Thanks to Flag Gazer and her diligence in highlighting the heroes who serve us, I found out SSG Bagge is up for an award and surely could use your vote.

Oh, have you voted yet? GET ON IT!!! (and tell your friends)

Said xformed @ 3:07 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

So good bye then Tony. You have fought some good fights but have mainly been on the wrong end of the argument.

You have tried to be Tory-lite but lacked the moral fibre to carry your actions through. You were right to remove both the Taliban and Saddam from power and those that now denigrate you would, in your position, have been too cowardly to confront evil. Indeed as Clare Short said just before the Iraq war “no amount of British lives are worth a single Iraqi one”. We feel real sympathy for you battling such racism that exists on the Left of the spectrum.

Well done for recognising that when New York was attacked there was a straight choice between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing. Even as members of the press lampooned you and Bush for believing in “black and white” issues we, as you did, saw that they were simply warming up for the next round of anti-American propaganda.

But you will forever be remembered as a man of sleaze and wasted opportunity.

With Peter Mandelson pushing through passports for party supporters and taking money off of other members of the cabinet, of Robin Cook leaving the Queen in India to conduct an illicit affair, with John Prescott sex-pesting his way through the be-skirted Civil Service, with cabinet ministers seeking to undermine the State education sector while their progeny seek enlightenment at fee-paying establishments, with all this and more (see the Big Book of Labour Sleaze) you will be remembered as someone who pontificated in opposition about clean government but became just as corrupt in 18 months as the replaced Tory regime had become in 18 years. And that is even before you started to sell seats in the Lords on the open market.

You missed great opportunities in what you term “public sector reform”. You missed the opportunity to properly de-nationalise the NHS. Instead you allowed Brown to bring in PFI to mislead the public as to the true nature of public debt. You allowed the unions to grow again so that we have the unedifying spectacle of the first days of the Brown premiership being without post. Or that Chairman Crowe has called another RMT strike because he thinks that striking should not affect a bonus paid to staff for, well, working.

You leave behind perhaps your greatest legacy. A hobbled Upper House. Stripped of its peers in a petulant punishment for it being independent minded, it has limped along. Still able to inflict the occasional body blow to an executive that holds Parliamentary democracy in contempt it has been destroyed. No more will it keep a contemplative watch over the populist nonsense emanating from the Other Place, it will soon be consumed in party politicking as well.

So how will history remember you? Will history remember you? How many Prime Ministers can a school child remember these days? Maybe 3? Churchill because of the Second World War, Thatcher for being the first woman in the job and because the leftie teaching establishment still hold her up as a hate figure and the current one which, by the time most people read this will be Gordon.

You may be remembered as the man who finally signed away Britain to the EU. You may be remembered as the man who lead us in the opening battles of the Jihadist Wars. But given that Brown has sulked over not being PM for 10 years I would expect a Maoist purging of you from the history books. And that would be a shame.

Because we learn from history. And the future generation needs to learn that regardless how the Labour Party dresses itself up, and regardless of who is the front man, underneath they are still a collection of bitter, low-expectation big government socialists who eye any success with envy and seek to stifle free enterprise. If we forget history we are doomed to re-elect similar conmen forever.

Said RfS @ 1:17 pm Comments (2) | Permalink   

As far as PC grovelling to alleged victims goes, Britain normally follows the US, so I suppose there’s a sort of pride that can be taken in the fact we’ve now found a victim group too absurd even for America. Yep, say hello to the newest set of grievance miners, the ginger.

Really.

For the last few months, the MSM has been full of whiny tarts blathering about how tough it is when your head looks like a Duracell battery. Speaking personally, I never had any animus for the    chromologically-challenged community, but if I hear one more school yard atrocity story, all bets are off. Still, for all that, all this whining does serve a useful social purpose. Here’s how one of these mutant freaks describes the thought process that led her to join the Red Army:

Well, I have to say that although the elder of my two sons is a redhead, neither he nor I, happily, has been victimised because of it. However, my son is a composer and it was partly considering his musical future that made me think about the ginger theme.

The idea came out of a flippant conversation in which we were discussing how to market his talents and I said something along the lines of “So what’s your unique selling point? Who’s going to be interested in a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ex-public schoolboy? – the only thing in your favour is that you might be considered ‘different’ because of your hair colour.”

Quite. Here’s the self-serving nature of the victimhood industry thrown into sharp relief.

Obviously, many of the claims to ginger victimhood are tongue in cheek, but not all of them. It’s a fascinating chance to see the creation of a victim group out of whole cloth. Sure, it’s ridiculous to talk about discrimination against redheads, but is it any less ridiculous to treat the children of a millionaire black sports star as victims ? Or, for that matter, to treat some homeless white guy as an oppressor ?

In so far as folks are apparently desperate to claim victim status, this does kind of undermine the whole point in the first place. ‘Victims’ seem to be kind of privileged actually. All the red-of-head community is doing is taking things to their barely-logical conclusion. If the government is going to arbitrarily assign special privileges to certain groups anyway, why get hung up about any particular example of capriciousness ?

There’s another upside to it all, as well. Doubtless, following previous victimhood templates, schools will be forced to take time out from teaching trivia such as literacy, in favour of ‘Redhead History Month’. There’ll be a frenzied search through the history books for any suitably red ‘role models’. Fortunately, unlike some groups I could mention, there are actual red heads in British history, rather than just, say, blondes who never definitely stated that they were not redheaded.

All of which is by way of saying that we on the Right will have to reluctantly accept that schools should teach about Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, or Churchill. It’s tough but there you have it: schools will have to teach about the Battle of Britain and the like. What a dilemma for the Left: teach the kids about British heroes, or fall foul of their obsessive PC ? Either way, we can sit back and enjoy PC’s very own reductio ad absurdum.

Said DJ @ 8:29 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

If Bush didn’t manage to ensure our country’s bankruptcy with his prescription drug handout, amnesty for illegal aliens ought to do the trick. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation recounts a few facts you won’t hear from Bush, Kennedy, McCain, or the rest of the irresponsible fools who are steering the ship of state straight at an iceberg, including this one:

Low-skill immigrants receive, on average, three dollars in government benefits for each dollar of taxes paid. This imbalance generates a net cost of $89 billion per year on U.S. taxpayers. Over a lifetime the typical low-skill immigrant household costs taxpayers $1.2 million dollars.

Rector estimates that the cost of amnesty alone will reach $2.6 trillion once illegal immigrant recipients of government largesse reach retirement age.

As for the wishful canard that making millions of low-skill illegal aliens eligible for every entitlement under the sun will somehow keep Social Security afloat,

In the not too distant future, the Social Security trust fund will be in deficit. Government will have to use general revenues to help pay promised benefits. Since amnesty recipients and their families will consume more government revenues that they contribute, they will undermine the financial support for U.S. retirees even before they reach retirement age themselves.

There will reach a point where the American economy simply cannot pay the bill for all the moonbattery gushing out of Washington, no matter how high taxes are raised. Our current crop of bureaucrats may even live to see it. Let’s hope they do. They certainly deserve to go down with the ship.

On a tip from Byron. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Said Van Helsing @ 5:07 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

Said Mike's America @ 1:39 pm Comments (1) | Permalink   

Stumbling about in the link forest I came across an article discussing blogging and Federal law.

