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Home Front: Politix
Austin hosts another tea party
2009-09-07
For Austin lawyer Greg Holloway, the idea behind the city's latest "tea party" protest was pretty simple.

"The point is that people are upset about representation from Democrats and Republicans," Holloway said. "At this point in the journey, we're more interested in informing and empowering people."

Holloway and his wife, Judy, were among the organizers of Saturday's rally, which drew more than 1,000 people to the south steps of the Capitol to protest the Obama administration's plans for health care reform and other government policies.

The event was the first statewide rally organized by the Texas Tea Party Patriots, a group that describes itself as a grass-roots organization that is "declaring independence from tax-and-spend politicians," according to the group's Web site. The group says it believes in limited government, fiscal responsibility and adherence to the Constitution.

"We'd love to see people calling up their congressmen" after the rally, Holloway said, "asking for them to follow the Constitution a little more closely."

Despite cloudy, sticky weather, people from all over the state gathered with fold-out chairs, coolers and signs that depicted President Barack Obama as a socialist, as the Joker and in other less-flattering ways.

The crowd chanted "Real Change Now" and "U.S.A." and listened to speeches from Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, the political celebrity also known as Joe the Plumber, and several others, including comedian and columnist Steven Crowder.

Local organizers also led the crowd in cheers and offered reading recommendations. Phillip Dennis, with the Dallas Tea Party, suggested Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and Congress' health care reform bill.

Members of the Minuteman Project, an activist group that monitors the flow of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, were also on hand.

Organizers handed out wristbands to count of the number of people in attendance, Holloway said. By noon, an estimated 1,300 people were in attendance. Holloway said that organizers expected 5,000 by the time the three-hour rally was over.

Among those who attended was Brad Palmer, 47, who drove from Sugar Land with his dog, Duke. Palmer held a sign that read "In God We Trust, Not Obama"; a sign on Duke's back read "Don't Tread on my Master!"

He said he made the trip because of his concern for where the country's headed.

"I'm worried we're headed down the road to communism. I hope by seeing these rallies, the government will start to fear us, like it was when this country was founded," Palmer said.

"Too many people fear the government, but the government should fear us."
Link


Fifth Column
Legislator wants law to declare Minutement "terrorists"
2007-01-21
An Arizona lawmaker has introduced a bill to revise the state's statutes on organized crime and fraud by defining "domestic terrorism" in such a way that members of the Minuteman Project or other border-patrol groups could be prosecuted and forced to serve a minimum six-month jail term.

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Mexico Phoenix, introduced HB 2286 in the Arizona House on Thursday. Sinema, formerly of the lunatic Green Party, had earlier submitted a bill asking the legislature to make changes to a law used to prosecute customers of immigrant smugglers as conspirators under Arizona's human trafficking law. "None of us every dreamed it would be used in a co-conspirator fashion," Sinema said.
After all, there's no possible connection between the coyotes and the invaders who create a market for their services.
As WND reported, it was federal inaction that motivated Arizona lawmakers to approve the new law creating the crime of smuggling in 2005. Maricopa County District Attorney Andrew Thomas announced he would interpret the law to mean illegals caught with a smuggler could be prosecuted as co-conspirators if they paid a coyote to transport them across the border. "If the customer pays a dope peddler money, he's violated the law," said Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who compares the relationship between coyotes and illegals to drug dealers and their customers. "(Here), they're paying for transport."

That law was upheld last year by a county judge after defense attorneys questioned its constitutionality. Last month, the same judge who upheld the law also overturned the first jury conviction of an illegal immigrant charged as a conspirator under the law, Associated Press made up reported.
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Home Front: Politix
WND : Documents reveal 'shadow government'
2006-10-24

Salt pic included, though there is no doubt there's a globalist/transnational/post-national ideology well-entrenched in western Elites, main example being the EU.

Freedom of Information request puts 1,000 new pages online
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

About 1,000 documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America show the White House is engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution, says WND columnist and author Jerome Corsi.

"The documents give clear evidence that the Bush administration has created a 'shadow government,'" Corsi said.

The documents can be viewed here, on a special website set up by the Minuteman Project.

Bureaucrats from agencies throughout the Bush administration are meeting regularly with their counterpart bureaucrats in the Canadian and Mexican governments to engage in a broad rewriting of U.S. administrative law and regulations into a new trilateral North American configuration, Corsi contends.

