[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Photos posted on Facebook claim to show US troops getting back on their plane shortly after landing.
US forces flown to Libya to support government troops had to leave after landing because of demands from a local militia group, US officials say.
It follows reports that 20 US special forces troops, equipped with advanced weaponry, landed on Monday at an airbase in western Libya.
The troops chose to leave “in an effort to avoid conflict”, a US Africa Command (Africom) spokesman told the BBC.
Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
The US forces had travelled to Libya in order to “foster relationships and enhance communication with their counterparts in the Libyan National Army”, Africom spokesman Anthony Falvo told the BBC.
The soldiers left without incident, he added.
Analysis: Rana Jawad - BBC North Africa correspondent
It is undoubtedly an embarrassing revelation for the Americans.
The timing of the incident, so close to the long-awaited deal signed by Libya’s rival parliaments on Thursday, has fuelled speculation among Libyans over what they see as the ulterior motives of the US and other Western nations.
There has been increasing suspicion that foreign troops are looking to establish their presence on the ground in Libya, especially with the so-called Islamic State grabbing more territory in recent months.
Reactions on social media ranged from accusations that the US was promoting one side of the conflict, to questions over the West’s long-term military aims in Libya.
Western nations have repeatedly spoken of their intent to support Libyan armed forces to help secure the country and combat extremism.
However, if nothing else, the incident chiefly serves as a reminder of the challenges foreign military forces will face trying to operate in a country with no central security structure.
Mr Falvo did not elaborate further on why the troops’ landing at al-Wattiya airbase had seemingly not been cleared with the relevant Libyan groups on the ground.
The airbase is not controlled directly by the Libyan army, but by a militia affiliated to it, which may explain the apparent breakdown in communication.
Unnamed Pentagon officials told national media that US forces had been “in and out of Libya” for some time, operating in an advisory, but not a combat role.
Photos of the secret mission were published on the official Facebook page of the Libyan Air Force, saying the troops had landed “without prior coordination”.
It described the forces arriving “in combat readiness wearing bullet proof jackets” carrying night-vision goggles, GPS devices and assault rifles.
Libya’s rival power bases (as of August 2015)
Libya has two rival governments, one based in the main city, Tripoli, and the other about 1,000km (620 miles) away in the port city of Tobruk.
Representatives of the two groups signed a deal in Morocco on Thursday, agreeing to form a national unity government, however their respective leaders voiced their reservations.
With the collapse of law and order in most of Libya, following the disastrous events of the Arab Spring, and the disastrous choice by some western leaders to utilise NATO as air cover for the reactionary Islamist forces that were unleashed by the process, the situation still remains unmanageable after 2011.
In the Greco-Roman era, the Roman Empire held the coastline of what is now known as modern day Libya, because it was a strategic imperative for them to hold it in order to more adequately manage the traffic on the Mediterranean Sea.
In light of the mass migration crisis, or the ‘immivasion’ as some people have taken to calling it, it may be time to consider that imperative again.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 15 December 2015 18:40.
There are war mongers operating behind the scenes of power whose motives highly resemble those of the Cold War era: Russia, adjacent geopolitical objectives, resource acquisition and control are seen as central problems which require strong military force.
What is insufficient in John Marshall’s investigative critique and whistle blowing article, however, is a failure to make clear the facts that:
1) The particular people, including at NATO, behind these strategies - viz., war with Russia, control in the Middle East and the borders of Russia - do not identify as White; and are not acting with White (i.e., European peoples) interests in mind first and foremost.
2) In normal ethno-nationalist terms, Russia is, in fact, a problematic nation, which is not circumscribed to their, let alone to our common White/European interests; not committed to cooperation in geopolitical ordering; border and demographic defense; and provisioning of The European Ethno-National Region and its necessary alliance with The Asian Region and its Ethno-Nations.
The point is, these are very real, not trumped-up concerns, and White Nationalism must take the helm in cooperation with Asian Nationalisms to handle these concerns.
