One Bangladeshi illegal nabbed? Just because he's a Muslim and got helped by some Central American gang doesn't mean he's anything more dangerous than another dishwasher or janitor. Bangladeshis have been trying to get to other places by hook or by crook for a long time. They are, after all, a rather poor country.

The fact of the matter is that the gangs will do anything for a buck, and there are plenty of people who'll do anything to get into the USA--whether to make trouble or make a go at a better life. It's one of the things that makes me proud to be an American even if, for the record, I'd like to see better enforcement of our immigration laws).

BTW, they've also nabbed Chinese on our Mexican border, and scads of other OTM (Other than Mexican) as well.

Posted by: Kepha1 at December 11, 2004 7:04 AM

"December 10, 2004 — Last week’s arrest of a Bangladeshi immigrant trying to illegally enter the country has federal authorities concerned over the vulnerability of the U.S.-Mexico border to infiltration by terrorists."

Whoa--Oh, my gosh, don't tell me that the terrorists would do something like come across our borders! I, personally, never would have thought of that! Thank goodness our government has been clever enough to figure that one out!

OK, here's a bumper sticker: "It's the borders, Stupid!"

Posted by: cubed at December 11, 2004 10:03 AM

December 11, 2004
http://www.beecy.net/frank/
Red Cross to give water to Iraqi city?? Looks like the Red Cross has said the battle in Falluja not any civis among the dead but all Dead Islamic Terrorist!!

China cracking down on Christians Churches? Why would they do that? Christianity is growing in China!!

James Brown to have surgery??

Man in AZ charged with Halloween display being to scary? Woman said children couldn’t sleep if he loses in court it will cost him 2500$ and maybe 6mo in jail?? What can we do about the mussis with this? I see hope here because of all the CUTTING OFF OF MENS HEADS and THE KILLING OF THE RUSSIAN CHILDREN IN THE BLESLAIN SCHOOL!! That our children see a mulsum in the street and it causes Nightmares so they must be deported and or kept from sight!! This is a case to watch!!

How to pay for the rise of gas prices? Cut the gas Tax!! How to pay for the Gas Tax Cut, Cut all AID to mulsum lands [countries] let them starve feed their own people, and revoke all visas!!!

2 islamic terrorist try to fire a rocket in Baghdad and DIE it back fired and KILLED BOTH!!!

Iwoa Church Burned Fire gutted the very old Church LOOKS like the People have a Islamic Terrorist running loose??

Fire @ Fort Worth Fence Factory??

Water main break?? Missed the town on this one??

Bike in paki blows up next to a military van?? Pakis arrest 10??

Fireworks blow up train in China?? Quite the light show??

Mulsums riot in Kashmir arrest made??

22 islamic countries to take on economic reform??

Berilliconi Acquitted!!

6000 people a year are injured by large vehicles backing over them? So some people are demanding beepers??

Kerik quits says no thanks??
I am sad to see Ashcroft go!!

Good point a man called Cspan and said if they make these bombs that are blowing up buildings how much armor on the trucks is enough??

Hugh I think Victor is on the same page!!

Ticker on Fox News Margaret Hassian funeral in London AP report was selected killed by hostage takers?? YOU THINK??
Nasseem seams that 10% of the pop of Egypt is Christian and they are decremented against? What is 10% of 70,000,000 isn’t that 7,000,000 so it seams 7 million is no big deal?? Now lets look at the USA pop of 300,000,000 and what are the mussis in the USA 2,oo,ooo not something to sneeze at but doable??

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200412100841.asp
December 10, 2004, 8:41 a.m.
The Ents of Europe
Strange rumblings on the continent.
One of the many wondrous peoples that poured forth from the rich imagination of the late J. R. R. Tolkien were the Ents. These tree-like creatures, agonizingly slow and covered with mossy bark, nursed themselves on tales of past glory while their numbers dwindled in their isolation. Unable to reproduce themselves or to fathom the evil outside their peaceful forest — and careful to keep to themselves and avoid reacting to provocation of the tree-cutters and forest burners — they assumed they would be given a pass from the upheavals of Middle Earth.

