Watching the horrible video of Alan Johnston of the BBC broadcasting Palestinian propaganda under orders from his kidnappers, I found myself asking what it would have been like had he been kidnapped by Israelis, and made to do the same thing the other way round. The first point is that it would never happen. There are no Israeli organisations - governmental or freelance - that would contemplate such a thing. That fact is itself significant.
But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?
There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down. Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.
If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by thus torturing him on television. No one would have been shy of saying so. But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston, and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been "asked" to say what he said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an "ask", why did he not say no?
Throughout Mr Johnston's captivity, the BBC has continually emphasised that he gave "a voice" to the Palestinian people, the implication being that he supported their cause, and should therefore be let out. One cannot imagine the equivalent being said if he had been held by Israelis. Well, he is certainly giving a voice to the Palestinian people now. And the truth is that, although it is under horrible duress, what he says is not all that different from what the BBC says every day through the mouths of reporters who are not kidnapped and threatened, but are merely collecting their wages.
The language is more lurid in the Johnston video, but the narrative is essentially the same as we have heard over the years from Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen and virtually the whole pack of them. It is that everything that is wrong in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world is the result of aggression or "heavy-handedness" (have you noticed how all actions by American or Israeli troops are "heavy-handed", just as surely as all racism is "unacceptable"?) by America or Israel or Britain.
Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the "absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to 40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West". That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC. The other side is almost unexamined. There is little to explain the internecine strife in the Arab world, particularly in Gaza, or the cynical motivations of Arab leaders for whom Palestinian miseries are politically convenient.
You get precious little investigation of the networks and mentalities of Islamist extremism - the methods and money of Hamas or Hizbollah and comparable groups - which produce acts of pure evil like that in which Mr Johnston is involuntarily complicit. The spotlight is not shone on how the "militants" (the BBC does not even permit the word "terrorist" in the Middle East context) and the warlords maintain their corruption and rule of fear, persecuting, among others, the Palestinians. Instead it shines pitilessly on Blair and Bush and on Israel.
From the hellish to the ridiculous, the pattern is the same. Back at home, the Universities and Colleges Union has just voted for its members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".
Well, they could consider how work by scientists at the Technion in Haifa has led to the production of the drug Velcade, which treats multiple myeloma. Or they could look at the professor at Ben-Gurion University who discovered a bacteria that fights malaria and river blindness by killing mosquitoes and black fly. Or they could study the co-operation between researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have isolated the protein that triggers stress in order to try to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and their equivalents at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research, often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.
The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly singling out the only country in the region with a free press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli goods, products of the only country in the region with a free trade union movement. The doctrine is that Israel practises "apartheid" and that it must therefore be boycotted.
All this is moral madness. It is not mad, of course, to criticise Israeli policy. In some respects, indeed, it would be mad not to. It is not mad - though I think it is mistaken - to see the presence of Israel as the main reason for the lack of peace in the region.
But it is mad or, perhaps one should rather say, bad to try to raid Western culture's reserves of moral indignation and expend them on a country that is part of that culture in favour of surrounding countries that aren't. How can we have got ourselves into a situation in which we half-excuse turbaned torturers for kidnapping our fellow-citizens while trying to exclude Jewish biochemists from lecturing to our students?
Nobody yet knows the precise motivations of Mr Johnston's captors, but it is surely not a coincidence that they held him in silence until the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War approached, and only then made him speak. They wanted him to give the world their historical explanation - Israeli oppression - for their cause. Yet that war took place because President Nasser of Egypt led his country and his allies declaring "our basic aim will be to destroy Israel". He failed, abjectly, and Egypt and Jordan later gave up the aspiration. But many others maintain it to this day, now with a pseudo-religious gloss added.
We keep giving sympathetic air-time to their death cult. In a way, Mr Johnston is paying the price: his captors are high on the oxygen of his corporation's publicity. As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to work out each morning how it can survive.
#1
"Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the "absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to 40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West". That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC."
Bitchslap! That's gonna leave a mark.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/03/2007 13:57 Comments ||
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. . . A civilization capable of the worst atrocities as well as the most sublime creation cannot examine itself only from the perspective of a guilty conscience. Genocide is far from a Western specialty, and it is the West which has allowed us to conceptualize certain acts as crimes against humanity; it is the West which since 1945 has distanced itself from its own barbarity to give a precise meaning to the term crimes against humanity.
