Jew-Hatred and Jihad

That is the title of an article in The Weekly Standard, sent to me by a friend.  To be fair, the historical links between the Nazis and the Islamists are well documented.  But this article was written by a German.

Jew-Hatred and Jihad
The Nazi roots of the 9/11 attack.
by Matthias Küntzel
09/17/2007, Volume 013, Issue 01



The idea of using suicide pilots to obliterate the skyscrapers of Manhattan originated in 1940s Berlin. "In the latter stages of the war, I never saw Hitler so beside himself as when, as if in a delirium, he was picturing to himself and to us the downfall of New York in towers of flame," wrote Albert Speer in his diary. "He described the skyscrapers turning into huge burning torches and falling hither and thither, and the reflection of the disintegrating city in the dark sky."

Not only Hitler's fantasy but also his plan of action foreshadowed September 11: He envisioned having kamikaze pilots fly light aircraft packed with explosives and with no landing gear into Manhattan skyscrapers. The drawings for the Daimler-Benz Amerikabomber from the spring of 1944 show giant four-engine planes with raised undercarriages for transporting small bombers. The bombers would be released shortly before the planes reached the East Coast, after which the mother plane would return to Europe.

Hitler's rapture at the thought of Manhattan in flames indicates his underlying motive: not merely to fight a military adversary, but to kill all Jews everywhere. Possessed of the notion that the whole of the Second World War was a struggle against an imaginary Jewish enemy, he deemed "the USA a Jewish state" and New York the center of world Jewry. "Wall Street," as a popular book published in Munich in 1919 put it, "is, so to speak, the Military Headquarters of Judas. From there his threads radiate out across the entire world." From 1941 on, Hitler pushed to get the bombers into production, in order to "be able to teach the Jews a lesson in the form of terror attacks on American metropolises." Towards the end of the war this idea became an obsession.

Sixty years later, it so happens, the assault on the World Trade Center was coordinated from Germany. Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian who piloted the plane that struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center; Marwan al--Shehhi, from the United Arab Emirates, who steered the plane into the South Tower; Ziad Jarrah, from Lebanon, who crashed United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and their friends Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni, and the Moroccan student Mounir al-Motassedeq had formed an al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, where they held regular "Koran circle" meetings with sympathizers.

What ideas propelled Atta and the others to act? Witnesses provided part of the answer at the world's first 9/11-related trial, the prosecution of al-Motassedeq, which took place in Hamburg between October 2002 and February 2003. One participant in the Koran circle meetings, Shahid Nickels, said Atta's Weltanschauung was based on a "National Socialist way of thinking." Atta was convinced that the Jews were striving for world domination and considered New York City the center of world Jewry, which was, in his opinion, Enemy No. 1. Fellow students who lived in Motassedeq's dormitory testified that he shared these views and waxed enthusiastic about a forthcoming "big action." One student quoted Motassedeq as saying, "The Jews will burn and in the end we will dance on their graves."

Amazingly, neither the American media nor the international press took much notice of this testimony, largely refusing to report on Atta's and Motassedeq's explicit Jew-hatred. The above quotations come from the weekly Der Spiegel and from the detailed notes of the trial taken by journalist Michael Eggers, who attended every session and wrote about it for Reuters. If this had been the trial of a Ku Klux Klan member or someone from the far right such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, reports of Nazi-like dreams of exterminating the Jews would probably have made the headlines. But in this case, involving attackers of Arab background, journalists apparently found the issue irrelevant. Moreover, this Jew-hatred was no quirk of the Hamburg cell. Osama bin Laden himself declared in 1998, "The enmity between us and the Jews goes back far in time and is deep rooted. There is no question that war between us is inevitable. . . . The Hour of Resurrection shall not come before Muslims fight Jews."

Even the 9/11 Commission Report, the summation produced by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States in July 2004, falls short in this regard. Its chapter on "Bin Laden's worldview" makes no mention of his hatred of Jews. This silence is all the more surprising in that the commission quotes documents in which bin Laden unambiguously expresses his hatred of Jews. For example, in the "Letter to the American People" of November 2002, which the report repeatedly cites, bin Laden warns: "The Jews have taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense." Osama goes on: "Your law is the law of rich and wealthy people. . . . Behind them stand the Jews who control your policies, media and economy." Yet the report's authors inexplicably fail to see the significance of these words and the ideology behind them. The report also ignores the history of Islamism. It accords the entire pre-1945 period just five lines. Yet it is precisely this period that fostered the personal contacts and ideological affinities between early Islamism and late Nazism--the linkage between Jew-hatred and jihad.

Read it all.  While the author clearly shows the Nazi roots of Al Qaeda, he never explains why the Western media ignores those roots.  He does hint to it though.  In my personal view, which seems to coincide with the Mr. Kunzel's view, the reason for Western media ignoring the Nazi connection is that acknowledging this connection would mean that no appeasement is possible and that we are in the fight for our very lives.  Acknowledging the Nazi-Islamist connection would also be politically incorrect.  Our "blame America first" media cannot do anything that is politically incorrect.

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World War IV?

This is a title of an article by William F. Buckley.  The article is pretty short, so, rather than excerpting a portion from it, I will just go ahead and copy the whole thing here.  You can comment here, or, if you want to comment on the original site, here is the link.

World War IV?
By William F. Buckley
Thursday, September 6, 2007

Some set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in many parts of the world, the symbolic center of which is the Twin Towers site in Manhattan? Sometimes the words chosen can mean the justification of an additional measure of military power. Always they calibrate the public mood and the public perception of what is going on.

I am informed that French pacifists, ensconced in the French Academy in 1939 and determined to understate Nazi military exercises (even those being done as close by as Czechoslovakia), refused to acknowledge such a creature as a "bombardier." Right, "bombardier" would have meant "bomber pilot." The pacifists were prepared to use the word bombardier, but only as the flying instrument -- an airplane from which one drops bombs. Since no such creature as a pilot who drops bombs from such an airplane was acknowledged to exist, the schoolmen of the academy at first refused to authorize that use of the word.

Norman Podhoretz, a gifted writer and analyst, does not cavil in these matters, and his new book is called "World War IV." By Podhoretz's calculations, World War II ended with the surrender of Berlin and Tokyo. This was followed by another and very serious war, which we termed the Cold War. That pretty well ended when the Soviet Union allowed the gates in Berlin to open and, two years later, abandoned the Soviet flag. But the end of World War III did not augur an end to global warfare. The new enemy is referred to in certain quarters as Islamofascism. And Podhoretz is the chief taxonomist of that awful combine.

He quotes in his book Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum. Pipes is off to a rollicking and reassuring start in what becomes the deadliest paragraph in town. Begin with our military superiority, which would appear to make victory inevitable. "Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?"

A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:

-- A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.

-- A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.

-- An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.

-- An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians."

Add to the above "a huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived."

