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October 31, 2005

Bush Nominates Sam Alito To Supreme Court

The President has nominated Federal Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor as an associate Justice at SCOTUS.

Judge Alito has a staunchly conservative record and one that's almost sure to blast Senate Democrats into overdrive in an attempt to fight an Alito confirmation.

ALITO BIO

NAME: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
AGE-BIRTH DATE: 55; April 1, 1950 in Trenton, N.J.
PERSONAL FINANCE: more than $615,000 in assets
EDUCATION: AB, Princeton, 1972; JD, Yale, 1975
EXPERIENCE: Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1990-present; U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey, 1987-1990; deputy assistant to the U.S. attorney general, 1985-1987; assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, 1981-1985
JUDICIAL STYLE: Known among conservatives as a strict constructionist in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Abortion-rights activists point to his dissent in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey -- in which he argued to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring a married woman to inform her husband before getting an abortion -- as putting him in the anti-Roe v. Wade camp.
FAMILY: Alito and his wife, Martha, live in West Caldwell, N.J. They have two children, a college-age son, Philip, and a younger daughter, Laura. His late father, Samuel Alito Sr., was the director of New Jersey's Office of Legislative Services from 1952 to 1984. Alito's sister, Rosemary, is a top employment lawyer in New Jersey.

Okay, Republican senators, it's time to get your game faces on and support a serious Bush nominee for a change. That means no more cowardice in the face of the enemy, as you've demonstrated during past confirmation hearings for conservative Bush nominees: You will fight to the death over this one, "blood and gore and things in your teeth" if necessary, and get Alito confirmed!

If you play the nose-up-Democrat-butt game as you've become so proficient at doing and fail us again, then don't complain the next time POTUS nominates someone with less of a conservative track record...

Posted by Seth at 12:40 PM |

One Approach To Addressing Illegal Alien Affairs

In view of the government's apparent determination not to guard our borders against illegal aliens nor enforce very many statutes regarding their deportation, it seems one Law Enforcement official has found a way to recoup the expenses of picking up Uncle Sam's slack, and I'm behind him 100%.

Sheriff bills Immigration $71K for 'illegals' in jail HAMILTON — The federal government will soon receive the first of several hefty bills from Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones for the housing of suspected illegal aliens in the county jail.

Following through on a threat made last week, Jones on Wednesday mailed a bill totaling $71,610 to the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the cost of housing 15 “undocumented” people, some of whom have been in the jail since June.

Last week, Jones, County Commissioner Michael Fox and state Rep. Courtney Combs announced a multi-tiered initiative to eliminate illegal aliens living in the county and throughout the state.

Among the initiatives was the implementation, on Monday, of a new booking process to include the signing of declarations of citizenship by jail inmates.

Those in jail for misdemeanor offenses who falsify their information, or are found to be illegal aliens, will be reported to ICE — the enforcement arm of the Federal Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services — for possible immediate deportation.

Those who are jailed for a felony offense, will first stand trial for their crimes and then face possible deportation.

To force the issue, Jones is billing the federal government $70 a day for every illegal alien housed at the jail — $10 above the average daily cost of housing an inmate.

In sending the first bill to ICE, which represents 1,023 billable days of housing illegal aliens, Jones said he’s hoping other sheriff’s offices throughout the country start following suit.

“We want to put extreme pressure on ICE to do its job with regard to illegal aliens,” Jones said. “This isn’t just a local issue. This is a national problem.”

While Jones acknowledged that ICE is not under obligation to pay the bill, he said his next step will be to load the questionable inmates into buses and deliver them to immigration offices in Cincinnati.

“Why should Butler County taxpayers have to pay for jail costs associated with people we don’t believe should ever have been in this country, let alone this state or county?” Jones said.

“These prisoners appear to be undocumented, in that they have no Social Security numbers,” Jones said. “They are in my jail because they have committed crimes here. It’s time the federal government should at least pay for the criminals they let stay here. If they don’t want to pay for them, then they can deport them.”

A message left with Greg Palmore, of the ICE Regional Office in Detroit, was not returned Wednesday.

Since announcing the local initiative last week, Jones said he has been inundated with e-mails and telephone calls, mostly from people expressing support for the measures.

Jones has also sent letters to sheriffs in Ohio’s 87 other counties urging them to implement similar measures in their jails.

“If ICE is having so much trouble locating illegal aliens, heck, I’ll help them out — I’ll send them 20 a day from our county jail,” Jones said.

Meanwhile, Combs is drafting new state legislation that will make it a state offense for illegal aliens to cross over Ohio’s borders and Fox is working on initiatives to discourage employers from hiring illegal aliens.

Contact Mary Lolli at (513) 820-2192, or e-mail her at mlolli@coxohio.com.

Please bear in mind that I'm a limited government, states' rights kind of guy, to the max. Certain issues belong to the Fed, others are the property of the private sector.

Border/frontier security issues are the property of the federal government. They have a job to do that they are not doing. The only thing that will fix that will be an onslaught of email from the general public to the human weevils that ultimately decide what makes it into the newspapers and on to TV news programs.

My source for the article posted above is the website produced by Tom Tancredo and Bay Buchanan, from the headquarters of Team America.

These are an issue and an organization we, as Americans, need to support.

Posted by Seth at 06:17 AM |

For Some, Deportation's Not Enough

According to members of both the F.B.I. and the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the government's policy of deporting illegal aliens belonging to MS-13, the gang named Mara Salvatrucha has been working in the gang's favor.

...a deportation policy aimed in part at breaking up a Los Angeles street gang has backfired and helped spread it across Central America and back into other parts of the United States. Newly organized cells in El Salvador have returned to establish strongholds in metropolitan Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. Prisons in El Salvador have become nerve centers, authorities say, where deported leaders from Los Angeles communicate with gang cliques across the United States.

A gang that once numbered a few thousand and was involved in street violence and turf battles has morphed into an international network with as many as 50,000 members, the most hard-core engaging in extortion, immigrant smuggling and racketeering. In the last year, the federal government has brought racketeering cases against MS-13 members in Long Island, N.Y., and southern Maryland.

Very interesting story, one that indicates the need for a change of policy where dealing with MS-13 members is concerned.

It is certainly bad enough, thanks to our porous borders, that we face a veritable infestation of illegal aliens in the United States --Mustang at Social Sense has a great post on our lax border security situation and the illegal alien problem that continues in a long, highly informed comment thread, well worth checking out -- but to be infiltrated also by gangs of violent criminals who make our own domestic gangs seem like weak amateurs is an inexcusable breach of homeland security.

Posted by Seth at 12:17 AM |

October 29, 2005

Say It Ain't So!

I quite enjoyed reading The DaVinci Code, a book which spurred massive controversy in global religious circles by its premise that Jesus and Mary Magdeline married and their line has survived into modern times.

It's a novel, people, wake up! You know, a work of fiction provided for readers' entertainment! There are far more serious events occurring in the world today than a mere novel, for God's sake, all this profound discourse and controversy at the highest levels of the religious establishment is absurd. If you don't like it, don't read it!

That said, I thought it was a great read and, while I'm not at all enamored by today's films, actors and actresses, I definitely look forward to seeing how the Hollywood crowd treats it. The movie company seems to be dedicated to the story line, a rarity for Hollywood, as they actually went to the trouble of convincing the French government to allow them to do some location filming inside the Louvre. That in itself had to be a great personal sacrifice, since having to deal with those socialist weasels would be a putrid experience at the best of times, but then again, our movie industry is a liberal socialist enclave{albeit rich socialists, go figure} whose denizens scream that we should model our government after those like France's, so maybe they were happy as the proverbial clams, dealing with their idols and all.