I will venture an outline of why that is and how it might come about in few days. I will do this in anticipation that Kumiko will contribute her considerable insight to correct oversights, flesh-out a myriad of details and augment points where emphasis is needed.
My perspective on this is that we’ve got the stuff of war at hand all around us already. It is now up to us to wrest the lines from the hands of Jews and others who do not identify with Whites, to shape and craft the battle lines in White Nationalist interests instead. I will argue that that will require European and Asian cooperation and, in terms of their prior imperialist overreaches and capacity to offer cooperation, a significantly chastened U.S. and Russia.
First, a look at how “obscure people’ can start wars” by John Marshall - talking about Victoria Nuland and her fellow Jewish and neocon cohorts, though, of course, he does not name the YKW as such:
Exclusive: Official Washington’s anti-Russian “group think” is now so dominant that no one with career aspirations dares challenge it, a victory for “obscure” government bureaucrats, like Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, as Jonathan Marshall explains.
History isn’t just made by impersonal forces and “great men” or “great women.” Sometimes relatively obscure men and women acting in key bureaucratic posts make a real difference.
Thus, the international crisis in Syria traces back in part to the decision of President Barack Obama’s first ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, to reject peaceful rapprochement with the Damascus regime in favor of “radically redesign[ing] his mission” to promote anti-government protests that triggered the civil war in 2011.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (U.S. State Department photo)
In much the same way, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland did her best to foment the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch against the democratically elected Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych, “while convincing the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for ‘democracy,’” as journalist Robert Parry wrote last July.
Nuland, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and wife of neoconservative luminary Robert Kagan, helped achieve in Ukraine the kind of “regime change” that her husband had long promoted in the Middle East through the Project for a New American Century.
Nuland now has a new counterpart in the Department of Defense who bears close watching for signs of whether the Obama administration will keep escalating military confrontation with Russia over Eastern Europe, or look for opportunities to find common ground and ease tensions.
On Dec. 14, Dr. Michael Carpenter started work at the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, with added responsibilities for the Western Balkans and Conventional Arms Control. He replaced Evelyn Farkas, who stepped down in October.
Farkas was a firebrand who accused Russia of “shredding international law and conventions that have held firm for decades.” In a call to arms straight out of the early Cold War, she wrote, “Russia’s challenge is so fundamental to the international system, to democracy and free market capitalism that we cannot allow the Kremlin’s policy to succeed in Syria or elsewhere.”
In a remarkable display of “projection” — ascribing to others one’s own motives and actions — she declared that “Russia has invaded neighboring countries, occupied their territory, and funded NGOs and political parties not only in its periphery but also in NATO countries.” Its goal, she asserted, was nothing less than “breaking NATO, the EU and transatlantic unity.”
Farkas declared that the United States must continue its military buildup to deter Russia; provide “lethal assistance” to countries on Russia’s periphery, including Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova; and step up economic sanctions “to pressure Russia . . . so that U.S. national security interests and objectives prevail.”
With people like that helping to shape official policy over the past three years, it’s no wonder U.S.-Russia relations have hit such a low point. Might her replacement, Michael Carpenter, take a less confrontational approach?
Carpenter moved to the Pentagon from the office of Vice President Joe Biden, where he was special adviser for Europe and Eurasia. Previously he ran the Russia desk at the National Security Council and spent several years in the Foreign Service.
Carpenter has kept a low public profile, with few publications or speeches to his name. One of his few quasi-public appearances was this April at a symposium on “Baltic Defense & Security After Ukraine: New Challenges, New Threats,” sponsored by The Jamestown Foundation.
His prepared remarks were off the record, but they were greeted warmly — “you’ve hit it right on the head” — by discussant Kurt Volker, former NATO ambassador under President George W. Bush and foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain. McCain has demanded that the United States arm Ukraine to fight Russia and he helped inflame the Ukraine crisis by meeting with the anti-Semitic leader of the country’s right-wing nationalist party for photo-ops in 2013.