But with the sudden arrival of two volatile hobbits, the nearby evils of timber-cutting, industrial devilry, and mass murder became too much for the Ents to stomach. They finally "wake up" (literally). Then they go on the offensive — and are amazed at the power they still wield in destroying Saruman's empire.
For Tolkien, who wrote in a post-imperial Britain bled white from stopping Prussian militarism and Hitler's Nazism, only to then witness the rise of the more numerous, wealthier, and crasser Americans, such specters were haunting. Indeed, there are variants of the Ent theme throughout Tolkien's novels, from the dormant Riders of Rohan — whose king was exorcised from his dotage and rallied the realm's dwindling cavalry to recover lost glory and save the West — to the hobbits themselves.
The latter, protected by slurred "Rangers," live blissfully unaware that radical changes in the world have brought evil incarnate to their very doorstep. Then to their amazement they discover that of all people, a hobbit rises to the occasion, and really does stand up well when confronted with apparently far more powerful and evil adversaries. The entire novel is full of such folk — the oath-breaking Dead who come alive to honor their once-broken pact, or the now-fallen and impotent High Elves who nevertheless do their part in the inevitable war to come.
Tolkien always denied an allegorical motif or any allusions to the contemporary dangers of appeasement or the leveling effects of modernism. And scholars bicker over whether he was lamenting the end of the old England, old Europe, or the old West — in the face of the American democratic colossus, the Soviet Union's tentacles, or the un-chivalrous age of the bomb. But the notion of decline, past glory, and 11th-hour reawakening are nevertheless everywhere in the English philologist's Lord of the Rings. Was he on to something?
More specifically, does the Ents analogy work for present-day Europe? Before you laugh at the silly comparison, remember that the Western military tradition is European. Today the continent is unarmed and weak, but deep within its collective mind and spirit still reside the ability to field technologically sophisticated and highly disciplined forces — if it were ever to really feel threatened. One murder began to arouse the Dutch; what would 3,000 dead and a toppled Eiffel Tower do to the French? Or how would the Italians take to a plane stuck into the dome of St. Peter? We are nursed now on the spectacle of Iranian mullahs, with their bought weapons and foreign-produced oil wealth, humiliating a convoy of European delegates begging and cajoling them not to make bombs — or at least to point what bombs they make at Israel and not at Berlin or Paris. But it was not always the case, and may not always be.
The Netherlands was a litmus test for Europe. Unlike Spain or Greece, which had historical grievances against Islam, the Dutch were the avatars of the new liberal Europe, without historical baggage. They were eager to unshackle Europe from the Church, from its class and gender constraints, and from any whiff of its racist or colonialist past. True, for a variety of reasons, Amsterdam may be a case study of how wrong Rousseau was about natural man, but for a Muslim immigrant the country was about as hospitable a foreign host as one can imagine. Thus, it was far safer for radical Islamic fascists to damn the West openly from a mosque in Rotterdam than for a moderate Christian to quietly worship in a church in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Algeria. And yet we learn not just that the Netherlands has fostered a radical sect of Muslims who will kill and bomb, but, far more importantly, that they will do so after years of residency among, and indeed in utter contempt of, their Western hosts.
Things are no less humiliating — or dangerous — in France. Thousands of unassimilated Muslims mock French society. Yet their fury shapes its foreign policy to the degree that Jacques Chirac sent a government plane to sweep up a dying Arafat. But then what do we expect from a country that enriched Hamas, let Mrs. Arafat spend her husband's embezzled millions under its nose, gave Khomeini the sanctuary needed to destroy Iran, sold a nuclear reactor to Saddam, is at the heart of the Oil-for-Food scandal, and revs up the Muslim world against the United States?
Only now are Europeans discovering the disturbing nature of radical Islamic extremism, which thrives not on real grievance but on perceived hurts — and the appeasement of its purported oppressors. How odd that tens of millions of Muslims flocked to Europe for its material consumption, superior standard of living, and freedom and tolerance — and then chose not merely to remain in enclaves but to romanticize all the old pathologies that they had fled from in the first place. It is almost as if the killers in Amsterdam said, "I want your cell phones, unfettered Internet access, and free-spirited girls, but hate the very system that alone can create them all. So please let me stay here to destroy what I want."
Turkey's proposed entry into the EU has become some weird sort of Swiftian satire on the crazy relationship between Europe and Islam. Ponder the contradictions of it all. Privately most Europeans realize that opening its borders without restraint to Turkey's millions will alter the nature of the EU, both by welcoming in a radically different citizenry, largely outside the borders of Europe, whose population will make it the largest and poorest country in the Union — and the most antithetical to Western liberalism. Yet Europe is also trapped in its own utopian race/class/gender rhetoric. It cannot openly question the wisdom of making the "other" coequal to itself, since one does not by any abstract standard judge, much less censure, customs, religions, or values.
So it stews and simmers. Not to be outdone, some in Turkey dare the Europeans, almost in contempt, to reject their bid. Thus rather than evolving Attaturk's modernist reforms to match the values of Europe, the country is instead driven into the midst of an Islamic reactionary revival in which its rural east far more resembles Iraq or Iran than Brussels. So the world wonders whether Europe is sticking a toe into the Islamic Middle East or the latter its entire leg into Europe.
Everyone gets in on the charade. The savvy Greeks discovered that they didn't want to be tarred with the usual anti-Ottoman obstructionism and so are keeping very quiet about their historic worries (legitimate after a near 400-year occupation) as a front-line state. And why not, when EU money pouring into Turkey might jumpstart the Eastern Mediterranean economy and lead to joint Greek-Turkish deals? With the future role of NATO and the 6th Fleet undetermined, is it not better to have the Turkish military inside the tent than for poor Greece to have a neighbor's ships and planes routinely violating Hellenic air and sea sovereignty — while it waits for the Danish air force or the French army to provide a little deterrence in the Aegean or Cyprus?
Of course, we are amused by the spectacle. Privately, most Americans grasp that with a Germany and France reeling from unassimilated Muslim populations, a rising Islamic-inspired and globally embarrassing anti-Semitism, and economic stagnation, it is foolhardy to create 70 million Turkish Europeans by fiat. Welcoming in Turkey will make the EU so diverse, large, and unwieldy as to make it — to paraphrase Voltaire — neither European nor a Union. Surely Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia will wish to get in on the largess. Were they not, after all, also part of the historical Roman mare nostrum, and did they not also enjoy long ties with France and Italy?
So, to our discredit I suppose, we are enjoying schadenfreud after our recent transatlantic acrimonies: Europe preached a postmodern gospel of multiculturalism and the end of oppressive Western values, and now it is time to put its money (and security) where its mouth is — or suffer the usual hypocrisy that all limousine liberals face. The United States has its own recent grievances with the Turks — its eleventh-hour refusal to allow American troops to come down from the north explains why the now red-hot Sunni Triangle never saw much war during the three-week fighting. Recently a minister of a country that gave rise to the notion of 20th-century genocide slurred the United States for resembling Hitler, who in fact was an erstwhile Turkish near ally. Still, our realists muse, how convenient that Europe may carry the water in bringing Turkey inside the Western orbit and prevent it from joining the radical Islamic fringe. Knowing it is in our interest (and not necessarily in the Europeans') and will cost them lots and us nothing, we "on principle" remonstrate for the need to show Western empathy to Turkish aspirations.
But gut-check time is coming for Europe, with its own rising unassimilated immigrant populations, rogue mosques entirely bent on destroying the West, declining birth rate and rising entitlements, the Turkish question, and a foreign policy whose appeasement of Arab regimes won it only a brief lull and plenty of humiliation. The radical Muslim world of the madrassas hates the United States because it is liberal and powerful; but it utterly despises Europe because it is even more liberal and far weaker, earning the continent not fear, but contempt.
The real question is whether there is any Demosthenes left in Europe, who will soberly but firmly demand assimilation and integration of all immigrants, an end to mosque radicalism, even-handedness in the Middle East, no more subsidies to terrorists like Hamas, a toughness rather than opportunist profiteering with the likes of Assad and the Iranian theocracy — and make it clear that states that aid and abet terrorists in Europe due so to their great peril.
So will the old Ents awaken, or will they slumber on, muttering nonsense to themselves, lost in past grandeur and utterly clueless about the dangers on their borders?
Stay tuned — it is one of the most fascinating sagas of our time.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Sight,Wisdom and Courage to Victory to Destroy ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat give the World Strength to Stand and Fight Amen