Now, it seems that a couple of people are suing Random House, The DaVinci Code's publisher, claiming that the novel plagiarized a nonfiction book they published back in 1982 called Holy Blood, Holy Grail that put forth the theory on which Dan Brown's novel is based.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing publisher Random House, claiming that Brown's "The DaVinci Code" lifts ideas from their 1982 nonfiction book, "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail." Their work explores theories that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child and that their blood line continues to the present day.

A similar theme is explored in Brown's novel, which has sold some 25 million copies around the world and is being made into a Hollywood movie starring Tom Hanks.

I, for one, fervently hope Doubleday and Brown are able to prove that this was not the case, as I had attributed the novel to Dan Brown's imagination and a lot of in-depth research with a view to weaving realism into the story as most good novelists do.

Time will tell, I suppose, but I sure am rooting for Doubleday in this instance.

Posted by Seth at 01:23 PM |

Turtle Bay Blues

Paul Volcker certainly exposed a quagmire of malfeasance, corruption and what's apparently come to be accepted as "business as usual" at the U.N.

October 29, 2005 -- Paul Volcker's final report on his investigation of the United Nations' $64 billion Iraqi Oil-for-Food program is a stunning indictment of, well, the entire United Nations. Yes, Saddam Hussein himself pocketed $1.8 billion through kickbacks alone from a program that was meant to feed his nation's starving people — endangered by the economic sanctions he himself had provoked by his violations of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire accords.

Yes, fully half of the 4,500 companies involved in the program — many of them recognizable corporate names — kicked back funds to Saddam's regime in order to land lucrative oil contracts.

And, yes, political figures from around the world — especially from Russia and France — landed contracts in direct proportion to their willingness to oppose continued sanctions against Iraq.

George Galloway, the malignant British parliament member who was Saddam's virtual mouthpiece in the run-up to the war, appears to have pocketed $270,000, funneled through his (now estranged) Palestinian wife.

Fr. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a former top aide to the Vatican's secretary of state who had formed an anti-sanctions group, and France's former U.N. ambassador, Jean-Bertrand Merrimee, both got six-figure deals.

Some were simply profiteers — like Marc Rich, the fugitive financier who was spared a U.S. prison term for tax evasion thanks to a last-minute presidential pardon from Bill Clinton.

Read on...

One wonders, however, why the former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve spared Kofi Annan.

As for Annan himself, we don't really know the full extent of his culpability, beyond his son Kojo's widely reported involvement in oil contracts.

Volcker, you see, has admitted taking care that his investigation not result in Annan's being toppled from his post.

"I felt uncomfortably," he said, of the point where he realized Annan might lose his job.

Really?

Well, we feel uncomfortably that Annan still has his job.

Posted by Seth at 01:09 PM |

A Dubious Enterprise

A friend of mine disappeared nearly two months ago and was finally resurrected in the form of a collect call informing me that he was{still is} in jail in a place called Dawson County, Georgia.

Apparently the reasons for his incarceration are somewhat complicated and so, not being exactly sure what they are, I pass no judgement -- I'll give him the benefit of the doubt until a jury says otherwise. I've known him for a long time and can not imagine what he could possibly have done.

But he's been in there since the start of September, evidently Dawson County's not known for being in any hurry where paperwork is concerned, and we'll hopefully have him out of there wihin the next couple of weeks, one way or the other.

But the subject of this post is not my friend's problem with the Law, it's the means by which we can communicate: A company called Evercom, or Correctional Billing Services as they refer to themselves when you get recordings of theirs on the telephone.

For prisoners with phone privileges, Evercom is ready with a dial tone. The company provides collect and prepaid phone service to inmates in over 2000 city, county, state, and private correctional facilities across the US. As an exclusive phone provider, Evercom installs and maintains its equipment at no cost to the facility. It also handles billing and collection services for other providers of inmate phone services and offers software for jail and facilities management, records management, and computer-aided dispatch services. The company was formed in 1996 with the acquisitions of AmeriTel Payphones and Talton Telecommunications.

In order to receive my friend's collect calls, I had to open an account with these people, providing my personal info and the telephone number(my landline)he could call me at.

They charge 89 cents a minute and place a maximum number of minutes on each call.

Whenever the collective minutes reach a certain amount, they block any further calls until you've made a $50.00 payment to your local phone company and call them with a confirmation number.

That is ridiculous! Their billing appears on the phone bill as part of the total, and you pay it.

When I first encountered this, I made a $100.00 deposit. When they hit me with the block I called and talked to a woman who had to be an eagle among turkeys as she actually seemed to know, unlike her associates, what is involved in having a home telepone.

"Look," I said, "I deposited a hundred last time instead of fifty, that's in your computer. So what's the big deal? I hate paying bills, and have an arrangement with SBC where they simply debit my checking account every month. There's more than enough money in that particular account to pay my phone bill for the next twenty years."

"So you have credit with your phone company?"

"Yes," I answered, "plenty. I even have my DSL through them."

So she went ahead and reset the account, and now here we are again at a block due to "high call volume."

This is idiocy.

A company like this seems totally unnecessary -- incarceration facilities don't need to outsource outgoing collect calls by inmates -- they can easily have their own call monitoring systems attached to banks of telephones.

When I see something like this, a totally unneeded government outsource, the first thing I ask myself is "why?"

In this case, the second thing I ask is, "Who in the prison system would have gotten the ball rolling on the use of such a company as this, and what did/do they stand to gain?"

Given past samples of corruption in the prison system(including county jails, etc), is this one of those deals where some officials somewhere in the system are getting kickbacks from this telephone operation?

It is apparent, when you accept the collect call(press 0) and a recorded voice tells you your call may be monitored, that this outsourced company also monitors the call.

That, to me, is a system-approved security breach of the first magnitude. These people are not Law Enforcement or Corrections personnel, they are outsiders, civilians who might have their own agendas, and the contents of these calls should not be accessible to them.

Undoubtedly, a goodly amount of these conversations from jails and prisons contain hooded or, in the case of some more moronic mutts, not so hooded references to criminal affairs that constitute useful intelligence for Law Enforcement that can be followed up on. On the same token, some of this information might provide outsourced listeners with opportunities to "cash in" on it.

Prison system officials are conversant with security issues involved in their field, so why would they outsource thus? They could say that it is "cost efficient" having the telephone system installed and maintained by an outside firm, but the intended results still would not outweigh the potential for harm.

So, once again I wonder, who are the graft practitioners in the prison system who are making money off Prison Billing Services, ne Evercom?

Posted by Seth at 11:40 AM | Comments (4) |

Cruisin'

Cruising around the blogosphere, I've run into some spot-on posts I'd like to share.

For the "feminists" among us who bash the War on Terror as a way of bashing Bush, yet also purport to champion the cause of fellow women, RomeoCat at Cathouse Chat has a "right to the point" post about what these feminists and other liberals really support when they oppose the battle against the Muslim fundamentalists who are at war with us. Good read!

At GM's Corner is a reality based look at "our friends," the Saudis.

And Rightly So's Raven's got a great "pop quiz" up that explores the hypocrisy of a number of wealthy lefties who do the very same things they accuse the right of doing and condemn us for it.

Happy reading.

