IN OUR CHURCH WHO ARE MUSLIM.'I ASKED HER, 'IS THAT HOW SENATOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA BECAME A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH?' THERE WAS A DEAD SILENT MOMENT. AND THEN I SAID THAT I KNEW HIS FATHER AND STEPFATHER ARE MUSLIM: HIS GRANDFATHERS AND GRANDMOTHERS ARE MUSLIMS: HIS UNCLES AND AUNTS, NEPHEWS AND NIECES AND COUSINS ARE MUSLIM. EVERYONE IN HIS FAMILY IN KENYA ARE MUSLIMS. She replied to me, 'I am sorry I cannot answer this question for you.' I could sense she was uncomfortable to go on further with me. I ended the conversation by saying to her, 'YOUR CHURCH HAS DONE GREAT HARM TO THIS COUNTRY BY COVERING A WOLF IN SHEEPS CLOTHING, AND THAT WOLF IS SENATOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA.'
End of phone call...........
I ASK YOU FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION OF THIS FRAUD TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA... Please let as many people as you can know about this information For all who mourn, he will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, and praise instead of despair. Isaiah 61:3
Border Fence Going Virtual
Border Fence Going Virtual
By: Joe Murray, The Bulletin
02/25/2008
The long-awaited and highly- controversial virtual security fence has received the green light and is ready to be implemented across a 28-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said on Friday.
Known as Project 28, the virtual fence will rely on cameras and radar in lieu of physical fencing to patrol the border.
It costs $20 million.
"I have personally witnessed the value of this system," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "I have spoken directly to the border patrol agents who are involved in operating that system over the last few months and who have seen it produce actual results in terms of identifying and allowing the apprehension of people who were illegally smuggling across the border."
The 28-mile virtual fence consists of 98-ft. unmanned surveillance towers equipped with radar technology, sensors and cameras the government asserted can distinguish people from cattle from a 10-mile distance. Officials claim the cameras are capable of determining group sizes and whether individuals are carrying backpacks that may contain dangerous weapons or drugs.
Project 28, however, was riddled with software glitches last summer. The government had already paid Boeing, the company providing the technology, $15 million of the $20 million owed before recognizing the system was not working properly. Mr. Chertoff now claims the system is operational.
"I don't think it's riddled with problems at this point. I think that the initial version that was completed in the summer was unsatisfactory, so we did not take additional acceptance," Mr. Chertoff explained. "We are trying to be tough customers but not unreasonable customers."
Despite the technological promises of the virtual fence, lawmakers are concerned DHS is using the virtual fence as cover for failing to build the 700 miles of a physical fence required by the Secure Fence Act of 2007. The act, which recognized the success of the double-barrier San Diego border fence, mandated that the government build a similar fence on the southern border, a mandate that has been largely ignored by Washington.
"The American people want our borders secured, yet the Department of Homeland Security, even when presented with a mandate from Congress to get the job done, has done little of what is actually required to achieve an enforceable border," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.).
The decision of DHS to move away from constructing the double-barrier fence and toward a virtual fence has raised concerns among many immigration reform advocates.
"Washington is attempting to play smoke and mirrors with the American people by promising border security, pledging a fence, refusing to build physical fencing and then deploying faulty and overpriced technology that will only tell us if people or cows are illegally invading our country," said Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. Mr. Simcox believes the virtual fence is "virtually useless" and will fail to protect the border.
"While technology and manpower are an important part of this effort, the best and most effective method of preventing illegal foot and vehicle traffic from entering the United States is border security fencing," Mr. Hunter argued. Mr. Hunter has introduced the Reinstate the Secure Fence Act in the House as an effort to compel government officials to build the double-layer fenced.
Joe Murray can be reached at jmurray@thebulletin.us.
©The Evening Bulletin 2008
By: Joe Murray, The Bulletin
02/25/2008
The long-awaited and highly- controversial virtual security fence has received the green light and is ready to be implemented across a 28-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said on Friday.
Known as Project 28, the virtual fence will rely on cameras and radar in lieu of physical fencing to patrol the border.
It costs $20 million.
"I have personally witnessed the value of this system," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "I have spoken directly to the border patrol agents who are involved in operating that system over the last few months and who have seen it produce actual results in terms of identifying and allowing the apprehension of people who were illegally smuggling across the border."
The 28-mile virtual fence consists of 98-ft. unmanned surveillance towers equipped with radar technology, sensors and cameras the government asserted can distinguish people from cattle from a 10-mile distance. Officials claim the cameras are capable of determining group sizes and whether individuals are carrying backpacks that may contain dangerous weapons or drugs.
Project 28, however, was riddled with software glitches last summer. The government had already paid Boeing, the company providing the technology, $15 million of the $20 million owed before recognizing the system was not working properly. Mr. Chertoff now claims the system is operational.
"I don't think it's riddled with problems at this point. I think that the initial version that was completed in the summer was unsatisfactory, so we did not take additional acceptance," Mr. Chertoff explained. "We are trying to be tough customers but not unreasonable customers."
Despite the technological promises of the virtual fence, lawmakers are concerned DHS is using the virtual fence as cover for failing to build the 700 miles of a physical fence required by the Secure Fence Act of 2007. The act, which recognized the success of the double-barrier San Diego border fence, mandated that the government build a similar fence on the southern border, a mandate that has been largely ignored by Washington.
"The American people want our borders secured, yet the Department of Homeland Security, even when presented with a mandate from Congress to get the job done, has done little of what is actually required to achieve an enforceable border," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.).
The decision of DHS to move away from constructing the double-barrier fence and toward a virtual fence has raised concerns among many immigration reform advocates.
"Washington is attempting to play smoke and mirrors with the American people by promising border security, pledging a fence, refusing to build physical fencing and then deploying faulty and overpriced technology that will only tell us if people or cows are illegally invading our country," said Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. Mr. Simcox believes the virtual fence is "virtually useless" and will fail to protect the border.
"While technology and manpower are an important part of this effort, the best and most effective method of preventing illegal foot and vehicle traffic from entering the United States is border security fencing," Mr. Hunter argued. Mr. Hunter has introduced the Reinstate the Secure Fence Act in the House as an effort to compel government officials to build the double-layer fenced.
Joe Murray can be reached at jmurray@thebulletin.us.
©The Evening Bulletin 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
Help! We Are Falling and We Can’t Get Up!
By Randy Taylor, Independent Analyst
22 February 2008: Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961 as Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, he spent some of his childhood in Honolulu, Hawaii. From the age of six to age ten, he lived in Jakarta with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. Jakarta, Indonesia, one of Islam’s jihadist training grounds.
He admittedly studied Islam early in life, attended a Wahabbi madrassa and then claims he converted from Islam to - well we aren’t really sure what he has converted to. In fact, we aren’t sure that he converted at all. People seem to forget one major fact about Islam: these people have been planning the demise of the United States for decades. They have more patience than anyone on this earth. So who is to say that when the Islamic radicals overthrew Iran in the late 70’s they didn’t have their own "Manchurian Candidate" in mind for the position as President of the most powerful non-Muslim nation in the world?
From a chronological standpoint, the timing of Islam’s bold move in Iran in 1979 and the fact that Barack Obama wrapping up his teenage formative years around the same time places him on my radar screen of suspicion. I haven’t heard him denounce Islam as of yet but I have heard him promote it. I've heard him slam just about everything this country has done in an effort to keep Islam and its perpetuators of the Islamic farce at bay. In fact after he whipped Hillary in one of the primaries he gave a speech in which if you closed your eyes and listened to only the words, you could have had Osama Bin Laden delivering the words to you.
What exactly do we know about this presidential candidate? I’m not talking about the surface, the obvious fake façade of Barack Hussein Obama. I’m talking about the true Obama, the ever evasive answerer, the Wahabbi trained and indoctrinated Muslim who suddenly, as we are experiencing our most difficult times with our Islamic enemy suddenly pops out of the cheap seats and makes a bid for the White House. The overall timing is bizarre to say the least. The bottom line is that this man should not be trusted with the security of the most powerful deterrent of Islam, the United States of America.
We know what a useless, lying piece of human feces that Ted Kennedy is, so why would anyone even consider anyone that he endorses? Possibly there are some back room manipulative plans in the works as surely even the Democrats know that Obama faces a higher than average chance of an assassination attempt if elected. I don’t wish that on anyone but let’s face the fact that Colin Powell even realized the risks and backed away from a presidential bid. Considering this theory, one would have to be curious who Obama’s running mate will be as there is a good chance that the vice president under Obama would eventually be the president. So let’s see who ends up in that seat as his running mate as that person could possibly be the President within the first year of the new regime. C’mon, Ted Kennedy is the same as the kiss of death. I’d put some distance between me and him if I were a candidate.
The Democrats are fairly certain that no Republicans will make it to the White House as most people, even the ones that voted for Bush are unhappy with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy and the stock market. Since Hillary Clinton smells too much like her screwball husband Bill Clinton, she won’t make the cut. The ones to watch for running mate will be John Edwards or that idiot John Kerry. Kind of funny because the only way either of those two clowns could get into the Presidential driver's seat is if someone died and vacated it. The Democrats are banking on the politically correct, demented thinking and lost logic of the American left to put Obama in the white house. Then and only then will their plan work. Watch how this plays out America as I’m not to far off with this theory. It’s like watching a poorly choreographed musical which unfortunately does well because of the supporters of the actors, not the actors themselves.
The politically correct thing to do is put a black, foreign born Muslim into office only because it is so far opposite of who is running the country now. America won’t vote him in because they think he is the man for the job, they will vote him in because he is against the war, he isn’t the same color as George Bush and he talks a good show. No one is very happy with the Bush-Chaney management (or mismanagement) job and a good majority of weak shortsighted Americans want something different. I’m a Republican but even I have questioned some of the things I’ve seen playing out. Bottom line is that I vote my conscience and I will always support the best person to protect this nation, even if I disagree with some policies.
Islam isn’t going away anytime soon and their plan is the demise of this country. They already have managed to infect Congress with one of their Islamic piglets named Keith Ellison who, for the record, has done nothing positive while in office yet has managed to promote Islam. When you look closely at his congressional district, he has created much conflict between Islam and America. Look closely folks, Muslim airport taxi driver issues with western passengers, the flying imams escapade, the repeated appearances of issues related to the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.
That are just a few incidents in a city from where a Muslim weaseled his way into a Congressional seat. Sit back and imagine the implications of a Muslim in the White House, in charge of a nation, and not limited to one congressional district. That is, of course, if he survives.
Incidentally, if anything did happen to Obama in office, you can be sure that the supposed "assassin" will be killed and magically traced back to some white supremacy group, making the story much more "marketable" to the American public. Since the media is the Democratic mouthpiece for all things, be assured there will be tons of evidence blasted across the media airwaves to seal the deal. It worked with a prior presidential assassination and it will work again if the power designers need it to. It’s what I call the Caesar Principle. It will be a repeat of history much like the Kennedy assassination in which Americas foreign policy changed with his death. It’s been going on for centuries all around the world, as long as there was power to gain and men willing to kill to gain that power.
This will be an interesting presidential election and the follow-up scenes and after effects will be even more interesting if Barack Obama makes it to the Oval Office especially if he survives. Then we will have fallen and we will not be able to get back up. Islam doesn’t have to attack us since we are going to walk them in the front door of the head office.
By the way, if you are wondering why we haven’t been attacked by these Islamic fanatics, it’s because they have no reason to attack us. We are doing exactly what they want us to and have been for some time. Think about it. All the security in the world won’t stop an attack if terrorists want to attack. Yet, we haven’t had a major attack since 2001. We won’t be attacked if Obama is elected and survives. We will be attacked however if anything happens to him or if a Republican gets elected. That’s the terrorist playbook and calendar folks and it is quite simple. Barack Obama is the puppet of Islam and is Islam’s real life equivalent of the fictitious Manchurian Candidate, groomed since childhood possibly even birth for this strategic position.
One way or another America will fall if we don’t get serious about this problem of Islam. When we fall, we will not get back up.
Be safe and stay vigilant.
By Randy Taylor, Independent Analyst
22 February 2008: Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961 as Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, he spent some of his childhood in Honolulu, Hawaii. From the age of six to age ten, he lived in Jakarta with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. Jakarta, Indonesia, one of Islam’s jihadist training grounds.
He admittedly studied Islam early in life, attended a Wahabbi madrassa and then claims he converted from Islam to - well we aren’t really sure what he has converted to. In fact, we aren’t sure that he converted at all. People seem to forget one major fact about Islam: these people have been planning the demise of the United States for decades. They have more patience than anyone on this earth. So who is to say that when the Islamic radicals overthrew Iran in the late 70’s they didn’t have their own "Manchurian Candidate" in mind for the position as President of the most powerful non-Muslim nation in the world?
From a chronological standpoint, the timing of Islam’s bold move in Iran in 1979 and the fact that Barack Obama wrapping up his teenage formative years around the same time places him on my radar screen of suspicion. I haven’t heard him denounce Islam as of yet but I have heard him promote it. I've heard him slam just about everything this country has done in an effort to keep Islam and its perpetuators of the Islamic farce at bay. In fact after he whipped Hillary in one of the primaries he gave a speech in which if you closed your eyes and listened to only the words, you could have had Osama Bin Laden delivering the words to you.
What exactly do we know about this presidential candidate? I’m not talking about the surface, the obvious fake façade of Barack Hussein Obama. I’m talking about the true Obama, the ever evasive answerer, the Wahabbi trained and indoctrinated Muslim who suddenly, as we are experiencing our most difficult times with our Islamic enemy suddenly pops out of the cheap seats and makes a bid for the White House. The overall timing is bizarre to say the least. The bottom line is that this man should not be trusted with the security of the most powerful deterrent of Islam, the United States of America.
We know what a useless, lying piece of human feces that Ted Kennedy is, so why would anyone even consider anyone that he endorses? Possibly there are some back room manipulative plans in the works as surely even the Democrats know that Obama faces a higher than average chance of an assassination attempt if elected. I don’t wish that on anyone but let’s face the fact that Colin Powell even realized the risks and backed away from a presidential bid. Considering this theory, one would have to be curious who Obama’s running mate will be as there is a good chance that the vice president under Obama would eventually be the president. So let’s see who ends up in that seat as his running mate as that person could possibly be the President within the first year of the new regime. C’mon, Ted Kennedy is the same as the kiss of death. I’d put some distance between me and him if I were a candidate.
The Democrats are fairly certain that no Republicans will make it to the White House as most people, even the ones that voted for Bush are unhappy with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy and the stock market. Since Hillary Clinton smells too much like her screwball husband Bill Clinton, she won’t make the cut. The ones to watch for running mate will be John Edwards or that idiot John Kerry. Kind of funny because the only way either of those two clowns could get into the Presidential driver's seat is if someone died and vacated it. The Democrats are banking on the politically correct, demented thinking and lost logic of the American left to put Obama in the white house. Then and only then will their plan work. Watch how this plays out America as I’m not to far off with this theory. It’s like watching a poorly choreographed musical which unfortunately does well because of the supporters of the actors, not the actors themselves.
The politically correct thing to do is put a black, foreign born Muslim into office only because it is so far opposite of who is running the country now. America won’t vote him in because they think he is the man for the job, they will vote him in because he is against the war, he isn’t the same color as George Bush and he talks a good show. No one is very happy with the Bush-Chaney management (or mismanagement) job and a good majority of weak shortsighted Americans want something different. I’m a Republican but even I have questioned some of the things I’ve seen playing out. Bottom line is that I vote my conscience and I will always support the best person to protect this nation, even if I disagree with some policies.
Islam isn’t going away anytime soon and their plan is the demise of this country. They already have managed to infect Congress with one of their Islamic piglets named Keith Ellison who, for the record, has done nothing positive while in office yet has managed to promote Islam. When you look closely at his congressional district, he has created much conflict between Islam and America. Look closely folks, Muslim airport taxi driver issues with western passengers, the flying imams escapade, the repeated appearances of issues related to the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.
That are just a few incidents in a city from where a Muslim weaseled his way into a Congressional seat. Sit back and imagine the implications of a Muslim in the White House, in charge of a nation, and not limited to one congressional district. That is, of course, if he survives.
Incidentally, if anything did happen to Obama in office, you can be sure that the supposed "assassin" will be killed and magically traced back to some white supremacy group, making the story much more "marketable" to the American public. Since the media is the Democratic mouthpiece for all things, be assured there will be tons of evidence blasted across the media airwaves to seal the deal. It worked with a prior presidential assassination and it will work again if the power designers need it to. It’s what I call the Caesar Principle. It will be a repeat of history much like the Kennedy assassination in which Americas foreign policy changed with his death. It’s been going on for centuries all around the world, as long as there was power to gain and men willing to kill to gain that power.
This will be an interesting presidential election and the follow-up scenes and after effects will be even more interesting if Barack Obama makes it to the Oval Office especially if he survives. Then we will have fallen and we will not be able to get back up. Islam doesn’t have to attack us since we are going to walk them in the front door of the head office.
By the way, if you are wondering why we haven’t been attacked by these Islamic fanatics, it’s because they have no reason to attack us. We are doing exactly what they want us to and have been for some time. Think about it. All the security in the world won’t stop an attack if terrorists want to attack. Yet, we haven’t had a major attack since 2001. We won’t be attacked if Obama is elected and survives. We will be attacked however if anything happens to him or if a Republican gets elected. That’s the terrorist playbook and calendar folks and it is quite simple. Barack Obama is the puppet of Islam and is Islam’s real life equivalent of the fictitious Manchurian Candidate, groomed since childhood possibly even birth for this strategic position.
One way or another America will fall if we don’t get serious about this problem of Islam. When we fall, we will not get back up.
Be safe and stay vigilant.
75% US Mosques Teaching Jihad
Study: 3 in 4 U.S. mosques preach anti-Western jihadist hate.
It isn't as if we haven't seen this coming. For years now I have pointed out the shallowness and flimsiness of condemnations of terror by American Islamic groups, and noted that American mosques and schools have no programs to teach against the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism, as one might have expected them to institute after 9/11 if they really stood where they claimed they stood.
And in 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani testified before a State Department open forum that eighty percent of American mosques had extremist leadership. And then there was the January 2005 report from the Center for Religious Freedom, "Saudi publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques" (pdf here).
http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/SaudiPropoganda.pdf
"Study: 3 in 4 U.S. mosques preach anti-West extremism," from WorldNetDaily (thanks to TCS):
An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.
The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.
"So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist," an official familiar with the project said.
Many of the Islamic centers are operating under the auspices of the Saudi Arabian government and U.S. front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt.
Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says the results of the survey have not yet been published. But he confirmed that "the vast majority" are inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature, videos and textbooks.
The project, headed by David Yerushalmi, a lawyer and expert on sharia law, has finished collecting data from the first cohort of 102 mosques and schools. Preliminary findings indicate that almost 80 percent of the group exhibit a high level of sharia-compliance and jihadi threat, including:
* Ultra-orthodox worship in which women are separated from men in the prayer hall and must enter the mosque from a separate, usually back, entrance; and are required to wear hijabs.
* Sermons that preach women are inferior to men and can be beaten for disobedience; that non-Muslims, particularly Jews, are infidels and inferior to Muslims; that jihad or support of jihad is not only a Muslim's duty but the noblest way, and suicide bombers and other so-called "martyrs" are worthy of the highest praise; and that an Islamic caliphate should one day encompass the U.S.
* Solicitation of financial support for jihad.
* Bookstores that sell books, CDs and DVDs promoting jihad and glorifying martyrdom.
Though not all mosques in America are radicalized, many have tended to serve as safe havens and meeting points for Islamic terrorist groups. Experts say there are at least 40 episodes of extremists and terrorists being connected to mosques in the past decade alone.