Recognition, then, of the scale of the pretensions of the Islamist enemy has to precede substantial measures against it. In the matter of Iraq, for instance, the ambiguity of our engagement and the enlarging political cry against it would alter dramatically if one accepted the premises of the Fourth World War so ineluctably spelled out in Podhoretz's little volume, which takes time here and there to demolish such arguments as were mounted in protest against President Bush's mention in his 2003 State of the Union address of yellowcake hunting in Niger.

Those critics who insist that it is only a small war-party faction of the Islamists that we have to fear might have been asked a generation ago if it was not merely a small number of Germans and Russians we were properly exercised about. Sixty million people were dead after that misreckoning.

William F. Buckley, Jr. is editor-at-large of National Review, the prolific author of Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography.

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Protest Warrior action in Poway

Every Sunday a bunch of leftists gather at the corner of Pomerado Road and Twin Peaks Road and demonstrate "against the war".  Apparently they are encouraged to do that by some Air America-affiliated radio show.  A week ago on Sunday I and a couple of my fellow Protest Warriors staged a counter-protest.  Later I was able to get an e-mail forwarded to a lady who is one of the organizers of the leftist demonstration, just to see her reaction and check whether she might be willing to debate based on facts.  Below is that e-mail:

So, this nice lady actually suggested to you that people in Iraq were better off under Saddam? Because he maintained order and government services functioned? Wow! It always amazes me that people on the Left resort to "Under Mussolini trains ran on time" argument. I wonder if she calls herself "liberal". How can one be liberal and resort to this kind of argument? So, she read that some Iraqis said that life was better under Saddam. Well, I am sure there were a lot of Germans in 1945 that thought that life was better under Hitler. In the late 1980s, when Soviet Union was disintegrating, there were people who were nostalgic for Stalin. "Stalin maintained order", they would say. Does she think that they were right?
Now Iraq is a mess for a number of reasons, screw-ups of our administration being one of them. So, these people think that we should just pick up and leave that place to Al-Qaeda and Iran. Do they think there will be peace once we leave, or they simply don't care? They keep saying that Al-Qaeda was not there before we went there. Although there are evidence to the contrary, including some findings by 9/11 Commission, for the sake of argument I will stipulate to that. But Al-Qaeda is there now. And it's not propaganda: I personally talked to people who served in Iraq. Do so-called "anti-war" people think that abandoning the place to Al-Qaeda is a good idea? Now, when finally something is going right?
Last Sunday there was one lady there. She was very condescending to me. She wore a T-shirt with an Israeli and a Palestinian flags and a word "Dialog" under the flags. I think she was Jewish. She also mentioned some of her family members who were killed in wars and was blaming America for it. I wonder if World War 2 was one of those wars. So, I guess, while her family was safely in the US, she would suggest that my family should have a "dialog". I guess, she would suggest it to my grandma's father who was hunted down and shot in occupied Odessa. Or to my wife's great-grandparents who were murdered in Salaspils. Or to my first grade teacher who was lucky to survive the ghetto in Odessa. That lady probably simply does not want to know about all that. Would she join Charles Lindberg's "America First" party? I'd love to ask her all these questions, but she did not really want to engage in conversation. As a Jew, I have to say that there is only one thing worst than Nazis: the suicidal Jews who enable them.
One of the signs I was holding had this George Orwell quote on it: "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." The anti-victory people said that it was facetious. Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But I happen to agree with it. There is only one way to make facetious: if you believe that in reality there are no bad guys who want to kill you. But as soon as you realize that there are people who wish us harm, then this quote becomes very accurate. Orwell's "1984" was based on the Stalin's Soviet Union. Don't take my word for it, look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Orwell.27s_inspiration
It is no wonder that "1984" was not available in the old Soviet Union. Neither was "Animal Farm". But I have been living in this country long enough, so perhaps I should have read "1984" by now. Why haven't I? Well, first of all, I already know what life is like in a totalitarian society. Thus, there is very little for me to learn from this book. So, I've been concentrating on history books like Dan Kurzman's "The Bravest Battle" or Winston Churchill's World War 2 memoirs. I've been also concentrating on current event's books like Yossef Bodansky's "Secret History of the Iraq War" and 9/11 Commission Report. I think I can be forgiven for not reading "1984".
Anyway, I don't want to sound like I am looking for excuses for not reading some book. My point is that, unlike the leftists, I always question my views and arrive to them based on the information I dig out from various sources.
So, this is what the people daring to call themselves "liberals" advocate: "Mussolini got the trains to run on time", appeasement and 1930s-style isolationism. That is very far from true liberalism, if you ask me.
You know what, I have an idea. Send this e-mail to that lady you got those e-mails from. It is unlikely that she will change her mind. But at least she might understand where I am coming from. At least maybe she will think of consequences of withdrawing our troops from Iraq now. While you are at it, send her also these links:
http://conservativlib.wordpress.com/why-conservative-liberal/
http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,499154,00.html
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/pollack20070730.htm
http://conservativlib.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/yeltsins-lessons-for-america/
And my e-mail: eric_odessit@yahoo.com.
Let's see what this lady has to say, or whether she will even follow my links.

Update:

Regarding that "dialog" with people who want to kill us: here is a "nice" story (via LGF):

...In total, seven Kassam rockets landed in and around the western Negev town as Sderot children started their second day of the new school year. The Islamic Jihad said they had fired nine Kuds-3 rockets, saying on their internet site that the attack was “a present for the start of the new school year.”

So, how do you talk to these people?

Update 2:

Apparently the nice peace-loving lady admitted that she would like to cut our losses and pull out, regardless of the consequences.  And, being "liberal" and "open-minded", she decided not to engage in any debate or at least take a look at the links I sent her.

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Better later than never

This article by Senator Joseph Lieberman was published some time ago.  Still, it is worth posting about it here.

The United States is at last making significant progress against al Qaeda in Iraq--but the road to victory now requires cutting off al Qaeda's road to Iraq through Damascus.

Thanks to Gen. David Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, and the strength and skill of the American soldiers fighting there, al Qaeda in Iraq is now being routed from its former strongholds in Anbar and Diyala provinces. Many of Iraq's Sunni Arabs, meanwhile, are uniting with us against al Qaeda, alienated by the barbarism and brutality of their erstwhile allies.

As Gen. Petraeus recently said of al Qaeda in Iraq: "We have them off plan."

But defeating al Qaeda in Iraq requires not only that we continue pressing the offensive against its leadership and infrastructure inside the country. We must also aggressively target its links to "global" al Qaeda and close off the routes its foreign fighters are using to get into Iraq.

Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others.

Obviously, read it all.

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Crazy Hugo

A friend e-mailed me this:

IN a new outburst of antiwestern sabre-rattling, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has threatened Britain with “revenge” for the Falklands war of 1982. The belligerent Latin American leftist warned last week that his recent build-up of sophisticated Russian and Iranian weapons would be used to destroy the British fleet if it attempted to return to the South Atlantic.

