Department Of Home Land Security Knowledge Base
Home Land Security? MSNBC and NBC News Updated: 7:24 p.m. ET April 5, 2007 WASHINGTON - Coming on the heels of a controversial “surge” of 21,000 U.S. troops that has stretched the Army thin, the Defense Department is preparing to send an additional 12,000 National Guard combat forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials told NBC News on Thursday. If our National Guard is over there who protects us over here?
how can i prove to dept. home land security that me and my wife are married for real ? i got a letter from immigration, they want more information that me and my wife are married for real, they sent the I-797E letter, if i send proof that we own a car together, she is on my health insurance, and she has used it before, and we have filed are taxes together. will this be anuff information ? i own the house we live in myself, she does not pay anything, i owned it long before we got married, we talked about this before we got married she was ok with it, i no american couples that have the same arrange meant and they are aloud to be married ? i pay all the bills ? i pay for everything. we have separate bank accounts, my wife keeps all the money she makes and can do what she want with it i don't ask her for a dime, i don't want to have any credit card together, besides that its to late now, because they are looking for the past 2 years record. i didn't think are marriage would ever become a issue or i would have done a better job keeping records, we have jumped through all the hoops, and this is how we are treated, my wife is so happy with are arrange ments and so am i. she can make her own money and help her family out, i think its a great arrangement, i don't think its right how we are being treated, i don't even feel like a american myself, i have given the immigration people everything that they have asked for and this is how they treat me and my wife, i have a full time job and then some and am tired allot, and now i have to track down all these records its making me sick, and now i might have to hire a layer, me and my wife are happy with the way we are living, and now we are trying to start a family, and i have doctor records of that will this help to prove that we are really married ? enough is enough i no i am a simple man i have never been to collage, but i work hard and try to be a good person and do the right thing, i think i have provided plenty of information and have been very submissive to the immigration people i will send this other information, but if it is not enough what can i do, can i strike back if i hire a layer i want to be able to sue them and at least get my money back for what i pay the layer and lost wages etc... think about it if the immigration department would spend more time sending illegals back to there country and less time harassing working people like me and others it would be allot better, look at the mexicans that come across the border and take jobs illegal, and the ones that come across the border and deal drugs, why don't they do some thing about them, instead of stressing me out and making me feel sick, if i hire a lawyer i want to make some money, go before a jury of my peers, i think most people would agree we have a problem with illegals, and harassing us citizens that are trying to live a peace full life with there spouses after going through all the hoops is not helping the problem. me and my wife are really married we don't have credit cards, we live simple lives, maybe if we took out great dept together on a joint credit card with 12 % or greaterinterestt that would be great proof, but idon'tt want to have any more dept than i have now, theimmigrationn people can come live with me any time they want i have a extra bedroom, they will see we do the things married couple do, the big ? is being in great dept together really what being married is ?
How can someone join the fight against terror who has been associated with a terrorist organisation? absconder Someone who was indoctrinated in radical islam in middle east but after coming to USA and having interacted with the americans learned that the hatred indoctrinated was the filth of a belligerent mind. Decision to leave the organisation was taken as a threat although bad moves made the guy absconder and later cost the life of uncle.I have tried contacting FBI, CIA, Department of Home Land Security, DOD, Congress Intelligence Committee, NSA,but no luck.
Could the Fort Hood nut case have been written off as a Corporal Clinger? Someone trying to get out of his military obligation by calming to be radical Muslim instead of Clinger routine. Might you know how the military handled such cases in general and did that change after Department of Home Land Security was formed? Very good point about Klinger and the draft, but Klinger didn't get advance medical degree. Personally think he was paid to kill solders. Main focus of question is on why he was not detected.
I see that Capella University was just recognized by the NSA for CAEIAE. What can you tell me? I am still looking at the online schools and I see that Capella University, which already is the only online school pessessing CACREP accreditation and SHRM certification, was just recognized by the Department of Home Land Security and the National Security Agency as a Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance. What does this mean to Capella learners, current and future?
H1-B visa : What are the exit requirement for Traveling abroad ? I am in US on an H1-B visa . I have stayed here for last 2 years . I have transfered my visa to a new client 8 months ago . I am go back home and I want to know what the exit requirment for traveling aborad. I have been told that I need to get some kind of stamp before going out . Some thing from department of home land security or INS . I am not sure which one . Please provide all info.
my (i-130) petition approved , how long it takes to get a visa? my wife got a letter from the united state department of home land security...the letter says : the visa peitition you filed has been approved,the beneficiary for whom you filed has been given the appropriate classification. note the approval gives no assurance that the beneficiary will automaically be found ellgible for visa ,,, what should i do now ? and how long it will takes ? please help me .... thanks
What are the names of the U.S. Departments? http://www.obama-presidential.com/imgs/logo.jpg Example: Department of Home Land Security. http://www.obama-presidential.com/index.html http://www.obama-presidential.com/imgs/powered-by-sbi-page-bottom.gif
A foreign terrorist “botches an attack”; must Americans be subjected to a higher level of pre-flight screening? The problem is that the Obama Administration’s Department of Home Land Security botched the vetting of the pre-flight passenger list. (Let's not discuss here the poor vetting of the Obama Cabinet members, unless you see it as pertinant.) In an apparently apologetic spin in behalf of the Obama administration Fox News called Friday’s terrorist activity on a NW flight a “thwarted plot”. A statement which would tend to make one believe that the Obama Administration had prior knowledge and acted upon that knowledge…which by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ admission they did not. A less supportive CNN reported what amounted to an admission by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs that the administration had nothing to do with stopping the “a botched terror attack”. Obviously the Obama administration knew nothing and did nothing to prevent the security breech. The question that I have is: Do Americans really need to be subjected to a higher level of pre-flight screening when the problem is that Home Land Security approved, for a foreign government prior to take off a flight with a known terrorist on board, the passenger flight list? Terror Suspect Wasn't Considered Threat Sunday, December 27, 2009 Suspect Not a Threat? Suspect in thwarted plot to blow up plane not considered a danger despite being in government databases The alleged Christmas Day terrorist had been in one of the U.S. government's largest terror databases since November, when his father brought him to the attention of embassy officials in Nigeria. But Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came to the attention of intelligence officials months before that, according to a U.S. government official involved in the investigation. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581211,00.htm, Sunday, December 27, 2009, 08:39:26 AM PST, FOX NEWS Obama orders review of flight screenings December 27, 2009 10:32 a.m. EST (CNN) -- President Obama has ordered a review of security screening processes after Friday's botched terror attack on a U.S. airliner, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday. Appearing on the ABC program "This Week" and the NBC program "Meet the Press," Gibbs said Obama is receiving regular briefings by his national security staff on the incident in which a suspect allegedly tried to detonate an explosive device on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, making its final approach to Detroit, Michigan. The suspect, 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was on a broad watch list of 550,000 names since last month, Gibbs said http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/12/27/airline.attack.security/index.html, Sunday, December 27, 2009, 08:42:37 AM PST, CNN News
What do you Think is Wrong? You know it seems like the world has gone crazy in the last ten years. Our economic system doesn't work anymore, our government clearly is broken, we no longer have any borders, and the word police are more worried about what we think and say then they do for the crazy Arabs who go around blowing themselves up. Our government seems to think the solution to our economic problems which stems from spending and borrowing to much is to spend more and barrow even more. Our local governments much like the federal government seem to have forgotten what that are limits to how much they can tax their citizens. We spend untold sums of our tax dollars on providing aid to employers to hire convicted felons, food stamps, college aid, and welfare payments to illegal aliens, studies on pig orders, banks who made bad loans, bailing out mortgages for those who can't afford the home they bought, and bridges to nowhere. To top things off the head of the Department of Home Land Security just issued a report which categorizes anyone who in essence disagrees with the O'bama administration as a potential right wing terrorist. Oh, I forgot, a terrorist attack is now called by the O'bama administration a Human Disaster. Now what kind of out of touch idiot came up with that political correct pharse? It only goes to show the folks in Washington [i.e. all of them] are out of touch with reality.
Is Law school a good idea? Ok i don't know where to start, i just got accepted to Northeastern University as a transfer student. I'm currently taking Criminal Justice as my major, and i plan on continuing at NU. But im not clear what i want to do with my major yet, I would like to work for the Government such as the Department of Home Land Security, US Marshall, any of those agencies. The thing is should i consider Law School after i graduate at Northeastern? even though i don't want to become a lawyer, and how would this benefit me towards my career? salary wise, and such. Thank You so much.
Obama ran on the premise that he would have direct talks and negotiate with his enemies. Why won't he do it? Yes he spends plenty of time talking to Iraq, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and Turkey. He is also going out of his way apologizing to them for things the USA did to them, and saying we are NOT A ANTI Muslim country. In the meantime he is attacking US citizins calling them right wing fanatics and potential terrorist if they are conservatives, Libertarians, Christians. Why because we believe in free speech, small government, the right to bear arms, and freedom of religion. He won't talk to us, he won't negotiate with us, instead he has the department of Home Land Security print out a memo saying we are the enemy. Does this count as a campaign promise broken? Or was he lying, Obama really has no interest in talking with his enemies we were just fooled into thinking the countries that want to destroy the USA were the enemies. My mistake. I didn't realize until after the election that I am the enemy of Obama and so are the other 100,000,000 voters who voted against him. We are now the terrorist that the US will not negotiate with. Is this what you voted for? Sorry Michael you did answer the question but you missed the point. Yes his is doing exactly what he said he was going to do talk to America's enemies. I give you that. But my point is I now question if America's enemies are Obama's enemies. He went over to talk with them and said he was sorry for the last 200 years of American History and its not his fault. Then at home he declared war on Christian's how cling to their bibles and believe in the constitution. He is refusing to have talks with us. So my conclusion is we are his enemy and not the terrorist. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Ron Paul Quiz --Do you know the answers to a few simple questions .? Will Ron Paul legalize drugs ? Will " " legalize prostitution ? Will " " bring home all our troops from around the world ? Will he balance the budget ? Will he cut spending and eliminate waste and un needed government bureaucracies LIKE the IRS , department of Education , home land security ,and dozens of others saving tax payers thousands of dollars every year they can invest save and use for their retirement and to aide their families in becoming independent from work a day jobs that lead to a small paycheck and a life of low wages and uncertainty .
What do U think Home Land Secuirty To Sheriff Joe Stop Arresting Illegals? Sheriff Joe PHOENIX (AP) -- The self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America" has never gotten so much resistance from the federal government. The Homeland Security Department wants Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., to stop arresting illegal immigrants whose only crime was crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without documents. The thing is, Arpaio doesn't much care. "I'm not going to bend to the federal government, I'm going to do my job," he said. "I don't report to the federal government, I report to the people." Shifting winds in Washington have led the Homeland Security Department to rework a federal program that has allowed Arpaio's deputies to make federal immigration arrests since February 2007.http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IMMIGRATION_ENFORCEMENT?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US Make sure your answer follows the community guidelines
If the immigration crackdown is crippling US Companies, how is this a positive in our economy? We are not only getting rid illegal immigrants that are tax payers and consumers of American, we are also crippling our own Companies. It's estimated at $1B!!! couldn't that be $1B less that we would need for the bailout? and then Home Land Security will spend more of our tax dollars to reanalyze the plan. How is this a postive in our economy? http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-24-3091305939_x.htm Study: Illegal worker crackdown would cost employers $1B WASHINGTON — The government's plan to crack down on illegal workers could cost employers more than $1 billion a year and legal workers billions in lost wages, a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says. Those costs are enough to trigger a federal law that would require the Homeland Security Department to analyze more thoroughly the effect of its proposal, said Richard Belzer, a consultant hired by the chamber to do the study. Belzer, a former economist with the Office of Management and Budget, looked at overall costs and multiplied the average costs by the number of employers in each category. He also used the Homeland Security's estimates that 2 percent of legal workers a year would lose their jobs because they can't resolve the Social Security mismatch. That adds up to between 37,000 to 137,000 unable to get work. Belzer estimated their lost wages would be from $8 billion to $37 billion. Belzer said the crackdown could cost employers who have to carry out administrative paperwork when their employees are affected. The loss of employees could also affect a company's ability to produce goods.
