Author: Papa Giorgio
Recent News Stories Put To Artistic Prose (Immigration, Oil, Sovereignty)
(These are old stories I decided to keep in my “repairing” old posts)
This rash politicization of education is being met with resistance, but here’s what supporters of the proposed curriculum had to say:
According to its press release, “The Los Angeles Board of Education also requested that Superintendent Ramon Cortines ensure that civics and history classes discuss the recent laws with students in the context of the American values of unity, diversity and equal protection for all people.”
“America must stand for tolerance, inclusiveness and equality,” said Board President Monica García, according to the release. “In our civics classes and in our hallways, we must give life to these values by teaching our students to value themselves; to respect others; and to demand fairness and justice for all who live within our borders. Any law which violates civil rights is un-American.”
Very telling that “rule of law” was not one of the “American values” mentioned.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was quoted in Politico hammering the administration for pulling away from Israel.
From Politico:
“We have to ask if the Obama administration remains committed to the state of Israel and the right of Israel to exist and defend herself. The Obama administration, through its word and its actions, has been sending the world mixed signals at best.”
She continued:
“It appears that from the time the Obama administration came into office they have been stepping away from Israel…”
(Michele Bachmann strong words for Obama over lack of support for Israel)
The Dutch government is condemning Israel’s defensive action against the Hamas/Al Qaeda terrorist vessel that entered its waters. However, one Dutch politician is standing against the tide.
From the Dutch News, June 1:
MPs from across the political spectrum, even those traditionally supportive of Israel, have said they were shocked by Israel’s actions.
However, PVV MP Geert Wilders said it is ‘cheap’ to attack Israel. ‘I am certainly not going to make a cheap attack on Israel by howling in the woods with the rest of the wolves,’ he told tv show Nova.
Israel was fully justified in entering the ships to see if they were also carrying weapons, he said.
(In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders stands virtually alone in defense of Israel flotilla attacks)
President Barack Obama Wednesday sought to break the political siege imposed by the US oil disaster, lacerating Republicans for gutting corporate regulation and exploding deficits.
The GOP immediately blasted back, accusing the president of trying to distract attention from the ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Good speeches can’t improve failing policies,” said House Republic Whip Eric Cantor. “America needs more than speeches and words — we need action to begin to erase our deficits and free our children from our debt.”….
(GOP Blasts Obama for Attack Speech as Spill Worsens in Gulf)
Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama’s tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we’ve had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
So we go deep, ultra deep — to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That’s a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?
Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they’ve escaped any mention at all.
The other culprits are pretty obvious. It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure.
However, the railing against BP for its performance since the accident is harder to understand. I attribute no virtue to BP, just self-interest. What possible interest can it have to do anything but cap the well as quickly as possible? Every day that oil is spilled means millions more in losses, cleanup and restitution….
….Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.
More Proof That The Earth’s Climate Has Always Changed And Always Will Change
Cage Fighter Kills Buddy In Belief He Was Possessed
I heard this on the way home from dropping my son and nephew off at school on KROQ (The Kevin & Bean Show). I had to add it to the “crime” section:
A U.S. cage fighter ripped out the heart of his training partner while he was still alive after becoming convinced he was possessed by the devil, it was alleged today.
Jarrod Wyatt also cut out Taylor Powell’s tongue and ripped off most of his face in a brutal assault that police said looked like a scene from a horror film, officers said.
They claim they found the 26-year-old standing naked over his friend’s body with parts, including an eyeball, strewn around the blood splattered room in Klamath, California.
Wyatt allegedly told police he had drunk a cup of tea spiked with hallucinogenic mushrooms and became convinced Powell was possessed.
According to an autopsy Powell, 21, bled to death after his heart was ripped out.
The coroner said Powell had been alive when the organ was ripped out after his chest had been sliced open with a knife.
Wyatt told the police he thrown the heart into a fire along with other organs that he had removed from the body, it was claimed.
He allegedly told investigators he cooked the body parts because he was fearful Powell was still alive and he ‘needed to stop the Devil’….
…(read more)…
Here are a few of his fights:
Melanie Phillips vs. Israel Bashers
The odious hypocrisy of … Israel-bashers, by Melanie Phillips:
1) There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The markets are full. There are fancy restaurants. An Olympic-size swimming pool was recently opened there. What hardship there is has resulted from the actions taken by the tyrannical Hamas regime which rules Gaza, which recently burned down an UNRWA summer camp for children, for example, and blew up one of Gaza’s restaurants.