Europe's genius is that it knows too well the fragility of the barriers separating it from its own ignominy. This lucidity, pushed to the extreme, keeps Europe from calling for a crusade of Good against Evil, inspiring it to substitute instead the battle of the preferable against the detestable, to use the excellent formula of Raymond Aron. Europe is constituted inside the very doubt which denies its existence, seeing itself with the pitiless gaze of an intransigent judge.
This suspicion weighing down our most notable successes risks degenerating into self-hate, into facile defeatism. We would then have only one obligation, to pay off our debts, forever atoning for what we have taken from humanity since its beginnings. Observe the wave of repentance ravaging our latitudes, especially our principal Protestant and Catholic churches: It is a good thing, a salutary awakening of awareness, provided that they accept reciprocity, and that other cultures and other faiths recognize their errors as well.
Contrition is not reserved for the chosen, nor is moral purity given like a moral allowance to those who say they are humiliated and persecuted. For too many countries, in Africa, in the Middle East, in South America, self-criticism is confused with the selection of an easy scapegoat who can explain their unhappiness: It is never their fault, always someone else's, the American Great Satan or the little European Satan.
This is the problem in Europe today: No policies of great import can be achieved through guilt. This was made clear in the whole [Danish] affair of the Muhammad caricatures, when Brussels, instead of showing solidarity with Denmark and Norway, whose embassies were being burned down--chose instead to send Javier Solana into the Arab capitals like a traveling salesman of mea culpa. Just as the status of "victim" cannot be transmitted hereditarily, there is also no transmission of the status of "executioner."
The duty of memory does not imply the punishment or the automatic corruption of our children or of our great grandchildren. There are no innocent states or citizens, that is what we have learned during the past half century. But there are states capable of recognizing their duty and looking their own barbarity in the eye, and there are others who seek in their long-ago oppression excuses for the indignities of today. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
06/03/2007 09:01 ||
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Global war or global warming: which concerns you more? The question sharply divides Americans, a split that makes me fear for my country. The freest, strongest, most innovative and prosperous nation in history ought to know better.
The twofold story line from the media and many politicians right now is that (1) we have been in Iraq too long for no reason, and (2) every day brings us closer to catastrophe from alleged human-induced climate change. The agenda is therefore to speed up the Kyoto-style self-flagellation while slowing the fight against jihadist Islam.
This is utterly upside down. An unproved, slow-moving environmental worry is elevated to crisis proportions by our elites while an avowed human enemy at the gates, committed to killing us by the millions and destroying the United States, is wished away. What folly.
Both jihad and climate should concern policymakers and the public, no question. But the inverted priority we give them will astound historians (assuming the history is written honestly and in our language, not in Arabic under Sharia theocrats). How could these 21st century Americans be such fools and fainthearts, posterity will ask, that hypothetically higher sea levels frightened them more than nuts with nukes?
We need to look hard at the American mind and the American spirit, summer 2007. A certain sleepy softness and unseriousness, a certain childish emotionalism, is evident in the national mood these days that does not bode well for survival in a dangerous world.
You may be more convinced by Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth, I by Dennis Avery and Fred Singers Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. You may feel your conscience pricked by CAIR, the Muslim lobby in this country, charging that Islamophobia is the ultimate terrorism, while I shudder at the jihadists deadly capabilities as documented by Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Fair enough; no oracle is final in such matters.
Yet cant we agree that an armed psychopath in our house is more of a threat than a finger raising the thermostat one degree? (Not that its certain any such human cause exists; it may be no more than a cyclical brownout of the planetary air conditioning.) And shouldnt we admit that in our house is literally true, when it comes to thousands of Islamic radicals who have slipped across US borders and now stand to gain instant legalization under the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill?
Among our opinion-shapers and political leaders, passivity toward the illegal-alien invasion aligns roughly, though not exactly, with passivity toward global jihad. President Bush, unbending as he is on Iraq, still naively insists Islam is a religion of peace, and he misleadingly calls the battle against Al Qaeda and Wahabbism a war on terror. John Edwards now dismisses even this term as a bumper sticker, and his fellow Democratic candidates hurry leftward to keep up.
Contrast this passive stance toward real people seeking to have their way with us (the jihadists by mayhem, the migrants by demography) to the hyperactive policies urged by many leaders on global warming a theoretical threat supposedly justifying bigger government, vast expense, and widespread sacrifice. What you see is an American elite that has lost its nerve, its head, its soul, or all three.
Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyns everyman trapped in the Soviet gulag, observes that the resilient and defiant inmates survive but the groveling self-doubters perish. Societies are no different. A nation stupefied like some battered spouse with the half-notion that we had it coming, both as to jihad and Kyoto, is hard to be hopeful for. Whereas an awakened America, recovering its Dont tread on me spirit, can defeat the Islamofascists as well as save the polar bears. Wake up or sleep on; the choice is ours.
Lieutenant General Ray Odierno held a press conference on May 31. In an unusual move, data on enemy losses was revealed.
This has resulted in a major update to the Terrorist Death Watch with the addition of over 2,000 more terrorists deaths in Iraq. This number is from January 15 through May 31.
The transcript and the briefing slides may be found at this link.
#3
This is gonna change fireworks shows.
You'll have your aerial flare art above and the appearance of shooting at them with standard fireworks from below.
Dunno if thisa was posted before, if so, please delete. This point is well taken - the radio broadcasts are relatively cheap ways to get the American viewpoint and unfettered news to the populaces of our enemies
Well, he's done it. Hugo Chavez was already systematically silencing criticism of his autocratic rule through threats and intimidation. Journalists have been threatened, beaten and even killed. Now he's shut down the last opposition television networks in Venezuela and arrested nearly 200 protesters mostly students. Its a monumental tragedy and the Venezuelan people will pay the price for decades to come. Americans are also at risk as he funds anti-American candidates and radicals all over Latin America.
Its equally tragic that the U.S. is in no position to provide the victims of this emerging dictator with the truth. There was a time, though, when Americans were on the front lines of pro-freedom movements all over the world. I'm talking about the surrogate broadcast network that included Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, often called "the Radios."
When Ronald Reagan was elected, he greatly empowered the private, congressionally funded effort and handpicked the Radios top staff to bring freedom to the Soviet Union. Steve Forbes led the group.
Cynics still say that the USSR fell of its own weight, and that President Reagans efforts to bring it down were irrelevant, but Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev say differently. Both have said that, without the Radios, the USSR wouldn't have fallen. The Radios were not some bland public relations effort, attracting audiences only with American pop music. They engaged the intellectual and influential populations behind the Iron Curtain with accurate news and smart programming about freedom and democracy. They had sources and networks within those countries that sometimes outperformed the CIA. When Soviet hardliners and reformers were facing off, and crowds and tanks were on the streets of Moscow and Bucharest, the radios were sending real-time information to the people, including the military, and reminding them of what was at stake.
Then we won the Cold War. The USSR collapsed in 1991, and America relaxed. Military downsizing began and the Radios began to reduce broadcast air time to target countries.
Now, of course, we know that the Islamofascists, many trained by the old Soviets, were making plans and plots of their own. Unfortunately, the plans to broadcast a pro-freedom message into Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kurdistan and Ukraine were shelved or diluted. Reagan's ideological audacity was replaced with a more "diplomatic" tone.
And see where it's got us? Not only has Islamic totalitarianism spread without a true ideological challenge, many of the freed Soviet bloc countries are slipping back into repression. Russia is making the same old threats and even protecting Iran's efforts to build nukes.
We'll never know if Afghanistan might have rejected al Qaeda if America had actively engaged that country as we did those Eastern Europeans. We can't know if Venezuelans would have chosen liberty over the false security of authoritarianism if they had been challenged to face the issues. I do know, though, that it's time for a new generation of Americans to stand up for freedom -- like others before us. And this time, well have a whole new set of media technologies.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2007 15:51 ||
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. RTWT - makes me sad to say I'm not supporting W on this Immigration issue. But it REALLY makes me mad when he calls me an idiot/xenophobe/racist for doing so. I will no longer contribute to the RNC (told the poor bastard calling for dollars as much on the phone last night...in more colorful language) until they build the fence, enforce the laws, and arrest emplyers on a regular basis. This is my bottom line. My congressman, Duncan Hunter is standup on this issue. I will support him and his son (if he can run, mil rules....) or his replacement, if he follows the same path. Otherwise? Except for Fred T (and I want to hear a promise to follow his writings from him), F*&k OFF!
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
I love this line:
Lets put this in another perspective: If I break into Sen. Ted Kennedys Massachusetts home and move into one of his spare bedrooms, as long as I pay a fine, pass a background check, keep a job, stay out of trouble and speak drunkenese, I can continue to live there.
And if I just pay a little bit more of a fine, I can actually become a member of the Kennedy family, as long as I return briefly to Nevada and fill out some paperwork. The fact that I broke the law by breaking into his home in the first place doesnt mean I have to move out. Im forgiven, and wont suffer any penalty other than having to pay a little fine.