Speaking on his weekly television show Alo Presidente (Hello, Mr President), Chavez denounced what he described as Britain’s “illegal occupation” of the Falklands and repeated his call for a regional military alliance against Britain and the United States.

“If we had been united in the last war, we could have stopped the old empire,” Chavez said, as he gesticulated to maps showing how Venezuelan aircraft and submarines would intercept British warships. “Today we could sink the British fleet.”

Chavez has often expressed support for Argentina’s claim to the Falklands, but his latest broadside was notable for both its antiBritish vitriol and its unprecedented threats. He declared that British history was “stained with the blood of South America’s indigenous people” and demanded revenge for the “cowardly” sinking of the General Belgrano, the Argentine cruiser.

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The more things change, ...

...the more they stay the same.  This article by William Grimm was published on Front Page Magazine:

I'm not Jewish. No one in my family died in the Holocaust. For me, anti-Semitism has always been one of those phenomena that doesn't really register on my radar, like tribal genocide in Rwanda, a horrible thing that happens to someone else.

But I live in a small town outside of Munich on a street that until May of 1945 was named Adolf Hitler Strasse. I work in Munich, a pleasant metropolitan city of a little over a million inhabitants whose Bavarian charm tends to obscure the fact that this city was the birthplace and capital of the Nazi movement.

Every day when I go to work, I pass by the sites of apartments Hitler lived in, extant buildings in which decisions were made to murder millions of innocent people, and plazas in which book burnings took place, SS troops paraded and people were executed. The proximity to evil has a way of concentrating one's attention, of putting a physical reality to the textbook narratives of the horrors perpetrated by the Germans.

Then the little things start to happen that over a period of time add up to something very sinister. I'm on a bus and a high school boy passes around Grandpa's red leather-bound copy of Mein Kampf to his friends who respond by saying "coooool!" He then takes out a VCR tape (produced in Switzerland) of The Great Speeches of Joseph Goebbels."

A few weeks later, I'm at a business meeting with four young highly educated Germans who are polite, charming and soft-spoken to say the least. When the subject matter changes to a business deal with a man in New York named Rubinstein, their nostrils flair, their demeanor attain a threatening mien and one of them actually says, and I'm quoting verbatim here: "The problem with America is that the Jews have all the money." They start laughing and another one says, "Yeah, all the Jews care about is money."

This is not good.  The way things are going, we might have to fight another war in Europe, in addition to the Middle East.

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Free The Rushes!

That is the title of the post by Yaacov Ben Moshe of Breath of the Beast.  He also e-mailed it to me.  I'll just copy the whole thing here:

Free The Rushes!

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/france2/petition.html

Friends,

Some of you have been wondering why the Breath of the Beast blog has been quiet for the past few weeks. One of the reasons is that I have had the pleasure and honor of being involved in helping with an initiative of tremendous importance.

Before the Pope's remarks, before Gaza Beach, before the Mohammed Cartoons there was Muhammad al Durah, the 12 year old boy the allegation of whose death was one of the first triumphs of the Islamo-rage-aholic/Pallywood/humiliation-a-thon that has sucked in and manipulated the Western Media.

Richard Landes of Second Draft http://www.seconddraft.org/index.php and Augean Stables http://www.theaugeanstables.com/ who, many of you know, is a pioneer debunker of media complicity in the Arab/Islamist/Palestinian offensive of misrepresented and staged news has refocused attention on this prototypical travesty with a new effort to try to get France2 to release all of their video tapes from that fateful days activities.

Here is what we know:

On September 30, 2000, Charles Enderlin alleged that Israeli soldiers intentionally targeted and killed a Palestinian boy at Netzarim Junction. Enderlin, Middle East Correspondent for France2 television, used the footage and testimony of cameraman, Talal abu Rahmah as “proof” of what he claimed to be Israeli savagery

That allegation spread all but instantaneously around the world, sparking explosions of hatred and violence against Israeland Jews. It has been alluded to by Jihadis the world over, from Palestinian suicide bombers to Osama Bin Laden to the executioners of Daniel Pearl, to assorted radical Islamists in Europe.

Landes and others have succeeded in casting serious doubts about the reliability of the France2 report, including exposing compelling evidence that what is claimed to be the child's death in the sequence is mere playacting. There is also evidence of the habitual and unashamed dishonesty of the photographer Talal abu Rahmah .

France2 immediately has released only the 3 minutes of their cameraman's rushes they thought “relevant”, they have consistently refused to release the full "rushes" (all the footage shot by their cameramen) for inspection. They have blocked efforts in the courts to gain their release, and have allowed only screened viewers to see the tapes at their offices. Even some of those hand-picked viewers who have seen these "rushes" think that major sections of their “action sequences” are staged, and that a close look reveals unprofessional journalistic standards both for the cameraman and for the news broadcaster who used his work.

Charles Enderlin’s defense for running the story – "it corresponded to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank" – recapitulates the “False but accurate” attitude of many towards the Dan Rather forgery- a weak rationalization of disingenuous journalistic bias.

Keeping the full rushes of an event like this one secret can serve no conceivable purpose, other than to protect a guilty media outlet from being exposed in the act of fraud and libel. The honor and safety of the Israelis and everyone who wish for their fair treatment are endangered thereby.  They and their embattled homeland are deprived of the chance to vindicate themselves without the evidence that France2 is withholding.

Richard has introduced a powerful and simple petition at the url below. Its wording and intent is broad and neutral enough that it should attract the sympathy (and deserve the signature) of any but the most blatantly anti-Semitic or radically Islamist reader. Anybody with a sense of fair play has to see the merit in this request. I believe it is of the utmost importance that we get behind this petition. Send it to your friends! Post it on your web sites! Sign It!

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/france2/petition.html

So, go ahead and sign this petition.  This modern day Dreyfus Affair has to be stopped.

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Hitler was a Socialist

A friend and fellow Protest Warrior sent me this interesting article by John J. Ray:

"True, it is a fixed idea with the French that the Rhine is their property, but to this arrogant demand the only reply worthy of the German nation is Arndt's: "Give back Alsace and Lorraine". For I am of the opinion, perhaps in contrast to many whose standpoint I share in other respects, that the reconquest of the German-speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?"

Have a look at the headline quote above and say who wrote it. It is a typical Hitler rant, is it not? Give it to 100 people who know Hitler's speeches and 100 would identify it as something said by Adolf. The fierce German nationalism and territorial ambition is unmistakeable. And if there is any doubt, have a look at another quote from the same author:

This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom.

That settles it, doesn't it? Who does not know of Hitler's glorification of military sacrifice and his aim to establish a "thousand-year Reich"?

