Friday, May 21, 2010
****IF YOU LIKE COFFEE YOU'LL LOVE THIS****
HEALTHY COFFEE
You can hear more about it.
A 2 MINUTE CALL TO: 646-222-0433 WILL PUT YOU ON THE RIGHT TRACK.
http://www.myjavafit.com/JAVADAD
EMAILS FROM SMART FOLKS
I was in Oklahoma for the last five days for meetings and to visit a cousin. Her husband's son, who lives in Phoenix, was also visiting and we had a nice conversation...he says Arizona is now the place where Americans are proud and the crims are scared. Isn't that the way it should be? HWZ
Of course! The battle lines are now being drawn for a real revitalization of America by the grassroots. Gov. Jan Brewer is a real patriot, and others will be inspired to get active. It will not be easy, but it is very doable. This November is a most critical election, and everyone needs to get on board with supporting and electing solid Constitutionalists everywhere!
Bill
Again, remember that if you're caught "undocumented" in Mexico, its to jail you go....I was stopped perhaps ten years ago in Mex City (actually crossed against a red light) and wound up calling my customer to get me out of a jam. Had left my passport in the hotel safe. We should have "equal rights". Z
There are about one BILLION plus muslims in the world. There are fifteen MILLION Jews in the world. The answer is real simple: Jews unite or...... HWZ
Jewish-Americans will not engage in self defense. Nor will they bear arms. Z
W. M.
Of course! The battle lines are now being drawn for a real revitalization of America by the grassroots. Gov. Jan Brewer is a real patriot, and others will be inspired to get active. It will not be easy, but it is very doable. This November is a most critical election, and everyone needs to get on board with supporting and electing solid Constitutionalists everywhere!
Bill
Again, remember that if you're caught "undocumented" in Mexico, its to jail you go....I was stopped perhaps ten years ago in Mex City (actually crossed against a red light) and wound up calling my customer to get me out of a jam. Had left my passport in the hotel safe. We should have "equal rights". Z
There are about one BILLION plus muslims in the world. There are fifteen MILLION Jews in the world. The answer is real simple: Jews unite or...... HWZ
Jewish-Americans will not engage in self defense. Nor will they bear arms. Z
W. M.
WHERE ARE THE CONFIDENCE BUILDING MEASURES?
by Hillel Fendel
Follow Israel news on Twitter and Facebook.
In response to the Palestinian Authority's violation of the Paris Agreement, calls increase for the government to "charge" the PA for losses its boycott will cause Israelis.
The Knesset Economic Committee held a session Sunday on the recent decision by the Palestinian Authority to boycott all Jewish goods made in Judea and Samaria, supported by both PA head Mahmoud Abbas and PA Minister Salam Fayyad. MK Yaakov Katz (National Union) said that the government should call a counter-boycott on goods made in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas.
The Paris Agreement of 1994 is the short name for the Protocol on Economic Relations between the Government of Israel and the PLO Representing the Palestinian Nation [sic]. The agreement stipulates there be no trade borders between the Israeli and Palestinian Authority economies, and is predicated on fair business practices – such as no boycotts.
"Until this matter is straightened out," MK Katz said, "there must be a call issued from this committee room to the People of Israel to prefer [Israeli-made] products."
MK Uri Ariel, also of the National Union and he who initiated the session, proposed that the Prime Minister's Bureau coordinate the entire issue "since it deals with a large number of government offices."
Yesha Council head Danny Dayan said at the session, "The boycott called by the PA against Jewish-made products from Judea and Samaria is a clear violation of the Paris Agreement and a hostile act from every standpoint, on the part of the PA and its leaders. We must react immediately and sharply, just as we would react to a violent attack."
Last week, the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria called for Israel to withhold monies that are transferred to the PA under the Value Added Tax agreement in order to reimburse Israelis for losses caused by the boycott. (For story, click here).
MK Ariel proposed that a bill be passed that for every shekel that the PA costs Israel via boycotts, 100 shekels of VAT money be withheld from the PA in return.
Ayalon: No Talks
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (Israel Our Home) said that Israel may have to stop all negotiations with the PA until the boycott is rescinded. He said "We do not differentiate between Jerusalem, Kiryat Tivon or Ariel. As far as we are concerned, this boycott is part of a continuous planned and budgeted campaign of incitement and delegitimization against Israel by the Palestinian Authority" He ventured that the continuation of the boycott would distance the Palestinians from their goal of acceptance to the World Trade Organization which considers free trade on of its principles. Israel has already approached the organization with its protest against the boycott.
MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union), also present at the session, demanded that Israel stop allowing the Arabs to unilaterally violate the Paris Agreements. "Israel must respond by confiscating PA monies and using them to compensate those who are damaged," Eldad said, agreeing with Dayan.
Israel has accused the PA of violating the Paris Agreement in other ways in the past. (IsraelNationalNews.com)
Follow Israel news on Twitter and Facebook.
In response to the Palestinian Authority's violation of the Paris Agreement, calls increase for the government to "charge" the PA for losses its boycott will cause Israelis.
The Knesset Economic Committee held a session Sunday on the recent decision by the Palestinian Authority to boycott all Jewish goods made in Judea and Samaria, supported by both PA head Mahmoud Abbas and PA Minister Salam Fayyad. MK Yaakov Katz (National Union) said that the government should call a counter-boycott on goods made in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas.
The Paris Agreement of 1994 is the short name for the Protocol on Economic Relations between the Government of Israel and the PLO Representing the Palestinian Nation [sic]. The agreement stipulates there be no trade borders between the Israeli and Palestinian Authority economies, and is predicated on fair business practices – such as no boycotts.
"Until this matter is straightened out," MK Katz said, "there must be a call issued from this committee room to the People of Israel to prefer [Israeli-made] products."
MK Uri Ariel, also of the National Union and he who initiated the session, proposed that the Prime Minister's Bureau coordinate the entire issue "since it deals with a large number of government offices."
Yesha Council head Danny Dayan said at the session, "The boycott called by the PA against Jewish-made products from Judea and Samaria is a clear violation of the Paris Agreement and a hostile act from every standpoint, on the part of the PA and its leaders. We must react immediately and sharply, just as we would react to a violent attack."
Last week, the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria called for Israel to withhold monies that are transferred to the PA under the Value Added Tax agreement in order to reimburse Israelis for losses caused by the boycott. (For story, click here).
MK Ariel proposed that a bill be passed that for every shekel that the PA costs Israel via boycotts, 100 shekels of VAT money be withheld from the PA in return.
Ayalon: No Talks
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (Israel Our Home) said that Israel may have to stop all negotiations with the PA until the boycott is rescinded. He said "We do not differentiate between Jerusalem, Kiryat Tivon or Ariel. As far as we are concerned, this boycott is part of a continuous planned and budgeted campaign of incitement and delegitimization against Israel by the Palestinian Authority" He ventured that the continuation of the boycott would distance the Palestinians from their goal of acceptance to the World Trade Organization which considers free trade on of its principles. Israel has already approached the organization with its protest against the boycott.
MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union), also present at the session, demanded that Israel stop allowing the Arabs to unilaterally violate the Paris Agreements. "Israel must respond by confiscating PA monies and using them to compensate those who are damaged," Eldad said, agreeing with Dayan.
Israel has accused the PA of violating the Paris Agreement in other ways in the past. (IsraelNationalNews.com)
WHY DO JEWS PUT UP WITH ALL THIS HATE?
Israel in the Teeth of the Storm
Posted: 19 Jan 2010 07:46 PM PST BY SULTAN
Gaza has become the cause celebre of the European left, and there are no shortage of activists, left wing celebrities and politicians eager to get their own Jane Fonda photo op with the Muslim Brotherhood derived terrorists of Hamas, who in any other forum would be chopping their heads off.
In the name of "human rights" the presses churn out cartoons that recall the best work of Nazi Germany's Der Sturmer and the USSR's Krokodil, in all the splendid pornographic iconography of anti-semitism mingling the Star of David with the Swastika, greedy Jews controlling the government, monstrous Jews devouring Arab children, when they aren't crucifying them.
To go by all this torrent of hate, this sewer flow of bile and boiling cauldron of rage, one might imagine that Israel was conducting a non-stop military invasion of Gaza, complete with ruined buildings and charred rubble. You might picture a Sharon style bulldozing of Hamas compounds and squads of Israeli paratroopers firing in all directions. And you would be wrong.
The simple summary of the situation is that in response to the Hamas takeover of Gaza, Israel closed its border with Gaza. Yes, all the lamenting shrieks, the mangled carols and the Red and Brownshirts screaming madly about the Zionist cancer is in response to Israel exercising its most basic right of self-defense by building a wall and getting behind it.
Naturally in the eyes of the left, this refusal by Israel to have open borders with a blatantly terrorist entity that was trying to bring back crucifixion, was considered the worst Zionist war crime yet. And the European left developed an all encompassing concern for what they called, "The People of Gaza", by which like "The Russian People" in 1928 and "The People of Iraq" in 2003, they really meant the murdering thugs at the top whom they supported. Calling them "The People" is always safer, particularly when really you mean the Muslim Brotherhood, the Bolsheviks or Saddam Hussein, and by the twisted progressive logic of the left, homicidal mania directed at the forces of capitalism makes one a genuine representative of the workers and peasants, e.g. the People.
The "Wall" which kept the friendly neighborhood Hamas suicide bombers out of Tel Aviv cafes and Jerusalem buses, was declared the Apartheid Wall, thus making it somehow different than all the other non-apartheid border fences and walls in the world, including the Great Wall of China, built to keep barbarian hordes on the other side. And of course substantively different than the Egypt, Gaza border which is somehow not at all an Apartheid border. Presumably because there aren't Jews on one side of it.
And what Israel demonstrated, yet failed to learn, is that even resorting to a passive means of self-defense while letting through as much humanitarian aid as could be gathered, providing medical care and even Swine Flu vaccines, not only serves as absolutely no defense, but incites the human rights crew to even greater extremes of rage. It is hard to see how Israel could be doing less to defend itself than it is, short of just gassing its own citizens to get it over with, and yet the furor is easily equal to what one might expect if there Israeli tanks rolling across Gaza every night.
Sweden and Counterpunch rediscovered the medieval blood libel. In the UK, Caryl Churchill launched Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, a slightly more liberal version of the kind of productions that Goebbels used to personally oversee. And then there are the rewritten Christmas Carols, the boycotts, and the British and American celebrities like Roger Waters, Oliver Stone Mike Leigh and Viggo Mortensen, lining up for their own Jane Fonda moment. Ken Loach, who had previously whined that critics were unfairly accusing him of being a bigot, said that anti-semitism was understandable.
George Galloway's Viva Palestina organization, the name alone a pathetically awkward synthesis of Marxist romanticism and Islamism, is raising money to ship ambulances to Gaza. And if you're wondering why Gaza suddenly has an ambulance shortage, it's because Hamas took the last batch for its own purposes, which includes using ambulances to carry out terrorist attacks. The same thing is likely to happen to this batch as well, which means that Viva Palestina is little more than a terrorist smuggling network. Of course donors to any Galloway project might want to keep in mind that with Saddam unable to offer Georgie any more money on account of being unavoidably deceased, Parliament's oldest Marxist Scottish soccer hooligan has found himself a little short of funds.
Back when George Galloway was campaigning against the sanctions placed on Saddam, he met a 4 year old Iraqi girl named Mariam Hamza with Leukemia, and set up the Mariam Appeal in her name, vowing that he would use the money to pay for her treatment in Glasgow. Needless to say little Mariam never saw the millions that Galloway raised in her name or any Glasgow hospital. Neither did any other children. Instead the money was used to fund Galloway's trips around the world, preaching hate for America and Israel, and promoting terrorism and tyranny.
But if Galloway's rabid bigotry and enthusiastic support for terrorists were once extreme, today when academic associations launch boycotts of Israel, left wing actors boycott Israeli films and Nazi propaganda gets put to new use by Europe's leftist elites in playhouses and newspapers-- he is positively mainstream. Some 70 years after Kristalnacht, all the old political tools of National Socialism have been brushed off for use by Progressive Socialists, from boycotts to bigotry to outright murder by proxy.