During a short Q&A session at the symposium, captured on video, Carpenter declared that “Russia has completely shredded the NATO-Russian Founding Act,” a choice of words strikingly reminiscent of Farkas’s denunciation of Russia for “shredding international law.” He accused Russia of “pursuing a neo-imperial revanchist policy” in Eastern Europe, inflammatory words that Sen. McCain lifted for an op-ed column in the Washington Post a couple of months later. Carpenter also indicated that he would personally favor permanent NATO bases in the Baltic states if such an escalation would not fragment the alliance.
The fact that Carpenter chose to make one of his few appearances at the The Jamestown Foundation is itself highly telling. According to IPS Right Web, which tracks conservative think tanks, the foundation’s president, Glen Howard, “is the former executive director of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a largely neoconservative-led campaign aimed at undermining Russia by bolstering U.S. support for militant nationalist and Islamist movements in the North Caucasus.” He has also been consultant to the Pentagon and to “major oil companies operating in Central Asia and the Middle East.”
The foundation was formed in 1984 by “a leading Cold Warrior close to the Reagan administration,” with the blessing of CIA Director William Casey, to provide extra funding for Soviet bloc defectors to supplement meager stipends offered by the CIA. Its board members today include former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and previous board members included Dick Cheney and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a prominent neoconservative activist.
All this matters hugely for several reasons. Increased confrontation with Russia, particularly along its highly sensitive Western border, will continue to poison relationships with Moscow that are crucial for achieving U.S. interests ranging from Afghanistan to Iran to Syria. Ratcheting up a new Cold War will divert tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into military spending at the expense of domestic priorities.
Most important, the action-reaction cycle between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe is dramatically increasing chances for an unwanted, unneeded and disastrous war involving the world’s great nuclear powers. Ian Kearns, director of the European Leadership Network, noted in a recent commentary for the Arms Control Association:
“Despite protestations by both sides that the exercises are aimed at no particular adversary, it is clear that each side is exercising with the most likely war plans of the other in mind. The Russian military is preparing for a confrontation with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a confrontation with Russia. This does not mean either side has the political intent to start a war, but it does mean that both believe a war is no longer unthinkable. . . .
“Too few appear to recognize that the current cocktail of incidents, mistrust, changed military posture, and nuclear signaling is creating the conditions in which a single event or combination of events could result in a NATO-Russian war, even if neither side intends it.”
In such a way, the actions of relatively minor figures in history – if their provocations are not reined in – can lead the world to cataclysm.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - The FBI is aware of reports of men visiting Walmart stores in several cities in Missouri and purchasing or trying to purchase large quantities of cellular telephones. An FBI spokeswoman won’t say exactly how much its agents are delving into the purchases. Some of the cities where the purchases and attempted purchases are reported by police and media are Macon, Columbia, Jefferson City, Lebanon, Ava, Jackson and Cape Girardeau.
Ava police say a man of Middle Eastern background bought a large number of cellular telephones at the Walmart store in Ava about 6:15 a.m. last Saturday. Police questioned the man, who was from Michigan, and he told them that he is a businessman. Police found no reason to detain him.
That purchase was about three hours after two men bought 60 cell phones at the Walmart store in Lebanon. Officers there questioned the men, at least one of whom said he is from Michigan, according to Ava police. Laclede County Sheriff Wayne Merritt said officers also found no reason to detain the cell phone buyers in Lebanon.
An Ava Police Department spokeswoman said her department’s officers also have heard of a similar purchase of a large number of cell phones at a Walmart store in Columbia. She said it’s possible that all three purchases are related and by the same men.
After an earlier version of this story was posted on Thursday afternoon, the Marshfield police chief called to say that a man who gave a Michigan address made a similar purchase of a 19 prepaid cell phones in his city in October. The chief said that man gave a false tax exempt waiver form to the store and bought the phones without sales taxes.
KY3 reporters have repeatedly called Walmart headquarters to try to find out if Walmart has a policy that limits the number of cell phones that one person can buy at a time, or has recently changed its policy. Walmart representatives have not returned those calls. On Thursday, a KSPR reporter went to the Walmart store on South Campbell Avenue in Springfield and tried to buy six cell phones and was told the limit is two; the store employees were not told he is a reporter.