The Department of Homeland Security has been training pastors to quell dissent. Scared yet? http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/160807_quell_dissent.htm Yeah, yeah, I know, prison planet, what kind of a source is that? Well, the revolution won't be televised and neither will the clampdown... Except that a little tv station in LA is covering it and is linked from this link. My fellow Americans, what the heck are we going to do? This news, on top of Bush's executive orders that give him total power of all branches and levels (down to tribal) of govt and his order that allows him to seize our property on his say so and the FBI now saying the big threat to America comes from within and AT&T being positively revealed to be spying on our emails for the govt, the contract the halliburton subsidiary has to build detention camps - all this looks pretty bad for the old land of the free and the home of the brave. Are we that anymore? Do we know how to be? http://www.alternet.org/rights/42458/ the detention camps http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/22/193437/867 clergy response teams another executive order seizing power http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/03/AR2007070301245.html AT&T spying on us: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/21/att_nsa/index_np.html yes, al jazeera does real news - investigates, presents many sides. how sad things have gotten here. i don't know what else prison planet does - i was trying to find a quick link - but even a stopped clock.... Bush's order on taking our property: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html executive order giving bush control of our govt http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html Why do all the conservatives on this site block email? Anyway, Chavez of Venezeula, having been elected twice (unlike our current president who was first appointed) is not a dictator. Castro is. What's your point? Do you like dictatorship as long as Bush brings it to us? http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SC20060206&articleId=1897 more on the detention camps
Am I going to far, asking for the resignation of Janet Napalitano? Will you be doing the same? Would you agree with this letter I am writing to my Senators and Representatives? As a productive tax paying citizen and American patriot, I am outraged that the Department of Homeland Security would label me as a right-wing extremist who is a potential danger to the country on the order of a Terrorist. According to a report, authorized by DHS director, Janet Napalitano, because of my believes ... in the right to life for all, the 2nd Amendment, responsible government spending, and other right wing exremists views, she thinks I am a danger to the Country? I refuse to be silenced by this abuse of power. Freedom of association and freedom of speech are guaranteed to all Americans. Even Conservatives who are labeled as politically incorrect extremists. Furthermore, since I am a citizen in this country governed of, by and for the people, I am asking for the resignation of Janet Napolitano, as director of DHS. Anyone who would try to criminalize patriotic Americans has no business directing a government agency like Home Land Security. Since you represent me in Washington, I am asking you to ask for her resignation, and if she will not resign I call on you to put pressure on the President to Fire her.
The land of the free and the home of the brave? Justice Department report accuses the FBI of underreporting its use of the Patriot Act to force businesses to turn over customer information in terrorism cases, according to officials familiar with its findings. The FBI failed to send follow-up subpoenas to telecommunications firms that were told to expect them Overall, the FBI underreported the number of national security letters it issued by about 20 percent between 2003 and 2005, the officials said. In 2005 alone, the FBI delivered a total of 9,254 letters relating to 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents. Is this what we've become? we are not the British. We are the original republic built on the idea that we have freedoms that are untouchable by the government. nick- very nicely put.
To whom and how do I report an fraudulent immigration marriage? I work in an office for a company that is owned by people from another country. The office manager is very close to the owners, she worked with them at a prior company and helped them open this one. She agreed to marry the owners brother to bring him to this country in return for $10,000. Since then she has been promoted to Administrator of the company (a position she is not qualified to have by any laws). The brother does not live with her, he lives with his brother and his family. She has a boyfriend who comes to her house almost daily,(he has no idea of the arranged marriage). I have no idea what to do, I tried to call Home Land Security but the man on the other line said I had the wrong department, and hung up. I know this is illegal, and they are not even trying to hide it. Can any one help me?
Do think if Joe Arpaio followed the rules, he's still have his authority....? .....to crack down on illegal immigration? Why do people that are so passionate about getting rid of Mexicans always have to cross the line? .....and he states he'll continue to do so regardless of what Home Land Security says.......isn't that hypocritical? http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/10/arizona-sheriff-joe-arpaio-says-he-will-continue-his-controversial-crime-suppression-operations-despite-a-department-of-homel.html DHS strips Arizona sheriff of authority to patrol for illegal immigrants
Revolution. Read and tell me what you think. would you participate? if it were to happen.? I'm curious, If I were to lead a militant socialist movement, would any of you consider joining? Here me out before you begin to criticize me. IF I were to do this, here would be the basics to my plan. First, we need funding, Everyone attempt to get a loan or after getting a few weapons we can do planed bank robberies we can blow up a few transformers across town the cops and fire department would be there in full force is the explosions are violent enough, ok back to the point. we need firearms, we can either hit the streets and get small arms or pool together our resources and acquire Ar15s,Aks, what ever we can afford,most of these guns can be purchases or ordered to your local gun store. how ever most of these guns will only be able to function semi auto or burst, but that can be modified, after we have a decent amount of firearms begins the second phase, Training in street guerrilla warfare, That part is no problem, Third phase this one would have to be carried out perfectly, by this time hopefully we will have at least 30-60+ recruits, We carry out organized hits on all prisons federal or local depending on what state we are currently operating in. This is to create chaos for the media to feed on, the criminals will also aid us by distracting most of the law enforcement agencies, by this time after the first two or even the very first one! the FBI and CIA and NSA home land security ATF you name it will either be suspicious or already preparing to anticipate our next move. BUT they have alot to handle on right now including us. Fourth stage, after creating this chaos in at least 15 states, we need to enlist more aid by this time most of our resources will be running thin, We will seek aid from foreign countrys seeking to get a piece of America seeing how it is weakened, They can either risk an all out nuke war, or take a once in a life time opportunity to strike this pig infested country without getting their hands dirty, This isnt 100% sure so dont get your hopes up we might have to do this on our own, and enlisting aid from another country could prove to be our downfall, They can sell us out, or after we succeed destroy the newly rebuilt America. Before I continue, Id like to say I am a true believer of Socialism, I have had my share of leadership roles since I was child, I know not to let the power get to my head, we together can create a nation truly ruled BY THE PEOPLE the government IS THE PEOPLE, their is no prime minister president or single figure head or 12 old men and women but a nation ruled by THE PEOPLE. all shall have a voice. it may seem difficult to do but nothing is impossible man has gone to the heavens and back we have created AI, man has played god. Fifth stage, after at least cause 25, Half the united states of America to be in a state of emergency we shall Finally liberate our first State, Territory, Capital. We need a state with a good sized port, in order to flee if possible. By this time we would have taken small forts and have a decent arsenal and funding if all goes as planned, now begins negotiations, We offer a cease fire, knowing the "government" they will be very stubborn and turn down our cease fire. now the media will be in flames, Americans Killing Americans They will scream! what madness?! and the goverment will already be loosing its grip seeing how they have just shown how incompetent they are. losing half of the states, their troop morale will be low, these are men shooting at their friends brothers cousins mothers fathers, how can they fight anymore? how can they involve their familys in this? they wont. This is war on American soil, They will not be able to handle it their familys are at stake. Victory. I do not intend to cause any unnecessary deaths in the civilian populace. but the hundreds or thousands that die during the Chaotic third phase, will be remembered and honored and mourned for, I will live with it. I've estimated that if we were to do this it would take 15-20 years to accomplish. odds of success are against us, but if we are well organized nothing is impossible. Our organization will be known as The Free People(TFP) a name for our nation will be decided afterwords. I've also considered the possibility of failure to liberate ourselves a State or states, during the fifth stage, If we had acquired foreign help and our fight seems to be failing our "allys" will abandon us. We would then have to move all our forces and Civilians south to south america or mexico, if the mexican goverment chooses not to let our forces pass to south america then we have no choice but to take over mexico by force then leave it and head to south america, the U.S armed forces will be busy by the chaos we create in mexico and stalled if they are chasing us. once in South america we have the Amazon as a shield to protect us while we rest and prepare...for a second strike.
Why "Land Of The Free, Home Of The Brave" America now has staggering 7 million jailed citizens ? As many people around the World continue in their amazement over the total moral and economic collapse of the American Nation, a possible new clue as to why this so was revealed this past week with the United States Department of Justice announcing the staggering rate in which their government has been jailing their own citizens, and which now stands at 7 million Americans. According to these reports, 'A record 7 million people - or one in every 32 American adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year', and when these figures are added to the estimated 1 million prisoners of war held by the Untied States, all around the World, the once great American Nation has now become the greatest jailer of human beings the World has ever known. More importantly about these numbers, however, is the debilitating effect they are having upon the American society as a whole due to the fact that these horrific numbers are a direct reflection of the Totalitarian Fascist Nation they have truly become. So draconian has life in the United States become, in fact, that their Nation's internal security police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), this past week received permission to monitor all American citizens by eavesdropping on their cell phones, and which according to these reports they are able to do even if the cell phones are turned off. Just as devastating to the American people as the total loss of their freedoms is the economic nightmare they are now entering, and as we can read as reported by Britain's The Guardian News Service in their article titled "Plunging dollar will set world markets reeling", and which says: "The slowdown in the US economy, which has sent the dollar into freefall over the past fortnight, will have devastating knock-on effects in markets around the world, analysts warn. As the US slows, and consumers in the world's biggest economy feel the buying power of the dollar in their pocket declining, global growth will be hit hard, economists say. The greenback took yet another turn for the worse on Friday, after a survey of the US manufacturing sector showed output declining for the first time in more than three years." It has been well said by others, that when the American War Leader Bush announced after the September 11, 2001 that the American Nation was in danger of losing its freedoms, he was more right than many of these helpless people knew, but not to any terrorist have the American people lost their freedoms, but from the actions of their own government has this been done.
Three years from now do you think you'll want to be able to say "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for the bum" I can't say that now because I voted for the "lesser of two evils" and look what I got; an economy where people are losing their homes, a 100-year war and a department of homeland security sucking the liberty out of the "land of the free and home of the brave"! So three years from now I want to be able to say "Don't blame me, I voted for The Constitution Party candidate, Chuck Baldwin, you're the one who voted for this mess!"
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Am I closer to being a republican or a libertarian? I think the responsibilities of the federal government are raising an army, delivering the mail, coining money, negotiating with other countries, overseeing the infrastructure and energy availability, do a census every decade. That's about it. The nanny state is a horrible failure and is totally unnecessary. I think America should commit itself 3 goals: paying off the national debt, finding cures for cancer, and becoming and staying energy independent. I am pro-life. Oppose abortion unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's life. Like slavery, this is a situation that is probably only resolvable trough the constitutional amendment process. I have no problem with marijuana being decriminalized because so far, people haven't died from marijuana poisoning like other drugs. I'd also like to see steroids and payote decriminalized. I think people should be allowed to invest their social security in a Roth IRA. And it should be more like a savings and investment plan people own. Not money we pay in on so congress can dip into it as they see fit. I support a “his body his choice law” that would set an age of consent so a baby couldn't be circumcised. And I know there will be religious objections to this one. But we don't let the Muslims cut the clitorises off of baby girls, we don't have to tolerate the Christians and Jews cutting the foreskin off of babies. If a person of age requests one, fine. But don’t it to a person to young to consent. I don’t think the FCC has any business deciding what content is OK and what is indecent. That should be left to the viewers and listeners at home. Just like ignorance in the law is no excuse, I think “the media made me do it” is no excuse for commuting a crime. No jury should entertain the idea that a rap song or a video game made someone go shoot somebody. Human beings have brains and are not empties out there walking around awaiting instructions. I oppose helmet laws for motorcyclists as well as seatbelt laws for adults. I think capitalism is the best tool of combating poverty and improving the quality of life the human race has found so far. It isn't perfect, but is better than all the other economic systems. I don't think a church should have to worry that the IRS is going to come and take away their tax-exempt status because they say things the government doesn't like. I think education is a state level responsibility and there should be no federal department of education. Schools don't work like fast food franchises. What works for a school in San Francisco might not work for a school in Utah. The school should be funded and run by the local school board and the state board of education. Not by someone in DC 4000 miles away. I don’t think we should have to spend so much money running US military bases all over the world. We need to start closing the ones in stable regions where the threat of war in the next 10 to 20 years is extremely unlikely. I oppose public bailouts of the private sector. I think a state should be able to decide who is married. I’m not for the amendment to tell the far left states, they can’t decide who is married. And don't think states should be forced to accept gay marriage from other states. I think eminent domain is a horrible thing that shouldn’t be invoked unless absolutely necessary. I support Internet neutrally and oppose bandwidth caps. I think the endangered species act should be repealed because it doesn’t protect the animals, it just gives the government control of other people’s land. I oppose closed party primaries. All they are doing is attempting to capture them into their party. All I think a political party is, is a private organization that runs people for public office. I think private citizens’ caring concealed weapons is a good thing that detours crime. And gun laws are counter productive because only the good guys care to follow them. The bad guys do what they want anyway. I am totally fine with adjusting the drinking and gambling age to 18. I support women’s rights to breastfeed in public places. I support hunter’s rights. I think an era where a black man can be elected President of the United States proves we don’t need affirmative action laws. There is no reason why congress needs to regulate Major League Baseball or any other sport. That is not the role of government. Sports are private organizations owned by businessmen and entertain the public. And I don’t buy that preserving the integrity argument. What would congress know about integrity anyway? After a natural disaster, government has a responsibility to rebuild public property and provide emergency aid. However, government should not be rebuilding private property. America needs to be more like France and use more nuclear power. For Pete's sake, 80% of France uses it! I oppose laws that restrict what types of pornography may be sold to adults. I oppose the digit I oppose the digital millenium copyright act. I would like to go back to the copyright laws of previous eras. Like you can copyright something for 14 years and renew it once. Then it goes into public domain. Which was our first copyright law. Also I think “fair use” needs to be expanded, not reduced. I don’t think “For the children” is an acceptable shied for unpopular decisions. I still think it's stupid that in some places, nudism on private property is banned. If someone wants to visit a private nude camp or beach to run around naked, fine by me. I think topless laws are stupid also because men are allowed to run around bare chested. So far, has anyone on earth been damaged by seeing a breast? I think most of the laws that limit alcohol; fireworks, strip clubs, etc are stupid. Just let people do what they want as long as they don't hurt anyone else. I think we need to replace the income tax system with either a national sales tax or a flat tax. Our current system is unfair. I support open transfer within our public schools. We need to put troops along the southern boarder to backup the boarder patrol. I would like to see our southern border secure and require Mexican immigrants to follow the same process as ones from everywhere else in the world. Also, we need to raise fines for those who knowing and willingly hire illegal immigrants. I support a strict 2 strikes and you’re out drunk driving law. Mandatory prison and permanent removal of your driving privileges if you went through it once and didn't learn your lesson. 90% of the time, I don't think the schools need more money. I think they need to learn to use what they get. Private schools teach kids more with less money. Because if a teach doesn't do a good job, they don't get to stay. How about that? Just like the rest of us.
