Aoril 2008
Demography Is KingÊ [4/30/08]
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In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims [4/29/08]
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Fraud Daylight [4/28/08]
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An Anatomy of Surrender [4/28/08]
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America's 'safety catch' [4/27/08]
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The demise of Turkey's pork butchers [4/27/08]
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ILIR seeks legality, not amnesty, for undocumented Irish [4/26/08]
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N.C. lawmakerÕs comments spark outrage in Mexico [4/26/08]
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Many Mexicans see oil as last frontier against US invasion [4/26/08]
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Indian police want to put severed head in museum [4/25/08]
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Mexican Embassy: Official Fired After Getting Caught With White House BlackBerries [4/24/08]
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Mexican American journalist to be honored with U.S. postage stamp [4/24/08]
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Congressional Hispanics knock Democratic leaders [4/24/08]
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On St George's Day, EU wipes England off map [4/23/08]
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50 percent of LA workforce are immigrants [4/23/08]
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Illegal Immigrants Charged in DWI Cases Test Judicial System [4/22/08]
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"Lawmaker Muzzled After Mexican Slur" [4/22/08]
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Mexico's President Calder—n to hear immigrant leaders' concerns at Dallas conference [4/21/08]
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FDA: Heparin supplier's Chinese factory 'unsuitable' [4/21/08]
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Muslim call to adopt Mecca time [4/21/08]
More brilliance on Egypt TV here, where a suit explains how Mecca has a magnetic field of zero -- whatever that means.
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Cancelled on police advice: St George's Day parade through the Bradford race-riot zone [4/20/08]
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A Populist Shift Confronts the U.S. Catholic Church [4/20/08]
See also Tom's YouTube page.
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Thousands in Hollywood protest remarks from CNN's Jack Cafferty [4/20/08]
More than 1,000 ethnic Chinese protesters assembled near CNN's LA office to shriek "Liar" regarding Jack Cafferty and demand his dismissal.
Because they have absorbed a pre-Cliff Notes grasp of freedom of expression from television, one member of the model minority prefaced his demands that Cafferty be fired by a brief disclaimer. It followed the usual pattern: "I support free speech, BUT..."
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Myrick takes aim at terrorism [4/20/08]
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Pope Speaks Up for Immigrants, Touching a Nerve [4/19/08]
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Global connections make Silicon Valley a portal in worldwide TB epidemic [4/19/08]
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Creeping sprawl overtakes refugees from cities [4/19/08]
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Tancredo Criticizes Pope's Comments on Immigration [4/18/08]
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Britons fear race violence - poll [4/17/08]
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"Illegals Called An 'Army of Evil' By Berlusconi" [4/17/08]
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Baca: Gang Hate Crimes [4/16/08]
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE: Travel Alert [4/15/08]
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In An Absolut World Of The People's Cube [4/14/08]
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Pope will pray for terrorists at Ground Zero [4/14/08]
To see what Muslims have in mind for us, check out this recent video clip from MemriTV: Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis Al-Astal in a Friday Sermon: We Will Conquer Rome, and from There Continue to Conquer the Two Americas and Eastern Europe.
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Phoenix Mayor Gordon calls for FBI investigation of Arpaio [4/13/08]
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End of coast's 150-year-old fishery looms [4/13/08]
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Immigration debate hits home for liver transplant patients [4/13/08]
See the VDARE.com version: Million-Dollar Mexican Medical Moocher.
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BBC chief Mark Thompson warns of 'over-cautious' Islam coverage [4/12/08]
Here's a perfect example of BBC wimpy reporting, if you can even call it that, from today's news: Terror threat to UK 'is growing'
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US to Double Visas for Saudi Students [4/11/08]
See VDARE.com version Visas for Saudi Students to Double.
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Pro-China crowds attempt to stifle dissenters [4/10/08]
There are literally thousands of comments about the event in various articles and coverage in the Chronicle's online home, SFGate.com. Quite a few are pro-China propaganda, written in poor English. I read a couple hundred, and not a one mentioned the lebensraum aspect of China's takeover of Tibet: in Lhasa, the capital city, the majority of the population is Han Chinese.
See the VDARE.com version: "Welcome to Beijing!" (Sino Francisco, Actually).
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Wall of silence broken at state's Muslim public school [4/09/08]
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At L.A. carwashes, taking a stand [4/08/08]
Today's illegal alien employers often pay wages that cannot support the most minimal standard of living. But taxpayers are forced against their will to make up the difference, by paying for food stamps, healthcare, housing vouchers, education for illegal kiddies through college and whatever else illegal advocates can successfully finegle. This is how slavery in America has "progressed" between 1850 and now.
See VDARE.com version Steadily Depressing, Lowdown Mind-Messing Illegal Alien Carwashero Blues.
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Illegal Immigration and Black Workers [4/07/08]
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Why U.S. View Of Britain Is Tanking [4/07/08]
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Indonesia: Over 100 Churches Closed in 3 Years [4/06/08]
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Bishop: Mexico drug gangs building churches [4/06/08]
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ACLU taps top legal talent to defend accused 9-11 plotters [4/05/08]
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Four in five say Britain is facing a crisis over immigration [4/05/08]
For an interesting British documentary that is fairly honest about the stresses on society, see last fall's Channel 4 Dispatches program.
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Feds want $5.4 million back from S.F. [4/04/08]
Update: A report a few days later noted some degree of repayment occurred -- S.F. returns half of border crime grant.
And, on April 12,
Grant fiasco cost soars to $9.3 million:
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David Brooks does some interesting analysis about how America has fractured in the last several decades, even without mentioning immigration. Imagine how much more the addition of tens of millions of foreigners over the same time has affected society.
Fifty-five years ago, 80 percent of American television viewers, young and old, tuned in to see Milton Berle on Tuesday nights. Tens of millions, rich and poor, worked together at Elks Lodges and Rotary Clubs. Millions more, rural and urban, read general-interest magazines like Look and Life. In those days, the owner of the local bank lived in the same town as the grocery clerk, and their boys might play on the same basketball team. Only 7 percent of adult Americans had a college degree.
But thatÕs all changed. In the decades since, some social divides, mostly involving ethnicity, have narrowed. But others, mostly involving education, have widened. Today there is a mass educated class. The college educated and non-college educated are likely to live in different towns. They have radically different divorce rates and starkly different ways of raising their children. The non-college educated not only earn less, they smoke more, grow more obese and die sooner.
Retailers, home builders and TV executives identify and reinforce these lifestyle clusters. There are more niche offerings and fewer common experiences. [...]
Over the years, different theories have emerged to describe the educated/less-educated divide. Conservatives have gravitated toward the culture war narrative, dividing the country between the wholesome masses and the decadent cultural elites. Some liberals believe income inequality drives everything. They wait for an uprising of economic populism. Other liberals divide the country morally, between the enlightened urbanites and the racist rednecks who will never vote for a black man.
None of these theories really fit the facts. ItÕs more accurate to say that the country has simply drifted apart into different subcultures. ThereÕs no great hostility between the cultures. Americans have a fuzzy sense of where the boundaries lie. But people in different niches have developed different unconscious maps of reality. They have developed different communal understandings of what constitutes a good leader, of what sort of world they live in. They have developed different communal definitions, which they canÕt even articulate, of what they mean by liberty, security and virtue. Demographic groups have begun to function like tribes or cultures.
Here's another example, if one is needed, about the insanity of welcoming millions who despise your society's values.
This prison is majority Muslim -- as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country's prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country's population.
Sixty to 70 percent Muslims in French prisons really is a stunning figure and makes a compelling case that France's policies regarding immigration may have been a massive failure. At the same time, the prevalence of Muslims in other European prisons (at three to eight times their percentage in each nation's population) indicates that welcoming millions from anti-western Islam was a bad idea from the start. The problem is not the integration policies, but the culture and attitude of the immigrants.
On a continent where immigrants and the children of immigrants are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders. [...]
In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry. Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.
In addition, 12 percent is the highest number I've seen for the Muslim population of France. One scholar has stated that 10 percent is the tipping point where society begins to feel the brunt of demanding Islam:
Life can become untenable when the Muslim population of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent, as shown by France, a Jewish expert on Islam says. [...]
Professor [Raphael] Israeli said that in France, which has the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There were regions even the police were scared to enter, and militant Muslims were changing the country's political, economic and cultural fabric, and demanding anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies.
"French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.
"If you are on a collision course, what can you do? You can't put them all in prison, and anyway they are not all violent. You can't send them all back. You are really in trouble. It's irreversible."
[Limit Muslim migration, Australia warned, Sydney Morning Herald, 2/16/07]
It's excellent news that the Supreme Court has ruled that reasonable steps may properly be taken at elections to prevent voter fraud, and that means identification.
