Jundallah

Når nu en eventuel invasion af Iran lige så stille rykker nærmere kunne det være interessant at se på nogle af de guerilla-bevægelser, der for tiden huserer i Iran og prøver at hævde forskellige etniske minoriteters rettigheder. Personligt har jeg et lille stykke tid interesseret mig for Jundallah (Guds Hær), en guerilla-gruppe der huserer i Irans sydøstlige Sistan og Baluchistan-provins. Provinsen er, som sidste led af navnet indikerer, befolket af etniske Baluchere, der modsat de regerende shiitiske mullaher er sunni-muslimer.

Hvad gruppen reelt står for står hen i det uvisse. Den iranske regering påstår at det er en Taliban-sympatiserende gruppe - hvilket faldet godt i tråd med dens navn. Problemet med iranernes version opstår når de prøver at overbevise folk om at det er amerikanerne og briterne, der lige over grænsen slår Talibanere ihjel i hundredevis, der står bag Jundallah.

Selv siger Jundallah via sin leder Ahmed Rigi, at den er en befrielsesbevægelse, der udelukkende er ude efter at få den iranske regering til at gå ind på gensidige forhandlinger, så undertrykkelsen af Baluchierne kan stoppe. Forneden har jeg sammensat en oversigt, der så godt som jeg nu har kunnet har kortlagt Jundallahs færden siden juli sidste år.

• Juli 2005: Jundallah halshugger en agent fra de iranske sikkerhedsstyrker.
• 15. december 2005: Irans præsident Ahmadinejads kortege bliver udsat for et bagholdsangreb da han besøger Zahedan i Baluchistan-provinsen. En sikkerhedsmand fra provinsen og en af Ahmadinejads bodyguards bliver dræbt. En anden bliver såret.
• 19. december 2005: Irans regering forsøger at nedspille bagholdsangrebet fra den 15. - nu er det pludselig et sædvanligt tilfælde af "smuglere", der har skudt på en enkelt bil, der indeholdt "en chauffør" og en mand fra revolutionsgarden. En "smugler" rapporteres dræbt, en anden såret.
• Sent i december 2005: Jundallah kidnapper de tre tyrkiske statsborgere Serdar Durna, Yurdaer Etike, and Avni Ozan nær Zahedan.
• Sent i december 2005 kidnapper Jundallah 9 iranske soldater fra deres post nær Saravan. Én af soldaterne løslades næsten øjeblikkeligt af heldbredsmæssige årsager.
• Efter kidnapningen arresterer iranske myndigheder 14 mennesker, der mistænkes for at være medlemmer af Jundallah.
• 4. januar 2006: Al Arabiya viser en video hvor Jundallah viser de kidnappede iranske soldater.
• 7. januar 2006: Irans myndigheder identificerer gidseltagerne, og påstår det er en pro-Taliban gruppe støttet af USA. Det lader ikke til at gå op for ham, den påstand ikke giver mening.
• 9. januar 2006: Jundallahs leder Ahmed Rigi kontakter Radio Farda og opstiller kravene for at løslade de iranske gidsler: 4 fængslede medlemmer af Jundallah skal løslades, der skal betales en løsesum på 230.000 dollars, og 8 biler samt skøderne på to huse de iranske myndigheder har taget fra dem skal udleveres. En anden kilde siger, Jundallahs krav involverer løsladelsen af 16 Jundallah-medlemmer.
• 17. januar 2006: De tilfangetagne iranske soldaters familier bliver kontaktet af Jundallah og får at vide, at de efter en 3-dages frist vil blive halshugget en efter en. Samtidig bliver de tyrkiske gidsler løsladt.
• Januar 2006: En af de 8 iranske fanger bliver henrettet.
• 30. januar 2006: De 7 tilbageværende kidnappede iranske soldater løslades.
• 17. marts 2006: En konvoj pakket med højtstående provins- og regerings-pinger falder i et baghold nær Shileh-broen da den er på vej fra Zabol til Zahedan. Oprørere klædt ud i militær-uniformer har oprettet en vejspærring, stopper konvojen og beordrer pingerne ud af deres biler. Derefter bliver de mejet ned. Officielt bliver 22 pinger dræbt og 7 såret, men uofficielt er antallet af dræbte og sårede nærmere 50. Blandt de dræbte er sikkerhedschefen for Zahedan-guvernementet, og både gurvernøren og viceguvernøren bliver hårdt såret med adskillige skudsår i bryst of mave-regionen. Guvernøren -Hossein-Ali Nouri - bliver alene skudt 5 gange. Ud over dræbte og sårede rapporteres der om, at op til 12 bortført. Senere viser det rigtige tal sig at være 7. Et interview med en af de tilfangetagne kan findes her, efter et med Ahmed Rigi. Alle ofrene er shiaer, modsat de indfødte Baluchier, der er sunnier. Jundallah tager ansvaret for angrebet.
• 6. april 2006: Det iranske indenrigsministerium siger, det har dræbt Jundallahs leder Ahmed Rigi sammen med 11 medlemmer af hans gruppe.
• 7. april 2006: Hojjatoleslam (en høj religiøs rang) Youssif Mohammadi-Soleimani, repræsentanten for Irans højeste religiøse leder Ali Khamenei i Centeret for Højere Uddannelse i Iranshahr bliver skudt ned af et individ på motorcykel. Han får fem kugler i kroppen, men overlever, hårdt såret.
• 8. april 2006: Seks mænd kidnapper Eshaq Nezamdoust, en olie-embedsmand foran hans hus.
• 9. april 2006: Uidentificerede "oprørere" dræber i to separate angreb de to iranske officerer Mostafa Ahmadi and Behzad Gholi-Pour.
• 10. april 2006: Al-Arabiya viser en video optaget af Jundallah, hvor Ahmed Rigi benægter at han er blevet slået ihjel 4 dage tidligere. Samtidig viser videoen henrettelsen ved skydning af en officer i den iranske revolutionsgarde ved navn Zahed Shaykhi.
• 4. maj 2006: Irans væbnede styrker udtaler, at de har arresteret 4 medlemmer af Jundallah og fundet et stort våbenlager.
• 6. maj 2006: Jundallah bekendtgør, at organisationen har dræbt den lokale kommandant for Revolutionsgarden, oberst Hamid-Reza Kaveh. Han var en af syv fanger Jundallah tog under bagholdet 17. marts. Har man en stærk mave kan henrettelsen ses på en video der linkes til her - de seks tilbageværende gidsler præsenteres også. Samtidig benægter organisationen, at de arresterede 4. maj var Jundallah-folk.
• 14. maj 2006: Uidentificerede "banditter" opretter en vejspærring 35 kilometer uden for Bam, og henretter 12 uidentificerede passagerer i forbipasserende biler. Seks af "banditterne" bliver siden dræbt af iranske styrker. Jundallah fralægger sig ethvert ansvar for angrebet.
• 15. maj 2006: Iranske styrker begynder en omfattende kampagne af luftbombardementer af landsbyer omkring byen Bam og i Nusrat Abaad Zahedan -området. Flere end 18 bliver dræbt.
• 15. maj 2006: Revolutionsgarden og Basij-militsen udtaler, at de har dræbt 10 mennesker mistænkt for at være medlemmer af Jundallah.
• 18. maj 2006: En af Jundallahs fanger fra bagholdet 17. marts, Amir Harati, bliver løsladt.
• 20. maj 2006: Iransk politi bekendtgør, at det efter at have ødelagt et støtte punkt for udefinerede "banditter" der har gjort "onde ting" har fundet papirer der forbinder dem med USA og Storbritannien. Ingen beviser for påstandene bliver fremlagt.
• 25. maj 2006: Iranske styrker dræber fem, mistænkt for at være medlemmer af Jundallah.