"We have hundreds of pages of e-mails from U.S. executive branch administrators who are copying the e-mail to somewhere between 25 to 100 people, a third of whom are in the U.S. bureaucracy, a third of whom are in the Mexican bureaucracy and a third of whom are in the Canadian bureaucracy," said Corsi.

"They are sharing their laws and regulations so we can 'harmonize' and 'integrate' our laws into a North American structure, not a USA structure."

Corsi claims the process is well along the way.

"This is totally outside the U.S. Constitution, virtually an executive branch coup d'etat," he said. "SPP is creating new trilateral memoranda of understanding and mutual agreements which should be submitted to Senate for two-thirds votes as international treaties."

Corsi said the documentation he received is missing key pieces.

"We received very few actual agreements, though many are referenced," he said. "Many of the work plans described lack the work products which the groups say they produced."
Link


Home Front: Culture Wars
NYT: Silencing of a Speech Causes a Furor
2006-10-07
For the most part, the NYT editors played it straight - but check out the spin in the lead paragraph... I guess they just couldn't help themselves.
When protesters stormed a Columbia University stage on Wednesday evening, shutting down a speech by the head of a fiercely anti-immigration [Uh, hang on there, try anti-illegal aliens, NYT assholes.] group, they not only stopped the program, but also hurtled the university back into the debate over free speech on campus.

The fracas, which came just weeks after the president of Iran was invited to speak at Columbia and then told not to come, was captured live by Columbia’s student-run television station, CTV, as well as by two commercial stations. It was shown repeatedly on television in New York yesterday and was widely available on the Internet.

Yesterday Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chastised Columbia for the disruption. “I think it’s an outrage that somebody that was invited to speak didn’t get a chance to speak,” he said in response to a question on his weekly radio program.

“Bollinger’s just got to get his hands around this,” Mr. Bloomberg added, referring to Columbia’s president, Lee C. Bollinger. “There are too many incidents at the same school where people get censored,” he said, using Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an example.

This time the speaker, invited by a campus Republican group, was Jim Gilchrist, the head of the Minuteman Project, which assembled hundreds of volunteers last year, some armed, to patrol the Arizona-Mexico border for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Bollinger, a legal scholar whose specialty is free speech and the First Amendment, quickly condemned this week’s disruption.

“Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus,” he said yesterday in an interview. “Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers.”

He added, “There is a vast difference between reasonable protest that allows a speaker to continue, and protest that makes it impossible for speech to continue.”

Monique Dols, a senior in history at Columbia’s School of General Studies, said she had mounted the stage in protest and unfurled a banner but that at such events in the past the speakers had kept going.

“We have always been escorted off the stage and the event continues,” she said, adding that this time the protesters were attacked.

“We were punched and kicked,” she said. “Unfortunately, the story being circulated is that we initiated the violence.”

While college campuses have long been battlegrounds for freedom of speech issues, Columbia seems to attract more attention than most when such problems arise, perhaps because of its location in New York and its history of political protest.

Mr. Bollinger, who has held high-level positions at the University of Michigan and Dartmouth, said he did not believe that Columbia was unusual in the number of disputes over free speech. Officials are studying whether disciplinary steps are warranted, he said.

On campus yesterday, many people condemned the silencing of Mr. Gilchrist.

“I think it was really wrong not to let him speak,” said Anusha Sriram, 18, a Columbia freshman studying political science and human rights, who moved to the United States from Mumbai five years ago. “He wasn’t being violent. He was giving his view peacefully.”

She said she was upset that by keeping Mr. Gilchrist from speaking, the protesters had unwittingly turned the tables of the discussion against themselves.

“That just undermined the entire protest,” she said. “Now everyone looks at the protest in a bad light instead of him in a bad light.”

She added, “They should invite him back and maybe set up a debate.”

The program was sponsored by the Columbia University College Republicans, a five-year-old group that says on its Web site that it has 600 members. Its president, Chris Kulawik, a junior, is described on the site as a “staunch conservative” who “endeavors to attain the cherished title of ‘Most Despised Person on Campus.’ ”

He said he was “very much surprised” by Wednesday night’s events.