PS
Time to arm the people sit them on the border and shot anything that comes across?? The new army those already armed and down there line up the moterhomes make a fence and they will work cheep all ready paid with SS??

Posted by: Catherine at December 11, 2004 10:17 AM

kepah1 says:

"The fact of the matter is that the gangs will do anything for a buck, and there are plenty of people who'll do anything to get into the USA--whether to make trouble or make a go at a better life.?"

Yeah, word spread fast there was an opening at the Bernard Kerik household!

Posted by: Kemaste at December 11, 2004 10:39 AM

Texas: Bangladeshi Muslim caught crossing border with member of group linked to Al-Qaeda

I'm surprised at the amount of news that is half complete. Why just the Bangladeshi Muslim and member of gang in the headline. The article would be more detailed to include descriptions of others stopped at the border. The title may be misleading and hint that the two had some connection wrapped in conspiracies and all kinds of scary things or maybe they did. I doubt that would have offended people at the Bangladesh Embassy in Washington D.C. Maybe the Bangladesh man was infiltrating groups at the borders and was undercover helping with Bangladesh's support with America's War on Terror. The 5 country (to my knowledge) wide gang and link with al qaeda was rumored to have been stated by an official in central america only to encourage popular opinion for the anti-gang sweeps going on. I highly doubt that the gangs running border crossing operations care who pays them. That gang is decades old and has been in the U.S. for decades, and Ive never heard anything about crazy links.

