Fall’s Hippest Trends Already Upon Us-
UPDATE:
23:17
Bill O’Reilly tonight had the chance on his Fox News “Factor” program to ask National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice about the matter of border-control as it relates to threats of terrorism to homeland security.
In
response to O’Reilly’s probing with regard to how the Department of
Homeland Security is dealing with the Islamofascist threat coming
across the U.S.-Mexican border, Dr. Rice had this to say,
“(This
administration has) done more to try and secure our borders than has
been done really in the entire history of the United States”.
Oh, really, Dr. Rice? Then why, as I mentioned earlier in this blog, are we not doing what has been done already numerous times before in our history- i.e. doing the most secure thing: placing our troops all along the border?
She later seems to mitigate her first claims by offering this explanation,
“It’s a balance between trying to keep commerce activities alive…”
So
she seems to hint that the relationship that criminal businesses have
with their illegal alien slave-laborers is a vitally more important
interest than homeland security and at the same time she admits that
the interests of those businesses engaged in criminal activity (namely,
the hiring of illegal aliens – and doing it with inhumane suppressed
wages) is greater than the security of law-abiding citizens. We should
all be outraged.
Her
statement here also seems to hint that controlling the border at
unauthorized entry points would hurt the legitimate business for which
NAFTA was ostensibly created. That’s awfully funny Dr. Rice, since most
of us would expect legitimate shipments to pass through customs.
Another of Condi’s quotes worth mentioning is her assertion that there is “cooperation with Mexico (and) Canada”,
which she actually dished out with a straight face. Everyone knows that
Vincente Fox has been anything but cooperative on any front and is
clearly pursuing a national agenda in Mexico which is in many ways directly opposed to the interests of the United States.
Namely and with regard to the current news, freely granting Visas to
individuals known to be on the international terrorist watch list
and even granting those same individuals various forms
of Mexican identification. The Al Jazeera- and Easy Visa-friendly
government in Canada is not much better.
It
therefore remains to be seen if the Bush administration is truly
"getting it", when it comes to border control, or if this is just
another attempt at shameful obfuscation from the grave realities we
currently face in this country. Realities which call for in the very
least, a similar course of action we have always followed when threats
loomed across our border, but for the first time in U.S. history, have chosen not to.
Well, maybe the second: after all, there was the War of 1812 when unsecured borders and ports allowed the U.K. to march down from Canada and come ashore at Maryland to burn the White House to the ground.
-M
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I
am finally back from my weekend vacation out of town and have
discovered a mound of interesting items to read that have developed
over the last few days. Those developments are interesting in
themselves, but I want to also look out at some different
perspectives and considerations- outside the litterbox.
We will begin today with what is sure to be one of the big topics around the water cooler this August. Let’s
jump into one of the hottest things selling on both sides of the pond,
Terrorism. That’s right, terrorism is making a comeback this fall with
a retro look any self-respecting einkaufs-bin-laden would love. For one of the first times ever, popular fashion is actually on the same page everywhere.
As we know today, reports indicate terrorists may be plotting to attack specific commerce targets in Washington D.C., New York and elsewhere, thus raising the panic code chromatic to orange (or in French, “orange”). At the same time a woman with a fake South African passport has been detained in Texas for suspected terrorist ties- only the third South African in Texas recently apprehended, some of whom snuck in across the hemorrhaging US-Mexican border. (Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose first husband died Ron Brown-style in a plane crash, attended school at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa, a country which some now fear has become a “terrorist breeding ground”). However,
the South Africans’ arrests seem to me to mark only a few of the first
in which there may have actually been cooperation between the FBI and
immigration officials. These events are not long after recent reports of activity in the U.S. Southwest where several states were put on alert, but law enforcement was refused help in detaining suspects. Such has been the case now, as we know, in several incidents where Customs allowed known watch-list persons of interest to be turned back onto the streets.
And from these examples, it seems safe to assume that the Feds are
thinking that anyone here illegally in the U.S. becomes the beneficiary
of an unspoken rule- one which requires every illegal alien be allowed
in and given complete freedom to move about unmolested- which, as we
have learned from the generous, if not traitorous bureaucratic
benefactors, trumps the Homeland In-Security list of known persons of
interest. In eternal wisdom, the spectacular minions of brilliantly
thinking federal workers in the U.S.
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE) told one South
Texas sheriff that he had to let any such persons of interest go
because of jail space. Isn’t that a
judges call? And what about Gitmo? Well, apparently BICE also trumps
the State department and CIA. It even seems to trump itself- BICE’s own
interim assistant director of investigations, Charles H. Demore did
more than indicate that BICE suffers from some form of institutional
Multiple Personality Disorder when he addressed the Senate Judiciary
Committee, according to a
report found on the U.S. Embassy’s Tokyo Website that admits in no uncertain
terms that immigration enforcement goes hand-in-hand with homeland
security.