Law enforcement officers say purchasing cellphones in bulk is done for any number of uses, including to give as gifts or to resell for profit. Law enforcement agencies report cell phones are also potential tools in the hands of terrorists. The devices can be used to communicate and they’re difficult to trace if they’re prepaid phones; they can also be used as detonators for bombs.
Harmless resellers, or Islamist cells organising themselves? I wonder what will turn out to be the truth?
Perhaps the only way to find out for sure, would be to let a couple thousand more Syrian ‘refugees’ into the United States. Or something.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Monday, 14 December 2015 03:40.
A still pond
Every action has reflections that ripple outward, like when a pebble is cast into a still pond. The enactment of free trade agreements such as NAFTA and, soon to come, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, have additional effects that are only seen in the criminal underworld. Every opening up of trade that occurs, also is an opening up of the potential for the transport of contraband of various sorts.
One of the webs of associations that have grown and become more complex over the past decade is the international drug trade, particularly those groups who interface with the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. As of December 2015, the components of the international drug trade surrounding the Sinaloa Cartel are as follows:
Sinaloa Cartel and associates (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Philippines, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Nicaragua)
Gente Nueva (Mexico)
Artistas Asesinos (Mexico)
Los Mexicles (Mexico)
Los Antrax (Mexico)
Mara Salvatrucha (Mexico, Canada, United States)
Cosa Nostra (Transatlantic)
French Mafia (Transatlantic)
FARC (Colombia)
United States DEA
Elements of Mexican government
Elements of Columbian government
Elements of Taiwanese government
Elements of Myanmar government
Elements of Laotian government
Elements of Japanese government
Elements of British government
Elements of Kosovo government
Elements of Afghan government
Kurdish Workers Movement (Middle East)
Albanian-connected syndicates (Europe, Caucasus)
Russian Mafia (Russia, Central Asia, Europe)
Chicago street gangs (Chicago)
Yamaguchi-gumi (Japan, Transpacific)
Inagawa-kai (Japan, Transpacific)
Sumiyoshi-kai (Japan, Transpacific)
The Seven Star Mob (South Korea, Transpacific)
The H.S.S. Mob (South Korea, Transpacific)
14K (Hong Kong, Transpacific)
Sun Yee On (Hong Kong, Transpacific)
The United Bamboo Gang (Taiwan, United States)
Celestial Alliance (Taiwan, China)
etc.
Ordinarily I’d draw up a map of how these all interact, along with mainstream news sources, but that would be a time-consuming task, and illustrating how they are all together is not the main purpose of this article. I provide that list only to say that they are together.
The alleged email
With Sinaloa Cartel sitting in the middle of that enterprise with the most to lose and most to gain from the success of the expansion of their operations and the linkages that they are cultivating around the world, it is not surprising that when this amalgamation of interests wishes to take on a human voice without disguise or artifice, it manifests as an email from Joaqin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, which allegedly reads as follows:
As drugs are not a part of the organizations ideology for a Muslim State, ISIS fighters have been destroying shipments of drugs from the cartels.
The cartels have made it clear that ISIS just made a huge mistake by destroying their shipments. It’s clear from the leaked emails that they are not only extremely mad, but are definitely willing to step up and take the organization out if they continue to mess with their business.
Here’s part of the leaked email:
“You [ISIS] are not soldiers. You are nothing but lowly pussies. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”
“My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a whore that tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them.”
[...]
To the pious Islamist readers out there, and I know you are out there, be aware of this when you set out on your jihad. Whether that email is real or a creative mock-up of what such an email would look like if it were to be composed, it is basically an accurate reflection of what the mood must be among the high ranks of the various criminal syndicates around the world.
And do not doubt that hearts and tongues will be torn out. So think twice before getting involved. Do you really want your heart and tongue torn out?
With what army?