So…from Aviva Directory here are the twelve points discussed in “Blog Law”:

• Whether to Disclose Paid Posts
• Is Deep Linking Legal?
• The Legal Use of Images and Thumbnails
• Laws that Protect You From Stolen Content
• Domain Name Trademark Issues
• Handling Private Data About Your Readers
• Who Owns User-Developed Content and Can You Delete It
• The Duty to Monitor Your Blog Comments, and Liability
• Basic Tax Law Issues in Blogging
• Limited Liability Laws and Incorporating
• Spam Laws and Which Unsolicited Emails are Legal
• Are Bloggers Protected from Journalism Shield Laws?

I’ll have to take the time to read it closely. It certainly looks comprehensive and I strongly recommend you put down what you’re reading and get over there to see how Federal law may work for, or against you. In the meantime, I’d recommend we spread the word….

Said xformed @ 10:42 am Comments (0) | Permalink   

From news.com.au

Said Sonnabend @ 4:45 am Comments (39) | Permalink   

Cross-posted from Maggie at Maggie’s Notebook

UPDATE: The new Senate Immigration Bill s.1369 appears to include paying World War II reparations to “Certain Persons.” The text, hidden in the middle of the massive tome, can be read here: Immigration Bill Will Pay WWII Reparations to Alien Residents. I suggest you read John Fonte’s piece in National Review Online for details before going to the long, long text of the Bill: Raindrops Keep Falling. The question: what else is lurking in the Bill that our Senate is not talking about?

Send a free fax, without a fax machine at NumbersUSA. This information-filled site will give you text for the fax, you can change it, where you want to change it, or create entirely your own message. Visit the NumbersUSA homepage for an enlightening look at the impact of illegal immigration in the United States.
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Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is one of the strongest Senate warriors against the Senate Immigration Reform bill. He has published twenty loopholes that place this bill in the category of a scheme (italicised - my words - my opinion). The Bills number has been changed and is now s.1369.

When you call your Senator this week, be ready to battle. You may be told: We changed the bill to address your concerns. It’s a “new” bill with a “new” number assigned to it. Don’t buy it! Ask direct questions that require a “yes” or “no answer.” On the Sean Hannity radio show recently, Sessions said that the only thing different in this bill is the additional adding of $4.4 billion.

In a press release June 19th, Senator Jeff Sessions said:

If we assume that the Administration and the bill’s drafters were serious about their commitment to enforcement, the recent promises of guaranteed funding are unnecessary.

The only significance of the promised funding is to effectively say ‘we’re going to fund what we already promised to fund.’ The $4.4 billion will not build additional miles of fencing, provide any new technology, hire additional agents or acquire more detention beds than already promised by the President and included in the bill’s provisions that trigger amnesty.

“Let me emphasize that this money will do nothing more than fund the enforcement trigger in the bill, which was already a solemn promise to the American people….

“Most significantly, the $4.4 billion will do nothing to change CBO’s conclusion that the bill will only reduce illegal immigration by 13 percent. CBO assumed the bill’s enforcement items would be funded when it published its June 4th cost estimate. If the Senate bill is enacted, CBO projects an additional 8.7 million new illegal immigrants will be in the U.S. in 20 years. These new promises do nothing to prevent that.”

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) released a list of 20 loopholes in the comprehensive immigration bill today which reveals that the bill is fatally flawed and will not establish a functioning immigration system in the future.

The list of loopholes includes flaws effecting border security, chain-migration and assimilation policies. The list exposes the lack of serious attention given to ensuring that the legislation fixes America’s failed immigration system.

“I am deeply concerned about the numerous loopholes we have found in this legislation. They are more than technical errors, but rather symptoms of a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that stands no chance of actually fixing our broken immigration system,” Sessions said. “Many of the loopholes are indicative of a desire not to have the system work.”

For example, one loophole in the “enforcement trigger” fails to require the U.S. VISIT system – the biometric border check-in/check-out system established by Congress in 1996, but never implemented – to be fully functioning before new worker or amnesty programs begin. Without the system in place, the U.S. has no method of ensuring that workers and their families do not overstay their visas.

Another flaw in the legislation prevents the benefits of merit-based immigration from taking full effect until 2016. Until then, chain migration into the U.S. will actually triple, compared to a disproportionately low increase in skill-based immigration. As a result, the merit-based system in the bill is only a shell of what it should have been.

A third loophole in the bill allows immigrants to avoid demonstrating a proficiency in English for more than a decade. Illegal aliens are not required to learn English to receive full “probationary benefits” of citizenship. Passing a basic English test is only required for the third Z-visa renewal, twelve years after amnesty is granted.

* Loophole 1 – Legal Status Before Enforcement:
Amnesty benefits do not wait for the “enforcement trigger.” After filing an application and waiting 24 hours, illegal aliens will receive full “probationary benefits,” complete with the ability to legally live and work in the U.S., travel outside of the U.S. and return, and their own social security card. Astonishingly, if the trigger is never met and amnesty applications are therefore never “approved,” the probationary benefits granted to the illegal alien population never expire, and the new social security cards issued to the illegal alien population are not revoked. [See pp. 1, 290-291, & 315].

* Loophole 2 – U.S. VISIT Exit Not In Trigger:
The “enforcement trigger,” required to be met before the new temporary worker program begins, does not require that the exit portion of U.S. VISIT system – the biometric border check-in/check-out system first required by Congress in 1996 that is already well past its already postponed 2005 implementation due date – to be in place before new worker or amnesty programs begin. Without the U.S. VISIT exit portion, the U.S. has no method to ensure that workers (or their visiting families) do not overstay their visas. Our current illegal population contains 4 to 5.5 million visa overstays, therefore, we know that the U.S. VISIT exit component is key to a successful new temporary worker program. [See pp. 1-2].

* Loophole 3 – Trigger Requires No More Agents, Beds, or Fencing Than Current Law:
The “enforcement trigger” does not require the Department of Homeland Security to have detention space sufficient to end “catch and release” at the border and in the interior. Even after the adoption of amendment 1172, the trigger merely requires the addition of 4,000 detention beds, bringing DHS to a 31,500 bed capacity. This is far short of the 43,000 beds required under current law to be in place by the end of 2007, or the additional 20,000 beds required later in the bill. Additionally, the bill establishes a “catch, pay, and release” program. This policy will benefit illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico that are caught at the border, then can post a $5,000 bond, be released and never show up for deportation hearings. Annual failure to appear rates for 2005 and 2006, caused in part by lack of detention space, doubled the 2004 rate (106,000 – 110,000 compared with 54,000). Claims that the bill “expands fencing” are inaccurate. The bill only requires 370 miles of fencing to be completed, while current law already mandates that more than 700 miles be constructed [See pp. 1-2, & 10-11, and EOIR’s FY2006 Statistical Yearbook, p. H2, and The Secure Fence Act of 2004].