While the official organizations of European Jewry continue to profess concern about the rise of the right, in line with official government and left wing concerns about Islamophobia, they know quite well that the reason synagogues need surveillance cameras. Jewish schoolchildren are advised not to wear distinguishing clothing and Jewish schools need high walls, is most likely to be directly connected to the passionate feelings of Mohammed and Achmed on the subject of Jews and what should be done with them, rather than Pierre and Pete. That is not to say that the BNP or Le Pen's merry albeit aging boys and girls do not have strong feelings on the subject, but they are a good deal less likely to air them accompanied by a molotov cocktail or a knife, than your friendly neighborhood Algerian, Moroccan or Pakistani out of Manchester or Paris.
But Israel has naturally taken the blame for that as well. And some European Jews who have never squashed their inner galut yid, have fallen for it. Like so many diplomats they have discovered that it is easier to pressure Israel to make concessions to terrorism, than to pressure terrorists to stop being terrorists. The former is futile, but entirely achieve. The latter is both futile and impossible to achieve. But now that Israeli citizens crouch behind a wall and rocket proof their homes, now that Israel has taken passive defenses in the face of terrorism to a new level, the hate has only continued to grow.
Walls and passive defenses are not the answer. Nor is pointing to the number of Palestinian Arabs treated free of charge in Israeli hospitals, some of whom nevertheless did their best to blow said facilities sky high. A passive defense is an active surrender, and trying to compare your level of humanitarianism to that of terrorist killers who blew up entire families at Passover seders and tried to assemble an HIV poisoned bomb, but who are nevertheless the toast of the European cultural elites, is an exercise in insane futility. It is not that they merely cannot tell the difference between two warring sides, they can. And not only that, fully aware of what they are doing, they are now eagerly engaging in a propaganda war on behalf of an Islamist terrorist organization that is a genetic cousin of Al Queda's.
The last 17 years have conclusively proven that there is absolutely nothing that Israel can do that will appease Islamic terrorists or their foreign backers. Israel can continue playing out this game to the next stage, at which point the Quartet will carve up Jerusalem, and the war will move on the next stage, and the next... until there is no Israel left. Or Israel can tear down the defensive walls it has built and go on the offensive. And for Jews abroad in turn it is past time that we stopped apologizing for a country that has had far more patience with terrorists, than any of the Middle Eastern countries they go on holiday to, such as Egypt and Jordan, have.
When the Intifada began, Israel brought out the tear gas and Jordan brought out the machine guns. And that succinctly explains why there are two Palestinian terrorist states inside Israel, and none inside Jordan, despite a 90 percent Palestinian Arab composition. In the final analysis force trumps humanism, particularly with humanitarians who for all their talk of peace and love, love nothing so much as a regime with a great many gulags and dungeons. Every concession that Israel has made, has only led to more terrorism from Muslim terrorists, and viler rhetoric and more open hate, from their left wing fellow travelers. When Israel stops being on the defensive, its enemies, all those who hope and strive for the death of free nations so that their favored tyrants and thugs might rule over them, will find themselves on the defensive instead.
Posted: 19 Jan 2010 07:46 PM PST BY SULTAN
Gaza has become the cause celebre of the European left, and there are no shortage of activists, left wing celebrities and politicians eager to get their own Jane Fonda photo op with the Muslim Brotherhood derived terrorists of Hamas, who in any other forum would be chopping their heads off.
In the name of "human rights" the presses churn out cartoons that recall the best work of Nazi Germany's Der Sturmer and the USSR's Krokodil, in all the splendid pornographic iconography of anti-semitism mingling the Star of David with the Swastika, greedy Jews controlling the government, monstrous Jews devouring Arab children, when they aren't crucifying them.
To go by all this torrent of hate, this sewer flow of bile and boiling cauldron of rage, one might imagine that Israel was conducting a non-stop military invasion of Gaza, complete with ruined buildings and charred rubble. You might picture a Sharon style bulldozing of Hamas compounds and squads of Israeli paratroopers firing in all directions. And you would be wrong.
The simple summary of the situation is that in response to the Hamas takeover of Gaza, Israel closed its border with Gaza. Yes, all the lamenting shrieks, the mangled carols and the Red and Brownshirts screaming madly about the Zionist cancer is in response to Israel exercising its most basic right of self-defense by building a wall and getting behind it.
Naturally in the eyes of the left, this refusal by Israel to have open borders with a blatantly terrorist entity that was trying to bring back crucifixion, was considered the worst Zionist war crime yet. And the European left developed an all encompassing concern for what they called, "The People of Gaza", by which like "The Russian People" in 1928 and "The People of Iraq" in 2003, they really meant the murdering thugs at the top whom they supported. Calling them "The People" is always safer, particularly when really you mean the Muslim Brotherhood, the Bolsheviks or Saddam Hussein, and by the twisted progressive logic of the left, homicidal mania directed at the forces of capitalism makes one a genuine representative of the workers and peasants, e.g. the People.
The "Wall" which kept the friendly neighborhood Hamas suicide bombers out of Tel Aviv cafes and Jerusalem buses, was declared the Apartheid Wall, thus making it somehow different than all the other non-apartheid border fences and walls in the world, including the Great Wall of China, built to keep barbarian hordes on the other side. And of course substantively different than the Egypt, Gaza border which is somehow not at all an Apartheid border. Presumably because there aren't Jews on one side of it.
And what Israel demonstrated, yet failed to learn, is that even resorting to a passive means of self-defense while letting through as much humanitarian aid as could be gathered, providing medical care and even Swine Flu vaccines, not only serves as absolutely no defense, but incites the human rights crew to even greater extremes of rage. It is hard to see how Israel could be doing less to defend itself than it is, short of just gassing its own citizens to get it over with, and yet the furor is easily equal to what one might expect if there Israeli tanks rolling across Gaza every night.
Sweden and Counterpunch rediscovered the medieval blood libel. In the UK, Caryl Churchill launched Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, a slightly more liberal version of the kind of productions that Goebbels used to personally oversee. And then there are the rewritten Christmas Carols, the boycotts, and the British and American celebrities like Roger Waters, Oliver Stone Mike Leigh and Viggo Mortensen, lining up for their own Jane Fonda moment. Ken Loach, who had previously whined that critics were unfairly accusing him of being a bigot, said that anti-semitism was understandable.
George Galloway's Viva Palestina organization, the name alone a pathetically awkward synthesis of Marxist romanticism and Islamism, is raising money to ship ambulances to Gaza. And if you're wondering why Gaza suddenly has an ambulance shortage, it's because Hamas took the last batch for its own purposes, which includes using ambulances to carry out terrorist attacks. The same thing is likely to happen to this batch as well, which means that Viva Palestina is little more than a terrorist smuggling network. Of course donors to any Galloway project might want to keep in mind that with Saddam unable to offer Georgie any more money on account of being unavoidably deceased, Parliament's oldest Marxist Scottish soccer hooligan has found himself a little short of funds.
Back when George Galloway was campaigning against the sanctions placed on Saddam, he met a 4 year old Iraqi girl named Mariam Hamza with Leukemia, and set up the Mariam Appeal in her name, vowing that he would use the money to pay for her treatment in Glasgow. Needless to say little Mariam never saw the millions that Galloway raised in her name or any Glasgow hospital. Neither did any other children. Instead the money was used to fund Galloway's trips around the world, preaching hate for America and Israel, and promoting terrorism and tyranny.
But if Galloway's rabid bigotry and enthusiastic support for terrorists were once extreme, today when academic associations launch boycotts of Israel, left wing actors boycott Israeli films and Nazi propaganda gets put to new use by Europe's leftist elites in playhouses and newspapers-- he is positively mainstream. Some 70 years after Kristalnacht, all the old political tools of National Socialism have been brushed off for use by Progressive Socialists, from boycotts to bigotry to outright murder by proxy.
While the official organizations of European Jewry continue to profess concern about the rise of the right, in line with official government and left wing concerns about Islamophobia, they know quite well that the reason synagogues need surveillance cameras. Jewish schoolchildren are advised not to wear distinguishing clothing and Jewish schools need high walls, is most likely to be directly connected to the passionate feelings of Mohammed and Achmed on the subject of Jews and what should be done with them, rather than Pierre and Pete. That is not to say that the BNP or Le Pen's merry albeit aging boys and girls do not have strong feelings on the subject, but they are a good deal less likely to air them accompanied by a molotov cocktail or a knife, than your friendly neighborhood Algerian, Moroccan or Pakistani out of Manchester or Paris.
But Israel has naturally taken the blame for that as well. And some European Jews who have never squashed their inner galut yid, have fallen for it. Like so many diplomats they have discovered that it is easier to pressure Israel to make concessions to terrorism, than to pressure terrorists to stop being terrorists. The former is futile, but entirely achieve. The latter is both futile and impossible to achieve. But now that Israeli citizens crouch behind a wall and rocket proof their homes, now that Israel has taken passive defenses in the face of terrorism to a new level, the hate has only continued to grow.
Walls and passive defenses are not the answer. Nor is pointing to the number of Palestinian Arabs treated free of charge in Israeli hospitals, some of whom nevertheless did their best to blow said facilities sky high. A passive defense is an active surrender, and trying to compare your level of humanitarianism to that of terrorist killers who blew up entire families at Passover seders and tried to assemble an HIV poisoned bomb, but who are nevertheless the toast of the European cultural elites, is an exercise in insane futility. It is not that they merely cannot tell the difference between two warring sides, they can. And not only that, fully aware of what they are doing, they are now eagerly engaging in a propaganda war on behalf of an Islamist terrorist organization that is a genetic cousin of Al Queda's.
The last 17 years have conclusively proven that there is absolutely nothing that Israel can do that will appease Islamic terrorists or their foreign backers. Israel can continue playing out this game to the next stage, at which point the Quartet will carve up Jerusalem, and the war will move on the next stage, and the next... until there is no Israel left. Or Israel can tear down the defensive walls it has built and go on the offensive. And for Jews abroad in turn it is past time that we stopped apologizing for a country that has had far more patience with terrorists, than any of the Middle Eastern countries they go on holiday to, such as Egypt and Jordan, have.
When the Intifada began, Israel brought out the tear gas and Jordan brought out the machine guns. And that succinctly explains why there are two Palestinian terrorist states inside Israel, and none inside Jordan, despite a 90 percent Palestinian Arab composition. In the final analysis force trumps humanism, particularly with humanitarians who for all their talk of peace and love, love nothing so much as a regime with a great many gulags and dungeons. Every concession that Israel has made, has only led to more terrorism from Muslim terrorists, and viler rhetoric and more open hate, from their left wing fellow travelers. When Israel stops being on the defensive, its enemies, all those who hope and strive for the death of free nations so that their favored tyrants and thugs might rule over them, will find themselves on the defensive instead.
THE U. S. POPULATION PROBLEM
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=roy+beck&hl=en#
Friday Afternoon Roundup - And All the Talk is of Arizona
Posted: 14 May 2010 03:54 PM PDT BY SULTAN
The municipality of Los Angeles will boycott Arizona. A girls high school basketball team will not be able to go to Arizona to play, because of "safety issues", which naturally did not come up in China. But why sweat the small stuff?
Councilman Paul Koretz compared the environment in Arizona now to Germany in the 1930s.
"This is very frightening stuff," he said. "If this was being proposed at the federal level, I would think we're absolutely at the very beginnings of what went on in Nazi Germany."
Since this exists already at the Federal level, we are already Nazi Germany. Clearly.
When the boycott issue first came up late last month, Councilwoman Janice Hahn criticized the Arizona law.
"When people are asked to show their papers, it brings back memories of Nazi Germany," she said.
How about border crossings or airline travel or being stopped for speeding? Is anybody who asks for "papers" a Nazi?