Some of the 9/11 hijackers, in fact, received aid and counsel from one of the largest mosques in the Washington, D.C., area. Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center is one of the mosques indentified by undercover investigators as a hive of terrorist activity and other extremism.
It was founded and is currently run by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Imams there preach what is called "jihad qital," which means physical jihad, and incite violence and hatred against the U.S.
Dar al-Hijrah's ultimate goal, investigators say, is to turn the U.S. into an Islamic state governed by sharia law.
Another D.C.-area mosque, the ADAMS Center, was founded and financed by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been one of the top distributors of Wahhabist anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma.
Even with such radical mosques operating in its backyard, the U.S. government has not undertaken its own systematic investigation of U.S. mosques....
Which is an ongoing scandal.
It isn't as if we haven't seen this coming. For years now I have pointed out the shallowness and flimsiness of condemnations of terror by American Islamic groups, and noted that American mosques and schools have no programs to teach against the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism, as one might have expected them to institute after 9/11 if they really stood where they claimed they stood.
And in 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani testified before a State Department open forum that eighty percent of American mosques had extremist leadership. And then there was the January 2005 report from the Center for Religious Freedom, "Saudi publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques" (pdf here).
http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/SaudiPropoganda.pdf
"Study: 3 in 4 U.S. mosques preach anti-West extremism," from WorldNetDaily (thanks to TCS):
An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.
The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.
"So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist," an official familiar with the project said.
Many of the Islamic centers are operating under the auspices of the Saudi Arabian government and U.S. front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt.
Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says the results of the survey have not yet been published. But he confirmed that "the vast majority" are inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature, videos and textbooks.
The project, headed by David Yerushalmi, a lawyer and expert on sharia law, has finished collecting data from the first cohort of 102 mosques and schools. Preliminary findings indicate that almost 80 percent of the group exhibit a high level of sharia-compliance and jihadi threat, including:
* Ultra-orthodox worship in which women are separated from men in the prayer hall and must enter the mosque from a separate, usually back, entrance; and are required to wear hijabs.
* Sermons that preach women are inferior to men and can be beaten for disobedience; that non-Muslims, particularly Jews, are infidels and inferior to Muslims; that jihad or support of jihad is not only a Muslim's duty but the noblest way, and suicide bombers and other so-called "martyrs" are worthy of the highest praise; and that an Islamic caliphate should one day encompass the U.S.
* Solicitation of financial support for jihad.
* Bookstores that sell books, CDs and DVDs promoting jihad and glorifying martyrdom.
Though not all mosques in America are radicalized, many have tended to serve as safe havens and meeting points for Islamic terrorist groups. Experts say there are at least 40 episodes of extremists and terrorists being connected to mosques in the past decade alone.
Some of the 9/11 hijackers, in fact, received aid and counsel from one of the largest mosques in the Washington, D.C., area. Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center is one of the mosques indentified by undercover investigators as a hive of terrorist activity and other extremism.
It was founded and is currently run by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Imams there preach what is called "jihad qital," which means physical jihad, and incite violence and hatred against the U.S.
Dar al-Hijrah's ultimate goal, investigators say, is to turn the U.S. into an Islamic state governed by sharia law.
Another D.C.-area mosque, the ADAMS Center, was founded and financed by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been one of the top distributors of Wahhabist anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma.
Even with such radical mosques operating in its backyard, the U.S. government has not undertaken its own systematic investigation of U.S. mosques....
Which is an ongoing scandal.
Vote Them All Out
Lets vote them out!
THE 545 PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA'S WOES
BY CHARLEY REESE
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then
campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are
against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the
politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high
taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I
don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The
House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress
does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't
control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court
justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally,
morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague
this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem
was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional
duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private
central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason They
have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a
congressman or a president to do one cotton- picking thing. I don't care if
they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the
power to accept or reject it.
No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility
to determine how he votes.
A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy
convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in
this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive
amount of gall No normal human being would have the gall of a SPEAKER, who
stood up and criticized G.W. BUSH for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to
accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives
sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and
approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party.
She and fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they
want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.
REPLACE THE SCOUNDRELS
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace
545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and
irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to
defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the
federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want
to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget
is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in
IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people
shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can
abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to
regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can
take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist
disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics"
that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone,
have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the
people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to
manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and
clean up their mess.
THE 545 PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA'S WOES
BY CHARLEY REESE
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then
campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are
against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the
politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high
taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I
don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The
House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress
does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't
control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court
justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally,
morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague
this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem
was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional
duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private
central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason They
have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a
congressman or a president to do one cotton- picking thing. I don't care if
they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the
power to accept or reject it.
No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility
to determine how he votes.
A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy
convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in
this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive
amount of gall No normal human being would have the gall of a SPEAKER, who
stood up and criticized G.W. BUSH for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to
accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives
sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and
approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party.
She and fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they
want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.
REPLACE THE SCOUNDRELS
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace
545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and
irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to
defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the
federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want
to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget
is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in
IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people
shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can
abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to
regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can
take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist
disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics"
that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone,
have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the
people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to
manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and
clean up their mess.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Liberal Manifesto
Liberal Manifesto
Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops,
government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of
patriotism.
Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and
hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and
fantasizing about the apocalypse.
Liberals believe in civil rights, the right to privacy, and that evolution and global warming
arent just theories but incontrovertible scientific facts.
Liberals believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment that (1) prohibits another Bush
from ever occupying the White House, and (2) prevents George W. Bush from ever becoming
baseball commissioner before he does to our national pastime what he did for America.
Liberals believe in rescuing people from flooded streets and rooftops, even if theyre too poor
to vote Republican.
Liberals believe that supporting our troops means treating our wounded vets like the heroes
they are, and not leaving them to languish in rat-infested military hospitals under the
outsourced management of incompetent cronies who think theyre running a Taco Bell franchise.
Liberals believe in pheromones, sex ed, solar panels, voting paper trails, the common good,
and that, no matter how fascinating a story it may be, a president should never sit around in
a state of total paralysis reading "My Pet Goat" while America is under attack.
And above all, liberals believe that its time to come together as a country and put a
collective boot in the ass of shameless conservative fearmongers, hate merchants, and
scapegoaters who are sucking the freedom out of all our souls.
Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops,
government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of
patriotism.
Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and
hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and
fantasizing about the apocalypse.
Liberals believe in civil rights, the right to privacy, and that evolution and global warming
arent just theories but incontrovertible scientific facts.
Liberals believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment that (1) prohibits another Bush
from ever occupying the White House, and (2) prevents George W. Bush from ever becoming
baseball commissioner before he does to our national pastime what he did for America.
Liberals believe in rescuing people from flooded streets and rooftops, even if theyre too poor
to vote Republican.
Liberals believe that supporting our troops means treating our wounded vets like the heroes
they are, and not leaving them to languish in rat-infested military hospitals under the
outsourced management of incompetent cronies who think theyre running a Taco Bell franchise.
Liberals believe in pheromones, sex ed, solar panels, voting paper trails, the common good,
and that, no matter how fascinating a story it may be, a president should never sit around in
a state of total paralysis reading "My Pet Goat" while America is under attack.
And above all, liberals believe that its time to come together as a country and put a
collective boot in the ass of shameless conservative fearmongers, hate merchants, and
scapegoaters who are sucking the freedom out of all our souls.
Monday, February 18, 2008
CAIR Loses Tax Status
A major victory in the fight against Jihad has apparently occurred. Somewhere in the dead of night, without any known announcement from the organization, the highly controversial Washington DC based group CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations has apparently lost the tax status which enabled it to conduct lobbying activities. The organization was registered for many years under the IRS tax code 501c(4) which allowed the organization to conduct lobbying activities, campaign funding, legislation and candidate backing, and many other government and litigation related activities. A 501c(4) tax status is very difficult to maintain, requiring quarterly public filings, and is very regulated under strict lobbying laws, yet is the most powerful tax status for organizations wishing to influence government.
CAIR, who was under this status, had numerous members of their leadership indicted on terrorism related charges in the past, and had received large amounts of funding from questionable foreign sources. Many critics of the group often wondered how CAIR was able to hold on to such a highly critiqued tax status such as 501c(4). In contrast there is another tax status which is much weaker, and one that is very easy for most anyone to receive, and that status is 501c(3), a status which U.S. tax laws prohibit such organizations from engaging in large amounts of lobbying and government influence activities, it is a status for educational groups and churches, which is greatly restricted in the ability to influence any kind of legislation. CAIR has recently downgraded the description of their organization on their website to 501c(3). While calls to their office could not confirm the reasons, it appears that CAIR may have lost the status as of the first of this year.
Note, the current organization description on CAIR's website reads:
"CAIR is a not-for-profit organization recognized as tax-exempt under U.S. Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3)."
While internet archives of the site as of June 2007 read as follows:
"The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a nonprofit 501(c)(4), grassroots civil rights and advocacy group."
Chalk one up for the good guys.
CAIR, who was under this status, had numerous members of their leadership indicted on terrorism related charges in the past, and had received large amounts of funding from questionable foreign sources. Many critics of the group often wondered how CAIR was able to hold on to such a highly critiqued tax status such as 501c(4). In contrast there is another tax status which is much weaker, and one that is very easy for most anyone to receive, and that status is 501c(3), a status which U.S. tax laws prohibit such organizations from engaging in large amounts of lobbying and government influence activities, it is a status for educational groups and churches, which is greatly restricted in the ability to influence any kind of legislation. CAIR has recently downgraded the description of their organization on their website to 501c(3). While calls to their office could not confirm the reasons, it appears that CAIR may have lost the status as of the first of this year.
Note, the current organization description on CAIR's website reads:
"CAIR is a not-for-profit organization recognized as tax-exempt under U.S. Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3)."
While internet archives of the site as of June 2007 read as follows:
"The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a nonprofit 501(c)(4), grassroots civil rights and advocacy group."
Chalk one up for the good guys.
No One Listening, No One Cares ...
Nobody is Listening!
By Arlene Peck
What is it going to take to make you angry? Will another 9/11 get your attention?
Our country is being given over to “them” and “we” don’t care. Recently, I returned from Dallas where I attended at symposium called America’s Truth Forum. It was an event at which the founder, Jeff Epstein, worked twenty hours a day to create a weekend of the most amazing speakers to dialogue the threat that we are all facing from the world of Islamo-fascism. Truly, the dais and those in attendance read like a who’s who of national and international figures who tell it like it is when it comes to what we’re facing in this savage terrorists’ war with Islamists and their tenth century mentality.
It usually takes a lot to keep me quiet but with this crowd I was awed. Three days of listening wasn’t enough. Unfortunately, most of the mainstream media aren’t listening; or worse, not caring about this war against bloodthirsty degenerates.
One of the speakers and bestselling author, Dr. Harvey Kushner, adviser to the FBI and FAA spoke of radical Islam’s infiltration of America. Like roaches, they are everywhere and we are losing this war. Dr. Kushner detailed how “the United States continues to be infiltrated by terrorists meaning to pull triggers, plant bombs and blast holes in the NYC skyline.
Hell, I’ve been writing that in my columns for years! Doesn’t matter anyway. America is at the mall. We are so dummied down that what is left of our news is now given in ten second sound bites. Which is more than likely told to us by blond Barbie Dolls, who can lead you on a tour of Bloomingdales before they could find the Middle East on a map. Instead of news, we listen to those in the newsroom recapping their kid’s birthday party over the weekend while laughing. Walter! Where are you?
To give you an example, I traveled to this conference with my friend, Dr. Carole Lieberman, who is referred to as the ‘shrink to the stars.’ This brilliant woman is also the author of a book on terrorism called, Coping with Terrorism: Dreams Interrupted. Before our flight, she was taken to the studio at FOX to speak to you on, you guessed it, Britney Speers.” People Magazine was also called her for interviews on the same topic.
Meanwhile, Jeff told us that people will spend $1,000 to attend a Hannah Montana concert. Yet it’s pulling teeth to find those that will lay out $100 to listen to a group who might educate them on the Islamic plan to destroy us. Boy, was this weekend at the America Truth Forum an eye-opener!
And, folks, without question, that is the plan. We are so politically correct that according to another speaker, Mike Gallagher, talk show host and guest host of the Rush Limbaugh show, saw this up close and personal in his own city of San Diego, that a nearby school began teaching Shari’a law in a local public school. “The enemy has infiltrated our own communities.” “We may not be able to teach prayer in the schools but it sure seems Allah is in.” Personally, I truly believe that with Obama’s background of being educated in a Wahabe school in Jakarta until the age of twelve, that mindset is in his DNA now. But with our culture now so ingrained in politically correct thinking, our new President might very well be him. And, I keep thinking of the Manchurian Candidate. And, was the reason he didn’t want to go into Iraq in the first place was because they were Muslim brothers?
Bruce Tefft, of the CIA’s counter terrorism Task Force, related to us that “Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a mentality.” One that I have no hesitation in naming however is the Saudis. The incubation of the funding and the terrorism of the savages who carry out these attacks derive from Saudi Arabia. It is all funded by the Saudi Royal family, their businesses, charities, schools etc. Centers that are paid for by them have sprung up all over America to promote Shari’a and Wahabelaw.
Yet, according to George Bush these murderers who educate the savages are our very good friends. It still nauseates me when I remember the pictures of our American President hugging and praising these monsters that are responsible for so many American and Israeli deaths. Hell, there is no reliability of Saudi Arabia as a recipient of advanced arms. Yet, he recently signed a bill to send them $20 billion in ‘smart bombs.’ Tell me? Who do you think they are buying these bombs to be used against? Norway? While our President courts their favor this group is spewing constant Anti-Jewish, Christian and American warfare.
When do we say enough! Not one of the Muslim allies has proven to be a dependable ally. This savage culture needs a ‘put up or shut up’ moment. We are so pathetically politically correct in this country that the questions that should be asked are not allowed. I will believe that there is a segment called “moderate Muslims” when I hear one stand in front of our flag and say, “Allah bless America.” They have been our enemies since 460 C.E. and we’are too ignorant to realize it. It wasn’t until recently that we even began to become aware of this culture.
I remember when I chaired a Jewish discussion group at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1976. There were never more than a few Jewish inmates who were in there. However, within a short time, many of the inmates who came into my ‘group’ were wearing knitted caps and carrying the Koran. They told me that they belonged to a brotherhood called Nation of Islam.
In those days, I was so naive that I believed them to be a nice, peaceful group. I felt that way because in those days I had never even heard about Muslims. None of us had. In 1965, there were 6,000 Muslims in our country. Then, there were no Muslim Student Associations, no members of the Nation of Islam.
Looking back, I believe that this was one of the training camps for ‘education’ into this culture. These men, in the penal system were learning about the Muslim culture. They, were ‘getting ready’ to spread the word’ when they were released. It was incubation. Today our prisons are doing the same thing, but their audience is growing by the thousands every month, paid for by our tax dollars! And, during this time the Saudis have invested (from our gas dollars) $90 billion dollars to bring down the government of America via this prison system.. Oh, and lets not forget our university system, in which they also have a big financial stake.
But, hey, it’s not only growing in our prisons. This phenomenon in our country is growing by 20% a year. Within a very short period of time, there are now more Muslims than Jews, Episcopalians, Lutherans and a host of other religions all together. By the year 2015, England, Belgium, France, Holland and most of Europe will be predominately Muslim. This group is the fastest growing population. The average non-Muslim American family has 1.7 members and the average Muslim has 6.2. They are tripling and we are decreasing. By 2015, they will have reached a critical mass, and the United States of America will be irrevocably Islamist! Think about that!
By Arlene Peck
What is it going to take to make you angry? Will another 9/11 get your attention?
Our country is being given over to “them” and “we” don’t care. Recently, I returned from Dallas where I attended at symposium called America’s Truth Forum. It was an event at which the founder, Jeff Epstein, worked twenty hours a day to create a weekend of the most amazing speakers to dialogue the threat that we are all facing from the world of Islamo-fascism. Truly, the dais and those in attendance read like a who’s who of national and international figures who tell it like it is when it comes to what we’re facing in this savage terrorists’ war with Islamists and their tenth century mentality.
It usually takes a lot to keep me quiet but with this crowd I was awed. Three days of listening wasn’t enough. Unfortunately, most of the mainstream media aren’t listening; or worse, not caring about this war against bloodthirsty degenerates.
One of the speakers and bestselling author, Dr. Harvey Kushner, adviser to the FBI and FAA spoke of radical Islam’s infiltration of America. Like roaches, they are everywhere and we are losing this war. Dr. Kushner detailed how “the United States continues to be infiltrated by terrorists meaning to pull triggers, plant bombs and blast holes in the NYC skyline.
Hell, I’ve been writing that in my columns for years! Doesn’t matter anyway. America is at the mall. We are so dummied down that what is left of our news is now given in ten second sound bites. Which is more than likely told to us by blond Barbie Dolls, who can lead you on a tour of Bloomingdales before they could find the Middle East on a map. Instead of news, we listen to those in the newsroom recapping their kid’s birthday party over the weekend while laughing. Walter! Where are you?
To give you an example, I traveled to this conference with my friend, Dr. Carole Lieberman, who is referred to as the ‘shrink to the stars.’ This brilliant woman is also the author of a book on terrorism called, Coping with Terrorism: Dreams Interrupted. Before our flight, she was taken to the studio at FOX to speak to you on, you guessed it, Britney Speers.” People Magazine was also called her for interviews on the same topic.
Meanwhile, Jeff told us that people will spend $1,000 to attend a Hannah Montana concert. Yet it’s pulling teeth to find those that will lay out $100 to listen to a group who might educate them on the Islamic plan to destroy us. Boy, was this weekend at the America Truth Forum an eye-opener!
And, folks, without question, that is the plan. We are so politically correct that according to another speaker, Mike Gallagher, talk show host and guest host of the Rush Limbaugh show, saw this up close and personal in his own city of San Diego, that a nearby school began teaching Shari’a law in a local public school. “The enemy has infiltrated our own communities.” “We may not be able to teach prayer in the schools but it sure seems Allah is in.” Personally, I truly believe that with Obama’s background of being educated in a Wahabe school in Jakarta until the age of twelve, that mindset is in his DNA now. But with our culture now so ingrained in politically correct thinking, our new President might very well be him. And, I keep thinking of the Manchurian Candidate. And, was the reason he didn’t want to go into Iraq in the first place was because they were Muslim brothers?
Bruce Tefft, of the CIA’s counter terrorism Task Force, related to us that “Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a mentality.” One that I have no hesitation in naming however is the Saudis. The incubation of the funding and the terrorism of the savages who carry out these attacks derive from Saudi Arabia. It is all funded by the Saudi Royal family, their businesses, charities, schools etc. Centers that are paid for by them have sprung up all over America to promote Shari’a and Wahabelaw.
Yet, according to George Bush these murderers who educate the savages are our very good friends. It still nauseates me when I remember the pictures of our American President hugging and praising these monsters that are responsible for so many American and Israeli deaths. Hell, there is no reliability of Saudi Arabia as a recipient of advanced arms. Yet, he recently signed a bill to send them $20 billion in ‘smart bombs.’ Tell me? Who do you think they are buying these bombs to be used against? Norway? While our President courts their favor this group is spewing constant Anti-Jewish, Christian and American warfare.
When do we say enough! Not one of the Muslim allies has proven to be a dependable ally. This savage culture needs a ‘put up or shut up’ moment. We are so pathetically politically correct in this country that the questions that should be asked are not allowed. I will believe that there is a segment called “moderate Muslims” when I hear one stand in front of our flag and say, “Allah bless America.” They have been our enemies since 460 C.E. and we’are too ignorant to realize it. It wasn’t until recently that we even began to become aware of this culture.