ISIL fighters have managed to negatively impact the bottom line of weapons manufacturers, oil services companies, agribusinesses, and now drug cartels and those who are invested in the movements of drugs around the world. That has ramifications.
For example, if Yamaguchi-gumi were ever to be listed as a ‘legitimate’ business conglomerate on the Japanese market instead of as multiple companies with obfuscated revenue streams and connections to ‘legitimate’ banks, it would actually be the second-largest private equity group in Japan. And in the west, this same logic applies, as many might remember from the situation involving Citigroup, and Barclays, and Bank of America, and so on.
Some people may have heard of the idea that the world revolves around guns, oil, grain, and drugs. They are right, it does. And some may ask, “What army will open the way for drugs to traverse the Middle East without interception again? The criminal organisations don’t have an army.”
Actually, there is an army which will accomplish that task, although it is not one assembled for that specific purpose. I wonder if anyone can guess which army that is?
Chess and not checkers
The world really is an interesting place, and people sometimes end up with really interesting unintentional-allies. In the coming period, I would propose that it would be prudent for ethno-nationalist groups to adopt a rhetorically nuanced approach to the drug war—much like the one I’m taking in this post—one which takes into account that the criminal syndicates have a potential to be a pseudo-ally to the NATO war effort because of shared interests, although not shared ideals.
People like Donald Trump and his supporters seem not to understand this dynamic, because they seem to want to fight ISIL and the Sinaloa Cartel at the same time. For what purpose? Surely it would always be more sensible to make good use of the cartels against ISIL. Government piggybacking on the trade—which is to say, standing on both sides of the trade—would also generate money from the fact that contraband tends to have enormous profit margins because it is illegal, and piggybacking would also enable the government to understand the market better and to mitigate the trade’s most socially-harmful side-effects ahead of time.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 08 December 2015 11:47.
..give ‘who’ hell? For Jewish academics to play both sides of “PC” is nothing new. While the re-normalization and motion to institutionalize social classification is a positive development - via ‘give-em-hell Trump’ in his campaign talk - the most important issue in the end, is not just normalization, but where the lines of institutionalized discrimination are to be drawn.
Trump is saying some things that we might like to hear, with a candor that purports contempt for “political correctness”, a candor that has not been heard from the last 11 Presidents at least, spanning more than 60 years.
With that, he flouts the avoidance of “racial profiling” for having allowed the San Bernadino attack. It is indeed a positive development to assert the validity of “race” as a criteria.
“There were people who knew bad things were going on [with the family], and they didn’t report it because of racial profiling.”
Moreover, he takes the validity of “profiling”, i.e., classifying people, a bit further to say that there should be a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Monday called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” the most dramatic response yet to the string of terrorist attacks that have Americans increasingly on edge.
Trump released a statement citing polling data he says shows “there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.”
Trump Calls for ‘Complete Shutdown’ of All Muslims Entering U.S.
“Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” Trump said.
Yes, it is a candor and a disdain for pseudo-intellectual and polite appearance that we have not heard from a President since “give-em-hell Harry Truman.”
Excellent though it is that race and other social classifications, and borders, are being re-invoked by “give-em-hell Trump” and that he is taking steps to re-normalize and re-institutionalize these criteria as a legitimate basis for discrimination…
one might wonder what, say, Japanese, et al., might think about who-for and how the “no-nonsense” lines are being drawn.
Playing “for/against PC” is nothing new for Jewish academia; i.e., one side playing “vanguard” while the other is “hand of restraint.”
Playing “for and against PC” is nothing new for Jewish academia: In this 1990 essay for the New York Times, Richard J. Bernstein is playing the role of “restraint” -
Central to p.c.-ness, which has roots in 1960’s radicalism, is the view that Western society has for centuries been dominated by what is often called “the white male power structure” or “patriarchal hegemony.” A related belief is that everybody but white heterosexual males has suffered some form of repression and been denied a cultural voice or been prevented from celebrating what is commonly called “otherness.”