2) It is astonishing to call upon Israel to lift its ‘blockade’ of Gaza, since every week Israel allows into Gaza tens of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid. Cameron and Clegg should be asked specifically why they have not called upon Egypt to lift its blockade of Gaza, which had been imposed more rigidly than Israel’s restrictions — until yesterday, when Egypt temporarily opened its border to fend off attacks from the Arab world during the current hysteria.
3) The only reason for Israel’s ‘blockade’ is to prevent weapons and missiles from being transported into Gaza. Lifting the ‘blockade’ would therefore allow those weapons through. Cameron and Clegg are therefore recommending that Israel take action which would jeopardise its security and lead directly to the deaths of many more Israelis.
4) It is therefore beyond nauseating to hear Clegg intone piously that this would be in Israel’s interests, which he claimed to have at heart. Let us hear no more from Cameron or Clegg about how of course they support Israel’s right to defend itself. That is precisely what they are attempting to remove. In the last two days, the new British government has shown itself hostile to Israel – and thus giving encouragement and strength to the enemies not just of Israel but of Britain itself and the free world. Cameron and Clegg should now be held publicly to account for this most alarming and despicable betrayal of Britain’s moral duty and the national interest.
This is with thanks to HotAir:
Melanie Phillips Writes On Israels Boarding of a “Peace” Flotilla
Here is some cogent input by Dennis Prager that should help to make a distinction on the deeper issues:
- On 31 May 2010, Israeli Shayetet 13 naval commandos boarded the ships from speedboats and helicopters in order to force the ships to the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection. On the Turkish ship MV Mavi Marmara, according to the Israel’s own Turkel Commission, the Israeli Navy faced resistance from about 40 of the 590 passengers, including IHH activists – described in the commission’s report as a separate “hardcore group” – who were said to be armed with iron bars and knives. According to flotilla organizer Greta Berlin, the Israeli soldiers did not start firing until an activist seized a gun from one of them. During the struggle, nine activists were killed, including eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish American, and many were wounded. On 23 May 2014, a tenth member of the flotilla died in hospital after being in a coma for four years. Ten of the commandos were also wounded, one of them seriously. (WIKI)
I love Melanie’s books, and now that I know she blogs, I have been reading veraciously. This is a great post on the terorrist connections to this “humanitarian flotilla.” (Her newest book — she has many — is pictured to the right). The gems in this article are all the links to video [now dead, but you can see one HERE]… make sure to follow them:
“PEACE CONVOY”? THIS WAS AN ISLAMIST TERROR AMBUSH
…Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara — the main flotilla ship — at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’.
And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion — backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine — was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.
The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.
And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today — and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.
This is what the Jerusalem Post reported earlier today about what happened last night:
According to the IDF, the international activists ‘prepared a lynch’ for the soldiers who boarded the ships at about 2 a.m. Monday morning after calling on them to stop, or follow them to the Ashdod Port several hours earlier.
… Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.
Also in the Jerusalem Post, David Horowitz wrote:
Benayahu said soldiers, who had been dispatched to block the flotilla because of fears that it was carrying weaponry and other highly dangerous cargo into the Hamas-controlled Strip, were attacked with knives and bars and sharpened metal implements.
Benayahu said two pistols that had been fired were subsequently found aboard the one ship, the Marmara, on which the violence erupted. And, most dramatically, he said that one IDF soldier had his weapon snatched away by one of the ‘peace activists’ on board, that this weapon was then turned against the IDF soldiers, who came under fire, and that they had no choice but to shoot back in self-defense.
… What seems urgent now is to make publicly available footage that shows exactly what did unfold. In early afternoon, video footage screened on Israel’s Channel 2 appeared to show one of those aboard the Marmara stabbing an IDF soldier. Any such footage should have been made available hours earlier. Critically, if footage showing a soldier’s weapon being snatched and turned on the IDF troops exists, it should be broadcast, and the sooner the better.
Some of this footage is now available on the web but much of it is hard to follow: as ever, the Israelis have been far too slow in making the most telling images and information available in comprehensible form (including in English rather than in Hebrew, for heaven’s sake!). This clip appears to show masked and armed flotilla activists beating Israeli soldiers (although here is the BBC report accompanying that footage, in which the voiceover appears to be claiming, perversely, that the people in masks were Israeli soldiers. That said, the report on Radio Four’s World at One was fair and balanced).