Islamiseringen af Tyrkiet

Information har et skoddet format og en utålelig agenda, men fra tid til anden har bladet faktisk nogle interessante artikler man ikke finder andetsteds. For nylig var det Robert Ellis, der dissekerede Det Islamiske Aktionspartis tiltagende islamisering af Tyrkiet:

Siden AKP-regeringen kom til magten i november 2002, har den forsøgt at få placeret sine tilhængere i ledende stillinger inden for statsadministrationen og til at bane vej for nye kadrer. I 2003 vedtog regeringen imod præsidentens veto en lov, der nedsatte pensionsalderen for offentlige ansatte fra 65 til 61. Eftersom det er kabinettet, der afgør, hvem der skal trække sig tilbage, betyder denne lov i praksis, at flere tusinde ledende bureaukrater kan erstattes med partifæller.

Indenfor retsvæsenet har regeringen planer om at ansætte 4.000 nye dommere og offentlige anklagere, hvilket EU-Kommissionen i sin seneste årlige rapport anser for betænkeligt, da justitsministeren og departementschefen kommer til at udøve uforholdsmæssig stor indflydelse i ansættelsesproceduren.

Uddannelsesområdet har været et oplagt mål for regeringens forsøg på at islamisere den offentlige administration, og i 2004 forsøgte AKP at få vedtaget en højere uddannelseslov, som bl.a. ville have politiseret Det Højere Uddannelsesnævn (YÖK) og givet fri adgang til universiteterne for studerende fra de religiøse højskoler (imam-hatip skolerne). Da præsidenten nedlagde veto mod denne lov, forsøgte regeringen igen sidste december med en bekendtgørelse fra undervisningsministeriet, denne blev bremset af etatsrådet.

Institutionelle konflikter

Det var præsidenten og forfatningsdomstolen, der i maj fik annulleret en artikel i en lov, der etablerede 15 nye universiteter, men som ville have overladt udvælgelsen af kandidaterne til rektorstillingerne til regeringen og ikke Det Højere uddannelsesnævn. Og det var præsident Sezer, der i 2003 nedlagde veto mod, at det skulle være premierministeren, som udnævnte formanden for Det Tyrkiske Videnskabelige og Tekniske Forskningsinstitut (TUBITAK).

I marts opstod der en mindre krise, da præsidenten nedlagde veto mod regeringens kandidat for stillingen som guvernør af centralbanken, som han betegnede som "uhensigtsmæssig", da vedkommende var generaldirektør for en islamisk bank. Kort efter blokerede etatsrådet for et cirkulære fra indenrigsministeriet, der berettigede lokaladminstrationer til at begrænse salget af alkohol til såkaldte 'røde zoner' i områder udenfor byerne.

Denne konstante konflikt mellem regeringens planer og forskellige statsinstitutioner førte til en stærkt omdiskuteret tale holdt af parlamentets formand den 23. april, hvor han beklagede sig over, at selvom sultanatet var blevet afskaffet for 84 år siden, blev parlamentets magt undermineret af "et sultanat af institutioner", der regerer landet. Samtidig opfordrede han til en omdefinering af det sekulære princip, der tager højde for befolkningens religiøse følelser.

Der har været en del diskussion om hvorvidt AKP-regeringen har en skjult dagsorden. I den forbindelse er det værd at hæfte sig ved en tale holdt af Tayyip Erdogans departementschef, Ömer Dincer, ved et symposium i Sivas i 1995. To år tidligere blev 37 deltagere i en kulturfestival i byen dræbt, da en rasende folkemængde gik til angreb på deres hotel og brændte det ned.

Integration med islam

I talen foreslog han, at det sekulære princip skulle erstattes med integration med islam og tilføjede:

"Derfor tror jeg, det er på tide, og absolut nødvendigt, at erstatte alle de grundlæggende principper fremlagt ved den tyrkiske republiks begyndelse,
såsom sekularisme, republikanisme og nationalisme, med en struktur, der er mere nærdemokratisk, mere decentraliseret og mere muslimsk."

I en injuriesag fornylig, som Dincer tabte, mente højesteretten i Ankara, at disse ideer var uforenelige med den tyrkiske forfatning. Om et års tid udløber præsident Sezers embedsperiode, og det springende punkt bliver hvem der kandiderer til posten.

Premierministeren og parlamentets formand nævnes som to oplagte kandidater,
men uanset udfaldet frygtes det, at Tyrkiets dage som sekulær, demokratisk republik er talte.

Islamoracisme på et højt plan

Mange vil måske stadig huske de to muslimske snigskytter, der i 2002 dræbte 12 sagesløse amerikanere mens de tankede deres biler, købte ind osv. Under retssagen mod dem er der kommet interessante detaljer frem om deres planer:

Malvo testified that Muhammad, driven by hatred of America because of its "slavery, hypocrisy and foreign policy" and his belief that "the white man is the devil", planned to kill six whites a day for 30 days.

Malvo alleged that Muhammad had said: "We are going to go to the Washington DC area and we are going to terrorise these people.

"They then intended to move to Baltimore for stage two of their campaign, to shoot a policeman and then blow up explosives at his funeral.

More explosives would target the ambulances that would then rush to the funeral. Another plan to kill three busloads of schoolchildren was thwarted because the pair were arrested when Malvo fell asleep while keeping watch at a Maryland petrol station. ..

Malvo had originally confessed to being the man who pulled the trigger because, as the younger defendant, he was likely to escape the death penalty. He has now admitted only one killing.

The other murders were allegedly carried out by Muhammad, who crawled into the back of their converted blue Chevrolet and shot the victims as they filled their cars with petrol, did their shopping or waited at bus stops.

The attacks left the Washington suburbs transfixed with terror. People knelt down by their rear wheels to pump petrol or sprinted into shops from their cars to avoid the snipers. ..

Malvo further testified that Muhammad wanted him to shoot pregnant white women. At one moment, he even had a pregnant woman in his sights in a fast-food
restaurant.

Amnestien i USA - og hvordan amerikanere bliver 2.-klasses borgere

På Townhall.com har Thomas Sowell et interessant perpektiv på den amnesti begge partier i den amerikanske kongres er i gang med at gennemføre. Det et skræmmende:

Some people are worried that amnesty will give illegal aliens the same rights that American citizens have. In reality, it will give the illegals more rights than the average American citizen. Since most of the illegals are Mexican, that makes them a minority.

Under affirmative action, combined with amnesty, they would have preferences in jobs and other benefits.Those who set up their own businesses would be entitled to preferences in getting government contracts. Their children would be able to get into college ahead of the children of American citizens with better academic qualifications.

Illegals who graduate from a high school in California can already attend the University of California, paying lower tuition that an American citizen from neighboring Oregon.

Under the supposedly "tough" immigration bill in the U.S. Senate, illegals don't have to pay all the back taxes they owe. An American citizen gets no such break from the government and can end up in federal prison, like Al Capone.

If an American citizen gets stopped by the police for a traffic violation and the cops discover that he is wanted for some other violation of the law, they can arrest him for whatever else he has done.

But if an illegal alien gets stopped for going through a red light and the police discovers that he is in the country illegally, in many communities the cop is forbidden to arrest him for that -- or even to report him to the feds.

If an American citizen forges a Social Security card in order to get a job, he can be arrested. Under a provision recently passed by the Senate, illegal aliens who forged Social Security cards not only get a pass, they get to collect Social Security benefits.

Hvor har vi set det før?