But neither quote is in fact from Hitler. Both quotes were written by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-author (See here and here). So let that be an introduction to the idea that Hitler not only called himself a socialist but that he WAS in fact a socialist by the standards of his day. Ideas that are now condemned as Rightist were in Hitler's day perfectly normal ideas among Leftists. And if Friedrich Engels was not a Leftist, I do not know who would be.

Obviously, read the whole thing. And if this article is not available at the link I provided, let me know, and I will post it on my site. But what is of particular interest to me is this picture from the article:

So, how do you like this Russian swastika? In case someone thinks this has something to do with some Russian fascists, let me assure you it does not. Let me translate this. On the left side it says:

ORDER

to troops of South-Eastern front

# 213

City of Saratov <date> November 1919

A shoulder patch is approved for Kalmyk units, according to the attached drawing and description.

The right to wear this patch is given to officers and Red Army privates of existing Kalmyk units, as well as the ones being raised, according to order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, this year, # 11<6>.

Below are the signatures of the front commander, the Member of the Revolutionary Military Council (the commissar) and chief of staff. On the right there is a description and the picture. Of interest are the Cyrillic letters R. S. F. S. R. inside the swastika. This abbreviation stands for "Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic", the official name of the part of the Soviet Union that is now Russia. By the way, even now the official name of Russia is Russian Federation. So, basically this is a Red Army shoulder patch with the swastika on it that was used during the Russian Civil War after the Bolshevik Revolution. My late grandpa told me many times that in 1939 after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the Soviet newspapers kept praising the friendship between 2 socialist countries. Indeed there were very few differences between the two.

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I am ashamed...

...of one of the largest Jewish human rights organization, the Anti-Defamation League.  To tell you the truth, I always thought of this organization as ineffective, but relatively harmless.  ADL leans left and always keeps looking for enemies where very few left.  They are the ones that seem to be suing municipalities for putting up Christmas trees.  But they once in a while would have a thoughtful opinion piece.  But recently they hit the bottom:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)-sponsored campaign to combat bigotry and celebrate diversity (“No Place for Hate”) has sparked bitter resentment in Watertown, MA—a small town whose 8,000 Armenian-Americans comprise nearly 25% of the population. Local Armenians do not object to the initiative, rather the group behind it, the ADL and its director, Abraham Foxman—whom they charge, correctly, with denying the ugly established legacy of the World War I era Armenian genocide. Under the authoritarian Young Turk (Ittihadist) regime, the bulk of the Armenian population from the territories of the Ottoman Empire—some 1 to1.5 million Armenians—were purged by violent and lethal means, which reproduced the historical conditions of a classical Islamic jihad: deportation, enslavement, forced conversion, and massacre.

Mr. Foxman maintains that dismantling a program designed to fight hatred simply because the ADL does not share what he refers to as the “Armenians’ viewpoint”, would be “bigoted.” Moreover Foxman and the ADL, who have spoken out in recent times against ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Balkans and the genocide against the syncretist black African Animist-Muslims in Darfur, are in effect oddly “neutral” on the Armenian genocide: “We're not party to this, and I don't understand why we need to be made party.” But even this morally-challenged “neutrality” is disingenuous. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (4/23/07, “Turks want genocide commission”), Mr. Foxman and the ADL are actively lobbying against the Armenian genocide recognition legislation in the Congress (HR 106) and the Senate (SR 106), including the presentation of letters from the Jewish community of Turkey complemented by, “their own [i.e., the ADL's] statement opposing the bill.”

After hitting bottom, they started, as LGF often puts it, digging (via Jewish Russian Telegraph):

The national Anti-Defamation League fired its New England regional director yesterday, one day after he broke ranks with national ADL leadership and said the human rights organization should acknowledge the Armenian genocide that began in 1915.

…………………………………………………………………………….

Tarsy, 38, said he had been struggling with the national position for weeks and finally told Foxman in a phone conversation Thursday that he found the ADL's stance "morally indefensible."

Soon Mr. Foxman found himself under pressure (via Atlas):

At least two prominent board members of the regional Anti-Defamation League have resigned in protest over the national ADL's decision to fire the regional director for acknowledging the slaughter of Armenians during World War I as genocide.

Former chairman of the Polaroid Corp., Stewart L. Cohen, and City Council member Mike Ross told the Globe yesterday they could no longer be part of an organization with national leaders who refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide and fired regional director, Andrew H. Tarsy, on Friday for taking a position in support of Armenian-Americans.

Finally, the ADL started trying to get out of that hole they dug for themselves (via Jewish Russian Telegraph):

NEW YORK (JTA) -- In a dramatic reversal, the Anti-Defamation League's national director has issued a statement describing the massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as "tantamount to genocide."

…………………………………………………………………………….

Despite the shift on the genocide question, Foxman says he still does not support the legislative measure, which he described in his Tuesday statement as "a counterproductive diversion" that could threaten the Turkish Jewish community and "the important multilateral position between Turkey, Israel and the United States."

So, how are the ADL leaders different from Pope Pius XII?  What an embarrassment!  All I can add is the quote from Andrew Bostom's Front Page article that I quoted above:

As a Jew, I find the ongoing efforts by Mr. Foxman and the ADL to deny recognition of the Armenian genocide morally repugnant, ignorant, and particularly inappropriate for an organization geared to reducing, as opposed to abetting and fomenting Antisemitism, and other forms of irrational hatred.

I can certainly sign my name under this statement.

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More reasons to support Giuliani

Just read it (thanks to LGF and Atlas).

While we are on the subject, Bookworm links to this great idea of a Giuliani vs. Hillary commercial.

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Jeszcze Polska nie zginela

This is the first line of the Polish National Anthem.  It means "Poland Has Not Yet Perished".  This phrase was also often used as a slogan by the members of Polish Home Army during World War 2.

Poland to this day is still getting a bad rap as a result of the Holocaust that largely happened within its territory.  There are reasons for it: the anti-Semitism was rampant in Poland, and often Poles would betray Jews to the Nazis for a price.  However, unlike Vichy French, some Lithuanians, some Latvians and some Estonians, Poles did not take a direct role in the actual murder of the Jews.  In Yad Vashem the largest number of names of Righteous Gentiles are Polish.  Home Army was reluctant to aid Mordechai Anielewicz's left-leaning ZOB, which could be understandable, given the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland in 1939.  However, Home Army did support pro-capitalist ZZW, which had the ideology similar to the modern Likud Party in Israel.  Home Army also created Council for Aid to Jews, which managed to save thousands of Jews.  There were also Polish heroes like Henryk Iwanski, who fought shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish fighters during Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  The Jews in the Ghetto fought under 2 flags: the red-and-white Flag of Poland and the blue-and-white with the Star of David.  There were also heroes like Jan Karski, who delivered the evidence of the Holocaust to the Allies.

Now these Polish heroes have yet another reason to be proud of their country (via LGF):

A conference of UN NGOs (non-governmental organizations) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to be hosted at the European Parliament this month, will be boycotted by Polish Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from across the political spectrum, who say that the conference is biased against Israel.