landmark hotel london processing fee? The Landmark ( Hotel ) London. 222 Marylebone Road London NW1 6JQ United Kingdom. Website : http://www.landmarklondon.co.uk Employment Recruitment Department ( Human Resources Department ) Contacts : Phone :+447031817864 Fax : +448704717298 Human Resources Department Reply Email : landmarklondon-hrd@consultant.com HRD MANAGER CHAT ID : HRD Manager ( ciarahassan ) , ADD ME FOR LIVE CHAT . Dear Michael, Congratulations! on your appointment . We earlier received your job application/cv and your interest in working with us ,after due considerations and verifications,The Landmark Hotel London is happy to employ you as a Waiter , We therefore attach your official Landmark ( Hotel ) London invitation letter for your visa and work permit processing and issuance by us towards your onward arrival to commence work with us as scheduled after the confirmation of your visa and working permit with The United Kingdom Immigration Service ( UKvisas ) Home-Land Office which we will help you to procure to facilitate the process and issuance of your visa and working permit as soon as possible by The United Kingdom Immigration Service ( UKvisas ) Home-Land Office.We will issue the original copy of your official letter of appointment and entitlements and send it to you through DHL or FEDEX to your home address on receipt of the requirements for the process and issuance of your visa and working permit towards your arrival to commence work with us as scheduled.Be rest assured that your appointment and working with us have been confirmed and intact towards your arrival to commence work with us as scheduled. As regards the security clearance certificate documents obtainable from The Clearance Co-ordinators Commission UK for people seeking job carrier in USA/EU countries,it is mandatory that we contact The Clearance Co-ordinators Commission on your behalf and as well grab your copies of the security clearance certificate documents to enable The United Kingdom Immigration Service ( UKvisas ) Home-Land Office process and issue your visa and working permit,i will also send the copy of the invitation letter to The United Kingdom Immigration Service ( UKvisas ) Home-Land Office.Every foreign worker who recently joined this hotel / migrated to USA/EU countries passed through this process.We do not issue invitation letters with payments or charges hence it is our policy to issue invitations to all our employees.For your visa and working permit processing,immigration services is in charge and as long as you provide all the documents they requested authentically,your United Kingdom visa and working permit is assured and authorized. N.B : Below is preview of your official letter of appointment and entitlements.Original copy will be issued and sent to your home address on receipt of the requirements and when we have got a security clearance certificate documents copy from The Clearance Co-ordinators Commission UK to enable us process for the application and process of your visa and working permit by The United Kingdom Immigration Service ( UKvisas ) Home-Land Office. ................................................................. Your official letter of appointment and entitlements Preview : DRAFTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THE BASIC CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT ACT.N0 66 OF 1995 ( AS AMENDED ) AND ANY OTHER STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS. It is hereby confirmed that ( Employee(s) Michael T. Shimizu with the following clearance certificate details ( USA/EU/INTP/CCCUSAEU/TCC958672-159 ) has been employed as a Waiter by The Landmark ( Hotel ) London residing at 222 Marylebone Road London NW1 6JQ United Kingdom. Employment will be effected at the above mentioned business address of the employer with the effect from 30th September 2009. The employer will be expected to work a maximum of 63 hours per week.The employee is entitled to 1/2 hour lunch break after 5 continuous hours of work.The above mentioned employee will receive a monthly/weekly salary in the amount of 5,100.00 Great Britain Pounds. Any overtime worked by the employee will be compensated at the rate of 1 1/2 x the normal rate of remuneration if the employee agrees to work over time.Any work on a Sunday or a public holidays will be compensated at a rate of 2 x the normal rate of remuneration. In the event that the employment is terminated it shall be effected by either party hereto with 30 days notice in writing. The employee is entitled to 21 continuous days leave per annum including WEEKENDS.The employee is entitled to sick leave,maternity leave and family responsibility leave as per the Basic Conditions Of Employment Act,1997. Due to the size,nature,structure,and operational requirements of the employer,the employee will be expected to perform general and other duties from time to time,which are not mentioned herein,although such duties will be relatives to the nature of the employee
Can someone translate this speech to its meaning? What main concerns are in the speech, whats its intentions , what can we learn from this message today The following is an excerpt from President Benjamin Harrison’s annual message, delivered December 9, 1891, in which he describes the Wounded Knee Massacre and the progress of the program to decrease Native American land acreage.* The outbreak among the Sioux which occurred in December last is as to its causes and incidents fully reported upon by the War Department and the Department of the Interior. That these Indians had some just complaints, especially in the matter of the reduction of the appropriation for rations and in the delays attending the enactment of laws to enable the Department to perform the engagements entered into with them, is probably true; but the Sioux tribes are naturally warlike and turbulent, and their warriors were excited by their medicine man and chiefs, who preached the coming of an Indian messiah who was to give them power to destroy their enemies. In view of the alarm that prevailed among the white settlers near the reservation and of the fatal consequences that would have resulted from an Indian incursion, I placed at the disposal of General Miles, commanding the Division of the Missouri, all such forces as we thought by him to be required. He is entitled to the credit of having given thorough protection to the settlers and of bringing the hostiles into subjection with the least possible loss of life. . . . Since March 4, 1889, about 23,000,000 acres have been separated from Indian reservations and added to the public domain for the use of those who desired to secure free homes under our beneficent laws. It is difficult to estimate the increase of wealth which will result from the conversion of these waste lands into farms, but it is more difficult to estimate the betterment which will result to the families that have found renewed hope and courage in the ownership of a home and the assurance of a comfortable subsistence under free and healthful conditions. It is also gratifying to be able to feel, as we may, that this work has proceeded upon lines of justice toward the Indian, and that he may now, if he will, secure to himself the good influences of a settled habitation, the fruits of industry, and the security of citizenship. It isn't clear to me of what the speech is about, I don't need it "Translated" I just need it explained of what he is talking about and his meaning of the speech.
This is breaking news Dallas bomb plot suspect stayed expired visa but Immigrant advocates say thats ok? WASHINGTON – Like millions of others classified by the government as illegal immigrants, the Jordanian teen accused of plotting to blow up a Dallas office tower last week arrived in the United States legally and stayed long after his visa expired. Federal immigration officials said Tuesday that Hosam Smadi, 19, arrived on a visitor visa, not a student visa as initially believed, in spring 2007. The difference is crucial: For foreign students, dropping out of school triggers a report to a central database and, often, a follow-up by immigration authorities. For those who arrive as tourists or workers, it's almost certain authorities won't take notice unless they apply for a driver's license, get pulled over or arrested or call attention to themselves. Officials in several federal agencies were reluctant to say much more about Smadi on Tuesday, citing the ongoing investigation. It's unclear when Smadi or his parents obtained the visa – Jordanians can receive visas that expire in five years, so he could have been as young as 11 or 12. Once a visa-holder arrives with a "B2" visitor visa – the sort Smadi apparently received – he has six months to seek an extension or leave the United States. Jordanian authorities say he spent time in detention when he was 14 or so, for a theft his father says he had reported to teach his son a lesson. It's unclear if U.S. authorities knew about that case, nor whether it would have held up his visa if they did. However he got here and however long he stayed, Smadi came under scrutiny because, the FBI alleges, he expressed jihadist views on a monitored Web site. "Unfortunately, a lot of people are coming in for the wrong reasons – to harm Americans or kill Americans, rather than as an innocent tourist," said Rep. Lamar Smith of San Antonio, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. "Once you come into the country on a tourist visa, you've passed 'Go.' People know they're home free and there's no effort made to keep track of them." In 1996, Smith wrote a bill – signed into law by President Bill Clinton – requiring the federal government to create a system to track both the entry and exit of foreign visitors. Thirteen years later, it's still a work in progress. The Homeland Security Department has been building a system called U.S.-VISIT for several years. The system compares biometric data with security databases, mostly to ensure that a foreigner arriving at a U.S. airport or land crossing isn't using someone else's passport. The data is stored. But, since most ports of entry don't identify departing foreigners, it's almost useless for tracking how many people – let alone which individuals – stayed longer than they were supposed to. Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, don't dispute that. Four of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had overstayed their visas, and that issue has vexed policymakers and informed the nation's immigration debate for years. Immigrant advocates agree that relatively little effort is expended to track down people who overstay their visas – though, unlike Smith and others, they say that's fine. "The government doesn't monitor computers and say: 'Aha.' Quite honestly, we don't have the resources for that," said Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Mostly what you'll pick up are people who are just trying to earn a living. I would rather see those resources spent on people who really mean us harm." http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/093009dnmetsmadivisa.3ed7e02.html
i received a letter from somone from south africa to transfer millions dollars to my account...is this a spam? this is the messageDear Sir/Madam, This letter may come to you as a surprise due to the fact that we have not yet met. I could have notified you about it at least for the sake of your integrity. But please accept my sincere apologies. I am Mrs. Rebeca Thambo , the wife to late Morgan Thambo the former Minister of Land and Agriculture in Zimbabwe, who was assassinated on the 18th of January 2005 by some of President Robert Mugabes aides. I managed to get your contact (email) details through your Country Online services here in Johannesburg South Africa in my desperate search for a trustworthy person to assist me in this confidential business. My late husband, Morgan Thambo urges President Robert Mugabe to hand over the power or he my husband will resign after the much talked about Land Reform Policy that denies white farmers their farm land which my husband highly opposed. After my husbands official resignation on the 16th of January2005, President Robert Mugabe, sent his aides police to beat up my husband in our home which lead to my husbands death. My late husband, Morgan Thambo made some deposit in a Security Company in the Republic of South Africa for purchasing of Farm Equipments amounting to US$22.7 MILLIONS (Twenty Two Millions, Seven Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) in cash. This amount of money was transferred into South Africa through diplomatic channels. After his death, I and my son being in Johannesburg , South Africa , decided to transfer the money out side the shores of South Africa for my family use since it is the only money that my family can lay hand on and I have all the original depositary documents of the money that was kept in a Security Company. My son and I are currently living in Johannesburg while waiting for an appeal lodged by a lawyer on our behalf to the Department of Home Affairs, for our refugee status application. We are having it difficulty in operating any type of bank transaction for the transfer of the money as the South African monetary policy is not favorable to people like us ((refugee) who have no permanent residence status. In acknowledgment of executive powers and the various business opportunities in your country, I am requesting your assistance in helping me transfer this money into your personal or business account. After the transfer is accomplished, my son and I will then follow you for subsequent investments in your Country. For your assistance in this transaction, I offer you 30% of the total sum for compensation. And all other expenses you incur during this operation will be credited to you. Please do not hesitate to contact me or my son. All documents concerning this transaction will be made available to you for your safety and as a proof that this money is not from any criminal origin. I must then emphasize that this operation/transaction is highly confidential and is to be kept as such. Kindly provide me with your full names, private phone and address or you can call on this my phone number for more details. {+27730987182} or email my son. Email: rebecathambo@hotmail.com Best regards, Rebeca Thambo Mrs.