This clip shows an Israeli soldier being stabbed. This IDF clip and this one show attacks on the commandoes including throwing one off the deck, attacking others with a metal pole and a firebomb and an attempted kidnap of another.
Media Bias via the N.Y. Times: Edwards vs. Haley
N.Y. Times Published Unproven Adultery Claims of Nikki Haley — After a John Edwards Blackout
Clay Waters of MRC’s Times Watch project noticed this week that the The New York Times was just as guilty as The Washington Post of jumping on the unsubstantiated adultery charges against female GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley in South Carolina:
[Reporter Shaila] Dewan used the sex scandal of former South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford as an excuse to suggest, without substance like emails or phone messages, that the claims by blogger Will Folks fit a pattern of sexual bad behavior in the Palmetto State: “Scandal Rattles Politics In South Carolina, Again.” The text box to Wednesday’s print story worked in the party identification: “A blogger says he had an affair with a G.O.P. candidate for governor.”
The treatment of a fairly obscure Republican politician stands in sharp contrast to the paper’s blackout of the amply documented affair of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. The Times totally ignored the Edwards affair until the candidate himself confessed on ABC News, then, when its own public editor criticized the paper’s lack of coverage, editors made hypocritical excuses.
…(Read More)…
Israel Navy Interception of the Gaza Flotilla
For more videos and discussion, see HOTAIR’S POST on this. (UPDATED VIDEO)
- Clip produced by official Israeli sources, describing the Israeli Navy’s interception of the Mavi Marmara of the Gaza Flotilla, which met with violence on the part of the IHH-sponsored protesters on board. As a result of the operation, nine assailants were killed, while seven Israeli personnel as well as about thirty protesters were injured.
WHY WAS ISRAELI RAIDER FORCE UNPREPARED FOR VIOLENT RESISTANCE?
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis May 31, 2010
More questions than answers came from the IDF video shots of the violent reception for Israeli naval commandos when they raided the Turkish ship early Monday, May 31 to prevent the pro-Palestinian flotilla from reaching Gaza Port and breaking the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory.
Prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who cancelled his trip to the United States and is flying straight home from Canada, will have to fill in the gaps left by his official spokesmen.
Released finally 12 hours after the event, the IDF shots failed to explain the big mystery of how soldiers armed with paint balls and pistols managed to kill 9 pro-Palestinian activists (Ankara claims 15 Turkish dead) and injure at least 34 aboard the Turkish Marmora.
Together with six injured soldiers – two in critical condition – the wounded activists are being treated in Israeli hospitals.
Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, and Navy commander, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom, reported that a fierce clash developed aboard the ship as the soldiers dropped on deck from helicopters and were mobbed by passengers. The activists fired pistols, but it is not clear if the guns were in the peace activists’ luggage or snatched from the soldiers.
Neither is it clear how civilian protesters were able to disarm elite fighters of the Navy’s Shayetet 6 unit….
…(READ MORE)…
Lower Back Tattoos (SNL Skit)
Islamo-Nazi’s Killing Other Muslims
RELIGION NEWS BLOG H/T:
LAHORE, Pakistan — Gunmen stormed two Pakistani mosques belonging to a minority Muslim sect in Lahore on Friday, seizing hostages among worshippers, setting off grenades and sparking a bloody shootout with police.
Ahmadiyaa
Theologically, Ahmadiyya is a cult of Islam. Their views about Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad, and their own founder, whom they regard as the Messiah, have placed them at odds with the rest of the Muslim world.Ahmadiyyas and their mosques often come under terrorist attacks from extremist Muslims. The latter apparently believe that they present the world with a more accurate picture of Islam.
Gunfire and explosions rang out at the mosques — one in the upscale neighbourhood of Model Town, where a suicide car bomber struck in March, and the second in the heavily congested area of Garhi Shahu.
They are both mosques of the Ahmadis, also known as Qadiani, and have tens of thousands of members. Rights groups say the sect has long been persecuted in Pakistan and has remained an occasional target of sectarian attacks.
“Terrorists have attacked mosques. They are firing and using grenades. They have taken people inside the mosque hostage,” district civil defence official Muzhar Ahmed told AFP by telephone from the scene in Garhi Shahu.
[…]
Founded by Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1838, the Ahmadi sect has a number of unique views including that Ahmad himself was a prophet and that Jesus died aged 120 in Srinagar, capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir….