…………………………………………………………………………….

"I will not take part in this conference. I saw the materials prepared by the organizers," Bronislaw Geremek, a Polish MEP, was quoted by Polish website, Europa21 as saying.

"Although there is no official statement that Israel must be pushed down to the sea there, the choice of subjects and the attitude towards the problems shows that it will be a biased, conflict generating conference. Actually we can call it anti-Israeli," he said.

"There is not the first such initiative. (The) Pro-Palestinian lobby is very active here. If in fact, the conference will become propagandist, Israelis can count on Poles," Boguslaw Sonik, another Polish MEP, said.

Konrad Szymanski, a third MEP, said: "Israel's objections are fully justified. (The) UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People is a platform for activity of various extremists. According to the most of them Israel should disappear."

"I am astonished that European Parliament allowed such activity to be placed in its building. If there is any activity against the conference, i.e. a petition signed by MEPs, I will be very glad to support it," Szymanski added.

Thank you, Poland.

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The legal jihad

This is an article by Phillis Chesler in the Front Page Magazine:

When will the West awaken? Of course, I am not talking about your ordinary citizen or soldier but about our Talking Heads and other gate-keeping chatterers who simply refuse to "get it."

Cambridge University Press not only recalls but has promised to pulp the book that authoritatively documents one Saudi billionaire's funding of terror; many anti-jihadic writers and all our leading mainstream media have privately apologized to this same billionaire. Only Rachel Ehrenfeld has refused to "apologize" for telling the truth and has counter-sued him in an American court of law based on her First Amendment right to tell the truth. (She was initially sued in London where she lost by default; she chose not to appear in court).

At a recent conference in Los Angeles, sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, Daniel Pipes announced his intention to start a legal defense bail fund for those who are sued by Islamists and their Western apologists for telling the truth. Not a moment too soon--although, regrettably, perhaps too late for Ehrenfeld. And, The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has begun a process of legal intimidation against my esteemed colleague, Robert Spencer. Accordingly, David Horowitz has launched a legal defense fund for Spencer. I have pledged money to this and advise us all to do the same.

Before this war is over, we will each need legal defense funds. And that's if we're lucky. Those in the Islamic East need bodyguards and air-lifts to safety in the West. But there is a pattern emerging in the West which we ignore at our own peril.

Of course, read it all.  Here is a scary thought.  Consider the stories about public school madrassa in New York, Carver Elementary School in San Diego, Foot-Washing Basins for Muslim Students, Sharia in Britain etc.  Can you imagine any of this prior to 9/11?  It is scary, because it seems that Al-Qaeda succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.  Even as our soldiers are chasing down the violent Islamists, our public officials are cowering in front of the Islamist front organizations like CAIR.  As long as political correctness exists, the bastards are very skillful in using our laws against us.  We need leaders who will shed any pretence of political correctness, and fast.  We need to stand up to this legal jihad and say: "Enough is enough".  And by the way, for once I would support litigation.  For example, suing Carver Elementary would be the right thing to do.  For once, let's use our laws and political correctness to our advantage.

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The US military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe

That was the caption under the photograph in the Spiegel article (via Bill's Bites):

When describing Iraq, the word "peace" is seldom used. Truth be told, the Americans have restored order to many parts of the county. But Iraq remains fractured, and where new schools are built today, bombs could explode tomorrow.

DER SPIEGEL / Agentur Focus / Tina Hager

The "Hands of Victory" in Baghdad's Green Zone: The US military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe.

The Iraq war came within a hair of returning to Ramadi in early July. The attackers had already gathered four kilometers (about 2.5 miles) south of the city, on the banks of the Nasr canal. Between 40 and 50 men dressed in light uniforms were armed like soldiers and prepared to commit a series of suicide bombings. They had already strapped explosive vests to their bodies and loaded thousands of kilograms of explosives, missiles and grenades onto two old Mercedes trucks. But their plan was foiled when Iraqis intent on preserving peace in Ramadi betrayed them to the Americans (emphasis mine - Eric-Odessit).

Read it all.

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Important development

Fox News reports:

The United States will soon be referring to an Iranian military division as a “specially designated global terrorist,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Under Executive Order 13224, which President George W. Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps would be targeted in probes of terrorism financing, the Post reported.

Click here to read the Washington Post story.

The Bush administration has been debating whether to target the Revolutionary Guard Corps in full, or only its Quds Force wing, which U.S. officials have linked to the growing flow of explosives, roadside bombs, rockets and other arms to Shiite militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Post reported.

The Revolutionary Guard boasts such veterans as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and many Iranian business leaders.

I would question the wisdom of revealing this information.  Of course, once Washington Post published it, there is no more reason to hide it.  On the other hand, maybe our counter-terrorism expert find it useful to keep the Iranians on their toes, and leaked it deliberately.  In any case, let's hope that this will help the war effort.

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Lessons of History

Today I received an e-mail from my friend George Mellinger of Veteran-American Voices, an author and historian.  His e-mail contained the links to 2 documentaries about Vietnam War, attempting to correct the misconceptions about that war and explain the role of the media during that war.  Apparently they are being posted on YouTube in pieces and also available for download in full.

The first documentary is called "Vietnam War - The Real Story":

Full 1-hour version is available for download here.

The second one is called "Vietnam War - The Impact of Media":

Full 1-hour version is available for download here.

So, why is the history of Vietnam War important now?  Because then, as now, our enemies used our Left and our leftist-dominated media to defeat us.  We need to learn from history in order to prevent this from happening again.  In conclusion, let me quote a journalist who participated in these documentaries, Robert Elegant.  He wrote an article entitled "How to lose a war".  Obviously, I highly recommend reading the whole thing.  The article is full of "money" quotes.  But here is the conclusion:

...As long as the "Viet Nam Syndrome" afflicts the media, it seems to me that it will be virtually impossible for the West to conduct an effective foreign policy. It is apparently irrelevant that the expectations of paradise after Hanoi's victory evoked by "the critics of the American war" became the purgatory the Indochinese people have suffered. Just as many denizens of the antebellum American South did not know that "Damyankee" was really two words, an entire generation in Europe and the United States behaves as if "the dirty, immoral war in Viet Nam" were an irrefutable and inseparable dogma. Merely equate El Salvador (or any other American intervention) to Viet Nam — and not only the American public but all "liberal" Europeans will condemn it without reservation. That is all they need to know. In its final effect — what has over the last decade been called "the paralysis of political will "— it will make it especially difficult for the United States to honor any political commitment anywhere in the world where small and threatened nations may expect American support for their independent existence. Before they fall to an aggressor, they will have been victimized by "the Viet Nam Syndrome."