But more than an earnest expression of belief, “politically correct” has become a sarcastic jibe used by those, conservatives and classical liberals alike, to describe what they see as a growing intolerance, a closing of debate, a pressure to conform to a radical program or risk being accused of a commonly reiterated trio of thought crimes: sexism, racism and homophobia.
“It’s a manifestation of what some are calling liberal fascism,” said Roger Kimball, the author of “Tenured Radicals,” a critique of what he calls the politicization of the humanities. “Under the name of pluralism and freedom of speech, it is an attempt to enforce a narrow and ideologically motivated view of both the curriculum and what it means to be an educated person, a responsible citizen.”
The restrained activist vs the activist vanguardist
In a generation before, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter* played the role of “restraint,” viz., the role of “activist restraint” opposed to “activist vanguard” - a role that shabbos goy Earl Warren was duped to take the lead in, as Chief Justice of an “activist Court.”
We should be on the watch as well, then, for the shabbos goy being fore-fronted as the “vanguard activist”, as:
Either Trump or Hillary Clinton can be used for - what? - we might not know exactly what for sure yet, other than that it would be another travesty. Hillary Clinton may well fit the role of shabbos goy “vanguardist” for their next demonstration of “chutzpah.”
* Frankfurter, a Jew, presiding as Chief Justice in the Supreme Court prior, fancied his “a restrained activist Court” and referred to his successor, Earl Warren, as “the dumb Swede” - worried that he would take the bait in such a headlong way of “activist vanguardism” that he would create an overly strong reaction.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 05 December 2015 16:44.
Note: This article has been re-posted in MR Central on 19 Dec. 2015. Any further comments are kindly directed there.
Refugee Resettlement Watch’s Ten Reasons For Moratorium On Immigration & Appeal To Congressman Virgil Goode.
Noticing the style of the “moratorium” logo and its coincidence with an appeal to Virgil Goode, I couldn’t help but find it reminiscent of Dietrich’s VoR design..
...and also that Virgil Goode represented a unique experience for me, to actually be talking with a Congressman as I produced the Stark interview with him. Congressman Goode stayed available on my Google chat and otherwise in communique with me for several months afterwards. That was funny for me, in a good way. Though it should be normal, how many Congressmen speak openly with our kind? It speaks well of him. Ann Corcoran has placed her appeal in the right direction.
The need for reduction in immigration both legal and illegal;
National sovereignty, NAFTA, and the North American Union;
Foreign policy and the Iraq war;
Energy independence.
Virgil Goode is the presidential nominee for the Constitution Party. He represented Virginia’s 5th Congressional District as a Republic from 1997-2009. He previously served in the Virginia State Senate as a Democrat.
Now that the mainstream media and the public are waking up to the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program and how it has been operating for the last 35 years, I thought it would be a good idea to re-post this testimony I gave to the US State Department (first in 2012 at its annual scoping meeting and repeated in 2013 and 2014).
I just mentioned it in my previous post on annual reports.
As far as we can tell, the US State Department did not hold a public scoping hearing in 2015 (for FY2016) because we never saw a notice for it this year. In these ‘scoping meetings/hearings’ they ostensibly seek public input on the size of the program for the upcoming year and they want to know what countries should be the focus of protection.
The ‘scoping’ meeting (like a hearing) was usually held in late spring/early summer of the preceding year. Prior to our attendance in 2012, these meetings/hearings were dominated by the resettlement contractors and their groupies.
One more thing, the State Department does not keep and publish a hearing record for this meeting. The only way we could ever learn what others were saying is to obtain the hard copy testimony by attending in person! There ought to be a law!
Here is my testimony in 2012 (repeated in 2013 and 2014):
Ten Reasons there should be no refugees resettled in the US in FY2013—instead a moratorium should be put in place until the program is reformed and the economy completely recovers.
1) There are no jobs. The program was never meant to be simply a way to import impoverished people to the US and place them on an already overtaxed welfare system.