* Loophole 4 — Three Additional Years Worth of Illegal Aliens Granted Status, Treated Preferentially To Legal Filers:
Aliens who broke into the country illegally a mere 5 months ago, are treated better than foreign nationals who legally applied to come to the U.S. more than two years ago. Aliens who can prove they were illegally in the U.S. on January 1, 2007, are immediately eligible to apply from inside the U.S. for amnesty benefits, while foreign nationals that filed applications to come to the U.S. after May 1, 2005 must start the application process over again from their home countries. Last year’s bill required illegal aliens to have been here before January 7, 2004 to qualify for permanent legal status. [See pp. 263, 282, & 306].

* Loophole 5 – Completion of Background Checks Not Required For Probationary Legal Status:
Legal status must be granted to illegal aliens 24 hours after they file an application, even if the aliens have not yet “passed all appropriate background checks.” (Last year’s bill gave DHS 90 days to check an alien’s background before any status was granted). No legal status should be given to any illegal alien until all appropriate background checks are complete. [See pp. 290].

* Loophole 6 – Some Child Molesters Are Still Eligible:
Some aggravated felons – those who have sexually abused a minor – are eligible for amnesty. A child molester who committed the crime before the bill is enacted is not barred from getting amnesty if their conviction document omitted the age of the victim. The bill corrects this loophole for future child molesters, but does not close the loophole for current or past convictions. [See p. 47: 30-33, & p. 48: 1-2]

* Loophole 7 – Terrorism Connections Allowed, Good Moral Character Not Required:
Illegal aliens with terrorism connections are not barred from getting amnesty. An illegal alien seeking most immigration benefits must show “good moral character.” Last year’s bill specifically barred aliens with terrorism connections from having “good moral character” and being eligible for amnesty. This year’s bill does neither. Additionally, bill drafters ignored the Administration’s request that changes be made to the asylum, cancellation of removal, and withholding of removal statutes in order to prevent aliens with terrorist connections from receiving relief. [Compare §204 in S. 2611 from the 109th Congress with missing §204 on p. 48 of S.A. 1150, & see missing subsection (5) on p. 287 of S.A. 1150].

* Loophole 8 – Gang Members Are Eligible:
Instead of ensuring that members of violent gangs such as MS 13 are deported after coming out of the shadows to apply for amnesty, the bill will allow violent gang members to get amnesty as long as they “renounce” their gang membership on their application. [See p. 289: 34-36].

* Loophole 9 – Absconders Are Eligible:
Aliens who have already had their day in court – those subject to final orders of removal, voluntary departure orders, or reinstatement of their final orders of removal – are eligible for amnesty under the bill. The same is true for aliens who have made a false claim to citizenship or engaged in document fraud. More than 636,000 alien fugitives could be covered by this loophole. [See p. 285:19-22 which waives the following inadmissibility grounds: failure to attend a removal proceeding; final orders of removal for alien smuggling; aliens unlawfully present after previous immigration violations or deportation orders; and aliens previously removed. This appears to conflict with language on p. 283:40-41. When a direct conflict appears in a statute, the statue is interpreted by the courts to the benefit of the alien.].

* Loophole 10 – Learning English Not Required For A Decade:
Illegal aliens are not required to demonstrate any proficiency in English for more than a decade after they are granted amnesty. Learning English is not required for an illegal alien to receive probationary benefits, the first 4-year Z visa, or the second 4-year Z visa. The first Z visa renewal (the second 4-year Z visa) requires only that the alien demonstrate an “attempt” to learn English by being “on a waiting list for English classes.” Passing a basic English test is required only for a second Z visa renewal (the third 4-year Z visa), and even then the alien only has to pass the test “prior to the expiration of the second extension of Z status” (12 years down the road). [See pp. 295-296].

* Loophole 11 – Earned Income Tax Credit Will Cost Taxpayers Billions In Just 10 Years:
Current illegal aliens and new guest workers will be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit designed to encourage American citizens and legal permanent residents to work. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this loophole will cost the U.S. taxpayer up to $20 billion dollars in just the first 10 years after the bill’s enactment. To be consistent with the intent of the 1996 welfare reforms – which limited new immigrants from receiving public benefits until they had been legal permanent residents for five years – the bill should withhold EITC eligibility from amnestied aliens until they become legal permanent residents. Closing this loophole will save the taxpayers billions of dollars. [See p. 293 after S.A. 1190 was adopted, p. 307, p. 315, §606. All that is required for EITC eligibility is a social security number and resident alien status. Nothing in the bill’s tax provisions limit EITC eligibility. The issuance of social security numbers to aliens as soon as they apply for amnesty will ensure they are able to qualify for the EITC.]

* Loophole 12 – Affidavits From Friends Accepted As Evidence:
Records from day-labor centers, labor unions, and “sworn declarations” from any non-relative (acquaintances, friends, coworkers, etc) are to be accepted as evidence that the illegal alien has satisfied the bill’s amnesty requirements. This low burden of proof will invite fraud and more illegal immigration – even aliens who are not yet in the U.S. will likely meet this burden of proof. DHS will not have the resources to examine whether the claims contained in the “sworn declarations” of the alien’s friends (that the alien was here prior to January 1, 2007 and is currently employed) are actually valid. [See p. 293: 13-16].

* Loophole 13 – Taxpayer Funded Legal Counsel and Arbitration:
Free legal counsel and the fees and expenses of arbitrators will be provided to aliens that have been working illegally in agriculture. The U.S. taxpayer will fund the attorneys that help these individuals fill out their amnesty applications. Additionally, if these individuals have a dispute with their employer over whether they were fired for “just cause,” DHS will “pay the fee and expenses of the arbitrator.” [See p. 339:37-41, & p. 332: 37-38.]

* Loophole 14 – In-State Tuition and Student Loans:
In-state tuition and other higher education benefits, such as Stafford Loans, will be made available to current illegal aliens that are granted initial “probationary” status, even if the same in-state tuition rates are not offered to all U.S. citizens. This would normally violate current law (8 U.S.C. §1623) which mandates that educational institutions give citizens the same postsecondary education benefits they offer to illegal aliens. [See p. 321: 8-31].

* Loophole 15 – Inadequacy of the Merit System:
The “merit system,” designed to shift the U.S. green card distribution system to attract higher skilled workers that benefit the national interest, is only a shell of what it should have been. Though the merit system begins immediately, it will not increase the percentage of high skilled immigrants coming to the United States until 2016, 8 years after enactment. Of the 247,000 green cards dedicated to the merit based system each year for the first 5 years, 100,000 green cards will be reserved for low-skilled guest workers (10,000) and for clearing the current employment based green card backlog (90,000). From 2013 to 2015, the number of merit based green cards drops to 140,000, and of that number, 100,000 green cards are still reserved each year for low-skilled guest workers (10,000) and for clearing the current employment based green card backlog (90,000). Even after 2015, when the merit system really begins (in 2016) by having 380,000 green cards annually, 10,00 green cards will be reserved specifically for low skilled workers, and points will be given for many characteristics that are not considered “high-skilled.” For example, 16 points will be given for aliens in “high demand occupations” which includes janitors, maids, food preparation workers, and groundskeepers. [See p.260: 25 – p. 261: 20, p. 262, & The Department of Labor’s list of “occupations with the largest job growth” available at www.bls.gov/emp/emptab3.htm].