Posted by Seth at 11:17 AM |

October 28, 2005

Gross U.N. Mishandling Of Palestinian Refugees

Overshadowed by news of terrorism and Middle East political issues is the "Palestinian" refugee situation, which even after more than half a century is still an ongoing problem. It is one the United Nations, who took responsibility for resettling some half to three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees after Israel achieved statehood, does not like to discuss -- that number of unsettled people has since grown to over four million, demonstrating abject failure on the part of the U.N. and the agency it created specifically to address the problem, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA.

Arlene Kushner has written a thorough report and analysis on this problem, including references to terrorism involvement by UNRWA members and the entire wasteful, mismanaged, horrendously criminal undertakings of the U.N. agency in Azure, an outstanding Jewish magazine. Access to the article requires registration{free}, but it is definitely worthwhile.

The article is here.

In the aftermath of World War II, when it became apparent that millions of destitute refugees were not going to be attended to by existing organizations, the United Nations saw fit to establish an agency–the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)–to coordinate assistance to them. The UNHCR worked in accordance with the binding parameters and regulations of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted in Geneva in 1951. In the decades that followed, as the problem of refugees increasingly took on a global dimension, the need arose for a global organization dedicated to their assistance. Thus did a relatively small and specialized agency expand into an organization with offices in over 100 countries, an annual budget of $1 billion, and the ability to provide both legal protection and emergency relief. Today, the UNHCR’s makeshift blue tents have become immediately recognizable symbols of humanitarian assistance to millions of displaced people around the world. Combined with measures such as monitoring national compliance with international refugee law, the UNHCR takes as its ultimate goal the attainment of long-term or “durable” solutions to refugee crises, such as voluntary repatriation or resettlement in countries of asylum or “third” countries. To date, the UNHCR has helped over 25 million people successfully restart their lives.

There is one group of refugees, however, for whom no durable solution has been found in the more than fifty years since their problems began: Palestinian Arabs who fled Israel in the period 1948-1949 as a result of its War of Independence. Originally numbering between 500,000 and 750,000 persons, there are today more than 4 million refugees, the majority of whom live in or near one of 59 camps in five areas, making for one of the world’s largest and most enduring refugee problems.1 There is no practicable solution to their situation in sight.

The plight of the Palestinian refugees is, at first glance, fairly surprising. Whereas the rest of the world’s refugees are the concern of the UNHCR, the Palestinians are the sole group of refugees with a UN agency dedicated exclusively to their care: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which operates independently of the Convention on refugees. The differences between the two agencies are striking: In addition to classifying Palestinian refugees by a distinct set of criteria, UNRWA, through an international aid package of several hundred millions of dollars a year, serves as the main provider of healthcare, education, relief, and social services for its client population–the sort of assistance UNHCR usually devolves to refugees’ countries of asylum. Moreover, while the UNHCR actively seeks durable solutions to refugee problems, UNRWA has declined to entertain any permanent solution for the Palestinian refugees, insisting instead on a politically unfeasible “return” to pre-1967 Israel.2

By operating outside the norms accepted by the international community, UNRWA has succeeded in perpetuating a growing refugee problem. By establishing its own definition of a “Palestinian refugee” and actively encouraging resettlement in Israel, UNRWA not only has failed to resolve the Palestinian refugee issue, but has also lost sight of its original humanitarian goals, subordinating them instead to the political aims of the Arab world. Moreover, by hiring from within its own client population, UNRWA has at best created a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regard to terrorist activity in its midst, and at worst has become so enmeshed in the terrorist population as to be effectively held hostage by it. In the final analysis, UNRWA’s handling of the Palestinian refugee issue is both antagonistic to the achievement of peace in the Middle East and detrimental to the plight of the refugees themselves.

As the author points out, UNRWA have been perpetuating their job, as it were, by redefining the criteria for their constituency in order to multiply it while setting stated resettlement goals that would require the destruction of Israel to actually reach fruition.

UNRWA, the first UN agency charged with the task of aiding refugees, was established by General Assembly Resolution 302 on December 8, 1949. The agency was tasked with directing relief and works programs for the Palestinian Arab refugees of Israel’s War of Independence, who had fled into the neighboring Arab regions of Gaza (then under Egyptian control), Judea and Samaria (then controlled by Jordan), Jordan proper, Lebanon, and Syria.

From the outset, UNRWA was granted an extraordinary degree of autonomy, largely due to pressure from the UN’s Arab bloc. Unlike most other UN agencies, for instance, the appointment of UNRWA’s commissioner general does not require any approval or confirmation from the General Assembly, but is rather left to the discretion of the UN secretary general, in consultation with UNRWA’s ten-member Advisory Committee. In addition, UNRWA’s Advisory Committee wields no executive or operative authority.3 Bound by no existing statute or international compact, it was free to set its own definitions and guidelines–definitions which differ markedly from those used by UNHCR. Thus, it described “Palestinian refugees” as

persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.4

The use of this definition is remarkable in itself, not least because its very short residency requirement–just two years–allows the inclusion of a great number of people who had recently arrived in Palestine, and were thus newcomers to the region; indeed, many of the people who fled Israel at that time had only just arrived from neighboring Arab countries in search of work.

Contrast this with the definition provided by the UNHCR, established just two years later and charged with functioning within the parameters of the UN’s Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The UNHCR was bound by the Convention, the universal standard for refugee status and the only definition recognized by international law. In this version, a refugee is someone who is outside his/her country of nationality or habitual residence; has well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution.5

By emphasizing “country of nationality or habitual residence,” the UNHCR clearly intends to exclude the kind of transients– for example, a new arrival to the area in question for the purpose of employment–embraced by UNRWA’s definition.

This is not the only way in which the two definitions differ. The UNRWA definition also encompasses many other persons who would otherwise be excluded by the UNHCR. The latter, for example, outlines in detail the conditions under which the status of “refugee” no longer applies, stating that formal refugee status shall cease to apply to any person who has voluntarily re-availed himself of the protection of the country of his nationality; or having lost his nationality, he has voluntarily re-acquired it; or, he has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality; or… he can no longer, because the circumstances in connection with which he has been recognized as a refugee have ceased to exist, continue to refuse to avail himself of the protection of the country of his nationality.6

By excluding people who have found legal protection from established states, or who have refused to do so when offered, UNHCR has sought to prevent expansion of the definition in ways that would encourage the improper use of UNHCR’s services for political ends. UNRWA, however, has done just the opposite: Not only has it declined to remove the status of refugee from those persons who no longer fit the original description, such as the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been granted full citizenship by Jordan, but it confers indefinitely the status of refugee upon a Palestinian refugee’s descendants, now entering the fourth generation. As the organization’s official website explains: “There are several groups and categories of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs): UNRWA-registered 1948 refugees and their descendants, unregistered 1948 refugees and their descendants, internally displaced Palestinians in Israel, and persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 war and their descendants.”7 When UNRWA was first conceived, it did not explicitly include the descendants of Palestinian refugees; however, as its refugee population entered the second generation, UNRWA relaxed the definition of the term “Palestinian refugee” altogether, explaining that “for the purposes of repatriation or compensation… the term ‘Palestinian refugee’ is used with a different, much less restrictive meaning as compared to UNRWA’s need-based definition.”8

Sounds to me like what they used to call a "goat fuck."

So, too, did the General Assembly resolution establishing UNRWA intend its mandate to be temporary: It sought “the alleviation of the conditions of starvation and distress among the Palestinian refugees” with “a view to the termination of international assistance for relief” at an early date.10 The provision of direct relief was originally set to end no later than December 1950; yet its mandate has been renewed by the General Assembly every few years, and its current term now runs through June 2008. This begs the question: If UNRWA was set up as a temporary agency, why is it still operating more than half a century later?