The Supreme Court got it right Monday in ruling 6-3 (with even liberal John Paul Stevens agreeing) that states are free to require voters to produce photo identification at the polls.
Everyone in the country should be pleased with the news. But, of course, not everyone is. It's almost as if some are disturbed that the ruling will make it harder to commit voter fraud.
The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance. It was the ACLU's suit against the state of Indiana over its requirement that voters need to produce a photo ID at the polls that led to the Supreme Court case.
Ken Falk, the organization's Indiana legal director, said he was "extremely disappointed" by the decision. It is the position of the ACLU that ID laws place a burden on voters, and the right to vote, Falk says, "is the most important right."
Bruce Bawer is one of the best writers warning of the danger to the West of creeping Islamicization -- something he has seen firsthand as an American expat living in Europe.
The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular -- the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about IslamÕs oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaperÕs 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing MohammedÑhave had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideologyÑwhich teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressiveÑpeople at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmisÑinfidels living in Muslim societies.
As Edmund Burke famously stated, "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." Double ditto that idea when Islam is involved.
Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly -- or not so slowly, in Europe's case -- being absorbed into the House of Submission.
British folks visiting the USA are apparently shocked not to be shot down in the streets by some gun-crazed American, since they are in fear of the 200 million guns in circulation here. In fact, they are surprised at how pleasantly peaceful American communities are.
A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up."
Theodore Dalrymple has written about how the British government does almost nothing to protect the citizenry from violent crime -- see Real Crime, Fake Justice. Police act in politically correct ways toward criminals, and the people are not allowed to protect themselves. Fjordman reported, "In the first two years after a complete ban on handguns was introduced in Britain, gun crime went up 50 per cent and is still growing."
This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos.
Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes.
I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.
"It seems so nice here," they quaver. [...]
What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.
The people who want Muslim Turkey to be a part of the European Union like to say that the country is a secular democratic state, with none of the dangerous Islamist stuff. But political trends of the last few years paint a different picture, that of increasing inroads made by authoritarian Islam.
One battleground is butcher shops, and the freedom to eat pork chops. The increasingly Islamicized government is moving to end pork eating altogether by cracking down on its merchants.
For more than 40 years he has been selling pork to his own fast-shrinking Christian community, to defiant Muslims, and to foreigners. Now, he is being squeezed out of business.
Lazari [Kozmaoglu]'s being prevented from slaughtering pigs and the stock of meat in his freezer is running critically low.
He owns an abattoir but the Agriculture Ministry has refused him a license to operate it, saying it does not meet strict new regulations.
Curiously, all the other slaughter-houses that once dealt with pork have been closed too. Lazari's reluctant to say what he suspects is happening.
"There are only 2,000 Greeks left in Istanbul," he grumbled. "None of us dares speak out."
So a rare customer filled-in the gaps.
"It's all about Islam," Sami said, as the shop-assistant wrapped his sausages in greaseproof paper.
"Most people are more religious these days. They don't want to eat pork, and they don't let others produce it either."
In their own way, illegal Irish are among the most arrogant and demanding of foreigners who have inserted themselves into America. They believe Ireland's history of exporting its excess population gives them some special rights not available to other illegal aliens. As English speaking people from Europe, Irish are more culturally similar to us than many other groups, but that gives them NO right to violate American immigration laws.
This issue appears to be more pressing now. The Economist recently warned that the weakening Irish property market could topple the country's economy because of Ireland's dependence on construction-related revenue. Unemployment in the Republic is higher than it has been in a decade, while the first quarter's increase in unemployment was the worst since 1975. Thousands of construction jobs are also at risk in the North because of the downturn in building activity.
What total BS. Ireland is now a major immigrant-receiving country (particularly from Eastern Europe -- leading to a multicultural Dublin) and if there are not enough jobs for Irish, then the Irish immigration pests should petition Ireland to take better care of its own. We have more than enough unwanted foreigners here in America already.
This is all the more reason to seek a legal pathway for Irish immigration. From the very beginning, the ILIR aligned ourselves with the Kennedy/McCain bill, which sought to create a conditional path to legal status for all undocumented immigrants. Kennedy/McCain did not promote amnesty, and neither did we. We have never sought amnesty for the undocumented Irish. We sought legality.
In fact, Ireland is so prosperous that its neighborhood bars are closing: In Affluent New Ireland, Rural Pubs Are So Yesterday. This is progress?
Arrogant Mexicans can't stand it when the rare spine-enhanced American official tells the truth about the invasion. Illegal Mexicans break all number of laws to steal food off the table of American workers, yet the foreigners become miffed when these basic facts are pointed out.
MEXICO CITY | A recent comment comparing illegal immigrants to prostitutes and drug dealers first inflamed the local Latino community, and now the anger has spilled into Mexico.
The point is the lawbreaking, but Mexicans always change the subject to non-existent racism. There's no right to immigrate, although Mexicans believe the border doesn't exist for them.
Mexican politicians and residents are calling Mecklenburg County commissioner Bill JamesÕ statements Ñ printed Friday in one of Mexico CityÕs leading newspapers Ñ an example of growing hostility against Latinos in the United States.
James, a Republican, made the comments during an April 15 commissioners meeting while discussing government contracts and whether illegal immigrants pay taxes. Near the end of the talk, Commissioner Norman Mitchell, a Democrat, referenced a recent Charlotte Observer article that mentioned that illegal immigrants paid taxes. James interjected that prostitutes and drug dealers also pay taxes.
ÒAl Capone paid taxes,Ó he said.
Jose Jacques Medina, a member of MexicoÕs lower house of Congress, said this is not the first time he has heard about James. He also said heÕs aware of the commissionerÕs proposals to deny county services to undocumented immigrants.
James is NOT backing down...
ÒThis is just racism, comparing us to prostitutes and narcotraffickers, in order win votes,Ó said Jacques Medina, secretary of the commission on Population, Border and Migratory Affairs.
James said had no intention of issuing an apology.
Check out his website: BillJames.org.
ÒWhy would I owe someone an apology for telling the truth?Ó James said. ÒI think that America needs to get a backbone. We have become a country of wimps. IÕm not going to apologize for stating the truth. Period.Ó
How lame is Mexico? State-owned Pemex oil still can't make a profit even with record prices for crude.
MEXICO CITY -- Even with oil at US$118 (euro75) a barrel, Mexico's state-run oil company is losing money.
Mexico is Marxico -- which is a big part of their problem.
But a presidential plan to fix Petroleos Mexicanos by inviting foreign help is riling deep-seated emotions over sovereignty -- and causing a paralysis that could doom America's third-largest oil supplier.
Leftist legislators have padlocked the doors of Congress, camping out in the chambers for two weeks in protest. Opponents on the right have attacked them in a national TV ad, invoking images of Adolf Hitler.
Everyone in Mexico -- from top leaders to housewives -- seems to be swept up in the fervor.
Violence against women in India can often take the form of accusations of witchcraft which can bring beatings or death.
PATNA, India (Reuters) - Police in eastern India want to display in a museum the head of a woman decapitated after she was accused of practicing witchcraft, hoping it will be a lesson for those who persecute innocent women.
Another indication of Indian misogyny is this item: India to crack down on doctors aborting girls.
A villager in Jharkhand state attacked the woman and chopped off her head at the weekend, apparently because he suspected her of being to blame for deaths in the family, police said. He then walked into the nearest police station holding the severed head.
"I think displaying this head in a museum will create a sensation in society and could be helpful in preventing people from taking to such heinous crimes," Sunit Kumar, a senior police officer, said from Jharkhand on Wednesday.
In rural India, villagers often accuse women of being witches and blame them for natural disasters or for an illness, death or theft.
Hundreds of them are killed every year and police say incidents often take a long time to come to light.
The Indian government yesterday signalled that it would be imposing tougher sentences on doctors who illegally abort female foetuses - a tacit admission that the law was not working.
And don't think that this behavior is a affliction of the poor classes only, that more educated Indians are too advanced to engage in it...
Experts estimate India has lost 10 million girls in the past 20 years. Yet in the 14 years since selective abortion was outlawed only two doctors has been convicted of the crime - and officials admit one of those is back in business.
The reason, says the government, is that under the existing act doctors are only suspended, face a fine of 50,000 rupees (£625) and a jail term of three months. Instead the health minister wants doctors conducting illegal sex determination tests to be struck off permanently, face a fine of 700,000 rupees (£8,750) and imprisonment for up to three years.
Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, will issue a call next week to clamp down on female foeticide. This comes after a campaign by the women and child development ministry to convince parents to give up girls for adoption rather than aborting them. The idea appears to have been quietly abandoned after running into bureaucratic quicksand.
Indian parents are choosing to abort female foetuses in such large numbers that 900,000 girls are now being lost every year.
Richer parts of India are worst affected - with parents sometimes ordering online home-kits which claim to determine the sex of a baby in the womb. In wealthy Haryana there are now just 770 girls being born for every 1,000 boys.