And in a blog posting condemning the law soon after it was signed, Cardinal Roger Mahony questioned what effect the law would have on local police and communities.
"I can't imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation," he wrote.
Which employers are already required to do. But again Nazi comparisons are much easier.
The Simon Wiesenthal center has tried to insert some reason into the debate, asking people to stop comparing a policy they don't like to Nazi Germany. Naturally absolutely nobody will listen to them. As usual.
Naysayers have adapted Nazi to mean 'anyone they disagree with'. The idea that their behavior is inappropriate in any way is of course incomprehensible to them.
But not about to let a bunch of liberal politicians steal their thunder, the President of the UN General Assembly declared that Israel closing the borders, partly, with Gaza was worse than Nazi death camps.
The President is of course an Arab Muslim from Libya, whose regime actually used to be a fan of Nazi Germany. Also very conveniently, the Palestinian Arab territories are sovereign states when their proponents want them to be, and helpless parts of Israel, when that's more convenient.
Meanwhile we're discovering that the poor persecuted Times Square bomber who was just angry over foreclosure and acted alone-- was a radical Muslim with co-conspirators. Who would have guessed that one? Who could have?
And of course Sharia Finance is involved.
Police are investigating whether a funding system that dates from the 15th century in the Middle East helped the accused Times Square bombing suspect.
Three men arrested Thursday by the FBI are suspected of helping funnel money to pay for the explosives and car bomb that was defused by police in New York last week.
They face a first court appearance early next week. They are being held on immigration charges as the investigation continues.
They were identified as Pir Khan and Aftab Khan, both of whom were arrested in Massachusetts, and Mohamad Rahman, who was arrested in Maine. All three are natives of Pakistan.
Police are investigating whether they helped attempted bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad pay for the bomb and SUV that concealed it by using a “hawala” funding network of brokers who operate under a trust system.
The hawala system avoids traditional money transfers that could be traced by police.
The system is most commonly used by foreign workers to send remittances home or by parents to send money to their children studying abroad.
Law enforcement officials say hawala systems are used increasingly by terrorists to hide their activities.
“Hawala is a popular value transfer method that predates the Western financial system and remains less expensive, and at times more widely available, than modern banking for transmitting legitimate funds around the world,” wrote John Rollins, a terrorism expert for the Congressional Research Service, in a March report on crime that crosses international borders.
But once again an extensive article fails to mention the dreaded I word. Islam (Banned by president Barack Obama).
Meanwhile though we've got a mosque coming near Ground Zero. To open on the anniversary of September 11. The last time they bombed us. Now they'll put up a monument to the triumph of Islam.
Steyn says it best
As for the idea that America has become fanatically "Islamophobic" since Sept. 11, au contraire: Were the United States even mildly "Islamophobic," it would have curtailed Muslim immigration, or at least subjected immigrants from Pakistan, Yemen and a handful of other hotbeds to an additional level of screening. Instead, Muslim immigration to the West has accelerated in the past nine years, and, as the case of Faisal Shahzad demonstrates, being investigated by terrorism task forces is no obstacle to breezing through your U.S. citizenship application. An "Islamophobic" United States might have pondered whether the more extreme elements of self-segregation were compatible with participation in a pluralist society. Instead, President Obama makes fawning speeches boasting that he supports the rights of women to be "covered" - rather than the rights of the ever-lengthening numbers of European and North American Muslim women beaten, brutalized and murdered for not wanting to be covered. The U.S. is so un-Islamophobic that a 13-story mosque is being built at ground zero - on the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory damaged by airplane debris that Tuesday morning in 2001.
So, in the ruins of a building reduced to rubble in the name of Islam, a temple to Islam will arise.
And, whenever the marshmallow illusions are momentarily discombobulated, the entire political-media class rushes forward to tell us that the thwarted killer was a "lone wolf," an "isolated extremist." According to Mr. Bloomberg a day or two before Mr. Shahzad's arrest, the most likely culprit "maybe" was "someone ... that doesn't like the health care bill or something." Even after Mr. Shahzad's arrest, Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post attached huge significance to the problems the young jihadist had had keeping up his mortgage payments. Subprime terrorism is a far greater threat to the United States than anything to do with certain words beginning with I and ending in slam.
Given the demographic advance of Islam in Europe, the de jure advance of Shariah in Europe (the Geert Wilders blasphemy trial) and de facto in America (Comedy Central's and Yale University Press' submission to Islamic proscriptions on representations of Muhammad), you wonder why excitable types like Faisal Shahzad are so eager to jump the gun. The Islamization of the West proceeds apace; why draw attention to it and risk a backlash?
Because the reactions of Bloomberg & Company are a useful glimpse into the decayed and corroded heart of a civilization. One day the bomb will explode. Dozens dead? Hundreds? Thousands? Would we then restrict immigration from certain parts of the world? Or at least subject would-be immigrants from those places to extra roadblocks on the fast track to citizenship? What do you think?
I see, as part of the new culturally sensitive warmongering, that the NATO commander in Afghanistan is considering giving out awards to soldiers for "courageous restraint." Maybe we could hand them out at home, too. Hopefully not posthumously.
Naturally the revelations about Shahzad's links have not discouraged more whitewashing of Islam.
D. London, a reader had the following reply to Wright's Times piece that the paper of unrecord would not accept
And Multiplying From Within -- The Making of a Terrorist.
Any self-aware person who examines the choices he has made will recognize that there is often a confluence of motives and reasons leading him to a decision. So, Robert Wright’s spelling this out for us is not so enlightening, nor does it undermine in any way Daniel Pipes’ sensible diagnosis of the terrorist problem. Sure, a Muslim terrorist will often have other things going on in his life, financial problems, sciatica, and any number of grievances, real or perceived. Everyone has grievances. But it is the Jihadi programming that leads so many individuals to express themselves in the form of killing entirely innocent and uninvolved people.
At least the operators of drones try to hit specific culprits.
If Wright wants to be the intellectual who sees infinite nuances and shades of gray and infinite reasons for people choosing terrorism, fine. If he prefers to address the minor and possible factors, rather than the major and obvious factor, well, it’s a free country. But let us recognize that there is some deception in this choice, and not a lot of courage. He is choosing to talk about social-alienation and bank-foreclosures (both safe topics of questionable pertinence) rather than talking about Islam and jihad (the rampaging elephant in the room).
Why doesn’t Mr. Wright ponder the hundreds of thousands of other people who lost their homes to foreclosure, but who did not plant bombs in public spaces? Why doesn’t he speculate on why Shahzad chose to park his bomb in Times Square rather than in front of the specific bank that foreclosed on him? The answers to such questions would point to the real and obvious motive.
Wright mentions social-alienation as a reason for Shahzad’s choice. Fine. But who has suffered more discrimination and alienation in this country than blacks and American Indians? And yet, where are their heavily loaded S.U.V.s?
Let me invite Mr. Wright to do a thought experiment similar to the one he invites Dr. Pipes to do.
Last May, four black men did indeed try to plant bombs in New York, hoping to kill hundreds of Jews coming out of two synagogues in Riverdale. Would Mr. Wright chalk this up to social-alienation of African-American males? Or would he be honest and recognize openly that these particular black men were converts to Islam who were acting out their jihadi programming?
Finally, Wright suggests that it is U.S. policies that invite such terror. He claims that “war-on-terror hawks” construct their own little universe where “‘jihadi intent’ is an uncaused cause . . .” This seems to mean that we caused it; we brought it on ourselves. How about Bali, Mr. Wright? Was that Australia’s fault? Was the Mumbai massacre India’s fault? How about London? Madrid? Buenos Aires? Has Mr. Wright forgotten the 15,282 deadly Islamic terrorist attacks around the world since 9/11? Has he forgotten the fourteen-hundred years in which Islam, whenever it had the wherewithal, made war on all other peoples that it encounters? By various historians’ tallies, Islam caused the death of 80 million Hindus (to take just one of its many victim groups). Is Mr. Wright going to tell us that Hindus and Buddhists did something to provoke such endless massacres?
As the historian Will Durant wrote . . .
“. . . the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate, complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within.”
Another interesting piece comes from Robert Harris on Palestinian Muslim terrorism entitled, A Movement of Hate
Which indeed is what it is.
Friday Afternoon Roundup - And All the Talk is of Arizona
Posted: 14 May 2010 03:54 PM PDT BY SULTAN
The municipality of Los Angeles will boycott Arizona. A girls high school basketball team will not be able to go to Arizona to play, because of "safety issues", which naturally did not come up in China. But why sweat the small stuff?
Councilman Paul Koretz compared the environment in Arizona now to Germany in the 1930s.
"This is very frightening stuff," he said. "If this was being proposed at the federal level, I would think we're absolutely at the very beginnings of what went on in Nazi Germany."
Since this exists already at the Federal level, we are already Nazi Germany. Clearly.
When the boycott issue first came up late last month, Councilwoman Janice Hahn criticized the Arizona law.
"When people are asked to show their papers, it brings back memories of Nazi Germany," she said.
How about border crossings or airline travel or being stopped for speeding? Is anybody who asks for "papers" a Nazi?
And in a blog posting condemning the law soon after it was signed, Cardinal Roger Mahony questioned what effect the law would have on local police and communities.
"I can't imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation," he wrote.
Which employers are already required to do. But again Nazi comparisons are much easier.
The Simon Wiesenthal center has tried to insert some reason into the debate, asking people to stop comparing a policy they don't like to Nazi Germany. Naturally absolutely nobody will listen to them. As usual.
Naysayers have adapted Nazi to mean 'anyone they disagree with'. The idea that their behavior is inappropriate in any way is of course incomprehensible to them.
But not about to let a bunch of liberal politicians steal their thunder, the President of the UN General Assembly declared that Israel closing the borders, partly, with Gaza was worse than Nazi death camps.
The President is of course an Arab Muslim from Libya, whose regime actually used to be a fan of Nazi Germany. Also very conveniently, the Palestinian Arab territories are sovereign states when their proponents want them to be, and helpless parts of Israel, when that's more convenient.
Meanwhile we're discovering that the poor persecuted Times Square bomber who was just angry over foreclosure and acted alone-- was a radical Muslim with co-conspirators. Who would have guessed that one? Who could have?
And of course Sharia Finance is involved.
Police are investigating whether a funding system that dates from the 15th century in the Middle East helped the accused Times Square bombing suspect.
Three men arrested Thursday by the FBI are suspected of helping funnel money to pay for the explosives and car bomb that was defused by police in New York last week.
They face a first court appearance early next week. They are being held on immigration charges as the investigation continues.
They were identified as Pir Khan and Aftab Khan, both of whom were arrested in Massachusetts, and Mohamad Rahman, who was arrested in Maine. All three are natives of Pakistan.
Police are investigating whether they helped attempted bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad pay for the bomb and SUV that concealed it by using a “hawala” funding network of brokers who operate under a trust system.
The hawala system avoids traditional money transfers that could be traced by police.
The system is most commonly used by foreign workers to send remittances home or by parents to send money to their children studying abroad.
Law enforcement officials say hawala systems are used increasingly by terrorists to hide their activities.
“Hawala is a popular value transfer method that predates the Western financial system and remains less expensive, and at times more widely available, than modern banking for transmitting legitimate funds around the world,” wrote John Rollins, a terrorism expert for the Congressional Research Service, in a March report on crime that crosses international borders.
But once again an extensive article fails to mention the dreaded I word. Islam (Banned by president Barack Obama).
Meanwhile though we've got a mosque coming near Ground Zero. To open on the anniversary of September 11. The last time they bombed us. Now they'll put up a monument to the triumph of Islam.