Posted by: sco at December 11, 2004 10:47 AM

Bangladeshis trying to enter the US? Why ain't I shocked?

If you wanna see the ill-effects of unchecked muslim immigration (and this case specifically involves Bangladeshis) simply look to what's happened in India's Northeast that borders Bangladesh. Heavy illegal immigration has now made some districts in the state of Assam muslim majority where already stirrings of an islamist insurgency aimed at separatism can be seen. India has only itself to blame and may the plight of Assam be a wake-up call on the ill-effects of muslim immigration.

Meanwhuile, Hindus and Chittagong Buddhists continue to be persecuted in B'desh proper and are leaving in droves for India.

Catherine, your point on chinese crackdown on churches is well-taken. Christianity has taken off so fabulously in China, millions converting every month, that Beijing is understandably worried. BTW, that way its probably christianity that's asia's fastest growing religion, seen in this new light.

Posted by: voletti at December 11, 2004 12:05 PM

sco
MAYBE BECAUSE YOU AREN'T LOOKING AND KEEPPING UP ON CURENT EVENTS GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS??

Cuauhtli
Minister of Information
Nation of Aztlan

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
October 18, 2000
On the Palestinian-Jewish Issue
La Raza's struggle for the land and for political and economic self-determination is not different from the struggle of the Palestinian people in Zionist Israel. We live in Aztlan under Anglo domination as the Palestinians live under Jewish domination. La Raza as well as the Palestinians lost the land through military aggression and both people now live in segregated regions within the larger nation. The Palestinian people as well as La Raza provide the hard labor necessary to prop up the national economies. Both Raza children and Palestinian children are victims of educational discrimination. The Palestinians as well as La Raza are considered people of color. So who should we side with in the present struggle in the Middle East? Will it be with the Jewish Zionists or with Islam? It is no secret that the United States as a whole is siding with the Jews, but should we? It is also no secret that the Jewish Lobby in America now also dominate large parts of the U.S federal government. It is estimated that over 32% of the Clinton Administration is of Jewish descent. Many are top level Federal Officials and includes the Secretary of Defense as well as the Secretary of State. In fact, the Department of State is now pretty much entirely Jewish. Most of the foreign Ambassadors are Jewish. This trend was begun by Henry Kissinger who is a Jew. This is very surprising considering that Jews only make about 2% of the total US population. Making these statements is not anti-semitic. It is stating facts. We do not hate Jews. We respect the contributions that many Jews have made to world culture. However, we reject Zionist racist Jews like the war criminal Ariel Sharon and appeal to all good Jews to do the same.
Israel can now be considered to be the 51st state. U.S. taxpayers are now sending over 8 billion dollars each year in economic and military aid. The sophisticated military weaponry being utilized against defenseless Palestinians are gifts from Uncle Sam. In fact, Israel now has nuclear and biological weapons, thanks to the United States. Why is the US providing so much to Israel? Well the selection of Joseph Lieberman as Vice Presidential running mate for Al Gore should give a clue.
Another clue should be provided by how the Israeli Army atrocities unfolded in the US media. At first, none of the Palestinian children murders were being covered by ABC, NBC or CBS. Not until the French and Italian media started broadcasting pictures of dead Palestinian children was the US media forced to cover some of the Israeli atrocities. Politicians, including Hillary Clinton running for US Senate in New York need a friendly media to be able to win elections.
La Raza is a victim of the same political and economic forces that are oppressing the Palestinian people and other people of color around the world. We must awaken to this fact and understand the hidden strategies and tactics being utilized to subjugate our people in order to devise effective counter-measures to neutralize them.
Tezcatlipoca
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Nation of Aztlan