I remember when I chaired a Jewish discussion group at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1976. There were never more than a few Jewish inmates who were in there. However, within a short time, many of the inmates who came into my ‘group’ were wearing knitted caps and carrying the Koran. They told me that they belonged to a brotherhood called Nation of Islam.
In those days, I was so naive that I believed them to be a nice, peaceful group. I felt that way because in those days I had never even heard about Muslims. None of us had. In 1965, there were 6,000 Muslims in our country. Then, there were no Muslim Student Associations, no members of the Nation of Islam.
Looking back, I believe that this was one of the training camps for ‘education’ into this culture. These men, in the penal system were learning about the Muslim culture. They, were ‘getting ready’ to spread the word’ when they were released. It was incubation. Today our prisons are doing the same thing, but their audience is growing by the thousands every month, paid for by our tax dollars! And, during this time the Saudis have invested (from our gas dollars) $90 billion dollars to bring down the government of America via this prison system.. Oh, and lets not forget our university system, in which they also have a big financial stake.
But, hey, it’s not only growing in our prisons. This phenomenon in our country is growing by 20% a year. Within a very short period of time, there are now more Muslims than Jews, Episcopalians, Lutherans and a host of other religions all together. By the year 2015, England, Belgium, France, Holland and most of Europe will be predominately Muslim. This group is the fastest growing population. The average non-Muslim American family has 1.7 members and the average Muslim has 6.2. They are tripling and we are decreasing. By 2015, they will have reached a critical mass, and the United States of America will be irrevocably Islamist! Think about that!
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Angry White Men ...
In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man
Gary Hubbell
February 9, 2008
There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.
Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.
There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.
His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.
The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.
He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.
The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.
The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.
His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.
He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.
Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”
He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.
He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.
Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.
He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.
There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.
He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.
Gary Hubbell
February 9, 2008
There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.
Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.
There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.
His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.
The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.
He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.
The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.
The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.
His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.
He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.
Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”
He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.
He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.
Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.
He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.
There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.
He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.
Friday, February 15, 2008
"Tribute" to Prince Bandar
February 15, 2008
Fitzgerald: A tribute to Prince Bandar
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family." -- from the British report quoted here
This is Prince Bandar, smiling Prince Bandar. The one with the estate in Virginia. The one with the vast chalet in Aspen, where he had the top of an entire mountain removed so as to improve his view. The one who has that Plantagenet hunting-lodge outside London. The one who became the longest-serving diplomat in Washington, who entertained so lavishly all of his many good and great friends of both parties. The one who defended the massive thievery of the Al-Saud with his usual actor's routine, as he served the port and distributed the box of cigars, that "after all, all governments are corrupt and it is only a matter of degree" -- and how, after all, could the Americans present, all of them recognizing the corruption in their own government, and of which some of them were no doubt more than observers, disagree?
Prince Bandar, the Smiler With the Knyf Under the Cloke, the one who was allowed in, or rather allowed himself in, to secret policy-planning sessions just before the war in Iraq. Prince Bandar, the one who was a regular tennis partner of Colin Powell, to whose wife he gave a jaguar, the very same one she had once possessed, and had let drop in conversation how much she missed it. Prince Bandar –whom did he not touch? Was there a President, or a Secretary of State, or a National Security Advisor, or members of key Congressional committees, or generals preparing arms sales of all kind, from AWACS back in 1980 to the most advanced weaponry now, or people in the Energy Department who never managed to come up with even the semblance of an intelligent energy policy, who never met Prince Bandar?
After all, those Energy Department officials never came up with taxes on gasoline of the kind needed, and never suggested any subsidies to trains and rebuilding of track by the Federal government, no subsidies to urban mass transit, no subsidies to solar energy, as the Germans finally did, no intelligent campaign to recognize the need for nuclear plants that required government planning, as the French did, no nothing at all, save measures largely ineffective, late, and in some cases, counter-productive.
They must all be very proud of themselves, all the people in the American government who for so long said such nice things about Saudi Arabia, trusted Saudi Arabia, "our staunch ally," to do the right thing. They must be very proud of all they have managed to do, and not to do, since 1973, when the massive price rises came, a period during which the Muslim nations of OPEC (that is, almost all of OPEC) were the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, some ten trillion dollars -- with the results we all see.
They must be very proud to have learned that Saudi Arabia has spent nearly $100 billion in the last years to pay for mosques, madrasas, campaigns of Da'wa, and small armies of propagandists all over the Western world, to make sure that Saudi Arabia, with its blend of Islamic fanaticism and ruling-class decadence and smiling malevolence toward Infidels, always with just enough of an appearance (and some gravelly-voiced assurances that seem so...so reasonable...if you are already inclined to be impressed by friendly billionaires, bearing or likely to bear gifts), could always satisfy the doubts of the slightly-doubting.
And at the center of it all, in Washington, there was one man.
Prince Bandar.
Fitzgerald: A tribute to Prince Bandar
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family." -- from the British report quoted here
This is Prince Bandar, smiling Prince Bandar. The one with the estate in Virginia. The one with the vast chalet in Aspen, where he had the top of an entire mountain removed so as to improve his view. The one who has that Plantagenet hunting-lodge outside London. The one who became the longest-serving diplomat in Washington, who entertained so lavishly all of his many good and great friends of both parties. The one who defended the massive thievery of the Al-Saud with his usual actor's routine, as he served the port and distributed the box of cigars, that "after all, all governments are corrupt and it is only a matter of degree" -- and how, after all, could the Americans present, all of them recognizing the corruption in their own government, and of which some of them were no doubt more than observers, disagree?
Prince Bandar, the Smiler With the Knyf Under the Cloke, the one who was allowed in, or rather allowed himself in, to secret policy-planning sessions just before the war in Iraq. Prince Bandar, the one who was a regular tennis partner of Colin Powell, to whose wife he gave a jaguar, the very same one she had once possessed, and had let drop in conversation how much she missed it. Prince Bandar –whom did he not touch? Was there a President, or a Secretary of State, or a National Security Advisor, or members of key Congressional committees, or generals preparing arms sales of all kind, from AWACS back in 1980 to the most advanced weaponry now, or people in the Energy Department who never managed to come up with even the semblance of an intelligent energy policy, who never met Prince Bandar?
After all, those Energy Department officials never came up with taxes on gasoline of the kind needed, and never suggested any subsidies to trains and rebuilding of track by the Federal government, no subsidies to urban mass transit, no subsidies to solar energy, as the Germans finally did, no intelligent campaign to recognize the need for nuclear plants that required government planning, as the French did, no nothing at all, save measures largely ineffective, late, and in some cases, counter-productive.
They must all be very proud of themselves, all the people in the American government who for so long said such nice things about Saudi Arabia, trusted Saudi Arabia, "our staunch ally," to do the right thing. They must be very proud of all they have managed to do, and not to do, since 1973, when the massive price rises came, a period during which the Muslim nations of OPEC (that is, almost all of OPEC) were the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, some ten trillion dollars -- with the results we all see.
They must be very proud to have learned that Saudi Arabia has spent nearly $100 billion in the last years to pay for mosques, madrasas, campaigns of Da'wa, and small armies of propagandists all over the Western world, to make sure that Saudi Arabia, with its blend of Islamic fanaticism and ruling-class decadence and smiling malevolence toward Infidels, always with just enough of an appearance (and some gravelly-voiced assurances that seem so...so reasonable...if you are already inclined to be impressed by friendly billionaires, bearing or likely to bear gifts), could always satisfy the doubts of the slightly-doubting.
And at the center of it all, in Washington, there was one man.
Prince Bandar.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Congressmen Supporting Terrorist Organization
Devil May CAIR
Investors Business Daily, February 8, 2008
Homeland Security: In a new court filing, federal prosecutors describe the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a supporter of terrorists. So why are Democrats still supporting the organization?
CAIR's boosters on the Hill, where it's headquartered just three blocks from the Capitol, have known for some time that several people in positions of power within the group have been directly connected to terrorism and have either been prosecuted or thrown out of the country. Yet lawmakers have gone right on singing CAIR's praises and doing its bidding. That agenda includes suing John Doe witnesses, censoring critics of Islamism and denying the FBI antiterror tools.
These cheerleaders, who include a handful of Republicans, also know by now that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-fundraising case last year. And that FBI wiretaps revealed that CAIR's founder, Omar Ahmad, and executive director, Nihad Awad, last decade attended a secret meeting in Philadelphia with Hamas leaders and other terrorist sympathizers.
CAIR's Cheerleaders
Members of Congress who still support the Council on American-Islamic Relations in spite of its proven ties to terrorism:
Sens, John Warner, R-Va.: Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; Paul Sar-boues, D-Md,; and Debbie Stabenaw, D-Mich.; Reps, Joe Sestak, D-?a.; John Conyers, D-Mich.; Jesse Jackson, D-lll.; Danny Davis, D-IIL; Gary Miller, R-Calif.; Loretta Sanchez. D-Calif.; Linda Sanchez, D-Calif; Jan Schakowsky, D-Ilb Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.; Albeit Wyna D-Md,: Betty McCollum, D-Minn.; Lols Copps, D-Calif.; Bill PascreH. D-N.J.;"Benjamin Cardia D-Md,: Elijah Cum-mings, D-Md.; Tom Davis, R-Va.: John DingelL D-Mich.; Keith Elli-son. D-Mimi.; Anna Eshoo, D-Calif,; Bob Filner, D-Calif.; Wayne Gilchrest R-Md; Mike Honda, D-Calif,; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Calif,: Zoe Lofgrea D-Calif; James Moran, D-Ya,; Nick Rahall, D-W,Va,: Charles B, Rangei, D-N.Y,; Dutch Ruppers-, D-Md; Pete Stark, D-Calif: and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
Source: CAIR
In fact, Ahmad himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror case, which counts a CAIR founding director among its criminal defendants.
But now, in a separate case involving a senior CAIR official who trained to kill American soldiers in jihad, prosecutors are tying CAIR even closer to terror. In court papers filed in December, federal prosecutors described CAIR as not just an apologist or sympathizer, but a supporter of terrorists.
"From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders," the filing states, "CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists." The government also cited evidence "the conspirators used deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists." [emphasis added].
Perhaps some members of Congress had been fooled by CAIR's deception. But now they have no excuse. Now Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who saluted CAIR's "important work," and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who applauded "CAIR's mission," know better.
The criminal briefing should also disabuse Rep. John Conyers, who's trumpeted CAIR's "long and distinguished history." Rep. John Dingell, who said "my office door is always open" to CAIR, now has an obligation to slam it shut.
No red-blooded American lawmaker wants to do anything that would facilitate the support of terrorists, not even Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who's gushed "CAIR has much to be proud of."
Continued support of CAIR plays right into its hands. Such endorsements are promptly posted on its Web site in an attempt to legitimize itself in the media. It also uses outreach events with the government as a kind of insurance policy against investigation.
But CAIR's tricks are wearing thin. Now it is resorting to thinly veiled threats, warning presidential candidates to avoid any "anti-Muslim rhetoric" or suffer a backlash at the polls. The group already attacked former GOP hopeful Rudy Giuliani for using the phrase "Islamic terrorism." Democrats, typically, have taken the hint. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama won't even describe the enemy as terrorists, let alone Islamic.
To continue to embrace CAIR and cater to its demands is the equivalent of legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood, a group which gave birth to Hamas and al-Qaida.
Investors Business Daily, February 8, 2008
Homeland Security: In a new court filing, federal prosecutors describe the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a supporter of terrorists. So why are Democrats still supporting the organization?
CAIR's boosters on the Hill, where it's headquartered just three blocks from the Capitol, have known for some time that several people in positions of power within the group have been directly connected to terrorism and have either been prosecuted or thrown out of the country. Yet lawmakers have gone right on singing CAIR's praises and doing its bidding. That agenda includes suing John Doe witnesses, censoring critics of Islamism and denying the FBI antiterror tools.
These cheerleaders, who include a handful of Republicans, also know by now that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-fundraising case last year. And that FBI wiretaps revealed that CAIR's founder, Omar Ahmad, and executive director, Nihad Awad, last decade attended a secret meeting in Philadelphia with Hamas leaders and other terrorist sympathizers.
CAIR's Cheerleaders
Members of Congress who still support the Council on American-Islamic Relations in spite of its proven ties to terrorism:
Sens, John Warner, R-Va.: Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; Paul Sar-boues, D-Md,; and Debbie Stabenaw, D-Mich.; Reps, Joe Sestak, D-?a.; John Conyers, D-Mich.; Jesse Jackson, D-lll.; Danny Davis, D-IIL; Gary Miller, R-Calif.; Loretta Sanchez. D-Calif.; Linda Sanchez, D-Calif; Jan Schakowsky, D-Ilb Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.; Albeit Wyna D-Md,: Betty McCollum, D-Minn.; Lols Copps, D-Calif.; Bill PascreH. D-N.J.;"Benjamin Cardia D-Md,: Elijah Cum-mings, D-Md.; Tom Davis, R-Va.: John DingelL D-Mich.; Keith Elli-son. D-Mimi.; Anna Eshoo, D-Calif,; Bob Filner, D-Calif.; Wayne Gilchrest R-Md; Mike Honda, D-Calif,; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Calif,: Zoe Lofgrea D-Calif; James Moran, D-Ya,; Nick Rahall, D-W,Va,: Charles B, Rangei, D-N.Y,; Dutch Ruppers-, D-Md; Pete Stark, D-Calif: and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
Source: CAIR
In fact, Ahmad himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror case, which counts a CAIR founding director among its criminal defendants.
But now, in a separate case involving a senior CAIR official who trained to kill American soldiers in jihad, prosecutors are tying CAIR even closer to terror. In court papers filed in December, federal prosecutors described CAIR as not just an apologist or sympathizer, but a supporter of terrorists.
"From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders," the filing states, "CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists." The government also cited evidence "the conspirators used deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists." [emphasis added].
Perhaps some members of Congress had been fooled by CAIR's deception. But now they have no excuse. Now Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who saluted CAIR's "important work," and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who applauded "CAIR's mission," know better.
The criminal briefing should also disabuse Rep. John Conyers, who's trumpeted CAIR's "long and distinguished history." Rep. John Dingell, who said "my office door is always open" to CAIR, now has an obligation to slam it shut.
No red-blooded American lawmaker wants to do anything that would facilitate the support of terrorists, not even Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who's gushed "CAIR has much to be proud of."
Continued support of CAIR plays right into its hands. Such endorsements are promptly posted on its Web site in an attempt to legitimize itself in the media. It also uses outreach events with the government as a kind of insurance policy against investigation.
But CAIR's tricks are wearing thin. Now it is resorting to thinly veiled threats, warning presidential candidates to avoid any "anti-Muslim rhetoric" or suffer a backlash at the polls. The group already attacked former GOP hopeful Rudy Giuliani for using the phrase "Islamic terrorism." Democrats, typically, have taken the hint. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama won't even describe the enemy as terrorists, let alone Islamic.
To continue to embrace CAIR and cater to its demands is the equivalent of legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood, a group which gave birth to Hamas and al-Qaida.
Muslim Food Stamp Fraud
Guess the Religion: Detroit Newspapers Shield Islamic Names in Hezbo Food Stamp Ring
By Debbie Schlussel
As soon as I learned that 27 people from eight Detroit-area stores were arrested and facing charges for illegal trafficking in food stamps, I just knew they were from the "Religion of Peace." This crime satisfies way too many of the precepts of that moon-god cult to be anything other than perpetrated by one of its members: cash easily transferred to terrorists, ripping off Infidel American taxpayers, laughing at the great American satan at the ease with which they can pull off this scam.
Shi'ite Muslim Food Stamp Fraudster Hussein Beydoun Gets Busted
And I was right. But I had no idea I was right by reading today's Detroit Newsistan AND Detroit Free Press. While both had big stories on the food stamp ring--which ripped off taxpayers to the tune of over $1.5 million--neither story would publish the names of the defendants even though they were in the press release. Why?
Well, naming them would let readers know that all of the individuals in this ring are Muslim Arabs, Shi'ites from Lebanon. And many of them are from prominent Hezbollah families: Beydoun, Chami, Berro, etc. Gee, what a shocker. Most of these individuals live modestly. So what happened to the money? How quickly was it funnelled to Hezbollah back home in Lebanon? And where the heck is the FBI--the LEAD agency in investigating terrorism? Famous But Incompetent is NOT interested. Another shocker.
This isn't the first time I've written about Muslim Arabs in America conducting food stamp fraud and likely benefitting Islamic terrorists. Sadly, it won't be the last. Most food stamp fraud rings across America are Muslim.
Read both Detroit Newsistan and Free Press stories. Not a hint about who these people are. I guarantee you if they had names like Steven Grant or John Smith, their names would have appeared in these papers with a pro-Islam PC agenda. Since they won't print the names and addresses of these pan-Hezbollah scam artists, I WILL:
* Citgo, 8351 Woodward, Detroit, Michigan
Nabil Shamel, owner
Jamal Chami, employee
Waad Fawazi, employee
* Livernois Gasoline, 7645 Livernois, Detroit, Michigan
Hafaid Musleh-Mohmood Alkahif, owner
Abdul Fattah-Mohmood Alkahif, employee
Dheyab M. Alquhaif, employee
Ammar Mahmood Gobah, employee
Mustafa Mohamen-Ahmed Alqohaif, employee
Yousef Mohamed-Ahmed Alqohaif, employee
* U&I Petro, 8820 Wyoming, Detroit, Michigan
Saleh Algathaithi, owner
Saif Ahmed Alghathie, employee
Hassan Ali Hussein, employee
* C&M Mini Mart, 18420 James Couzens, Detroit, Michigan
Abdo Mahfouz, owner
Ali Abdo Mahfouz, employee
Tarek Moshen Baderddine, employee
* Rowan Party Store, 7000 Rowan, Detroit, Michigan
Saeb Abdul-Ghani Abdul-Ghani, owner
Joseph Soliman Elrubi, employee
Maher Diab, employee
* Big Al's Marathon, 3910 Grand River Detroit, Michigan
Hussien Kamel Beydoun, owner
Ali Hussein Beydoun, employee
* Van Dyke Petro, 19030 Van Dyke Detroit, Michigan
Taha Ahmad Dika, owner
Nizar Ali Nazha, employee
Michael Maher, employee
Bassel Ibrahim-El-Sayed-Sleim Hachem, employee
* Schaefer & Puritan, 15901 Schaefer Detroit, Michigan
Mr. and Mrs. Adel Mohamad Kobeissi, owner
Khaled Abid Al-Bonijim, employee
Moahamad [sic] A. Berro, employee
As I've noted, Mohamad Berro's cousin, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, was the Hezbollah homicide bomber who blew up the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and murdered about 100 innocent civilians.
Why is this kind of crowd living here in America to suck at the American teat and fund their jihad through their rip-offs?
I'm only asking you rhetorically what only the President and his employees "Serpenthead" Chertoff, Emilio T. Gonzalez, and Julie L. Myers can answer, but never do.
Posted by Debbie at February 13, 2008 04:38 PM
Comments
Again, I say that this kind of bullshit makes me see red!! Our government is pulling out all stops to defeat the American people. How is it that nobody has to answer to anyone over their non-action? The current crop of Presidential candidates assure us that we will continue on the same course regardless of who is elected.
The bottom line is that nothing will happen to any of these vermin. Nothing ever happens and that's the problem!
The American public has been targeted as the next batch of slave labor. We are being forced at the point of a gun to sit back, be quite and just pay the bill. I'm tired of paying the bill. I could care less about outreach to moozlums or mexicans or anyone else!!!!