Steyn says it best
As for the idea that America has become fanatically "Islamophobic" since Sept. 11, au contraire: Were the United States even mildly "Islamophobic," it would have curtailed Muslim immigration, or at least subjected immigrants from Pakistan, Yemen and a handful of other hotbeds to an additional level of screening. Instead, Muslim immigration to the West has accelerated in the past nine years, and, as the case of Faisal Shahzad demonstrates, being investigated by terrorism task forces is no obstacle to breezing through your U.S. citizenship application. An "Islamophobic" United States might have pondered whether the more extreme elements of self-segregation were compatible with participation in a pluralist society. Instead, President Obama makes fawning speeches boasting that he supports the rights of women to be "covered" - rather than the rights of the ever-lengthening numbers of European and North American Muslim women beaten, brutalized and murdered for not wanting to be covered. The U.S. is so un-Islamophobic that a 13-story mosque is being built at ground zero - on the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory damaged by airplane debris that Tuesday morning in 2001.
So, in the ruins of a building reduced to rubble in the name of Islam, a temple to Islam will arise.
And, whenever the marshmallow illusions are momentarily discombobulated, the entire political-media class rushes forward to tell us that the thwarted killer was a "lone wolf," an "isolated extremist." According to Mr. Bloomberg a day or two before Mr. Shahzad's arrest, the most likely culprit "maybe" was "someone ... that doesn't like the health care bill or something." Even after Mr. Shahzad's arrest, Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post attached huge significance to the problems the young jihadist had had keeping up his mortgage payments. Subprime terrorism is a far greater threat to the United States than anything to do with certain words beginning with I and ending in slam.
Given the demographic advance of Islam in Europe, the de jure advance of Shariah in Europe (the Geert Wilders blasphemy trial) and de facto in America (Comedy Central's and Yale University Press' submission to Islamic proscriptions on representations of Muhammad), you wonder why excitable types like Faisal Shahzad are so eager to jump the gun. The Islamization of the West proceeds apace; why draw attention to it and risk a backlash?
Because the reactions of Bloomberg & Company are a useful glimpse into the decayed and corroded heart of a civilization. One day the bomb will explode. Dozens dead? Hundreds? Thousands? Would we then restrict immigration from certain parts of the world? Or at least subject would-be immigrants from those places to extra roadblocks on the fast track to citizenship? What do you think?
I see, as part of the new culturally sensitive warmongering, that the NATO commander in Afghanistan is considering giving out awards to soldiers for "courageous restraint." Maybe we could hand them out at home, too. Hopefully not posthumously.
Naturally the revelations about Shahzad's links have not discouraged more whitewashing of Islam.
D. London, a reader had the following reply to Wright's Times piece that the paper of unrecord would not accept
And Multiplying From Within -- The Making of a Terrorist.
Any self-aware person who examines the choices he has made will recognize that there is often a confluence of motives and reasons leading him to a decision. So, Robert Wright’s spelling this out for us is not so enlightening, nor does it undermine in any way Daniel Pipes’ sensible diagnosis of the terrorist problem. Sure, a Muslim terrorist will often have other things going on in his life, financial problems, sciatica, and any number of grievances, real or perceived. Everyone has grievances. But it is the Jihadi programming that leads so many individuals to express themselves in the form of killing entirely innocent and uninvolved people.
At least the operators of drones try to hit specific culprits.
If Wright wants to be the intellectual who sees infinite nuances and shades of gray and infinite reasons for people choosing terrorism, fine. If he prefers to address the minor and possible factors, rather than the major and obvious factor, well, it’s a free country. But let us recognize that there is some deception in this choice, and not a lot of courage. He is choosing to talk about social-alienation and bank-foreclosures (both safe topics of questionable pertinence) rather than talking about Islam and jihad (the rampaging elephant in the room).
Why doesn’t Mr. Wright ponder the hundreds of thousands of other people who lost their homes to foreclosure, but who did not plant bombs in public spaces? Why doesn’t he speculate on why Shahzad chose to park his bomb in Times Square rather than in front of the specific bank that foreclosed on him? The answers to such questions would point to the real and obvious motive.
Wright mentions social-alienation as a reason for Shahzad’s choice. Fine. But who has suffered more discrimination and alienation in this country than blacks and American Indians? And yet, where are their heavily loaded S.U.V.s?
Let me invite Mr. Wright to do a thought experiment similar to the one he invites Dr. Pipes to do.
Last May, four black men did indeed try to plant bombs in New York, hoping to kill hundreds of Jews coming out of two synagogues in Riverdale. Would Mr. Wright chalk this up to social-alienation of African-American males? Or would he be honest and recognize openly that these particular black men were converts to Islam who were acting out their jihadi programming?
Finally, Wright suggests that it is U.S. policies that invite such terror. He claims that “war-on-terror hawks” construct their own little universe where “‘jihadi intent’ is an uncaused cause . . .” This seems to mean that we caused it; we brought it on ourselves. How about Bali, Mr. Wright? Was that Australia’s fault? Was the Mumbai massacre India’s fault? How about London? Madrid? Buenos Aires? Has Mr. Wright forgotten the 15,282 deadly Islamic terrorist attacks around the world since 9/11? Has he forgotten the fourteen-hundred years in which Islam, whenever it had the wherewithal, made war on all other peoples that it encounters? By various historians’ tallies, Islam caused the death of 80 million Hindus (to take just one of its many victim groups). Is Mr. Wright going to tell us that Hindus and Buddhists did something to provoke such endless massacres?
As the historian Will Durant wrote . . .
“. . . the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate, complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within.”
Another interesting piece comes from Robert Harris on Palestinian Muslim terrorism entitled, A Movement of Hate
Which indeed is what it is.
******AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY IN SHAMBLES******
AMERICAN LEADERS HAVE BEEN KEEN ON INSULTING BRITISH ROYALTY, THE POLES, CZECHS, HONDURANS, TIBETANS, ISRAELIS AND NUMEROUS OTHERS. THE U.S.A. HAS RENEGED ON MANY COMMITMENTS WITH OUR FRIENDS
AT THE SAME TIME WE HAVE GONE OUT OF OUR WAY TO APPEASE RUSSIA, IRAN, CUBA, VENEZUELA, CHINA, SAUDI ARABIA, SYRIA, THE P.A. AND OTHER OF OUR ENEMIES.
WHAT HAVE WE GOTTEN IN RETURN?
RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE INVOLVED IN STRATEGIC DEALS IN ORDER TO PROTECT IRAN FROM ATTACK WHILE ALLOWING IT TO CONTINUE THE INEVITABLE CREATION OF ANTI-WESTERN NUCLEAR HEGEMONY. NEVER MIND THE OBAM DEADLINE OF DECEMBER 2009. WASHINGTON'S HAND OF PEACE HAS BEEN MET BY THE STONE WALL OF IRAN WITH THE HELP OF RUSSIA, CHINA AND OTHER GUYS WHO ARE ALL LAUGHING AT US. CUBA IS ASSISTING IT'S FRIENDS THROUGHOUT SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA TO SUBVERT DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS. VENEZUELA IS ON THE VERGE OF CREATING THE MOST POWERFUL MILITARY SOUTH OF OUR BORDER IN ALLIANCE WITH IRAN, RUSSIA AND CHINA. WHILE SAUDI ARABIA SUBVERTS OUR CHILDREN IT STILL HAS NOT A SINGLE CHURCH OR SYNAGOGUE NOR MAY ANY WOMAN DRIVE A MOTOR VEHICLE IN THAT TERRIFYING COUNTRY. SYRIA, THE P.A., HAMAS AND IRAN ARE ALL IN BED TOGETHER IN AN EFFORT TO DESTROY THE ONLY DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY IN THE MIDDLE EAST..
WHAT IS THE U.S.A. NOW DOING TO PROTECT OUR INTERESTS? WE ARE DISMANTLING ISRAEL SO THAT SYRIA, HAMAS, THE P.A. AND IRAN, ESPECIALLY IRAN, CAN HAVE HEGEMONY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFTERWARDS IRAN CAN THREATEN OTHERS WITH IT'S ATOMIC MIGHT.
WASHINGTON FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THAT OUR NUCLEAR ARSENAL HAS BEEN A DETERRENT TO WORLD WAR, NOW, WE AGREE WITH RUSSIA AND OTHERS THAT BY LIMITING OUR ARSENAL AND TAKING ISRAEL'S NUKES WE CREATE A SAFER WORLD. IT IS OBVIOUS THAT OUR GOVERNMENT HAS NO STUDENTS OF HISTORY.
WASHINGTON FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THAT BY ABDICATING AMERICAN POWER THE VACUUM MUST BE FILLED. TODAY, ONLY LITTLE ISRAEL CAN PROTECT AMERICA FROM THE FATE THAT TEHRAN IS PLANNING FOR THE U.S.A. AND THE REST OF THE WORLD. THUS, DISMANTLING LITTLE ISRAEL WILL ONLY ACCELERATE THE DAY OF RECKONING FOR US. APPEASEMENT NEVER WORKS.
AT THE SAME TIME WE HAVE GONE OUT OF OUR WAY TO APPEASE RUSSIA, IRAN, CUBA, VENEZUELA, CHINA, SAUDI ARABIA, SYRIA, THE P.A. AND OTHER OF OUR ENEMIES.
WHAT HAVE WE GOTTEN IN RETURN?
RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE INVOLVED IN STRATEGIC DEALS IN ORDER TO PROTECT IRAN FROM ATTACK WHILE ALLOWING IT TO CONTINUE THE INEVITABLE CREATION OF ANTI-WESTERN NUCLEAR HEGEMONY. NEVER MIND THE OBAM DEADLINE OF DECEMBER 2009. WASHINGTON'S HAND OF PEACE HAS BEEN MET BY THE STONE WALL OF IRAN WITH THE HELP OF RUSSIA, CHINA AND OTHER GUYS WHO ARE ALL LAUGHING AT US. CUBA IS ASSISTING IT'S FRIENDS THROUGHOUT SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA TO SUBVERT DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS. VENEZUELA IS ON THE VERGE OF CREATING THE MOST POWERFUL MILITARY SOUTH OF OUR BORDER IN ALLIANCE WITH IRAN, RUSSIA AND CHINA. WHILE SAUDI ARABIA SUBVERTS OUR CHILDREN IT STILL HAS NOT A SINGLE CHURCH OR SYNAGOGUE NOR MAY ANY WOMAN DRIVE A MOTOR VEHICLE IN THAT TERRIFYING COUNTRY. SYRIA, THE P.A., HAMAS AND IRAN ARE ALL IN BED TOGETHER IN AN EFFORT TO DESTROY THE ONLY DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY IN THE MIDDLE EAST..
WHAT IS THE U.S.A. NOW DOING TO PROTECT OUR INTERESTS? WE ARE DISMANTLING ISRAEL SO THAT SYRIA, HAMAS, THE P.A. AND IRAN, ESPECIALLY IRAN, CAN HAVE HEGEMONY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFTERWARDS IRAN CAN THREATEN OTHERS WITH IT'S ATOMIC MIGHT.
WASHINGTON FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THAT OUR NUCLEAR ARSENAL HAS BEEN A DETERRENT TO WORLD WAR, NOW, WE AGREE WITH RUSSIA AND OTHERS THAT BY LIMITING OUR ARSENAL AND TAKING ISRAEL'S NUKES WE CREATE A SAFER WORLD. IT IS OBVIOUS THAT OUR GOVERNMENT HAS NO STUDENTS OF HISTORY.
WASHINGTON FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THAT BY ABDICATING AMERICAN POWER THE VACUUM MUST BE FILLED. TODAY, ONLY LITTLE ISRAEL CAN PROTECT AMERICA FROM THE FATE THAT TEHRAN IS PLANNING FOR THE U.S.A. AND THE REST OF THE WORLD. THUS, DISMANTLING LITTLE ISRAEL WILL ONLY ACCELERATE THE DAY OF RECKONING FOR US. APPEASEMENT NEVER WORKS.
Lesson: LIPSTICK IN SCHOOL
According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips on the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine all the yawns from the little princesses). To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror. There are teachers.. . . and then there are educators.
Obama threatens to 'impose' Palestinian state
WND Exclusive
TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND
Warns White House can force solution 'Israelis won't appreciate'
Posted: May 15, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
NEW YORK – If Israel and the Palestinians fail to reach an agreement to create a Palestinian state, the Obama administration will look into imposing a solution on the parties, a senior Palestinian Authority negotiator told WND.