* Loophole 16 – Visas For Individuals That Plan To Overstay:
The new “parent” visa contained in the bill which allows parents of citizens, and the spouses and children of new temporary workers, to visit a worker in the United States is not only a misnomer, but also an invitation for high rates of visa overstays. This new visa specifically allows the spouse and children of new temporary workers who intend to abandon their residence in a foreign country, to qualify to come to the U.S. to “visit.” The visa requires only a $1,000 bond, which will be forfeited when, not if, family members of new temporary workers decide to overstay their 30 day visit. Workers should travel to their home countries to visit their families, not the other way around. [See p. 277:1 – 33, and p. 276: 38-43].

* Loophole 17 – Chain Migration Tippled Before Being Eliminated:
Though the bill will eventually eliminate chain migration (relatives other than spouses and children of citizens and legal permanent residents), it will not have full effect until 2016. Until then, chain migration into the U.S. will actually triple, from approximately 138,000 chain migrants a year (equal to 14% of the 1 million green cards the U.S. currently distributes on an annual basis) to approximately 440,000 chain migrants a year (equal to 45% of the 1 million green cards the U.S. currently distributes on an annual basis). [See pp. 260:13, p. 270: 29 – pp. 271: 17]

* Loophole 18 – Back Taxes Not Required:
Last year’s bill required illegal aliens to prove they had paid three of their last five years of taxes to get amnesty. This year, payment of back taxes is not required for amnesty. The bill requires taxes to be paid at the time of application for a green card, but at that time, only proof of payment of Federal taxes (not state and local) is required for the years the alien worked on a Z visa, not the years the alien has already worked illegally in the United States. Though Senator McCain’s S.A. 1190, adopted by voice vote, claimed to “require undocumented immigrants receiving legal status to pay owed back taxes,” the amendment actually only required proof of payment of taxes for “any year during the period of employment required by subparagraph (D)(i).” Since the bill does not contain a subparagraph (D)(i), nor require any past years of employment as a prerequisite for amnesty, the amendment essentially only requires proof of payment of taxes for future work in the U.S., not payment of “back taxes.” [See p. 307, and p. 293 as altered by S.A. 1190, amendment p. 2: 19-20.]

* Loophole 19 – Social Security Credits Allowed For Some Illegal Work Histories:
Aliens who came to the U.S. on legal visas, but overstayed their visas and have been working in the U.S. for years, as well as illegal aliens who apply for Z visa status but do not qualify, will be able to collect social security credits for the years they worked illegally. Under the bill, if an alien was ever issued a social security account number – all work-authorized aliens who originally came on legal visas receive these – the alien will receive Social Security credits for any “quarters of coverage” the alien worked after receiving their social security account number. Because the bill requires social security account numbers to be issued “promptly” to illegal aliens as soon as they are granted “any probationary benefits based upon application [for Z status]” (these benefits are granted 24 hours after the application is filed), an illegal alien who is denied Z visa status but continues to work illegally in the U.S. will accumulate Social Security credits. [See pp. 316:8 – 16, and pp. 315: 32-39]

* Loophole 20 – Criminal Fines Not Proportional To Conduct:
The criminal fines an illegal alien is required to pay to receive amnesty are less than the bill’s criminal fines for paperwork violations committed by U.S. citizens, and can be paid by installment. Under the bill, an illegal alien must pay a $1,000 criminal fine to apply for a Z visa, and a $4,000 fine to apply for a green card. Eighty percent of those fines can be paid on an installment plan. Under the bill’s confidentiality provisions, someone who improperly handles or uses information on an alien’s amnesty application can be fined $10,000. Administration officials suggest that the bill’s “criminal fines are proportionate to the criminal conduct.” Why, then, is the fine for illegally entering, using false documents to work, and live one-tenth the fine for a paperwork violation committed by a government official? [See p. 287: 34, p. 317: 9, p. 315:6-8, & remarks made by Secretary Gutierrez on Your World with Neil Cavuto, 4:00 May 31, 2007]

Said maggie @ 8:38 am Comments (0) | Permalink   

We’ve gone to Lite Wide Awakes rather than full strength.

I think the weather has gotten to all of us; there are so many wonderful things going on outside, you can go out without a jacket, and you can wear shorts and sandals or flipflops if you want.

With the knowledge that Jesse Davis’ body was found with her dead baby inside her, and her boyfriend, the father of her living toddler and her dead infant has been arrested for her murder, my heart weighs heavy today.

I would just ask that you pray for the families involved.  It is a terrible tragedy that has happened in Ohio, and the people who were searching for Jesse discovered the most horrible thing.  Instead of celebrating her baby’s birth, we will be celebrating her life, and its passing.

Let’s just hope that the justice system doles out some justice on Bobby Cutts rather than lets him go, which seems to be the way of these black-on-white crimes.

Said Cao @ 8:11 pm Comments (1) | Permalink   

I’ve been pondering this issue for a few weeks now and will get busy on posting my thoughts on the topic, figuring there are many issues associated with our current mania with all things green. I’m not against it, and because I was thinking of a title for such postings, my thoughts moved to another plane, that of the world-wide issues, but unlike those being discussed. Maybe I just haven’t tripped across those editorials yet, but…going “green” has far ranging implications for the entity at the top of the food chain, some good, some potentially very, very bad.

I suspect Al Gore and company hasn’t thought them through yet, or he may not have ever made his movie.

So, that being stated as the opening salvo, here’s a short run down of some of my installed filters: BS - Biology, emphasis in marine and botany regions of the science. Degrees in International Relations and Strategic Studies. Lived on two islands in the Pacific and spent a lot of time swimming the reefs. Post military career, spent 4 years in electronic recycling sales, in a small operation, where I was involved not just in making the sales of what came out of the “waste stream,” but helping sort through large and small loads of “hazardous waste,” to see what was there, and also worked contact proposals, so I had to describe the processes involved in proper disposal techniques and get a reasonable understanding of current HAZMAT practices as it related to electronic waste.

My original title was going to be something like “Go Green - For National Security.” The premise was you can hate the junk science, or embrace it, but it still had value at that level. Certainly from a national level, going green in regards to reducing our oil consumption provides a variety of benefits in the short run. If we could create the technology, affordable and effective, to replace basic petroleum based fuels with any combination of alternative energies, we would have a tremendous impact on the World’s complaint about how we use 25% of the energy for less than 5% of the World’s population. The tyrannical and theocratic nations of South America and the Middle East would have to back off on how we were “stealing their oil” (as a side note, we’re stealing at a competitive price!) and come up with a new “slogan” to make the World hate us. We’d have much more control of some of the more contentious issues worldwide along those lines. Overall, a real plus.

I have often pondered pulling up John F. Kennedy’s speech about going to the moon and re-writing it on the topic of energy independence. If we actually had plenty of “home grown” engineers, the sleeves could be rolled up and I bet some amazing results could be achieved. Not having a lot of real scientists and engineers coming out of the colleges and universities to support this is an entirely separate, yet tightly linked subject for discussion at another time.

If we did “go to the moon” in developing methods and techniques such as you might imagine, we certainly would export it, creating entirely new companies and corporations around the globe, all the the benefit of mankind.

But…..I’ll get to my thoughts in a few paragrapghs.