Shouldn't the United States organize a Border Brigade? I think the United States needs to organize a military border brigade that has the responsibility to patrol the borders of our country. The Border Patrol would manage legal crossing points but the brigade would do the patrolling. The brigade would be made up of active duty and reserve military personnel. Reservists would enlist into the brigade where they would spend their initial tour patrolling and training in immigration control, anti-narcotic tactics, emergency management and disaster control. These people would then return to their homes where they would be assets to the local government and law enforcement departments. Members from all branches could volunteer for regular or short tours with the brigade. The brigade would have land, air and sea assets and would work closely with other federal, state and local agencies. The personnel of this brigade would provide greatly enhanced border security and valuable assets to local government upon their return home. Anyone have other ideas about how we can secure the borders? Response to What? - The Posse Comitatus Act would not apply as it is the federal governments responsibility to secure and protect our borders; that is why they have federal officers there now. To Warrior - You Bet I would and hope I would be the first one there! I spent 26+ years in the Army and would be happy to do it all over again; for America, not a lot of illegals trying to overun our country!
Mexican Gangs Maintain Permanent Lookout Bases in Hills of Arizona , Are you ok with this ? Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, federal agents tell Fox News. The scouts are supplied by drivers who bring them food, water, batteries for radios -- all the items they need to stay in the wilderness for a long time. Click here for more on this story from Adam Housley. “To say that this area is out of control is an understatement," said an agent who patrols the area and asked not to be named. "We (federal border agents), as well as the Pima County Sheriff Office and the Bureau of Land Management, can attest to that.” Much of the drug traffic originates in the Menagers Dam area, the Vekol Valley, Stanfield and around the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. It even follows a natural gas pipeline that runs from Mexico into Arizona. In these areas, which are south and west of Tucson, sources said there are “cartel scouts galore” watching the movements of federal, state and local law enforcement, from the border all the way up to Interstate 8. “Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers," a second federal agent told Fox News by e-mail. "The danger is out there, with all the weapons being found coming northbound…. someone needs to know about this!” The agents blame part of their plight on new policies from Washington, claiming it has put a majority of the U.S. agents on the border itself. One agent compared it to a short-yardage defense in football, explaining that once the smugglers and drug-runners break through the front line, they're home free. “We are unable to work any traffic, because they have us forward deployed," the agent said. "We are unable to work the traffic coming out of the mountains. That traffic usually carries weapons and dope, too, again always using stolen vehicles.” The Department of Homeland Security denies it has ordered any major change in operations or any sort of change in forward deployment. “The Department of Homeland Security has dedicated unprecedented manpower, technology and infrastructure resources to the Southwest border over the course of the past 16 months," DHS spokesman Matt Chandler said. "Deployment of CBP/Border Patrol and ICE personnel to various locations throughout the Southwest border is based on actionable intelligence and operational need, not which elected official can yell the loudest.” While agents in the area agree that southwest Arizona has been a trouble spot for more than a decade, many believe Washington and politicians “who come here for one-day visit” aren’t seeing the big picture. They say the area has never been controlled and has suddenly gotten worse, with the cartels maintaining a strong presence on U.S. soil. More than ever, agents on the front lines are wearing tactical gear, including helmets, to protect themselves. “More than 4,000 of these agents are deployed in Arizona," Chandler says. "The strategy to secure our nation’s borders is based on a 'defense in depth' philosophy, including the use of interior checkpoints, like the one on FR 85 outside Ajo, to interdict threats attempting to move from the border into the interior of our nation.” Without placing direct fault on anyone, multiple agents told Fox that the situation is more dangerous for them than ever now that the cartels have such a strong position on the American side of the border. They say morale is down among many who patrol the desolate area, and they worry that the situation won't change until an agent gets killed. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/22/mexican-gangs-permanent-lookouts-parkland/ Wow , there was a boatload of illegals in here .
ALSO BURNED BY ROSEDALE FINANCIAL!!!? What was thought to be an answered prayer turned into a nightmare! I received a phone call from Rosedale Financial Services saying me and my husband were approved for a loan. I had contacted lending tree.com via Internet, so I am guessing this is how Rosedale got my info. I gave Mr. Murphy, from Rosedale Financial the information he needed to process paper work, of course being thankful we found a loan. We received a contract via fax to sign that looked really legal with a loan number, loan amount, payment schedule, maturity date, ect..., and of course the COLLATERAL SECURITY PAYMEN, which we signed and faxed back to Rosedale Financial Services at 347-436-9088. After 2 weeks of phone calls and faxes back and forth, we just prayed that this was real. We spoke to Micheal Murphy at 1-888-290-0560 ext. 461 several times and then someone named Stanley Sheppard, who claimed to be Mr. Murphy's supervisor. I have tried all day today 8/25/09 to contact them because today is the day the money was going to be direct deposited to our account and the call goes to customer service voice mail or Micheal Murphy's voice mail. No return calls from them. I have requested my money be sent back and still no money or no communication with Rosedale Financial. I have filed a report with my local sherriffs department and also Money Gram and the Trade Commission. I even received an approval letter from Rosedale Financial Services stating that disbursements of the full loan amount of $115,000.00 via direct deposit on Aug. 24th by 5 PM Central. Any calls should be directed to Micheal Murphy at 1-888-290-0560 ext. 461. The letter was signed by a S. Jefferson (Phillip S. Jefferson CEO of Rosedale Financial Services). I had put a contract on a home and had land cleared which I was going to pay for out of the loan. The 1-888-290-0560 number is also connected to some kind of national answering service which I learned by error. If you dial the 1-888-290-0560 and when it answers hit the number 0 twice it will transfer you to this automated service and you can hear the options of how to set up your business mail box. In listening to this I also found out that these extensions at Rosedale financial should also have other numbers to contact such people as Micheal Murphy. The service of course will not give you those numbers. Other extensions at Rosedale Financial are as follows: 461 Micheal Murphy, 361 Scott Kamble, 0 Customer service and Stanley Shepard, 561 Greg Burnett. I was just trying these different extensions but of course all went to voice mail. Please let me know if anyone has found out anything about these people. Any feedback will be appreciated.
Why did the ADL pushed a lawsuit against AZ for trying to defend the US border but support Israel's policy of? killing women and children.... destroying Palestinian homes......... stealing land http://www.adl.org/PresRele/TerrorismIntl_93/5780_92.htm http://www.adl.org/PresRele/CvlRt_32/5804_32.htm New York, NY, July 6, 2010 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) welcomed the lawsuit filed today by the U.S. Department of Justice against Arizona's harsh new anti-immigrant law. Robert G. Sugarman, ADL National Chair, and Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement: ADL welcomes the Justice Department's action to prevent the ill-advised Arizona law from taking effect later this month. Immigration is a national issue, and a federal responsibility. Rather than allow states to adopt a patchwork of disparate immigration policies, we strongly support comprehensive immigration reform that will provide a unified and focused approach to strengthen border security in a workable and humane manner. The Arizona law poorly serves both our security and our values as a nation of immigrants.
Is America protected enough? The Bushites insists that if America was not in Iraq the terrorists would be coming here ( if the Department of Homeland Security were dumb enough to give them visas)..... But with all our troops fighting abroad, what about enemies much closer to home? CANADA: The Canadian Mounties have been making aggressive patrols on the northern border lately: Who would stop them from heading "due south" and laying waste to Chicago , for example? We all know that the Canadians, like the Martians towards Earth, envy America. MEXICO: All the talk in Mexico City is of "Reconquista" and "We will succeed even if Santa Ana failed". What's to stop the Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande and taking back their lost lands? And wouldn't the Hispanic community act as a fifth column aiding and abetting the invasion? CUBA: What's to stop Castro from launching a biological attack on Little Havana and its dissidents? So yuo see, America is terribly exposed. BRING THE TROOPS HOME! Defend the Mainland
Which party voted AGAINST these Obama tax cuts? FACTBOX - Tax details of US stimulus plan Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:20pm GMT Feb 17 (Reuters) - The $787 billion U.S. economic stimulus package contains about $287 billion in tax cuts, according to the latest congressional calculations on the value of the package and its impact on U.S. budget deficits. President Barack Obama signed the bill on Tuesday, saying he wants quick action to boost the struggling economy. Here are some of the major tax provisions in the bill: FOR WORKERS, CONSUMERS AND RETIREES * A "making work pay" refundable tax credit championed by Obama of up to $400 per individual and $800 for couples in 2009 and 2010. It is calculated at a rate of 6.2 percent of earned income and is phased out for individuals with adjusted incomes over $75,000 and couples with incomes over $150,000. * A one-time payment of $250 to Social Security beneficiaries, railroad retirees and veterans receiving benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. State government retirees not eligible for Social Security would also get the $250 payment. * Increases the earned income tax credit for low-income workers with three or more children. * Increases eligibility for the refundable child tax credit to more low-income workers. The bill reduces the income floor to $3,000 in 2009 and 2010 from the current floor of $8,500. * A new $2,500 tax credit for college education expenses. The credit phases out for individuals earning more than $80,000 and couples with incomes over $160,000. * An $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers for homes purchased between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2009. The tax credit phases out for individuals earning more than $75,000 and couples earning more than $150,000. * Temporary relief from the alternative minimum tax for millions of middle-class taxpayers who otherwise would be ensnared by the tax originally meant for the very wealthy. FOR BUSINESSES * Small businesses with gross receipts of up to $15 million can write off 2008 losses against five previous tax years. Current laws allows a two-year carryback of losses. Businesses will also be allowed to immediately write off more of their investments in computers and other equipment. * Businesses that repurchase debt at a lower amount than when it was issued will be able to defer taxes on it. Usually reduced or canceled debt is treated as income and taxed. The break applies to debt repurchased adjusted after Dec. 31, 2008, and before Jan. 1, 2011. * A tax break on capital gains from the sale of stock held in a small business for more than five years. * The bill raises about $7 billion in revenues by repealing a Treasury Department decision last year to liberalize rules that were intended to prevent companies in a merger from taking huge tax breaks on losses of firms they were acquiring. FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS * Creates a new category of tax-preferred bonds for investment in economic recovery zones for job training, education and economic development. * Creates a new category of tax-preferred bonds for the construction, and repair of public schools and the purchase of land for schools. * Creates a federal subsidy for state and local governments offering bonds that give investors credits against their federal taxes in place of interest payments. FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY * Extends tax breaks for wind facilities and other renewable energy facilities and provides other tax incentives to encourage development of renewable energy facilities. * Authorizes an additional $1.6 billion of new clean renewable energy bonds as well as $2.4 billion of energy conservation bonds to finance state and local government projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. * Extends tax credits for energy-efficient improvements to existing homes. * Provides a tax credit for purchase of "plug-in" electric vehicles of at least $2,500. The credit is increased depending on the battery capacity of the car purchased. * Provides a new 30 percent investment tax credit for facilities engaged in producing renewable energy technology and conservation. (Editing by Peter Cooney and David Wiessler) http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1248080420090217?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