By Debbie Schlussel
As soon as I learned that 27 people from eight Detroit-area stores were arrested and facing charges for illegal trafficking in food stamps, I just knew they were from the "Religion of Peace." This crime satisfies way too many of the precepts of that moon-god cult to be anything other than perpetrated by one of its members: cash easily transferred to terrorists, ripping off Infidel American taxpayers, laughing at the great American satan at the ease with which they can pull off this scam.
Shi'ite Muslim Food Stamp Fraudster Hussein Beydoun Gets Busted
And I was right. But I had no idea I was right by reading today's Detroit Newsistan AND Detroit Free Press. While both had big stories on the food stamp ring--which ripped off taxpayers to the tune of over $1.5 million--neither story would publish the names of the defendants even though they were in the press release. Why?
Well, naming them would let readers know that all of the individuals in this ring are Muslim Arabs, Shi'ites from Lebanon. And many of them are from prominent Hezbollah families: Beydoun, Chami, Berro, etc. Gee, what a shocker. Most of these individuals live modestly. So what happened to the money? How quickly was it funnelled to Hezbollah back home in Lebanon? And where the heck is the FBI--the LEAD agency in investigating terrorism? Famous But Incompetent is NOT interested. Another shocker.
This isn't the first time I've written about Muslim Arabs in America conducting food stamp fraud and likely benefitting Islamic terrorists. Sadly, it won't be the last. Most food stamp fraud rings across America are Muslim.
Read both Detroit Newsistan and Free Press stories. Not a hint about who these people are. I guarantee you if they had names like Steven Grant or John Smith, their names would have appeared in these papers with a pro-Islam PC agenda. Since they won't print the names and addresses of these pan-Hezbollah scam artists, I WILL:
* Citgo, 8351 Woodward, Detroit, Michigan
Nabil Shamel, owner
Jamal Chami, employee
Waad Fawazi, employee
* Livernois Gasoline, 7645 Livernois, Detroit, Michigan
Hafaid Musleh-Mohmood Alkahif, owner
Abdul Fattah-Mohmood Alkahif, employee
Dheyab M. Alquhaif, employee
Ammar Mahmood Gobah, employee
Mustafa Mohamen-Ahmed Alqohaif, employee
Yousef Mohamed-Ahmed Alqohaif, employee
* U&I Petro, 8820 Wyoming, Detroit, Michigan
Saleh Algathaithi, owner
Saif Ahmed Alghathie, employee
Hassan Ali Hussein, employee
* C&M Mini Mart, 18420 James Couzens, Detroit, Michigan
Abdo Mahfouz, owner
Ali Abdo Mahfouz, employee
Tarek Moshen Baderddine, employee
* Rowan Party Store, 7000 Rowan, Detroit, Michigan
Saeb Abdul-Ghani Abdul-Ghani, owner
Joseph Soliman Elrubi, employee
Maher Diab, employee
* Big Al's Marathon, 3910 Grand River Detroit, Michigan
Hussien Kamel Beydoun, owner
Ali Hussein Beydoun, employee
* Van Dyke Petro, 19030 Van Dyke Detroit, Michigan
Taha Ahmad Dika, owner
Nizar Ali Nazha, employee
Michael Maher, employee
Bassel Ibrahim-El-Sayed-Sleim Hachem, employee
* Schaefer & Puritan, 15901 Schaefer Detroit, Michigan
Mr. and Mrs. Adel Mohamad Kobeissi, owner
Khaled Abid Al-Bonijim, employee
Moahamad [sic] A. Berro, employee
As I've noted, Mohamad Berro's cousin, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, was the Hezbollah homicide bomber who blew up the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and murdered about 100 innocent civilians.
Why is this kind of crowd living here in America to suck at the American teat and fund their jihad through their rip-offs?
I'm only asking you rhetorically what only the President and his employees "Serpenthead" Chertoff, Emilio T. Gonzalez, and Julie L. Myers can answer, but never do.
Posted by Debbie at February 13, 2008 04:38 PM
Comments
Again, I say that this kind of bullshit makes me see red!! Our government is pulling out all stops to defeat the American people. How is it that nobody has to answer to anyone over their non-action? The current crop of Presidential candidates assure us that we will continue on the same course regardless of who is elected.
The bottom line is that nothing will happen to any of these vermin. Nothing ever happens and that's the problem!
The American public has been targeted as the next batch of slave labor. We are being forced at the point of a gun to sit back, be quite and just pay the bill. I'm tired of paying the bill. I could care less about outreach to moozlums or mexicans or anyone else!!!!
Open Letter to Congress
I have recently learned of the " Merida Initiative" ( http://michellemalkin.com/2008/02/12/mexico-and-the-merida-initiative-continued/ )
Under this scheme, We American taxpayers will unknowingly be giving Mexico a 1.4 BILLION dollar aid package in order to assist Mexico in securing it's southern border.
This outrageous misuse of taxpayer monies will be given to Mexico with no oversight whatsoever. To quote Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico: “I cannot accept any submission or subordination…Give it to me. And give it to me without conditions!”
Congressmen, there is absolutely no excuse for this, since we are makng little or no effort to secure our own southern border while a literal invasion of our nation takes place! I expect you, as the Representative of the taxpayers of our District here at home, to stand on the floor of the House and verbally expose this treachery and then offer a Bill to prevent our President from advancing this scheme!
If you will not or cannot do this, I demand to know why not. There has been no debate about this Merida Initiative; there will be no oversight on how this money is spent, and we are sending it to the most corrupt nation in the Western Hemisphere! If this is not unconstitutional and downright treasonous, I'll eat my hat!!
We have had more than enough of the complete incompetence exhibited by this Congress and this President!! Taxation without representation happened once before in our history, and I don't believe we want to relive the consequences of that folly!
I expect a swift answer as this is a "no-brainer"!
Under this scheme, We American taxpayers will unknowingly be giving Mexico a 1.4 BILLION dollar aid package in order to assist Mexico in securing it's southern border.
This outrageous misuse of taxpayer monies will be given to Mexico with no oversight whatsoever. To quote Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico: “I cannot accept any submission or subordination…Give it to me. And give it to me without conditions!”
Congressmen, there is absolutely no excuse for this, since we are makng little or no effort to secure our own southern border while a literal invasion of our nation takes place! I expect you, as the Representative of the taxpayers of our District here at home, to stand on the floor of the House and verbally expose this treachery and then offer a Bill to prevent our President from advancing this scheme!
If you will not or cannot do this, I demand to know why not. There has been no debate about this Merida Initiative; there will be no oversight on how this money is spent, and we are sending it to the most corrupt nation in the Western Hemisphere! If this is not unconstitutional and downright treasonous, I'll eat my hat!!
We have had more than enough of the complete incompetence exhibited by this Congress and this President!! Taxation without representation happened once before in our history, and I don't believe we want to relive the consequences of that folly!
I expect a swift answer as this is a "no-brainer"!
Calderon Praises Illegals
Calderon Tells Mexican Invaders They Are Heros!
TRANSLATED FROM: Presidencia.gob.mx
I know that you have risked your lives in order to give opportunities to your children, to your families. I know that in each one of you thereis a history of heroism and also a history of pain.
A history of heroism because is not easy to leave your country, your house, your Nation and to cross the border risking it all. A history of heroism because each year more than 400 Mexicans die trying to cross the border, perhaps more than in any another part of the world.
______
When they tell me that the Government of Mexico what wants to multiply migration, attacking and criticizing our defense for the migrant, I say that they are mistaken. Because I know that Mexico in each migrant it loses its bravest people, its strongest people, its more audacious people, because I know that in each migrant there is a family that is disconnected.
______
I come here, to Chicago, to Illinois, because I know that my duty as President, especially in the difficult moments that the undocumented are passing, of harassment, of clear discrimination in some cases, my duty is to echo the voice of all the Mexicans, the voice of all of Mexico telling them we are with you.
We are truly determined that Mexico be present with you, supporting you, helping you, understanding you.
I also know, my friends, that my duty as the President is to work and to work very, very hard so that immigration will not be in the future the only option for our people. _______
When they ask me what is, exactly, the cause of this phenomenon, seems tome to that we cannot deceive ourselves. The U.S. economy and the economy of Mexico are absolutely complementary economies; one is intensive in capital, like their economy, another is intensive in labor as is the Mexican and I have always said that labor and capital necessarily are complemented, that they are similar as the left shoe and the right shoe, both have to be put on at the same time in order to walk.
And just as labor has sought capital, the investment here in the United States, we are seeking to attract investment and capital to Mexico, to generate in Mexico well paid jobs for the Mexicans so they don’t continue separating our families and our communities. ________
We have worked and we have been speaking and relating to diverse actors in the political panorama in Mexico and in the United States, above all with those who have influences in this migratory debate issue and we have expressed to them with firmness the position of the Government of Mexico that can be summarize in five points.
First. We want that the extraordinary cultural, social, and economic contribution of the Mexican migrants in the United States to be recognized.
Second. We want that that recognition be reflected in a greater certainty, in a greater stability, in a greater tranquility so that our compatriots can do what they came to do, to work in peace, to be productive, support their family and be recognized or not, that their work has also helped this Nation.
Third. That for the Mexican Government it is important, of course, to have a secure border. When they think that we are disputing this point, they are also mistaken, yes, of course I want a secure border, of course I want a secure border for our people, for our children and also for the Americans or any person that live on both sides of the border.
The Government of Mexico is commited and works for having a secure border with the United States, but we should not make a mistake, its not the people, is the organized crime and not the migrant Mexicans the ones that are a problem of national security for the United States.
I think that both nations should recognize what is a reality, the world is being globalized, the economies are being built global and the nations that are prospering, the regions that are prospering, like Asia, and Europe, are nations that recognize that reality and they are capable of being integrated in larger economies of scale and in larger territories.
What we should do Americans and Mexicans is to recognize that if we want prosperity, that if we want to progress we should become united. Not by closing our border, not by canceling our exchanges are we going to prosper, we either prosper together incorporating and integrating ot there will not be prosperity neither for Mexico or for the United States.
________
We want to build bridges because we know that bridges, more than walls, are the ones that join people. And I also know, I understand the worry of many American citizens, but I can share with you, my friends, what some time ago I commented to President Bush in his visit to Mexico last year.
I assured the President, I told him, that he can do more to reduce immigration,to reduce immigration it would benefit more a kilometer of highway in Zacatecas or in Michoacán than 20 kilometers of border wall covering Texas or Arizona.
________
We want to be near the Mexicans in Chicago and anywhere in the world and in the U.S. And we have an idea to continue working with you in five main issues.
First. We will dedicate all the resources at our reach to be able to improve the services that the Government gives. I know that the consular services have always left a lot to be desired and more now since the American authorities are asking for documents for anything.
By that reason, friends, I have decreed in the Budget that all the incomes that be received for passports or other documents in the U.S. consulates, that money remain in the consulates to lend better service.
Second. Starting this week, various mexican consulates in the United States, especially the one in Chicago, will use mobile truck consulates to function with newly hired personnel, with new vehicles, new equipment, so they can vist the 80 cities in the region and offer consular services.
We are going to continue working with those programs and others more. Today, for example, we signed two covenants, one with the State of Illinois and another with the City of Chicago, a covenant to do an exchange of teachers, we are going to bring Mexican teachers here, so they can teach our culture, our traditions and from here we are going to send teachers to Mexico, if you want you could lend us a hand teach English at our communities, to our children that need that Instrument.
Third. We are going to continue working to generate a different environment in the migratory theme; this should remain clear that the Mexicans, that Mexico is not the enemy and Mexicans are not any threat for this great Nation.
That we want to prompt and make recognition of the enormous contributions that the Mexicans do to the U.S. economy. Recent studies have shown, above all one done by the Counsel of Economic Advisors of the White House, they have shown that the immigrant workers, especially the Mexicans, do not displace native workers, to the contrary, they complement the work that they carry out, they enlarge also the income of the American workers. It is calculated that 30 Billion dollars per year, is what the migratory labor force contributes to the income of the U.S. workers.
It also has been shown that the balance that the migrants costs the American taxpayer, this is false thus, this study that is not from the Government of Mexico, is from the Government of the United States and the Counsel of Economic Advisors of the White House, indicates that the balance is a lot more than what the migrants pay in taxes upon working than what they receive in services, and that is so much that they are even maintaining a good part of the retirement pensions of thousands of U.S. workers.
We have to do an enormous effort by changing the image of the immigrant, of Mexico and of the Mexicans, and that implies, exactly, to put clear emphasis in the idea that we are here to build, we are for harmonizing with this great nation our efforts, because the prosperity of the U.S. is directly linked to immigrant labor especially Mexicans.
TRANSLATED FROM: Presidencia.gob.mx
I know that you have risked your lives in order to give opportunities to your children, to your families. I know that in each one of you thereis a history of heroism and also a history of pain.
A history of heroism because is not easy to leave your country, your house, your Nation and to cross the border risking it all. A history of heroism because each year more than 400 Mexicans die trying to cross the border, perhaps more than in any another part of the world.
______
When they tell me that the Government of Mexico what wants to multiply migration, attacking and criticizing our defense for the migrant, I say that they are mistaken. Because I know that Mexico in each migrant it loses its bravest people, its strongest people, its more audacious people, because I know that in each migrant there is a family that is disconnected.
______
I come here, to Chicago, to Illinois, because I know that my duty as President, especially in the difficult moments that the undocumented are passing, of harassment, of clear discrimination in some cases, my duty is to echo the voice of all the Mexicans, the voice of all of Mexico telling them we are with you.
We are truly determined that Mexico be present with you, supporting you, helping you, understanding you.
I also know, my friends, that my duty as the President is to work and to work very, very hard so that immigration will not be in the future the only option for our people. _______
When they ask me what is, exactly, the cause of this phenomenon, seems tome to that we cannot deceive ourselves. The U.S. economy and the economy of Mexico are absolutely complementary economies; one is intensive in capital, like their economy, another is intensive in labor as is the Mexican and I have always said that labor and capital necessarily are complemented, that they are similar as the left shoe and the right shoe, both have to be put on at the same time in order to walk.
And just as labor has sought capital, the investment here in the United States, we are seeking to attract investment and capital to Mexico, to generate in Mexico well paid jobs for the Mexicans so they don’t continue separating our families and our communities. ________
We have worked and we have been speaking and relating to diverse actors in the political panorama in Mexico and in the United States, above all with those who have influences in this migratory debate issue and we have expressed to them with firmness the position of the Government of Mexico that can be summarize in five points.
First. We want that the extraordinary cultural, social, and economic contribution of the Mexican migrants in the United States to be recognized.
Second. We want that that recognition be reflected in a greater certainty, in a greater stability, in a greater tranquility so that our compatriots can do what they came to do, to work in peace, to be productive, support their family and be recognized or not, that their work has also helped this Nation.
Third. That for the Mexican Government it is important, of course, to have a secure border. When they think that we are disputing this point, they are also mistaken, yes, of course I want a secure border, of course I want a secure border for our people, for our children and also for the Americans or any person that live on both sides of the border.
The Government of Mexico is commited and works for having a secure border with the United States, but we should not make a mistake, its not the people, is the organized crime and not the migrant Mexicans the ones that are a problem of national security for the United States.
I think that both nations should recognize what is a reality, the world is being globalized, the economies are being built global and the nations that are prospering, the regions that are prospering, like Asia, and Europe, are nations that recognize that reality and they are capable of being integrated in larger economies of scale and in larger territories.
What we should do Americans and Mexicans is to recognize that if we want prosperity, that if we want to progress we should become united. Not by closing our border, not by canceling our exchanges are we going to prosper, we either prosper together incorporating and integrating ot there will not be prosperity neither for Mexico or for the United States.
________
We want to build bridges because we know that bridges, more than walls, are the ones that join people. And I also know, I understand the worry of many American citizens, but I can share with you, my friends, what some time ago I commented to President Bush in his visit to Mexico last year.
I assured the President, I told him, that he can do more to reduce immigration,to reduce immigration it would benefit more a kilometer of highway in Zacatecas or in Michoacán than 20 kilometers of border wall covering Texas or Arizona.
________
We want to be near the Mexicans in Chicago and anywhere in the world and in the U.S. And we have an idea to continue working with you in five main issues.
First. We will dedicate all the resources at our reach to be able to improve the services that the Government gives. I know that the consular services have always left a lot to be desired and more now since the American authorities are asking for documents for anything.
By that reason, friends, I have decreed in the Budget that all the incomes that be received for passports or other documents in the U.S. consulates, that money remain in the consulates to lend better service.
Second. Starting this week, various mexican consulates in the United States, especially the one in Chicago, will use mobile truck consulates to function with newly hired personnel, with new vehicles, new equipment, so they can vist the 80 cities in the region and offer consular services.
We are going to continue working with those programs and others more. Today, for example, we signed two covenants, one with the State of Illinois and another with the City of Chicago, a covenant to do an exchange of teachers, we are going to bring Mexican teachers here, so they can teach our culture, our traditions and from here we are going to send teachers to Mexico, if you want you could lend us a hand teach English at our communities, to our children that need that Instrument.
Third. We are going to continue working to generate a different environment in the migratory theme; this should remain clear that the Mexicans, that Mexico is not the enemy and Mexicans are not any threat for this great Nation.
That we want to prompt and make recognition of the enormous contributions that the Mexicans do to the U.S. economy. Recent studies have shown, above all one done by the Counsel of Economic Advisors of the White House, they have shown that the immigrant workers, especially the Mexicans, do not displace native workers, to the contrary, they complement the work that they carry out, they enlarge also the income of the American workers. It is calculated that 30 Billion dollars per year, is what the migratory labor force contributes to the income of the U.S. workers.
It also has been shown that the balance that the migrants costs the American taxpayer, this is false thus, this study that is not from the Government of Mexico, is from the Government of the United States and the Counsel of Economic Advisors of the White House, indicates that the balance is a lot more than what the migrants pay in taxes upon working than what they receive in services, and that is so much that they are even maintaining a good part of the retirement pensions of thousands of U.S. workers.
We have to do an enormous effort by changing the image of the immigrant, of Mexico and of the Mexicans, and that implies, exactly, to put clear emphasis in the idea that we are here to build, we are for harmonizing with this great nation our efforts, because the prosperity of the U.S. is directly linked to immigrant labor especially Mexicans.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Security Grant for Mexico ?
The White House wants a $1.4 billion stimulus/national security package…for Mexico
By Michelle Malkin • February 11, 2008 01:54 PM
A reader asked me to check into information that President Bush was pushing a massive foreign-aid package to Mexico to help them secure their southern border against the flow of illegal aliens from Central America.
“We can’t even get our own border straight, and we are going to provide Mexico with funding so they can solve their problem,” the reader fumed. “I doubt the Central Americans are staying very long in Mexico anyway. We know where they are going!”
Too outrageously outrageous to be true?
Well, I checked it out and it’s even worse than the reader described. Far worse.
The plan is called “The Merida Initiative.” Seems that the White House has had this plan in the works for nearly a year with little congressional input on either side of the border.
We can’t finish our own border fence, properly supply our immigration agents and border patrol with all the equipment and resources they need, or get our house in order. Yet, the Bush administration wants to fork over $1.4 billion to Mexico and Central America–with much of it going into the hands of corrupt law enforcement officials and government bureaucrats who have worked tirelessly to undermine our immigration laws. The funding is tucked into the 2008 supplemental budget.
Naturally, the State Department has taken a lead role. They’ve held meetings in secret and cut out members of Congress from discussion. You’ll love the explanation for the secrecy: Mexico is “sensitive,” you see. Also, according to one expert, “Mexico is very protective of its sovereignty and very worried about any incursion of U.S. security forces or private contractors—like Blackwater—coming in to train Mexicans.” Yeah, they’re worried about incursions and sovereignty.