One reason, again, lies in its singular definition of a refugee: By conferring the status of refugee on descendants, UNRWA has ensured an ever-growing population in need of its services. Yet a more significant reason has to do with its policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: UNRWA refuses to consider any resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue other than that demanded by the Arab world–the “right of return” to Israel. As explained on its website, UNRWA claims its services to be necessary until repatriation, “as envisaged in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of December 1948,” is enacted.11 While the legitimacy and applicability of resolution 194, which states that refugees wishing to return to their original countries of residence under certain conditions should be permitted to do so, can be, and is, debated ad infinitum, the fact remains that by staunchly adhering to this resolution, and actively encouraging its beneficiaries to do the same, UNRWA is denying the Palestinian refugees the one thing that the UNHCR takes as its essential purpose for existence: An end to their unwanted status.

Keep in mind, here, that the U.N., which funds this agency, is financed by the tax dollars of working Americans and citizens of other member countries.

Finally, it should be noted that, over the years, groups of Palestinian refugees have been offered opportunities to move into permanent housing–opportunities that have almost always been thwarted. In 1985, for instance, Israel attempted to move refugees into 1,300 permanent housing units constructed near Nablus with the support of the Catholic Relief Organization–without, it must be stated, demanding that they relinquish the “right of return.” Yet the UN intervened to prevent such an occurrence.23 In response to Israel’s attempts to provide housing, a General Assembly resolution was passed asserting that:

measures to resettle Palestine refugees in the West Bank away from the homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right of return… [the GA] calls once again upon Israel to abandon its plans and to refrain from… any action that may lead to the removal and resettlement of Palestine refugees in the West Bank and from the destruction of their camps.24

Put simply, if UNHCR struggles to bring an immediate end to the plight of refugees through any means available, UNRWA’s entire efforts are geared towards a single “solution” which is both extremely unlikely ever to happen and not in the best interests of the refugees’ humanitarian needs. Rather it is in the interests of their political leaders’ aims.

The difference between the two organizations is felt also in the respective services they provide and the extent to which they are willing to place a burden of assistance on sovereign states. The UNHCR aims to provide basic material assistance only as necessary, and with the expectation that host or new countries of residence will cooperate as far as they are able in providing for refugee needs. The Convention states clearly that UNHCR is “charged with the task of supervising international conventions providing for the protection of refugees,”25 and the UNHCR website maintains that “UNHCR’s main role in pursuing international protection is to ensure that states are aware of, and act on, their obligations to protect refugees… and cannot be considered as a substitute for government responsibility.”26 UNRWA, by contrast, has been providing material assistance to Palestinian refugees for over fifty years in the form of “educational services, including general and higher education as well as vocational, technical and teacher education” and “a wide range of health services, including disease prevention and treatment, health protection and promotion and environmental and family health programs”–services far beyond the scope of “emergency relief” envisioned by UNHCR as a temporary measure on the road to self-sufficiency.27 Indeed, Palestinian Arabs provided for by UNRWA are the only refugees in the world to have guaranteed health care, primary education, and welfare benefits–as befitting a quasi-governmental body aimed at nurturing a people over the long haul rather than providing humanitarian relief. Not surprisingly, in the course of providing these services, UNRWA has developed an extensive bureaucracy–according to its website, UNRWA’s staff currently stands at 24,324 members28–with one staff person per 164 refugees (compared to one staff person per 2,803 refugees in UNHCR), and 99 dollars spent per refugee annually (compared with the UNHCR’s 64 dollars per refugee).29 The result is a kind of mutual dependence: The Palestinian community has become dependent on UNRWA’s services, support, and employment; and UNRWA has become dependent on its clients for its own survival and operational growth.

In short, by introducing broad parameters of inclusion, UNRWA has inflated the original numbers on its rolls; by declining to exempt those refugees who subsequently acquire citizenship elsewhere, it has sustained those large numbers over the years; and by counting successive generations, it has succeeded in indefinitely expanding the number of refugees. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, by encouraging the expectation of and desire for a “return” to Israel that is in all likelihood impossible, UNRWA has done a grave disservice to the refugees themselves–in effect, subordinating the humanitarian aims of refugee assistance to the political aims of Arab leaders. Unlike other refugees, who have been helped to regain some measure of autonomy, the Palestinian refugees remain mired in a sense of helplessness and frustration, condemned to an existence as stateless, displaced persons.

So we're paying welfare and all sorts of other benefits to four million people through an agency whose purpose was to exist for a relatively short time, long enough to relocate roughly one seventh of that amount of refugees, it's fifty six years later and they can't even claim to see a light at the end of the tunnel, nor even the tunnel itself. And we're paying a staff of over twenty four thousand people for this!

As if that isn't more than enough to make one at least a little angry, the percentage of our tax dollars that find their way into the coffers of UNRWA also aid and abet terrorism.

Of all the problems inherent in UNRWA’s policies, however, the practice of hiring from within its own client population is perhaps the thorniest. Of the approximately 24,000 persons in its employ, all but the roughly 100 “internationals” in executive positions are Palestinian Arabs, the vast majority of whom are themselves refugees.30

UNRWA claims that hiring refugees ensures a greater degree of sensitivity on the part of employees toward the problems facing their client base. Yet there is a general rule of thumb that it is not appropriate for an agency to do large-scale hiring of staff from the population it serves. No other UN agency does this; the UNHCR, for example, maintains by design a certain distance from its client base. The reason for this distance is clear: Employers who share the situation of their clients are vulnerable to conflicts of interest. UNRWA staff naturally share the passions and perceptions of their fellow refugees, and can easily be led to act on them inappropriately. In some cases, this means turning a blind eye to beneficiaries of UNRWA services engaged in terrorism; in others, it means outright involvement in terrorist activity itself.

Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence of such involvement. Incidents like the one on July 6, 2001 are not uncommon: The terrorist organization Hamas convened a conference in an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza with the full participation of school administrators and faculty. Students were addressed by Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who spoke about the “liberation of Jerusalem.” He was then joined by Saheil Alhinadi, UNRWA’s representative from the teachers’ sector, who praised the Hamas students who had carried out suicide attacks against Israelis in recent months. “The road to Palestine,” he orated, “passes through the blood of the fallen.”31

It is also common knowledge that Hamas-affiliated workers control the UNRWA union in Gaza.32 Within the teachers’ sector of the union, for example, all representatives are Hamas-affiliated, and Hamas candidates constitute the union’s entire executive committee, as well. Moreover, an organization called Islamic Bloc, ideologically similar to Hamas, has been charged with furthering the goals of Hamas within UNRWA schools; it prepares the next generation of Palestinians for the “liberation of Palestine” by organizing special events and distributing printed materials. Retired IDF colonel Yoni Fighel, a former military governor in the territories, explains how radical Islamic movements have come to dominate the refugee camps: “As long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or pelp [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine],” he says, “they are going to pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job…. Who’s going to check up on them to see that they don’t? UNRWA? They are UNRWA.”33