Meanwhile, culturally backward India remains a popular outsourcing destination for US companies: Debt Collection Done From India Appeals to U.S. Agencies.
Americans are used to receiving calls from India for insurance claims and credit card sales. But debt collection represents a growing business for outsourcing companies, especially as the American economy slows and its consumers struggle to pay for their purchases.
What a bunch of lowlifes. This character is one of Presidente Calderon's top aides, but he is a common thief.
Whether he was up to no good or simply desperate to play BrickBreaker, a Mexican press attachŽ was caught on camera pocketing several White House BlackBerries during a recent meeting in New Orleans and has since been fired, FOX News has learned.
The rip-off was the last straw in another disgusting performance by Presidente Calderon as a guest in this country. In earlier visits he had made vague references to relatives residing here illegally; in this trip he practically bragged about them, saying,"Many times the press asks me well where are your cousins, your friends? I greet them every day each time that I am able and I tell them the day there's an immigration reform I'm going to tell them where my cousins and my friends are."
Sources with knowledge of the incident said the official, Rafael Quintero Curiel, served as the lead press advance person for the Mexican Delegation and was responsible for handling logistics and guiding the Mexican media around at the conference.
Mexican Embassy spokesman Ricardo Alday said Thursday he was asked to tender his resignation once he arrived back in Mexico City.
"Mr. Quintero will be responsible for explaining his actions to the American authorities conducting an investigation. The Mexican Government deeply regrets this incident," he said.
On April 22, the US Postal Service issued a series of stamps honoring journalists. There was only one name with which I was not familiar, that of Ruben Salazar. Apparently his only qualifications for being honored were being deceased and Mexican.
Naturally the LA Times whipped up a froth of ethnic veneration for the late Mr. Salazar.
The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp today honoring Los Angeles newsman Ruben Salazar, who, through his reporting and opinion columns during the 1960s, became a provocative voice for a Mexican American community searching for its political and social identity.
Yes, so fascinating and diverse. Zzzzzzz.
Among the first Mexican American reporters to work at a mainstream newspaper, Salazar was killed Aug. 29, 1970, struck in the head by a high-velocity tear gas projectile fired by a sheriff's deputy during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in East Los Angeles. He was 42.
A Times columnist and general manager of KMEX-TV at the time of his death, Salazar quickly became a cultural icon. Awards are granted in his memory, and roads, schools and parks have been named after him. His likeness appears on posters, murals and lithographs, including one by the famous Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. Folk songs were written about him.
He is one of five American journalists being honored with stamps. The others are Martha Gellhorn, John Hersey, George Polk and Eric Sevareid.
The work and death of the husky man with piercing eyes, wavy black hair and a penchant for Louis Roth suits continue to haunt and inspire people.
Among them are a restaurant owner who for half a century has been helping Latinos campaign for political office, a professor writing a book about injustices Mexican Americans have suffered at the hands of law enforcement, a woman trying to separate myths from facts about her famous father, and a continuation high school student trying hard to get back on track.
But after 38 years of reminiscing and interpretation, can the true personal, professional and political depths of Salazar's life ever be known?
The truth, like everything else about Salazar, is complicated. Born in Juarez, Mexico, he was a political moderate who married a young white woman and lived in a middle-class home with a swimming pool in Orange County. Salazar was especially fond of dining on steak and corn with his wife, Sally, and their three children.
Yet, Charlie Ericksen, the founder of Hispanic Link, a Latino news service that publishes a weekly newsletter, recalled, "The husband that Sally knew was so different from the man we knew that it was almost as though he changed uniforms while driving down the freeway on the way home from work.
"Sally said he didn't like tequila, he preferred Scotch, and that he didn't like 'that Mexican music,' " he said. "But the Ruben I knew often spent his last dollar on one more song by mariachis. He was mas mexicano than anybody."
Three of the others honored with stamps -- Martha Gellhorn, John Hersey and Eric Severeid --
were all celebrated correspondents in WWII, back in the day when combat reporters were loyal Americans. George Polk was murdered while he was investigating the authoritarian Greek government in 1946, and a major journalism award was named for him.
In contrast, Salazar is only an icon to other hispanics, who have precious few accomplished persons to admire. It's a shame that the Post Office continues in the business of multicultural propaganda after its wretched Eid stamp honoring the religion of peace.
The hispanic caucus of the Congress is a tail trying to wag the dog, and its members are miffed that they have not succeeded in making immigration even more permissive. Speaker Pelosi may be a craven open-borders shill, but she is no fool. She knows that Americans and Democrats don't want an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus denounced House Democratic leaders Wednesday as "spineless" and little better than Republicans for failing to take on comprehensive immigration reform.
Leaders of the all-Democratic caucus, which numbers two dozen, criticized their party leadership at a news conference for instead scheduling hearings on enforcement legislation and specific visa issues.
They also complained that they are being blamed for opposing bills strongly supported by other Democrats that would add more visas for certain classes of immigrants, such as high-tech or seasonal workers. Instead, the Hispanic Caucus insists on a comprehensive approach that would provide a path for citizenship for some 12 million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S.
Such legislation collapsed in the Senate last year and Democratic House leaders have shown little appetite for trying to revive the highly contentious issue in an election year.
The European Union demonstrates how nation-states can be erased by unelected transnational bureaucrats, in this case by creating the "Manche Region" out of southern England and the northwestern coast of France.
The new European plan splits England into three zones that are joined with areas in other countries. [...]
Unlike globalist elites, the people want to keep those "old borders" and the national identity that goes with them. But the Eurocrats couldn't even allow the English Channel to remain, and had to rename it the meaningless "Channel Sea." The residents of these two areas have little in common in terms of history, language, religion and culture. The proposal is a blatant attempt to destroy national representative government to the advantage of Brussels bureaucrats.
Each zone will have a "transnational regional assembly", although they will not have extensive powers. However, the zones are regarded as symbolically important by other countries.
German ministers claimed that the plan was about "underlying the goal of a united Europe" to "permanently overcome old borders" at a time when the "Constitution for Europe needs to regain momentum".
Citizens of both France and the Netherlands rejected the EU "Constitution" in 2005, but the EU globalists have ignored what voters want. At least some Europeans got to vote to keep their own nation-states, unlike Americans.
In the parallel war against the American nation, on Monday President Bush opened a refurbished Mexican consulate in New Orleans, as well as effused shamefully over the neighboring narco-state and defended NAFTA. The occasion was a meeting of the North American Union principals, only now it has been renamed the North American Leaders' Summit in order to confuse the electorate.
The "Mexican city" continues its descent into madness and anarchy.
Los Angeles is at the leading edge of a U.S. demographic trend, with half of its workforce immigrants, many of them unskilled and speaking little English.
Leaders are just now noticing the overall drift of the region's skill set when illiterate peasants comprise a large portion of new workers?
As baby boomers retire, the same pattern will emerge across the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. Demographers estimate that by 2025 most of the growth in the workforce will be from immigrants.
Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, said Los Angeles is at a crossroads.
"The question is: Are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages?" he asked. "Right now we're headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that."
Some little education program thrown together by LA's reconquista mayor Villaraigosa won't solve the problem of a Mexican national culture that does not value education. Mexicans are the worst possible immigrants for a first-world economy.
One of the worst aspects of Mexican culture is how its people do not assimilate to American educational values even after generations of living here. Only 9.6 percent of fourth-generation Mexican-Americans earn a post-high-school degree compared with 45.1 percent of Americans as a whole.
As another indicator of America's self-destruction being recognized, here is a headline from Britain's Telegraph newspaper on the employment stats: Los Angeles 'is a Third World city'.
Seven-year-old Marcus Lassiter had hardly begun to live, but that young life was snuffed out by a drunk-driving illegal alien with several prior arrests for DUI. The boy was walking along the road with a friend when Hipolito Hernandez struck him down and sped off.
Marcus was a first-grader at Cooper Elementary School, in Clayton, North Carolina. His teacher Kate Mundt described him as a friendly boy who played with everyone. "He walked in every morning with a huge smile on his face," she said.
At least this article from WRAL.com connects the dots of crimes committed by illegal foreigners in a way that most media reports don't.
Seven-year-old Marcus Lassiter won't see his eighth birthday. George Smith was on his morning commute to Duke University but never made it to work. Betty Coates might struggle with daily tasks for the rest of her life.
The accused killer was speeding when he struck the little boy and had a blood-alcohol level of .21, more than twice the legal limit of .08.
Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell sees a pattern among the cases ofÊ these victims of drunken driving: Each accused driver was in the United States illegally.
Bizzell pointed to Hipolito Hernandez, an illegal immigrant who faces second-degree murder charges in the hit-and-run that killed Marcus last Sunday.