From my view point in the recycling company (still going strong, BTW), the two owners were not tree hugging liberals. In fact, despite their penchant to vote for the Democrats, at the “local” level, they were very much capitalists to the core. They did enjoy their success, and not a word was ever spoken about how they were doing any of this to “save the planet.” They were two smart business guys. Rough cut, from a contract proposal response: In three years, they went from $3M to $12M in gross revenues, with about an average of 25 people a new forklift and some building additions, totaling maybe $100K during that period. Most of what was taken in was paid for in the collection fees, and I was the one getting unbelievable money for what some would consider obsolete equipment in unknown operating condition, that was still needed by companies “stuck” with a requirement to maintain what they had in place and could not afford to wholesale replace. In many cases, on the equipment I sold, we came close to, and exceeded in some cases, a 100% profit margin. And, readers, that was but one of seven such companies within about 50 miles around us.

Taking a jump to the tree-hugger side of that same story, I was amazed at just how many different components were recycled, saving further mining of metals and also reducing the energy needed to make new product, as some of the “front end” of some manufacturing processes were shortened by feeding recycled material into the production lines. I also was amazed at how much truly functional equipment was just disposed of due to age. About the only thing that we paid to get rid of was the plastics, which we had made a decision to not separate the types (like defined by the number you see on the bottom/side of plastic items), so we had to pay to have that hauled off.

Summary: You can make a handsome living in electronics recycling, if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty and learning some EPA (Federal and local) regulations and complying with them and it does, in fact, benefit the environment.

Back to the issue of petroleum based fuel replacement and how we must consider carefully how we do this:

• Bio-Fuels. A few weeks back, on some talk show, a caller said “You think they hate us now? Wait until we take their food to drive our cars!” Precisely! I have read in several places, since the push to burn ethanol has become a life of its own, that the price of corn based products in Southern Mexico have gone up in price. Someone down there sees the opportunity, just like the oil producing countries have done for most of the last century, seen a need in America and are positioning themselves to fill it, at the expense of their local economy and people. Next, consider this: American farmers will be chomping at the bit to get in one the action! But, WAIT! They already have! Its hitting our bank accounts already. Add to that that estimates I have seen say our total corn output, if only used to make ethanol, would only replace between 12 and 15% of our oil consumption in vehicles. In other words, we can’t reach “escape” velocity” from the dead dinosaur addiction. So, you say we can use sugar cane, and beets, and soy beans. Yes, we can. And those are all used to produce food, too. You’d have to have someone regulating the balance between food and fuel production, similar to the market for fuel oil and gasoline that changes gas prices each fall. The bottom line: Is it food, or is it a way to get to the mall?
• Wind/Solar/Hydrogen: I have hopes smart minds could make it happen, so we could thumb our noses at the people who pull the fuel from the ground, but here’s the rub, economically and, therefore strategically: The nations that sell us the oil, for the most part, have never developed any other industry that would allow them to “live in the manner to which they are accustomed.” See where this is going? They hate us now for buying their product, screaming in the streets and at international conferences about how wasteful and greedy we are (as they count our money. Now, when we get serious about listening to their criticisms and do something about it, the cash flow will no longer head to them and they will holler loud and long, about how America is screwing them. That metaphor is already being used to recruit terrorists around the world and on our own streets. Can’t win for losing, you see, and those people, with the oil reserves, have not had the foresight to “diversify” their revenue producing capability. As our nation leads the way in innovation, and freedom, no one else seems to get that those are the very mechanisms that have allowed this upstart of a nation surpass all other economies in human history.

So here if the conundrum, economically, geo-politically and strategically: We go “green” to save the planet (the < 5% of us on the face of the planet), with other sneering at us, saying it's all our fault that they now have no money, so all the more reason to attack us, sooner, while there still is an oil producing infrastructure to make things go, rather than later when there's no oil to make things go and they can't afford the new technologies to get around.

Our economy is tightly intertwined with the rest of the world. for all we bring to the table for humanity to use, we are accused of using more than our fair share now. We will be accused of not using any in the possible future. It appears that keeping our wallets open to economic blackmail may keep us more stable than if we invent better ways to get around and thereby clean up the air globally.

I think it’s a dangerous minefield we have wandered into, yet I don’t know if others have yet looked at this endgame.

“Equal Time” is provided in the comments section attached. So, what do you think?

Said xformed @ 7:59 pm Comments (2) | Permalink   

Crazed fanboy that I am, I’ve been avidly reading Mark Steyn’s dispatches from the Conrad Black trial, but even if you don’t trust men with beards or Canadians, it’s still worth giving this case a second look. It might just be that Patrick Fitzgerald has managed the near-inpossible and found a prosecution sleazier than the judicial lynching of Scooter Libby.

What it’s all about is the sale of certain assets by Black’s company Hollinger and the presence of ‘non-compete’ clauses in certain of the contracts which involved……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Well, OK, let’s skip the specifics and get straight to the point. The contracts under dispute were between private companies and raised not an eyebrow at the time. It was only years after the fact that anyone realised there’d been a really huge robbery - and only then with a certain degree of persuasion from the Feds.

Indeed, one of the most striking features of the case is just how many of the prosecution witnesses have the government breathing down their neck. Chief prosecution witness David Radler’s plea bargain with the government is dependant on him giving a good performance in court, the SEC has been making noises about taking action against former members of the Audit Committee, while Darren Sukonick, lawyer for Hollinger at Canadian Law Firm Torys testified as a condition of a deal to get them off the hook of civil action. But what about the shareholders, the supposed victims in all of this ? Nada! The US government hasn’t yet managed to get any on the stand to testify how evil Black et al are.

Not only is this a case without any identifiable victims, it’s not even clear what the prosecution is arguing. Was Black the centre of an evil conspiracy, or did he just turn a blind eye to one in return for cash ? Don’t ask the Feds, they can’t seem to decide, their main argument seems to be: who cares what they actually did, they’re rich and obnoxious, convict them anyway!

If this sounds weak, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Amongst the charges are claims that Black robbed his company by charging two thirds of the cost of his wife’s birthday party to Hollinger, which seems open and shut, until you realise it was a bash attended by a large chunk of the New York business community - I doubt Donald Trump was there to do the catering.

All of which is by way of saying that there was surely some business component to the party. Maybe - for the sake of the US government’s absurd argument - it was more like 1/2, rather than 2/3, is it really the role of the US Government to look for buffet abuse ? Similarly, should prosecutors be allowed to strong arm witnesses years after the fact, and present juries with multiple choice cases ?

At the end of the day, it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for the super-rich, but this case raises issues that no amount of Federal Prosecutors yuckking it up over heated towel rails can distract from. Steyn makes the point that the post-Black regime has managed to spend far more money on ‘corporate governance’ and the like than was ever in dispute in this current case. Why not ? With Pat Fitzgerald hiding under the buffet table counting the number of guests, who wouldn’t feel the need to have the auditors wandering round carefully recording whether conversations are business or pleasure ?

Whether or not Black and pals acted wisely or well, the prospect of government prosecutors trawling through every business deal should worry everyone. At best, it holds out the prospect of ever more money flowing down the ‘corporate governance’ hole, as corporations employ the business equivalent of defensive medicine. At worst, well, we’re back with Scooter Libby, and nominally private businesses at the mercy of politically-motivated prosecutors - but at least we’ll be free of the threat of tycoons charging the vol au vonts to the company.