The full extent of the terrorist infiltration in Palestinian refugee camps was revealed during the IDF’s Operation Defensive Shield, mounted in the spring of 2002 in response to an unprecedented wave of terror attacks inside Israel. The evidence gleaned from that operation is both irrefutable and damning: Hardly innocent residential areas, the UNRWA-run camps which the army entered were riddled with small-arms factories, explosives laboratories, Kassam-2 rocket manufacturing plants, and suicide-bombing cells. The camp in Jenin, site of the most intense fighting, provides the most dramatic example of the terrorist takeovers of UNRWA camps. A letter written by Fatah members in Jenin to Marwan Barghouti in September 2001 grants some insight into the situation:

Of all the districts, Jenin boasts the greatest number and the highest quality of fighters from Fatah and the other Islamic national factions. The refugee camp is rightly considered to be the center of events and the operational headquarters of all the factions in the Jenin area–it is, as the other side calls it, a hornets’ nest. The Jenin refugee camp is remarkable for the large number of fighting men taking initiatives in the cause of our people. Nothing will defeat them, and nothing fazes them. They are prepared to fight with everything they have. It is little wonder, therefore, that Jenin is known as the capital of the suicide martyrs.34

It should come as no surprise, then, that the IDF found a number of wanted terrorists hiding inside UNRWA schools; that a large number of youth clubs operated by UNRWA in the camps were discovered to be meeting places for terrorists; and that an official bureau of the Tanzim, or Fatah-affiliated, militia was established inside a building owned by UNRWA. UNRWA’s donors might be surprised to learn that funds intended for humanitarian relief sometimes end up serving the goals of Palestinian terror: In an interview with CNN in February 2002, PA Minister of Labor Ghassan Khatib remarked that every young man in UNRWA’s Balata refugee camp has his own personal weapon, since the local steering committee–an official UNRWA body–had voted that charitable donations received would be used for guns rather than food or other relief. UNRWA’s role in the terrorist activity of the Palestinian refugees is not only a passive one. Rather, UNRWA employees themselves sometimes engage in terrorism. According to the 2003 report by the United States General Accounting Office,35 for example, UNRWA employees were arrested and convicted by Israeli military courts of throwing firebombs at an Israeli public bus; possession of materials that could be used for explosives; and transferring chemicals to assist in bomb-making. Also, the IDF demonstrated that UNRWA ambulances have been used to transport terrorists and firearms in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, himself saw shahid (martyr) posters on the walls in the homes of UNRWA workers during a visit to Jenin in April 2002. “It was clear,” he said in a December 2003 interview, “that UNRWA workers were doubling as Hamas operatives.”36

Given the U.N.'s record for being anti-Israel, the UNRWA sounds like their dream come true. Foreign tax dollars to finance an organization that supports terrorism while breeding an ever-growing population of "refugees" Palestinian terrorist groups can blame on Israel as another excuse to murder innocent people.

There is much more in the article, register free with a great online magazine and read the whole article...

Posted by Seth at 06:31 PM |

Iranians In Space

Iran has now put a satellite in space as part of a joint venture with their good friend, Russia.

Iran launched its first satellite into space from Plesetsk in northern Russia on Thursday, joining a select club of countries.
A joint project between Iran and Russia, the Sina-1 satellite will be used to take pictures of Iran and to monitor natural disasters.

Director General of Iran Electronic Industries Ebrahim Mahmoudzadeh said Sina-1 was the result of years of research and 32 months of construction.

I find the very concept just a little scary -- they are the 43rd out of the planet's 191 countries to have a satellite in space -- and they are a country governed by extreme ideals several centuries in arrears, a nation that sponsors terrorism, whose president just decried a need for the destruction of Israel, who are the subject of a frantic attempt by the western world to discourage their development of the means to manufacture and deliver nuclear weapons.

Mr Mahmoudzadeh said the $15m research satellite would contain a telecommunications system and cameras that would be used for monitoring Iran's agriculture and natural resources.

"Considering that the satellite weights 170kg and is carrying a camera, it is an initial model as far as technical know-how and experience are concerned."

Great, so perhaps next they'll have a Russian version of the KH-12{surveillance} satellite to send up, to keep an eye on Israel and on the Great Satan{the U.S.} and other western countries.

It would be nice to think that we have some folks on tap who can intercept their satellite feed and disseminate it for useful intelligence.

Hat Tip The Raw Story.

Posted by Seth at 05:12 AM |

October 27, 2005

Just Curious

Just wondering about gas prices, and how high they should be instead of how high they really are.

Are we looking at oil companies taking major advantage of their customers?

Remember the early 1970s, when gas prices were high for the times, the oil companies screaming of a shortage, when people had to drive up to long lines at the pumps on alternate days, depending upon whether their license plate numbers were odd or even, and meanwhile entire fleets of fully laden oil tankers sat calmly offshore, out of visual range?

Hmmmm.

So what, exactly, is happening now?

We're reading here that Exxon Mobile has made a 75% profit due mainly to the "increase in gas prices" resulting from the hurricanes that banged up their offshore rigs and some of their refineries. It stands to reason, therefore, that had they merely raised their prices to reflect the situation, they would balance out at about the same profit margin they did before prices "went up." Instead, they're collecting exponential profits, which means that if the price of gas, based on the per-barrel price, goes up 80 cents, they'll charge a dollar and a half, or somewhere thereabouts.

Yup, no question about it, I love the way Mobile Chevron and others demonstrate their patriotism by profiteering on natural disasters.

Posted by Seth at 08:19 AM | Comments (2) |

Every Chapter Is Exactly The Same, Word For Word

Briefly, though I'm sure most of us know about yesterday's news,

A suicide bomber blew himself up Wednesday next to a food stand in the central Israeli town of Hadera, wounding at least 30 people and leaving a path of destruction at an open air market, police and rescuers said.

To update the above, there have been five resultant deaths. To me, that's five cold blooded murders of innocent civilians, not to mention the crippling of numerous other soft targets.

How very nice, still more humanity from the Palestinian end of things.

Interestingly enough, it came on the heels of a prediction by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Palestinians would, through their terrorism, eventually destroy Israel and he even offered words of encouragement to that end.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday predicted a wave of Palestinian attacks that would erase Israel "from the face of the Islamic world," just hours before a suicide bomber killed five Israelis in a marketplace.
The attack, which wounded about 30, also made a mockery of a major speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who appealed in Ramallah yesterday for an end to attacks that he said were undermining attempts to establish a Palestinian state.
Iran's firebrand president called for Israel's destruction at a conference in Tehran titled "The World Without Zionism."

For the trillionth time or so, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the guy who let western governments, shamefully including ours, bully him into ceding Gaza to the Palestinians, said there would be no further talks with Mahmoud Abbas until he acts against armed groups.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ruled out talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas until he takes "serious action" against armed groups, the Prime Minister's Office said Thursday, a day after five Israelis were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Hadera.

Israel and the Palestinians earlier this month had delayed a meeting set for mid-October, their first since Israel completed its Gaza pullout on September 12. Officials had said the summit could take place in late October or early November, but sporadic violence since then had cast doubt on that timetable.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also called on Abbas to rein in militants, a PA official said Thursday. Rice called Abbas and they discussed Wednesday's attack, the official said.

Impressively, liberal media icon New York Times manages to incorporate all the essentials into one article.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli army launched an offensive against Islamic Jihad militants Thursday, carrying out a series of airstrikes in what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said would be a ''broad and nonstop'' response to a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis.

''Unfortunately the Palestinian Authority has not taken any serious action to battle terrorism,'' Sharon said before meeting the visiting Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. ''We will not accept under any circumstances a continuation of terrorism. Therefore our activities will be broad and nonstop until they halt terrorism.''