ReasonTV Critiques Hillary Clinton’s View on Taxes and Fairness
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said that “the rich are not paying their fair share” of taxes in the United States and other developed countries.
Is she right? It depends on what you consider fair. Using 2006 data, The New York Times found that the richest 20 percent of households were paying 26 percent of their income to the federal government in the form of income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes. The average for all familes? 21 percent.
And there’s this: “In 2006, the top quintile of households earned 55.7 percent of pretax income and paid 69.3 percent of federal taxes, while the top 1 percent of households earned 18.8 percent of income and paid 28.3 percent of taxes.”
Paying in a lot more than you get out? That doesn’t seem fair.
The rich are different than you and me; they’ve got more money. And they pay more taxes.
Politicians are different too–they rarely say what they really mean. Perhaps what Secretary Clinton means is that the rich can always pay more than they’re already paying.
That would explain why she and the president are lobbying to let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, a policy that would raise all sorts of taxes on all sorts of people.
Which doesn’t sound all that fair either.
See more at REASON!
MORE:
Those Who Clapped for Mexican President Felipe Calderon Are Dumbasses!
Activists Blast Mexico’s Immigration Law
TULTITLN, Mexico — Arizona’s new law forcing local police to take a greater role in enforcing immigration law has caused a lot of criticism from Mexico, the largest single source of illegal immigrants in the United States.
But in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system.
And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona’s that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally.
“There (in the United States), they’ll deport you,” Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. “In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first.”
Mexican authorities have harshly criticized Arizona’s SB1070, a law that requires local police to check the status of persons suspected of being illegal immigrants. The law provides that a check be done in connection with another law enforcement event, such as a traffic stop, and also permits Arizona citizens to file lawsuits against local authorities for not fully enforcing immigration laws.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the law “violates inalienable human rights” and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.
Yet Mexico’s Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists.
“The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else’s,” said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.
In one six-month period from September 2008 through February 2009, at least 9,758 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico – 91 of them with the direct participation of Mexican police, a report by the National Human Rights Commission said. Other migrants are routinely stopped and shaken down for bribes, it said.
A separate survey conducted during one month in 2008 at 10 migrant shelters showed Mexican authorities were behind migrant attacks in 35 of 240 cases, or 15%.
Most migrants in Mexico are Central Americans who are simply passing through on their way to the United States, human rights groups say. Others are Guatemalans who live and work along Mexico’s southern border, mainly as farm workers, as maids, or in bars and restaurants.
The Central American migrants headed to the United States travel mainly on freight trains, stopping to rest and beg for food at rail crossings like the one in Tultitlán, an industrial suburb of Mexico City.
On a recent afternoon, Victor Manuel Beltrán Rodríguez of Managua, Nicaragua, trudged between the cars at a stop light, his hand outstretched.
“Can you give me a peso? I’m from Nicaragua,” he said. Every 10 cars or so, a motorist would roll down the window and hand him a few coins. In a half-hour he had collected 10 pesos, about 80 U.S. cents, enough for a taco.
Beltrán Rodríguez had arrived in Mexico with 950 pesos, about $76, enough to last him to the U.S. border. But near Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, he says municipal police had detained him, driven him to a deserted road and taken his money. He had been surviving since then by begging.
Abuses by Mexican authorities have persisted even as Mexico has relaxed its rules against illegal immigrants in recent years, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
In 2008, Mexico softened the punishment for illegal immigrants, from a maximum 10 years in prison to a maximum fine of $461. Most detainees are taken to detention centers and put on buses for home.
Mexican law calls for six to 12 years of prison and up to $46,000 in fines for anyone who shelters or transports illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the law applies only to people who do it for money.
For years, the Mexican government has allowed charity groups to openly operate migrant shelters, where travelers can rest for a few days on their journey north. The government also has a special unit of immigration agents, known as Grupo Beta, who patrol the countryside in orange pickups, helping immigrants who are in trouble.
At the same time, Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law requires that all authorities “whether federal, local or municipal” demand to see visas if approached by a foreigner and to hand over migrants to immigration authorities.
“In effect, this means that migrants who suffer crimes, including kidnapping, prefer not to report them to avoid … being detained by immigration authorities and returned to their country,” the National Human Rights Commission said in a report last year.
As a result, the clause has strengthened gangs who abuse migrants, rights activists say.
“That Article 67 is an obstacle that urgently has to be removed,” said Alberto Herrera, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico. “It has worsened this vicious cycle of abuse and impunity, and the same thing could happen (in Arizona).”