It has long appeared to me that the medical and legal professions enjoy one enormous advantage. If they err, doctors and lawyers may be blamed. Yet, except in the most flagrant cases, the client or the patient pays them again for correcting their mistakes — if they can, and if he can. But the media on Viet Nam, it has become blatantly obvious, have enjoyed even greater advantages. Even in the most flagrant cases, they have not been blamed. They have, rather, been acclaimed for their errors. Who can, ultimately, prove it otherwise? The peoples of the non-Communist world have paid dearly for these errors — and may well continue to pay.

Let's just hope that we can defeat that "Viet Nam Syndrome".

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Carnival of the Liberals - on-line Protest Warrior action

A couple of days ago I received an invitation to participate in the Carnival of San Diego bloggers.  I've never heard of such a thing as a Blog Carnival.  Turns out, a blog carnival is a collection of articles from a bunch of participating blogs.  It is not a bad idea: it allows you to essentially advertise your blog.  Well, the requirement for the San Diego Blog Carnival was that an article has to have an emphasis on local coverage within the last month.  I did not have anything specific to San Diego in the last month, so I did not have anything to submit to this particular carnival.  However, there are many other blog carnivals.  Interestingly, one of the is called "Carnival of the Liberals".  Well, well, well, I consider myself a Liberal in the original sense of the word.  Thus, I should be able to participate, right?  So, in the finest tradition of Protest Warrior, I submitted my original "Reclaiming the Terms" article to the Carnival of the Liberals.  Supposedly it will be hosted at the blog called "Neural Gourmet".  The date it should be published is August 15.  Let's see what kind of reaction I will get from the Left.

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The Ultimate Jew

This Jackie Mason video is via Hot Air:

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We are under attack

This is via LGF:

Goose Creek - Two men are being held in the Berkeley County Detention Center after police find explosive making devices in their car. The quantity of explosive making materials in that vehicle is unclear. The FBI (website) reports that there is no known link to terrorism. The Berkeley County Sheriff's Office believes that among materials in the car's trunk were a bomb and bomb making materials that include chemicals, fuses, and igniters. The men 21-year-old Yousef Megahed and 24-year-old Ahmed Mohamed were pulled over Saturday evening during a routine traffic stop near Myers Road and Highway 176. Few details about the suspects are known at this time. They are believed to be students at a Florida college. They are of Middle Eastern descent and are not US citizens. Neither man has been charged, but charges are expected Monday. A press conference will be held in Berkeley County on Monday morning. Possession of unlawful explosives is among the potential charges. Officials are not at this time releasing any additional information. The Berkeley County Sheriff's office may confirm what exactly was found in that trunk during Monday's press conference. Stay tuned to ABC News 4 and www.abcnews4.com for details as they become available.

So, here we have young Middle-Eastern men fitting certain profile with explosives.  Am I profiling them unfairly?  Could it be that the explosives make a large contribution to that profile?

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Land mines in Canada

This is a disturbing story (via Atlas):

The big question about two live landmines found in a countryside culvert running under Inadale Drive between Strathroy and Mt. Brydges, Ontario yesterday is who put them there?

Appearing to be attached to timers, the landmines were likely of the type used to blow up tanks, according to Strathroy-Caradoc police.

Police yesterday swarmed a country creek where children cool off in heat waves like the one this week as Canadian Forces explosives experts detonated the landmines.

The creek would be a huge draw for children in the weatherman’s extreme heat alert on Ontario’s Simcoe Day long weekend.

“One mine was discovered by two teenaged girls Friday. They called police, and a second mine was found yesterday morning, only one metre away from the first.” (London Free Press, (London, Ontario) and Sun Media, August 5, 2007

I wonder what my Canadian cousins would have to say about this.

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Mark Stein's article

Here is an important article by Mark Stein, thanks to Atlas:

How will we lose the war against "radical Islam"?

Well, it won't be in a tank battle. Or in the Sunni Triangle or the caves of Bora Bora. It won't be because terrorists fly three jets into the Oval Office, Buckingham Palace and the Basilica of St Peter's on the same Tuesday morning.

The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who's behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?

Obviously, read it all.

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Reclaiming the Terms, Part 2: Immigrant

The immigration issues have not been in the news lately.  But they will come back eventually.  They always come back, until the issue will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.  Thus, even though I got to this issue only now, it is useful to touch upon.  This is a continuation of an idea that started this blog: a desire to reclaim the terminology of the English language.  The large part of the following first appeared as a comment and then on front page of Bill Faith's original blog.  I'd like to have this all on my blog as well.

To start with, as in the first part of "Reclaiming the Terms" series, let's consult Merriam-Webster:

immigrant:

one that immigrates: as a: a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence b: a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown
— immigrant adjective

However, in my view this definition omits a uniquely American meaning of the word "immigrant": someone who comes to a new country, learns the language of a new country, which is English in the case of USA, assimilate and become part of the new country.  I personally resent when people marching and waving other country's flags are called "immigrants" to this country. That is because I am myself a naturalized American, i. e. an immigrant.  Those people waving Mexican flags and, as they say in Russian, pumping their right (kachat' prava), are not immigrants.  They are unassimilated migrants at best, and foreign invaders at worst, their legal status notwithstanding.  Thus, we come to the core of the problem as I see it.  The problem, in my opinion, is not "illegal immigration", as it is commonly called.  The problem is unassimilated migration.  The legal status of those migrants is absolutely irrelevant.  I bet the majority of those people participating in so-called pro-immigrant demonstrations were in fact legal residents or citizens, many of them perhaps born and raised in this country.  If you were illegal, would you risk attracting attention to yourself by going to such demonstration?  Yet they cannot be called "Americans".  As a country, we failed to assimilate certain segment of newcomers. We did it by allowing the Left to declare them a protected minority and pander to them.  Why do we keep hearing that if you speak Spanish, you'll get a better job?  Better job doing what?  Selling tacos in San Isidro?  Every time I go to a polling place, there are ballots available in Spanish. Don't you have to speak English in order to cast an informed vote?  I am always tempted to demand a ballot in Russian.  I actually did it once, just for laughs.  The people at the polling place explained to me that there are not enough Russian-speaking immigrants, but if I want ballots in Russian, I need to write to San Diego Registrar of Voters and ask for them.  The worst part of it is that  had I demanded a ballot in Russian hard enough, I would probably get it. And that is really sad. And by the way, they do have ballots in Russian in Brighton Beach, which I resent just as much as the Spanish ballots.  I can understand older people not being able to learn English.  But people in their 20s and 30s?  My wife, as a nurse, had patients who were disappointed, to say the least, when she could not speak Spanish with them.  And they were themselves, or had family members who were young enough and have been in this country long enough to learn the language.  Yet, they never did.