"This case here is a prime example of the justice system letting the people down," Bizzell said.
Nearly 300 illegal immigrants were convicted on driving-while-impaired charges and placed in North Carolina prisons in 2007.
Hispanics also account for 18 percent of drunken-driving arrests, while making up less than 7 percent of the stateÕs population, according to a study from the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center aired in WRAL's documentary "Focal Point: Crossing the Line."
The study also showed that Hispanics involved in car crashes were 2.5 times more likely to be drunk than white drivers and three times more likely to be drunk than black drivers.
Bizzell said the tragedy is that deaths such as Marcus' and debilitating injuries such as Coates' are preventable.
"This isn't about race. This isn't about Mexico versus the United States," Bizzell said. "It's about a drunk Mexican that's illegal, driving drunk, no operator's license, stolen vehicle, killing a little 7-year-old boy."
That's the ABC network's headline about a recent kefuffle over language in the Colorado state legislature. Douglas Bruce violated the prime directive of political correctness: Thou shalt not tell the truth about immigration.
State Rep. Douglas Bruce, who has a history of provoking controversy, made the comment during debate on a bill that would allow the state to help immigrant workers get temporary federal visas. The measure is intended to ease a shortage of farm workers in the state.
What's wrong with "illiterate peasant"? Is that not an accurate description of many Mexicans who come to America?
"I would like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don't think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado," Bruce said.
His outburst drew an audible gasp from the House.
"How dare you," said state Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Democrat who was serving as chairwoman during the debate. She told the Republican lawmaker he was no longer recognized to speak.
Only 13 percent of adult Mexicans have a high school diploma (compared with 87 percent of Americans). The average Mexican has about five years of education.
Dictionary.com defines "peasant" in these words: a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank.
My much-used Merriman-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (copyright 1983) says this: a member of a European class of persons tilling the soil as small landowners or as laborerors; also; a member of a similar class elsewhere.
So what's the big slur? Why is this description objectionable other than being an unpleasant truth? If I called Mexican immigrants "uneducated workers from rural backgrounds" would that be a problem?
In the 1930s, the German American Bund acted openly within the United States in its espousal of Nazi doctrine. However, at no time did Hitler or any other Nazi official visit the group in this country. Hitler wanted the Bund's leader, Fritz Kuhn, to pipe down and keep a lower profile.
But Mexico's fifth column has no such shyness. Mexican presidentes, like the current one Felipe Calderon, love to visit and whip up the troops into greater fervor about the beloved homeland. "Keep those remittances coming" is part of the message, along with the more long-term goals of reconquista.
Mexico's President Felipe Calder—n comes to Dallas on Tuesday with bridge-building credentials. He has a Harvard master's degree, English fluency Ð and relatives who work illegally in the U.S.
All three attributes should serve him well when he meets separately with Mexican immigrant leaders and Texas business executives.
A crackdown against illegal immigrants is roiling Texas and much of the U.S., and its scope and fury haven't been seen in this country in at least 50 years, historians have said.
Dallas is the setting this week for a three-day conference of an advisory board to the Institute for Mexicans Abroad (IME), an organization founded in 2003 by the Mexican government. The board's mission is to promote economic development in Mexico and the U.S. while defending migrants working outside Mexico.
I regard the Americans killed by illegal aliens as the sacrifice willingly made by elites in order to lower wages by maintaining open borders. George Bush and his pals are fine with a few thousand deaths to secure the anti-democratic global economy.
In the same way, citizens who have lost their lives because of poison products from China are victims of the war for globalization -- by the elites against the people.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today said a Wisconsin company's Chinese plant used to make the blood thinner heparin's active ingredient was "unsuitable for its intended use" and was not in a position to detect impurities in the product now linked to hundreds of potentially deadly allergic reactions.
The FDA is probing the China-based supply chain, where the active ingredient in heparin made by Baxter International Inc. originates. Health officials suspect it may have been intentionally contaminated with an animal-like substance similar to heparin that was put into the product to increase certain suppliers' profits. [...]
The FDA has said there are now 62 reports of deaths of patients who experienced one or more allergic reactions and who were infused with heparin from Jan. 1, 2007, through the end of last month, the agency said.
You can't make this stuff up. "Muslim science" remains stuck in two dimensions and proves beyond a doubt that ignorance is bliss.
Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.
Actually, Greenwich was chosen as the point for zero degrees longitude, aka the Prime Meridian, in an international conference in 1884. Delegates from 25 countries voted and Greenwich won by 22 to one (two abstentions).
Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.
The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.
One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.
He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.
Back to Islamic notions of time, another bright Son of Allah invented a unique clock:
The meeting also reviewed what has been described as a Mecca watch, the brainchild of a French Muslim.
The watch is said to rotate anti-clockwise and is supposed to help Muslims determine the direction of Mecca from any point on Earth.
The British continue to surrender in pieces to their demanding Muslim immigrants, who are remarkably sensitive about the culture of their adopted home when they are not busy blowing people up.
St. George is the patron saint of England and April 23 is meant to be a patriotic holiday. But police feared the Muslims would be miffed, so the city backed down. Muslims don't even have to make active threats any more.
Earlier this year there was a controversy over whether the country has become dangerously divided by ethnic neighborhoods (Bishop warns of no-go zones for non-Muslims), but this latest incident shows what the police believe.
A St George's Day parade through an inner-city area hit by race riots has been cancelled following police advice.
This is the same country where liberal elites believe that national loyalty is too retro to be taught to the young: 'Don't teach children patriotism'
Community groups had planned to stage the multi-cultural event in Bradford and 1,500 schoolchildren were due to take part.
Many of the youngsters had already made flags of St George to carry on the parade on April 23, which was designed to boost community cohesion.
But last week police and council chiefs told the organisers that the event could not go ahead as planned for 'health and safety' reasons. At a meeting, police demanded a shorter route which avoided two streets at the centre of the race riots in 2001.
As a result, organisers have decided to call off the event, which was due to attract more than 10,000 people.
Bradford City councillor Quasim Khan said: "We were told by the police at the meeting that the original route had not been risk assessed and if we wanted a march to go ahead on that date, St George's Day, we would have to accept a smaller, different route. [...]
Local Tory MP Philip Davies said: "This was a prime opportunity to promote integration in a celebration of being British. "The police and council, whether it's through political correctness or whatever, have failed miserably. It's frankly pathetic."
The Bradford riots in July, 2001, were sparked by the stabbing of a local Asian youth by National Front supporters. They ended with more than 300 police injured and 297 people arrested.
As it happens, the Vatican is losing quite a number of hispanic immigrantss to Protestant churches, including Pentacostal. The Pope's visit is certainly designed as a six-day commercial to gather up the flock who have wandered off to other pews.
Catholic leaders and experts on the church in the United States say that the impact of Pentecostalism has been less dramatic here. Still, the pope has urged the nationÕs bishops to make every effort to welcome immigrants Ñ Òto share their joys and hopes, to support them in their sorrows and trials, and to help them flourish in their new home.Ó And any number of Catholic clergy and laypeople have conceded that the church needs to work harder at reaching, and keeping, its Latino flock.
Interesting that the Office for Cultural Diversity wants only Vatican-dictated homogeneity for what it regards as its tribe.
"That some of the newly arrived Latinos are drawn to Pentecostalism is certainly reason for concern," said the Rev. Allan Figueroa Deck, the executive director of the Office for Cultural Diversity, which was created last June by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to help the church adjust to its changing ethnic makeup.
Rep. Tom Tancredo mentioned some of that demographic background in his April 17 Special Orders speech.
Tribal Chinese were out in force on Saturday, squawking about CNN's Jack Cafferty, who had the temerity to speak honestly when describing the products of their beloved communist homeland.
"We understand free speech," said Lake Wang, 39, of Thousand Oaks. "But what if Cafferty said this about other racial groups? I think he would be fired. I think he's jealous of China."
It's such a nice touch to display their foreign-language signs in America! Let's just imagine what they mean...
Incidentally, here's what Cafferty actually said, and it's quite clear that he was referring to the communist government. But immigrants looking for something to complain about will always find something.
Cafferty made the comments during an appearance on "The Situation Room" that aired April 9.
See the VDARE.com version: Los Angeles Chinese Protest Criticism of PRC Government.
Speaking about the U.S. trade deficit with China, Cafferty commented: "We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart."
"So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed," he continued. "I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."
[SoCal Protest Slams CNN For McCafferty China Slurs, KPIX-TV, San Francisco, April 19, 2008]
In addition, see China tribal solidarity over the issue of "unification" in rallies from Canada to Europe and Australia: Chinese unite in global protest over Tibet, bias
Rep Sue Myrick shot up in my estimation when she presented the Scott Gardner Act to fight against drunk driving illegal aliens. Named after a victim, the legislation (which has yet to be signed into law) would crack down on drunk-driving illegal aliens. It's shocking that drunk driving is treated as a minor offense -- when it's committed by a foreigner.