I tire of the preludes one has to make, all the protestations of anti-nativism. Its not enough to say youre in favor of immigration, and lots of it; anything short of dropping thousands of blank American birth certificates on the other side of the Rio Grande is construed as Nativist Hysteria. All I want is a fence, but even that desire makes people jump up and shout at the house HEY! what gives you the right to put a fence to keep people out and keep your antiquated concept of privileged-status Northern European culture in? If God was here to tell it to your face, man, youre some kind of sinner!
What really irks me more than the Administrations mulishness is their tone-deaf replies to the bills opponents, and it really is Le Straw Finale. Add to the list of lesser mistakes to which any administration composed of human-type people is prone, add the ham-fistery evident in their handling of those events... and you have a general Throwing Up of The Hands on the right. Self-inflicted wounds, every one of them.
President Bush is toast as far as i am concerened. I shut up and voted for him twice and supported him thru all kinds of happy horse shit...but this is it for me.
#5
President Bush is toast as far as i am concerened. I shut up and voted for him twice and supported him thru all kinds of happy horse shit...but this is it for me.
#6
This bill made me mad enough to write both Senators and my Representative the first day I read about it. I've written them again since. Bush's stance on this totally disgusts me and I won't give any Republican who supports this bill one damned dime. As a lifelong Republican, I have to say that this man is the worst Republican President in my time and is pressing to be the worst President ever. Jimmuh Catuh only gave away the Panama Canal; Z-visa Bush is trying to give away the whole damned country. NO WAY, JORGE!
Posted by: Mac ||
06/03/2007 6:10 Comments ||
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#7
I notice George that you have a fence around your house and property. Why? For all those who support this action, first remove all locks on any doors or windows on your home since you want to remove them on our home. It's not about the illegals here, though the high levels of crime and heavy burden on our commons of education, health, and safety have been excessive. No, it's about a national identity. A country with virtual borders is a virtual country.
The preamble of the Constitution says it all. It is We the people of the United States.., not we the people of the North American Union, the United Nations, or whatever. That is a compact between the people and the entity that constitutes the government. We grant the government powers. We agree to be law abiding, to pay our taxes duly levied, and to contribute to the common good. Those who have sought that power and who have held that power have lied too many times about securing our southern border. Since 9/11 more Americans have likely died at the hands of illegals here than what the terrorist have done. Yet, our government, while making herculean efforts against the killers in one theater, plays fast and loose with the source of the other scourge upon us. The powers within the beltway have abandoned their office and responsibilities. This is not really about the 12 million illegals here. Its is about the relation of a people and its government, just as the issue two hundred years ago wasn't about the Tax Act as much as it was about the relationship between the people and its government. Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson were raising issues that they defined as the natural rights of Englishmen. Today we raise the issue about the natural rights of Americans. This act destroys the commons. It declares that it is everyman for himself. What exists as the United States after this act is merely facade for the trappings of powers that can not call upon its legitimacy based upon the consent of the governed, because it so clearly ignores the governed and sells its heritage cheaply.
In the end it is not votes that legitimizes a government for many a dictator run shame votes often to give them the appearance of legitimacy. Rather it is the willingness of the people to act freely to support and defend that government which sustains it. When you kill the commons, there's nothing left to fight for.
#9
I returned the RNC collection envelope with a 'strongly worded reply'. The really cool part is I got to use the F word, and they got to read it.
This is all Bush's doing. He has created a monster funding problem and he, personally has nothing to lose. What an ass.
#11
Jimmuh Catuh only gave away the Panama Canal; Z-visa Bush is trying to give away the whole damned country.
Today we raise the issue about the natural rights of Americans. This act destroys the commons. It declares that it is everyman for himself. What exists as the United States after this act is merely facade for the trappings of powers that can not call upon its legitimacy based upon the consent of the governed, because it so clearly ignores the governed and sells its heritage cheaply.
Thanks Mac and P2k. Very well stated. I was a strong supporter of this president and the Republican Party, but I became increasingly frustrated after the 2004 election. I predicted the 2006 Trunk bloodbath in 2005, but I didn't want to believe that our "government" was no longer acting with the consent of the governed. If this act passes, the USA is finished as a great power. Multiculti will have won because it destroyed the American character. Try to imagine a North American Union that tries to blend the American character with Canadian moonbattery and Mexican corruption. When you kill the commons, there's nothing left to fight for.