Said DJ @ 5:46 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

It used to be that the conspiracy bug was almost exclusively confined to right wing extremists - Birchers, Klansmen, McCarthyites, and a mish mash of anti-government, anti-communist (where many believed the commies had already taken over the US government), and anti-UN psychopaths. According to the eminent historian Richard Hofstadter’s brilliant essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics , these pathetic people felt that they had no control over their lives, that “an invisible hand” was directing their destiny and the destiny of the nation.

Scholar Daniel Pipes expounded on this theme more recently with his book Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. Pipes traces the history of conspiracy mongering from the Middle East, to Western Europe (where regular pogroms against the Jews were the result) and it’s arrival here in America with its roots in the anti-Masonic, anti-Illuminati groups of the 19th century.

Now James Piereson, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, president of the William E. Simon Foundation, and former executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation, has written a book that posits the theory that the JFK assassination “compromised the central assumptions of American liberalism” thereby devastating the left as no other event did before or has since. This led American liberals to several wrong historical conclusions which gave flight to a conspiracy culture of their own.

The book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, is not the first effort to use the Kennedy Assassination as a starting point to show where liberalism lost its way. Theodore H. White’s brilliant autobiographical In Search of History made basically the same point; that the unfulfilled promise of the JFK presidency haunted liberals down to this day. From tragedy, there emerged a culture of paranoia that saw the “invisible hand” at work - not of Masons or Communists, but of right wing extremists both in and out of government. White also commented on the takeover of the liberal ideology - his ideology - by hard left Stalinists as New Deal Democrats like Humphrey were marginalized as a result of their support for the Viet Nam war.

John Miller interviewed Piereson for the National Review. It should be noted that Piereson is a well respected academic whose main interest over the years has been to promote an ideologically neutral atmosphere in our educational system - in other words, a “classically liberal” education. While he is generally identified as being a moderate conservative, Mr. Piereson has not been shy about taking on the right over issues such as teaching evolution in classrooms and prayer in schools.

Miller begins the interview by asking how the JFK assassination changed American politics:

JAMES PIERESON: Kennedy’s assassination, happening the way it did, compromised the central assumptions of American liberalism that had been the governing philosophy of the nation since the time of the New Deal. It did this in two decisive ways: first, by compromising the faith of liberals in the future; second, by undermining their confidence in the nation. Kennedy’s assassination suggested that history is not in fact a benign process of progress and advancement, but perhaps something quite different. The thought that the nation itself was responsible for Kennedy’s death suggested that the United States, far from being a “city on a hill” and an example for mankind, as Kennedy had described it (quoting John Winthrop), was in fact something darker and more sinister in its deepest nature.

The conspiracy theories that developed afterwards reflected this thought. The Camelot legend further suggested that that the Kennedy years represented something unique that was now forever lost. Liberalism was thereafter overtaken by a sense of pessimism about the future, cynicism about the United States, and nostalgia for the Kennedy years. This was something entirely new in the United States. It was evident in the culture during the 1960s. George Wallace tried to confront it in the electoral arena in 1968, as did Richard Nixon — though it was somewhat difficult to do so because neither Lyndon Johnson nor Hubert Humphrey represented this new orientation. It was not until this mood of pessimism was brought into the government during the Carter administration that it could be directly confronted in the political arena, which is what Ronald Reagan in fact did.

Miller challenges Piereson on the notion that 11/22/63 meant more than 9/11:

We know from looking back over the decades that Kennedy’s sudden death cast a long shadow over American life, which I have tried to describe. Many of us thought that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 would also have great consequences for the way Americans looked at politics, the parties, and national security. In particular, some felt that the attacks might drive out of our politics the tone of anti-Americanism that had been a key feature of the American Left from the 1960s forward. That did not really happen. The liberal movement today remains far more the product of the 1960s than of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Indeed, the terrorist attacks now seem to have had very little effect on the thinking of American liberals who view the war on terror and the war in Iraq through the lenses of the Vietnam War. That is not true of conservatives. In that sense, the terrorist attacks have simply deepened the divide between liberals and conservatives. What is surprising, then, is what little enduring effect the terrorist attacks have had, particularly for liberals.

I have written many times on this site with all the earnestness that I can muster that it is absolutely imperative that if we are going to survive as a nation and win this war against the terrorists and the states that continue to enable them, the left simply must join this fight. Until liberals embrace the notion that the War on Terror or whatever you choose to call it is real and not some political ploy designed by President Bush to win elections, or set up a dictatorship, or destroy the left itself, we have no hope of either confronting the menace or winning through to victory. The intellectual framework for the survival of the west has always been best outlined by classically liberal writers and thinkers. Today, they are missing in action and it hurts the cause terribly.

Piereson believes a large part of the problem is that the left has their eyes focused on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza:

Liberals who were rational and realistic accepted the fact that Oswald killed JFK but at the same time they were unable to ascribe a motive for his actions. They tended to look for sociological explanations for the event and found one in the idea that JFK was brought down by a “climate of hate” that had overtaken the nation. Thus they placed Kennedy’s assassination within a context of violence against civil rights activists. They had great difficulty accepting the fact that Kennedy’s death was linked to the Cold War, not to civil rights. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in his 1,000-page history of the Kennedy administration, published in 1965, could not bring himself to mention Oswald’s name in connection with Kennedy’s death, though he spent several paragraphs describing the hate-filled atmosphere of Dallas at the time — suggesting thereby that Kennedy was a victim of the far right. The inability to come to grips with the facts of Kennedy’s death pointed to a deeper fault in American liberalism which was connected to its decline.

Gerald Posner points out in his conspiracy debunking book on the assassination Case Closed that theorists have gone to extraordinary lengths to absolve Oswald of any connection to the crime at all. He traces the theories on Oswald’s involvement from the notion that he was an assassin hired by the CIA or FBI through the “patsy” phase to where now, Oswald is thought of by many conspiracists as an innocent bystander. Anything but the truth about Oswald’s political leanings.

To be fair, it is doubtful that Oswald really understood Communism or any other ideology for that matter. He embraced it because it set him apart, made him different. And for someone as brutally neglected as Oswald was when he was young, basking in the glow of attention as a result of his contrarian political stands - especially in the Marine Corps - it must have given him an enormous amount of satisfaction.

As historian William Manchester points out in his seminal work on the assassination Death of a President, “Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President of the United States in the back to get attention.” Rather than looking for complex, multi-level reasons for why Kennedy and Oswald’s paths crossed that tragic day in Dealey Plaza, sometimes the simplest explanations are the most plausible.

Piereson weighs in on Oliver Stone’s fantasy film JFK:

The Oliver Stone movie was foolish to the extent it was held up as an account of the Kennedy assassination. Using Jim Garrison as a credible authority on the Kennedy assassination is akin to citing Rosie O’Donnell as an authority on the collapse of the Twin Towers. It is not possible to claim that Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll without at the same time claiming that the autopsy (which said he was shot from the rear) was wrong or fabricated. The conspiracy theories do not arise from any evidence but from a need to believe that Kennedy was shot by someone other than Oswald.