As Rep. Myrick stated when introducing the bill, "You're drunk, you're driving, you're illegal, you're deported, period."
Anyway, Rep. Myrick has been a rare voice of sanity in the Congress against Islamic terrorism. She wants to stop the Saudi student program until their country stops using Islam-extremist textbooks. Hey, why not end the ill-considered program entirely, if for no other reason than citizen kids need those college slots.
Among her goals is to investigate Muslim military and prison chaplains who were endorsed by a man now in prison for funding terrorism, and examine the nonprofit status of an organization partially funded by Saudis.
That group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says her assumptions are wrong.
If the Pope were only concerned about saving souls for Christ -- his job description, as I understood it -- then the geographical location of the vessels holding those souls would not matter. They could be as easily reached in Mexico as in America.
Actually, the Pope could more readily evangelize those people in their hispanic homelands, which are Catholic nations, unlike the United States whose history is based on Protestant, democratic values.
As multiculturalism critic Prof. Samuel Huntington has written, "if America had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics, it would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil."
The American bishops have been consistently outspoken in favor of legislation to give legal status to illegal immigrants and expand legal avenues for immigrants to bring their family members from abroad.
The Pope's unseemly meddling in America's domestic immigration policies is indeed about "faith-based marketing," as Rep. Tancredo remarked.
They and other Catholic activists were among the most visible supporters of a broad bill, supported by Mr. Bush but not enacted by Congress last year, which included a path to legal status for 12 million illegal immigrants.
They took BenedictÕs statements last week as affirmation of their work. For while the immigration theme has been overshadowed during BenedictÕs trip by his denunciations of the sexual abuse scandal in the church, it was the second issue after the abuse cases that he addressed on the plane from Rome, when he responded to reportersÕ questions that were submitted in advance and picked by the Vatican.
But more than that, the Pope seeks to increase the market share and political clout of Catholicism in the world's superpower to shape this country more to his liking. Open-borders demographics are an efficient force-multiplier for the Vatican's special interests.
With immigrants from everywhere and yonder, northern California gets disease diversity.
Call it one price of globalism.
See also California TB Data, WHO's recent report about the increase of Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and a TB factsheet from the CDC.
Last year, tuberculosis increased in four of the Bay Area's five largest counties, and the San Jose area in 2006 had the highest TB rate of any large American metro area, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the California Department of Public Health. San Francisco, after an outbreak of TB among Latino dayworkers in the Mission district, has the highest TB rate of any county in California - quadruple the U.S. rate.
From the bodies of Peruvian mummies to 21st-century tech workers, tuberculosis has been mankind's dark partner for centuries - a highly infectious disease that never followed the path to eradication of smallpox and polio. One in three people worldwide are infected, and 1.7 million died last year, mostly in poor countries where people lack the access to detection and treatment available in the United States.
Tuesday is Earth Day, so the San Francisco Chronicle has a few articles examining the problems of growth. (Hint: to genuine environmentalists, every day is Earth Day.)
The other 360 days of the year, the paper defends open borders and endless population growth, but for this brief span of time, the Chron recognizes that sprawl and other symptoms of the human population explosion are problematic.
In 1990, Tracy, a friendly agricultural community separated from the Bay Area by the Altamont Pass, had fewer than 34,000 residents. Today, the mushrooming town, located at the western gateway to the Central Valley, has a population nearing 81,000.
Where the rubber hits the road, so to speak: San Ramon development envelops more pasture land.
The town sits as a symbol of the quest by working- and middle-class Bay Area residents to find housing they can afford - a pursuit that often draws them further from the traditional job centers in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.
The result: A swath of residential and retail development that reaches toward the Sierra foothills, into the agricultural heartland of the Central Valley and south toward Salinas on land once reserved for ranching, farming and recreation.
The migration comes at costs to the environment: loss of natural habitat, increased greenhouse gases and a growing strain on the watershed.
This is Rep Tom Tancredo's press release criticizing the Pope's intrusion in Americans' domestic affairs.
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) today criticized the PopeÕs comments regarding U.S. immigration policy. According to reports, Pope Benedict XVI said the United States must do "everything possible to fight ... all forms of violence so that immigrants may lead dignified lives."
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It's disapointing to see Pope Benedict talking about non-existent violence against "immigrants" like some La Raza race huckster. As Tancredo says, it's all
"I would like to know what part of our lax immigration policy is considered violent," Tancredo said. ÒI fail to see how accepting more refugees than any other nation Ðand providing free health care, education, housing and social service benefits to millions of illegal aliens is in any way 'violent' or 'degrading.'" [...]
"I am not taking issue with the Pope's moral authority and respect his views on the threats of Islamic immigration," Tancredo said. "However, it is not in his job description to engage in American politics."
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Tancredo also cited a recent report indicating that the "Catholic ChurchÉhas been losing members rapidly -- as much as a third of the native-born Catholic population. Meanwhile, it has gained members among foreign-born (mostly Hispanic) residents."
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Tancredo concluded, "I suspect the PopeÕs immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church," said Tancredo. "This isnÕt preaching it is 'faith-based' marketing."
The Denver Post has a brief video of Tancredo expressing his disappointment at the Pope's meddling, along with an article, Tancredo slams pope on immigration. It also notes that "Tancredo was raised Catholic but now attends Cherry Hills Community Church, an evangelical Christian church."
See also Michelle Malkin's remarks, Open borders and the Catholic elite.
Maybe it's an instance of the grass is always greener, but it has long seemed to me that Britain does edgier polls regarding immigration than the USA. For example, America didn't have a domestic survey asking Muslims questions about jihad, identity and loyalty until May 2007 (Muslim Fifth Column Polled). That's nearly six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
By comparison, the Daily Telegraph in Britain quizzed the local Muslims about their attitudes toward explosives and headchop two years after the London bombings that killed 52.
Anyway, here is the current morsel of information from across the pond.
Almost two-thirds of people in Britain fear race relations are so poor that tensions are likely to spill over into violence, a BBC poll has found.
Any racial strife is Britain is totally about immigration of course, since the country was almost entirely white until post WWII.
Of the 1,000 people asked, 60% said the UK had too many immigrants and half wanted foreigners encouraged to leave.
The survey was commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell's infamous "rivers of blood" speech, in which he described the indigenous population's "sense of alarm and resentment" over immigration.
For a transcript of Enoch Powell's famous warning against disastrous immigration, see the VDARE.com account. Everyone carries on about the "rivers of blood" bit, which doesn't even exist, but I find the first sentence to be most memorable:
Speaking of his foreboding, he said: "Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with blood."
"The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils."
Incidentally, just a couple weeks ago, Britain's Prime Minister rejected any limits on newcomers to the tiny island: Brown rejects cap on immigration. Low-rent politicians still want to forget Powell's foresight.
Forty years later (on April 20, to be precise), Enoch Powell is looking more prescient by the day.
The media are still stuck on multiculturalism nonsense, while the public knows better. Italy has had terrible trouble with criminal gypsies and Muslims, and the people are sick of it. Nobody wants to have diversity crapola shoved down their throat, and Italians are no different.
But the media have to make the desire for cultural survival sound like the worst thing in the world.
ROME Ñ Silvio Berlusconi branded illegal immigrants an "army of evil" on yesterday in his first day in office after winning Italy's general election.
Here's the BBC trash-talking Berlusconi's political support: Italy's Northern League resurgent.
Mr. Berlusconi, 71, who was elected on Monday to serve a third term as prime minister, said that he would "step up neighborhood police, who can be an army of good, placing themselves between the Italian people and the army of evil."
He vowed to deport non-European Union citizens who "do not have work or home and are forced into crime in order to live."
Italy's centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi won a return to power this week with a majority that - by Italian standards - looks very comfortable.
I have no idea whether the Northern League is over the line in its righty-ness. But the MSM still lies regularly that any people defending borders are nut jobs, so how would you know? On this issue at least, the Northern League expresses a totally mainstream sentiment, that citizens from Hazleton to Rome want immigration to be legal, controlled and reduced. They don't want an invasion of their national home by a bunch of hostile foreigners to be papered over with liberal ideology about "celebrating diversity" and other multiculti BS. Italians sure don't want to make way for a bunch of head-choppy Muslims.
But he did so with the help of a formerly troublesome and often controversial right-wing ally, the Northern League.
The populist party almost doubled its vote, winning more than 8% nationally, and is expected to have several ministers in the new government.
That has led to concerns about what critics see as the party's overtly xenophobic stance, and questions over whether Mr Berlusconi will be "held hostage" by the League.