Accouting help? I am at my wedding in florida and i have accounting homework, its a take home quiz of 10 questions. If anyone can help me with any of these i would greatly appreciate it, its due tonight and i am honestly pooped from the wedding so please help. It is a multiple choice quiz 1. Chapter 1—Introduction to Accounting and Business Question MC #70 (Points: 2) Al Shea is a stockholder and operator of SawTooth Company. As of the end of its accounting period, December 31, 2007, SawTooth Company has assets of $925,000 and liabilities of $285,000. During 2008, Al Shea invested an additional $50,000 in exchange for capital stock and was paid dividends in the amount of $30,000 from the business. What is the amount of net income during 2008, assuming that as of December 31, 2008, assets were $980,000, and liabilities were $255,000? 1. $725,000 2. $ 95,000 3. $ 65,000 4. $165,000 Save Answer 2. Chapter 1—Introduction to Accounting and Business Question MC #32 (Points: 2) The objectivity principle requires that 1. amounts recorded in the financial statements must be based on independently verifiable evidence 2. accounting principles must meet the objectives of the Security and Exchange Commission 3. the Financial Accounting Standards Board must be fair and unbiased in its deliberations over new accounting standards 4. business transactions must be consistent with the objectives of the entity Save Answer 3. Chapter 1—Introduction to Accounting and Business Question MC #20 (Points: 2) Which of the following is the best description of accounting’s role in business? 1. Accounting provides stockholders with information regarding the market value of the company’s stocks. 2. Accounting provides creditors and banks with information regarding the credit risk rating of the company. 3. Accounting provides information to managers to operate the business and to other stakeholders to make decisions regarding the economic condition of the company. 4. Accounting is not responsible for providing any form of information to stakeholders. That is the role of the Information Systems Department. Save Answer 4. Chapter 1—Introduction to Accounting and Business Question MC #67 (Points: 2) Land, originally purchased for $20,000, is sold for $75,000 in cash. What is the effect of the sale on the accounting equation? 1. assets increase $55,000; stockholders' equity increases $55,000 2. assets increase $75,000; liabilities decrease $20,000; stockholders' equity increases $55,000 3. assets increase $20,000; no change for liabilities; stockholders' equity increases $75,000 4. assets increase $75,000; stockholders' equity increases $75,000 Save Answer 5. Chapter 1—Introduction to Accounting and Business Question MC #57 (Points: 2) If total assets decreased by $47,000 during a period of time and stockholders' equity increased by $24,000 during the same period, then the amount and direction (increase or decrease) of the period's change in total liabilities is 1. $71,000 increase 2. $71,000 decrease 3. $23,000 increase 4. $47,000 decrease Save Answer 6. Chapter 2—Analyzing Transactions Question MC #90 (Points: 2) June26Equipment 14,000 Cash 4,000 Note Payable 10,000 ???????????? Which is the best explanation for this journal entry? 1. Purchased equipment on credit. 2. Purchased equipment, paid cash of $4,000, with the remainder to be paid in payments 3. Purchased equipment, paid cash of $4,000, with the remainder to be received in the future. 4. Purchased equipment, paid cash for the entire amount Save Answer 7. Chapter 2—Analyzing Transactions Question MC #59 (Points: 2) XYZ Hospital purchased X-ray equipment for $3,000, paid $750 down, with the remainder to be paid later. The correct entry would be 1. Cash 750 Accounts Payable 2,250 Equipment 3,000 2. Equipment 3,000 Accounts Payable 2,250 Cash 750 3. Equipment 750 Cash 750 4. Equipment Expense 3,000 Accounts Payable 750 Cash 2,250 5. Cash 750 Equipment 750 Save Answer 8. Chapter 2—Analyzing Transactions Question MC #12 (Points: 2) Which of the following types of accounts have a normal credit balance? 1. assets and liabilities 2. liabilities and expenses 3. revenues and liabilities 4. capital stock and dividends Save Answer 9. Chapter 2—Analyzing Transactions Question MC #36 (Points: 2) Cash was paid by J's Appliance Repair to creditors on account. Which of the following entries for J's records this transaction? 1. Cash, debit; Capital Stock, credit 2. Accounts Payable, debit; Cash, credit 3. Accounts Payable, debit; Account Receivable, credit 4. Accounts Receivable, debit; Cash, credit Save Answer 10. Chapter 2—Analyzing Transactions Question MC #28 (Points: 2) A debit balance in which of the following accounts would indicate a likely error? 1. Notes Payable 2. Dividends 3. Supplies 4. Salaries Expense Save Answer
Are my views closer to republican or libertarian? Sorry it's so long. Hopefully It can help me sort through whether I need to register as a republican or a libertarian. I think the responsibilities of the federal government are raising an army, delivering the mail, coining money, negotiating with other countries, overseeing the infrastructure and energy availability, do a census every decade. That's about it. The nanny state is a horrible failure and is totally unnecessary. I think America should commit itself 3 goals: paying off the national debt, finding cures for cancer, and becoming and staying energy independent. I am pro-life. Oppose abortion unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's life. Like slavery, this is a situation that is probably only resolvable trough the constitutional amendment process. I have no problem with marijuana being decriminalized because so far, people haven't died from marijuana poisoning like other drugs. I'd also like to see steroids and payote decriminalized. I think people should be allowed to invest their social security in a Roth IRA. And it should be more like a savings and investment plan people own. Not money we pay in on so congress can dip into it as they see fit. I support a “his body his choice law” that would set an age of consent so a baby couldn't be circumcised. And I know there will be religious objections to this one. But we don't let the Muslims cut the clitorises off of baby girls, we don't have to tolerate the Christians and Jews cutting the foreskin off of babies. If a person of age requests one, fine. But don’t it to a person to young to consent. I don’t think the FCC has any business deciding what content is OK and what is indecent. That should be left to the viewers and listeners at home. Just like ignorance in the law is no excuse, I think “the media made me do it” is no excuse for commuting a crime. No jury should entertain the idea that a rap song or a video game made someone go shoot somebody. Human beings have brains and are not empties out there walking around awaiting instructions. I oppose helmet laws for motorcyclists as well as seatbelt laws for adults. I think capitalism is the best tool of combating poverty and improving the quality of life the human race has found so far. It isn't perfect, but is better than all the other economic systems. I don't think a church should have to worry that the IRS is going to come and take away their tax-exempt status because they say things the government doesn't like. I think education is a state level responsibility and there should be no federal department of education. Schools don't work like fast food franchises. What works for a school in San Francisco might not work for a school in Utah. The school should be funded and run by the local school board and the state board of education. Not by someone in DC 4000 miles away. I don’t think we should have to spend so much money running US military bases all over the world. We need to start closing the ones in stable regions where the threat of war in the next 10 to 20 years is extremely unlikely. I oppose public bailouts of the private sector. I think a state should be able to decide who is married. I’m not for the amendment to tell the far left states, they can’t decide who is married. And don't think states should be forced to accept gay marriage from other states. I think eminent domain is a horrible thing that shouldn’t be invoked unless absolutely necessary. I support Internet neutrally and oppose bandwidth caps. I think the endangered species act should be repealed because it doesn’t protect the animals, it just gives the government control of other people’s land. I oppose closed party primaries. All they are doing is attempting to capture them into their party. All I think a political party is, is a private organization that runs people for public office. I think private citizens’ caring concealed weapons is a good thing that detours crime. And gun laws are counter productive because only the good guys care to follow them. The bad guys do what they want anyway. I am totally fine with adjusting the drinking and gambling age to 18. I support women’s rights to breastfeed in public places. I support hunter’s rights. I think an era where a black man can be elected President of the United States proves we don’t need affirmative action laws. There is no reason why congress needs to regulate Major League Baseball or any other sport. That is not the role of government. Sports are private organizations owned by businessmen and entertain the public. And I don’t buy that preserving the integrity argument. What would congress know about integrity anyway? After a natural disaster, government has a responsibility to rebuild public property and provide emergency aid. However, government should not be rebuilding private property. America needs to be more like France and use more nuclear power. For Pete's sake, 80%
What would you do.... I need help (life/job related)? I've got the skills to make things happen. Whether it's in the IT department (networking, programming, administrating skills, *nix familiarity, etc), or even out in the field (heavy equipment operations, some commercial/residential construction, landscaping, land surveying, etc). What kills me is that piece of paper with my name on it that says "I can do THIS stuff!". I taught myself nearly everything I know. I don't WANT a piece of a paper that tells everyone I'm qualified to do ______. Just let me prove it to you and we'll go from there. Want me to test the security of your network, sure. Build you a network? Ok. Want me to be your SysAdmin, write you software to help out with your work, build you a computer, test/debug your software... whatever. Chances are, I can do it. I shouldn't need a piece of paper to say "Yep, you sure can!". Yes, education IS important. But I AM educated. I'm self-taught. Anywho, I had my EMT-Basic a few years ago but it has since expired. I got burnt out after watching two friends die in a car accident and decided that maybe EMS wasn't for me. Nonetheless, I still have all that knowledge stored up top but little use for it right now. I don't think I can emotionally handle being an EMT any more. So here's the deal.... you're working for $8.50 an hour for a sub-contractor. Your job is to build huge wooden swingsets (Creative Playthings/Woodplay) all day (2 to 3 a day, then 2 pick ups at the warehouse). And do some cabinetry work about once a week. You leave the house at 6am and get home around 8pm every night... yet you can only bill for the time you spend on site (which is 2-3 hours per set on average). Your boss is a dick, and all but one of your coworkers are lying, lazy, cheap, sleazy bastards. So, your work environment blows. You somehow turned into your boss' and coworkers bitch. Even if you have your hands full with a 100lb beam, your trying to muscle in a 10" bolt through 4 holes (all the while holding the beam with one arm, moving it to line up the bolt, then moving the bolt again with the other arm, etc) and every fucking 30 seconds someone yells at you... "I need more 4 inch bolts! Go get me some bolts man!!!" or "I'm out of the #10's! Go get me some! Go get my drill gun too!".... despite them being perfectly fucking able to walk 10 feet and get them themselves, they call on you.... EVERY time. Hence, the laziness. Your boss doesn't pay for your mileage, either. You drive 100-200 miles per day on average and get nothing in return. Even though you bust your ass for your mediocre paycheck ($135 on an OK week and $235 MAX on a great week), you grit your teeth and get the job done and done RIGHT (unlike the guys who make $15-$20 an hour). Nearly your entire paycheck goes into your gas tank every week. Usually you have to use your credit card to get gas by Thursday, only to pay the damn thing off again on Monday and start all over. So.... Today, I quit. I know work is hard to come by right now but I started this job with $0 in my checking account and as of today I have $4.74 I'm stuck living with my parents, making $8.50 an hour (around $11,000/yr and 80% of that goes right back to my boss... who makes $5,000 a week but can't afford to give me a raise), slaving day in and day out and I don't have a damn thing to show for it. I work OVER 40 hours a week nearly every week, yet I can only get paid for 40. He "can't afford to pay me for overtime", so even if it's a 50 hour week.... it's 40 on my paycheck. I'm sore, I'm tired, I'm cut up and bruised.... but mostly, I'm pissed the fuck off. I wanted to whack that bitch with my hammer and then go for his jugular this morning (between trash talking and asking me for shit every 5 minutes), but I kept my cool. I just let it go. Basically, I don't know if I made a mistake or if I did the right thing. I have no way of telling as of right now but I wanted to get an outsiders' opinion. I have 5 possible job opportunities. Three of which could become careers, and two that could just hold me over until I find something better. Two as a land surveyor, Two in coffee shops, and one as a 911 Dispatcher. So not ALL is lost. But I'm still on the fence. What do you think? Did I make a mistake when I said to hell with my boss and his company? Or am I the only sane one in the picture here?