Fra Worldnetdaily:

Hamas is seeking the ability to attack Israel using small airplanes laden with explosives to be flown 9-11-style into important targets, possibly Tel Aviv skyscrapers, Abu Abdullah, a leader of Hamas' so-called military wing, told WorldNetDaily yesterday. ..

Abdullah's statements come after Palestinian security officials told WND they believe Hamas recently smuggled into the Gaza Strip three small airplanes that can carry explosives and be used to attack Israel. They said information indicates the aircraft were purchased from eastern European dealers and that Hamas members received flight training from professionals in the Sudan, Iran and Syria. ..

Abdullah said Hamas would fly the planes into Jewish targets, possibly Tel Aviv skyscrapers.

"The goal is to have these planes carry maximum quantities of explosives and that they will be able to hit the targets that are fixed for its operation at a high level of accuracy. All the Zionist goals in our dear Palestine are legitimate. I estimate that this tool will not be used against regular targets. We will choose precious targets and I do not want to speak about strategic or any other targets. ... We know that the enemy is building new and high buildings in Tel Aviv."

Bemærk at Tel Aviv inkluderes i "Palæstina". Der er intet Israel i Hamas´ verden.

Israel in the past has reportedly had numerous security alerts involving plots to fly aircraft into skyscrapers, including Tel Aviv's two Azrieli towers. Although the towers are shaped differently – one is triangular, another is circular – they are often referred to as Israel's Twin Towers.

In February 2003, six Hamas members were reportedly killed in a blast while filling a small aircraft with explosives. Security reports at the time said Hamas planned to fly the airplane by remote control into an Israeli target. Hamas leaders, including Abdullah, blamed Israel for the explosion that halted the aircraft attack.

In the past we succeeded to acquire one of these planes but the enemy discovered it and bombarded the plane killing our brothers who were working and training on the plane," Abdullah told WND.

Iran tager Europa på sigtekornet.

Det islamofascistiske diktatur i Iran og det kommunistiske ditto i Nordkorea har i snart tyve år samarbejdet om våbenspredning. Seneste iranske indkøb er ballistiske missiler i stand til at sende en regn af atomvåben ned over Europa:

IRAN has received a first batch of surface-to-surface missiles that put some central European countries within firing range, Israel's military intelligence chief claimed yesterday.

The 18 BM-25 missiles, purchased from North Korea, have a range of 1,550 miles and are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Israeli security officials said the new missiles would put eastern and parts of central Europe within firing range, including the Czech Republic, Italy and Romania.

Samtidig fortsætter den amerikanske flåde med at udbygge sin evne til at følge og skyde ballistiske missiler ned. Den vestlige venstrefløj - deriblandt vores egen Svend Auken - har i årevis fordømt programmet som en trussel mod freden. Man kan håbe at truslen om at blive fordampet af islamofascistiske atomvåben får dem på andre tanker.

Irak klar til at stå på egne ben fra 2007 - samtidig udvandrer mange sunnier

Ifølge den irakiske premierminister Nuri al-Maliki vil Irak snart være klar til at stå på egne ben. Fra CNN:

With more training and better equipment "our security forces will be capable of taking over the security portfolio in all Iraqi provinces within one year and a half," al-Maliki said during the meeting with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen....

During a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday, al-Maliki said his government could take over security for 16 of Iraq's 18 provinces by the end of this year. The exceptions were Baghdad and the sprawling western province of Anbar, where U.S. troops are battling a stubborn insurgency.

Irakerne overtager allerede provinserne Samawa og Amara. Derefter følger Muthanna-provins til Juli og så videre indtil irakerne selv tager sig afterroristerne i hele landet. Sunnierne er begyndt at forstå at de er ved at tabe kampen, og at deres massakrer på shiiter og kurdere snart er fortid. Hvor det før bare var massakrering af anderledes-troende der stod på programmet er de derfor begyndt ikke bare at tinge om betingelserne for at holde op med at slå ihjel, men endda at true de sunnier der allerede HAR forstået, de har tabt. De sunnitiske trusler er, sammen med shiitiske dødspatruljer, årsag til at adskillige hundredetusinder irakere er flyttet til udlandet den seneste tid:

In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.

The school system offers another clue: Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. The number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department. Iraqi officials and international organizations put the number of Iraqis in Jordan at close to a million. Syrian cities also have growing Iraqi populations.

New York Times stiller det op, som om det er middelklassen det går ud over, men bemærk at hovedparten af de medlemmer af den der prortrætteres er sunnier, mens de kun udgør 15-20% af befolkningen. Strategypage har en god gennemgang af deres situation:

Sunni Arabs, the main supporters of Saddam Hussein (and many more Sunni Arab tyrants before him) may be out of power, but thousands of them, mainly men who used to work for Saddam, want back in. Not a government job, but the government. Control. To these men, the Shia Arabs are a bad joke, and will sell out the country to the hated (by all Arabs) Iranians. Many Sunni Arabs are Islamic conservatives, and no fan of Saddam, but they agree with the concept of Sunni Arab supremacy, mainly because they consider the Shia form of Islam to be heretical. And heretics must recant, or die. Sunni Arabs are only 15-20 percent of the population. They used to be closer to 20 percent, but increasing numbers of Sunni Arabs have been fleeing the violence, and Iraq. Most missed are the middle and upper class Sunni Arabs who form the backbone of the Sunni Arab community, and the Iraqi economy and business community. Harassed by gangsters and terrorists, these Iraqis are giving up on the new Iraq, at least for now, and heading to nearby Arab nations or, for the most disenchanted, the West. To many Kurds and Sunni Arabs, all Sunni Arabs should be expelled from Iraq. For these bitter victims of Saddams decades of abuse, Sunni Arabs have been the cause of most of Iraqis problems, and don't seem to have changed their attitudes much since 2003. But many Sunni Arabs have changed their attitudes, and are trying to work out deals that will give them a place in a democratic Iraq. But first, the Sunni Arab community has to purge itself of its thugs and gangsters. This isn't easy.

Hamas´ nye politistyrke

For nylig sendte Hamas sine morderbander på gaden og lod som om det var en ny politistyrke, der skulle "genskabe ro og orden" i Gazastriben og på Vestbredden. På Stephane.info faldt jeg over et billede af den nye styrke mens den afholder en parade:

Vi lader lige billedet stå lidt.

Private hære på fremrykning

Fra World Tribune:

A leading U.S. security firm has offered to provide forces for any counter-insurgency mission around the world.

J. Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA told the Special Operations Forces Exhibition (Sofex-2006), that his company could supply private soldiers to any country. Black, a former U.S. State Department counter-terrorism coordinator, said Blackwater has been marketing the concept of private armies for low-intensity conflicts.

"About a year ago, we realized we could do it," Black said.

Blackwater has been a leading private security firm in Iraq. The company provides thousands of foreign and Iraqi personnel for government and private security missions.

In his presentation in Amman, Jordan, on March 27, Black said Blackwater could supply peace-keeping forces. He said the company was capable of providing a brigade-sized force on alert.

Det er mere end Danmark kan stille på benene. Private hære er ikke længere kun noget vi så i Middelalderen og Renaissancen.