''The state of Israel would very much have liked to move peace efforts forward,'' he added. ''To my regret, as long as terror continues we shall not be able to move forward as we would have wished.''

So as I said, it's just another chapter that is identical to all those that came before. In good faith, Israel makes concessions. Staying true to their track record, the Palestinians make terrorism.

It looks like this time out, an act of terrorism has been the straw that broke the camel's back{no un-PC reference intended, at least maybe not}.

Bush, Blair and a whole bunch of other world leaders really have to wake up to the fact that there will be no peace in Israel as long as the Palestinian Authority(Fatah, who were once the military wing of the P.L.O. and who presently "own" other, active terrorist groups) or Hamas are recognized as valid political concerns in the quest for peace in the Middle East rather than being treated by the world community as the failures they are in order for Israel to achieve positive diplomatic results via negotiating with terrorists.

Posted by Seth at 07:15 AM |

October 25, 2005

Walmart{I think I've been here before}

Yes, I have. I have defended Wal-Mart before.

And not for any in-depth political reasons, either. Just for topical observations I made a couple of years ago, when I spent some time in rural Illinois.

You know, you go to some of these extreme "fly-over zone" towns, the ones that subsist off outlying farms and a few totally locally owned businesses, and you see places in which there are no, and I mean NO job openings to speak of. A lot of families are simply clinging to their homes and eating on budgets that rate genuine pity...

There's a Wal-Mart in town, luckily, that employs hundreds of locals in the entire range of retail. Most of the people who live in town are poor.

Wal-Mart is sort of a nucleus: It supports the locals -- not just the economy, but the people. It sells them the luxuries higher income, large city residents enjoy at a fraction of the price that they can afford while simultaneously furnishing the means to buy.

Sure, a lot of people have reasons to share as to why they hate, or disapprove, of Wal-Mart. I'm personally pretty bottom-line when it comes to Retail. Wal-Mart is Retail with a vengeance; it employs an awesome amount of people who might not otherwise have any work at all or people who haven't got any credentials but possess strong business, supervisory or merchandising aptitudes and affords them the opportunity to move ahead in the company's hierarchy.

Right, Wal-Mart is a corporate dynasty, but it is positive -- it contributes to our economy on every front.

The left don't like that, because they don't believe that individuals who work hard, sacrifice and succeed should live any better than those who live off government largesse. Except, of course, for themselves.

Bummer.

Most of Wal-Mart's inventory originates in China. China is our enemy, though no-one in the media seems to explore that fact, but on the other hand, the more capitalist ventures we share with Beijing firms, the more people we can place in China and the better HUMINT we can harvest. I'm all for that, given the fact that we will eventually have a reckoning with them, and it won't be small potatoes.

But back to Wal-Mart -- I was actually inspired to write this post by another post by Raven, of And Rightly So fame.

Wal-Mart's greatest crime was the crime of success, the prime target of liberals, whose actual agenda is socialism, but the term "liberal" sounds better. Heh.

Think of the left as a pack of wild dogs with mange, a significant percentage rabid, descending upon any newsworthy "target of opportunity," for the sole purpose of transforming the U.S. Constitution into the Communist Manifesto.

WTF are they thinking!?

Posted by Seth at 07:27 AM | Comments (4) |

October 24, 2005

A Couple Of Good Columns

During today's read of Jewish World Review online, I ran into a couple of columns I thought I'd share.

Mark Steyn writes that Bush was right:Sometimes war is worth it, and John Leo tells us that -- no kidding, John! -- The ACLU is crossing the line.

Posted by Seth at 01:49 PM |

Kofi, the U.N. And Israel

At Jewish World Review, Johnathan Tobin weighs in on Kofi Annan's recent benevolent change of attitude toward Israel and the issues that render it a mere attempt to mask his and the embattled U.N.'s true feelings toward the Jewish State. The column in its entirety is here.

...The United Nations seemed to be sliding back toward old-style anti-Semitism as the organization reached its zenith at its International Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. But Secretary General Kofi Annan has been spreading good will toward the Jews right and left these days. In the last year, the United Nations officially condemned anti-Semitism (amazing!) and commemorated the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

But the problem doesn't begin and end there. The U.N. committee on the "Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People" and its division of Palestinian Affairs and "Special Information Program" on the "Question of Palestine" have been there to fuel hate at every possible U.N. forum.
These organs of anti-Israel propaganda have served to fuel the conflict. And the corruption and waste at these agencies make the oil-for-food skullduggery of the past decade seem like just more of the same.

Yeah, Kofi's scrambling to play the "hail fellow well met" to shore up the damage done over the Oil For Food scandal and the accusations from various quarters of the U.N.'s corruption, antisemitism and inefficiency, but as the author says,

The signals we should send to Congress and the White House are those of increased monetary pressure on the United Nations. Indeed, far from turning down the heat, a congressional focus on cutting funds to terrorist hangouts like UNRWA should be at the top of our agenda.

Posted by Seth at 01:13 PM | Comments (2) |

RightMarch Alert

This is a new alert from Rightmarch, addressing the pork barrel spending issue:

ALERT: Last week, the House of Representatives was poised to dramatically cut over $50 BILLION in wasteful "pork-barrel" spending. It seemed like they were finally ready to do the job we SENT them there to do! Then, far-left groups like MoveOn.org sent an e-mail to their members, and over 160,000 of these leftists wrote or called Congress to demand they NOT trim back our ridiculously bloated budget...

The work of RightMarch.com is funded entirely by voluntary contributions. Help us spread the word with a donation to RightMarch.com!
https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

Posted by Seth at 12:18 PM |

Like Dad, Bashar Is Pushing His Luck

Syria, an outspoken enemy of Israel since long before the Jewish State kicked its butt in 1973, has done more than enough in recent years to warrant some aggressive attention not only from Israel, but the Coalition of the Willing as well.

Many of the Palestinians who commit acts of terrorism in Israel are trained in Syria, armed by Syria and financed by Syria, or by terror groups headquartered in Syria with the blessing of "President" Bashar Assad and previously that of his father and predecessor, Hafez Assad.

There has been evidence submitted, via satellite intelligence and from a few on-the-ground witnesses, that prior to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, guards on the Iraq-Syria border were relieved by Saddam's own security people in order to permit convoys of trucks to drive into Syria without any official scrutiny of their cargoes.

There has been no "smoking gun" level of evidence yet presented to support any theories as to what may have been in the trucks, though one theory is that the convoys were transporting WMD from Iraq into the hands of Baathist-run Syria. The anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-America, pro-terrorist, pro-tyranny crowd screams that there's no way this could be so, for according to them, there never was any WMD in Iraq. To even hint at the possibility would be to discredit their weak, long played out "Bush lied" mantra.

However, throughout the merry time Saddam and his cronies enjoyed sending blind man Blix on wild goose chases while shuffling the sought after inventory out of his path, and since, a lot of WMD that was known to be in Saddam's possession prior to the Blix idiocy is unaccounted for. The Mainstream Media doesn't speculate on this, nor do their liberal subscribers, who apparently think the unaccounted-for weaponry -- chemical and biological for the most part -- must have simply ceased to exist of its own volition.

As the Kennedy who is a left wing columnist would say, "the science speaks for itself" or some such moronic declaration as when he blamed Bush for Hurricane Katrina because Dubya had declined to sign the Kyoto Agreement, thus causing the "global warming" that in turn "caused" Katrina. Right, so much for liberal science.