http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_3_immigrant_gang.html
The Immigrant Gang Plague
Heather Mac Donald
Chicago provides a cautionary tale about high levels of Hispanic immigration combined with an ever more powerful underclass ethic. During the 1990s, the Hispanic population in Chicago grew 38 percent, to 754,000, and became increasingly concentrated in the city’s barrios. Education levels and fluency in English dropped lower and lower, while serious crime, social disorder, and physical decay grew in direct proportion to the number of Spanish-speaking Latinos. After a neighborhood became more than 60 percent Latino, physical decay—including graffiti, trash-filled vacant lots, and abandoned cars—jumped disproportionately. By 2001, social pathology among Spanish-speaking Latinos was higher than for any other racial or ethnic group.
There are many counterexamples that show a salutary effect of Hispanic immigration. Santa Ana, California, at 76 percent Latino the most heavily Spanish-speaking city of its size in the country, has cleaned up the seedy bars from its downtown area and replaced them with palm trees and benches, in large part thanks to a newly created business improvement district. Many homes in Santa Ana’s wealthier Mexican neighborhoods sport exuberant roses and bougainvillea in their front yards, and students I spoke to there wanted to become lawyers, architects, and medical technicians. In predominantly Mexican East Los Angeles, housing prices are soaring along with the rest of the Southern California housing market: a 1928 two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow with a lawn gone to seed was listed at $265,000 this April. And in increasingly Hispanic South Central L.A., tiny bodegas selling milk, diapers, and piñatas are replacing liquor stores.
Yet a seemingly innocuous block in Santa Ana can host five to eight households dedicated to gangbanging or drug sales. A front yard may be relatively trash-free; inside the house, a different matter entirely, says Santa Ana cop Kevin Ruiz. “I’ve been to three houses just this week where they made a mountain of trash in the backyard or changed their baby’s diaper by throwing it over the couch. They don’t use the indoor plumbing, while letting their dogs go to the bathroom on the carpet.” Ruiz drives by the modest tract home where his Mexican father, who worked in Orange County’s farming industry, raised him in the 1950s. A car with a shattered windshield, a trailer, and minivan sit in the backyard, surrounded by piles of junk and a mattress leaning on the garage door. “My mom taught us that even if you’re poor, you should be neat,” he says, shaking his head. Fifty-year-old men are still dressing like chollos (Chicano gangsters), Ruiz says, and fathers are ordering barbers to shave their young sons bald in good gang tradition.
Without prompting, Ruiz brings up the million-dollar question: “I don’t see assimilation,” he says. “They want to hold on [to Hispanic culture].” Ruiz thinks that today’s Mexican immigrant is a “totally different kind of person” from the past. Some come with a chip on their shoulder toward the United States, he says, which they blame for the political and economic failure of their home countries. Rather than aggressively seizing the opportunities available to them, especially in education, they have learned to play the victim card, he thinks. Ruiz advocates a much more aggressive approach. “We need to explain, ‘We’ll help you assimilate up to a certain point, but then you have to take advantage of what’s here.’ ”
Ruiz’s observations will strike anyone who has hired eager Mexican and Central American workers as incredible. I pressed him repeatedly, insisting that Americans see Mexican immigrants as cheerful and hardworking, but he was adamant. “We’re creating an underclass,” he maintained.
Immigration optimists, ever ready to trumpet the benefits of today’s immigration wave, have refused to acknowledge its costs. Foremost among them are skyrocketing gang crime and an expanding underclass. Until the country figures out how to reduce these costs, maintaining the current open-borders regime is folly. We should enforce our immigration laws and select immigrants on skills and likely upward mobility, not success in sneaking across the border.

THEY ARE NOT STAYING ON THE BORDER ANY LONGER KNOW THIS SUMMER THERE WERE GANGS WHO USED MASHETIS IN A MALL IN DC??