Bilbombens historie

Asia Times bragte sidste måned "A History of the Car Bomb" i to dele. Det er eminent læsning, der over 8 årtier tager en med til blandt andet Jerusalem, Lima, Saigon, Beirut og London. Undertiden er der øjen-åbnere. Følgende er en passage om IRAs forsøg på at forkrøble den britiske økonomi i midt-90erne. Mindre bombeangreb på blandt andet trafik-knudepunkter var en del af kampagnen, en anden var en serie enorme bilbomber:

A "billion-pound explosion"? One meaning, of course, is the TNT yield of three or four Hiroshima-size atomic weapons (which is to say, only a smidgen of the explosive power of a single H-bomb). Alternately, one billion (British) pounds (US$1.45 billion) is what the IRA cost the City of London in April 1993 when a blue dump-truck containing a ton of ANFO exploded on Bishopsgate Road across from the NatWest Tower in the heart of the world's second major financial center.

Although one bystander was killed and more than 30 injured by the immense explosion, which also demolished a medieval church and wrecked the Liverpool Street station, the human toll was incidental to the economic damage that was the true goal of the attack.

Whereas the other truck bomb campaigns of the 1990s - Lima, Bombay, Colombo and so forth - had followed Hezbollah's playbook almost to the letter, the Bishopsgate bomb, which A Secret History of the IRA author Ed Moloney describes as "the most successful military tactic since the start of the troubles", was part of a novel IRA campaign that waged war on financial centers in order to extract British concessions during the difficult peace negotiations that lasted through most of the 1990s.

Bishopsgate, in fact, was the second and most costly of three blockbuster explosions carried out by the elite (and more or less autonomous) South Armagh IRA under the leadership of the legendary "Slab" Murphy. Almost exactly a year earlier, they had set off a truck bomb at the Baltic Exchange in St Mary Axe that rained a million pounds of glass and debris on surrounding streets, killing three and wounding almost 100 people.

The damage, although less than Bishopsgate, was still astonishing: about 800 million pounds or more than the approximately 600 million pounds in total damage inflicted over 22 years of bombing in Northern Ireland.

Then, in 1996, with peace talks stalled and the IRA Army Council in revolt against the latest cease-fire, the South Armagh Brigade smuggled into England a third huge car bomb that they set off in the underground garage of one of the postmodern office buildings near Canary Wharf Tower in the gentrified London Docklands, killing two and causing nearly $150 million dollars in damage. Total damage from the three explosions was at least $3 billion.

As Jon Coaffee points out in her book on the impact of the bombings, if the IRA like the Tamil Tigers or al-Qaeda had simply wanted to sow terror or bring life in London to a halt, they would have set off the explosions at rush hour on a business day - instead, they "were detonated at a time when the city was virtually deserted" - and/or attacked the heart of the transport infrastructure, as did the Islamist suicide bombers who blew up London buses and subways in July.

Instead, Murphy and his comrades concentrated on what they perceived to be a financial weak link: the faltering British and European insurance industry. To the horror of their enemies, they were spectacularly successful. "The huge payouts by insurance companies," commented the BBC shortly after Bishopsgate, "contributed to a crisis in the industry, including the near-collapse of the world's leading [re]insurance market, Lloyds of London." German and Japanese investors threatened to boycott the city unless physical security was improved and the government agreed to subsidize insurance costs.

Første halvdel af artiklen kan findes her, anden del her.

Union - nu også i Nordamerika

San Francisco Cronicle kunne for tre dage siden fortælle, at hver tiende mexikaner nu befinder sig i USA. Når det drejer sig om arbejdsstyrken er det hver syvende. Af de godt 10 millioner mexikanere i USA er flertallet illegale indvandrere. Når nu USA faktisk har lovgivning der, hvis viljen var der, kunne gøre noget ved problemet med de illegale, hvor for sker der så ikke noget? WorldNetDaily har fundet en god forklaring. Konklusionen:

At the March 2005 meeting at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, President Bush, President Fox of Mexico and Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin announced a joint decision to form a tri-lateral partnership named "The Security Prosperity Partnership of North America," or SPP.

As outlined in a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report entitled "Building a North American Community," the goal of the SPP is to move toward the creation of a North American Union in which the borders between the U.S. and Mexico and between the U.S. and Canada will be erased, permitting free movement of people, capital and trade within the three countries. The U.S. Department of Commerce has established a website to document the extensive work that has been done since March 2005 to advance the North American Union agenda.

Conservative critics of President Bush have found it difficult to comprehend why the administration has fought so hard to avoid securing our border with Mexico. The Dubai Ports World deal also troubled conservative critics who said the Bush administration was more interested in global business ties with Dubai than U.S. port security.

If we continue to "follow the money," we begin to see that the Bush administration may well be following a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, which would be consistent with nearly unregulated migration of people from Mexico to the United States.

Earlier this year, the nation debated which was more important – allowing Dubai Ports World to acquire P&O, or U.S. port security? We may be seeing a similar debate take shape over illegal immigration. Which is more important now? Allowing unrestrained movement of people, capital and trade in an emerging North American Union, or securing our southern border with Mexico from a continuing invasion of illegal aliens?

Følg linket. Der er en del mere.

Forræderi

London Times kunne for et par dage siden fortælle, hvordan det er lykkedes Europæiske lande at finansiere de folkemordere, venstrefløjen godt kan lide at kalde "oprørere" i Irak. Fra Deutsche Welle:

"Our principle is that the government rejects ransom payments," Reinhard Silberberg, the head of the German foreign ministry's team responsible for such matters told the Leipziger Volkszeitung. "The government doesn't let itself be blackmailed."

France and Italy, both of whom had hostages freed in the past year, have made similar statements.

But now, documents unearthed by the London Times show the three countries approved of payments worth $45 million (34 million euros) to free nine hostages in Iraq.

Anger over payments

The paper reported that the documents, held by security officials in Baghdad involved in hostage negotiations, show the governments involved paid between $2.5 million and $10 million per hostage in the past two years.

That includes an alleged $3 million for Ostloff, $5 million for Braunlich and Nitzschke from Germany; $10 million for journalist Florence Aubenas and $15 million for journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot from France, released in June 2005 and December 2004 respectively; and $6 million for Guiliana Segrena and $5 million for aid volunteers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta from Italy, who were freed in March 2005 and September 2004 respectively.

Selv om en Kalashnikov i Irak er tredoblet i pris det sidste stykke tid er 45$ millioner stadig nok til, hvis man har lyst, at bevæbne 150.000 mand. Og hvad er logikken lige i at sende soldater til landet, når man samtidig financierer modstanderen? For ikke at snakke om, at de personer man så løskøber øjeblikkeligt begynder at drive propaganda for deres gidseltagere (Simona Pari og Simona Torretta er eksempler - jeg gider ikke engang finde et link til Giuliana Sgrenas udgydelser).

Ingen penge til terroristerne, tak.

Utilfredshed blandt USA´s konservative - og de muligheder det åbner for

I forgår var Colin Powell, tidligere general og amerikansk udenrigsminister i Danmark for at tale ved et møde for Børsens Executive Club. Vanen tro skulle medierne benytte lejligheden til at presse ham til at svine Pæsident Bush til - på DR1´s Horisont blev det blandt andet til et spørgsmål om Irak-krigen ikke var et bevis på at det at føre krig for at sikre olieforsyningen var en fejlslagen politik. Lige en gang til for de svagtbegavede: Hvis olien var problemet var alt der skulle til, at FN fjernede en hvilken som helst grænse på Iraks olieeksport. En grænse, som USA havde været med til at indføre, vel at mærke.

Midt i al dæmoniseringen af Bush som en ond højreorienteret cowboy overser de danske medier imidlertid, at manden er en centrist, der faktisk har ført Demokratisk/venstreorienteret politik på langt de fleste områder - noget der efter 5 år ved magten er ved at gøre reelt højreorienterede amerikanere godt og grundigt trætte af manden. Mere fra Washington Post:

Conservatives tolerated the No Child Left Behind Act, an extensive intrusion into state and local education, and the budget-busting Medicare prescription drug benefit. They tolerated the greatest increase in spending since Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. They tolerated Bush's failure to veto a single bill, and his refusal to enforce immigration laws. They even tolerated his signing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul, even though Bush's opposition to that measure was a key reason they backed him over Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in the 2000 primaries.