The State Dept. disclosed the first phase of the Merida Initiative last October, involving some $550 million in aid for inspection scanners, helicopters, surveillance tools, and case management software:
This partnership would support coordinated strategies to:
*Produce a safer and more secure hemisphere where criminal organizations no longer threaten governments and regional security; and
*Prevent the entry and spread of illicit drugs and transnational threats throughout the region and to the United States.
To achieve these goals, President Bush has requested $550 million as part of a multi-year program to provide:
*Non-intrusive inspection equipment, ion scanners, canine units for Mexican customs, for the new federal police and for the military to interdict trafficked drugs, arms, cash and persons.
*Technologies to improve and secure communications systems to support collecting information as well as ensuring that vital information is accessible for criminal law enforcement.
*Technical advice and training to strengthen the institutions of justice – vetting for the new police force, case management software to track investigations through the system to trial, new offices of citizen complaints and professional responsibility, and establishing witness protection programs.
*Helicopters and surveillance aircraft to support interdiction activities and rapid operational response of law enforcement agencies in Mexico.
*Initial funding for security cooperation with Central America that responds directly to Central American leaders’ concerns over gangs, drugs, and arms articulated during July SICA meetings and the SICA Security Strategy.
*Includes equipment and assets to support counterpart security agencies inspecting and interdicting drugs, trafficked goods, people and other contraband as well as equipment, training and community action programs in Central American countries to implement anti-gang measures and expand the reach of these measures in the region.
The Brookings Institute issued more details and analysis in November:
For the past six months, without input from respective legislatures, government officials have quietly planned this joint endeavor. The newly elected president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, campaigned on a platform of citizen’s security, committed $3 billion of federal funds to this priority and persuaded the Mexican army and navy to lead the fight against the drug cartels and the criminal networks. The cartels and the networks are distinct, but drug money is the juice that feeds both enterprises: together, they have become an international threat to Mexican national security. In this campaign, President Calderon found a strong ally in President Bush. In March this year, they met in the colonial town of Merida to strategize on combating transnational crime. In the interim, and out of public scrutiny, government officials drew up the technical elements of a plan, known as the Merida Initiative, to avoid any confusion with Plan Colombia.
Under the terms of this Initiative, the United States will commit 41% of the $500 million grant to military equipment, which will include six brand new Bell 412 helicopters and two Casa 245 twin-engine aircraft. Accompanying both is a two year agreement to provide maintenance and spare parts. This represents a significant improvement over the gift of Hueys in the 1990s under the Excess Defense Articles program. Those helicopters soon became inoperable and were cannibalized for spare parts, leaving a bitter taste by the recipients of “hand me downs.” Now, the grant of new equipment, plus the maintenance and spare parts, assures the Mexican armed forces that we take collaboration seriously. However, the planned use of the Casa aircraft needs to be discussed publicly, given its multiple and potential capabilities from medevac to cargo, to intelligence gathering, even to use as a gunship equipped with light cannons.
There is encouraging news in the Initiative that 59% of the grant will be earmarked for civilian agencies responsible for law enforcement. This is much needed, but the number and complexity of Mexico’s security agencies will need more than cash to reform. Multiple Federal agencies have earned a reputation for ineffectiveness and corruption; among them, the Attorney General’s Federal Investigative Agency, the Ministry of Public Security’s Federal Preventive Police Force, the Ministry of Government’s Center for Investigation and National Security and the Ministry of Finance’s Customs Administration. Furthermore, the 32 states within the Mexican Federation hold responsibility for crime control. State security agencies and the courts have not protected the citizenry effectively. According to surveys carried out by Transparencia Mexicana, the police and justice system are perceived as having worse problems of corruption and inefficiency than other public agencies.
If you subsidize it, you’ll get more of it.
Which is exactly what Bush-Calderon Mexican stimulus package will do. Add this to Dick Lamm’s plan to destroy America.
At a little-noticed hearing (finally) on the plan last week, seems there was some opposition.
Rep. Gabrielle Gifford, D-Ariz., questioned whether it was wise to assist Mexico at a time when the U.S. economy appears to be headed toward a recession.
“Unless we have our house in order, putting millions into Central America and Mexico is not the solution,” she said.
But I haven’t read about any opposition from Republicans. Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?
Meantime, Mexico refuses to extradite criminal suspects who’ve fled from the U.S. down to Mexico unless our prosecutors drop death penalty charges against them.
Oh, and just in time to mobilize pro-illegal immigration activists during this heated campaign season, Calderon landed in the U.S. yesterday for a five-day visit:
Officially, the five-day trip is billed as an “encounter” with Mr. Calderón’s compatriots abroad, according to a statement from the president’s office to the Mexican Congress. But the visit could backfire, experts say, by putting the focus back on the hot-potato issue of Mexican migration….The trip allows him to “reach out to Mexican communities in the United States, which he hasn’t been able to do in his first year in office, and support them, and tell them they’re not alone,” said one official speaking on the condition of anonymity. And it will help him to “strengthen the relationship with the U.S. private sector” as he tries to bring more investment to Mexico, the official added.
Mr. Calderón, other officials say, is also trying to reshape the immigration debate in the United States by showcasing the “hard work” and “economic benefits” that his compatriots represent to the U.S. economy and economic integration of the two countries.
“Timing is everything, and the timing of President Calderón’s trip speaks volumes – following Super Tuesday and on the eve of the remaining primaries,” said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, president of Peschard & Associates, an independent consulting firm. “He clearly will capitalize on the timing, plus some of his politically oriented meetings, to make sure he puts Mexico on the next president’s desk and even try to shape the bilateral agenda.”
Among the U.S. politicians Calderon will meet with: New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He will also meet with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a prominent Hispanic leader who endorsed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
No word on whether John McCain is on the schedule. Perhaps Juan Hernandez will stand in.
I ask: Whose sovereignty is in jeopardy?
By Michelle Malkin • February 11, 2008 01:54 PM
A reader asked me to check into information that President Bush was pushing a massive foreign-aid package to Mexico to help them secure their southern border against the flow of illegal aliens from Central America.
“We can’t even get our own border straight, and we are going to provide Mexico with funding so they can solve their problem,” the reader fumed. “I doubt the Central Americans are staying very long in Mexico anyway. We know where they are going!”
Too outrageously outrageous to be true?
Well, I checked it out and it’s even worse than the reader described. Far worse.
The plan is called “The Merida Initiative.” Seems that the White House has had this plan in the works for nearly a year with little congressional input on either side of the border.
We can’t finish our own border fence, properly supply our immigration agents and border patrol with all the equipment and resources they need, or get our house in order. Yet, the Bush administration wants to fork over $1.4 billion to Mexico and Central America–with much of it going into the hands of corrupt law enforcement officials and government bureaucrats who have worked tirelessly to undermine our immigration laws. The funding is tucked into the 2008 supplemental budget.
Naturally, the State Department has taken a lead role. They’ve held meetings in secret and cut out members of Congress from discussion. You’ll love the explanation for the secrecy: Mexico is “sensitive,” you see. Also, according to one expert, “Mexico is very protective of its sovereignty and very worried about any incursion of U.S. security forces or private contractors—like Blackwater—coming in to train Mexicans.” Yeah, they’re worried about incursions and sovereignty.
The State Dept. disclosed the first phase of the Merida Initiative last October, involving some $550 million in aid for inspection scanners, helicopters, surveillance tools, and case management software:
This partnership would support coordinated strategies to:
*Produce a safer and more secure hemisphere where criminal organizations no longer threaten governments and regional security; and
*Prevent the entry and spread of illicit drugs and transnational threats throughout the region and to the United States.
To achieve these goals, President Bush has requested $550 million as part of a multi-year program to provide:
*Non-intrusive inspection equipment, ion scanners, canine units for Mexican customs, for the new federal police and for the military to interdict trafficked drugs, arms, cash and persons.
*Technologies to improve and secure communications systems to support collecting information as well as ensuring that vital information is accessible for criminal law enforcement.
*Technical advice and training to strengthen the institutions of justice – vetting for the new police force, case management software to track investigations through the system to trial, new offices of citizen complaints and professional responsibility, and establishing witness protection programs.
*Helicopters and surveillance aircraft to support interdiction activities and rapid operational response of law enforcement agencies in Mexico.
*Initial funding for security cooperation with Central America that responds directly to Central American leaders’ concerns over gangs, drugs, and arms articulated during July SICA meetings and the SICA Security Strategy.
*Includes equipment and assets to support counterpart security agencies inspecting and interdicting drugs, trafficked goods, people and other contraband as well as equipment, training and community action programs in Central American countries to implement anti-gang measures and expand the reach of these measures in the region.
The Brookings Institute issued more details and analysis in November:
For the past six months, without input from respective legislatures, government officials have quietly planned this joint endeavor. The newly elected president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, campaigned on a platform of citizen’s security, committed $3 billion of federal funds to this priority and persuaded the Mexican army and navy to lead the fight against the drug cartels and the criminal networks. The cartels and the networks are distinct, but drug money is the juice that feeds both enterprises: together, they have become an international threat to Mexican national security. In this campaign, President Calderon found a strong ally in President Bush. In March this year, they met in the colonial town of Merida to strategize on combating transnational crime. In the interim, and out of public scrutiny, government officials drew up the technical elements of a plan, known as the Merida Initiative, to avoid any confusion with Plan Colombia.
Under the terms of this Initiative, the United States will commit 41% of the $500 million grant to military equipment, which will include six brand new Bell 412 helicopters and two Casa 245 twin-engine aircraft. Accompanying both is a two year agreement to provide maintenance and spare parts. This represents a significant improvement over the gift of Hueys in the 1990s under the Excess Defense Articles program. Those helicopters soon became inoperable and were cannibalized for spare parts, leaving a bitter taste by the recipients of “hand me downs.” Now, the grant of new equipment, plus the maintenance and spare parts, assures the Mexican armed forces that we take collaboration seriously. However, the planned use of the Casa aircraft needs to be discussed publicly, given its multiple and potential capabilities from medevac to cargo, to intelligence gathering, even to use as a gunship equipped with light cannons.
There is encouraging news in the Initiative that 59% of the grant will be earmarked for civilian agencies responsible for law enforcement. This is much needed, but the number and complexity of Mexico’s security agencies will need more than cash to reform. Multiple Federal agencies have earned a reputation for ineffectiveness and corruption; among them, the Attorney General’s Federal Investigative Agency, the Ministry of Public Security’s Federal Preventive Police Force, the Ministry of Government’s Center for Investigation and National Security and the Ministry of Finance’s Customs Administration. Furthermore, the 32 states within the Mexican Federation hold responsibility for crime control. State security agencies and the courts have not protected the citizenry effectively. According to surveys carried out by Transparencia Mexicana, the police and justice system are perceived as having worse problems of corruption and inefficiency than other public agencies.
If you subsidize it, you’ll get more of it.
Which is exactly what Bush-Calderon Mexican stimulus package will do. Add this to Dick Lamm’s plan to destroy America.
At a little-noticed hearing (finally) on the plan last week, seems there was some opposition.
Rep. Gabrielle Gifford, D-Ariz., questioned whether it was wise to assist Mexico at a time when the U.S. economy appears to be headed toward a recession.
“Unless we have our house in order, putting millions into Central America and Mexico is not the solution,” she said.
But I haven’t read about any opposition from Republicans. Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?
Meantime, Mexico refuses to extradite criminal suspects who’ve fled from the U.S. down to Mexico unless our prosecutors drop death penalty charges against them.
Oh, and just in time to mobilize pro-illegal immigration activists during this heated campaign season, Calderon landed in the U.S. yesterday for a five-day visit:
Officially, the five-day trip is billed as an “encounter” with Mr. Calderón’s compatriots abroad, according to a statement from the president’s office to the Mexican Congress. But the visit could backfire, experts say, by putting the focus back on the hot-potato issue of Mexican migration….The trip allows him to “reach out to Mexican communities in the United States, which he hasn’t been able to do in his first year in office, and support them, and tell them they’re not alone,” said one official speaking on the condition of anonymity. And it will help him to “strengthen the relationship with the U.S. private sector” as he tries to bring more investment to Mexico, the official added.
Mr. Calderón, other officials say, is also trying to reshape the immigration debate in the United States by showcasing the “hard work” and “economic benefits” that his compatriots represent to the U.S. economy and economic integration of the two countries.
“Timing is everything, and the timing of President Calderón’s trip speaks volumes – following Super Tuesday and on the eve of the remaining primaries,” said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, president of Peschard & Associates, an independent consulting firm. “He clearly will capitalize on the timing, plus some of his politically oriented meetings, to make sure he puts Mexico on the next president’s desk and even try to shape the bilateral agenda.”
Among the U.S. politicians Calderon will meet with: New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He will also meet with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a prominent Hispanic leader who endorsed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
No word on whether John McCain is on the schedule. Perhaps Juan Hernandez will stand in.
I ask: Whose sovereignty is in jeopardy?
Monday, February 11, 2008
Terrorists Entering Through Arizona
First aired August 13, 2004 at 11:00PM MST
Investigators: Terrorist Alley
Illegals from terrorist nations are crossing the border into Arizona.
Tom McNamara and the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators have spent the last three months talking to experts and eyewitnesses.
The stories are compelling and the evidence is frightening, and just this week, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo released a report showing that the problem is worse than anyone thought.
Here's what the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators uncovered.
"It's a Muslim prayer blanket. It was found about a mile and a half west from the Douglas port of entry in 2001."
Larry Vance is a rancher who lives near the U.S.-Mexico border in Douglas, Arizona.
For years, he says he's watched - and documented - thousands of illegals crossing the border and running away to eventual arrest... or freedom and anonymity somewhere in this country.
And in just one hour, during this stake-out along the border between Douglas and b\Bisbee, The Investigators count 198 illegals in five different groups crossing into the U.S. with no resistance.
Watch as they huddle in the bushes, then climb thru a few strands of barbed wire and run for freedom.
We called Border Patrol and waited another full hour, but no one ever came.
Later, we checked Border Patrol logs which note agents being dispatched following our call, but also note those agents found no signs of activity in the area.
In recent years, Vance says, the evidence some illegals leave behind is alarming.
Vance says, "Other log books, diary-type things, other bits and pieces of paper with Arabic written on them found in the area over the last few years
We've all heard of the U.S. government's Terror Watch List: countries flagged because Americans are endangered by their citizens, yet regularly, illegals from those countries are crossing the Arizona border, blending in with groups of Mexican and South American illegal immigrants.
If apprehended, they are brought to this federal detention center in Florence, Arizona.
The investigators found that on this day, several individuals of this kind were being detained here, including some from Sudan, Iran, and even Iraq.
These are just the ones who were caught.
These detainees are called 'other than Mexicans' or OTM's. Most will eventually be sent back to their home country.
But some disappear very quickly, usually before they even reach this center or other holding facilities. They're taken away by tight-lipped federal agents to who-knows-where.
Who are they? They're called 'Special Interest Aliens" or "SIA."
According to Ben Anderson, a retired U.S. Army Colonel, The SIA that they don't want to talk about. That's special interest alien. These are people from those countries that we consider terrorist threats."
Anderson is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who tracks illegal immigration from his home in Sierra Vista, Arizona. He has a website sharing his research into Special Interest Aliens.
"You will not read about that. You will not hear about that. They will not talk about that. They will not provide that info to the press
Colonel Anderson says these Special Interest Aliens originate in the Middle East or Northeast Asia. They travel through Spain to what's called the tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, then, to Mexico City.
They pay to learn Spanish language skills, and by the time they reach the U.S., they're acting and talking like Mexicans to fool border agents.
And, Anderson says, they're entering the United States right through our backyard. "This is the main alley. It's called "Cocaine Alley" or "Terrorist Alley." Whatever you want to call it, Arizona is the prime place."
Cochise County is the center. It's the point of gravitus, center of gravity for all illegals," says Anderson.
Anderson says some Special Interest Aliens are well-funded. paying tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled into this country. They manage to get passports from non-terrorist nations.
And here's the shocking part: if they are caught, they are often released on their own recognizance, never to be seen again.
According to Retired Border Patrol Agent David Stoddard, "There are Middle Easterners coming across the border as we speak."
Stoddard agrees with Anderson. Stoddard spent 17 years as a Border Patrol agent and supervisor in the Tucson Sector before retiring.
"What's scary is that I can show you places out here on the line right now where 18-wheelers can be driven across."
"These 18-wheelers can be loaded with anything -- illegal aliens, atomic weapons, whatever."
Stoddard says Americans would be shocked if they knew just how many people from all over the world are getting into this country across the Arizona border. And he says we're even less safe from terrorism today than we were before 9/11.
Take for example, the capture of terrorist suspect Jose Padilla. The Justice Department says Padilla and an accomplice planned to enter the U.S. thru Mexico to blow up apartment buildings in major cities, like New York.
Or the case of suspected al-Qaeda sleeper agent Mohammed Junaid Babar.
Babar has told investigators of a scheme to smuggle terrorists across the Mexican border. He's tied to a terror plot to carry out bombings and assassinations in London.
And the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper reports that in June, 53 Middle Eastern men were apprehended by Border Patrol agents near Willcox.
It's believed they were from Iran or Syria.
Stoddard says, "It's the ones who are sneaking into our country under cover of darkness between our ports of entry that concern me and should concern every American.
Border Patrol Council President T.J. Bonner says, "You don't know what is getting by you unless you come across, as you said, small pieces of evidence, remnants of things that give you clues, that not everybody is coming across from mexico looking for a job."
Bonner knows exactly who and what current agents are uncovering along our border and he has a dire warning:
"It's only a matter of time before another terrorist attack occurs, unfortunately.
Some in Congress are starting to take notice of the threat. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo released a report that revealed a 50% increase in OTMs, illegals Other Than Mexicans, crossing the border.
Tancredo says some illegals from terrorist nations are paying as much as $50,000 to be smuggled in. He says they're not paying that kind of money simply to work at a 7/11.
Investigators: Terrorist Alley
Illegals from terrorist nations are crossing the border into Arizona.
Tom McNamara and the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators have spent the last three months talking to experts and eyewitnesses.
The stories are compelling and the evidence is frightening, and just this week, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo released a report showing that the problem is worse than anyone thought.
Here's what the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators uncovered.
"It's a Muslim prayer blanket. It was found about a mile and a half west from the Douglas port of entry in 2001."
Larry Vance is a rancher who lives near the U.S.-Mexico border in Douglas, Arizona.
For years, he says he's watched - and documented - thousands of illegals crossing the border and running away to eventual arrest... or freedom and anonymity somewhere in this country.
And in just one hour, during this stake-out along the border between Douglas and b\Bisbee, The Investigators count 198 illegals in five different groups crossing into the U.S. with no resistance.
Watch as they huddle in the bushes, then climb thru a few strands of barbed wire and run for freedom.
We called Border Patrol and waited another full hour, but no one ever came.
Later, we checked Border Patrol logs which note agents being dispatched following our call, but also note those agents found no signs of activity in the area.
In recent years, Vance says, the evidence some illegals leave behind is alarming.
Vance says, "Other log books, diary-type things, other bits and pieces of paper with Arabic written on them found in the area over the last few years
We've all heard of the U.S. government's Terror Watch List: countries flagged because Americans are endangered by their citizens, yet regularly, illegals from those countries are crossing the Arizona border, blending in with groups of Mexican and South American illegal immigrants.
If apprehended, they are brought to this federal detention center in Florence, Arizona.
The investigators found that on this day, several individuals of this kind were being detained here, including some from Sudan, Iran, and even Iraq.