US rebukes Israel over housing plan! Is It True, Scull Cap Wearing Biden? US rebukes Israel over housing plan! Is It True, Scull Cap Wearing Biden? The announcement embarrassed Biden and cast doubt over plans for indirect Israeli-Palestine talks [AFP] Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has warned the Israeli prime minister, that his government was putting US ties at risk by failing to take action towards renewed Middle East peace talks, a US spokesman says. In a telephone call to Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday, Clinton expressed frustration over Israel's announcement on Tuesday to build new settlements on Palestinian land. PJ Crowley, the US state department spokesman, said Clinton told Netanyahu the announcement was a "deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship ... and had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process". "The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States' strong commitment to Israel's security," Crowley said. He said Clinton made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process. Asked if the tone of the call was angry, Crowley said "frustration would be a better term". American criticism Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said Clinton's unprecedented reaction had raised some hopes in the Palestinian territories. "These kinds of reactions are not customary from the US, regardless of whether its a Republican or Democratic administration in the White House," she said. "The Palestinians are watching very carefully. They have welcomed the American rebuke ... all eyes are on Washington - this is the closest ally to Israel and the country that has the most leverage to exercise in the Middle East." Clinton's rebuke of Netanyahu came at the end of a week of tense exchanges between the US and Israel, after the latter announced it was building 1,600 new settler homes in an area of the occupied West Bank. The announcement infuriated the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership, which threatened to pull out of US-brokered indirect "proximity" talks with Israel that Washington hoped would be the first step towards relaunching full peace negotiations after more than a year. It also embarrassed Joe Biden, the US vice-president, who was in Israel to emphasise the US president's commitment to Israel's security in the face of a possible Iranian nuclear threat. "The announcement of the settlement the very same day the vice-president was there was insulting ... an unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone," Clinton said in an interview with CNN. Since then Biden repeated calls for talks despite Palestinian demands that Israel first cancel the settlement project. Sabotage Crowley said George Mitchell, the US Middle East peace envoy, and Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state, had made numerous calls to regional leaders including Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and underscored continued commitment to the plans for indirect talks. Palestinians have called the announcement a deliberate attempt by Netanyahu to sabotage peace talks in which he will likely come under pressure to trade land for a deal. Netanyahu has said he did not know the announcement was coming and that nothing would actually be built in the area for years. But Crowley said: "We accept what Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, but by the same token he is the head of the Israeli government and ultimately is responsible for the actions of that government." Also on Friday, The Middle East diplomatic Quartet condemned Israel's plans and said unilateral actions would not be recognised by the international community. The group - the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations - in a statement condemned "Israel's decision to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem". "The Quartet reaffirms that unilateral actions taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations and will not be recognised by the international community," it added. Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010312193942951187.html
Who's profiting from the Iraq war? Military contractors that set up utilities, prepare food or make bulletproof vests are getting a big boost from the conflict. Here's who's getting the most money. In a few weeks, Gen. David Petraeus and the Bush administration will report to Congress on the progress of the U.S. military's troop surge in Iraq. But some of the war's winners are already clear: military contractors who supply everything from bodyguards to bombs, clean socks to ready-to-eat meals. "For the companies involved, this has been a real gravy train," says William Hartung, who tracks defense spending for the New America Foundation. The White House has proposed military spending of $647 billion in 2008. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the highest level since World War II -- topping even expenditures during Vietnam and the Reagan years, calculates Hartung. The current request for Iraq-related spending for 2008 is $116 billion, which would raise total Iraq war spending to $567 billion. Who's getting all that money? Sometimes it can be difficult to tell. "There isn't good visibility on where the money goes," says Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But you can get a snapshot of who's been getting a good chunk of the Iraq-related spending in two ways. The first step is to scour a vast database of more than $400 billion in annual government contracts, more than 70% of which are from the Department of Defense. It's called the Federal Procurement Data System. I turned to a private contractor of my own, Eagle Eye, for some (free) expert assistance in navigating the database. Eagle Eye mined the database for all Iraq-related contracts from 2003 through 2006 (the most recent year for which numbers are available). That catches everything from spending on base maintenance and bulletproof vests to ammo and combat boots. We tallied the numbers to find the top 10 companies out of thousands of contractors. The second step is to look at the Pentagon's own budget to see which companies are building the major weapons systems that support the war in Iraq. The Top 10 It's no surprise that KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs), a division of Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs) during the years we examined, tops the first list, compiled by Eagle Eye, with $17.2 billion in Iraq-related war revenue for 2003-2006. KBR is one of the largest construction and energy field-service companies in the world. It has a long history of collaborating with the U.S. government on war-related construction. Videos: Recent news on Halliburton In Iraq, KBR has been working on base construction and maintenance, oil-field repairs, infrastructure projects and logistics support. KBR got about a fifth of its revenue from the Iraq war in 2006, according to our calculations. "We are proud to serve the troops," says a KBR spokeswoman. "We are providing the troops with essential services and the comforts of home that allow them to stay focused on the dangerous and important missions they face daily." But why does a private-equity shop called Veritas Capital Fund take the No. 2 slot? That's easy. It specializes in investing in defense and aerospace companies. So Veritas owns a portfolio of companies -- and has a stake in others -- that pull down big Iraq-related contracts. DynCorp International (DCP, news, msgs), which Veritas bought in 2005 and spun out last year, offers security services and police training, as well as logistical services. Veritas' McNeil Technologies provides interpreter and translation services to the military and U.S. government agencies in Iraq. Another of its companies, Wornick, supplies military rations. It's also no big surprise that U.S.-based companies like Washington Group International (WNG, news, msgs), Fluor (FLR, news, msgs), Perini (PCR, news, msgs) and Parsons are on our top 10 list. They've landed many of the contracts to restore, repair and maintain oil fields, power plants, schools, public water systems and military bases. But the award of contracts to build the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting left many analysts scratching their heads. Environmental Chemical does munitions disposal, while International American Products sets up systems that deliver electricity to military camps. L3 Communications (LLL, news, msgs) offers security screening services, linguists, training and law-enforcement services, and some equipment replacement. Two companies that have seen their revenue shoot up the most in the ongoing military buildup -- largely because of Iraq-related spending -- are Armor Holdings and Renco, according to Hartung's calculations. They don't make our list because their overall defense-related revenue is too small. But they have done phenomenally well. Armor Holdings, which sells vehicle and personnel armor, saw defense-related revenue shoot up 2,747% between 2001 and 2006, to $634.9 million. Armor is now a division of BAE Systems (BAESY, news, msgs). Renco, which makes the extra-wide all-terrain vehicle known as the Humvee, saw Defense Department revenue rise 1,260% over the same period, to $1.9 billion. Misspent funds Not all of the Iraq-war money is well spent. "Because of the urgency of the war, a lot of these contracts have been subject to less scrutiny," says Hartung. Another problem is that the war has been funded outside of the regular defense budget process. Instead, it gets funded through "emergency" spending bills called supplementals, which offer much less detail and get less scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Hartung believes we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in allegations of fraud and corruption related to Iraq war spending. "Congress is starting to look into it, but it has not yet gotten down to specific questions," says Hartung. While all of these companies have benefited from the Bush administration's defense spending ramp-up since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, not all are equally exposed to the Iraq war effort, says defense sector analyst Paul Nisbet of JSA Research. In addition to ships and Gulfstream planes, General Dynamics (GD, news, msgs) makes ground vehicles and ammunition, so it generates a fair amount of revenue directly from Iraq war spending. But Lockheed Martin (LMT, news, msgs), which is working on next-generation military aircraft and also makes military electronics and satellites, has little direct exposure to the war, says Nisbet. Neither does Northrop Grumman (NOC, news, msgs), which makes ships designed to last three decades or more. Videos: Recent news on Lockheed Martin Of all the companies on my second list, KBR saw some of the biggest revenue gains from the Iraq war. It was No. 37 on the Defense Department's top-100 list of military contractors in 2002. By 2006, KBR had climbed to No. 6. source msn news
the corporate media says we are making progress. is this progress? 09/27/07 WaPo: Blackwater Faced Bedlam, Embassy Finds The initial U.S. Embassy report on a Sept. 16 shooting incident in Baghdad involving Blackwater USA, a private security firm, depicts an afternoon of mayhem that included a car bomb, a shootout in a crowded traffic circle and an armed standoff... 09/27/07 NYTimes: Official Calls Kurd Oil Deal at Odds With Baghdad A senior State Department official in Baghdad acknowledged Thursday that the first American oil contract in Iraq, that of the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas with the Kurdistan Regional Government, was at cross purposes with the stated United States... 09/27/07 MCT: 9 Bodies found in Baghdad Police found 9 unidentified dead bodies in the following neighborhoods in Baghdad: 6 were found in west Baghdad; 2 in Doura, 2 in Hurriyah, 1 in Bayaa and 1 in Amil. While 3 were found in east Baghdad (Risafa bank); 2 in Sadr city and 1 in Ur. 09/27/07 NPR: 'Lost Boy' Survivor Dies in Iraq A man who survived a civil war in Sudan died working as a translator for the U.S. Army in Iraq. Beer Ayuel spent several years in Atlanta before "The Lost Boys" were resettled here. 09/27/07 NPR: National Guard Works to Ease Soldiers' Return Minnesota's National Guard is taking some extraordinary steps to help troops returning from Iraq readjust to life at home. They have finished the longest deployment in the history of the guard — 22 months. 09/27/07 MNF: Apache hit by small arms fire lands safely A Task Force Marne AH-64 Apache helicopter was hit by small arms landed at a nearby Coalition base Sept. 26 south of Baghdad...The aircraft landed safely and no one was injured in the incident... 09/27/07 AP: U.S. soldier describes killing unarmed Iraqi In damning testimony, a U.S. soldier Thursday told a court-martial he was ordered by his staff sergeant to shoot an unarmed Iraqi man and that the sergeant then laughed and told the trooper to finish the job as the dying man convulsed on the ground. 09/27/07 AP: Roots of Iraq Weapon Probes Date to 2004 In the rush to arm Iraqi forces against a violent insurgency, U.S. military officials did not keep good records. About 190,000 weapons weren't fully accounted for, according to one audit.
So its all worth it because the lettuce gets picked? So it's more important to Obama to NOT come to the rescue of one of its states and their American citizens???? "Arizona governor signs tough immigration enforcement measure called 'misguided' by Obama." http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/sns-ap-us-immigration-enforcement,0,6383927.story 1. In October 2008, talk radio station KFYI reported that according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, five million illegal immigrants hold fraudulent home mortgages. 2. In 1999, law enforcement activities involving unauthorized immigrants in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas cost a combined total of more than $108 million. This cost did not include activities related to border enforcement. In San Diego County, the expense (over $50 million) was nine percent of the total county's budget for law enforcement that year. 3. Identity theft is associated with illegal immigrants who use social security numbers that do not belong to them, in order to obtain fake work documentation.[118] 4. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, "Through other violations of our immigration laws, Mexican drug cartels are able to extend their command and control into the United States. Drug smuggling fosters, subsidizes, and is dependent upon continued illegal immigration and alien smuggling. 5. As of 2005, Operation Community Shield had detained nearly fourteen hundred illegal immigrant gang members. 6. Waves of illegal immigrants are taking a heavy toll on U.S. public lands along the Mexican border, federal officials say.[131] Mike Coffeen, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Tucson, Arizona found the level of impact to be shocking.[131] "Environmental degradation has become among the migration trend's most visible consequences, a few years ago, there were 45 abandoned cars on the Buenos Aires refuge near Sasabe, Arizona and enough trash that a volunteer couple filled 723 large bags with 18,000 pounds of garbage over two months. 7. Illegal immigrants trying to get to the United States via the Mexican border with southern Arizona are suspected of having caused eight major wildfires in 2002. The fires destroyed 68,413 acres (276.86 km2) and cost taxpayers $5.1 million to fight. 8. An ABC News Poll,[160] indicates that most respondents (67%) believe the United States is not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from coming into the country. 9.------->>> PHOENIX (AP) — Gov. Jan Brewer ignored criticism from President Barack Obama on Friday and signed into law a bill supporters said would take handcuffs off police in dealing with illegal immigration in Arizona, the nation's gateway for human and drug smugglers. Does anyone know where Obama's priorities are? He seems to be more concerned with not enforcing federal law and bashes Arizona for doing what Obama ignores. Of course turning their backs on the people isn't strange to the dems, is it? 8 U.S.C. § 1325 : US Code - Section 1325 http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/8/12/II/VIII/1325
What are your thoughts (part 8)? Provide Short-term Relief to American Families *Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families. Obama will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on Obama’s long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief. *Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation. Barack Obama will close energy industry market loopholes and increase transparency to prevent traders from unfairly lining their pockets, while driving up oil prices at the expense of the American people. *Swap Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Cut Prices. With oil prices doubling in the past year, Barack Obama believes we have an economic emergency that requires a limited, responsible swap of light oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for heavy crude oil to help bring down prices at the pump. Eliminate Our Need for Middle Eastern and Venezuelan Oil within 10 Years *Increase Fuel Economy Standards. Obama will increase fuel economy standards 4 percent per year while providing $4 billion for domestic automakers to retool their manufacturing facilities in America to produce these vehicles. *Get 1 Million Plug-In Hybrid Cars on the Road by 2015. These vehicles can get up to 150 miles per gallon. Barack Obama believes we should work to ensure these cars are built here in America, instead of factories overseas. *Create a New $7,000 Tax Credit for Purchasing Advanced Vehicles. *Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Obama will establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) to reduce the carbon in our fuels 10 percent by 2020. Obama will also require 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels to be phased into our fuel supply by 2030. *A “Use it or Lose It” Approach to Existing Oil and Gas Leases. Obama will require oil companies to develop the 68 million acres of land (over 40 million of which are offshore) which they have already leased and are not drilling on. *Promote the Responsible Domestic Production of Oil and Natural Gas. An Obama administration will establish a process for early identification of any infrastructure obstacles/shortages or possible federal permitting process delays to drilling in the Bakken Shale formation, the Barnett shale formation, and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Create Millions of New Green Jobs *Ensure 10 percent of Our Electricity Comes from Renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. *Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source -- Energy Efficiency. Obama will set an aggressive energy efficiency goal -- to reduce electricity demand 15 percent from projected levels by 2020. *Weatherize One Million Homes Annually. Obama will make a national commitment to weatherize at least one million low-income homes each year for the next decade, which can reduce energy usage across the economy and help moderate energy prices for all. *Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology. Obama’s Department of Energy will enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology. *Prioritize the Construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline. As president, Obama will work with stakeholders to facilitate construction of the pipeline. Not only is this pipeline critical to our energy security, it will create thousands of new jobs. Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050 *Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. Obama's cap-and-trade policy will require all pollution credits to be auctioned, and proceeds will go to investments in a clean energy future and rebates and other transition relief for families. *Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change. Obama will re-engage with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) -- the main international forum dedicated to addressing the climate problem. He will also create a Global Energy Forum of the world’s largest emitters to focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues. Thank you Sophie and Gaia. McCain supporters have no reasonable response?