In 2004, Republican leaders pleaded with conservatives -- particularly religious conservatives -- to register people to vote and help them turn out on Election Day. Those efforts strengthened Republicans in Congress and probably saved the Bush presidency. We were told: Just wait till the second term. Then, the president, freed of concern over reelection and backed by a Republican Congress, would take off the gloves and fight for the conservative agenda. Just wait.

We're still waiting.

Sixty-five months into Bush's presidency, conservatives feel betrayed. After the "Bridge to Nowhere" transportation bill, the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and the Dubai Ports World deal, the immigration crisis was the tipping point for us. Indeed, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found last week that Republican disapproval of Bush's presidency had increased from 16 percent to 30 percent in one month. It is largely the defection of conservatives that is driving the president's poll numbers to new lows. ...

The main cause of conservatives' anger with Bush is this: He talked like a conservative to win our votes but never governed like a conservative.

For all of conservatives' patience, we've been rewarded with the botched Hurricane Katrina response, headed by an unqualified director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which proved that the government isn't ready for the next disaster. We've been rewarded with an amnesty plan for illegal immigrants. We've been rewarded with a war in Iraq that drags on because of the failure to provide adequate resources at the beginning, and with exactly the sort of "nation-building" that Candidate Bush said he opposed.

Republicans in Congress and at the White House seem oblivious to the rising threat of communist China and of Vladimir Putin's Russia. Despite the temporary appointment of conservative John R. Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the current GOP leadership keeps shoveling money to the world body despite its refusal to change. ...

But unhappy conservatives should be taken seriously. When conservatives are unhappy, bad things happen to the Republican Party.

In 1948, conservatives were unhappy with Thomas E. Dewey's liberal Republican "me too" campaign, and enough of them stayed home to give the election to Harry S. Truman. In 1960, conservatives were unhappy with Richard M. Nixon's negotiations with Nelson A. Rockefeller to divide the spoils of victory before victory was even achieved, and John F. Kennedy won.

In 1974, conservatives were unhappy with the corruption and Big Government policies of Nixon's White House and with President Gerald R. Ford's selection of Rockefeller as his vice president, and this led to major Republican losses in the congressional races that year. By 1976, conservatives were fed up with Ford's adoption of Rockefeller's agenda, and Jimmy Carter was elected with the backing of Christian conservatives.

In 1992, conservatives were so unhappy with President George H.W. Bush's open disdain for them that they staged an open rebellion, first with the candidacy of Patrick J. Buchanan and then with Ross Perot. The result was an incumbent president receiving a paltry 37 percent of the vote. ...

If conservatives accept the idea that we must support Republicans no matter what they do, we give up our bargaining position and any chance at getting things done. We're like a union that agrees never to strike, no matter how badly its members are treated. Sometimes it is better to stand on principle and suffer a temporary defeat. If Ford had won in 1976, it's unlikely Reagan ever would have been president. If the elder Bush had won in 1992, it's unlikely the Republicans would have taken control of Congress in 1994.

Der er forlydender om en konservativ samling om en konservativ selvmordskandidat op til præsidentvalget i 2008 - Tancredo kunne være en mulighed. Et sådant kandidatur ville ikke være helt ulig Goldwaters i 1964 - de to har endda til fælles at de begge har truet med at atombombe fjenden i krig - Nordvietnam i Goldwaters tilfælde, Mekka i Tancredos.

Men der er større sager på spil end et enkelt præsident valg eller to på grund af konservativ forurettethed: der er chancer for en reel omvæltning af det politiske landskab i USA, med massiv vælgerflugt fra demokraterne.

Goldwater var den kandidat, der indtil 1964 havde fået den lavest mulige andel af stemmerne ved et præsidentvalg i 1900-tallet, men det var samtidig også ham, der viste konservative vælgere i USAs sydstater, at det Demokratiske Parti ikke var deres eneste valgmulighed, og derved gav Republikanerne sydstaterne som den ene af deres to sikre støtter ved næsten valg siden.

Dengang var det Borgerrets-sagen der slog konservative demokrater løs fra det parti de havde stemt trofast på i 100 år, og det var lov-og-orden der fik dem til at stemme republikansk fra da af.

I årene der kommer står Krigen mod Terror og sagen om den kolossale illegale indvandring klar til, hvis omstændighederne er de rette, at slå især de irsk- og italiensk-amerikanske vælgergrupper løs fra deres traditionelle valg af Demokratiske kandidater. Spørgsmålet er så, om Republikanerne da står klar til at tage imod dem.

Cuba har blod på hænderne

For et par dage siden kunne de danske medier fortælle, at Cubas socialistiske styre sikrede danske arbejdspladser på Lolland. Samme medier forsømte at fortælle at det "socialistiske styre" reelt er et kommunistisk diktatur. Vi fik heller ikke at vide at det - og dets hovedrige diktator Fidel Castro - har titusindvis af menneskers blod på hænderne. Lad mig derfor rette op på den mangel, med hjælp fra Wall Street Journal via Center for a Free Cuba:

The Cuba Archive project (www.cubaarchive.org) has already begun the heavy lifting by attempting to document the loss of life attributable to revolutionary zealotry. The project, based in Chatham, N.J., covers the period from May 1952 -- when the constitutional government fell to Gen. Fulgencio Batista -- to the present. It has so far verified the names of 9,240 victims of the Castro regime and the circumstances of their deaths. Archive researchers meticulously insist on confirming stories of official murder from two independent
sources.

Cuba Archive President Maria Werlau says the total number of victims could be higher by a factor of 10. Project Vice President Armando Lago, a Harvard-trained economist, has spent years studying the cost of the revolution and he estimates that almost 78,000 innocents may have died trying to flee the dictatorship. Another 5,300 are known to have lost their lives fighting
communism in the Escambray Mountains (mostly peasant farmers and their children) and at the Bay of Pigs. An estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Fidel's revolutionary adventures abroad, most notably his dispatch of 50,000 soldiers to Angola in the 1980s to help the Soviet-backed regime fight off the Unita insurgency. The archive project can be likened to the 1999 "Black Book of Communism," which documented the world-wide cost of communism, noting that "wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established it quickly led to crime, terror and repression." The Castro methodology, Cuba Archive finds, was much like that used in Poland and East Germany, less lethal than Stalin's purges, but equally effective in suppressing opposition.

In the earliest days of the revolution, summary executions established a culture of fear that quickly eliminated most resistance. In the decades that followed, inhumane prison conditions often leading to death, unspeakable torture and privation were enough to keep Cubans cowed. Cuba Archive finds that some 5,600 Cubans have died in front of firing squads and another 1,200 in "extrajudicial assassinations." Che Guevara was a gleeful executioner at the infamous La Cabaña Fortress in 1959 where, under his orders, at least 151 Cubans were lined up and shot. Children have not been spared. Of the 94 minors whose deaths have been documented by Cuba Archive, 22 died by firing squad and 32 in extrajudicial assassinations.

Fifteen-year-old Owen Delgado Temprana was beaten to death in 1981 when security agents stormed the embassy of Ecuador where his family had taken refuge. In 1995, 17-year-old Junior Flores Díaz died after being locked in a punishment cell in a Havana province prison and denied medical attention. He was found in a pool of vomit and blood. Many prison deaths are officially marked as "heart attacks," but witnesses tell another story. The project has documented 2,199 prison deaths, mostly political prisoners.