Garrison, the ambitious, homophobic New Orleans DA who prosecuted Clay Shaw for the murder of JFK made Mike Nifong look like a pillar of legal rectitude. The fact that the jury returned a verdict in 45 minutes of not guilty should tell you everything you need to know about Garrison’s out of control prosecution. (One juror said after the verdict that the reason they took so long was that several jurors had to use the washroom.) Making Garrison out to be a hero in the film was perhaps the most outrageous calumny in the history of Hollywood. The damage done to the historical record by Stone should never, ever be forgotten.

Finally, Miller asks Piereson about Jack Ruby:

MILLER: Would liberals have had an easier time of it if Jack Ruby hadn’t killed Oswald?

PIERESON: If Ruby had not intervened, Oswald probably would have tried to stage some kind of “show” trial in which Kennedy’s policies in Cuba would have been raised as a central issue. Oswald proudly acknowledged that he was a Communist. If the case had been brought to trial, Oswald would have certainly been convicted. In that case, it would have been far more difficult for liberals and the Kennedy family to maintain that JFK was killed because of his support for civil rights. There would have been less talk of conspiracies; less anti-Americanism from the left; perhaps it would have further reinforced the anti-communism of post-war liberalism. There is no question that Ruby changed the equation a great deal.

Recent theories about the Mafia’s involvement in the assassination include not only Ruby as silencer but Oswald as trigger man thanks to a distant uncle of Oswald’s who worked for New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello. The thought of any one of those gabby losers working for the Mafia on a hit the magnitude of the Kennedy assassination is outrageous on its face. Besides, federal agents had Marcello, Sam Trafficante, and Sam Giancana - all three implicated by conspiracists in the assassination - under close surveillance for years prior to the death of Kennedy and not a word was uttered by any of them that would prove they had anything to do with the murder.

I think Piereson is right. I believe that the assassination so unbalanced the left that they have yet to find their way back. Spinning ever more fantastic conspiracy theories to explain electoral losses, describe their political enemies, and generally view the world with a suspicion and paranoia once reserved for the mouth breathers on the right, the left has truly lost their way. Perhaps it will take someone like Senator Obama - a sunnyside up sort of liberal - to reinvigorate the movement and bring it back down to earth.

And then perhaps, we can all go to war together rather than the left hanging back while seeing monsters under the bed.

Said Rick Moran @ 12:51 pm Comments (1) | Permalink   

As everyone’s favourite fictional state goes into full meltdown-mode, it really is worth pondering how the BBC are going to spin this one. After all, the Corporation’s drones usually rely on the tactic of blaming Palestinians’ blood-soaked, genocidal rampages on Israel’s efforts to defend itself. Yet. For the last few weeks, the country’s Big Two terror-gangs have put their anti-Semitism on hold in order to slaughter each other, with nary an Israeli soldier in sight.

What to do? What to do

Some Palestinians fear that the end of the unity government could cause the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and the other institutions they had hoped would become part of the apparatus of an independent state.

This, from the BBC’s Mid-East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, who isn’t exactly clear on whether these ’some Palestinians’ are ones he’s spoken directly to or not. Certainly, there simply must be ’some’ (that word again) Palestinians who feel this way — There are some Britons who worry that the moon-landings were faked. In any event, their (non-)appearance affords Bowen the opportunity to shoehorn a useful truism into his article in order to provide a platform for some Israel-bashing:

The institutions, and the hopes behind them, have already taken a severe battering from Israel’s military actions over the last seven years and, more recently, by the punishing financial sanctions imposed by Israel and other countries after Hamas won a free election at the beginning of last year.

So, let’s try to understand what Bowen’s saying here:

• The fact that the majority of Palestinians vote only for political parties with armed-wings
• The fact that, in a free and fair election between the sneaky and the blatant approaches to Jew-murder, the majority of Palis opted to get their genocide out in the open by siding with Hamas
• The fact that, as promised, Hamas have spent the past year launching rockets into Israel
• The fact that the Palestinian definition of a ‘unity government’ involved more toe-curling violence than the average civil war prior to escalating into one

– None of this is, according to the BBC, the reason for Palestine’s latest meltdown. Instead, the fault lies with Israel and the West.

It’s tempting, of course, to point out that drivel like this shouldn’t be the sort of thing British subjects are forced to pay for in return for public-service broadcasting. But then, we would no longer treated to the pleasure of watching lefties like Bowen spin so hard in favour of their beloved Palis that they fail to notice the somewhat … um … singular line they’ve been reduced to arguing.

See, it’s really quite hard not to conclude that, right now, the BBC is pushing the idea that, although Palestinians deserve to run their own state, free from all foreign interference, they are also a people, so uniquely incompetent in the whole of human history, that they cannot even be trusted to take responsibility for their own civil wars.

Was that really what Jeremy Bowen meant?

Said RottyPup @ 2:00 pm Comments (1) | Permalink   

It’s not new to point out that the press reports with a bias.  You may have heard it said that the press gets to choose which topics and ideas that they report on, which often determines what people will talk about.  Of course, the blogosphere has been instrumental in changing that focus.  However, in addition to choosing the topics, the news media is well-aware of how people read the news — often just skimming the topics and headlines.  Those headlines can easily be worded to change thoughts, rather than to report the news.

For example, do you notice any difference between these two headlines?

1. No Guard Rails where Dragster Hit Crowd in Tennessee, Killing 6.

2. People Playing Next to Highway Killed in Accident.

Both headlines are about the same story — the ACCIDENT that killed 6 people.  But the first headline assumes that it’s the fault of the lack of guard rails, while the second assumes it’s the fault of the people standing next to the speeding car who are responsible for the deaths.  People are continually asking now, “Gee, why wasn’t there a guard rail?”  Of course, the fact that this event has been happening for 18 years without an injury is seldom mentioned.  Instead of asking about a guardrail, I would ask why people are standing next to a road with a dragster driving on it.  I’m very sorry those people were killed, but it’s not the fault of a guard rail.

How about these headlines:

1. US kills 7 children in Strike on Suspected Al Qaeda Hideout in Afghanistan.

2. US kills numerous Al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan.

Again, both headlines describe the same story.  However, the first one makes it sound like the US Military set out to kill kids; while the second one is more accurate — stating that the US Military set out to kill Al Qaeda members.  In this case, Al Qaeda is clearly winning the information war — people see that the US Military is killing children — even when it’s the Al Qaeda members who intentionally HID children from the military and then hid behind them to blame the US when the children die.

No, the media in the United States is NOT interested in journalism and reporting facts.  Instead, they continue to prove that they are interested in promoting their own agenda — including support of Al Qaeda and open support of socialism.   If you want freedom or facts, stay away from the formerly mainstream media — you will find neither one there.

Said Ogre @ 6:43 am Comments (0) | Permalink   

Hugh Hewitt today links to a Lawrence Wright piece from the September 11, 2006 New Yorker, as a part of Hewitt’s latest “Grim Reality” post. As you may know, Wright is the author of the definitive pre-9/11 biography of Al Qaeda, “The Looming Tower” which recently won the Pulitzer Prize (and as an aside, that book deserves every accolade it gets…if you have not read it, it is truly a must for your library).