“We always understood that this is a very left-wing campus,” he said. “But to see your peers resort to physical violence because they disagree with you is very frightening.”

He said he had been working to ensure there is more campus security next week when his group has three more potentially controversial speakers, including Walid Shoebat, a former P.L.O. member, and Hilmar von Campe, an author who fought for Germany during World War II.

When asked how he chooses speakers, and whether he tries to stir up controversy, he said he chooses people that his group’s members request.

Wei Wei Hsing, 20, is a junior at Columbia and general manager of the Columbia Political Union, which has frequently co-sponsored events with the College Republicans, including a lecture by John Ashcroft last year. She criticized both Mr. Gilchrist’s supporters and the protesters for yelling and shouting before the lecture started, setting a tone of intolerance. But she said the controversy simply reflected the political mood. “The polarization of the country in general is reflected in the microcosm of Columbia,” she said. “And because people here happen to read the news more, and talk about politics, it’s expressed more outwardly.”

The Minuteman Project, which calls itself a “citizens’ vigilance operation,” featured photos, video and news accounts of the Columbia events yesterday on its Web site and said they amounted “a riot.”

“At Columbia University free speech took quite the hit,” it said. “At an event hosted by the college Republicans at Columbia we were reminded that the left advocates free speech only for those who regurgitate the same tripe that they spew.”

Columbia officials said yesterday that while there had been pushing and shoving on stage, as protesters surrounded Mr. Gilchrist and others tried to defend him, there were no reports of injuries.

Mr. Bollinger said he believed that the importance of free speech must be reinforced repeatedly. He said he hoped to do “a number of things” over the next several weeks to accomplish that on campus.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said yesterday, “Academic freedom thrives when all ideas, including racist ideas, have the opportunity to be aired.”
And, of course, they have to get the last word in - quoting one of their socialist asshole ACLU buddies - with the "racist" meme. Gawd I hate these pricks. Bite me, NYT.
Link


Home Front: Culture Wars
At Columbia, Students Attack Minuteman Founder
2006-10-05
Ah, yes. The "free speech for me, but..." thing. And an Ivy League school. Can ya believe that?
Students stormed the stage at Columbia University's Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.

Mr. Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart, another member of his group, were in the process of giving a speech at the invitation of the Columbia College Republicans. They were escorted off the stage unharmed and exited the auditorium by a back door.

Having wreaked havoc onstage, the students unrolled a banner that read, in both Arabic and English, "No one is ever illegal."
Arabic. How... interesting.
As security guards closed the curtains and began escorting people from the auditorium, the students jumped from the stage, pumping their fists, chanting victoriously, "Si se pudo, si se pudo," Spanish for "Yes we could!"
I thought it meant "Submit. Or die."?
The Minuteman Project, an organization of volunteers founded in 2004 by Mr. Gilchrist, aims to keep illegal immigrants out of America by alerting law enforcement officials when they attempt to cross the border. The group uses fiery language and unorthodox tactics to advance its platform. "Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious ‘melting pot,'" the group's Web site warns.

The pandemonium that ensued as the evening's keynote speaker took the stage was merely the climax of protest that brewed all week. A number of campus groups, including the Chicano caucus, the African-American student organization, and the International Socialist organization, began planning their protests early this week when they heard that the Minutemen would be arriving on campus.
Yeah, the usual suspects. Did they bring their Big Giant Puppets?
The student protesters, who attended the event clad in white as a sign of dissent, booed and shouted the speakers down throughout. They interrupted Mr. Stewart, who is African-American, when he referred to the Declaration of Independence's self-evident truth that "All men are created equal," calling him a racist, a sellout, and a black white supremacist.
If only Mr. Stewart were considered a "white black supremacist". The boys and girls of Columbia would be organizing his ticker tape parade instead of acting like some spoiled child lynch mob.
A student's demand that Mr. Stewart speak in Spanish elicited thundering applause and brought the protesters to their feet. The protesters remained standing, turned their backs on Mr. Stewart for the remainder of his remarks, and drowned him out by chanting, "Wrap it up, wrap it up!" Mr. Stewart appeared unfazed by their behavior. He simply smiled and bellowed, "No wonder you don't know what you're talking about."