The Left made it even worse.  They managed to brainwash the younger generation, whose parents came to this country to seek better life for their children, into hating this country.  The leftist teachers distorted history, and now these young people do not see themselves as Americans, but identify with some other group that was supposedly wronged by America.  Yet they were often born and raised in this country.  To further illustrate the irrelevance of the legal status to this much deeper problem, who would you prefer: one of those kids waving Mexican flags and dumping on this country, or someone who sneaked across the border at the age of, let's say, 17, and a year later, out of appreciation for America, using fake ID, enlisted into the Marine Corps and put his life on the line for this country?  I would definitely prefer such an "illegal" Marine.  In fact, I would give him US Citizenship.  This is just a hypothetical, but I think it illustrates the point.  And no, I am not excusing the illegal crossing of the border, I am just saying that it is irrelevant to the issue of loyalty and assimilation, which is much more important in the time of war.

So, now we have a problem.  There is a segment of the population that is not loyal, and often openly hostile to this country.  You can call them "5th column".  How can we solve it?  First of all, the bleeding has to be stopped.  The border has to be secured.  It does not necessarily mean a wall, but most definitely means some sort of border troops, similar to what the Soviets had.  National Guard can play this role.  There was never a wall around the Soviet Union.  But there was a ploughed strip of land all around, where the footsteps were always visible, and there were border military patrols.  The border was secure.  By the way, as a side note, the Russians have now illegal migration problem on the Chinese border.  This is not really new: back in the 60s and 70s the Chinese Government would send civilians across the border.  The border dispute there is probably about 150 years old and it did at times escalated into an open border warfare.  My dad once on a business trip ran into a guy who used to be a helicopter pilot for the Soviet Air Force.  He told my dad that they were taken to hospitals treating Soviet soldiers mutilated by the Chinese and then given assignments to strafe those Chinese attempting to cross the border and destroy border villages.  Back then it worked to stop the Chinese infiltration.  But I don't think they would do it now, so they do have a problem.

But back to our problem.  It is possible to secure the border.  Then the immigration process has to be streamlined. Ideally, the whole INS, or whatever it is called now, should be replaced, but this is just wishful thinking.  Any kind of guest worker program or work visas should be eliminated and replaced with just Green Cards.  So, for example, if some employer is willing to sponsor someone to come and work in this country, that person should get a Green Card instead of H1B Visa.  There should be strings attached: if that person does not state his or her desire to immigrate and become an American, the Green Card should not be given, and that person should not be allowed to come to this country.  Why?  Because the temporary condition for that person that prevents assimilation should be eliminated.  After 5 years, that person should be allowed and reminded to apply for Citizenship.  A year should be given for that.  Then another reminder should be sent, stating that if the Citizenship application is not filled up by the end of another year, that person will be deported and not allowed to come back ever, or for at least 10 years.  If that person is caught in the country illegally, the prison sentence should be extremely stiff, like 10 years.  You see, my idea is essentially that America should be for Americans, both old and new, native-born and naturalized.  Dual Citizenships could be allowed, but only with friendly countries.  The alliances come and go, so some friendly countries might become hostile.  Should that happen, those holding dual citizenship with those formerly friendly countries should be specifically asked at that time where their loyalties lie.  And if they choose that other country, they should be sent there.

So, if this is ever implemented, we will never have people who live here, but who will by definition never assimilate.  The only people living in the country would be either loyal Americans or those who are waiting to become loyal Americans.  So, what do we do with the people that are now illegally in the country?  Well, after the border is secure, and it is actually easier to come to this country legally, than illegally, those who are already here can be given an amnesty.  Why?  Because the only alternative to it is to round them up, men, women and children, including the kids who were born in this country, and throw them out.  Besides this being a logistical nightmare, I don't think any of us are going to like what we see, if this is done.  Thus, anything other than a complete legalization will still leave an unassimilated chunk of population.  Any other idea, like requiring people to go to a country of origin and apply for Green Cards will not work: they are already here, they do not have a lot of money, and anything they would have to do to go back would cause tremendous disruption to their lives.  Besides, even if we give them a promise that they will automatically get Green Cards in their country of origin, still they would not feel that they have any guarantees.  So, they would just stay, and the problem will never be solved.  And that is just because we don't want to reward their law-breaking of entering the country illegally.  Do we really want to keep a permanent 5th column in the country just for that?  The goal should be not just an orderly immigration, but also a thorough assimilation of immigrants, the way it was done 100 years ago.  So, what's left?  The criminal background check.  That is a joke.  You can only check criminal backgrounds of those who come from friendly Western countries, and there are not many of those.  (Mexico is not a friendly Western country. It might not be hostile, but it is also not Western.)  Instead, immigrants committing crimes should be designated as "foreign criminals", somewhat similar to spies.  Now, that of course should apply only to premeditated crimes, not DUIs.  They should be given extremely stiff sentences, like 20 years, and then deported.  Perhaps, this should even include naturalized citizens.  And citizens involved in Islamo-Fascist terrorism should be charged with treason.  The punishment for treason during wartime is death.

Thus, here is my solution to the current immigration problem. We can call it "America for Americans". It does not stop immigration, but demands that every single immigrant assimilates and becomes a loyal American. What do you think? Did I solve "unassimilated migration" problem?

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Intellectually honest "liberals"

Apparently, there are some intellectually honest "liberals".  The only reason the word "liberals" is in quotes here is because I believe that true liberalism is now found right of center, while the authors of the article I am about to link are on the Left.  Nevertheless, they seem to have enough intellectual honesty and integrity to write the article I heard about on the Dennis Prager Show, but only now got around to posting on it:

A War We Just Might Win

By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK

Washington

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.

Incidentally, my friend's brother, who is an Army Major and was in Ramadi with his unit, told me the same story.  But anyway, read the whole article.  Meanwhile, here is the Democrats in Congress say (via LGF):

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Monday that a strongly positive report on progress on Iraq by Army Gen. David Petraeus likely would split Democrats in the House and impede his party's efforts to press for a timetable to end the war.

…………………………………………………………………………….

Many Democrats have anticipated that, at best, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would present a mixed analysis of the success of the current troop surge strategy, given continued violence in Baghdad. But of late there have been signs that the commander of U.S. forces might be preparing something more generally positive. Clyburn said that would be "a real big problem for us."

That is very tricky position to be in that the Democrats find themselves in: whatever is good for the country is bad for them.

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Spirit of America

John, a fellow Protest Warrior and a blogger, forwarded this to me with request to publish it on my blog.  I am more than happy to do that.