In any case I had never read the entire New Yorker piece, which discusses the alliance between Iran and Al Qaeda and the latter’s “master plan” for jihad as it has taken shape over the last few years. So I clicked to the article, meaning to just scan it for some relevant material for Hewitt’s original point–but then I got sucked in, just as I was by The Looming Tower; I simply could not stop reading. So, instead of posting a number of posts about the news of the day–I find myself compelled to take more time on this one, to make sure people have a grip on just what we are facing–my own version of a grim reality.

Unfortunately, there is no way to reproduce the entire New Yorker article here –it is way too lengthy (and I would undoubtedly have to get the author’s permission to do so, anyway)–but here is a small but relevant taste, in which Al Qaeda’s articulated “master plan” is unveiled and explained. Read the excerpt, let that soak in, then go read the whole article; It is simultaneously chilling and extremely important–and we had better take heed now of what is coming–because the current set of politicians in the halls of Congress is simply not going to get it done:

[…] In 2005, Hussein produced what is perhaps the most definitive outline of Al Qaeda’s master plan: a book titled “Al-Zarqawi: The Second Generation of Al Qaeda.” Although it is largely a favorable biography of Zarqawi and his movement, Hussein incorporates the insights of other Al Qaeda members—notably, Saif al-Adl, the security chief.

It is chilling to read this work and realize how closely recent events seem to be hewing to Al Qaeda’s forecasts. Based on interviews with Zarqawi and Adl, Hussein claims that dragging Iran into conflict with the United States is key to Al Qaeda’s strategy. Expanding the area of conflict in the Middle East will cause the U.S. to overextend its forces. According to Hussein, Al Qaeda believes that Iran expects to be attacked by the U.S., because of its interest in building a nuclear
weapon. “Accordingly, Iran is preparing to retaliate for or abort this strike by means of using powerful cards in its hand,” he writes. These tactics include targeting oil installations in the Persian Gulf, which could cut off sixty per cent of the world’s oil supplies, destabilizing Western economies.

In an ominous passage, Hussein notes that “for fifteen years—or since the end of the first Gulf War—Iran has been busy building a secret global army of highly trained personnel and the necessary financial and technological capabilities to carry out any kind of mission.” He is clearly referring to Hezbollah, which has so far focussed its attention on Israel.

According to Hussein, “Iran has identified American and Jewish targets around the world. This secret army is led by two professional Lebanese men who have pledged full allegiance to Iran and who hold enough of a grudge against the Americans to qualify them to inflict damage on Jewish and American interests around the world.”

[…] Hussein claims, without offering evidence, that Iran already has thirty thousand intelligence agents in Iraq. “Since the Americans have not succeeded in eliminating the Sunni resistance, how can they deal with the situation if the Shiites join the resistance? Iran plans to incite its proponents in Iraq to join the anti-U.S. resistance in the event that the United States or Israel launches an attack on Iran.

Iran plans to open its border to the resistance and provide it with what it needs to achieve a swift and major victory against the Americans.” Al Qaeda, he writes, also expects the Americans to go after Iran’s principal ally in the region, Syria. The removal of the Assad regime—a longtime goal of jihadis—will allow the country to be infiltrated by Al Qaeda, putting the terrorists within reach, at last, of Israel.

Hussein observes that Al Qaeda’s ideologues have studied the failure of Islamist movements in the past and concluded that they lacked concrete, realistic goals. Therefore, he writes, “Al Qaeda drew up a feasible plan within a well-defined time frame. The plan was based on improving the Islamic jihadist action in quality and quantity and expanding it to include the entire world.”

Al Qaeda’s twenty-year plan began on September 11th, with a stage that Hussein calls “The Awakening.” The ideologues within Al Qaeda believed that “the Islamic nation was in a state of hibernation,” because of repeated catastrophes inflicted upon Muslims by the West. By striking America—“the head of the serpent”—Al Qaeda caused the United States to “lose consciousness and act chaotically against those who attacked it. This entitled the party that hit the serpent to lead the Islamic nation.”

This first stage, says Hussein, ended in 2003, when American troops entered Baghdad. The second, “Eye-Opening” stage will last until the end of 2006, Hussein writes. Iraq will become the recruiting ground for young men eager to attack America. In this phase, he argues, perhaps wishfully, Al Qaeda will move from being an organization to “a mushrooming invincible and popular trend.”

The electronic jihad on the Internet will propagate Al Qaeda’s ideas, and Muslims will be pressed to donate funds to make up for the seizure of terrorist assets by the West. The third stage, “Arising and Standing Up,” will last from 2007 to 2010. Al Qaeda’s focus will be on Syria and Turkey, but it will also begin to directly confront Israel, in order to gain more credibility among the Muslim population.

In the fourth stage, lasting until 2013,Al Qaeda will bring about the demise of Arab governments. “The creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within Al Qaeda,” Hussein predicts. Meanwhile, attacks against the Middle East petroleum industry will continue, and America’s power will deteriorate through the constant expansion of the circle of confrontation.

“By then, Al Qaeda will have completed its electronic capabilities, and it will be time to use them to launch electronic attacks to undermine the U.S. economy.” Islamists will promote the idea of using gold as the international medium of exchange, leading to the collapse of the dollar. Then an Islamic caliphate can be declared, inaugurating the fifth stage of Al Qaeda’s grand plan, which will last until 2016. “At this stage, the Western fist in the Arab region will loosen, and Israel will not be able to carry out preëmptive or precautionary strikes,” Hussein writes. “The international balance will change.” Al Qaeda and the Islamist movement will attract powerful new economic allies, such as China, and Europe will fall into disunity.

The sixth phase will be a period of “total confrontation.” The now established caliphate will form an Islamic Army and will instigate a worldwide fight between the “believers” and the “non-believers.” Hussein proclaims, “The world will realize the meaning of real terrorism.”

By 2020, “definitive victory” will have been achieved. Victory, according to the Al Qaeda ideologues, means that “falsehood will come to an end. . . . The Islamic state will lead the human race once again to the shore of safety and the oasis of happiness.”

If reading Al Qaeda’s master plan second hand via its security chief–and if reading the rest of Wright’s piece (along with his Pulitzer-winning book)–is not enough to convince you that this enemy is no mere “law enforcement problem” as our Democrat friends would like us to believe, then I don’t know what would be enough… We are in the fight of our lifetime, my friends; and there are years and years of struggle remaining. We may not believe we are fighting for Western Civilization–but our enemies believe it; and they are organized, armed and dangerous. We can no longer afford for the American people to be “collective ostriches”, egged on by a hysterical and myopic media. Nor can we longer afford the so-called “leaders” who are currently leading us down the path to collective annihilation in the Democrat Congress.

This is our wake-up call; and it is time to wake up our friends and neighbors too, before it is too late for us all. This is a life or death struggle, whether we acknowledge it or not and whether we like it or not. Hitler did not care a whit that no one believed that he would exterminate an entire race of people–yet he very nearly succeeded in doing just that. We cannot simply sit back and allow the greatest experiment in the history of mankind to disintegrate before our eyes, all because religious fanatics with bloodlust had greater collective will than we do. Patrick Henry famously said “Give me Liberty or Give Me Death.” Well, my friends, that is the choice here. How choose you?

Cross posted at The Discerning Texan

Said Discerning Texan @ 1:16 pm Comments (2) | Permalink