Los Angeles Fox reporter John Schwada blogged about the secret that everyone in LA knows, that hispanic gangsters are shooting down random blacks (like 14-year-old Cheryl Green) to show their growing power. The murder of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw last month looks like another one of those killings, but is hardly the first. (See my March 10 article, In Los Angeles, Hispanic Gangs Ethnically Cleansing Black Neighborhoods.)
LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, on April 4th, told a largely African-American audience in Compton that when Latino gangs are at war with black gangs over drugs and turf they are sometimes satisfied to kill any young black living in their rivalÕs territory in order to flex their criminal muscle. In other words, Baca asserted innocents are being targeted for death by gangs just because of their race. Sounds like a hate-crime to most of us.
Twelve-year-old gang members -- another reason to celebrate diversity! (It's almost as good as the recent Colorado story about a diverse couple: Parents Fight Over Which Gang Toddler Should Join.)
Fox 11 News obtained a videotape of the remarks Baca made to the National Association for Equal Justice in America; those remarks, taped by Lonzo Williams, a cable TV talk-show host, were included in a Fox 11 story that aired Friday (April 10) as part of our continuing coverage of the murder of Jamiel Shaw, a promising LA High School football player, allegedly killed by an 18th Street gang member on March 2.
Shaw lived in a neighborhood identified as the turf of the Black P-Stones (BPS), an African-American gang that has had a long, deadly feud with the predominantly Latino 18th Street gang. But Shaw was not a member of BPS, and the evening he was murdered Shaw was not wearing attire that might have caused him to be mistakenly identified as a gang member. Immigration and police officials say Shaw's accused murderer, Pedro Espinoza, 19, is an illegal alien who has been an 18th Street gang member since he was 12 years old.
Here's more from Baca's remarks.
Pretty explosive stuff. And then Baca went a step further, claiming his deputies had overheard jailed Latino gang bosses (so-called Òshot-callersÓ) telling their followers on the outside that, in a feud with a black gang, it was okay to kill any blacks to make their point. ÒWeÕve heard when the person out there canÕt find African-American gang member to shoot, the shot-caller says: ÔThen shoot any African-American you see.ÕÓ (Jamiel Shaw's father was in the audience that day and Baca looked him straight in the eye when he made these remarks; but the sheriff did NOT specifically say if he believed ShawÕs murder was racially-motivated).
Going to Mexico is dangerous business: the State Department says so. Check out the official word on what's going on right next door.
Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily-armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades.ÊÊ Confrontations have taken place in numerous towns and cities in northern Mexico, including Tijuana in the Mexican state of Baja California, and Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua.Ê The situation in northern Mexico remains very fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements there cannot be predicted.
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Here's a relevant chunk of news ripped from the headlines: Mexican town caught in crossfire of drug cartels.
Armed robberies and carjackings, apparently unconnected to the narcotics-related violence, have increased in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.Ê Dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007.Ê Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas.Ê
CIUDAD JUçREZ, Mexico: One sign of the desperation to end organized crime in this border town is that the good guy on the police recruitment posters is not a clean-cut youth in smart police caps, but a menacing-looking soldier wearing a black mask and a helmet and carrying a heavy machine gun. [...]
A turf war between drug cartels has claimed more than 210 lives in the first three months of this year, more than twice the number of homicides for the same period last year. Several mass graves, hiding a total of 36 bodies, have been discovered in the backyards of two houses belonging to drug dealers.
At the height of the violence, around Easter, bodies were turning up every morning, at a rate of almost 12 a week. The mayor and the governor of Ciudad Ju‡rez asked the federal government to intervene.
The brilliant People's Cube has a lot of Absolut Photoshops spun off from the vodka company's disastrous reconquista marketing strategy. One caught my eye...
Western civilization doesn't have many defenders in Europe, but the Pope should definitely be counted as one. He must walk a very fine line in his position, because when Muslims are angered by his words and actions, Christians are murdered in the Islamic world.
Remember that Pope John Paul II was shot and nearly killed in 1981 by Mehmet Ali Acga, a Turkish Muslim. Pope John Paul II was later photographed kissing a Koran, something Pope Benedict has not done and hopefully never will.
Back when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, he opposed the entry of Turkey into the European Union, but now as Pope he must be more political. Still, his intention to pray that Islamic jihadists turn to Christianity away from the religion of headchop shows a lot of grit and will be seen by many Muslims as a Crusader incitement.
The Pope will pray for the redemption of Islamic terrorists when he visits the site of the September 11 attacks in New York next week.
Below: On Easter, Pope Benedict baptized the former Muslim Magdi Allam into the Christian faith, an act that endeared neither man to the Sons of Allah.
The pontiff will call for terrorists to convert to Christianity, saying: "Turn to Your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.
"God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance".
The prayer is likely to further incense the Muslim world, which has already attacked the Pope for publicly converting Magdi Allam, a journalist and one of Italy's most high-profile Muslims, at Easter.
Osama bin Laden accused the Pope of trying to provoke "a new crusade" against Islam.
On domestic American issues, the anti-borders extremists plan to nag the Pope about how the poor Mexicans need a welcome wagon a the Rio Grande instead of a fence. The Catholic church is ideologically conflicted on this issue, saying on one hand that nations have the right to control their immigration, while also declaring that the poor have the right to go wherever they want to get money. Of course, the Catholic elites in America favor permissive immigration because it benefits them directly, both in accumulating fresh pew fillers and $40 million in government funds disbursed for annual refugee resettlement.
We'll see an interesting gauge of the Pope's integrity by his response on the immigration issue. Hispanics are a big part of Catholic churches not being completely empty in America, since corruption has turned off so many citizens. However, in 2000, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi recommended that Italy protect its national identity by favoring Catholic immigrants over Muslim ones. We loyal Americans would like to protect our national identity also.
For a more detailed exposition of the Catholic church's political activism for open borders, see my 2006 article, America's Vaticrats.
No good deed goes unpunished when it has to do with immigration enforcement. The useless Mayor of Phoenix wants Sheriff Arpaio shut down because he is sending illegal aliens to where they belong. Arizonans are happy to see illegals on their way home to Mexico or wherever. Bon Voyage.
In the wake of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office crackdowns on illegal immigrants throughout the Valley, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is calling on the FBI to investigate whether Sheriff Joe Arpaio has violated any civil-rights laws.
In an April 4 letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Gordon asked the Justice Department's civil-rights division and the FBI to probe what Gordon calls a "pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests."
The collapse of the Pacific salmon fishery was ""unprecedented" and surprised many experts when the number of adult chinooks returning to spawning ground fell precipitously. There are many reasons given, but they add up to California's torrent of population growth, and all of the policies designed to accommodate millions more residents. The salmon has been sacrificed for the Ponzi growth associated with open borders, but it won't be the last loss by any means.
The ban on all commercial and sport fishing for chinook salmon in California and most of Oregon this year could be the beginning of the end for a whole way of life.
Commercial fishing is an industry that is deep in the heart of life along California's 1,000-mile coast, where fishing ports from Crescent City to Morro Bay have supported generations of fishing families. [...]
"Salmon are trapped between human population growth, economic development, degradation of environmental quality and the politics of public policy," [David] Montgomery wrote.
There are a lot of reasons the population of salmon returning to their spawning grounds on the Sacramento River and its tributaries dropped from 800,000 six years ago to 68,000 last year.
On a 1-10 scale of infuriating stories about foreign parasites feeding on American society, this case is an 11. Its central figure illustrating illegal aliens at the trough is a 21-year-old Mexican awaiting her 4th liver transplant. Kudos to reporter Anna Gorman for including the dollar figures of costs for taxpayers and important statistics about the availability of transplant organs.
Ana Puente was an infant with a liver disorder when her aunt brought her illegally to the U.S. to seek medical care. She underwent two liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center as a child in 1989 and a third in 1998, each paid for by the state.
This article is also valuable because of its illumination of the California programs that give illegal aliens more rights and privileges than citizens.
But when Puente turned 21 last June, she aged out of her state-funded health insurance and the ability to continue treatment at UCLA. [...]
Puente's case highlights two controversial issues: Should illegal immigrants receive liver transplants in the U.S. and should taxpayers pick up the cost?
The average cost of a liver transplant and first-year follow-up is nearly $490,000, and antirejection medications can run more than $30,000 annually, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplantation nationwide.
Donor livers are also in scarce supply. In California, nearly 3,700 people are on a waiting list for livers, according to the network. Last year, 767 liver transplants were performed in the state. More than 90% of the organs were given to U.S. citizens.
Late last month Puente learned of another, little-known option for patients with certain healthcare needs. If she notified U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that she was in the country illegally, state health officials might grant her full Medi-Cal coverage. Puente did so, her benefits were restored and she is now awaiting a fourth transplant at UCLA.
Get that? Breaking the law gets her a special provision of California policy providing free healthcare for illegal aliens only. Nice! Naturally she has already signed up for her new freebies, from the old source (us battered taxpayers).