“Dear Blog Community, Welcome to the first Spirit of America (SoA) monthly update. A new outreach program designed to keep the blogger community informed of the projects that we engage in. We are a non-profit organization dedicated to helping our troops make a difference in the war torn countries of Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. Spirit of America facilitates the donation of humanitarian supplies that our troops distribute to civilians in those strategic regions of the world. This assistance is vital towards the creation of jobs and the restoration of public services like education and medical care. Thank you to the blogger community for your support. Sincerely, Spirit of America” This Month’s Topics:

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  Help us reach out to our Military
  
  


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  A Special Iraqi School Project
  
  


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  Quick Response to Afghan Farmers Request
  
  


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  Women’s Burn Unit & Maternity
  
  


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  Join our Mailing List, pass it on
  
  

REACHING OUT For our first blogger update we would like to ask for your help in order to reach out to our military personnel serving in Spirit of America’s theatre of operations (especially in Ramadi where our forces have had some huge successes recently). Many front line troops are not aware of the services that we provide to help them assist civilians living in those critical regions that they serve in. We can help facilitate their outreach to these civilians. Such humanitarian aid is vital to advance the cause of freedom, democracy and peace. Quite often our military personnel have requests for goods like school and medical supplies, sewing machines, hand tools, watches, water barrels, clothing, soccer gear and toys. Since 2001 we have successfully completed many of these supply projects and urge our servicemen and women to contact us to see if we can help them make a difference. Email Us SPECIAL IRAQI SCHOOL PROJECT Would you say that four years is a long time? It’s a fair chunk of change, but it’s hardly an extreme amount of time unless it is spent under extreme circumstances. In the case of Staff Sergeant (SSG) Steven Gardner you can say that he has experienced more in the last four years than most people have in their entire lifetimes. SSG Gardner has served his country in war torn Iraq since April 2003!!! For almost the entire conflict that has reshaped our times he has been deployed in many different provinces of the country. Throughout this time SSG Gardner witnessed how a brutal insurgency has victimized the Iraqi people. In order to give the Iraqis an alternative message of hope SoA is undertaking a special project with SSG Gardner to help a local school in the northern Iraqi city of Habur Gate. This endeavor is being conducted in the true spirit of our service men and women. It is something that is not fully appreciated by the general public. Consider the fact that last year 807 schools serving 322,800 students nationwide were completed using American funding and supervised by our military forces. In addition projects like “The America-Iraq School Partners Program” and many others have been completed by SoA to bolster what our troops have accomplished. Despite all of that hard work, this new project is made special by some very unique circumstances. While many of the military personnel that work on humanitarian relief projects with SoA are very enthusiastic about these efforts, few can say that they have been serving continuously in Iraq for so long. As much as we are concerned about how our soldiers and their families will have to endure extended tours as much as 15 months long, SSG Gardner won’t be going home to his family until 2008. That will make his tour of duty five years long!!! And as if that isn’t enough, he wants to contribute even more to the people of Iraq.
“All of this started because of what I have seen and been through. I want to leave here knowing I came, I fought and I made a difference in someone’s life here. This area is safe or reasonably so. The people are good.” “The kids are great and the teaching staff try and make do with what they have but with funds and materials not available, they can only do so much. The school is set-up so that the kids attend from middle school through high school. The blackboards are a wreck. No fans or cooling systems in the classrooms. No computers. No sports equipment. There are no sports uniforms (they take a lot of pride in soccer). No art supplies to speak of. Basically, they need an overhaul.” There can be no better example of the quality of our men and women serving in Iraq than SSG Gardner. SoA is proud to support such an American patriot and friend to the Iraqi people. He doesn’t ask for glory or any form of undue attention, he only desires to help those in need. Please visit our project page to learn more. QUICK RESPONSE TO AFGHAN FARMERS REQUEST WOW!!! Due to your overwhelming show of support, this project is already well underway. Here is the Sergeant Major’s response when told that we had raised $13k in the first five hours: “I didn’t expect the project to be such a big hit. I am really pleasantly surprised that the project has raised so much already!”
SoA is also working to find the zargol type of saffron which prospers in Iraq. If you have information on where these bulbs can be found or would like to donate saffron bulbs for these farmers, please send an email to us with the subject: Saffron Bulbs for Afghanistan. The Sergeant Major says: “The amount of heroin that is produced from this country (about 90% of total world’s production) is unbelievable. Poppy fields stretch for miles. The Taliban use poppy grown in Afghanistan to generate funding for their activities... ...This region is where saffron originally came from, before cultivation spread to Europe. Right now Afghanistan’s neighbor in the west, Iran, grows the largest quantities of saffron, that it exports globally as the world’s most expensive spice by weight... ...I think that if it were more available, saffron would be grown here in greater quantities, taking cash away from the Taliban.” Please visit our project page to learn more. WOMEN’S BURN UNIT & MATERNITY After the rule of the Taliban and decades of war, Afghanistan’s healthcare system has been neglected. Equipment is in short supply and hospitals are in disrepair. Army Colonel Wendell Hickman in cooperation with attorney Melinda Lord seeks your help in improving conditions for at least one community - Herat, Afghanistan. Nearly two-thirds of the Afghan population is without access to basic health-care facilities. Women and children are especially affected as Afghanistan has one of the word’s highest maternal and child mortality rates. Some studies estimate that an Afghan woman dies giving birth every 30 minutes. In addition, women are often burn victims either at the hands of angry relatives or self-inflicted as a protest against harsh circumstances. The 400-bed Herat Hospital is the only non-military hospital in this entire province in Western Afghanistan. Supply needs are critical for the Burn Unit where cream, bandages and IV saline are the only solace available for patients, some of whom are tragic victims of the difficult intentional burnings. Your support of this project will enable SoA to contribute critical supplies to the Herat Burn Center, Gozahra Clinic and similiar facilities throughout Western Afghanistan. In addition to the items listed above which SoA will provide with your help, we will partner with Orchard International in shipping an ocean container of supplies donated specifically for Herat Hospital including incubators, baby warmers, and vitamins.
A very sparse Delivery Room in Herat You can visit our project page to learn more. PLEASE ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO JOIN OUR MAILING LIST Our recent drive for signups to our mailing list only netted about 65 new subscribers. We are hoping that by reaching out to bloggers that we jump start this effort. There’s no risk to pass it on to family and friends, we never share your email address. It’s also very easy for you, at any time, to unsubscribe on our site. Bloggers please contact us if you wish to publish these monthly updates on your blog or volunteer your time in any way. We are looking for a volunteer Web Technology Director, volunteer Administrative staff and volunteer writers. If you would like to post this article on your blog please contact us by clicking on the email link below. We will email you the text and html so you can just copy it into a new post on your blog. Thank you for taking the time to read our project update. The War on Terror is beginning to pick up steam and our country has finally been able to get out the word due to the contributions of the blogger community. Bloggers like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and Michael Totten are bringing America’s side of the story directly to the people. In the past when we won important victories like the capture of Saddam Hussein, the conclusion of successful elections, the recapture of Fallujah and many others - the significance was lost on the general public because of the lack of awareness about what is really going on. That ignorance has led some Americans to remain unaware that our troops do more than just kill the enemy. They spend much of their time building relationships with Iraqi communities, assisting them to defend themselves, coordinating reconstruction projects and distributing humanitarian aid. Now that we have found our voice it is time to step up our efforts. The blogger community has done a great job so lets keep up the good work. We have a long way to go. Email Us All the best, The Spirit of America Team http://www.spiritofamerica.net/

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