2) The program has become a cash cow for various “religious” organizations and other contractors who very often appear to care more about the next group of refugees coming in (and the cash that comes with each one) than the group they resettled only a few months earlier. Stories of refugees suffering throughout the US are rampant.
3) Terrorist organizations (mostly Islamic) are using the program that still clearly has many failings in the security screening system. Indeed consideration should be given to halting the resettlement of Muslims altogether. Also, the UN should have no role in choosing refugees for the US.
4) The public is not confident that screenings for potential terrorists (#3) or the incidences of other types of fraudulent entry are being properly and thoroughly investigated and stopped. When fraud is uncovered—either fraud to enter the country or illegal activity once the refugee has been resettled—punishment should be immediate deportation.
5) The agencies, specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is in complete disarray as regards its legally mandated requirement to report to Congress every year on how refugees are doing and where the millions of tax dollars are going that run the program. The last (and most recent) annual report to be sent to Congress is the 2008 report—so they are out of compliance for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011. A moratorium is necessary in order for the ORR to bring its records entirely up-to-date. Additionally, there needs to be an adequate tracking system designed to gather required data—frankly some of the numbers reported for such measures of dependence on welfare as food stamp usage, cash assistance and employment status are nothing more than guesses. (The lack of reports for recent years signals either bureaucratic incompetence and disregard for the law, or, causes one to wonder if there is something ORR is hiding.)
6) The State Department and the ORR have so far failed to adequately determine and report (and track once the refugee has been admitted) the myriad communicable and costly-to-treat diseases entering the country with the refugee population.
7) Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government,especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.
8) Congress needs to investigate and specifically disallow any connection between this program and big businesseslooking for cheap and captive labor. The federal government should not be acting as head-hunter for corporations.
9) The Volag system should be completely abolished and the program should be run by state agencies with accountability to the public through their state legislatures. The system as presently constituted is surely unconstitutional. (One of many benefits of turning the program over to a state agency is to break up the government/contractor revolving door that is being demonstrated now at both the State Department and ORR.) The participating state agency’s job would be to find groups, churches, or individuals who would sponsor a refugee family completely for at least a year and monitor those sponsors. Their job would include making sure refugees are assimilating. A mechanism should be established that would allow a refugee to go home if he or she is unhappy or simply can’t make it in America. Short of a complete halt to resettlement-by-contractor, taxpayers should be protected by legally requiring financial audits of contractors and subcontractors on an annual basis.
10) As part of #9, there needs to be established a process for alerting communities to the impending arrival of refugees that includes reports from the federal government (with local input) about the social and economic impact a certain new group of refugees will have on a city or town. This report would be presented to the public through public hearings and the local government would have an opportunity to say ‘no.’
For these reasons and more, the Refugee admissions program should be placed on hold and a serious effort made by Congress to either scrap the whole thing or reform it during the moratorium. My recommendation for 2013 is to stop the program now. The Office of the President could indeed ask for hearings to review the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980-–three decades is time enough to see its failings and determine if reauthorization is feasible or whether a whole new law needs to be written.
Information on the three hearings we wrote about and attended are archived here, here and here. (Those files include posts in which we referenced the hearings/meetings as well.)
By the way, Richard revolved into the State Department from her contractor job at the International Rescue Committee. She had a previous stint at the State Dept. The revolving door is alive and well between contractor and federal agency involving refugee resettlement.
Did you see that even the NY Times wrote about the female Islamic terrorist, how there was no way to “vet” her or to “screen” her as she came to live among us. Any logical person can see that. There was no d*** data, no biographic or biometric information to tap! And, if asked about any terror connections in personal interviews she certainly didn’t tell the truth.
So, don’t you wonder why only TEN US Senators can see that and that 89 others are so willfully blind. See our post on Senator Paul’s failed attempt at a moratorium on issuing visas to those coming from jihad-producing countries.
And, here see Daniel Greenfield on the killers yesterday. If you read nothing else from Greenfield’s post, this is the line every one must grasp:
It’s a matter of simple math that as the population most likely to commit terrorist acts increases, so do the acts themselves.