The revolution boasts of its gender equality, and that's certainly true for its victims. Women have not fared much better than men. In 1961, 25-year-old Lydia Pérez López was eight months pregnant when a prison guard kicked her in the stomach. She lost her baby and, without medical attention, bled to death. A 70-year-old woman named Edmunda Serrat Barrios was beaten to death in 1981 in a Cuban jail. Cuba Archive has documented 219 female deaths including 11 firing squad executions and 20 extrajudicial assassinations.

The heftiest death toll is among those trying to flee. Many have been killed by state security. Three Lazo children drowned in 1971 when a Cuban navy vessel rammed their boat; their mother, Mrs. Alberto Lazo Pastrana, was eaten by sharks. Twelve children -- ages six months to 11 years -- drowned along with 33 others when the Cuban coast guard sank their boat in 1994. Four children -- ages three to 17 -- drowned in the famous Canimar River massacre along with 52 others when the Cuban navy and a Cuban air force plane attacked a hijacked excursion boat headed for Florida in 1980.

Hvad artiklen ikke nævner er, at dusinvis af ikke-cubanere også er blevet dræbt af Castros Kommunistiske diktatur. Og at der blandt dem er en dansker - Joachim Lovschall, dræbt af cubanske soldater 28. marts 1997.

En helt dekoreres

Seniorsergent Bradley Kasal (billedet til højre) blev mandag dekoreret med det amerikanske Navy Cross for heltemodig optræden i kamp da USA i 2004 befriede Fallujah. Historien er værd at høre:

When then-1st Sgt. Kasal assisted one of his platoons with an over watch inside Fallujah that day, intense gunfire broke out in an Iraqi home to his immediate front. ..

When he found out that there were Marines still pinned down inside the infamous house, nothing the insurgents could put on the table would stop him from rescuing his Marines.

“Going in for them was the right thing to do,” said Kasal, 39, who hails from Afton, Iowa. “They’re Marines, and I’m a Marine. We look out for each other.”

Upon entry of the house, Kasal found himself face-to-face with an insurgent who he neutralized at extreme close range. Shortly afterwards, AK-47 gunfire was coming from all directions, and Kasal was hit from behind.

“While I was in that house, I made three life or death decisions,” Kasal said. “I never thought I would live through any of them, but I did what I did to help the other Marines.”

The first decision Kasal made was to expose himself to enemy fire in order to pull another wounded Marine out of the line of fire. Kasal took more enemy fire doing this.

While both Marines were under cover, they assessed their wounds. Both had multiple injuries, but there were only enough bandages for one of them to live.

Kasal made his second decision to forfeit his medical supplies to the other Marine.

“It made more sense to use all of the bandages on one of us then to split the supplies and have us both bleed to death,” Kasal said.

The insurgents deployed a hand grenade to get the Marines out of cover, and it landed within a few feet of the two bleeding Marines.

Kasal then decided to use his own severely wounded body to protect the Marine from shrapnel.

By the time he was carried out of the house by Lance Cpl. Chris Marquez and Lance Cpl. Dan Shaffer as Lucian M. Reed, an Associated Press photographer snapped the iconic photo displayed at Marine Corps installations all over the globe, Kasal had lost approximately 60 percent of his blood from more than 40 shrapnel wounds and seven 7.62 mm AK-47 gunshots (fotografiet kan ses forneden - bemærk at han stadig har sin pistol i hånden).

One day prior to being awarded the Navy Cross Kasal’s father passed away.

However, a live video teleconference feed to Kasal’s hometown provided his mother, family members and friends an opportunity to watch him receive the Navy Cross, be promoted to the rank of sergeant major and reenlist for three years.

“It’s been a very emotional week,” Kasal said. “I am blessed to recover from my injuries, which the doctors thought would never happen, and regain my place in the Marine Corps. I would take the pain of surgeries any day over the pain of being away from my Marines.”

Det er fanden gale mig et mandfolk man kan have respekt for.

Anti-alliancen - og hvorfor Azerbaijan snart bliver et interessant sted

Lidt for sjov har jeg et stykke tid leget med navnet "Anti-alliancen" for det sammenrend af hel- og halvtotalitære, ex-venstredrejede stater der gør alt hvad de kan for at stoppe den spredning af demokrati, verden har set mens George Bush har været præsident i USA.

Kernen er Rusland og Kina, der via deres veto-ret i FN saboterer samtlige tiltag til befrielsen af undertrykte befolkninger rundt omkring i verden, men dertil føjer sig et stigende antal hel- og halv-totalitære venstredrejede stater i den 3. verden, der flokkes om denne kerne.

Det oprindelige tilløb til Anti-alliancen var Shanghai Five, grundlagt i 1996 af Kina, Rusland og de centralasiatiske semi-diktaturer Tajikistan, Kirgizistan og Kazakhstan. Organisationen havde oprindelig primært havde med militært samarbejde at gøre, men tog efterhånden karakter af en mere politisk samarbejdsorganisation. Den blev i 2001 omdøbt til Shanghai Cooperation Organisation da Uzbekistan blev medlem, men tabte en del i styrke da USA efter 11. september 2001 styrtede Taliban i Afghanistan og fik overdraget baser i Uzbekistan og Kirgizistan og derved mindskede russisk og kinesisk indflydelse i Centralasien betragteligt.

Koblet med Kinas og Ruslands nederlag i kampen for at forhindre en amerikansk befrielse af Irak (begge lande havde lukrative oliekontrakter med folkemorderen Saddam Hussein) og demokratiske og pro-vestlige revolutioner i Georgien og Ukraine blev Anti-alliancen trængt mere og mere i defensiven, og truede reelt med at blive overflødig.

Én ting gjorde dog, at det ikke blev tilfældet - oprøret i Andijan i Uzbekistan i maj 2005. Om det var demokrater eller islamister, der stod bag er idag et akademisk spørgsmål - det vigtige er reaktionen på det. Den amerikanske regering var til at begynde med tilbageholdende med sin reaktion på den uzbekiske massakre på flere hundrede mennesker, men endte med at kræve en uafhængig undersøgelse af massakren. Da Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) var pænt ligeglad med massakrer på folk (både Rusland og Kina har foretaget lignende ting i hhv Tjetjenien og Peking/Sinkian) fik amerikanerne i Juli 2005 180 dage til at evakuere deres base i Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan vendte således tilbage til den lejr landet havde forladt i 2001.

Med kernen således var genskabt blev SCO favoriseret af to udviklinger i international handel, en gammel og en ny. Den gamle var Kinas fænomenale økonomiske vækst de sidste 20 år, der har gjort landet mere og mere i stand til at købe sig nye klienter i den 3. verden. Den nye er olie og gasprisernes himmelflugt, der tilsvarende har begavet Rusland med en respektabel økonomisk vækst de sidste 5 år. Det har givet dem overskud til en fænomelnal ekspansion af SCO. Jeff Vail forklarer:

The global struggle for geopolitical domination never really stops, but it certainly has its periods of storm and calm. Historically, the storm never seems to develop quite where people are focused. Right now all eyes are turned towards a potential US confrontation with Iran—and as a result, virtually no one is watching the recent moves made by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Founded (out of the Shanghai Five Mechanism) in 2001 between China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the organization’s stated goal was to facilitate “cooperation in political affairs, economy and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres as well as in energy, transportation, tourism, and environment protection fields.” Recently, however, the SCO is beginning to look more like a modern-day Warsaw Pact, an energy-financial bloc in central Asia consciously constructed to serve as an anti-pole to US hegemony.