Old and in the Way
The American Street has sized up best the new paradoxes of foreign policy.
The events following 9/11 created an "empire" industry — millions of words written by pundits claiming that by intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq America was now a hegemon. The charge was that we are a world bully of sorts, intent on controlling the globe and ignoring the admonitions of more sober folk like the Europeans.
Yet even as university professors and consultants cling to such regurgitated and discredited postcolonial theories and Chomskyite drivel, the American profile abroad has made such conventional exegesis obsolete. In fact, we are adopting a radically new world role that defies conventional analysis as either imperialist or isolationist.
During this entire crisis tired voices of convention have misunderstood the nature of this war and the temporary presence of Americans in exotic places like the Asiatic provinces of the former Soviet Union, the Gulf, or Kurdistan. Instead of seeing such deployments in their proper context of ad hoc military efficacy and reaction to 9/11, they have instead shrilly alleged some sinister conspiracy to harness the world's oil through the use of permanent military deployment abroad and perpetual war.
Fools! The real danger is not that we are interventionists, but rather are on the verge of a weird insularity not seen since the 1920s — a paradox of still being engaged abroad but not in the usual manner of the past. The American Street is in a strangely revolutionary — read "fed-up" — mood. It is growing distant from Europe. It is angry with the Arab world especially, and it is tired with South Korea — and most whiny nations that either take billions of dollars in direct American aid or ankle-bite under the aegis of American arms.
The result is while hothouse analysts in Paris and spoiled teenagers in Seoul with Reeboks and football jerseys damn America the imperialist, the United States they knew is changing right before their eyes in ways that they might not like in the next decade — but that will in fact relieve most Americans.
Redeployment of troops off the DMZ down to southern Korea has powerfully affected both South and North Korea, who have played at a silly game of triangulation the last few years — as if we, not a murderous communism, were their shared problem. In the process, too many Americans have seen too many secure and affluent South Koreans — in and out of government — slur the United States, as if we are dying to die in their country.
Thanks to such critics, millions of us have now come to the conclusion that after a half century of American support, thousands of American dead, and billions of dollars in aid, it is perhaps time to let the rich South Koreans protect themselves and be weaned from the American military. We gave them their country; now on the 50-year anniversary of the armistice, let them keep — or lose — it. Yes, let them, not 20-year-old young men and women from Des Moines and Missoula, find out whether their own Sunshine Policy really works. Having us defend them in perpetuity from a bankrupt third-world country would be somewhat like asking them to come over here to defend our own porous border with Mexico.
Oh, in explanation of our radical new redeployment, we will profess that the nature of war itself has changed or that it signals no cooling in our relationship. In fact, anytime American soldiers risk their life on a trip-wire vulnerable to 10,000 cannon while their benefactors march in the street against such a courageous presence and their corrupt politicians talk of a third way, it is long time to come home. Under the present radical mood in America, redeployment is the stale option — complete withdrawal along the Philippines or Panama model being the more preferred solution.
Now we are lectured by Europeans that Mr. Rumsfeld hurt Brussels' feelings by politely pointing out the absurdity of Belgians indicting as war criminals American generals who rid the world of fascists. Good. Mr. Rumsfeld is, in fact, behind the curve: Most Americans would prefer that none of our NATO representatives at all be in such an Oz-like fairyland. The question is not whether we are rude to hosts who slander our officer corps — but rather what business do we have subsidizing such unbalanced allies at all? At the very least, an American-led NATO command should leave Brussels and rent out its headquarters to the new EU defense force.
Two years ago those of us who called for removing soldiers from Saudi Arabia were derided by an assortment of ex-diplomats and various think-tank apparatchiks funded by Gulf money. But most Americans are delighted at the idea — and are beginning to ask further why one dime of American money goes to a Palestine Authority that is as murderous as it is venal, or to an Egypt — or even Jordan — whose citizens have killed Americans while its unelected "moderate" leaders have chastised rather than thanked us for the billions of dollars received.
A quarter-century of subsidies created the "Korean disease" in Cairo and Amman — and it is perhaps time to alter all our unquestioning Middle East relationships with monarchs and dictators as well. The long-term outlook for Iran looks more hopeful than for Egypt — and our State Department and Middle Eastern experts should take a deep breath and ask why that is so. Principled resistance seems to bear more fruit than sending Abrams tanks to Mr. Mubarak or pretending that the Palestine Authority is a responsible government. A subsidized Jordan — the darling of our State Department — should now decide whether it belongs to the past or future Middle East, and then be treated accordingly. A charismatic young Westernized autocrat or his globe-trotting American step-mother does not necessarily ensure that his kingdom is either stable or friendly.
What is going on? After the defeat of the Axis and the long containment of the Soviet Union, the beneficiaries of past American sacrifices find their new identities in part by mouthing cheap anti-Americanism without cost. Fine; it's a free world. But they forget that the Middle East, the DMZ, Cyprus, the Balkans, the former provinces of the Soviet Union, the world's oil lanes, the shrines and icons of the West in Europe, all that and more thousands of miles from our own coasts can all blow up in their faces — and that we no longer can, or should, alone guarantee that they won't.