The negotiator, speaking by telephone from Ramallah, said the PA agreed to resume direct talks with Israel earlier this week only after a U.S. pledge to ensure against any new Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank.
The PA negotiator told WND the Obama administration told the Palestinians if a deal is ultimately not reached with Israel the U.S. will consider imposing a solution "that the Israelis won't appreciate."
Aaron Klein's exposé of Barack Obama's notorious connections with extremists and America-haters is scorching the best-seller lists. Order your copy of "The Manchurian President" today.
Further, the PA negotiator said recent meetings between the Obama administration and the Palestinians revealed the White House is on board a Palestinian threat to unilaterally ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state outside of negotiations with Israel.
The PA negotiator said the U.S. wanted for now to stress negotiations between the parties, but that if an agreement is not reached the U.S. would not veto a U.N. Security Council resolution to unilaterally create a Palestinian state.
Earlier this week, Obama urged PA President Mahmoud Abbas in a telephone conversation to engage in direct talks with Israel, the White House announced.
A White House statement said the two "discussed the need for both parties to negotiate seriously and in good faith, and to move from proximity talks to direct negotiations as soon as possible in order to reach an agreement on permanent status issues."
The report came after the PA announced last Sunday it was ready to resume indirect negotiations with Israel, brokered by Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell.
TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND
Warns White House can force solution 'Israelis won't appreciate'
Posted: May 15, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
NEW YORK – If Israel and the Palestinians fail to reach an agreement to create a Palestinian state, the Obama administration will look into imposing a solution on the parties, a senior Palestinian Authority negotiator told WND.
The negotiator, speaking by telephone from Ramallah, said the PA agreed to resume direct talks with Israel earlier this week only after a U.S. pledge to ensure against any new Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank.
The PA negotiator told WND the Obama administration told the Palestinians if a deal is ultimately not reached with Israel the U.S. will consider imposing a solution "that the Israelis won't appreciate."
Aaron Klein's exposé of Barack Obama's notorious connections with extremists and America-haters is scorching the best-seller lists. Order your copy of "The Manchurian President" today.
Further, the PA negotiator said recent meetings between the Obama administration and the Palestinians revealed the White House is on board a Palestinian threat to unilaterally ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state outside of negotiations with Israel.
The PA negotiator said the U.S. wanted for now to stress negotiations between the parties, but that if an agreement is not reached the U.S. would not veto a U.N. Security Council resolution to unilaterally create a Palestinian state.
Earlier this week, Obama urged PA President Mahmoud Abbas in a telephone conversation to engage in direct talks with Israel, the White House announced.
A White House statement said the two "discussed the need for both parties to negotiate seriously and in good faith, and to move from proximity talks to direct negotiations as soon as possible in order to reach an agreement on permanent status issues."
The report came after the PA announced last Sunday it was ready to resume indirect negotiations with Israel, brokered by Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell.
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?
Muslim lender forces Christian to sell kidney
5 'armed men' accompany debtor to hospital
Posted: May 15, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
A Pakistani Christian who borrowed money from his Muslim employer – at 400 percent interest – to send his daughter to college has been forced by the lender to sell a kidney to repay a portion of the debt
The report today by Compass Direct said John Gill, a machine operator at Shah Plastics in the Youhanabad area of Lahore, Pakistan, was taken to Ganga Ram hospital by "five armed men" and forced to sell a kidney against his will.
Gill borrowed 150,000 rupees, or about $1,760, from his employer, Ghulam Mustafa, in 2007. Compass Direct said Mustafa confirmed he took over Gill's home last week after giving the Christian two weeks to pay off the interest.
Mustafa came to Gill's home with about five armed men and transported him to Ganga Ram hospital, the Compass report said.
The sale generated about 200,000 rupees, or $2,350, leaving the remaining debt at about 250,000 rupees, or $2,945, Gill reported.
The money is due next month. Mustafa told Compass Direct the debt was figured with a 400 percent interest rate. "I only offer 50 percent interest to Muslim employees," he said. The report by John Little confirmed Gill reported he was paying installments every month on the note. "They sold my kidney and said that they will come next month for the rest of the money," Gill told the news service.
Confirmation from the hospital was not available, but Compass Direct reports there is a raging black market for human kidneys because of the combination of wealthy foreigners seeking to stay alive after health issues that damage their own.
The report said the Pakistan Kidney Foundation has documented the exploitation of impoverished "donors" in the mostly Muslim population.
WND previously reported concerns have been raised by the U.S. Copts Association about the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Egyptian Medical Association attempting to prohibit any organ transplants that would involve a Muslim donor and Christian recipient or vice versa.
WND also has reported that in the United States, President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, already has defended the possibility of taking such organs from terminally ill patients without their permission.
Sunstein and co-author Richard Thaler discussed in their 2008 book "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness" multiple legal scenarios regarding organ donation. One possibility presented in the book, termed by Sunstein as "routine removal," posits that "the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission."
5 'armed men' accompany debtor to hospital
Posted: May 15, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
A Pakistani Christian who borrowed money from his Muslim employer – at 400 percent interest – to send his daughter to college has been forced by the lender to sell a kidney to repay a portion of the debt
The report today by Compass Direct said John Gill, a machine operator at Shah Plastics in the Youhanabad area of Lahore, Pakistan, was taken to Ganga Ram hospital by "five armed men" and forced to sell a kidney against his will.
Gill borrowed 150,000 rupees, or about $1,760, from his employer, Ghulam Mustafa, in 2007. Compass Direct said Mustafa confirmed he took over Gill's home last week after giving the Christian two weeks to pay off the interest.
Mustafa came to Gill's home with about five armed men and transported him to Ganga Ram hospital, the Compass report said.
The sale generated about 200,000 rupees, or $2,350, leaving the remaining debt at about 250,000 rupees, or $2,945, Gill reported.
The money is due next month. Mustafa told Compass Direct the debt was figured with a 400 percent interest rate. "I only offer 50 percent interest to Muslim employees," he said. The report by John Little confirmed Gill reported he was paying installments every month on the note. "They sold my kidney and said that they will come next month for the rest of the money," Gill told the news service.
Confirmation from the hospital was not available, but Compass Direct reports there is a raging black market for human kidneys because of the combination of wealthy foreigners seeking to stay alive after health issues that damage their own.
The report said the Pakistan Kidney Foundation has documented the exploitation of impoverished "donors" in the mostly Muslim population.
WND previously reported concerns have been raised by the U.S. Copts Association about the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Egyptian Medical Association attempting to prohibit any organ transplants that would involve a Muslim donor and Christian recipient or vice versa.
WND also has reported that in the United States, President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, already has defended the possibility of taking such organs from terminally ill patients without their permission.
Sunstein and co-author Richard Thaler discussed in their 2008 book "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness" multiple legal scenarios regarding organ donation. One possibility presented in the book, termed by Sunstein as "routine removal," posits that "the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission."
FGM: WHERE DO YOU STAND?
Another accommodation in the slippery slope
What’s next—allowing “minimal” wife beating in Muslim marriages in order to stave off “serious” wife beating?
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com:80/2010/05/09/american-academy-of-pediatrics-okays-female-circumcision-see-note/
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS OKAYS FEMALE CIRCUMCISION?
Group Backs Ritual ‘Nick’ as Female Circumcision Option
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/policy/07cuts.html
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: May 6, 2010
In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision.
The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo mutilation.
“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.
But some opponents of female genital mutilation, or F.G.M., denounced the statement.
“I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether F.G.M. is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who recently introduced a bill to toughen federal law by making it a crime to take a girl overseas to be circumcised. “F.G.M. serves no medical purpose, and it is rightfully banned in the U.S.”
Georganne Chapin, executive director of an advocacy group called Intact America, said she was “astonished that a group of intelligent people did not see the utter slippery slope that we put physicians on” with the new policy statement. “How much blood will parents be satisfied with?”
She added: “There are countries in the world that allow wife beating, slavery and child abuse, but we don’t allow people to practice those customs in this country. We don’t let people have slavery a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway, or beat their wives a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway.”
A member of the academy’s bioethics committee, Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, said the panel’s intent was to issue a “statement on safety in a culturally sensitive context.”
Dr. Friedman Ross said that the committee members “oppose all types of female genital cutting that impose risks or physical or psychological harm,” and consider the ritual nick “a last resort,” but that the nick is “supposed to be as benign as getting a girl’s ears pierced. It’s taking a pin and creating a drop of blood.”
She said the panel had heard anecdotes from worried doctors.
“If we just told parents, ‘No, this is wrong,’ our concern is they may take their daughters back to their home countries, where the procedure may be more extensive cutting and may even be done without anesthesia, with unsterilized knives or even glass,” she said. “A just-say-no policy may end up alienating these families, who are going to then find an alternative that will do more harm than good.”
Currently, more than 130 million women and girls worldwide have undergone female genital cutting, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It is mostly performed on girls younger than 15 in countries including Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. Consequences can include severe complications with pregnancy, childbirth and sexual dysfunction.
The academy’s statement acknowledged that opponents of the procedure, “including women from African countries, strongly oppose any compromise that would legitimize even the most minimal procedure.”
Dr. Friedman Ross said, “If you medicalize it and say it’s permissible, is there a possibility that some people will misunderstand it and go beyond a nick? Yes.”
But she said the risk that people denied the ceremonial procedure, usually on the clitoris, would opt for the more harmful one was much more dangerous.
And the statement said that, “in some countries where FGC is common, some progress toward eradication or amelioration has been made by substituting ritual ‘nicks’ for more severe forms.”
What’s next—allowing “minimal” wife beating in Muslim marriages in order to stave off “serious” wife beating?
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com:80/2010/05/09/american-academy-of-pediatrics-okays-female-circumcision-see-note/
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS OKAYS FEMALE CIRCUMCISION?
Group Backs Ritual ‘Nick’ as Female Circumcision Option
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/policy/07cuts.html
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: May 6, 2010
In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision.
The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo mutilation.
“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.
But some opponents of female genital mutilation, or F.G.M., denounced the statement.
“I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether F.G.M. is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who recently introduced a bill to toughen federal law by making it a crime to take a girl overseas to be circumcised. “F.G.M. serves no medical purpose, and it is rightfully banned in the U.S.”
Georganne Chapin, executive director of an advocacy group called Intact America, said she was “astonished that a group of intelligent people did not see the utter slippery slope that we put physicians on” with the new policy statement. “How much blood will parents be satisfied with?”
She added: “There are countries in the world that allow wife beating, slavery and child abuse, but we don’t allow people to practice those customs in this country. We don’t let people have slavery a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway, or beat their wives a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway.”
A member of the academy’s bioethics committee, Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, said the panel’s intent was to issue a “statement on safety in a culturally sensitive context.”
Dr. Friedman Ross said that the committee members “oppose all types of female genital cutting that impose risks or physical or psychological harm,” and consider the ritual nick “a last resort,” but that the nick is “supposed to be as benign as getting a girl’s ears pierced. It’s taking a pin and creating a drop of blood.”
She said the panel had heard anecdotes from worried doctors.
“If we just told parents, ‘No, this is wrong,’ our concern is they may take their daughters back to their home countries, where the procedure may be more extensive cutting and may even be done without anesthesia, with unsterilized knives or even glass,” she said. “A just-say-no policy may end up alienating these families, who are going to then find an alternative that will do more harm than good.”
Currently, more than 130 million women and girls worldwide have undergone female genital cutting, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It is mostly performed on girls younger than 15 in countries including Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. Consequences can include severe complications with pregnancy, childbirth and sexual dysfunction.
The academy’s statement acknowledged that opponents of the procedure, “including women from African countries, strongly oppose any compromise that would legitimize even the most minimal procedure.”
Dr. Friedman Ross said, “If you medicalize it and say it’s permissible, is there a possibility that some people will misunderstand it and go beyond a nick? Yes.”