"These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border," Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. "They have no right to be able to speak here."
Wonder if Ryan wore his jackboots? Oh, wait. That's the other side...
The student protesters "rush to vindicate themselves with monikers like ‘liberal' and ‘open-minded,' but their actions, their attempt to condemn the Minutemen without even hearing what they have to say, speak otherwise," the president of the Columbia College Republicans, Chris Kulawik, said. On campus, the Republicans' flyers advertising the event were defaced and torn down.
We'll decide what's free speech, dammit!
The College Republicans expressed their concern about the lack of free speech for opposing viewpoints on the Columbia campus in the wake of the evening's events. "We've often feared that there's not freedom of speech at Columbia for more right-wing views — and that was proven tonight," the executive director of the Columbia College Republicans, Lauren Steinberg, said.
Kinda looks that way...
The Minutemen's arrival at Columbia drew protesters from around the city as well. An hour before Messrs. Stewart and Mr. Gilchrist took the stage, rowdy protests began outside the auditorium on Broadway, where activists chanted, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the Minutemen have got to go!"
My, how original...
Link


Home Front: Culture Wars
Minutemen Founder: 30 Million Illegals in U.S.
2006-07-25
The Minutemen border-watch group is coming to New York to demand that the federal government tighten security at our borders – and to promote an eye-opening new book co-authored by Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist. President George Bush once referred to Minutemen volunteers as "vigilantes," but the book promises to give the group "a chance to respond, and to change the nature of the illegal immigration debate in the process,” according to a release from the group.

"Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders" is written by Gilchrist and "Unfit for Command" co-author Jerome Corsi. The book hits stores nationwide on July 25, and the following day at noon the authors will appear at New York City's ground zero, a site chosen as a symbolic reminder of the connection between border security and national security.

A number of the terrorist hijackers on 9/11 were in this country illegally, and Gilchrist – a Marine Corps veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart – notes: "We might have avoided that tragedy had the federal government been willing to enforce the immigration laws already on the books.

"But five years and thousands of lives later, Washington still refuses to do its job. That's why I organized the Minuteman Project, and that's also why I felt compelled to write this book."

The assertions in "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders" include:

  • The real number of illegal aliens in the U.S. is not 12 million, as the federal government claims, but closer to 30 million.
  • The IRS – known for hounding citizens who make mistakes on their returns – has paid out $10 billion in refunds and credits to illegal aliens who used fraudulent Social Security numbers, and it has no intention of going after those who've made fraudulent claims.
  • Over 3,000 illegal aliens suspected of murdering Americans have fled to Mexico, where they often live openly and without fear of arrest.

    • "Illegal immigration is out of control, and Americans are paying for it with their pocketbooks and - far too often - with their lives," Corsi declared. "Our government is not being honest with us about the extent of the problem. This book will put a stop to that deception."
    Link


    Home Front: Culture Wars
    Officer Hurt, Several Arrested During Anti-Immigration Rally
    2006-07-10

    Note I used KABC's headline. It was actually an anti-ILLEGAL imigration rally
    An officer was injured and six people were arrested during an anti-illegal immigration march involving the Minuteman Project and other groups Saturday evening in Hollywood, police said.
    guess which side precipitated the violence....
    One female officer suffered a minor injury, apparently to her ankle, after clashing with protesters, said Officer Sandra Escalante, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
    Counter-protesters stood along the sidewalks shouting as anti-immigration demonstrators, including members of the Minuteman civilian border patrol group, marched along Hollywood Boulevard. The Minutemen, many of them carrying American flags, had a permit to march.
    huh....obeying the law. What a concept.
    Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist was among the marchers. Angry counter protesters, some wearing bandannas to cover their faces, yelled at the Minutemen and called them racists.
    the tolerant left
    They also tried to join the march, but since they did not have a permit, police stopped them, sometimes forcefully.
    I hope they cracked their f*cking heads with batons
    Escalante said several people were arrested, though it wasn't immediately clear if they were part of the anti-immigration march or the counter-protest.
    guess?Police estimated the number of marchers at 200 shortly after 7 p.m. The march began at Hollywood Boulevard and Argyle Avenue, Escalante said.

    Link


    Home Front: Culture Wars
    Fox, in U.S., Says Walls Won't Fix Problem
    2006-05-24

    Kicking off a four-day, three-state tour, Mexican President Vicente Fox said Tuesday that his nation wants to be part of the solution in the immigration debate, not the problem.