Our concern instead is to clean up Afghanistan and Iraq, warn Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to change — or else — and then hunt down every last al Qaedist. And for now our own war against terror is plenty enough to worry about — especially when it is being won on the battlefield without a great deal of help from our bases in Turkey and Saudi Arabia and with a lot of criticism from allied hosts from Germany and Greece to Okinawa and South Korea.
So what accounts for this sudden paradox of independent action abroad while becoming ever more skeptical of traditional alliances?
The general public at last understands this post-Cold War teenager syndrome — that perpetual dependency creates envy and jealousy. After all, we would find it strange if our own American teenagers were to wear German T-shirts, play French music, and watch Belgian videos as they painted anti-European graffiti on our walls and their parents in New York sued Chirac or Kohl for European criminal neglect in the Balkans. Our own senators and representatives do not engage in German bashing while the Luftwaffe has 100 jets parked outside of Washington protecting our eastern seaboard. It all reminds me of a Greek hotelier — replete with American Ray-bans and Eminem blaring in his portable CD player — this week who snapped at me that Americans were all over the globe sticking their noses in the business of innocent others like poor Mr. Milosevic — but lamentably not as tourists coming to Greece as in the past.
There is common ground between liberals and conservatives to start downsizing from places like Saudi Arabia, Germany, South Korea, Turkey, and as much of Western Europe as possible. The former either fear the label of imperialism or, as in the case of the Gulf, don't like us propping up corrupt governments. The latter are more hard-headed, and see only increasing costs — political, monetary, psychological — with decreasing benefits.
The real global story is not "anti-Americanism," but perhaps a growing American weariness with strident allies and the braggadocio of pathetic Middle Eastern despotisms. If I were a functionary of the European Union, I would either have an emergency meeting right now to explore ways of stemming a rising, grassroots tide of Middle America's anger against Europe or alternatively allot 400 or 500 billion Euros per annum for its own unilateral and collective defense. We in America are waiting for sober Europeans to question their current frightening leadership that came of age in 1968, but now shrug that the Schroeders, Fischers, and Villepins may not be so aberrant after all. The EU, remember, is now being asked by Mr. Abbas on the West Bank to stop subsidizing Hamas.
So in response, what should we do?
Keep quieter and carry a far bigger stick. Methodically and politely transfer, redeploy, and reduce troops from countries that have opposed our efforts of the past two years or whose populations simply profess no overt support for the United States. Seek real friends — the fewer the better — in Eastern Europe, on the Black Sea, or around the Gulf who want American troops as a reflection of genuine mutual security needs, appreciate the economic stimulus such bases provide, and quite simply like the United States.
Here at home, new thinking is encompassing immigration reform, as well. A country that cannot count its own illegal aliens — estimates range from 8-12 million — with a porous 2,000 mile border is not secure despite twelve carrier battle groups. We must accept that it is a cornerstone of Mexican foreign policy to export illegally each year a million of its own to the United States to avoid needed reform at home and to influence American domestic policy.
And if one wishes to find real anti-Americanism, there is no need to go to Brussels or Damascus. Simply peruse the Mexico City newspapers, read what Mr. Fox says to non-Americans, or listen carefully to la Raza (a blatantly racist term analogous to the old German concept of a pure Volk) dogma in the southwest. Papers in Mexico often mirror those in the Arab world — blaming the United States for Mexico City's own failure to address self-created pathologies. If we truly wished to help Mexico and its people, then we would not be complicit in the present corrupt status quo by allowing its ruling families to export millions of potential dissidents and would-be reformers.
It is not a moral thing for either Mexico or us to barter in human capital, as we accept tens of thousands of poor economic refugees who work at menial jobs that we say we cannot do. Both the race industry on the left and the corporate right must accept that they are on the wrong side of history, and it is time to return to the sanity of measured, documented, and legal immigration — jettisoning the charade of consular IDs, billions lost in unfunded entitlements, and everything from driver's licenses to in-state tuition discounts for those who are here illegally. Rwanda, the Balkans, and separatist Muslim communities in southern France should remind us all of the wages of ethnic separatism, chauvinism, illegal immigration, and the creation of a second-class citizenry relegated to menial work.
Thousands of influential Americans in Washington and New York, revolving in and out of government on a perpetual basis, at home, on the networks, and in newspapers, will resist all such reappraisals tooth and nail. It is not just that their foundations receive money from a variety of foreign and domestic special interests, or that they enjoy flying to Brussels, or being courted in Georgetown by diplomats — or liked being liked.
It is less dramatic than all that. Instead, a change to a new muscular autonomy for conventional policymakers simply represents an entire paradigm shift, an acceptance that their world has been turned upside down after September 11.
You see, their old way of doing business is now both old and in the way
VDH