But
many elected officials and local law enforcement are beginning to call
BICE out on the carpet for all that has been occurring much to the harm
of all Americans. Texas Congressman John Culberson, who recently was featured on the John and Ken show in LA has
become one who is leading the charge. While at the same time, local law
enforcement doing its part by documenting and publicizing each instance
of federal dereliction of duty by immigration. Ominously however,
Culberson stated he believes based on the intelligence data he’s
received that we face a 100% chance of a terrorist attack before the
elections are held in November because the federal government is still
not acting to seal the borders and control the inflow of illegals, even
though intel shows that terrorist are exploiting the border to gain
access, sometimes posing as Mexican illegals. So it was no surprise
after hearing such news, such as the Culberson story, which came out
two weeks ago, that the sequence of events which we have hence
encountered is the most likely scenario of all.
We
need to make sure that BICE learns that not only do we prefer not to
become the primary care-giver to millions of unproductive illegal
aliens, but we are moreover of the opinion that mass death and
destruction by way of rabid jihadist is also not the best thing in
town. Nor is trying to make up the slack by limiting our freedoms a
reasonable first-line of defense. Until the federal government stops
trying to combat terrorism in the homeland by restricting the rights of
its citizens and yielding non-existent rights to non-citizens in favor
of gaining favor with those who wish to cross the border illegally, any
reasonable person would agree the mechanism of homeland defense is
philosophically bankrupt.
There
is little doubt the threat of attack will remain a strong one
throughout the coming months in large part due to a lack of desire to
deploy troops to guard our borders from unlawful crossings and
incursions- something which the U.S. Military has done numerous times throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries- but I suppose we shouldn’t give any credit to the old fogies that did that, should we.
We
are fortunate still, to have been able to find to this point a few good
breaks. But like 9/11, the game of Russian roulette is likely to turn
more deadly. The information which lead to the latest set of terror
alerts was apparently gleaned by the capture of a key Al Qaeda
“computer engineer” in Pakistan recently. According to the New York Times,
Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan has been giving the CIA a great deal of
information while leaving agents stunned by the sophistication of
reconnaissance done by operatives inside the US.
Khan’s tasks included the passing of secret information between various
al Qaeda correspondents which “included a Saudi-based Yemeni, Egyptian
and Palestinian nationals and Arabs in unknown locations, and someone
described as the ‘in-charge’ in the city of Khost in
eastern Afghanistan.” Such details as given by the CIA however are
naturally and understandably not always accurately given. Khost, for
example has basically been a US stronghold since 2002 due to the importance of its airport, once also used as a base by the Soviets in Afghanistan to conduct sorties.
We will have more on the matter of domestic terrorism and border protection at a later date.
More related:
On border control…
MichelleMalkin.com
Police Arrest Man Armed to the Teeth Who Also Had Flight Manuals
Arizona Border Patrol Catching Hundreds of Islamists Attempting to Cross Border from Mexico
Across the pond…
St. Petersburg Under Threat of Massive Chechen Attack?
Meanwhile in Russia, St. Petersburg police this week also may be scrambling to stop a terrorist plot. BalticBlog says Chechens are in search of targets in the historic city in the coming days.
The site claims Russian officials suspect that over 200 Chechen
separatists may be filtering in to the city. Though, it would not be
surprising, I was nevertheless unable to find any reports to fully
confirm this, however past such occurrences have been noted by the St. Petersburg Times. The January 2000 report interestingly enough also gives an account of involvement by Egyptian nationals in not only the carrying out of attacks inside Russia, but masterminding and sponsoring them. The report cites a man by the name of Said el-Maban, who supposedly fronted $200,000 USD for the operation which blew up several Moscow apartment units, killing hundreds back in September of 1999.
Russian officials have long connected Chechen rebels with Al Qaeda and their backers.
On a side note-
New
reports seem to indicate what we already knew- most Europeans (and
possibly some of John Kerry’s “world leaders”) strongly support U.S.
Democrat Nominee John Kerry over incumbent presidential candidate
George W. Bush this fall. A quote from a recent article at SeattlePi.com reads,
"’It is not just a narrow majority of American voters who, according to
current polls, want Mr. Bush to be defeated in November,’ The Guardian
said in an editorial on the convention. ‘It is an overwhelming majority
of the citizens of other lands, those of this country very much
included.’" It amazes me how so many people can be out of their minds
at the same time. George W. Bush, who supports open borders for all who
wish to cross (including by definition, terrorists), is viewed in Europe
as a “cowboy”. One does wonder how steep the rhetoric would right now
be had we someone as no-nonsense about national Defense as either of
the two Roosevelt presidents, in the Oval Office today.
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