After mooching so much free stuff from the American taxpayer, Puente has a sense of entitlement that just won't quit...
"It doesn't matter if I'm undocumented," she said. "They should take care of me at UCLA for the rest of my life because I've been there since I was a baby."
This is an excellent, maddening article that deserves a close reading.
Incidentally, California is deep in debt: California proposes $7 billion for prison healthcare (LA Times, April 12):
As of Oct. 1, the state had $57.3 billion in debt outstanding, plus $78.2 billion that has been authorized but not yet borrowed. The prison borrowing would not be dependent on approval by voters because state officials want to use a type of bonds that requires only lawmakers' permission.
Lest we forget, Puente's nation of citizenship, Mexico, is quite wealthy (often ranking around #15 in GDP among nations) and could easily afford to take better care of its citizens. Mexico only pretends to be poor so it can dump its unwanted sick and uneducated on Uncle Sucker, as well as beg for foreign aid for interior policing.
Schwarzenegger and the SacraMexico legislature recently pitched ahealthcare program that would include illegal immigrant children. If their idiotic legislation were ever to pass, all the sick kids of Mexico and beyond would soon be here, and California would sink in red ink like a stone.
It is not exactly news that the BBC checks its spine at the door when reporting Islam truthfully is concered. But when the guy in charge admits his company's failings, albeit mildly, that's noteworthy.
Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, tonight warned broadcasters against becoming overly-cautious in their reporting on Islam for fear of causing offence to Muslims.
Media types like to regard themselves in noble, grandiose terms. However, the plain fact is that Muslim intimidation and death threats work, and fear has shut up the press.
Speaking at Westminster Cathedral Mr Thompson, a practising Catholic, said there was Òa growing nervousness about discussion about Islam and its relationship to the traditions and values of British and Western society as a wholeÓ.
The home secretary has described the terrorism threat facing the UK as "severe" and "growing". [...]
No mention of who those "terrorists" might be, or their reason to hate Britain so, or how they came to be there in the first place.
"There are 2,000 individuals they are monitoring. There are 200 networks. There are 30 active plots.
"That has increased over the past two years. Since the beginning of 2007, 57 people have been convicted on terrorist plots.
As I have been reporting since 2005, the Bush administrationÊhas endangered the American public by welcoming college students from Saudi Arabia to study at US universities. It's bad enough that the foreign students are taking slots that could go to worthy citizen young folks, but the policy is clearly a national security threat. Now they want more.
Al-JOUF, 10 April 2008 Ñ US Ambassador Ford Fraker said in Sakaka that his country aims to double the number of student visas issued to Saudis.
Islamic students have already been involved in terror plots, for example Egyptian nationals attending the University of South Florida, Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed and Youssef Samir Megahed. They were charged last August with possessing explosive devices: 2 Charged With Pipe Bombs Near Navy Base.
"Currently there are 15,000 Saudi students in the US," he said during an event on Sunday with local business leaders to an audience at the Al-Jouf Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "We aim to increase their numbers to 30,000 over the next five years."
Another well known criminal who was in fact a Saudi graduate student, Homaidan Al-Turki, pursued a PhD in Colorado. Though not convicted as a terrorist, he did get 20 years to life for slavery. He forced an Indonesian woman to work as a nanny in his house for years, held her passport and sexually abused her.
At sentencing, al-Turki played the cultural victimization card, saying "The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution."
He continues to whine from prison on his personal website, HomaidanAlTurki.com. (You can drop him a line about American values at alturki.mr@gmail.com)
So even when Saudis residing in America don't act as terrorists, many believe that they can act as they please, despite breaking American law -- including the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which ended slavery.
Parts of San Francisco were a sea of Red China flags yesterday, as friends of the Peoples' Republic showed up in force to celebrate the homeland's rise to power on the occasion of the Olympic torch run.
Taking the torch to the other side of town and skirting the whole enormous pro-China crowd at the ballpark might have improved the chances for public safety, but it also gave the torch back to San Francisco. Suddenly, it was back to the original idea, a run through the streets with a symbol of the upcoming Olympic Games, not a carefully planned political charade.
Below, only one American flag, among a sea of red, indicated the location of the Olympic torch event.
Because this, apparently, is the Chinese government's idea of free speech. They speak freely, and everyone else gets shouted down. Frankly, there is no denying that they were well organized. I took a minute to talk to a Tibetan protester, Kal Sang, but I was quickly joined by two young men who listened to the interview and began to interject derogatory comments.
"I hope America hears the voice of these people," said one of the interrupters, Jun Liu, from San Mateo. "The media pretended they would be fair, but they are not just biased, they are extremely biased."
Sang, a Tibetan from Minnesota, who had done nothing more than stand with a friend wearing a "Free Tibet" shirt, was surrounded by critics. A woman shouted at her, "You know nothing!" and "Go to Tibet to see for yourself."
"They put pressure on us," said Sang, who looked like a soccer mom. "They try to get us to push them, but we are nonviolent. We are not against the Olympics. They should hold the Olympics. But we are speaking for people who do not have a voice."
At that moment, the China supporters seemed to think that they'd carried the day. The "Free Tibet" crowd had been harassed to the point that they packed up and walked toward the Ferry Building. It appeared that the torch would be coming down the street any minute, and the news photos and video would feature thousands and thousands of cheering China supporters waving red flags.
A cocky young man walked past me and read his sign out loud, "Welcome to Beijing," he said.
What you do read is a lot of adoration for the Chinese homeland from people who immigrated to the United States of their own volition. These folks are a potential fifth column, and some in sensitive positions have already taken that step by spying for Red China, like the recently sentenced Chi Mak and other PRC loyalists.
See Friendly Appeasement: Chinese-American ÒCommittee Of 100Ó Seeks Accommodation with Beijing for more about the "global Chinese" -- with emphasis on "Chinese."
Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten is a breath of fresh air among the PC gerbils that populate the staff of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, one of the most liberal newspapers in America. She has been drawing attention to a madrassa-style school financially supported by Minnesota taxpayers. Madrassas, particularly in Pakistan, have been effective in training junior jihadists.
Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion.
See Kersten's March 9 column, Are taxpayers footing bill for Islamic school in Minnesota?
Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.
TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is "establishing Islam in Minnesota." The building also houses a mosque. TIZA's executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.
Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food - permissible under Islamic law -- and "Islamic Studies" is offered at the end of the school day. [...]
Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.
Also, check out the New York Times Magazine article from 2000: The Education of a Holy Warrior
If there's any doubt that slavery has returned to America, check out the wages and working conditions for illegal alien carwasheros in Los Angeles. Naturally, corrupt, anti-Amerian unions want to organize these workers, rather than insist on their deportation -- a policy that would aid citizen workers and the country at large.
That first day the organizers came, Varela's insides churned with worry. He was terrified at the thought of losing this job. But he felt his boss owed him -- all of them -- more than the $3 to $4 an hour they typically were paid. He would see what this union meeting was all about.
Below, demonstrators protest the wages that "carwasheros" receive at a workplace in Los Angeles.
Month after month, at Wednesday-night meetings in the Pico-Union area, Nary's workers sat among dozens of carwasheros who'd straggled in after work from all over Los Angeles. Like the Nary's workers, these men were being paid $40 a day -- or less -- for up to 12 hours of work. They said their bosses threatened and screamed at them.
For a reminder of when Americans did those jobs, see the trailer for the 1976 blaxploitation movie, Car Wash.
C-SPAN has been putting more of its videos online for individual viewing. This one is an odd hearing last Friday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a government entity with members of varying intelligence. However, several friends of borders delivered statements and answered questions on the subject of how black citizens are harmed by illegal immigration, including Prof Vernon Briggs, Prof Carol Swain and CIS's Steve Camarota.
Another C-SPAN video worth your attention is a 10-minute clip of author Jerome Corsi at a book fair explaining the North American Union: The Late Great USA.
As usual, Investors Business Daily lays down an opinion that is right on target. It's sad to see one of our closest cultural cousins turned to mush by bad immigration and other self-destructive behavior and attitudes.
This is the same place where educational bureaucrats declared in February that schools should not teach love of country (ÔDonÕt teach children patriotismÕ) because Britain's history is "morally ambiguous" -- compared to what paragon of national virtue, I would ask.
First, it's no pleasure to see U.S. perceptions fall so precipitously for our oldest and closest ally Ñ the one with whom we went through two World Wars and the Cold War, and in each simultaneously elected great leaders who rose to the occasion.
See also my article from January expressing similar concerns, Britain: Where Are the MinutemenÉEr, Home Guard?
But from a BBC World Service poll of 1,000 Americans, it's clear U.S. views of Britain have fallen sharply. The BBC said "positive views" of Britain stand now at 45%, down from 67% a year ago. Those holding negative views are at 42%, up from 18%. [...]