But there is a strong possibility that those missing WMD are, or were, in the hands of Bashar Assad, awaiting use at a time of opportunity.

Since we overthrew Saddam and waxed his sadistic sons, Syria has been a staging point for terrorists, including al-Qaeda mambers, entering Iraq. Damascus has been a veritable mall of headquarters for a variety of Fundamentalist Islam-based terrorist organizations and Assad has done nothing to discourage this, save for weak promises he's had no intention of carrying out.

Now, it seems, he is bringing his country back to the strongman rule embraced by his father.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- A brutal beating delivered last week to Anwar al Bounni, one of the few lawyers who dares to represent political prisoners before Syria's security court, indicates that after a brief "Damascus Spring," the administration of President Bashar Assad is cracking down on dissent.
And there is evidence considered strong enough to pursue an investigation into allegations that the Assad government was involved in the February assassination bombing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri.

A U.N. report last week accused the Syrian administration of complicity in the Feb. 14 bombing deaths of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 others in Beirut.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who are traveling together in Alabama, both called yesterday for international action in response to the report.
"These are very serious charges and they have to be debated at the level of foreign minister," Miss Rice said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview.
Mr. Straw said the report indicated that "people of a high level of this Syrian regime were implicated" in the assassination. He also referred to "false testimony being given by senior people" in the Syrian government.

Thus far, our disagreements with Damascus have been limited to barking contests and as such, Bashar Assad is making the same mistake Saddam & Sons made by assuming the United States was all talk, no action. The Husseins at least had reason to opine thusly, as our track record under the Clinton Administration was one of a toothless tiger. One of Saddam's sons was quoted as saying, when the Coalitition was making mincemeat of the Iraqi Army, that "Bush is not Bill Clinton!" Assad is just stupid, one of those people who refuse to learn from others' mistakes, a yipping chihuahua snapping at the heels of a couple of tigers named Israel and the United States.

It seems inevitable that if Assad doesn't clean up his act in the very near future, that "aggressive attention" will be visited upon Syria in ways he will find to be not to his liking, extremely so.

Posted by Seth at 10:42 AM | Comments (5) |

Good Shooting, Guys!

TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops on Monday shot dead a top Islamic Jihad commander in the occupied West Bank, the most senior Palestinian militant killed since the start of an eight-month-old ceasefire.

Posted by Seth at 10:10 AM |

The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

The most thorough and spot-on post I've ever seen regarding our Second Amendment rights can be found at Kender's Musings.

Posted by Seth at 08:36 AM |

A New Post From Michael Yon

Michael Yon's brand new post from Iraq is called Purple Fingers.

Posted by Seth at 06:49 AM |

October 22, 2005

Same Old, Same Old

So nothing in the so-called "Middle East Peace Process" has really changed since Ariel Sharon, via what I believe would be more aptly named the "Roadmap To Hell," gave Gaza to the Palestinians. Now they've got their new firebase and a staging point for attacks against Israel, and once they've gotten their seaport built, at the expense of U.S. and other nations' taxpayers, they'll have the perfect set-up for importing still more terrorists, such as al-Qaeda types.

The White House meeting between President George W. Bush and Palestinian Authority whip Mahmoud Abbas seems to have been a rather stagnant affair, nothing new to report, as it were, no problems resolved. They should've had their talk by telephone -- Abbas could've used a $5.00 phone card and saved all the money he spent travelling to the U.S. Again, our tax dollars at work.

Mohammed Dahlan's back from the hospital in Belgrade, and addressed his fellow Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan on Saturday praised his Fatah movement's armed struggle against Israel, but called on gunmen to set aside their weapons and move toward democracy.

Right, and

Without the armed resistance, the Palestinians would not have made progress in their struggle, Dahlan told the crowd, in an apparent reference to Israel's withdrawal last month from the Gaza Strip. However, he said, it was time for Fatah to control their arms, end the chaos in Gaza and focus on winning a January parliamentary vote.

"We are the pioneers in the Fatah movement and we should put an end to the division. We should be united. It's time for democracy," Dahlan said.

On the one hand, Dahlan praises the success of Palestinian terrorism against the Israelis -- sure, he calls it armed resistance, but if blowing up soft targets like women and children is "armed resistance," I wonder what he would call actually getting up on ones hind legs and going toe-to-toe with armed soldiers.

In the same breath as his praise for the murder of innocents and the destruction of property, he urges his terrorist brethren to lay down their arms and pursue democracy.

Until when? Until you've convinced the world of your sincerity, Mohammed, and foreign sources of funding have begun a deluge of largesse into your coffers to finance more mayhem when you believe the Israelis have let their guard down? Then you can praise your fellow terrorists some more when they've driven Sharon out of the West Bank, as well?

The Palestinians have proven that no matter who's in charge, nothing changes. They renege on every condition they ever agree to in peace proceedings, which from their perspective is just fine as it's okay for "the faithful" to lie to infidels, who don't count.

Israel has been the side forced to make all the concessions in every peace attempt, the Palestinians have been asked only to disband and disarm their terrorist organizations. Israel has kept its end of every deal, the Palestinians have done nothing but accept these concessions, absorb money from numerous countries and then continue to terrorize.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz laid down the law, warning Abbas that if the PA doesn't hold up their only end of the bargain and deal with the terrorist groups, diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will come to an end.

"We demand that the Palestinian Authority move from the talking phase and actively work against the terror organizations," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said following Sunday’s terror attacks in the West Bank.

Abass' meek approach allowed this attack. He is not doing what is necessary. It seems that the terror organizations are trying to send him a message, that he should stop working against them," a diplomatic source told Ynet.

This entire diplomatic spectacle is just that. Even as the Israelis have given up Gaza and pursue peace talks, the terrorism continues.

More here.

The Israelis waxed a young bomber, expect some kind of violent response from the Palestinians, who become really angry when the Israelis kill one of these monsters in self defense. According to the Arab script, the Jews are supposed to cooperate and die.

A long time ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said that "there will be peace in the Middle East when the Palestinians come to love their children more than they hate the Jews." Well...

Woman carrying baby hides hand grenade
Earlier on Saturday, IDF troops arrested five wanted Palestinian militants during an arrest sweep in a village near the West Bank town of Nablus. The forces discovered in one militant?s home a suitcase containing 10 kg of explosives.

Lt. Col. Arik Chen said his troops finally searched Jawabra after they became suspicious of the way she was carrying the baby. The soldiers found she was holding the grenade just under the baby's backside, he told The Associated Press.

"To see a woman using her baby to hide a grenade is not typical," Chen said.

Right, sure, anything you say. I'm reminded of an incident awhile back in which a teenage Palestinian girl snuck out of the house, took a walk down an Israeli street and blew herself up in a suicide vest.
The father's reaction was not concern over the loss of his daughter nor for the victims of the bombing.
It was anger that his daughter had left the house without his permission nor with one of her brothers as an escort, and the admonition that had his daughter survived, he would have beaten her to death.

It would appear that nothing's changed in the violent landscape that is Israel, except that the Palestinians now own Gaza.

Posted by Seth at 11:58 AM | Comments (4) |

Oops! Three Hours Late!

I can't believe I neglected to post on this yesterday, which was the 208th birthday of the very naval sailing vessel that heads up this blog.

On 21 October 1797, the frigate U.S.S. Constitution, known also as Old Ironsides was launched at Edmund Hartt's Shipyard in Boston Harbor.

Let's hoist a pint in her honor.