    "We don't set up walls, and that's not the way you're going to fix this situation," Fox said in Spanish to representatives of groups active in Utah's Mexican community. "It's not with fences that we are going to solve this problem."
    Lying sack - why don't you explain how Mexico treats illegals from Central America?
    There were cheers of "Viva Mexico" as Fox shook hands before leaving for an official dinner at the governor's mansion.

    Earlier in the day, at a lunchtime speech to about 500 business, civic and religious leaders, Fox stressed the need for greater cooperation between his country and the U.S. on such issues as trade, energy and security.
    Si se puede salir!
    Fox discussed his accomplishments during his six-year term, which ends this year, and promoted trade opportunities with Utah and the rest of the United States.

    Working together, Mexico and the U.S. can improve the quality of life for citizens in both countries, he said.
    why don't you try a lot harder on your end
    "The future of North America must guarantee great competitiveness, greater regional security, greater availability of energy, greater trade exchanges and, naturally, a greater well-being for all of its inhabitants," said Fox, who is also scheduled to visit Washington state and California this week.

    He spoke of the steps he has taken to strengthen the Mexican economy and the democratization of his country.

    Fox's visit comes as the U.S. Senate considers legislation to strengthen border security, authorize new guest-worker programs and give an eventual chance at citizenship to most of the estimated 12 million people already living illegally in the United States.

    Utah, like many states, is divided on immigration. While Utah's largest minority population is Hispanic, there also is growing frustration about the wave of illegal immigrants entering the state.

    Jorge Fierro, a Mexican citizen who has lived in Utah since 1986, hopes Fox addresses how he and future leaders can improve the lives of Mexicans. Fierro, who is catering an address Fox is scheduled to make at Rico's Market, opened his first bean stand in 1997 and now sells Mexican food products in supermarkets throughout Utah.

    "This is going to boost our morale now that our brothers and sisters are facing uncertainty in their future," Fierro said.

    The Minuteman Project, which opposes illegal immigration, is planning protests at the Capitol, where Fox is scheduled to address a special session of the Legislature on Wednesday.

    "I'd like to see Vicente Fox tell his people to respect the law and come here legally," said Alex Segura, founder of the Utah Minuteman Project.

    Link


    Home Front: WoT
    Minutemen to build fences on private property
    2006-05-10
    Anticipating no response to its demand that President Bush place U.S. troops on the Mexican border, a civilian watch group said Tuesday it will start building a short border security fence May 27 on private land. Last month, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leader Chris Simcox said the group would break ground to start putting up fencing privately unless the White House deployed military reserves or the National Guard to the border by May 25 and endorsed more- secure fencing. "We are not anticipating that the White House will make any effort in the next 2 1/2 weeks as far as putting troops on the border, or even as far as moving training to the border," Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair said.

    The group initially plans to put up two parallel 15-foot high steel-mesh fences, anywhere from 50 to 150 feet long, on a ranch in Southern Arizona, the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexican border. An unpaved road will run between the fences. Hair declined to reveal the location in hopes of avoiding harassment, repercussions or retaliation.

    Todd Fraser, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, said the agency has no position on such fencing. "If private citizens want to construct something on their property . . . who is the Border Patrol to say they can't do it?" Fraser said.

    The Minuteman group has received about $175,000 in Internet donations to build fencing, while others have volunteered time, equipment and materials, Hair said. Initially, a large fencing company offered to donate materials, but it won't be able to provide supplies immediately, she said. The Minuteman group will buy the materials to be used later this month.

    Hair said Simcox still hoped to hold costs to between $125 and $150 a foot with volunteers donating labor, including design and survey work, as well as heavy equipment. Plans call for a fence complex based on an Israeli design. Much seeting expected.

    On the south side facing Mexico, a 6-foot deep trench will keep vehicles from crashing through the fencing. Behind that, coiled and razor-edged barbed wire will be placed in front of a 15-foot high heavy-gauge steel mesh fence angled outward at the top to make climbing more difficult. The other fence will be built behind that on the other side of the road. Inexpensive video cameras will be mounted between the fences and monitored from home computers.