It comes down to this: Bush adores Hispanics, as good, human people, and he dislikes white Americans, as nasty, prejudiced people.
We've discussed this at VFR many times. We've had good insights and speculations into why he loves Hispanics. But as far as I remember we've never had a theory explaining why he prefers Hispanics to white Americans, meaning, why he sees only good in Hispanics, and why he sees so much bad in non-Hispanic whites.
Think that goes too far? Listen to how they promote the bill.
#12
Procopious2K---That is ONE FINELY CRAFTED ARTICULATE PIECE OF WRITING!!! [/JM caps] All kidding aside, you concisely and eloquently hit the nail on the head. Our so-called leaders in Congress have turned their backs on the compact between the People and their Government.
The only way to get through to to the so-called leaders is to hit them in their pocketbooks. Citizens who obey the law and contribute to this country are penalized for being good citizens. Well, Mr. President and the Congress have backed us into a corner. We oppose them or we acquiesce to the culture of corruption. I guess the lines are drawn.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/03/2007 13:33 Comments ||
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#13
"Its is about the relation of a people and its government, just as the issue two hundred years ago wasn't about the Tax Act as much as it was about the relationship between the people and its government."
#15
Frank G, you are 100% right about Hunter. He is a GREAT guy. I am in Bilbray's district. Although I don't agree with Bilbray any many things (he's a little too liberal) I will say he's been awesome on the immigration thing. I'm mad as hell at Bush. No mo $$$ from me. And I'm so glad I never sent a dime to the Governator. He's a bigger spender/liberal than Davis was.
#16
IP - those who don't live on the border don't understand the visceral feeling of backstabbing we get from every unfulfilled promise of border security/crackdown on illegals/emploment enforcement. It's bad enough, but when we get called names for expressing our feelings, in my book, that party or person has walked away from US. I see Rove's hand in this, but I also think W wants it himself. No Mo $!
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2007 15:36 Comments ||
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#17
Kennedy doesn't care about this country. He is only trying to obtain 40-60 million new Democratic votes over the next decade. Essentially hew wants to destroy the two party system. Why is Bush and the Republicans going along with this sham? Do they want to destroy the two party system? Are they stupid? What the hell's the deal with them.
#18
And many people who don't live on the border don't realize the extent of the "invasion". If they ever had the chance to visit a San Diego area emergency room they would find a multiple hour wait while they handle a room full of illegals. Of course the ER's are not allowed to ask any questions and are obligated by CA state law to treat them. If these 12-20 million illegals get amnesty the American southwest territorial integrity will be at stake. Within our lifetime. The anchor baby children of illegals are growing up. And now they are taking over city councils, water boards, planning boards and even the state government. The liberals fight against assimilation has caused these people to maintain an allegiance with Mexico. This may not have a happy ending. Just look at what happened to Serbia when the Albanian Muslims came in, reproduced at a furious rate and then wanted independence.
#21
The president next complimented ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) for making more than 3,000 arrests for immigration violations since the beginning of this fiscal year.
Great, only 9,997,000 to go give or take a few million. Not bad for 15,000 employees on a bare-bones taxpayer-funded budget of just $4.2 billion. That would be one arrest for every five employees at a cost of only $1.4 million per arrest. Yep, were really getting our bang for our buck there, arent we?
Now, multiply those figures by some 12 million. This doesn't even include the family members that Z visa holders will be able to import. Will they get screened too? I doubt it.
I notice George that you have a fence around your house and property. Why? For all those who support this action, first remove all locks on any doors or windows on your home since you want to remove them on our home. It's not about the illegals here, though the high levels of crime and heavy burden on our commons of education, health, and safety have been excessive. No, it's about a national identity. A country with virtual borders is a virtual country.
Author! Author! These fat bastards sit in their gated enclaves, get driven about in chauffeured vehicles and use military transports. Laws are for the little people to obey, not them.
If the republicans ever wonder why they have such a difficult time winning over the little people, it's this sort of pandering to big business that stops them cold. There is no other explanation for why Bush is pushing this load of manure.
Face it, electorally, the democrats will be the big winners from this bill. Why then are the republicans backing it too? It's suicide, until you consider where the republicans get all of their campaign financing.
Here's a real simple start. Begin sweeps in front of every hardware store like Home Depot. I'd bet some 98% of the people sitting outside looking for work are illegals. Next stop, the food industry. Due to their tight margins, they are one of the largest employers of illegal help in America.