But she said the risk that people denied the ceremonial procedure, usually on the clitoris, would opt for the more harmful one was much more dangerous.
And the statement said that, “in some countries where FGC is common, some progress toward eradication or amelioration has been made by substituting ritual ‘nicks’ for more severe forms.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO JEWISH & CHRISTIAN SENSITIVITIES?
BY:UCI
Since Israel unified Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli government has not interfered with the administration of the Temple Mount and Muslim holy sites by the Jordanian-financed Waqf (Islamic trust) in East Jerusalem. Although Israel does not interfere with the day-to-day administration, religious observances or regulation of the Muslim holy sites, Israel has not surrendered its sovereignty of those places.[33] Israel’s policy is that a united city under Israeli sovereignty will allow worshipers of all faiths unrestricted access to their holy places throughout the city. However, to protect Muslim sensitivities, Jewish and Christian prayer are barred on the Temple Mount.[34] Because of previous incidents, Israel has a police presence on the Temple Mount.[35]
Since Israel unified Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli government has not interfered with the administration of the Temple Mount and Muslim holy sites by the Jordanian-financed Waqf (Islamic trust) in East Jerusalem. Although Israel does not interfere with the day-to-day administration, religious observances or regulation of the Muslim holy sites, Israel has not surrendered its sovereignty of those places.[33] Israel’s policy is that a united city under Israeli sovereignty will allow worshipers of all faiths unrestricted access to their holy places throughout the city. However, to protect Muslim sensitivities, Jewish and Christian prayer are barred on the Temple Mount.[34] Because of previous incidents, Israel has a police presence on the Temple Mount.[35]
How Much Do You Know About Jerusalem?
Test Yourself -
May 12 (28 Iyar) marks the 43rd anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War.
In honor of the occasion, the Jerusalem Center invites you to take a short quiz about Jerusalem.
http://www.jcpa.org/quiz/jerusalemquiz.html
HISTORY TEST
Test your USA history
Okay you good-looking, red-blooded Americans....Let's see how you do on this test. 24 out of 30 is considered a passing grade.
Have a good day.
Supposedly 96% of all high school Seniors FAILED this test.
AND if that's not bad enough, 50% + of all individuals over 50 did too!!
Take the test and be surprised at what we don't know.
http://games.toast.net/independence/
AFGHANISTAN'S LAST JEW
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/09/afghanistan.last.jew/?hpt=Mid&nl=1
J STREET: ADVOCATES FOR ISRAEL?
By Moshe Phillips
J Street, the controversial Jewish pressure group that was created to lobby for a Palestinian state, is back in the news. J Street is now in the news in -- of all places -- Amman, Jordan because of its unauthorized freelance diplomacy mission there. The Jordan Times reported on May 2 that "[t]heir Majesties King Abdullah and Queen Rania on Sunday met with delegates from the American organization, J Street, who are on a visit to the Kingdom as part of a regional tour."
The question is, why would the Jordanian monarchy be interested in meeting with J Street in the first place? One might think that a group that held its first national convention only in October of 2009 would not be deemed worthy of meeting with Jordan's king and queen.
It is also curious that the visit to Jordan did not generate the headlines that J Street has been getting somewhat used to. After all, J Street has been making the news a lot since 2009.
Perhaps the Jordanian government believed that it was worth meeting with J Street because of the connections J Street has with the Democratic Party.
A key strategy of J Street from its very outset has been to use the gravitas that even the most radical Democrats now have in the Obama era to provide it with the cover it needs to advance its pro-Palestine agenda.
Five of the Democratic congressmen who signed a controversial letter that urged President Obama to increase pressure on Israel were rewarded by the radical J Street lobby organization with a five-day President's Day weekend tour of Israel, Jordan, and the so-called "Palestinian Territories." That this letter precipitated what many have termed the worst crisis in U.S.-Israel relations in decades must not be discounted.
Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim to be elected to the United States Congress, was the key organizer of the letter to President Obama asking the administration to use diplomatic pressure on Israel to end the so-called blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Ellison and the 53 other Democrats who signed the letter were widely labeled as the "Gaza 54."
Matt Brooks, the Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, released the following statement about the letter on January 29:
By now, you've probably heard that 54 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives (no Republicans) sent a letter to President Obama -- a letter in which they urge him to pressure Israel to loosen security measures on Israel's border with Hamas-controlled Gaza. This is outrageous. And we need to raise our voices to respond! These security measures were implemented to counter the threat from terrorism originating from the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip.
Every congressman on the J Street-sponsored President's Day trip signed Ellison's letter, which J Street endorsed.
J Street's February 12 press release on its "first Congressional mission" read in part:
Representatives Lois Capps (CA-23), Bill Delahunt (MA-10), Bob Filner (CA-51), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15), and Donald Payne (NJ-10) will meet with Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian government officials as well as civil society leaders to get an in-depth, on-the-ground look at the state of the peace process, and to explore the American role in bringing about regional, comprehensive peace. "We're excited to start bringing members of Congress to the Middle East as part of our overall effort to promote strong US leadership to achieve a two-state solution and regional, comprehensive peace," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, Executive Director of the J Street Education Fund.
Several important nuanced phrases in Ben-Ami's statement and the press release illustrate the cause for alarm that J Street has generated from its critics both in Israel and in the U.S. Zionist community.
J Street's very radical stance is based on the idea that the U.S. should pressure Israel into accepting a "two-state solution" and that a "two-state solution" is the remedy for a "regional, comprehensive peace." This is a seriously dangerous view. How will a "two-state solution" make peace magically happen between Muslims and Christians in Lebanon or Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq? Will a "two-state solution" bring a stop to the murder and persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt? This "two-state solution" rhetoric gives credence to the ridiculous claims that Israel's existence is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. According to the May 2 Jordan Times, King Abdullah stated to J Street "that the continuation of the status quo will lead to a new cycle of tension and violence in the region."
There is no reason to believe that a "two-state solution" will be any solution at all. After all, the creation of a de facto Islamic Republic in Gaza not only hasn't brought peace to the region, but it has dramatically increased the footprint of Iranian backed Islamic terrorism in the area.
J Street had stated that the congressmen were to meet with Palestinian "government officials." Which officials did they mean? The Fatah terrorists posing as a government in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) or the Hamas terrorists posing as a government in Gaza?
Were leaders of Israel's settlers granted any access to the congressmen? Without meeting the settlers -- the only community being transferred and displaced by J Street's "two-state solution" Palestinian statehood scheme -- how could these Americans ever hope to get an accurate idea of the full situation?
J Street is more interested in the views of Jordan. Jordan's Prince Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, Ambassador of Jordan, was a presenter at the J Street Conference on October 26, 2009, the first full day of the Capitol Hill event. And this was just weeks after Christiane Amanpour's October 2, 2009 CNN interview with Queen Rania when Rania directly attacked Israel stating "can the world afford for this conflict to keep the way -- I mean, it is -- it's a disgrace to humanity that there is still this occupation, that there's an entire population that's still dehumanized, that's still under occupation and suffering."
J Street seemed in part to be following Queen Rania's lead when it joined an alliance of organizations with a strong history of criticizing Israel when it too endorsed Ellison's letter. These staunch critics of Israel include The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF), the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), the American Near East Refugee Association (ANERA), the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), and Rabbis for Human Rights.
Since being elected to Congress in 2006, Ellison has caused controversies several times, perhaps most significantly when he demanded to use a Koran for his ceremonial swearing-in in 2006. Ellison has traveled to Iraq, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Gaza since being elected. In February 2009, Ellison and fellow Democratic congressman Brian Baird toured Gaza. At the time, Ellison and Baird issued a joint statement assigning moral equivalency to Israel and the Hamas terrorist group, saying, "The first and most urgent priority must be helping the people in Gaza. At the same time, the rocket attacks against Israeli cities must stop immediately. Just as the people of Gaza should not be subject to what they have experienced, the Israeli civilians should not have to live in fear of constant and indiscriminate rocketing."
So far, J Street's JStreetPAC has distributed over half a million dollars to U.S. congressional candidates it is backing for the November 2, 2010 elections. Ellison was among those that the JStreetPAC financially contributed to and has officially endorsed.
Did these congressmen show their appreciation to J Street by setting the stage for J Street's unusual May visit to the Jordanian Royal Court when they were there back in February? How will J Street reward the 49 others of the Gaza 54? We will have to keep watching.
Moshe Phillips is a member of the executive committee of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans for a Safe Israel / AFSI. The chapter's website is at phillyafsi.com, and Moshe's blog can be found at phillyafsi.blogtownhall.com.
////////////////////////////////////////
hursday, February 18, 2010
J Street's Wheels Coming Off The Bus in Israel
Two Sides of the Same Coin
The centuries old Islamic doctrine of "Al Taqiyya" or sacralized lying in order to further the interests of the ummah or community of believers has been remarkably taken up by the hard left group, J Street. Raymond Ibrahim (The Al Qaeda Reader) recently published an examination of this kind of "Holy Lying" here.
For two years, J Street and Jeremy Ben Ami have been lying to Americans in general and American Jews in particular by branding themselves - ad nauseam - as "Pro Israel." On bags, buttons, letterheads, websites, on television, in newspapers - everywhere - the label "Pro Israel" has become indelibly inked onto the brand.
In spite of the presence of virulent, anti-Israel groups and individuals in their midst and recipients of their George Soros-funded PAC money (like the CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood associated Keith Ellison of Minnesota), the lying has pretty much succeeded, especially among Congressmen who tend to give forth a Pavlovian drool when confronted with a putative Jewish group that chants "Pro Peace" from dawn until dusk.
But the latest taqqiya move by J Street is so blatant and disingenuous that it threatens to vaporize all the lies and all the hype.
J Street has teamed up with Churches for Middle East Peace (CAMERA exposes this other "Peace" group here and here) in bringing a select Congressional delegation to Israel. Select - in the sense that most of the travelling politicians (who footed the bill?) have a distinct record of anti-Israel statements or policies. And if they don't - Ben Ami will make certain that they will in the future.
But the wheels on their bus appear to be falling off this week. The lead Democrat Congressman (they're all Democrats) on the "fact finding" trip to Israel is one William Delahunt, representative for Massachusetts' 10th District for the past 13 years.
Phone: (202) 225-3111
In a uni-party state like Massachusetts (a big crack appeared, of course, with the astounding election of Sen. Scott Brown), dominated by a university culture that is distinctly anti-israel and Pro Obama, his presence on a J Street junket was predictable.
But due to a bizarre confluence of events, Delahunt has found himself in an unwanted spotlight this week. "Snubbed", as he put it, by Danny Ayalon, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister,when he refused to meet with the delegation along with J Street because of the latter's demonstrably hostile policies and statements towards The Jewish State. Delahunt's wounded pride got worse by the simultaneous revelations surrounding his potential malfeasance in the Amy Bishop murder case when he was Norfolk County District Attorney 20 years ago. The latest on this embarrassment is here. His presence on the trip may prove moot in light of rumors that he will not seek re-election. More and more, he seems to be crying "My Assistant ate My Homework."
As for the other villain in the piece, Churches for Middle East Peace, Solomonia has an excellent backgrounder.
Pretty soon, we're going to see a national licensing bureau in charge of requiring groups with "Peace" in their title to live up to their billing. I suspect 99% of groups like CFMEP and J Street will have their licenses revoked.
Let's look at the other members of Jeremy Ben Ami's Congressional group. Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio has had a long and cordial association with CAIR (The Council on American Islamic Relations) and with its national vice chairman, Ahmad al-Akhras.
Phone (202) 225-2215
Pho (202) 225-2015
It is worth noting that CAIR has seen many of its officers and members indicted and convicted on terrorism related charges. The organization itself was a named an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful prosecution of the terror-supporting Texas charity front, The Holy Land Foundation in 2008. Central Ohians Against Terrorism chronicled Kilroy's connections to CAIR.