    Other Minuteman groups have also undertaken fencing projects. On April 30, some 200 Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of California volunteers began building a 6-foot barbed wire fence along a quarter-mile of rugged terrain 50 miles east of San Diego. It connected to an existing 12-foot high government-built fence. Meanwhile, the California-based Minuteman Project, founded last year by Jim Gilchrist, is raising money to build a private fence along parts of the California-Mexico border.

    Simcox said last month that a half-dozen Arizona border landowners indicated they would allow fencing to be put up. Other border landowners in California, New Mexico and Texas also have given their approval, he said.
    Link


    Home Front: Politix
    Labor Site Backlash Felt at Polls In Herndon, VA
    2006-05-03
    Herndon voters yesterday unseated the mayor and two Town Council members who supported a bitterly debated day-labor center for immigrant workers in a contest that emerged as a mini-referendum on the turbulent national issue of illegal immigration. Residents replaced the incumbents with challengers who immediately called for significant changes at the center. Some want to bar public funds from being spent on the facility or restrict it to workers living in the country legally. Others want it moved to an industrial site away from the residential neighborhood where it is located.

    The labor center forced the western Fairfax County town into the national spotlight last summer as the immigration debate grew deeply contentious. Even though fewer than 3,000 people voted yesterday, advocates on both sides of the issue looked at the Herndon election as a test of public sentiment. Outside groups such as the Minuteman Project, which opposes illegal immigration, intervened in the debate, and Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, is suing the town over the establishment of the center.

    The council voted 5 to 2 last August to establish the center, but yesterday's vote created an apparent 6 to 1 majority in opposition. Steve J. DeBenedittis, 38, a health club operator and political newcomer, defeated Mayor Michael L. O'Reilly with 52 percent of the vote. Council members Carol A. Bruce and Steven D. Mitchell, who voted for the center, also were turned out of office. Jorge Rochac, a Salvadoran businessman who supported the center and was seeking to become the town's first Hispanic council member, also was defeated.

    Elected to the council were challengers William B. Tirrell, Charlie D. Waddell, Connie Haines Hutchinson and David A. Kirby, all opponents of the facility, which was created to help immigrants connect with employers each day. Two incumbents were reelected. Dennis D. Husch, who was one of the two council members to vote against the center, received more votes than any of the eight other council candidates. J. Harlon Reece was the lone supporter who was reelected. He received the fewest number of votes among the six winners. Twenty-six percent of the town's 10,203 registered voters came to the polls, up from 20 percent when O'Reilly was elected two years ago, according to Fairfax County figures.

    DeBenedittis, the son of a popular former high school art teacher in Herndon, said his victory was the product of intensive door-to-door campaigning and voters' deep discontent over how the labor center issue was handled by the mayor and council in the town of 23,000 residents. "They didn't like the way the debate went down, and there was the feeling that they were not heard," he said. DeBenedittis frequently skirted specifics on the labor center issue during the campaign, but he said in at least one candidate questionnaire that the facility on Sterling Road should be limited to legal immigrants.

    A disappointed O'Reilly said last night that he was proud of the way he and the council handled the controversy. He said the center remains a quantum improvement over the chaotic ad hoc site in a 7-Eleven parking lot that had become a community eyesore. "I'm really proud of what I stood for, and proud of what I did," O'Reilly said. "I think there was a lot of misinformation that was out there. There may be a lot more resentment and hatred out there than I anticipated."
    Early warning shot
    Link


    Home Front: Culture Wars
    Protesters plead guilty but claim victory
    2006-04-26
    Four activists accused of fighting with police during a raucous immigration protest in Arlington Heights were sentenced Tuesday to court supervision and community service work after they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery.

    But once they stepped outside the Cook County courtroom, the four Chicago residents quickly claimed victory and denied any wrongdoing during last fall's demonstration. "We did nothing wrong on Oct. 15," said Cindy Gomez, one of the activists who accepted the plea deal with prosecutors to avoid a trial. "We stand by everything we did."

    "We feel the agreement we came to was an important victory,'' added Kara Norlander, another of the demonstrators arrested last fall as they protested outside a meeting of the Chicago Minutemen Project.