Driver in fatal Carson crash charged does immagrtion have something to do with this twice deported? A motorist's blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when his speeding truck plowed into a man's car, killing the man, in Carson last week, sheriff's deputies said Tuesday. Quirino Mateo Antonio, 30, of Lomita, who was driving 95 mph with a blood-alcohol level of 0.19, was charged Tuesday with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and drunken driving causing death and injury. The legal limit for driving in California is 0.08. "He's facing a lot of time," Carson sheriff's traffic Investigator Jon Tedder said. The Jan. 8 crash killed Juan Gabriel Ontiveros, a 32-year-old husband and father of four who was on his way home from his trucking job in Wilmington at 3:30 a.m. Investigators said Antonio was at the wheel of a Toyota Tacoma that hit Ontiveros' 1987 Cadillac Coupe Deville broadside at Sepulveda Boulevard and Wilmington Avenue. Investigators do not know if Antonio ran a red light. The intersection does not have red-light cameras, which would have taken photographs as the crash occurred. Deputies know Antonio's speed because his truck's speedometer froze when it hit the passenger side of Ontiveros' car without braking, Tedder said. The truck, heading west on Sepulveda, barreled through the Cadillac, which was traveling north on Wilmington. The collision completely knocked the Cadillac's body off the frame, bending it into a U shape. "The force of the collision was so great, Ontiveros' body hitting the side door broke the door latches and the door bolts," Tedder said. Ontiveros, who was not wearing a seat belt, was ejected from the car into the street. He landed 20 feet away. Had he been wearing the seat belt, Ontiveros would have been burned because the Cadillac burst into flames, Tedder said. Antonio, who was hospitalized along with his passenger, had attended a party earlier in the evening. A case of beer was also found in his truck. Some bottles were opened and some were unopened. Many shattered in the crash, Tedder said. "He was confused as to where he was," Tedder said. "He thought he was in Harbor City. He thought he was at Sepulveda and Vermont instead of Sepulveda and Wilmington." Antonio works as banquet manager at the Bluewater Grill in Redondo Beach. A manager declined to comment. Antonio pleaded not guilty Tuesday at his arraignment at the Compton courthouse. Commissioner Ron Slick ordered him held on $500,000 bail. His attorney, Philip DeLuca, did not return a message. State Department of Motor Vehicles records show the Mexican national had obtained a driver's license in February 2003, but state authorities later deemed it invalid. Records show officials had made a request that he show proof of his Social Security number to validate the license. That request remained current Tuesday. In August 2003, Antonio was deported from the United States after he was detained in San Ysidro and determined to be an illegal immigrant, authorities said. Antonio was ordered to leave the country and told he could not return legally for five years. Ontiveros' family held his funeral Monday, calling for an ambulance when his mother fainted three times during the service, said his brother-in-law, Efren Hernandez. Ontiveros and his wife, Juanita, had been married for 17 years. Together, they had four children - a 16-year-old girl and boys ages 14, 13 and 8. They bought a two-bedroom home a year ago. He worked two trucking jobs to pay the mortgage. Hernandez said his sister has accepted the fact that she will raise the children alone. "My brother-in-law wanted them to have a profession," Hernandez said. "She is going to try to keep his promise to her kids to help them go to college. She has accepted he is dead. It's still painful." http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_7983087
To whom and how do I report an fraudulent immigration marriage? I work in an office for a company that is owned by people from another country. The office manager is very close to the owners, she worked with them at a prior company and helped them open this one. She agreed to marry the owners brother to bring him to this country in return for $10,000. Since then she has been promoted to Administrator of the company (a position she is not qualified to have by any laws). The brother does not live with her, he lives with his brother and his family. She has a boyfriend who comes to her house almost daily,(he has no idea of the arranged marriage). I have no idea what to do, I tried to call Home Land Security but the man on the other line said I had the wrong department, and hung up. I know this is illegal, and they are not even trying to hide it. Can any one help me? Jessie D The reason I am concerned is the fact that I have been told by countless people that if they are found out, I can get into trouble for not reporting. I have been told that I could be charged with crimes against the government.
Can someone translate this speech to its meaning? The following is an excerpt from President Benjamin Harrison’s annual message, delivered December 9, 1891, in which he describes the Wounded Knee Massacre and the progress of the program to decrease Native American land acreage.* The outbreak among the Sioux which occurred in December last is as to its causes and incidents fully reported upon by the War Department and the Department of the Interior. That these Indians had some just complaints, especially in the matter of the reduction of the appropriation for rations and in the delays attending the enactment of laws to enable the Department to perform the engagements entered into with them, is probably true; but the Sioux tribes are naturally warlike and turbulent, and their warriors were excited by their medicine man and chiefs, who preached the coming of an Indian messiah who was to give them power to destroy their enemies. In view of the alarm that prevailed among the white settlers near the reservation and of the fatal consequences that would have resulted from an Indian incursion, I placed at the disposal of General Miles, commanding the Division of the Missouri, all such forces as we thought by him to be required. He is entitled to the credit of having given thorough protection to the settlers and of bringing the hostiles into subjection with the least possible loss of life. . . . Since March 4, 1889, about 23,000,000 acres have been separated from Indian reservations and added to the public domain for the use of those who desired to secure free homes under our beneficent laws. It is difficult to estimate the increase of wealth which will result from the conversion of these waste lands into farms, but it is more difficult to estimate the betterment which will result to the families that have found renewed hope and courage in the ownership of a home and the assurance of a comfortable subsistence under free and healthful conditions. It is also gratifying to be able to feel, as we may, that this work has proceeded upon lines of justice toward the Indian, and that he may now, if he will, secure to himself the good influences of a settled habitation, the fruits of industry, and the security of citizenship.
Illegal person in the country? If you know an illegal alien that has committed a crime would you report him to the police or the Home land security department?
This letter was published in a South African Newspaper.Your thoughts? TIME FOR THE TRUTH For the past 13 years we have heard how all our problems are the fault of the long since departed apartheid regime. The ANC spin doctors resort to all sorts of excuses when things go wrong, as they have been doing for the past 10 years. Now is the time for the truth. In 1994 the ANC took over a country that was in a healthy state of repair, with an Education system rated one of the top ten in the world. A Health system that produced pioneers in many fields of medical research and enjoyed the respect of the medical fraternity the world over. A transportation system that was the envy of the rest of Africa, and a network of roads equal to the best in Europe. A police force that controlled crime. A water supply rated one of the cleanest in the world. What have we now? An education system rated at the bottom end of a field of 50, with a required pass rate of 33% (the lowest requirement of any system in the world, and still our pupils are unable to achieve this miserable standard). We have a health system where those in control believe beetroot and garlic will cure AIDS, where babies die in hospitals through lack of knowledge, medication, equipment and efficient care. Where untrained staff forget to check regularly on patients in serious condition. We have a Minerals and Energy Minister who suggests that businesses close for certain periods to conserve electricity whilst South Arica suffers power failures, but until very recently continued to supply electrical power to our northern and eastern neighbours. We have cholera outbreaks because of contaminated water supplies in rural areas. We have a crime rate which is just about the highest in the world. We have a government composed of officials under investigation for corruption, theft, fraud, consorting with criminals, drunken driving, speeding and many other forms of law breaking. Time to tell the truth – the ANC government is incapable of running our country. And their policies border on insanity. The ANC policy of Affirmative Action has stripped the country of 75% of its skilled population and is responsible for the deprivation of the constitutional and social rights of the white population. The practice of putting black people in a position way above their ceiling of competence is now showing the inevitable signs of efficiency erosion at all levels. Along with the inevitable rise in prices and lowering of standards of service and living. The Black Economic Empowerment policy has empowered a certain group of people (all ANC members) at the expense of the entire population. And has cost, and continues to cost, our country billions of rand. The ANC government officials, both local and national have embarked on a policy of rewarding themselves with excessive salaries, and ridiculous bonuses, for utter inefficiency. Eskom is another case in point, with an alleged R143 million paid in bonuses, whilst the country suffers an energy crisis due to ignorance and lack of planning. This crisis now threatens the economy of our country. I am sure many of those who operate a Telkom service have had the pleasure of holding on for 49 minutes when contacting Telkom's help line. (My personal best was 59 minutes on January 26, 2008. I must admit that I was helped after that period, which was a refreshing change). We have a crime rate that is the envy of the Russian Mafia, who will no doubt soon be relocating to Johannesburg and Cape Town. (The Sicilian Brotherhood are already here it seems, enjoying the friendship of some of our Commissioners and Ministers). We have roads which, in the rural areas, are slowly crumbling away, if they have not already disintegrated. We have roads in our towns and cities which have more potholes than a slice of Swiss cheese. We have traffic lights which do not work for at least 2 - 3 days each month. As a reward for this farcical and criminal inefficiency, the government hands out awards and bonuses to all concerned. Let's be honest. Several Ministers should have been fired by the President 4 years ago. Those involved in Health, Safety and Security, Education, Home Affairs, Land Affairs, Labour and Minerals and Energy should long since have walked the plank. The latest madness is to disband the one department that stands between absolute corrupt government and the man in the street, the Scorpions. In fact our democracy, such as it is, is under severe threat. We have a former Minister of Defence who bought fighter planes which the airforce did not want, and who, it is alleged by a former ANC Minister, received R39-R50 million for his troubles. We have two submarines (cost R1.6 billion a piece, it is alleged) which are languishing in Cape Town Harbour as no one can drive them. We also have a fancy army, which costs millions monthly, with no one to fight. Which is why we have millions unemployed and without shelter. And 4 million refugees, which we cannot afford to cater for. But if one criticises the present ANC government, (which should be one’s democratic right), one is labeled 'racist'. But the biggest racists are those who accuse others of racism, and everyone knows where they are. Let's be honest, tell the truth and declare quite openly, the ANC are incapable of running this country. The Pied Piper. Marky/Amsterdam - The pair of you distinctly need to disengage your head from your anus. The writer comments on the current situation in South Africa. How on earth can you use the past (which the pair of you clearly know nothing about) to justify the present? Chickyboo/Malaliekie - I have no SA phone book but this appeared under the letter: Fax letters to 011 907 9348 before 10am on Mondays. Now perhaps you can establish from the number which Newspaper that is and lets us know. Then of course we can look at the Newspaper's Website. Chickyboo/Malaliekie - I have no SA phone book but this appeared under the letter: Fax letters to 011 907 9348 before 10am on Mondays. Now perhaps you can establish from the number which Newspaper that is and lets us know. Then of course we can look at the Newspaper's Website. MJ - Prior to handing over to Zanu PF, Ian Smith said that Mugabe would wreck the Country within 20 years. He was right as are the South Africans whoi forecast the same scenario for South Africa. That is not racism. That is foresight and realism.