These are just the ones who were caught.
These detainees are called 'other than Mexicans' or OTM's. Most will eventually be sent back to their home country.
But some disappear very quickly, usually before they even reach this center or other holding facilities. They're taken away by tight-lipped federal agents to who-knows-where.
Who are they? They're called 'Special Interest Aliens" or "SIA."
According to Ben Anderson, a retired U.S. Army Colonel, The SIA that they don't want to talk about. That's special interest alien. These are people from those countries that we consider terrorist threats."
Anderson is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who tracks illegal immigration from his home in Sierra Vista, Arizona. He has a website sharing his research into Special Interest Aliens.
"You will not read about that. You will not hear about that. They will not talk about that. They will not provide that info to the press
Colonel Anderson says these Special Interest Aliens originate in the Middle East or Northeast Asia. They travel through Spain to what's called the tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, then, to Mexico City.
They pay to learn Spanish language skills, and by the time they reach the U.S., they're acting and talking like Mexicans to fool border agents.
And, Anderson says, they're entering the United States right through our backyard. "This is the main alley. It's called "Cocaine Alley" or "Terrorist Alley." Whatever you want to call it, Arizona is the prime place."
Cochise County is the center. It's the point of gravitus, center of gravity for all illegals," says Anderson.
Anderson says some Special Interest Aliens are well-funded. paying tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled into this country. They manage to get passports from non-terrorist nations.
And here's the shocking part: if they are caught, they are often released on their own recognizance, never to be seen again.
According to Retired Border Patrol Agent David Stoddard, "There are Middle Easterners coming across the border as we speak."
Stoddard agrees with Anderson. Stoddard spent 17 years as a Border Patrol agent and supervisor in the Tucson Sector before retiring.
"What's scary is that I can show you places out here on the line right now where 18-wheelers can be driven across."
"These 18-wheelers can be loaded with anything -- illegal aliens, atomic weapons, whatever."
Stoddard says Americans would be shocked if they knew just how many people from all over the world are getting into this country across the Arizona border. And he says we're even less safe from terrorism today than we were before 9/11.
Take for example, the capture of terrorist suspect Jose Padilla. The Justice Department says Padilla and an accomplice planned to enter the U.S. thru Mexico to blow up apartment buildings in major cities, like New York.
Or the case of suspected al-Qaeda sleeper agent Mohammed Junaid Babar.
Babar has told investigators of a scheme to smuggle terrorists across the Mexican border. He's tied to a terror plot to carry out bombings and assassinations in London.
And the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper reports that in June, 53 Middle Eastern men were apprehended by Border Patrol agents near Willcox.
It's believed they were from Iran or Syria.
Stoddard says, "It's the ones who are sneaking into our country under cover of darkness between our ports of entry that concern me and should concern every American.
Border Patrol Council President T.J. Bonner says, "You don't know what is getting by you unless you come across, as you said, small pieces of evidence, remnants of things that give you clues, that not everybody is coming across from mexico looking for a job."
Bonner knows exactly who and what current agents are uncovering along our border and he has a dire warning:
"It's only a matter of time before another terrorist attack occurs, unfortunately.
Some in Congress are starting to take notice of the threat. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo released a report that revealed a 50% increase in OTMs, illegals Other Than Mexicans, crossing the border.
Tancredo says some illegals from terrorist nations are paying as much as $50,000 to be smuggled in. He says they're not paying that kind of money simply to work at a 7/11.
Madrassas for Arizona
March 09, 2005
Turning Arizona Public Schools Into Muslim Madrassas --IT'S ALREADY BEGUN
[Another long post, but more bloggy, with great chunks of other peoples' words. This may be blessing or curse, depending on the reader's taste for my prose. At any rate, read it and weep. Then get angry. Then do something. And remember the goal: No dhimmis here. Ever.]
by Jerome du Bois
Before we begin this very long post, a quick question for Arizona parents of middle-school students: if someone placed a pretty mat on the floor, told you to face in a certain direction, kneel, bow down, and repeat strange words five times a day for a month, would you do it? Your children will, before the end of the year. You can count on it, their grades will depend on it, and right now there's nothing you can do about it.
. . . it is hard to understand why, in an American textbook in which the birth and expansion of Islam gets 55 pages, the Middle Ages in Europe get merely seven, and the Byzantine Empire six. By way of contrast, the story of the Umayyad Muslims is told in seven pages, and even more peculiarly for students in a Western culture, a chapter about "Village Society in West Africa" takes up eight pages. --Rod Dreher, NRO, February 12, 2002, commenting on Across The Centuries, a seventh-grade social-studies textbook.
Michael H. Hart's top 100 list of the most influential people in the history of the world was presented to teach that Muhammad was #1, Sir Isaac Newton was #2 and Jesus was #3. --from an email to Daniel Pipes by FISH, February 27, 2005, about History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a newer seventh-grade social-studies textbook.
Schools and campuses are no exceptions as places where Islam can be victorious. . . . We should use every opportunity to sensitize non-Muslim peers and school staff to Islam and to establish an environment in which everywhere a non-Muslim turns, he notices Islam portrayed in a positive way, is influenced by it and eventually accepts Islam.--from DawaNet, "How To Make America An Islamic Nation." (See Pipes here.)
Coming soon to an elementary school near you: mandatory indoctrination in Islamic customs and practices. According to The Kansas City Star, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in Herndon, Virginia, are to be given lessons in the three Rs: Reading, ‘Riting, and Ramadan. During this instruction, public school children will play act being Muslims, and, perhaps unwittingly, convert to Islam. -- Alexis Amory, FrontPage, October 20, 2004.
On February 23, 2005, the Arizona Republic ran a story about Scottsdale Unified School District Superintendent John M. Baracy, a Ph.D who makes over $200,000 per year. [Email is: superintendent@susd.org.] The subject: he changed six job titles. It was cute. From Anne Ryman's article:
She used to be known as the receptionist.
Now she's the Director of First Impressions.
Barbara Levine is one of several employees in the Scottsdale Unified School District whose job titles have changed in a sharp departure from the traditional titles that parents grew up using.
National workplace experts say they are unaware of another school district in the United States that has changed its titles so dramatically, and they disagree over whether the new titles, which are designed to reflect the district's commitment to learning, are good. Parents, they say, could become confused over whom to contact if they have a complaint.
Was the school bus late? Blame the "transporter of learners," formerly the bus driver.
Got a problem with your school principal? Take it up with the 10-word "executive director for elementary schools and excelling teaching and learning," formerly known as the assistant superintendent of elementary schools.
Sound confusing or like hyperbole?
Scottsdale Superintendent John Baracy, who created the new titles for about a half-dozen employees, doesn't think so.
"This is to make a statement about what we value in the district. We value learning," said Baracy, who pledges to back up the new titles with better customer service.
Better customer service? I'm impressed --at first-- but I have a question for Dr. "Excelling" Baracy on a lot less whimsical subject than job titles. In fact, I address my question to everyone on the Governing Board. [Email is: govboard@susd.org.] This means you--
Mrs. Christine Schild, President, appointed 2002, three sons in Scottsdale schools;
Mrs. Jennifer Petersen, appointed 2004, three children in Scottsdale schools;
Ms. Karen Beckvar, appointed 2002;
Mrs. Molly Holzer, appointed 2004, two children in Scottsdale schools; and
Dr. Eric Meyer, appointed 2004, two children in Scottsdale schools--
--and the first one to answer gets a Muslim-approved forehead-activated prayer-rug buzzer. Here's my question:
With all this valuing of learning going on, why won't you allow a seventh-grade social studies textbook to go home with the student? You know, one of your "customers"?
Could it be because it champions, foregrounds, and whitewashes Islam?
At least one Scottsdale father wants to know. Read his recent comment (links added by me) on Daniel Pipes's website, responding to Pipes's November 24, 2004 article, Teaching Islam in American Schools:
Submitted by FISH (fish123abc@cox.net), February 27, 2005 at 10:45
Excellent article, Dr. Pipes, and thank you for taking the time to write it!
My child is in the 7th grade in Scottsdale, Arizona. The school's officially adopted social studies textbook is titled Across the Centuries and is published by Houghton Mifflin. However, Across the Centuries has been shelved and the school is piloting a brand new book from Teacher's Curriculum Institute, aka TCI, titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond (this book is not permitted to go home). In my opinion, this book is highly biased towards Islam, historically incorrect and also includes fake history along with Islamic religious proselytizing and indoctrination techniques.
The school has spent approximately 5 weeks of the third quarter grading period teaching Islam to 12 and 13 year olds. The children had to write a full biography on the life of Muhammad, using the information from the textbook --an extremely indoctrinating exercise. This biography will be a large portion of their grade for the 8 week period. Michael H. Hart's top 100 list of the most influential people in the history of the world was presented to teach that Muhammad was #1, Sir Isaac Newton was #2 and Jesus was #3. The school hosted two professional Muslim speakers, from the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona, to speak to all 7th grade social studies classes. This took one whole day. The Muslim speakers brought prayer rugs and taught the children to pray the Muslim way. I also believe that there were recitations from the Koran and possibly an Islamic "fashion show".
To the best of my knowledge, in this Islamic program, there are none of the negative aspects of Islam touched upon. It is my opinion that in the book, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, Christians are trounced and portrayed as murderers of the Muslim and Jewish people. The Jewish people are only mentioned, and very briefly, in order to be victimized, persecuted and murdered by the Christians. All the while, Islam builds great and grand new empires, has many great and wonderful achievements in architecture, education, science, geography, mathematics, medicine, literature, art and music, and ultimately rules benevolently over the Jewish and Christian people.
Islamic indoctrination in American education is a highly successful insidious industry that is extremely well organized, well connected, legally savvy, brazenly influential, and without successful opposition. When individuals complain to the schools, we often find ourselves engaged in a seriously daunting uphill battle. There should be an opposing and equally aggressive and well connected organization of people who are willing to stop the Islamization of our school children and of our public schools. This is a big job. Sharing information, increasing awareness and being connected are half the battle.
There is a large amount of information available about the Islamization of public school textbooks. Of course, Daniel Pipes' website is a good place to start. Check The Textbook League and William Bennetta, The American Textbook Council and Gilbert Sewall for starters. Search the internet using terms like Islamic indoctrination in public schools, textbooks promote Islam, Islamic dawa in public schools, Across the Centuries criticism, Serge Trifkovic Across the Centuries, Textbooks for Jihad by Lee Kaplan, Look who's teaching Johnny about Islam by Paul Sperry, etc. . . You will find many articles and one will lead to the next and so on . . .
I feel strongly that religious studies should not be taught in public elementary, middle or high schools. Religious studies can be offered in public colleges to adults who are able to make their own choices about what they want to be "fed." I wish that the people in charge of our children's public education felt the same way!
I've never heard of a school textbook that the student was forbidden to take home, and neither has my wife, a former teacher. While we're waiting for Dr. Baracy and the SUSD Governing Board's answer to this anomaly, we will explore further this Islamic insinuiation campaign, which did not burst onto the Scottsdale scene two weeks ago like a saddle sore. It goes back years. For example, the "shelved" book Across The Centuries is just as egregious and misleading at the book that replaced it, is used in many school districts nationwide, was read by John Walker Lindh, for example --and was first published in 1991.
I'll be taking us back about ten years, in reverse order, to see what American Muslims have in store for you and me. (I can give you the short version in two words, though: The Borg.) But before we jump, I'd like to point to who has paid attention to this educational scandal, and who has ignored it. Nationally, Charles Johnson and his commenters covered a lot in one posting. Instapundit had a one-sentence link after a story about Al Qaeda in Tucson. Solomania has a mention. Rantburg had a fat quote and some good comments. As for local political blogs, I confess I barely glance at them. But I checked in with Blog for Arizona, a Dean hangover site. No mention. Then I used the blogroll there to check out over three dozen Arizona sites. Nada. (Oh, azcentral.com had a cute little follow-up on the job title thing.) Finally, what about Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser a Phoenix physician, organizer of the only "Moderate Muslim March" yet, and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum For Democracy? Who even has access to azcentral.com's blog, pluggedin? Anything from him . . . ? No. Silence from the Doctor.
We're on our own here. Get on the bus, dear learner, while I transport us back --in-- time.
Less than a year ago, on April 25, 2004, there was a rally in downtown Phoenix organized by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. Several sources describe it in several ways, but the pitch was "Muslims for moderation, and against terrorism." I mention it here to provide some local context, because it was so recent, and because the turnout, from a Muslim community of 50,000-plus, was so pitifully small.
Since our children are grown and gone, we don't monitor local educational policies and programs. But we sure have the antennae out for Islam. In fact, to make our position about Islam clear, here I'll republish the main part of Seven Statements For Muslims, which I first posted on November 2, 2004 --Re-Election Day (joy), and the day Theo van Gogh was ritualistically murdered (sorrow) by a Muslim, in a Muslim way, for Muslim reasons (anger):
1. The Jews are not a question mark. (Thought experiment: Imagine a history of the world without any contributions by Muslims. Now imagine the same without Jews.)
2. Women are equal to men. They are not property or chattel or anything less than any man, and indeed superior to any man who thinks women should be anything less than any man.
3. The Qu'ran was not orally or mentally channelled inerrantly to Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel. It is a palimpsest, edited, abridged, and extended over many years. This is just historical fact, attested to by the Hijazi Ultraviolets.
4. Allah isn't alone. He shares the world with all the gods in Mecca's cave, and Yahweh, Shiva, Chango, The Everywhere Spirit, Ein Sof, and many more.
5. I don't trust your words. You have a practice called Taqiyya: "Muslims hold that the Islamic version of dissimulation is applied only externally with the tongue and not internally (on the heart, spirit, and soul). In other words, a Muslim is allowed to say untruths to a non-Muslim if in their heart they still respect the truths that they externally deny." (Definition from fact-index.com.) And you want us to trust Muslims? No. Because of taqiyya, I cannot believe a single thing any Muslim says.
6. There is nothing spiritual or mystical about the Arabic language. It may not even be of Arabian origin; evidence suggests it originated in the Levant. So chanting anything in Arabic, or writing it down, is no different than chanting or writing in English or German or Urdu or Spanish or Esperanto.
7. There will be no more one-way tolerance. One man, one vote, once don't go 'round here. Submission is not in our law, our tradition, our Constitution, or our blood, habibi.
Opposition, stubborness: now, that's another matter.
With that settled . . . As soon as I saw FISH's emailed comment over at Daniel Pipes --Scottsdale? That's in my Valley!-- I started Googling and digging.
History Alive! is part of an entire K-12 curriculum. The new middle-school text with its Islamic emphasis may be a pilot program here, but some California parents know well an earlier high-school version, with its bias against Israel. On October 3, 2003, the online magazine j., the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, published an article by Alexandra J. Wall:
A Middle East curriculum used in some local high schools is strongly biased against Israel, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council is charging.
The offending curriculum, the “History Alive!” series distributed by the Rancho Cordova-based Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, was discovered by a Santa Rosa parent who not only brought it to the attention of the JCRC but filed a complaint against Maria Carrillo High School.
The parent, an attorney, did not want to be named in j. but he is angry.
First, he found a textbook he found factually incorrect. But what he saw in some supplemental materials was even worse.
The supplementary materials provided by TCI have so many inaccuracies that the section on the Arab-Israeli conflict shouldn’t be used, according to the JCRC’s report.
One especially offensive activity, the JCRC said, divides the students into two groups. There are the “Pads,” whose ancestors have lived in the Land of Pad for thousands of years, and the “Jeds,” who are told: “Your ancestors used to live in the Land of Z, which you believe was given them by God. Your ancestors were forced to leave the Land of Z 2,000 years ago, and your people have been scattered throughout the world ever since.”
The exercise has the teacher, acting as “the Great Power,” favoring the Jeds over the Pads in trying to reach a small, overcrowded plot of land bordered by desks in the classroom. The Pads and Jeds debate whom it belongs to, and the teacher is to act unimpressed by whatever the Pads have to say, while agreeing with the Jeds.
Jackie Berman, the JCRC’s education specialist co-authored the JCRC study with Yitzhak Santis, the JCRC’s Middle East director.
That exercise is perhaps the most egregious example, the JCRC maintains, but there are many such problems in the curriculum, causing Berman to conclude: “That’s why it can’t really be fixed, by saying, ‘Change this around or that.’ It’s just permeated with this kind of bias.”
Neither Berman nor a TCI spokeswoman knew how widely the TCI curriculum is used in this area, but Berman said she had been in touch with the JCRC in Chicago, where schools were also using it. According to the company’s Web site, www.historyalive.com, TCI programs are used by more than 1,000 school districts across the nation, and there are testimonials from California officials from Fremont Union High and Cupertino Unified school districts.
On Monday, Berman and Jonathan Bernstein, director of the Central Pacific region of the Anti-Defamation League, met with the assistant superintendent of the Santa Rosa City School District, Steve Butler. The ADL has dealt with the TCI curriculum on a national level.
Butler said the district tried to solve the complaint filed by the parent informally, as is district procedure. When they were unable to, they convened a committee of four educators not connected to the school to review the offending materials.
The committee found that with supplementary information, including some provided by the parent, as well as the JCRC’s report, multiple points of view were represented, Butler said.
The conclusion the panel came to was that the materials “are not perfect, but they weren’t at a point where they needed to be censored or banned,” he said. “This is making a mountain out of a molehill for us.”
That response does not please those at the JCRC. A copy of the report is set to be sent off to TCI shortly. And Santis said this will be an ongoing story.
“We’re not satisfied,” said Santis. “If the Santa Rosa school district acknowledges it’s flawed, why are they using it? We urge that the school district drop this curriculum completely.”
The district’s response certainly was not enough for the offended parent either. He said he is not only filing a complaint against the teacher, but plans to continue the appeal to the state department of education and is willing to file a lawsuit, if necessary.
This effort paid off. On February 14, 2004, Ms. Wall followed up with another story:
A textbook company has agreed to rewrite its unit on the Middle East after the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council issued a report claiming it was biased against Israel.
The JCRC report concluded that the supplemental materials that go along with the Teachers Curriculum Institute’s “History Alive!” textbooks were too filled with inaccuracies and so biased that they should not be used.
Jim Lobdell, senior director of TCI in Rancho Cordova, estimated that it could take a year to update the Middle East curriculum, but in the best-case scenario, it will be done sooner. In the meantime, a notice appears on TCI’s Web site that warns teachers to use discretion with the existing unit.
All current TCI customers will receive the new materials at no charge.
Last fall, the parent of a student at Santa Rosa’s Maria Carrillo High School complained to school officials not only about the textbook his son was using — which he said was biased against Israel — but about the supplemental materials. When the school district refused to stop using the materials, he took the matter to the JCRC, which, upon reading the chapter in question, became alarmed.
This prompted Jackie Berman, the JCRC’s education specialist, and Yitzhak Santis, JCRC Middle East director, to write a report analyzing point by point how the curriculum was flawed. A back and forth ensued with TCI, which sent the report to scholars of its choosing to offer their opinions.
A JCRC board member sent the report to attorney Alan Dershowitz. The board member called Dershowitz’s assistant to see if he would be willing to look at the materials as well as the report, and he did.
“I agree completely that the historical distortions and factual mistakes that appear throughout the curriculum make it unacceptable for classroom use and I hope that the proper authorities will seriously consider your criticisms,” Dershowitz wrote.
Lobdell said that the JCRC’s report prompted TCI leadership to seek the opinions of additional scholars and teachers on the unit in question.
“The feedback we got from them and the context of the events since 9/11 and the heightened sensitivities around the issues in the Middle East prompted us to update the lessons that we have,” said Lobdell.