Mary Jo Kilroy, incidentally, comes in third in J Street PAC's dollar recipients for 2009: $47,132.00
Phone: (202) 225-3601
Lois Capps, Democrat representative for California's 23rd District is the author of this statement on Israel's Operation Cast Lead:
"...I fear the current military operation in Gaza represents a vastly disproportionate response that will further destabilize the region."
Representative Capps received $4303.00 from J Street's PAC in 2009.
While condemning Hamas' rocket attacks, she nonetheless appears to endorse the infamous Goldstone Report. Indeed, Representative Capps was one of a handful of Congressmen who voted "No" to the resolution condemning the Goldstone Report.
Bob Filner, from California's 51st District, was also among the few who refused to sign onto the resolution - another member of J Street's delegation to Israel. Rep. Filner also holds the dubious distinction of being one of only two Congressmen to refuse to sign a letter circulated by AIPAC in May of 2009 which urged:
“absolute Palestinian commitment to end violence, terror and incitement” and urges “far greater involvement and participation by the Arab states both in moving toward normal ties with Israel and in supporting moderate Palestinians.”
Phone: (202) 225-8045
"Pro Peace" Bob, like Capps, voted "No" in the critical resolution on the Goldstone Report.
Congressman Donald M. Payne, of New Jersey, currently chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, while generally voting on Israel's side, was a signatory to a CAIR crafted letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which failed to mention the daily threat and actualization of terror against Israel.
Phone: (202) 225-3436
While certainly better than the others in fairness to Israel, the overall apparent qualification for joining the J Street mission to Israel appears to be a hyper-critical record on Israel and the relative exculpation of Palestinian violence.
Danny Ayalon was certainly morally and tactically correct in refusing to lend credibility to J Street and CMEP by meeting with their delegation. Taqqiya, Ben Ami style, is rapidly going out of style.
J Street, the controversial Jewish pressure group that was created to lobby for a Palestinian state, is back in the news. J Street is now in the news in -- of all places -- Amman, Jordan because of its unauthorized freelance diplomacy mission there. The Jordan Times reported on May 2 that "[t]heir Majesties King Abdullah and Queen Rania on Sunday met with delegates from the American organization, J Street, who are on a visit to the Kingdom as part of a regional tour."
The question is, why would the Jordanian monarchy be interested in meeting with J Street in the first place? One might think that a group that held its first national convention only in October of 2009 would not be deemed worthy of meeting with Jordan's king and queen.
It is also curious that the visit to Jordan did not generate the headlines that J Street has been getting somewhat used to. After all, J Street has been making the news a lot since 2009.
Perhaps the Jordanian government believed that it was worth meeting with J Street because of the connections J Street has with the Democratic Party.
A key strategy of J Street from its very outset has been to use the gravitas that even the most radical Democrats now have in the Obama era to provide it with the cover it needs to advance its pro-Palestine agenda.
Five of the Democratic congressmen who signed a controversial letter that urged President Obama to increase pressure on Israel were rewarded by the radical J Street lobby organization with a five-day President's Day weekend tour of Israel, Jordan, and the so-called "Palestinian Territories." That this letter precipitated what many have termed the worst crisis in U.S.-Israel relations in decades must not be discounted.
Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim to be elected to the United States Congress, was the key organizer of the letter to President Obama asking the administration to use diplomatic pressure on Israel to end the so-called blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Ellison and the 53 other Democrats who signed the letter were widely labeled as the "Gaza 54."
Matt Brooks, the Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, released the following statement about the letter on January 29:
By now, you've probably heard that 54 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives (no Republicans) sent a letter to President Obama -- a letter in which they urge him to pressure Israel to loosen security measures on Israel's border with Hamas-controlled Gaza. This is outrageous. And we need to raise our voices to respond! These security measures were implemented to counter the threat from terrorism originating from the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip.
Every congressman on the J Street-sponsored President's Day trip signed Ellison's letter, which J Street endorsed.
J Street's February 12 press release on its "first Congressional mission" read in part:
Representatives Lois Capps (CA-23), Bill Delahunt (MA-10), Bob Filner (CA-51), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15), and Donald Payne (NJ-10) will meet with Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian government officials as well as civil society leaders to get an in-depth, on-the-ground look at the state of the peace process, and to explore the American role in bringing about regional, comprehensive peace. "We're excited to start bringing members of Congress to the Middle East as part of our overall effort to promote strong US leadership to achieve a two-state solution and regional, comprehensive peace," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, Executive Director of the J Street Education Fund.
Several important nuanced phrases in Ben-Ami's statement and the press release illustrate the cause for alarm that J Street has generated from its critics both in Israel and in the U.S. Zionist community.
J Street's very radical stance is based on the idea that the U.S. should pressure Israel into accepting a "two-state solution" and that a "two-state solution" is the remedy for a "regional, comprehensive peace." This is a seriously dangerous view. How will a "two-state solution" make peace magically happen between Muslims and Christians in Lebanon or Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq? Will a "two-state solution" bring a stop to the murder and persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt? This "two-state solution" rhetoric gives credence to the ridiculous claims that Israel's existence is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. According to the May 2 Jordan Times, King Abdullah stated to J Street "that the continuation of the status quo will lead to a new cycle of tension and violence in the region."
There is no reason to believe that a "two-state solution" will be any solution at all. After all, the creation of a de facto Islamic Republic in Gaza not only hasn't brought peace to the region, but it has dramatically increased the footprint of Iranian backed Islamic terrorism in the area.
J Street had stated that the congressmen were to meet with Palestinian "government officials." Which officials did they mean? The Fatah terrorists posing as a government in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) or the Hamas terrorists posing as a government in Gaza?
Were leaders of Israel's settlers granted any access to the congressmen? Without meeting the settlers -- the only community being transferred and displaced by J Street's "two-state solution" Palestinian statehood scheme -- how could these Americans ever hope to get an accurate idea of the full situation?
J Street is more interested in the views of Jordan. Jordan's Prince Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, Ambassador of Jordan, was a presenter at the J Street Conference on October 26, 2009, the first full day of the Capitol Hill event. And this was just weeks after Christiane Amanpour's October 2, 2009 CNN interview with Queen Rania when Rania directly attacked Israel stating "can the world afford for this conflict to keep the way -- I mean, it is -- it's a disgrace to humanity that there is still this occupation, that there's an entire population that's still dehumanized, that's still under occupation and suffering."
J Street seemed in part to be following Queen Rania's lead when it joined an alliance of organizations with a strong history of criticizing Israel when it too endorsed Ellison's letter. These staunch critics of Israel include The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF), the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), the American Near East Refugee Association (ANERA), the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), and Rabbis for Human Rights.
Since being elected to Congress in 2006, Ellison has caused controversies several times, perhaps most significantly when he demanded to use a Koran for his ceremonial swearing-in in 2006. Ellison has traveled to Iraq, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Gaza since being elected. In February 2009, Ellison and fellow Democratic congressman Brian Baird toured Gaza. At the time, Ellison and Baird issued a joint statement assigning moral equivalency to Israel and the Hamas terrorist group, saying, "The first and most urgent priority must be helping the people in Gaza. At the same time, the rocket attacks against Israeli cities must stop immediately. Just as the people of Gaza should not be subject to what they have experienced, the Israeli civilians should not have to live in fear of constant and indiscriminate rocketing."
So far, J Street's JStreetPAC has distributed over half a million dollars to U.S. congressional candidates it is backing for the November 2, 2010 elections. Ellison was among those that the JStreetPAC financially contributed to and has officially endorsed.
Did these congressmen show their appreciation to J Street by setting the stage for J Street's unusual May visit to the Jordanian Royal Court when they were there back in February? How will J Street reward the 49 others of the Gaza 54? We will have to keep watching.
Moshe Phillips is a member of the executive committee of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans for a Safe Israel / AFSI. The chapter's website is at phillyafsi.com, and Moshe's blog can be found at phillyafsi.blogtownhall.com.
////////////////////////////////////////
hursday, February 18, 2010
J Street's Wheels Coming Off The Bus in Israel
Two Sides of the Same Coin
The centuries old Islamic doctrine of "Al Taqiyya" or sacralized lying in order to further the interests of the ummah or community of believers has been remarkably taken up by the hard left group, J Street. Raymond Ibrahim (The Al Qaeda Reader) recently published an examination of this kind of "Holy Lying" here.
For two years, J Street and Jeremy Ben Ami have been lying to Americans in general and American Jews in particular by branding themselves - ad nauseam - as "Pro Israel." On bags, buttons, letterheads, websites, on television, in newspapers - everywhere - the label "Pro Israel" has become indelibly inked onto the brand.
In spite of the presence of virulent, anti-Israel groups and individuals in their midst and recipients of their George Soros-funded PAC money (like the CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood associated Keith Ellison of Minnesota), the lying has pretty much succeeded, especially among Congressmen who tend to give forth a Pavlovian drool when confronted with a putative Jewish group that chants "Pro Peace" from dawn until dusk.
But the latest taqqiya move by J Street is so blatant and disingenuous that it threatens to vaporize all the lies and all the hype.
J Street has teamed up with Churches for Middle East Peace (CAMERA exposes this other "Peace" group here and here) in bringing a select Congressional delegation to Israel. Select - in the sense that most of the travelling politicians (who footed the bill?) have a distinct record of anti-Israel statements or policies. And if they don't - Ben Ami will make certain that they will in the future.
But the wheels on their bus appear to be falling off this week. The lead Democrat Congressman (they're all Democrats) on the "fact finding" trip to Israel is one William Delahunt, representative for Massachusetts' 10th District for the past 13 years.
Phone: (202) 225-3111
In a uni-party state like Massachusetts (a big crack appeared, of course, with the astounding election of Sen. Scott Brown), dominated by a university culture that is distinctly anti-israel and Pro Obama, his presence on a J Street junket was predictable.
But due to a bizarre confluence of events, Delahunt has found himself in an unwanted spotlight this week. "Snubbed", as he put it, by Danny Ayalon, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister,when he refused to meet with the delegation along with J Street because of the latter's demonstrably hostile policies and statements towards The Jewish State. Delahunt's wounded pride got worse by the simultaneous revelations surrounding his potential malfeasance in the Amy Bishop murder case when he was Norfolk County District Attorney 20 years ago. The latest on this embarrassment is here. His presence on the trip may prove moot in light of rumors that he will not seek re-election. More and more, he seems to be crying "My Assistant ate My Homework."
As for the other villain in the piece, Churches for Middle East Peace, Solomonia has an excellent backgrounder.
Pretty soon, we're going to see a national licensing bureau in charge of requiring groups with "Peace" in their title to live up to their billing. I suspect 99% of groups like CFMEP and J Street will have their licenses revoked.
Let's look at the other members of Jeremy Ben Ami's Congressional group. Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio has had a long and cordial association with CAIR (The Council on American Islamic Relations) and with its national vice chairman, Ahmad al-Akhras.
Phone (202) 225-2215
Pho (202) 225-2015
It is worth noting that CAIR has seen many of its officers and members indicted and convicted on terrorism related charges. The organization itself was a named an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful prosecution of the terror-supporting Texas charity front, The Holy Land Foundation in 2008. Central Ohians Against Terrorism chronicled Kilroy's connections to CAIR.
Mary Jo Kilroy, incidentally, comes in third in J Street PAC's dollar recipients for 2009: $47,132.00
Phone: (202) 225-3601
Lois Capps, Democrat representative for California's 23rd District is the author of this statement on Israel's Operation Cast Lead:
"...I fear the current military operation in Gaza represents a vastly disproportionate response that will further destabilize the region."
Representative Capps received $4303.00 from J Street's PAC in 2009.
While condemning Hamas' rocket attacks, she nonetheless appears to endorse the infamous Goldstone Report. Indeed, Representative Capps was one of a handful of Congressmen who voted "No" to the resolution condemning the Goldstone Report.