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight and Courage to stay the course to Victory[FREEDOM] to Defeat ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat Amen

Posted by: Catherine at December 11, 2004 12:06 PM

Here's a little bit from the local paper:

F-16s force pilot to land in Willcox

The Willcox airport received unexpected visitors last Wednesday when two F-16s forced down a pilot who had inadvertently crossed the Mexican border.
Instructor and student had planned to fly the single-engine Cessna from Tucson to Douglas then to Willcox.

"When they got to Douglas, the student went across the border a little bit," said Walden.

The pilot and co-pilot realized the error and immediately returned north, said Agent Andrea Zortman, spokeswoman for the Tucson sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Border Patrol agents searched the plane and obtained documentation from the student pilot and the instructor, Zortman said.

After finding everything in order, the two were sent on their way -- no doubt a little wiser for the experience.

Does this remind you of airport screening? Where it's "overkill" stripsearching Granny while Mohammed slips under the Radar 'cause no one wants to be labeled a racist profiler?
The Politicians and courts had better get their priorities together and focus our resources where they are going to do the most good, with no apologies! What's it going to take for these guys to be "a little wiser"?
Start building fences!

Posted by: D' Artist at December 11, 2004 12:55 PM

MICHAGAN RASH OF GUN STORES ROBERYS?? COULD THIS BE BECAUSE WE HAVE STOPPED THEIR FLOW FROM ACROSS THE BORDER?? nOW THEY HAVE TO RISK HAVING MAKE DO? 35 GUN STORES 300 GUNS??

WHAT'S IN MICHAGAN BUT TONS OF MUSSIS??

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH,WISDOM,SIGHT AND COURAGE TO STAY THE COURSE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM AMEN

Posted by: Catherine at December 11, 2004 1:52 PM

Posted by: D' Artist at December 11, 2004 12:55 PM

GUESS YOU DID'T HEAR ABOUT THE GRANNY 78 YERS OLD IN HOLLYWOOD FLA TRYING TO BRING A GUN ON A PLANE IN HER LUGGAGE??

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight, and Courage Amen

Posted by: Catherine at December 11, 2004 1:57 PM

Catherine-
Yes, I missed that, those darn granny hijackers are everywhere!

Posted by: D' Artist at December 11, 2004 3:26 PM

In case anyone else missed it:

Woman, 79, arrested at Fort Lauderdale airport with gun in bag

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A 79-year-old woman was arrested at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Tuesday when security screeners found an unloaded gun in her carryon bag, sheriff's officials said.

Margaret Anderson of Bonita Springs was planning to board a flight on Bahamas Air when an X-ray scanner revealed a small handgun inside the bag, and Broward Sheriff's Office deputies took her and her luggage into custody, sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal said in a news release.

Deputies found a single shot Colt Derringer in a gun case built to resemble a hardcover book, with seven .22 caliber bullets in the case next to the weapon, the sheriff's office said.

Anderson told deputies and reporters she knew the gun case contained a pistol, but had forgotten it was in the tote bag. She said she had put the gun in the bag when she recently moved and never removed it, the sheriff's office said.

She was booked into Broward County Jail on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon and later released on $1,000 bond. If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

"I'm awful sorry. I wouldn't harm a soul," Anderson said after her release.

WE HOPE THEY THROW THE BOOK AT HER!
SHOW THOSE GRANNYS HOW TOUGH THEY ARE??

Posted by: D' Artist at December 11, 2004 3:36 PM

Yeah, People need to do this quick. Whatever it is. We are in such a hurry to solve everything in one or two years. It may take more than that for a problem that may have been documented for the past 2 milleniums. But it is good. Im counting on the scientists to create a ten thousand solutions for a problem they've never had.

Posted by: sco at December 11, 2004 7:23 PM

sco.
Thank you for your admirable support.

Posted by: voletti at December 11, 2004 9:22 PM

Ya gotta control your borders, regardless of whethe its mexicans or hammas weirdos that want to get in
ya gotta control your borders

re mexicans in America legally or otherwise,
BECAUSE Mexico is joined to the U.S.,
you must insist on english, should be a fed law to that affect.

in no way an anti mex sentiment.

The first decision is no more illegals in,
a far more awkward decision is what to do with those already here

control your flipping borders Americans; come on, get serious about this, a small matter like the survival of civilization may depend on it.

Thanks Catherine for the Tolkien analogy web article.

Posted by: dby at December 12, 2004 4:17 AM

Ya gotta control your borders, regardless of whethe its mexicans or hammas weirdos that want to get in
ya gotta control your borders

re mexicans in America legally or otherwise,
BECAUSE Mexico is joined to the U.S.,
you must insist on english, should be a fed law to that affect.

in no way an anti mex sentiment.

The first decision is no more illegals in,
a far more awkward decision is what to do with those already here

control your flipping borders Americans; come on, get serious about this, a small matter like the survival of civilization may depend on it.

Thanks Catherine for the Tolkien analogy web article.

Posted by: dby at December 12, 2004 4:18 AM

It seems that our politicians only care about getting immigrant(and illegal immigrant) votes, not protecting our borders. GET THE NATIONAL GUARD ON ALL OF OUR BORDERS NOW.

Posted by: juicealot at December 12, 2004 5:14 PM

They've caught over 44,000 of them between 10-03 and 6-04. Non-Mexicans, mostly of Middle Eastern persuation trying to sneak in here.....

This is not an isolated incident, and Bush had better screw his head on right and forget about doing away with deporting all of these sneaks....

Since when should any American be penalized and have to pay for illegals, no matter what the reason is they're trolling in here?

If they had respect for our country and for us that'd be different, but they don't.....So they can stay out.

Posted by: DCWatson at December 13, 2004 3:30 PM