While no such intention is explicitly stated by the group, recent actions speak for themselves. So far in 2006, the SCO has extended de-facto offers of membership to India, Mongolia, Pakistan, and most importantly to Iran (who will officially be invited to become a full member at the SCO June 15th meeting). Beyond their expansion, the SCO member states are also taking steps to separate themselves from US-petrodollar imperialism: Russia has announced that it will open a Ruble-denominated oil and gas bourse in late 2006; China recently announced the intention to move its reserves away from the dollar and that it will use $40 billion in US dollars to purchase gold reserves; Russia’s state-owned, Vladimir Putin-controlled natural gas transport monopoly Transneft has further consolidated its pipeline control to become the sole exporter of Russian natural gas (by far the largest reserves in the world). With Iran, the SCO will control the vast majority of the world's natural gas reserves, as well as a significant portion of its oil reserves, not to mention potential control of the Strait of Hormuz.

These moves are significant because they amount to an act of energy encirclement. Central Asia, the greatest remaining promised land for oil and gas development, is completely enveloped within the SCO, limiting hydrocarbon access to non-SCO nations. China ensures the supply of energy that it will need to continue its amazing economic growth. Alternative supply sources of oil and gas to Europe now run exclusively through SCO-controlled export pipelines, allowing for a new OPEC-style cartel to bleed Europe at the optimal rate. And the ability to force the West to purchase energy in something other than dollars (to a greater extent than is currently the case) will help balance China’s export-driven surplus of foreign currency—at least until the rise of a consuming middle-class in India and China can become a self-sustaining market for their own economic production.

To the extent that this maneuvering is a move to encircle the energy supplies of central Asia, and to form an effective energy-cartel, the combined pincer maneuver is decidedly pointed at the trans-Caucus region: Georgia and Azerbaijan. With the addition of Pakistan and Iran to the SCO’s geostrategic alliance, the only remaining point of access to the riches of Central Asia are through those two nations—and the West’s “great white hope,” the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, runs precisely that route. So rather than looking towards conflict in Iran (which seems increasingly likely to be a unilateral exercise with Russia and China’s veto power firmly behind Iran at this point), perhaps we should be more carefully watching events in Georgia and Azerbaijan, as these nations represent the critical battleground between the SCO and the “West.” Russia has long been involved with fomenting problems among the Ossettians (South Ossettia in Georgia, North Ossettia in Russia), but Georgia is a traditionally Western-looking nation. More attractive to the SCO is the prize of Azerbaijan--an Asian nation with its own hydrocarbon reserves and a complete connection of the encirclement between Iran and Russia. Expect to see interesting developments regarding Azerbaijan after Iran is solidified as an SCO member on June 15th.

Har man lyst kan man læse mere om Baku-Ceyhan rørledningen her.

Portene slås op

Så vedtog USA´s Senat sit forslag til, hvordan den amerikanske indvandrings-lovgivning skal reformeres. Som ventet var det en groft udvandet udgave af Repræsentanternes Hus´ forslag, og straks var der vrede konfrontationer mellem de to fløje blandt republikanerne når det kommer til indvandringen.

På den ene side er der slapperne i især senatet med Præsident Bush i front, der vil vedtage love, men helst ikke ser at de har nogen som helst indflydelse. De er for en stor dels skyld financieret af storkapitalien, og ser som sådan intet problem i, at der er 12 millioner illegale indvandrere i landet, så længe de leverer billig arbejdskraft til industrien. At samme illegale indvandrere er en underskudsforretning for landet er de pænt ligeglade med - samme gruppe af republikanere har, med en amerikansk bekendts ord "spenderet penge som en fuld sømand på landlov" og derved øget landets udlandsgæld til over 2.500 milliarder dollars. De vil, reelt, føre Demokratisk politik på Republikanske stemmer. I dette tilfælde er det da også demokraternes stemmer der gør, at de har fået det nominelt republikanske lovforslag igennem.

På den anden side er der strammerne i især Repræsentanternes Hus, der mener at illegale indvandrere ikke skal have lov til at lukrere på at de har brudt loven - for eksempel ved at de ifølge senatets lovforslag bare skal ansøge om at blive legaliseret. Et par reaktioner fra Repræsentanternes Hus og Senatet beskriver meget godt, hvor linierne går:

"Regardless of what the president says, what he is proposing is amnesty," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. the lawmaker who would lead House negotiators in any attempt to draft a compromise immigration bill later this year.

The blast by Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee' name, came on the day the White House dispatched top presidential aide Karl Rove to ease the concerns of rebellious House Republicans, and also coincided with a clash among GOP senators on the Senate floor.

"This is not amnesty, so let's get the terms right," Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska lectured fellow Republicans who condemned the bill. "Come on. Let's stop the nonsense."

"It sort of reminds me of the famous line, `Methinks thou dost protest too much,'" responded Sen. David Vitter, R-La., who repeatedly described the legislation as an amnesty bill for lawbreakers.

Ud over hvad der mest af alt er en amnesti for de 12 millioner illegale indvandrere slår Senatets forslag også portene op for en masse-indvandring uden paralleler i verdenshistorien:

The Senate immigration reform bill would allow for up to 193 million new legal immigrants -- a number greater than 60 percent of the current U.S. population -- in the next 20 years, according to a study released yesterday.

"The magnitude of changes that are entailed in this bill -- and are largely unknown -- rival the impact of the creation of Social Security or the creation of the Medicare program," said Robert Rector, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation who conducted the study.

Although the legislation would permit 193 million new immigrants in the next two decades, Mr. Rector estimated that it is more likely that about 103 million new immigrants actually would arrive in the next 20 years. ..

Although that "amnesty" would be granted to about 10 million illegals, the real growth in the immigrant population would come later.

As part of the bill, the annual flow of legal immigrants allowed into the U.S. would more than double to more than 2 million annually. In addition, the guest-worker program in the bill would bring in 325,000 new workers annually who could later apply for citizenship.

That population would grow exponentially from there because the millions of new citizens would be permitted to bring along their extended families. Also, Mr. Sessions said, the bill includes "escalating caps," which would raise the number of immigrants allowed in as more people seek to enter the U.S.

"The impact of this increase in legal immigration dwarfs the magnitude of the amnesty provisions," said Mr. Rector, who has followed Congress for 25 years. He called the bill "the most dramatic piece of legislation in my experience."

Mr. Rector based his numerical projection on the number of family members that past immigrants have sponsored.

Immigration into the U.S. would become an "entitlement," Mr. Sessions said. "The decision as to who may come will almost totally be controlled by the desire of the individuals who wish to immigrate to the United States rather than by the United States government."

Mexico og dobbelmoralen

Som før nævnt truer Mexico med at lægge sag an mod USA, hvis amerikanerne faktisk prøver at håndhæve deres love hvad angår legal og illegal indvandring. Denne omfatter 500.000 primært ufaglærte, fattige mexicanere årligt. Det er de mennesker, Mexico gerne vil af med.

For sjov skyld har jeg gravet Mexicos egen indvandrerlovgivning, og hvilke indvandrere landets regering så selv gerne vil have inden for landets grænser. Der er 5 grupper, og ufaglærte har ingen chance. Ud over sportsfolk, kunstnere, investorer og faglærte har kun én gruppe en chance:

Retirees
If you are over 50 years of age, and want to engage in "non remunerative activities" and you are receiving funds from abroad (from a pension or other investments or fixed income) at least to the value of 400 times the daily minimum daily wage per month and a further 200 times daily minimum wage per month for each dependent (e.g. spouse, children) then you can apply for a Retiree Immigration Permit.