Bob Filner, from California's 51st District, was also among the few who refused to sign onto the resolution - another member of J Street's delegation to Israel. Rep. Filner also holds the dubious distinction of being one of only two Congressmen to refuse to sign a letter circulated by AIPAC in May of 2009 which urged:
“absolute Palestinian commitment to end violence, terror and incitement” and urges “far greater involvement and participation by the Arab states both in moving toward normal ties with Israel and in supporting moderate Palestinians.”
Phone: (202) 225-8045
"Pro Peace" Bob, like Capps, voted "No" in the critical resolution on the Goldstone Report.
Congressman Donald M. Payne, of New Jersey, currently chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, while generally voting on Israel's side, was a signatory to a CAIR crafted letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which failed to mention the daily threat and actualization of terror against Israel.
Phone: (202) 225-3436
While certainly better than the others in fairness to Israel, the overall apparent qualification for joining the J Street mission to Israel appears to be a hyper-critical record on Israel and the relative exculpation of Palestinian violence.
Danny Ayalon was certainly morally and tactically correct in refusing to lend credibility to J Street and CMEP by meeting with their delegation. Taqqiya, Ben Ami style, is rapidly going out of style.
RIOT BUT NO NOTORIETY - WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
THIS EVENT HAD A TOTAL NEWS BLACKOUT. NO REPORT WAS MADE BY ANY MEDIA AS TO THIS MUSLIM RIOT IN THE USA!
On Tuesday 05-11-10 I attended the Israeli Colonel Lecture at Denver University. Approximately 120 people were in attendance. A near riot broke out as Muslim and Leftist attendees screamed "war criminal " and made other derogatory comments to IDF Colonel Gruber. Both the Denver University campus police and the Denver Police Department were on scene to keep order. Several persons were ejected from the event. The event was stopped more than ten times to restore order.
IDF Colonel Gruber gave an excellent presentation showing how the IDF operates within Israel. Colonel Gruber is a professional in every sense of the word.
R.M.
Retired Law Enforcement Officer
Federal Heights, Colorado.
On Tuesday 05-11-10 I attended the Israeli Colonel Lecture at Denver University. Approximately 120 people were in attendance. A near riot broke out as Muslim and Leftist attendees screamed "war criminal " and made other derogatory comments to IDF Colonel Gruber. Both the Denver University campus police and the Denver Police Department were on scene to keep order. Several persons were ejected from the event. The event was stopped more than ten times to restore order.
IDF Colonel Gruber gave an excellent presentation showing how the IDF operates within Israel. Colonel Gruber is a professional in every sense of the word.
R.M.
Retired Law Enforcement Officer
Federal Heights, Colorado.
DO YOU LIKE ARIZONA'S ENACTMENT OF THE FEDERAL LAW? OR?
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4206174/gov-brewer-mr-president-secretary-napolitano---do-your-job/?playlist_id=86925
http://www.tearupyourcard.com/
//////////////////////////////////////
Bureaucrats already drawing up plan to implement
The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, already has drafted a plan for processing 13 million illegal alien applicants for amnesty in a 30-week period at an estimated cost of $1 billion, WND has learned.
///////////////////////////
White House, Democrats Applaud Mexican President Slamming Arizona Law -which conforms to Federal law!
FOXNews.com
Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday strongly denounced Arizona's new law clamping down on illegal immigrants and urged members of Congress to pass "comprehensive immigration reform".
Mexican President Felipe Calderon is applauded during a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 20, 2010. (Reuters)
WASHINGTON -- As Mexican President Felipe Calderon ripped Arizona's new law clamping down on illegal immigrants in front of Congress on Thursday, Democrats and White House officials rose to their feet to cheer, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Janet Napolitano -- two officials who have confessed to not even reading the law.
And that isn't sitting well with officials from states along the border.
"It was extremely disappointing to have a foreign head of state on the floor of the U.S. Congress exhibiting willful ignorance" over the new law, Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams told Fox News.
"But I'll tell you what's even more galling is to have members of the White House staff standing and applauding something that is absolutely wrong," he said. "Arizona's law does not introduce racial profiling. Quite the contrary."
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said "those who encourage criticism of the Arizona law are on the wrong side of the American people."
Mexican President Felipe Calderon addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 20, 2010. (AP)
"When you peel back the inflammatory rhetoric and the baseless accusations of those who oppose the Arizona law, you find that Arizona has taken a reasonable, constitutional approach to dealing with a problem that the federal government hasn't," he said. Despite confessing to not reading the law, Holder and Napolitano are among those who have criticized it, saying the law would promote racial profiling and may be unconstitutional.
In the first address to Congress by a foreign national leader this year, Calderon delivered a message Thursday that the two countries must cooperate to improve security along the often-violent border and control the flow of immigrants into the United States.
While Republican lawmakers welcomed Calderon's call for improved relations between the two countries, they jeered his lecture on how to fix the U.S. immigration system and his criticism of Arizona's new law.
"I think it's inappropriate for him to come in and criticize our law," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News. "When we go down to Mexico, we don't do that to the Mexicans." "The Arizona law is not the problem," he added. "The problem is the growing violence down the border and securing the border and the Obama administration enforcing federal law."
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee's immigration, refugees and border security subcommittee, said it was "inappropriate" for Calderon to "lecture Americans on our own state and federal laws." "Arizona's immigration law has been amended to make clear it does not authorize racial profiling by law enforcement," he said.
In his remarks Thursday, Calderon said he is "convinced comprehensive immigration reform is crucial to securing our border." "But I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona," he said. "It's a law that not only ignores reality, but also introduces racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement." Calderon said his "government does not favor the breaking of the rules" and that he respects the right of any country to "enact and enforce its own laws." "But what we need today is to fix a broken and inefficient system," he said. "We favor the establishment of laws that work and work well for all."
Smith said he was "disappointed that President Calderon did not use this opportunity before us to talk about what more Mexico will do to discourage illegal immigration and improve conditions so that good, hardworking Mexican citizens will want to stay home instead of coming to America."
"The economic and tax reforms that President Calderon discussed are important, but they are not enough to curb the flow of illegal immigration," he said in a written statement. "Instead, President Calderon continues to mischaracterize and criticize domestic policies of the United States. It is not right for the president of another country to come here and criticize our nation or our states for wanting to stop human smuggling and drug trafficking, or secure our border."
Calderon's state visit comes at a time of renewed furor over the flawed immigration system from Mexico into the United States. From border security troubles to questions about how to deal with the millions of illegal migrants living in the United States, the immigration debate remains politically vexing, frustrating and volatile.
Obama is lobbying lawmakers to get moving on legislation that would seek to deal with the security, employment and citizenship issues at once. He concedes, however, that he does not yet have the Republican support he would need to get such a complex deal done. Whether any progress will happen this year is unclear.
Stoking the matter is a new law approved by Arizona lawmakers and set to take effect July 29 unless derailed by legal challenges. It requires police, in the context of enforcing other laws, to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the United States illegally.
Calderon calls that discriminatory, and Obama agrees the Arizona law could well be applied that way. He has ordered a Justice Department review. Calderon also told Congress Thursday that the fight against narcotics traffickers along the border can only succeed if the United States reduces its demand for illegal drugs. Calderon called on Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban. "The Second Amendment is not a subject open for diplomatic negotiation, with Mexico or any other nation," Cornyn said.
He said the United States must stop the flow of assault weapons and other arms across the border.
The Mexican leader found an ally at the White House Wednesday, where Obama is pressing lawmakers to take up legislation that would deal with security, employment and citizenship issues.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.tearupyourcard.com/
//////////////////////////////////////
Bureaucrats already drawing up plan to implement
The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, already has drafted a plan for processing 13 million illegal alien applicants for amnesty in a 30-week period at an estimated cost of $1 billion, WND has learned.
///////////////////////////
White House, Democrats Applaud Mexican President Slamming Arizona Law -which conforms to Federal law!
FOXNews.com
Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday strongly denounced Arizona's new law clamping down on illegal immigrants and urged members of Congress to pass "comprehensive immigration reform".
Mexican President Felipe Calderon is applauded during a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 20, 2010. (Reuters)
WASHINGTON -- As Mexican President Felipe Calderon ripped Arizona's new law clamping down on illegal immigrants in front of Congress on Thursday, Democrats and White House officials rose to their feet to cheer, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Janet Napolitano -- two officials who have confessed to not even reading the law.
And that isn't sitting well with officials from states along the border.
"It was extremely disappointing to have a foreign head of state on the floor of the U.S. Congress exhibiting willful ignorance" over the new law, Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams told Fox News.
"But I'll tell you what's even more galling is to have members of the White House staff standing and applauding something that is absolutely wrong," he said. "Arizona's law does not introduce racial profiling. Quite the contrary."
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said "those who encourage criticism of the Arizona law are on the wrong side of the American people."
Mexican President Felipe Calderon addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 20, 2010. (AP)
"When you peel back the inflammatory rhetoric and the baseless accusations of those who oppose the Arizona law, you find that Arizona has taken a reasonable, constitutional approach to dealing with a problem that the federal government hasn't," he said. Despite confessing to not reading the law, Holder and Napolitano are among those who have criticized it, saying the law would promote racial profiling and may be unconstitutional.
In the first address to Congress by a foreign national leader this year, Calderon delivered a message Thursday that the two countries must cooperate to improve security along the often-violent border and control the flow of immigrants into the United States.
While Republican lawmakers welcomed Calderon's call for improved relations between the two countries, they jeered his lecture on how to fix the U.S. immigration system and his criticism of Arizona's new law.
"I think it's inappropriate for him to come in and criticize our law," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News. "When we go down to Mexico, we don't do that to the Mexicans." "The Arizona law is not the problem," he added. "The problem is the growing violence down the border and securing the border and the Obama administration enforcing federal law."
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee's immigration, refugees and border security subcommittee, said it was "inappropriate" for Calderon to "lecture Americans on our own state and federal laws." "Arizona's immigration law has been amended to make clear it does not authorize racial profiling by law enforcement," he said.
In his remarks Thursday, Calderon said he is "convinced comprehensive immigration reform is crucial to securing our border." "But I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona," he said. "It's a law that not only ignores reality, but also introduces racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement." Calderon said his "government does not favor the breaking of the rules" and that he respects the right of any country to "enact and enforce its own laws." "But what we need today is to fix a broken and inefficient system," he said. "We favor the establishment of laws that work and work well for all."
Smith said he was "disappointed that President Calderon did not use this opportunity before us to talk about what more Mexico will do to discourage illegal immigration and improve conditions so that good, hardworking Mexican citizens will want to stay home instead of coming to America."
"The economic and tax reforms that President Calderon discussed are important, but they are not enough to curb the flow of illegal immigration," he said in a written statement. "Instead, President Calderon continues to mischaracterize and criticize domestic policies of the United States. It is not right for the president of another country to come here and criticize our nation or our states for wanting to stop human smuggling and drug trafficking, or secure our border."
Calderon's state visit comes at a time of renewed furor over the flawed immigration system from Mexico into the United States. From border security troubles to questions about how to deal with the millions of illegal migrants living in the United States, the immigration debate remains politically vexing, frustrating and volatile.
Obama is lobbying lawmakers to get moving on legislation that would seek to deal with the security, employment and citizenship issues at once. He concedes, however, that he does not yet have the Republican support he would need to get such a complex deal done. Whether any progress will happen this year is unclear.
Stoking the matter is a new law approved by Arizona lawmakers and set to take effect July 29 unless derailed by legal challenges. It requires police, in the context of enforcing other laws, to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the United States illegally.
Calderon calls that discriminatory, and Obama agrees the Arizona law could well be applied that way. He has ordered a Justice Department review. Calderon also told Congress Thursday that the fight against narcotics traffickers along the border can only succeed if the United States reduces its demand for illegal drugs. Calderon called on Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban. "The Second Amendment is not a subject open for diplomatic negotiation, with Mexico or any other nation," Cornyn said.
He said the United States must stop the flow of assault weapons and other arms across the border.
The Mexican leader found an ally at the White House Wednesday, where Obama is pressing lawmakers to take up legislation that would deal with security, employment and citizenship issues.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)