Which is cause for cautious celebration at the JCRC. “Of course we’ll be watching,” said Berman, “but we’re hoping it turns out right now.”
Since TCI’s decision, the Santa Rosa school district has stopped using its materials.
What concerns me here is that it apparently doesn't matter if Scottsdale is using the "new materials" or the old materials: either is unacceptable as a portrayal of truth. More importantly, the earlier text, Across The Centuries, was flawed as well.
On February 11, 2002, Daniel Pipes posted Think Like A Muslim [,Urges "Across The Centuries"]. The heart of the piece:
. . . But the really serious problem concerns the covert propagation of Islam, which takes four forms:
* Apologetics: Everything Islamic is praised; every problem is swept under the rug.
Students learn about Islam's "great cultural flowering," but nothing about the later centuries of statis and decline. They read repeatedly about the Muslims' broadmindedness (they "were extremely tolerant of those they conquered") but not a word about their violence (such as the massacres carried out by Muhammad's troops against the Jews of Banu Qurayza).
* Distortion: Jihad, which means "sacred war," turns into a struggle mainly "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." Islam gives women "clear rights" not available in some other societies, such as the right to an education? This ignores the self-evident fact that Muslim women enjoy fewer rights than perhaps any other in the world. ("Across the Centuries" implicitly acknowledges this reality by blaming "oppressive local traditions" for their circumstances.)
* Identification as Muslims: Homework assignments repeatedly involve mock-Muslim exercises. "Form small groups of students to build a miniature mosque." Or: "You leave your home in Alexandria for the pilgrimage to Mecca. . . . write a letter describing your route, the landscapes and peoples you see as you travel and any incidents that happen along the way. Describe what you see in Mecca."
And then there is this shocker: "Assume you are a Muslim soldier on your way to conquer Syria in the year A.D. 635. Write three journal entries that reveal your thoughts about Islam, fighting in battle, or life in the desert."
* Piety: The textbook endorses key articles of Islamic faith. It informs students as a historical fact that Ramadan is holy "because in this month Muhammad received his first message from Allah." It asserts that "the very first word the angel Gabriel spoke to Muhammad was 'Recite.' " It explains that Arabic lettering "was used to write down God's words as they had been given to Muhammad." And it declares that the architecture of a mosque in Spain allows Muslims "to feel Allah's invisible presence."
By 2002, this book had been in use 11 years. This fact made me think about John Walker Lindh. Did he use this book? The answer is yes.
During 2002, the American Textbook Council formally studied and researched seven major history and social studies textbooks. They published a report in February 2003, and a reply to critics the following December. (Both available in pdf on their website. You may also peruse eye-opening excerpts on jihad and sharia.) Earlier this year, their website published an update, part of which I excerpt below, with my emphases:
During the last two years, beginning with the American Textbook Council report, "Islam in the Classroom," published in February 2003, several reviews, articles and books have documented bias and evasions in world history textbooks on the subjects of militant Islam and Islamic terrorism. Textbooks misrepresent the scope and aims of militant Islam, critics agree. They contain fallacies and untruths about jihad, sharia, slavery, status of Muslim women, terrorism, and tolerance.
These reviews independently reach the same conclusions. Most conspicuously, history textbooks distort the meaning of jihad. Houghton Mifflin's seventh-grade text, Across the Centuries, has come in for singular criticism. Houghton Mifflin's books dominate the nation's largest state, but they are in no way worse on this score than competing textbooks. Textbooks make no distinction between sharia and Western law, and they pretend that women are making great strides in the Islamic world, when all evidence indicates otherwise. Social studies textbooks ignore the global ambitions of militant Islam. They fail to explain that Muslim terrorists seek to destroy the United States and Israel. They omit geopolitical goals that include theocracy and world domination by religion.
Islamic organizations act as domestic textbook "censors." Strictly speaking, since only governments censor books, the Islamists are merely agents of suppression, using educational publishers to do their bidding. But for years, publishers have ignored -- "stonewalled" -- those who have pressed them about motives, funding, legal status, and strong-arm tactics on the part of their Muslim "consultants."
Now comes a test. Are new textbooks that publishers plan to introduce in California in the next few months going to correct Islam-related errors and tell the truth about terrorism? Or will California succumb to the potent Islamist lobby and its attendant multiculturalists in the state? We'll have a better idea next spring, when publishers, including Houghton Mifflin, submit their new and revised textbooks in Sacramento.
Anyone who is interested in world history or how Islam is covered in social studies classes should pay attention to a new seventh grade history textbook, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond. The textbook and its instructional materials are now being piloted in Scottsdale, Arizona. The program is almost certainly to be submitted in the important California adoption this spring.
What's the Muslim educational lobby like in Arizona? I have no idea, but I'll be checking it out for sure. I hope these chunks of quotations have been carving out the story for the reader as well. But there's more.
In 1994, Valerie Moore took her daughter to school one day.
Valerie Moore says her daughter "was indoctrinated in the Islamic religion for over four months while in the seventh grade" in 1994. Moore expressed shock in arriving at Joseph Kerr Junior High School in Elk Grove, Calif., one day and being greeted by a "huge banner on the front grounds of the school that read 'There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.'" Moore also recounts witnessing "children dressed in Muslim attire, chanting from the Koran and praying while marching around the cabala. [sic]" Moore recalls the banner being up all day.
"What if we put up a sign that says 'Jesus is Lord' for 30 minutes? Oh, no. You can't do that – separation of church and state," Moore laments. "They aren't just teaching them about Islam; they have them practicing it. They have them kneeling down and praying to Allah. I have a problem with that. That's more like inculcation." Moore says when she complained to the school officials she was ridiculed and yelled at.
This was in 1994. This excerpt is from the fanatical Christian website blessedcause.org, which I won't link to. That doesn't change the facts, though. This kind of thing is proliferating in schools across the land: invasion of the mind-snatchers. (Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they don't want to turn your kids into Muslims.) When I'm done here, please follow FISH's advice and Google those links I've made available in his comment.
In the meantime, we may ask, as Lowell Ponte did in FrontPage on December 3, 2003,
How did such a textbook get written and approved? It was launched in accord with California policy in 1991, which wanted such a book to advance the state’s multi-culturalist, inclusive agenda.
(America by some accounts is now home to more Muslims than Presbyterians and is adjusting its culture and politics accordingly. But it’s worth noting that of the world population of 1.2 billion Muslims –-one in five human beings-– the majority is non-Arab. The five nations with the largest Muslim populations, according to the CIA World Factbook, are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), and Turkey –-with a combined Muslim population above 650 million. The next five with the most Muslims include Nigeria, Ethiopia and Persian Iran, with only Egypt and Morocco as nominally “Arabic” nations in the top ten. And yet the pro-Muslim multiculturalist agenda would lead people to believe that Islam is a predominately Arab faith, perhaps because of its origin in Saudi Arabia.)
In 1990 a new man was named its Chairman and Chief Executive Office at this textbook’s publisher Houghton Mifflin, and in 1991 he was also given the title President at the company. He was Nader F. Darehshori, who before coming to the United States in “the early 1960s,” as his short biography tells, was for a year a teacher “in a one-room elementary school in his native Iran.”
Iran, of course, is an overwhelmingly-Islamic country.
The textbook was published with approval by the Council on Islamic Education (CIE), formed in 1988 to promote a better treatment of the subject of Islam in such texts. But, reportedly, according to one Houghton Mifflin executive CIE not only reviewed the book for errors and insensitivities after it was written, but also supplied information about the crusades that was incorporated into the textbook itself. [Dhimmi Watch has the skinny on the unscrupulous CIE.]
But how did the Scottsdale pilot program for the new book originate? Why Scottsdale? Because it's unified, K-12, we'll get 'em young and keep 'em? Because Across the Centuries was building up too much negative baggage, bogged down and barnacled with controversy?
But exactly how did this book get into the classroom --and once there, must never leave? Who decided that?
Who knows? I've emailed FISH to ask him why he does not have a copy of that book in his hand. He hasn't replied yet. I'm not questioning his behavior; I really want clarification of school district policy. Did he demand a copy of the book, and they refused? I'm emailing everyone I can think of as soon as I finish this post.
Will Arizona follow California, smoothing the path for Islamification? Despite the huffing about pilot program, California is way ahead of Arizona in educational dhimmitude. I checked out the guidelines for studying Islam recommended by the History–Social Science Curriculum Framework and Criteria Committee of the California Board of Education in their report for the California Department of Education, October 11, 2001 (which reaffirms the 1998 guidelines):
In this unit students examine the rise of Islam as a religion and as a civilization. Attention should be given to the historic events of A.D. 636–651 when Arab armies reunited the ancient Middle East. Students should analyze the geographic and economic significance of the trade routes between Asia and Europe that were used by Arab merchants. They should consider the importance of a common literary language (Arabic) and religion (Islamic) in unifying the many ethnic groups of this region. The religious ideas of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, should be discussed both for their ethical teachings and as a way of life. Mohammed should be seen as a major historical figure who helped establish the Islamic way of life, its code of ethics and justice, and its rule of law. Students should examine the position of Christians and Jews in the Islamic world who, as “People of the Book,” were allowed to practice their religious beliefs. Contributions of Islamic scholars, including mathematicians, scientists, geographers, astronomers, and physicians from many ethnic groups, should be emphasized and their relationship to Greek thought acknowledged. Scholars at Baghdad and Córdoba, the two great centers of Muslim learning, helped to preserve much of the learning of the ancient world; and, by the end of the ninth century, they added important new discoveries of their own in mathematics, medicine, geography, history, and science. Attention should be paid to the flowering of Jewish civilization in Córdoba, where poets, philosophers, and scholars established a vibrant culture.
Anything about those guidelines seem unusually greasy to you?
These guidelines were reaffirmed two days ago at the conclusion of the 2005 California Council for the Social Studies Conference at the Airport Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. (Pdf available from Google here.) According to the pdf of the Conference Schedule, there were dozens of workshops on dozens of subjects. None of them covered specific aspects of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism. But the following workshops were offered:
--Standards Based Unit Projects for 7th Grade World History MS
Greg Clifton, Teacher , JL Stanford MS, Palo Alto; Jason Dickinson
Three standards based unit projects will be shared from the topics of Islam, Medieval Japan and Medieval/Renaissance Europe. Project descriptions and rubrics will be provided. Student examples will be shown.
--Making Sense of Differing Interpretations of Islam MS SH G
Munir Shaikh, Council on Islamic Education, Shabbir Mansuri
What are Islam’s true teachings, and who decides? Find out how to make sense of Muslim’s diversity. Learn how religion, culture, politics and other factors affect our perceptions of Islam.
--What Do State Standards Say Regarding Teaching About Religion? MS SH G
Munir Shaik, Council on Islamic Education, Shabbir Mansuri
This session will provide participants with an overview of how the standards of California and other states address teaching about religion. Is there consensus on how to cover religion?
--Creative Ways to Teach About the Middle East in our Schools, Grades 6-10 MS SH
Ron Pahl, Professor, CSU Fullerton; Connie DeCapita
Lots of exciting lessons on how to teach about the Middle East in the classroom. Traditional peoples, their cultures, map work, Israel/Palestine, the US Iraqi invasion & other modern critical issues.
Daniel Pipes put it succinctly: why is Islam priveleged in our public schools over every other religion? My answer is: because they're pushy and motivated, and American non-Muslims are complacent and lazy.
What are you going to do, Scottsdalians, Arizonans? Let the Arizona Muslims turn your children into little dhimmis, banging their foreheads on the floor five times a day for Allah? Don't let it happen. In the name of the future of America, don't let it happen!
Posted by Jerome at March 9, 2005 01:20 AM | TrackBack
Turning Arizona Public Schools Into Muslim Madrassas --IT'S ALREADY BEGUN
[Another long post, but more bloggy, with great chunks of other peoples' words. This may be blessing or curse, depending on the reader's taste for my prose. At any rate, read it and weep. Then get angry. Then do something. And remember the goal: No dhimmis here. Ever.]
by Jerome du Bois
Before we begin this very long post, a quick question for Arizona parents of middle-school students: if someone placed a pretty mat on the floor, told you to face in a certain direction, kneel, bow down, and repeat strange words five times a day for a month, would you do it? Your children will, before the end of the year. You can count on it, their grades will depend on it, and right now there's nothing you can do about it.
. . . it is hard to understand why, in an American textbook in which the birth and expansion of Islam gets 55 pages, the Middle Ages in Europe get merely seven, and the Byzantine Empire six. By way of contrast, the story of the Umayyad Muslims is told in seven pages, and even more peculiarly for students in a Western culture, a chapter about "Village Society in West Africa" takes up eight pages. --Rod Dreher, NRO, February 12, 2002, commenting on Across The Centuries, a seventh-grade social-studies textbook.
Michael H. Hart's top 100 list of the most influential people in the history of the world was presented to teach that Muhammad was #1, Sir Isaac Newton was #2 and Jesus was #3. --from an email to Daniel Pipes by FISH, February 27, 2005, about History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a newer seventh-grade social-studies textbook.
Schools and campuses are no exceptions as places where Islam can be victorious. . . . We should use every opportunity to sensitize non-Muslim peers and school staff to Islam and to establish an environment in which everywhere a non-Muslim turns, he notices Islam portrayed in a positive way, is influenced by it and eventually accepts Islam.--from DawaNet, "How To Make America An Islamic Nation." (See Pipes here.)
Coming soon to an elementary school near you: mandatory indoctrination in Islamic customs and practices. According to The Kansas City Star, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in Herndon, Virginia, are to be given lessons in the three Rs: Reading, ‘Riting, and Ramadan. During this instruction, public school children will play act being Muslims, and, perhaps unwittingly, convert to Islam. -- Alexis Amory, FrontPage, October 20, 2004.
On February 23, 2005, the Arizona Republic ran a story about Scottsdale Unified School District Superintendent John M. Baracy, a Ph.D who makes over $200,000 per year. [Email is: superintendent@susd.org.] The subject: he changed six job titles. It was cute. From Anne Ryman's article:
She used to be known as the receptionist.
Now she's the Director of First Impressions.
Barbara Levine is one of several employees in the Scottsdale Unified School District whose job titles have changed in a sharp departure from the traditional titles that parents grew up using.
National workplace experts say they are unaware of another school district in the United States that has changed its titles so dramatically, and they disagree over whether the new titles, which are designed to reflect the district's commitment to learning, are good. Parents, they say, could become confused over whom to contact if they have a complaint.
Was the school bus late? Blame the "transporter of learners," formerly the bus driver.
Got a problem with your school principal? Take it up with the 10-word "executive director for elementary schools and excelling teaching and learning," formerly known as the assistant superintendent of elementary schools.
Sound confusing or like hyperbole?
Scottsdale Superintendent John Baracy, who created the new titles for about a half-dozen employees, doesn't think so.
"This is to make a statement about what we value in the district. We value learning," said Baracy, who pledges to back up the new titles with better customer service.
Better customer service? I'm impressed --at first-- but I have a question for Dr. "Excelling" Baracy on a lot less whimsical subject than job titles. In fact, I address my question to everyone on the Governing Board. [Email is: govboard@susd.org.] This means you--
Mrs. Christine Schild, President, appointed 2002, three sons in Scottsdale schools;
Mrs. Jennifer Petersen, appointed 2004, three children in Scottsdale schools;
Ms. Karen Beckvar, appointed 2002;
Mrs. Molly Holzer, appointed 2004, two children in Scottsdale schools; and
Dr. Eric Meyer, appointed 2004, two children in Scottsdale schools--
--and the first one to answer gets a Muslim-approved forehead-activated prayer-rug buzzer. Here's my question:
With all this valuing of learning going on, why won't you allow a seventh-grade social studies textbook to go home with the student? You know, one of your "customers"?
Could it be because it champions, foregrounds, and whitewashes Islam?
At least one Scottsdale father wants to know. Read his recent comment (links added by me) on Daniel Pipes's website, responding to Pipes's November 24, 2004 article, Teaching Islam in American Schools:
Submitted by FISH (fish123abc@cox.net), February 27, 2005 at 10:45
Excellent article, Dr. Pipes, and thank you for taking the time to write it!
My child is in the 7th grade in Scottsdale, Arizona. The school's officially adopted social studies textbook is titled Across the Centuries and is published by Houghton Mifflin. However, Across the Centuries has been shelved and the school is piloting a brand new book from Teacher's Curriculum Institute, aka TCI, titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond (this book is not permitted to go home). In my opinion, this book is highly biased towards Islam, historically incorrect and also includes fake history along with Islamic religious proselytizing and indoctrination techniques.
The school has spent approximately 5 weeks of the third quarter grading period teaching Islam to 12 and 13 year olds. The children had to write a full biography on the life of Muhammad, using the information from the textbook --an extremely indoctrinating exercise. This biography will be a large portion of their grade for the 8 week period. Michael H. Hart's top 100 list of the most influential people in the history of the world was presented to teach that Muhammad was #1, Sir Isaac Newton was #2 and Jesus was #3. The school hosted two professional Muslim speakers, from the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona, to speak to all 7th grade social studies classes. This took one whole day. The Muslim speakers brought prayer rugs and taught the children to pray the Muslim way. I also believe that there were recitations from the Koran and possibly an Islamic "fashion show".
To the best of my knowledge, in this Islamic program, there are none of the negative aspects of Islam touched upon. It is my opinion that in the book, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, Christians are trounced and portrayed as murderers of the Muslim and Jewish people. The Jewish people are only mentioned, and very briefly, in order to be victimized, persecuted and murdered by the Christians. All the while, Islam builds great and grand new empires, has many great and wonderful achievements in architecture, education, science, geography, mathematics, medicine, literature, art and music, and ultimately rules benevolently over the Jewish and Christian people.
Islamic indoctrination in American education is a highly successful insidious industry that is extremely well organized, well connected, legally savvy, brazenly influential, and without successful opposition. When individuals complain to the schools, we often find ourselves engaged in a seriously daunting uphill battle. There should be an opposing and equally aggressive and well connected organization of people who are willing to stop the Islamization of our school children and of our public schools. This is a big job. Sharing information, increasing awareness and being connected are half the battle.
There is a large amount of information available about the Islamization of public school textbooks. Of course, Daniel Pipes' website is a good place to start. Check The Textbook League and William Bennetta, The American Textbook Council and Gilbert Sewall for starters. Search the internet using terms like Islamic indoctrination in public schools, textbooks promote Islam, Islamic dawa in public schools, Across the Centuries criticism, Serge Trifkovic Across the Centuries, Textbooks for Jihad by Lee Kaplan, Look who's teaching Johnny about Islam by Paul Sperry, etc. . . You will find many articles and one will lead to the next and so on . . .
I feel strongly that religious studies should not be taught in public elementary, middle or high schools. Religious studies can be offered in public colleges to adults who are able to make their own choices about what they want to be "fed." I wish that the people in charge of our children's public education felt the same way!
I've never heard of a school textbook that the student was forbidden to take home, and neither has my wife, a former teacher. While we're waiting for Dr. Baracy and the SUSD Governing Board's answer to this anomaly, we will explore further this Islamic insinuiation campaign, which did not burst onto the Scottsdale scene two weeks ago like a saddle sore. It goes back years. For example, the "shelved" book Across The Centuries is just as egregious and misleading at the book that replaced it, is used in many school districts nationwide, was read by John Walker Lindh, for example --and was first published in 1991.