Arabisk Nihilisme i Gaza

Da Israel begik etnisk udrensning mod de jødiske landsbyer i Gaza-striben var et af de få lyspunkter (for araberne, vel at mærke), at en gruppe amerikanske rigmænd købte mere end 3.200 højteknologiske drivhuse af de fordrevne jøder for en klatskilling (14m $). Da de var ved at blive fordrevet var der ikke rigtigt så meget at handle med.

For araberne i Gaza-striben, derimod, var det en fænomenal handel. Ikke bare fik de som oprindeligt aftalt jorden gratis, de fik nu også adskillige tusinde drivhuse, der på årsbasis producerede for mere end 100 millioner $ grøntsager oven i hatten - igen helt gratis.

Pr mellemøstlig sædvane skal misundelsen imidlertid spille ind, så siden den etniske udrensning har forskellige arabiske bander ødelagt flere hundrede af drivhusene:

The Palestinian Company for Economic Development, which is in charge of thousands of greenhouses that used to belong to Morag and other settlements in Gush Katif, said the attack, which took place on Friday, was the latest in a series that began almost immediately after the settlements were evacuated.

The company revealed that hundreds of greenhouses and other agricultural installations have been sabotaged over the past few months, expressing its outrage over the recurring phenomenon. The company issued an urgent appeal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Interior Minister Said Siam to intervene to halt the attacks on the lands belonging to the former settlements. ..

Friday's attack on the greenhouses, the biggest since the Israeli withdrawal, was carried out by dozens of gunmen belonging to a number of families living in the area. PA security forces opened fire at the attackers, killing 21-year-old Rami al-Masri and wounding four others.

The security forces managed to regain control over parts of the greenhouses, PA security sources told The Jerusalem Post. They said the attackers caused heavy damage to most of the greenhouses before leaving the area.

Lignende ting er sket før i historien. Iraks Hængende Haver forfaldt efter den arabiske erobring i 630erne. Nordafrika var Romerrigets kornkammer indtil den arabiske invasion omtrent samtidigt, og Cyrenaica var kendt som Middelhavet Have indtil den arabiske Banu Hilal-stamme invaderede området i 1000-tallet. Ingen lader til at lære lektien. Måske undtagen jøderne i Israel. Bemærk hvordan Israel er en del grønnere end omgivelserne:

USA og den illegale immigration

Efter årtiers laden stå til er der endelig tilløb til at USA begynder at håndhæve gældende lov. For tiden opholder over 12 millioner indvandrere sig illegalt i USA, og en halv million slutter sig til dem hvert år. For at i det mindste begrænse antallet har Præsident Bush besluttet at sende 6.000 soldater fra Nationalgarden til den mexikanske grænse for at hjælpe med at arrestere og udvise lovbryderne langs grænsen.

Der er imidlertid dem, der synes det er en dårlig idé. Blandt andet den mexikanske regering, der truer med at lægge sag an, hvis Nationalgarden faktisk hjælper med til at arrestere illegale indvandrere. Man kan undre sig over, hvorfor en suveræn stat støtter massive brud på en nabos lovgivning, men for SFGate.com er forklaringen simpel:

At the heart of the illegal immigration crisis is the dysfunctional relationship between the United States and Mexico. As if distributing a form of international welfare, the United States continues to foot the bill while Mexico does nothing whatsoever to improve its situation. The Mexican government has come to rely on the exportation of its poor in order to stay in power. Instead of meeting the needs of its citizens, Mexico's government has encouraged them to populate the United States.

As Rodolfo Garcia Zamora, an economist and immigration expert at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, told the Contra Costa Times: "For the governing class, immigrants become the solution. They leave. They reduce the political and social pressure ... they can only hope that everybody leaves and sends home collective remittances."

Ved at eksportere sine fattige slipper den meksikanske regering for at høre på dem. Samtidig står USA imidlertid tilbage med regningen. I forbindelse med de illegale immigranters en-dags-"strejke" for et par uger siden opgjorde Tom Tancredo, der sidder i Kongressen for et distrikt i Colorado, hvor meget hans hjemstat ville spare hvis de samtidig afholdt sig fra at nasse på de amerikanske skatteydere samme dag (National Review via Mean Mr. Mustard):

Colorado taxpayers would save almost $3,000,000 in one day if illegals do not access any public services, because illegal aliens cost the state over $1 billion annually according to the best estimates.

Colorado’s K-12 school classrooms would have 131,000 fewer students if illegal aliens and the children of illegals were to stay home, and Denver high schools’ dropout rate would once again approach the national norm.

Colorado’s jails and prisons would have 10-percent fewer inmates, and Denver and many other towns would not need to build so many new jails to accommodate the overcrowding. ..

On a Day Without an Illegal Immigrant, thousands of workers and small contractors in the construction industry across Colorado would have their jobs back, the jobs given to illegal workers because they work for lower wages and no benefits.

Med hensyn til det sidste punkt har Center for Immigration Studies regnet sig frem til, at den meksikanske indvandring op gennem 1990erne (legal såvel som illegal) faktisk har SÆNKET lønningerne for ufaglærte med 5%:

• Though most natives are more skilled and thus do not face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants, this study (consistent with previous research) indicates that the more than 10 million natives who lack a high school degree do face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants.

• By increasing the supply of unskilled labor, Mexican immigration in the 1990s has reduced the wages of workers without a high school education by an estimated 5 percent. The workers affected are already the lowest-paid, comprising a large share of the working poor and those trying to move from welfare to work.

Samtidig er mexikanerne netto en underskudsforretning for USA:

• Because of their much lower education levels, Mexican immigrants earn significantly less than natives on average. This results in lower average tax payments and heavier use of means-tested programs. Based on estimates developed by the National Academy of Sciences for immigrants by age and education at arrival, the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a negative $55,200.

En lille succeshistorie fra Irak

Stars and Stripes har en lille succeshistorie fra Irak. En amerikansk patrulje havde fundet et mennesketomt hus gemt væk i vegetationen, da en mobiltelefon i huset pludselig ringede:

“The interpreter went in and answered the phone, and on the other end of the phone the person said, in Arabic, ‘Hey, coalition forces are here, go ahead and run away,’ and he specifically said, ‘Go and run into the palm groves all around here,’ ” Nicodemus said.

The troops then fanned out into the palm groves and found several weapons including several rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, two AK-47s and a new sniper’s rifle, Nicodemus said.

They also found a hand-written map of a U.S. military base, diagrams on how to build rockets and a CD-ROM with several thousand files written in Arabic, said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Greer, 35, of San Luis Obispo, Calif.

If that weren’t enough, the insurgent kept calling the interpreter back to ask what the Americans were doing.

The interpreter kept the act going.

“He’s basically acting like, you know, he’s watching us ... making sure everything is fine,” Nicodemus said.

The U.S. troops knew the insurgents were coming back and decided to lie in wait for them.

Many troops said they were psyched by the prospect of killing the person on the other end of the phone.

“I love this [expletive],” said Sgt. Nicholas Hake-Jordan, 23, of Springfield, Ore.

The troops didn’t have to wait long.

Shortly after U.S. troops set up, the insurgents called the interpreter and said they would be by in about 10 minutes to attack the Americans, said Staff Sgt. Art Hoffman, 30.

When seven insurgents got to the house, they ran into a wall of U.S. fire, said Hoffman, of Baltimore.

“The first guy that came in the door just dropped like a rock. The other two guys behind him got hit pretty hard, too. The rest grabbed their wounded and just ran back off,” said Hoffman.

Et lille sammenstød i krigen mod terror.