    The guilty pleas may not end the legal action stemming from the demonstration. Rehana Khan, one of the activists, is weighing a civil lawsuit against Arlington Heights, saying that while arresting her, police officers forcibly removed her religious head scarf.
    Any chance of filing a suit against these mooks?
    The claims of a legal victory rankled prosecutors and Arlington Heights officials, who said the guilty pleas speak louder than the statements made afterward.
    Not in progressive la-la land; they spoke truth to power, y'know.
    "It's absurd to suggest they were innocent when they in fact pleaded guilty," Assistant State's Attorney Lance Northcutt said.
    So take the plea bargain off the table and go to trial.
    The four charged were among a group of several hundred demonstrators who gathered last fall outside the Christian Liberty Academy to protest a meeting of the Minuteman Project, a group that opposes illegal immigration.

    Critics say the group -- which provides volunteers to patrol the nation's borders -- is a racist organization that encourages vigilante action against immigrants crossing into the United States from Mexico.
    More intelligent, sane people say the Minutemen are patriots and volunteers who are calling attention to a festering issue.
    Arlington Heights police arrested five people during the rally, saying they blocked an entrance to the building, then hit or struggled with officers trying to remove them. Charged with battery and resisting arrest were Gomez, 28; Norlander, 24; Khan, 23; Eric Zenke, 18, and Marco Quiroz-Rojas. All were in court Tuesday for the expected start of their trial except Quiroz-Rojas, a Chicago man who disappeared after being released on bail.

    In the plea bargain, Gomez, Norlander, Khan and Zenke pleading guilty to battery, while prosecutors agreed to drop the resisting arrest charges. Judge Hyman Riebman sentenced each to one year of court supervision and ordered each to do 240 hours of community service work. They had faced a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
    For the community service, have them help build the fence.
    Arlington Heights Village Attorney Ernest Blomquist said he was satisfied with the plea deal, but a Minutemen leader ripped the punishment as too lax. "I'm just sorry they weren't thrown into prison for 10 years for assaulting police," said Rosanna Pulido, a co-founder of the Chicago Minutemen Project.

    Khan, a college student, said she felt her "religious rights'' were violated when officers removed the hijab, or religious head scarf, she was wearing during the protest. "It is very disrespecting,'' she said.

    Arlington Heights police defended their handling of the protest and said Khan's head scarf had to be removed as a security precaution because it could have covered a weapon or dangerous object. "We're pleased with the way our officers responded,'' Capt. Jerry Lambert said.
    You're not the only one, Captain Lambert. Keep up the good work, officers.
    Link


    International-UN-NGOs
    The UN's "Borderless" World
    2006-04-25
    Check this "United Nations, Population Division, Replacement migration : is it a solution to declining and ageing populations ?, New York, 2000 (ESA/P/WP.160)" (.pdf) rapport, which preconises a... 700 millions immigration from 2000 to 2050 into Europe to maintain its population ratio, including 100 millions in France (current population circa 61 millions). One socialist MP recently talked about current immigration here as a "genocide by population substitution".

    By Joseph Klein

    While pro-immigrant rallies get most of the attention from the mainstream press, many law-abiding American citizens are fed up with the reality of tens of thousands of foreign nationals every few weeks continuing to enter this country illegally through our porous borders, added to the more than 11 million illegal aliens who are already here. Americans are bearing a grossly disproportionate share of the security risks and economic costs associated with such migration, which makes it a national problem for Americans to solve through their elected representatives and through voluntary groups like the Minuteman Project.

    Citizens are demanding that their government ensure effective protection at the borders against more illegal entrants, who at the very least will become tax burdens on the American people and could pose a much more serious security threat. Congress and the President must decide what to do about this mounting problem, consistent with the tenets of the U.S. Constitution. Our democratic institutions can and must handle this situation without any outside interference.


    The United Nations sees the matter differently. Its bureaucrats envision a “borderless” world where immigration is treated as an international human rights issue and used as a global development tool to encourage free movement of the developing countries’ poor to developed nations. This philosophy underlies their preparations for the United Nations High Level Dialogue concerning international migration and development, scheduled to take place in conjunction with the fall 2006 General Assembly session. They want the agenda for this Dialogue to center on the relationship between international migration and the economic and social development of the poorer countries in the world.

    The UN bureaucrats’ aggressive push into the immigration debate fits in with their dogmatic belief that international treaties should trump national sovereignty prerogatives – in this case, a UN treaty that codifies the internationalization of immigration policy called the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. This Convention was adopted by the General Assembly in 1990 but went into effect in 2003 after the twentieth signing country formally ratified it. It is heavily biased against countries like the United States which receive the lion’s share of illegal aliens.