I'll be taking us back about ten years, in reverse order, to see what American Muslims have in store for you and me. (I can give you the short version in two words, though: The Borg.) But before we jump, I'd like to point to who has paid attention to this educational scandal, and who has ignored it. Nationally, Charles Johnson and his commenters covered a lot in one posting. Instapundit had a one-sentence link after a story about Al Qaeda in Tucson. Solomania has a mention. Rantburg had a fat quote and some good comments. As for local political blogs, I confess I barely glance at them. But I checked in with Blog for Arizona, a Dean hangover site. No mention. Then I used the blogroll there to check out over three dozen Arizona sites. Nada. (Oh, azcentral.com had a cute little follow-up on the job title thing.) Finally, what about Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser a Phoenix physician, organizer of the only "Moderate Muslim March" yet, and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum For Democracy? Who even has access to azcentral.com's blog, pluggedin? Anything from him . . . ? No. Silence from the Doctor.
We're on our own here. Get on the bus, dear learner, while I transport us back --in-- time.
Less than a year ago, on April 25, 2004, there was a rally in downtown Phoenix organized by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. Several sources describe it in several ways, but the pitch was "Muslims for moderation, and against terrorism." I mention it here to provide some local context, because it was so recent, and because the turnout, from a Muslim community of 50,000-plus, was so pitifully small.
Since our children are grown and gone, we don't monitor local educational policies and programs. But we sure have the antennae out for Islam. In fact, to make our position about Islam clear, here I'll republish the main part of Seven Statements For Muslims, which I first posted on November 2, 2004 --Re-Election Day (joy), and the day Theo van Gogh was ritualistically murdered (sorrow) by a Muslim, in a Muslim way, for Muslim reasons (anger):
1. The Jews are not a question mark. (Thought experiment: Imagine a history of the world without any contributions by Muslims. Now imagine the same without Jews.)
2. Women are equal to men. They are not property or chattel or anything less than any man, and indeed superior to any man who thinks women should be anything less than any man.
3. The Qu'ran was not orally or mentally channelled inerrantly to Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel. It is a palimpsest, edited, abridged, and extended over many years. This is just historical fact, attested to by the Hijazi Ultraviolets.
4. Allah isn't alone. He shares the world with all the gods in Mecca's cave, and Yahweh, Shiva, Chango, The Everywhere Spirit, Ein Sof, and many more.
5. I don't trust your words. You have a practice called Taqiyya: "Muslims hold that the Islamic version of dissimulation is applied only externally with the tongue and not internally (on the heart, spirit, and soul). In other words, a Muslim is allowed to say untruths to a non-Muslim if in their heart they still respect the truths that they externally deny." (Definition from fact-index.com.) And you want us to trust Muslims? No. Because of taqiyya, I cannot believe a single thing any Muslim says.
6. There is nothing spiritual or mystical about the Arabic language. It may not even be of Arabian origin; evidence suggests it originated in the Levant. So chanting anything in Arabic, or writing it down, is no different than chanting or writing in English or German or Urdu or Spanish or Esperanto.
7. There will be no more one-way tolerance. One man, one vote, once don't go 'round here. Submission is not in our law, our tradition, our Constitution, or our blood, habibi.
Opposition, stubborness: now, that's another matter.
With that settled . . . As soon as I saw FISH's emailed comment over at Daniel Pipes --Scottsdale? That's in my Valley!-- I started Googling and digging.
History Alive! is part of an entire K-12 curriculum. The new middle-school text with its Islamic emphasis may be a pilot program here, but some California parents know well an earlier high-school version, with its bias against Israel. On October 3, 2003, the online magazine j., the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, published an article by Alexandra J. Wall:
A Middle East curriculum used in some local high schools is strongly biased against Israel, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council is charging.
The offending curriculum, the “History Alive!” series distributed by the Rancho Cordova-based Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, was discovered by a Santa Rosa parent who not only brought it to the attention of the JCRC but filed a complaint against Maria Carrillo High School.
The parent, an attorney, did not want to be named in j. but he is angry.
First, he found a textbook he found factually incorrect. But what he saw in some supplemental materials was even worse.
The supplementary materials provided by TCI have so many inaccuracies that the section on the Arab-Israeli conflict shouldn’t be used, according to the JCRC’s report.
One especially offensive activity, the JCRC said, divides the students into two groups. There are the “Pads,” whose ancestors have lived in the Land of Pad for thousands of years, and the “Jeds,” who are told: “Your ancestors used to live in the Land of Z, which you believe was given them by God. Your ancestors were forced to leave the Land of Z 2,000 years ago, and your people have been scattered throughout the world ever since.”
The exercise has the teacher, acting as “the Great Power,” favoring the Jeds over the Pads in trying to reach a small, overcrowded plot of land bordered by desks in the classroom. The Pads and Jeds debate whom it belongs to, and the teacher is to act unimpressed by whatever the Pads have to say, while agreeing with the Jeds.
Jackie Berman, the JCRC’s education specialist co-authored the JCRC study with Yitzhak Santis, the JCRC’s Middle East director.
That exercise is perhaps the most egregious example, the JCRC maintains, but there are many such problems in the curriculum, causing Berman to conclude: “That’s why it can’t really be fixed, by saying, ‘Change this around or that.’ It’s just permeated with this kind of bias.”
Neither Berman nor a TCI spokeswoman knew how widely the TCI curriculum is used in this area, but Berman said she had been in touch with the JCRC in Chicago, where schools were also using it. According to the company’s Web site, www.historyalive.com, TCI programs are used by more than 1,000 school districts across the nation, and there are testimonials from California officials from Fremont Union High and Cupertino Unified school districts.
On Monday, Berman and Jonathan Bernstein, director of the Central Pacific region of the Anti-Defamation League, met with the assistant superintendent of the Santa Rosa City School District, Steve Butler. The ADL has dealt with the TCI curriculum on a national level.
Butler said the district tried to solve the complaint filed by the parent informally, as is district procedure. When they were unable to, they convened a committee of four educators not connected to the school to review the offending materials.
The committee found that with supplementary information, including some provided by the parent, as well as the JCRC’s report, multiple points of view were represented, Butler said.
The conclusion the panel came to was that the materials “are not perfect, but they weren’t at a point where they needed to be censored or banned,” he said. “This is making a mountain out of a molehill for us.”
That response does not please those at the JCRC. A copy of the report is set to be sent off to TCI shortly. And Santis said this will be an ongoing story.
“We’re not satisfied,” said Santis. “If the Santa Rosa school district acknowledges it’s flawed, why are they using it? We urge that the school district drop this curriculum completely.”
The district’s response certainly was not enough for the offended parent either. He said he is not only filing a complaint against the teacher, but plans to continue the appeal to the state department of education and is willing to file a lawsuit, if necessary.
This effort paid off. On February 14, 2004, Ms. Wall followed up with another story:
A textbook company has agreed to rewrite its unit on the Middle East after the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council issued a report claiming it was biased against Israel.
The JCRC report concluded that the supplemental materials that go along with the Teachers Curriculum Institute’s “History Alive!” textbooks were too filled with inaccuracies and so biased that they should not be used.
Jim Lobdell, senior director of TCI in Rancho Cordova, estimated that it could take a year to update the Middle East curriculum, but in the best-case scenario, it will be done sooner. In the meantime, a notice appears on TCI’s Web site that warns teachers to use discretion with the existing unit.
All current TCI customers will receive the new materials at no charge.
Last fall, the parent of a student at Santa Rosa’s Maria Carrillo High School complained to school officials not only about the textbook his son was using — which he said was biased against Israel — but about the supplemental materials. When the school district refused to stop using the materials, he took the matter to the JCRC, which, upon reading the chapter in question, became alarmed.
This prompted Jackie Berman, the JCRC’s education specialist, and Yitzhak Santis, JCRC Middle East director, to write a report analyzing point by point how the curriculum was flawed. A back and forth ensued with TCI, which sent the report to scholars of its choosing to offer their opinions.
A JCRC board member sent the report to attorney Alan Dershowitz. The board member called Dershowitz’s assistant to see if he would be willing to look at the materials as well as the report, and he did.
“I agree completely that the historical distortions and factual mistakes that appear throughout the curriculum make it unacceptable for classroom use and I hope that the proper authorities will seriously consider your criticisms,” Dershowitz wrote.
Lobdell said that the JCRC’s report prompted TCI leadership to seek the opinions of additional scholars and teachers on the unit in question.
“The feedback we got from them and the context of the events since 9/11 and the heightened sensitivities around the issues in the Middle East prompted us to update the lessons that we have,” said Lobdell.
Which is cause for cautious celebration at the JCRC. “Of course we’ll be watching,” said Berman, “but we’re hoping it turns out right now.”
Since TCI’s decision, the Santa Rosa school district has stopped using its materials.
What concerns me here is that it apparently doesn't matter if Scottsdale is using the "new materials" or the old materials: either is unacceptable as a portrayal of truth. More importantly, the earlier text, Across The Centuries, was flawed as well.
On February 11, 2002, Daniel Pipes posted Think Like A Muslim [,Urges "Across The Centuries"]. The heart of the piece:
. . . But the really serious problem concerns the covert propagation of Islam, which takes four forms:
* Apologetics: Everything Islamic is praised; every problem is swept under the rug.
Students learn about Islam's "great cultural flowering," but nothing about the later centuries of statis and decline. They read repeatedly about the Muslims' broadmindedness (they "were extremely tolerant of those they conquered") but not a word about their violence (such as the massacres carried out by Muhammad's troops against the Jews of Banu Qurayza).
* Distortion: Jihad, which means "sacred war," turns into a struggle mainly "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." Islam gives women "clear rights" not available in some other societies, such as the right to an education? This ignores the self-evident fact that Muslim women enjoy fewer rights than perhaps any other in the world. ("Across the Centuries" implicitly acknowledges this reality by blaming "oppressive local traditions" for their circumstances.)
* Identification as Muslims: Homework assignments repeatedly involve mock-Muslim exercises. "Form small groups of students to build a miniature mosque." Or: "You leave your home in Alexandria for the pilgrimage to Mecca. . . . write a letter describing your route, the landscapes and peoples you see as you travel and any incidents that happen along the way. Describe what you see in Mecca."
And then there is this shocker: "Assume you are a Muslim soldier on your way to conquer Syria in the year A.D. 635. Write three journal entries that reveal your thoughts about Islam, fighting in battle, or life in the desert."
* Piety: The textbook endorses key articles of Islamic faith. It informs students as a historical fact that Ramadan is holy "because in this month Muhammad received his first message from Allah." It asserts that "the very first word the angel Gabriel spoke to Muhammad was 'Recite.' " It explains that Arabic lettering "was used to write down God's words as they had been given to Muhammad." And it declares that the architecture of a mosque in Spain allows Muslims "to feel Allah's invisible presence."
By 2002, this book had been in use 11 years. This fact made me think about John Walker Lindh. Did he use this book? The answer is yes.
During 2002, the American Textbook Council formally studied and researched seven major history and social studies textbooks. They published a report in February 2003, and a reply to critics the following December. (Both available in pdf on their website. You may also peruse eye-opening excerpts on jihad and sharia.) Earlier this year, their website published an update, part of which I excerpt below, with my emphases:
During the last two years, beginning with the American Textbook Council report, "Islam in the Classroom," published in February 2003, several reviews, articles and books have documented bias and evasions in world history textbooks on the subjects of militant Islam and Islamic terrorism. Textbooks misrepresent the scope and aims of militant Islam, critics agree. They contain fallacies and untruths about jihad, sharia, slavery, status of Muslim women, terrorism, and tolerance.
These reviews independently reach the same conclusions. Most conspicuously, history textbooks distort the meaning of jihad. Houghton Mifflin's seventh-grade text, Across the Centuries, has come in for singular criticism. Houghton Mifflin's books dominate the nation's largest state, but they are in no way worse on this score than competing textbooks. Textbooks make no distinction between sharia and Western law, and they pretend that women are making great strides in the Islamic world, when all evidence indicates otherwise. Social studies textbooks ignore the global ambitions of militant Islam. They fail to explain that Muslim terrorists seek to destroy the United States and Israel. They omit geopolitical goals that include theocracy and world domination by religion.
Islamic organizations act as domestic textbook "censors." Strictly speaking, since only governments censor books, the Islamists are merely agents of suppression, using educational publishers to do their bidding. But for years, publishers have ignored -- "stonewalled" -- those who have pressed them about motives, funding, legal status, and strong-arm tactics on the part of their Muslim "consultants."
Now comes a test. Are new textbooks that publishers plan to introduce in California in the next few months going to correct Islam-related errors and tell the truth about terrorism? Or will California succumb to the potent Islamist lobby and its attendant multiculturalists in the state? We'll have a better idea next spring, when publishers, including Houghton Mifflin, submit their new and revised textbooks in Sacramento.
Anyone who is interested in world history or how Islam is covered in social studies classes should pay attention to a new seventh grade history textbook, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond. The textbook and its instructional materials are now being piloted in Scottsdale, Arizona. The program is almost certainly to be submitted in the important California adoption this spring.
What's the Muslim educational lobby like in Arizona? I have no idea, but I'll be checking it out for sure. I hope these chunks of quotations have been carving out the story for the reader as well. But there's more.
In 1994, Valerie Moore took her daughter to school one day.
Valerie Moore says her daughter "was indoctrinated in the Islamic religion for over four months while in the seventh grade" in 1994. Moore expressed shock in arriving at Joseph Kerr Junior High School in Elk Grove, Calif., one day and being greeted by a "huge banner on the front grounds of the school that read 'There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.'" Moore also recounts witnessing "children dressed in Muslim attire, chanting from the Koran and praying while marching around the cabala. [sic]" Moore recalls the banner being up all day.
"What if we put up a sign that says 'Jesus is Lord' for 30 minutes? Oh, no. You can't do that – separation of church and state," Moore laments. "They aren't just teaching them about Islam; they have them practicing it. They have them kneeling down and praying to Allah. I have a problem with that. That's more like inculcation." Moore says when she complained to the school officials she was ridiculed and yelled at.
This was in 1994. This excerpt is from the fanatical Christian website blessedcause.org, which I won't link to. That doesn't change the facts, though. This kind of thing is proliferating in schools across the land: invasion of the mind-snatchers. (Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they don't want to turn your kids into Muslims.) When I'm done here, please follow FISH's advice and Google those links I've made available in his comment.
In the meantime, we may ask, as Lowell Ponte did in FrontPage on December 3, 2003,
How did such a textbook get written and approved? It was launched in accord with California policy in 1991, which wanted such a book to advance the state’s multi-culturalist, inclusive agenda.
(America by some accounts is now home to more Muslims than Presbyterians and is adjusting its culture and politics accordingly. But it’s worth noting that of the world population of 1.2 billion Muslims –-one in five human beings-– the majority is non-Arab. The five nations with the largest Muslim populations, according to the CIA World Factbook, are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), and Turkey –-with a combined Muslim population above 650 million. The next five with the most Muslims include Nigeria, Ethiopia and Persian Iran, with only Egypt and Morocco as nominally “Arabic” nations in the top ten. And yet the pro-Muslim multiculturalist agenda would lead people to believe that Islam is a predominately Arab faith, perhaps because of its origin in Saudi Arabia.)
In 1990 a new man was named its Chairman and Chief Executive Office at this textbook’s publisher Houghton Mifflin, and in 1991 he was also given the title President at the company. He was Nader F. Darehshori, who before coming to the United States in “the early 1960s,” as his short biography tells, was for a year a teacher “in a one-room elementary school in his native Iran.”
Iran, of course, is an overwhelmingly-Islamic country.
The textbook was published with approval by the Council on Islamic Education (CIE), formed in 1988 to promote a better treatment of the subject of Islam in such texts. But, reportedly, according to one Houghton Mifflin executive CIE not only reviewed the book for errors and insensitivities after it was written, but also supplied information about the crusades that was incorporated into the textbook itself. [Dhimmi Watch has the skinny on the unscrupulous CIE.]
But how did the Scottsdale pilot program for the new book originate? Why Scottsdale? Because it's unified, K-12, we'll get 'em young and keep 'em? Because Across the Centuries was building up too much negative baggage, bogged down and barnacled with controversy?
But exactly how did this book get into the classroom --and once there, must never leave? Who decided that?
Who knows? I've emailed FISH to ask him why he does not have a copy of that book in his hand. He hasn't replied yet. I'm not questioning his behavior; I really want clarification of school district policy. Did he demand a copy of the book, and they refused? I'm emailing everyone I can think of as soon as I finish this post.
Will Arizona follow California, smoothing the path for Islamification? Despite the huffing about pilot program, California is way ahead of Arizona in educational dhimmitude. I checked out the guidelines for studying Islam recommended by the History–Social Science Curriculum Framework and Criteria Committee of the California Board of Education in their report for the California Department of Education, October 11, 2001 (which reaffirms the 1998 guidelines):
In this unit students examine the rise of Islam as a religion and as a civilization. Attention should be given to the historic events of A.D. 636–651 when Arab armies reunited the ancient Middle East. Students should analyze the geographic and economic significance of the trade routes between Asia and Europe that were used by Arab merchants. They should consider the importance of a common literary language (Arabic) and religion (Islamic) in unifying the many ethnic groups of this region. The religious ideas of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, should be discussed both for their ethical teachings and as a way of life. Mohammed should be seen as a major historical figure who helped establish the Islamic way of life, its code of ethics and justice, and its rule of law. Students should examine the position of Christians and Jews in the Islamic world who, as “People of the Book,” were allowed to practice their religious beliefs. Contributions of Islamic scholars, including mathematicians, scientists, geographers, astronomers, and physicians from many ethnic groups, should be emphasized and their relationship to Greek thought acknowledged. Scholars at Baghdad and Córdoba, the two great centers of Muslim learning, helped to preserve much of the learning of the ancient world; and, by the end of the ninth century, they added important new discoveries of their own in mathematics, medicine, geography, history, and science. Attention should be paid to the flowering of Jewish civilization in Córdoba, where poets, philosophers, and scholars established a vibrant culture.
Anything about those guidelines seem unusually greasy to you?
These guidelines were reaffirmed two days ago at the conclusion of the 2005 California Council for the Social Studies Conference at the Airport Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. (Pdf available from Google here.) According to the pdf of the Conference Schedule, there were dozens of workshops on dozens of subjects. None of them covered specific aspects of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism. But the following workshops were offered:
--Standards Based Unit Projects for 7th Grade World History MS
Greg Clifton, Teacher , JL Stanford MS, Palo Alto; Jason Dickinson
Three standards based unit projects will be shared from the topics of Islam, Medieval Japan and Medieval/Renaissance Europe. Project descriptions and rubrics will be provided. Student examples will be shown.
--Making Sense of Differing Interpretations of Islam MS SH G
Munir Shaikh, Council on Islamic Education, Shabbir Mansuri
What are Islam’s true teachings, and who decides? Find out how to make sense of Muslim’s diversity. Learn how religion, culture, politics and other factors affect our perceptions of Islam.
--What Do State Standards Say Regarding Teaching About Religion? MS SH G
Munir Shaik, Council on Islamic Education, Shabbir Mansuri
This session will provide participants with an overview of how the standards of California and other states address teaching about religion. Is there consensus on how to cover religion?
--Creative Ways to Teach About the Middle East in our Schools, Grades 6-10 MS SH
Ron Pahl, Professor, CSU Fullerton; Connie DeCapita
Lots of exciting lessons on how to teach about the Middle East in the classroom. Traditional peoples, their cultures, map work, Israel/Palestine, the US Iraqi invasion & other modern critical issues.
Daniel Pipes put it succinctly: why is Islam priveleged in our public schools over every other religion? My answer is: because they're pushy and motivated, and American non-Muslims are complacent and lazy.
What are you going to do, Scottsdalians, Arizonans? Let the Arizona Muslims turn your children into little dhimmis, banging their foreheads on the floor five times a day for Allah? Don't let it happen. In the name of the future of America, don't let it happen!
Posted by Jerome at March 9, 2005 01:20 AM | TrackBack
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