Posted by Seth at 02:54 AM | Comments (2) |

The War On Terror

Tony Blankley has written a detailed and must-read piece on the premises behind his book The West's Last Chance: Will We Win The Clash Of Civilizations?, in which he discusses the serious threat posed to western civilization by radical Islam, citing among other causes for alarm the rapid ongoing ingestion of Europe by Muslims.

It is beginning to dawn on Europeans that the combination of a shrinking ethnic-European population and an expanding, culturally assertive Muslim population might lead to the fall of Western civilization in Europe within a century.
This phenomenon, called Eurabia, is viewed with growing fatalism both in Europe and in America. Such fatalism, however, is premature.
Last November, an Islamist terrorist's butchering of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had made a movie revealing abuse of Muslim women, aroused deep fears in Holland and across the Continent.
The public anger, which included the burning of mosques in traditionally tolerant Holland, is evidence that the European instinct for survival has not been fully extinguished.
But that survival instinct is threatened by the multiculturalism and political correctness advocated in media and academe -- and institutionalized in national and European Union laws and regulations for half a century.
Europe's effort at cultural tolerance since World War II slowly morphed into a surprisingly deep self-loathing of Western culture that denied the instinct for cultural and national self-defense.
If Europe doesn't rise to the challenge, Eurabia will come to pass. Then Europe will cease to be an American ally and instead become a base of operations (as she already is to a small degree) against us.

Another excerpt from the article that should be kept in mind,

Many Muslims in Europe are content to be law-abiding, culturally integrated citizens. But an increasing number feel some degree of alienation. Many are beginning to believe that they have a religious duty not to integrate.
Radical Islam, sometimes accurately called Islamo-fascism, has all the "advantages" the Nazis had in Germany in the 1930s. The Islamo-fascists find a Muslim population adrift, confused and humiliated by the dominance of foreign nations and cultures. They find a large, youthful population increasingly disdainful of their parents' passive habits.
Just as the Nazis reached back to German mythology and the supposed Aryan origins of the German people, the radical Islamists reach back to the founding ideas and myths of their religious culture. And just like the Nazis, they claim to speak for authentic traditions while actually advancing expedient and radical innovations.
The Islamo-fascist mullahs encourage young Muslims not to turn to their parents for guidance on choosing a wife (or wives). Nor are young Muslims to be guided by parental or community disapproval of making an individual commitment to jihad. They are allowed to drink alcohol, shave their beards and commit what otherwise would be judged immorality in a Muslim -- in order to advance jihad.

Read the entire series, three parts, the second two linked at the ends of their "predecessors."

We are fighting a war against a religious entity that has actually been at war with the rest of the world, in one way or another, for about a dozen centuries, because they believe that only Muslims are entitled to live, the rest of us must be killed.

The technology of today has enabled them, for the first time in their entire bloody history, to mount the war they've always wanted on a global scale.

And we are fighting them tooth and nail, despite obstruction from our own lemminglike left and politically partisan propaganda, spins, omissions and outright lies by the mainstream{liberal} media, all of whom either take the side of or play into the hands of our terrorist enemy.

The superbly well prepared, well fact-checked outing of a left wing media stooge who is a very good friend, indeed, of the terrorists in Iraq can be found at GM's Corner, and a definitive rebuttal to the left's decomposing dead horse, "Bush lied! We only invaded Iraq because he said they had WMD!" awaits at Kender's Musings.

Posted by Seth at 01:48 AM | Comments (2) |

So Much For Liberal Propaganda

The Democrats have for years hammered us with the myth that the nation's wealthier folks pay less or no tax at all, leaving the poor to carry the tax burden.

Pat'sRick proves otherwise.

Posted by Seth at 01:40 AM |

He Got That Right!

Brian Carney's New York experience in yesterday's Opinion Journal talks about something I, too, have recently encountered.

I was in New York for several days last month, and man, has the city of my birth become expensive in the last few years. I mean, here's a place where people have become so accustomed to being robbed at the cash register that they don't bat an eye when forking over $8.00 for a pack of cigarettes or $4.50 for a coffee and a bagel "with a schmear" to go.

I am preparing to move back to the east coast soon and buy a house, and have studied real estate prices from Maine to the Carolinas and New York... well, let's say you're single and you badly want to live in Manhattan, where you are willing to buy a condo or co-op{personally, I wouldn't even consider a co-op, because then you're subject to a "board of directors" whose decisions can in many ways decide upon how you can live in your own "home"). If you search very hard and are blessed, beat the multitudes of competitors for the property and win the day(strike up the band!) you may get really, truly lucky and be able to buy your own tiny studio condo for a mere $350,000.00 plus monthly maintenance fees. Woo, at least you won't have to spend a lot of money on furniture, since there'd be noplace to put it. Add a couple of hundred thousand dollars or considerably more if you're looking to buy a small or medium sized house or a multiroom condo. On the even brighter side, you would have the opportunity to pay the city's high property tax, a gift to the people of New York from mayor and "former" Democrat, billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

The other four boroughs, especially Brooklyn and Queens, with the exception of New York's few remaining enclaves of "live here and die, whitey!", are fast catching up on the inflated property gravy train.

Brian Carney, looking to buy a home for himself and his family, searched high and low for a property that was affordable, without success:

But even Brooklyn has gone real-estate crazy, especially if you limit your search to neighborhoods with decent public schools. After seriously considering a two-bedroom basement apartment in Brooklyn Heights going for far more than we could afford, the reality hit home. New York might be great--greater than ever in many ways--but it was beyond our financial grasp. We regrouped and started to look in the suburbs. Which is where we ended up.

And he's got a family in tow, jeez! It's enough that prices in New York repelled me, intending to live by myself, from its real estate market.

There's this bubble thing, you see, in many large cities, among them New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, DC, that has real estate prices titanically overvalued, and in my opinion as well as those of acquaintances in the business, this bubble will burst in the not-too-distant future, transforming current sellers' markets into big time buyers' markets, and that $500,000.00 house you buy today might suddenly enjoy a market price of only $300,000.00 three or four years down the road, if that.

So, like the author of the linked article, I, too, am looking elsewhere for my house.

Posted by Seth at 12:51 AM |

October 20, 2005

Tom DeLay Booked in Houston

Tom DeLay turned himself in quietly at the sheriff's office in Houston earlier, got himself fingerprinted and photo'd, spoke to a judge and posted bail and was gone within half an hour, depriving self seeking, politically motivated, shyster, Travis County, Tx D.A. Ronnie Earle of the dog and pony show he would have preferred.

DeLay showed up with his attorney, Dick DeGuerin.

"Now Ronnie Earle has the mugshot he wanted," DeGuerin said, referring to the Travis County district attorney who brought the charges. DeLay and his lawyer have accused the district attorney of trying to make headlines for himself.

Earle is a shameless maggot who has no compunction about destroying another man's reputation or career if he believes it will advance his own political future.

DeLay had been expected to turn himself in in his home county outside Houston, Fort Bend, where a horde of reporters awaited. But under Texas law, he could check in anywhere in the state.

"That's what Ronnie (Earle) wanted. He wanted a perp walk and we did not want to do it," the defense attorney said.

I predict Tom DeLay will be cleared of the trumped up charges against him, but unfortunately, as happens as a result of human nature, there will always be a lingering doubt among the voting public, and that will have a highly negative impact on the future of his career in politics.

Posted by Seth at 10:33 PM | Comments (2) |

Move America Forward

This is the latest email announcement from Move America Forward:

Fellow Move America Forward Supporters,