My own belief is that our politicians do not want any immigration reform because of all the masked contributions streaming into Social Security. Imagine the untold BILLIONS flowing into Social Security from all of the false IDs and documentation. You may as well leave an open cookie jar in a class full of kindergarteners.
#22
I think Zenster has hit upon a salient point. The detection of illegals working in the US would be hugely increased if the Social Security Administration were told to disclose it's records to ICE. They don't as a direct result of government policy. Yet they do share info with the IRS, negating any privacy claims. Willful policy is they only possible answer.
Regarding the massive influx of illegals, and the prostitution of our soverignty for votes and cheap labor, my level of anger at my own government and polital party has never been higher. Most angering, is the total bankruptcy thses decisions will have on what's left of the public treasury. What follows will be means testing for government services, including social security and increased taxation. Essentially, force economic serfdom for those of use who pay taxes now, and who have honestly carried the freight and paid the bills in prepaaration for our own retirements, now defrauded of earned benefits by invading thieves and gutless political leaders. This is the stuff of revolution and violence left unchallenged.....and ugly things are coming no matter how this plays out.
As an aside of how fast this is breaking down, Note that there is scant informaiton about the Border Patrol revolt in the Tucson Sector, where agents refuse to be aggressive as a protest for agent prosecutions..... have you heard a peep about it?
#24
Don't worry about it, JAE. Your point is well made. Is this true, that Social Security is not allowed to run audits with Immigration? If so, heads need to roll.
Legend has it that when computers were first installed at Social Security, the first thing they did was run a cross-check of employee SSNs (Social Security Numbers) against the SSNs of those receiving payments. Supposedly, they got thousands of hits. The next cross-check was against the SSNs of relatives of Social Security employees. A similar outcome followed.
How the fuck is it that Social Security is not allowed to perform routine cross-checks against the INS or ICE database in order to catch contributions to accounts of deceased SSNs or multiple contributions to existing SSNs? This would represent a dead-nuts certain way of detecting falsified work documentation.
What is it that makes our politicians so reluctant to institute such a policy? Again, while our politicians are so busy raping Social Security, not to mention trying to cover up its eventual collapse, the BILLIONS of unrecoverable contributions being made by illegal aliens represent nothing more than a "busted lock on a candy store".
Well, what about it, fellow Rantburgers. Anyone got something to refute this theory? I'm eager to hear it.
#25
Multiculti will have won because it destroyed the American character. Try to imagine a North American Union that tries to blend the American character with Canadian moonbattery and Mexican corruption.
The American character is not "multiculti"??? Shit, what are you? American Indian?
What a bunch of racists. But anyway, continue in your merry racisms and you'll soon be part of the grand dustbin of history. Pass the popcorn.
Its about borders and the meaning of borders.
Its about government and the meaning of government.
Its about "the citizens" and thieves sneaking in to eat the citizens and their jobs and their stuff.
Its about a Nation vs a virtual Nation.
Its about "We the People"
No racism! Its about our nation not illegals stealing it.
#27
Citizenship: The status of a citizen with its attendant duties, rights, and privileges.
Procopius2kIn the end it is not votes that legitimizes a government for many a dictator run shame votes often to give them the appearance of legitimacy. Rather it is the willingness of the people to act freely to support and defend that government which sustains it. When you kill the commons, there's nothing left to fight for.
I've been at this immigration fight since before prop. 187 here in Caliphornia and I think folks are even more pissed off today.
We must fight longer though, for our children's sake and for the sake of every Citizen Soldier who ever fought and bled for our Country.
and Yes lets withhold money from the pols and withhold Federal taxes from King George too [shelter them legally] but we need something more...
Something Massive.. Perhaps a 2007 Super Boston Tea Party across the country.
#30
Funny thing about IE1977 and people like him. Even he knows what the American character is, but he hates it. Guys like him hate traditional America, but it is wrong to say they hate America. They love the America of abortion 'rights', gay liberation, radical secularism, radical feminism, and the kind of multiculturalism that says a mud hut is just as valuable as a great cathedral. These people make alliance with any force that they think will destroy traditional America - whether it be head chopping Muslims or illegal aliens. That is why they want the jam-down on this immigration bill. Of course, push back a little, and he screams racist, bigot, homophobe, etc. because he knows deep down that he has no real argument.
I've said before that these guys think that they are smarter than everyone else, and they think they will rule after they destroy the existing order. In reality, they will be the first to be stood against the wall when the current order fails.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