That brings up a second repellent trend Ñ a culture gone so soft it won't defend itself. Several events happened to show it.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, who leads the Church of England, said Britons will eventually accept some aspects of Muslim Shariah law Ñ the same rules that cut off hands for stealing, heads for blasphemy, and force women behind the veil.
As practiced, it's the very system responsible for the stagnation and poverty of Arabic and Muslim cultures over a thousand years Ñ which happens to be why many Muslims flee to Britain in the first place. If the Archbishop won't stand up for British values, who will?
Meanwhile, an unassimilated Muslim immigrant population attends radical madrassas and adopts radical views seen on satellite TV and seems to want Britain to assimilate Ñ not vice versa. That's why some 80% of British Muslims in one poll said they believe suicide bombing to be an acceptable form of Jihad against the West.
The U.S. is constantly bombarded with news stories of Piglet mugs being banned to avoid offending Muslims, U.K. flags being taken down in prisons because their crosses offend Muslims, and mosque Minarets rising among the historically dreaming spires of Oxford.
All these are strikes against some of the strongest and most beloved symbols of Britain. If a culture doesn't want to defend itself, no one else will. But certainly, no one has to admire it.
Islam apologists constantly tell us that the religion in Asia is not like the "extreme" version practiced by backward Arabs in the Middle East. Someone forgot to tell the Indonesian Muslims, apparently.
Islamic extremism and local governments closed more than 100 churches in Indonesia within three years, according to a persecution watchdog agency.
From 2004 to 2007, 110 churches were closed in Indonesia as a result of attacks from radical Muslim groups or by local governments coerced by these groups, reported Compass Direct News. Based on official numbers, a total of 1,025 churches have been closed or destroyed in Indonesia since the island nation claimed its independence in 1945. Notably, however, only two cases of church destruction or closures are recorded in the era of IndonesiaÕs first president, Sukarno (1945-1967).
Also in 2005, Islamic militants on motorcycles beheaded three Christian schoolgirls who were on their way to school. The girlsÕ heads were dumped in villages nearby with and a handwritten note by the bodies warned of more killings in revenge for sectarian violence on Sulawesi Island.
ÒWanted Ð 100 more heads,Ó read the letter, according to The Associated Press. ÒBlood must be paid with blood, lives with lives, heads with heads.Ó
While Muslims compose 86.1 of IndonesiaÕs population, Protestants account for 5.7 percent, Roman Catholics 3 percent, Hindus 1.8 percent, and others 3.4 percent, according the CIA World Factbook.
In fact, Indonesian Muslims were some of the first to call for the death of Dutch member of Parliament Geert Wilders: Indonesian Muslims protest anti-Islam film by Dutch legislator.
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Hardline Muslims have called for the death of a Dutch legislator for producing a film critical of their faith at a protest Monday in the Indonesian capital.
For more about the film controversy, see my recent VDARE.com article, Knock, Knock, Knocking on Europe's DoorÑGeert Wilder's Campaign to Save The West
Scores of police stood guard as 40 demonstrators from the Islamic Defenders Front - a small group that has occasionally staged violent protests against Western targets in the past - rallied outside the Dutch embassy.
Also, see the documentary presented on Fox News, Radical Islam: Terror in Its Own Words. Another doc available online is Islam: What the West Needs to Know.
High standards the Catholic elites have in Mexico.
MEXICO CITY Ð Violent drug gangs in Mexico, which kill thousands of people a year, fund the building of churches in impoverished villages to try to win over locals, a senior Catholic bishop said.
In other Mexico news, crime is worsening:
U.S. ambassador alarmed by Mexico border violence.
"They are very generous," Bishop Carlos Aguiar told a press conference, Reforma newspaper reported Saturday.
Aguiar, who heads Mexico's Catholic bishops' conference, said drug traffickers pour money into poverty-stricken towns where the government lacks funds to build roads or provide electricity.
MEXICO CITY Ð The U.S. ambassador to Mexico warned Friday of an ÒalarmingÓ surge in violence in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and said he could heighten a travel alert for U.S. citizens traveling there.
Tony Garza said he was preparing an updated travel advisory after visiting Ciudad Juarez this week to talk to local officials about a jump in murders in the city to nearly 200 this year, as well as kidnappings and robberies. The city borders El Paso, Texas.
"Despite valiant attempts by Mexican law enforcement in the area, crime and violence is rapidly increasing," Garza said in a statement. "The statistics are alarming."
ÒWhile there is little doubt in my mind that the travel alert should be reissued, it may also be necessary to heighten the alert to better reflect the increasing insecurity in the state of Chihuahua,Ó he said.
Killings in Ciudad Juarez, a city in Chihuahua state that gained notoriety in recent years for a spate of brutal murders of women, are 10 times as high this year as the same time a year ago.
The so-called American Civil Liberties Union continues to shamelessly protect the worst enemies of this country and humanity.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which for years has scorned Pentagon military commissions as "kangaroo courts,'' announced Friday that it will try to provide top civilian defense attorneys for alleged terrorists facing trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Ñ including the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Former Attorney General Janet Reno is among top lawyers who've endorsed the $8.5 million effort, which will help coordinate and defray the expenses of civilian defense attorneys working on the terrorism cases. Under the military commissions scheme, the Pentagon won't reimburse volunteer civilian attorneys for their expenses.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said a major thrust of the effort will be to defend Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who military officials say has confessed to masterminding the 9-11 attacks and several other terrorist acts, including the beheading in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl.
The problems with mass immigration and the faulty social engineering that is the ideological underpinning are similar in all first-world countries. Citizens don't want to be overwhelmed with foreign dysfunction and then be called racist when they complain.
Immigration is diluting our culture and leading to the breakdown of society, according to the vast majority of Britons.
83 per cent told pollsters the country had a "population crisis".
Strikingly, this view was held by 58 per cent of settled migrants and their British-born children.
Most of those interviewed felt that special treatment for newcomers was causing locals to "lose out."
The same views were shared across the social classes.
Funny how San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is happy to spit in the eye of America when he wants to showboat his generosity in spending other people's money on social services for foreigners: San Francisco Advertises Sanctuary to Attract More Illegals. (Watch a KGO-TV news clip here of the news conference where the Mayor declared his support for illegals. Also included is the Chief of Police Heather Fong stating, "We do not work on enforcing immigration laws.")
But when Washington is handing out cash, Newsom's snout is deep into the trough. He pursued drug-fighting money from the feds with apparently no intention of using the grant for the purpose intended -- and what was the DOJ doing giving a pile of cash to a sanctuary city to prosecute crimes often committed by illegal aliens?
The U.S. Department of Justice wants San Francisco to repay $5.4 million in grant money earmarked to help fight the war on drugs in states bordering Mexico because federal auditors found the city was not eligible for the funding.
Earlier this week, Newsom claimed a massive undercount of the city that costs it a pile in federal handouts: Newsom says U.S. census missed 100,000.
San Francisco had sought the grant under the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative, which compensates law enforcement agencies in California and other border states for the costs of handling prosecutions in lieu of federal authorities.
As of March of last year, the city claimed it had handled more than 2,241 such cases, but a federal audit released this week found that none of the cases had been referred by federal officials to District Attorney Kamala Harris' office as required under the program.
Mayor Gavin Newsom said the U.S. census has somehow overlooked 100,000 San Francisco residents and the city is failing to collect millions of dollars in federal funding as a result.
To compound the wackiness, the city paid an unspecified amount for the study by the Social Compact, a Washington-based non-profit that promotes inner-city investment. Who are these "uncounted" -- illegal aliens, homeless living in Golden Gate Park and the like? Newsom believes that such people represent "incredible purchasing power" but the notion that persons living on the fringes have lots of disposable income doesn't pass the most rudimentary credibility test.
Washington is not about to fork over millions of dollars to San Francisco on the basis of a bogus study, but Newsom keeps pitching anyway for more handouts. He wants all the benefits of being the mayor of an American city with none of the responsibility.
In an interesting aside, the LA Times covered the story (San Francisco advertises services for illegal immigrants) with the absurd observation that Los Angeles has no such policy, but the police act as if they do:
Los Angeles does not consider itself a sanctuary city, but officials say police will not take part in federal immigration raids. "Our officers are not immigration officers," said Matt Szabo, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
In fact, Los Angeles has Special Order 40, one of the granddaddies (1979!) of the protect-the-illegal-criminals byways of public policy. (Here's the LA Times collection of articles about Special Order 40.)
San Francisco is expected to suffer a $9.3 million budget hit in the wake of the federal audit that found the city reaped millions of dollars without justification to prosecute border-related crimes, city officials said Friday.
Federal officials released an audit last week that found that the city was not entitled to any of the millions it got over three years under the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative grant program, which repays local authorities in border states for handling prosecutions on behalf of federal authorities.
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