I went back to our archives to see when I first heard anyone suggest a MORATORIUM on Muslim immigration and want to give a shout-out to former Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode who saw the San Bernardino slaughter coming 9 years ago! Learn about how the politically correct harpies at the Washington Post treated him then. His position, in support of a moratorium on legal (Muslim) immigration to America cost him his seat. We told you more about him here in 2010.
Political correctness is dead! Everyone of you must start saying the ‘M’ word! MORATORIUM! Moratorium on Muslim migration to America, NOW!
Thank you Mr. Goode! Goode is a Trump supporter in Virginia today!
‘Access to Europe is too easy,’ Tusk said. (Photo: Consillium)
The current influx of migrants is “too big not to stop them,” European Council president Donald Tusk has said. He proposed that irregular migrants are detained for up to 18 months to check their identity.
In an interview with six European newspapers, Tusk said there is “no majority” in Europe for plans to relocate asylum seekers and that the priority should be the protection of Schengen’s external borders.
The scheme to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece has been pushed by Tusk’s EU Commission counterpart, Jean-Claude Juncker, and by Germany’s Angela Merkel. So far, just a few dozen people have been relocated.
“I am convinced there is no majority in the EU for such a system,” Tusk said, adding that “this time, central Europe is not the only problem.”
“Let’s avoid hypocrisy: it is not a question of international solidarity anymore, but a problem of European capacities. Europeans would be less reluctant if the EU’s external border was really under control,” he said.
“Today access to Europe is, simply speaking, too easy,” he added.
Tusk, who chairs the summits of EU leaders, asked them to “change [their] mindset” and covertly took on Merkel.
“Some [leaders] say the wave of migrants is too big to stop them. That is dangerous,” he said.
“This wave of migrants is too big not to stop them,” he said, adding that nobody is ready “to absorb these high numbers, Germany included.”
Effective controls
He noted that debate on migration has slipped out of the hands of “politicians or intellectuals or commentators” and has gone “really public because the fear and uncertainty is so genuine.”
He also reiterated that the key is border control.
“Every country must respect and apply the Schengen Borders Code, including the rule that asylum requests be filed in the country of arrival, for example Greece, and not somewhere else,” Tusk said.
“It is often said that we must be open to Syrian refugees. But these are only 30 percent of the inflow. Seventy percent are economic migrants. Also for this reason we need more effective controls,” Tusk noted.
Controls are not only a matter of stemming the flow, but also a question of security, he said, floating the idea that the EU should be ready to detain illegal migrants as long as it can to check them.
“If you want to screen migrants and refugees, you need more time than only one minute to fingerprint,” he noted, adding that international and European law allow up to 18 months “for the screening we need.”
Will Donald Tusk’s voice be heeded though, I wonder?
Fourteen people were killed and at least 17 wounded
“Three lions made us proud. They are still alive,” one ISIS adherent tweeted in Arabic after the shootings at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. “California streets are full with soldiers with heavy weapons. The Unites States is burning #America_Burning #Takbir”
Translation:
“Three lions made us proud. They are still alive,” tweeted after the shootings in San Bernardino
After the Paris attacks, confirmed ISIS accounts praised “Lions” as well.
Around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, two assailants opened fire in San Bernardino at a party in the Inland Regional Center, police said.
Fourteen people were killed and 21 wounded. The names of all those injured have not yet been released, but The Times is collecting their names and stories.
After a Wednesday afternoon car chase, the two armed suspects were killed by police: Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik.
The attackers’ motive is unknown. President Obama, in a statement from the Oval Office Thursday morning, said the shooting was possibly related to terrorism, but might also be workplace related.
Police said there was “some degree of planning.” The suspects were heavily armed, wearing tactical attire, and had an arsenal of ammunition and pipe bombs in their Redlands home.
A silver lining to terrorism is that it moves us in the direction of having to classify people - e.g., non-White middle-easterners, as a whole - as we are less able to distinguish “the good ones from the bad ones.” That is a necessary step in racial, systemic maintenance.