    Indeed, the Convention goes so far as to use the term ‘irregular’ as a euphemism for illegal aliens and would require their destination countries to provide them with an array of benefits and justiciable rights. This explains why the ratifying countries are the ones who are effectively exporting their economic problems to the United States and other destination countries, and why the destination countries in turn have not signed on.

    The United Nations wants to change all that by seeking to position the right to freely migrate from poor to richer lands as a fundamental human right deserving of universal recognition. Indeed, they view internationally managed migration as an effective means to socially engineer the end of wealth disparities existing between the world’s most developed countries and the world’s developing countries. “Migration must become an integral part of global development strategies”, said a report prepared last fall by the Global Commission on International Migration set up with Kofi Annan’s assistance to help prepare the way for this fall’s United Nations High Level Dialogue. Using the euphemism ‘irregular migration’ to refer to illegal aliens, the Commission warned that restrictive national policies are “neither desirable nor feasible, and may jeopardize the rights of migrants and refugees.”

    To the UN ‘experts’ who advocate using migration as a global development tool, the unemployed poor should become the economic charges of their destination countries. For those migrants who do manage to find jobs in their destination countries, they would be expected to send money back to their families still residing in their countries of origin. These remittances, as they are called, are seen by the UN’s migration development advocates as an indirect form of aid generated from the economies of the host countries and adding significantly to the gross national product of the migrants’ countries of origin. If transfers that went through informal channels were added to the official statistics, remittances could be as high as $300 billion. They are larger than official development assistance (ODA) and more than foreign direct investment (FDI).

    At the same time, these same UN ‘experts’ want to discourage the movement of those skilled educated workers from a developing country who seek better economic opportunities for themselves and their families where their skills will bring them more reward. With regard to those skilled workers who do migrate, the UN ‘experts’ expect the prosperous destination countries of these skilled workers to compensate the less developed countries of origin for the so-called “brain drain”. Of course, nothing is said about requiring compensation from the countries of origin for the educational and monetary benefits the destination countries are paying to assist their poor nationals who cross the border illegally.

    In short, if the UN advocates of open borders have their way, the developing countries would get to transfer their economic underclass without any cost to the destination countries, which would be expected to subsidize them. The developing countries would also receive compensation from the destination countries where their skilled nationals have migrated in order to find gainful employment that is not available back home.

    In support of such an approach, UNESCO recently completed a research project – paid for, in part, by American taxpayers - entitled ‘Migration without Borders’. The project investigated the implications of an internationally managed regime of freedom of movement for the world’s migrants, including the impact on economic and social development. The chief of UNESCO’s International Migration Section referred to this project when he advocated that “(A)ll initiatives taken to address the challenges of migration should above all consider the priority of the human rights of migrants.” (International Migration and Development: Key Aspects for the High-Level Dialogue 2006.) He had in mind, no doubt, the poor uneducated persons who leave their impoverished countries, often ruled by corrupt governments that have failed their people. These migrants carry their problems to an economically prosperous country which they enter without permission and the skills or wherewithal to support themselves and their families. The host country is supposed to welcome all migrants desiring entry across an open border and take care of them. Why? Because the United Nations bureaucrats want us to believe that migrants’ human rights must take precedence above all else, including concerns about securing national borders.

    As they say in Texas, that dog won’t hunt. The United Nations is an interloper, putting its nose in our country’s business when it comes to deciding how we are to treat illegal aliens, irregulars, undocumented immigrants or whatever other label one wishes to attach to those individuals who do not abide by our laws when entering our country.

    Whatever compromise is ultimately reached in Congress regarding the treatment of illegal aliens already in this country, there is a broad consensus that our borders must be tightly secured to stem the follow of more illegal aliens. As one petition to President Bush being circulated on the Internet for signatures lays out, American citizens expect migrants who attempt to cross our borders without permission to be “(a) detected, (b) apprehended and (c) either removed from this country or detained for appropriate punishment under the law". I would add that we cut off all U.S. funding for any United Nations projects or forums promoting the inane idea that ‘migration without borders’ is a universal human right or seeking to push international migration as a global wealth transfer development tool.
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