Should we give money to poor ppl? ZAKAAT (Alms) Ramadan is the month of giving and benevolence, the Messenger was more benevolent than a falling rain. Muslims are encouraged to emulate the Messenger of Allah (saas), to assess and pay their Zakaat during the month of Ramadan, thus combining the two pillars of Islam at the same time. Zakaat (alms) is the name of what a believer returns out of his or her wealth to the neediest of Muslims for the sake of the Almighty Allah. It is called Zakaat because the word Zakaat is from Zakaa which means, to increase, purify and bless. Who Should Give Zakaat The obligation of Zakaat is mandatory on every Muslim who possesses the minimum Nisaab, whether the person is man, woman, young, old sane or insane. Because the proof of Zakaat in Al-Qur`an and Sunnah is general and does not exclude young or insane. Allah (SWT) stated that: "Of their goods take alms so that thou mightiest purify and sanctify them..." (Al-Qur`an, 9: 103) Imam Ibn Hazim said that every Muslim young or old sane or insane needs to cleanse his or her wealth with Zakaat because of generality of the evidence. Anas bin Malik reported that the Messenger of Allah (saas) said: "Trade with the money of the orphan, lest it is eaten up by Zakaat." (At-Tabraani) In another Hadith `Amru bin Shuaib related from his grandfather that the Messenger of Allah said: "Whoever is entrusted with money of an orphan should trade with it and should not leave it sitting to be used up by charity." (Tirmidhi) The point of reference in these reports is that the Messenger (saas) urged the trustee on the estate of people who due to age or other reasons cannot manage their own financial affairs, to invest it in a business that will yield a return and make it grow until they are in a position to do so themselves. For, if proper investment is not made with an ophan's inheritance, it will be depleted by charity, thus leaving the orphan with little or nothing. The Nisaab The Lawgiver, Allah has prescribed the minimum amount that is obligatory for Zakaat in different ranges of properties, and that minimum amount is known as nisaab. The reason for nisaab is to ensure that no one is forced to give Zakaat out of what he or she does not have, and that no wealth goes without Zakaat. Nisaab is also an insurance against the tyranny of the state to tax the poor and or the neediest as is the case in many countries. Nisaab is a reference point for the average Muslim who is not sure whether he possesses the minimum wealth on which Zakaat is obligatory. The wealthy need not worry about the Nisaab. Zakaat is obligatory on their entire wealth and must be paid out at the end of financial year that they set for their Zakaat. The Nisaab will not be valid unless it fulfills two conditions: 1) The amount that has reached Nisaab must be the excess or surplus known as "faadil" from one's essential needs such as food, clothing, housing, vehicles, tools and machinery that is used in business. The essentials for living are exempted from Zakaat. Although what constitutes nisaab may change from one country to another, the amount that is needed for the basic needs of living in different countries is very similar, because the market place determines the prices, whether it is an official market or a non-official market. In the poorest countries people do without or live below the poverty standard, and that is why many go hungry or without basic essentials. However, we must realize that Zakaat is an act of worship (ebadah) like Salaat. The element of intention (niyyah) is necessary, and we should not overly rely on state agencies to determine for us the requirements of our religious duty. The so called the "consumption basket" (that is poverty level as determined the social security administration which are updated every fiscal year) may not be the same as what Islam considers minimum Nisaab. In the industrialized countries, the consumption basket may include items that are not necessarily essential, such as entertainment, extra clothing, variety of food, eating in restaurant or eating at home, owning more than one car as opposed to having three cars in the driveway, drinking water as opposed to juices, eating regular food or special "health" food. This is why I believe it is essential that we do not lose site of the fact that Zakaat is ebadah of wealth, like salaat and fasting. Non Muslims may consider all the things mentioned above as essentials while Muslims will not. Indeed, no Muslims in good standing will attempt to hide behind the label of consumption basket so as to evade Zakaat. Nisaab eliminates the possibility of injustice or unfair treatment of the Zakaat payer. To suggest that if we do not follow the rules of International Monetary Fund or the arbitrary figures of social security administration or department of agriculture we will be doing injustice to the Zakaat payer is ludicrous. 2) Nisaab must mature, that is the money is not liable for Zakaat unless it has remained a full year in the possession of a person. This is the understanding of the majority of the scholars. Imam Abu Hanifah (raa) said: "What should be considered is the existence of nisaab at the beginning and the end of the Zakaat year set by the payer". It does not matter if the nisaab money increases or decreases during the calendar year, as we will explain later. This condition does not include farm produce, for it is due on the day it is harvested. Allah (SWT) stated: "... But render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered..." (Al-Qur`an, 6: 141) According to Imam Al-`Abadi, (raa) Zakaat money is of two kinds: one that by its nature can not be invested and Zakaat of this category is due on the day of harvest. This includes all the farm produce that is liable for Zakaat. The other is wealth that can be invested in the hope of a good return, like cash, gold or silver, because the opportunity is there that cash in one's hand can be invested for a good return. This includes currency investment, merchandise and livestock. Their Zakaat is not due until they have matured in one full year. The proof of this condition is the Hadith related by Ibn `Umar that the Messenger of Allah (saas) said: "He who acquires property is not liable for Zakaat on it till a year passes." According to Ibn Rushd (raa) this is the understanding of the majority of scholars, including the four rightly guided Khalifahs. Zakaat Of Salaries The condition of yearly term maturity applies to the commodities on which the Lawgiver said Zakaat is due, and this includes silver, gold, modern paper currency and livestock. Paper currency is analogous to silver, therefore, it takes the case of silver. There is no Zakaat on salary, earned income from wage earners or professionals or independent contractors until such money matures in a full year. There is no such thing as paying your Zakaat on the day you receive your paycheck. What the wage earner must know is that he or she can purify that money with charity (sadaqah) anytime they cash the paycheck. Allah (SWT) states: "And in their wealth and possessions (was remembered) the right of the needy, he who asks and he who (for some reason) was prevented (from asking)." (Al-Qur`an, 51: 19). We can deduce from the concept of "yearly maturity" of wealth on which Zakaat is due as encouraging, among other things, saving on the part of the Zakaat payer, and enhances the chances for eradicating poverty, because if the poor receives his rightful share of Zakaat there will be the possibility that he can take Zakaat money and invest it and become a Zakaat payer instead of recipient. This possibility will be lost if he receives few Zakaat dollars every month. To say that the wage earner just brings his check home and spends everything on necessities and lives from check to check with nothing left over means the person is eligible for Zakaat. Using farm produce as analogous to salary for Zakaat is wrong analogy. As Imam Al-`Abadi said, these are two different categories of money. $2, 500.00 cash can be invested by the person and expect a good return whereas it will be difficult to invest a bushel of corn. It can be traded as a commodity, which is what it is. This why we must know that analogy has rules that must be followed before it is applied. Certainly the jurists are unanimous that earned income, known as almal al-mustafadah, should either be added to existing money and wait until that amount reaches maturity and then give their Zakaat; or if there is no money on hand the time one possesses this money, he or she should wait one full year before assessing it for Zakaat. Zakaat is one of the five pillars of Islam and a vital element in the religion of Islam. It is the twin sister of Salaat. In Al-Qur`an, Allah (SWT) stated: "So establish regular Prayer and give regular Alms; and obey the Messenger; that you may receive mercy." (Al-Qur`an, 24: 56) Also, "...Establish regular Prayer and give regular Alms, and loan to Allah a beautiful loan...." (Al-Qur`an, 73: 20) "And they have been commanded no more than this: to worship Allah, offering Him sincere devotion, being true (in faith); to establish regular Prayer and to practice regular charity; and that is the religion right and straight." (Al-Qur`an, 98: 5) In a famous Hadith reported by `Umar Bin Khattab (raa), the Messenger of Allah (saas) responded to Jibreel (as) and said: "... Islam is to testify that there is no deity but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, to perform the prayer, to pay Zakaat, to observe fasting in Ramadan, and to make pilgrimage to the house of Allah if you are able to do os...." (Bukhari, Muslim) There is consensus among Muslim scholars that it is mandatory on every believer who is financially able. Whoever knowingly denies this obligation, while he possesses the minimum amount, would be considered a disbeliever and a renegade from Islam. Whoever is stingy, or tries to cheat, is considered among the wrongdoers. Zakaat is mandatory on four categories of items. 1. Farm produce of seeds and fruits, such as wheat, barley, rice, dates, raisins, cocoa, pistachios, coffee, cashews. Allah (SWT) stated: "O you who believe, give of the good things which you have (honorably) earned, and of the fruits of the earth which We have produced for you..." (Al-Qur`an, 2: 267) Also: "... But render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered..." (Al-Qur`an, 6: 141) Thus, these two verses and many others indicate that Zakaat is due on farm products that reached the minimum amount (nisaab). No farm product is liable for Zakaat unless it is a product that is considered as food and can be stocked or saved naturally without refrigeration. If the produce is perishable fruit, such as grapes, there is no Zakaat. But if one sells them they will pay their Zakaat on the profit earned when it matures. The nisaab is 612 kilos, which equals 1,346.40 lb. There is no Zakaat on produce that is less than this amount. If the farm produce or crops grow dependant on rainwater, or without any man's labor or irrigation, Zakaat due is one-tenth of the total. If it is grown by irrigation, then the Zakaat due is half of one-tenth of the total produce. There is no Zakaat on fruits like apples or oranges or vegetables which are perishable and need refrigeration for long storage, but they should be considered as any income if the profit earned from their sale reaches the amount of Zakaat, then Zakaat should be given. 2. Cattle, including camels, cows, sheep and goats, that are freely graze and are raised for trade and production. For Zakaat to be obligatory, the number must reach the nisaab. The nisaab of camels is five, of cows 30, of sheep and goats, 40. By freely grazing is meant the animal goes out to feed without the owner buying or bringing it feed or hay. If it is not a grazing animal, there is no Zakaat in the stock by itself. The stock will, however, be considered as articles of trade, then will be assessed for Zakaat as articles of trade when the profit earned from their sale reaches the amount by itself or in combination with other articles of the trade. 3. Merchandise and goods of trade and commerce. This includes anything that is obtained for the business of buying and selling: land, animals, food provisions, fabric, cars, spare parts, etc. This inventory is evaluated annually and assessed for Zakaat, whether the value is the same as the amount spent on it, more, or less. The owners of grocery stores, like any other business, must evaluate every item and give their Zakaat. Simple bookkeeping of inventory, orders, cash on hand, and credits, that is non-delinquent loans, will give one a good picture of the zakaatable assets. But if one is unable to account for everything in the store or shop, he should assess it according to his ability until he is sure that his conscience is clear. There is no Zakaat on what is within one's dwelling or property which includes food, drinks, furniture, houses, animals, cars, clothes and shoes. The only exception is gold and silver. There is no Zakaat on assets from rentals or lease, whether they are apartment units, taxi cabs, etc. That is, there is no Zakaat on the apartment units, buses or cars for rental like yellow cabs company or trucks for rental or equipments. But there is Zakaat on the proceeds or incomes from these rental assets if these assets reach the executable amount, either by themselves or in combination with other assets. Business Activities Many scholars are of the opinion that any business activity that brings any return to the entrepreneur or investor should be assessed for Zakaat. If the activity has a prescribed nisaab, such as gold, silver or paper currency, that nisaab is applied for Zakaat. But if the business has no declared nisaab, its nisaab is the nisaab of commerce, one reason being that most business activities are considered as commerce and because, in actual fact, it is not factitious business name, such as GM, Apple or GE that is taxed for Zakaat, it is the individual investor. We do not tax cooperations such IBM, Apple, GM or Rajihy Bank but the individual investors, share holders and owners of these corporations. Indeed, there are enough rules in Zakaat books to cover all types of business activity, be it cash or risk investment. If the business activity is analogous to commerce, it should be assessed the same rate as commerce. To subject the business to a different Zakaat rate of 10%, which is the rate of farm products instead of its correct rate of 2.5%, the rate of commerce, is unfair and unjustified. Besides, there is no proof, even a weak one, to justify this unfair arbitrary taxation. The difference between 2.5% and 10% is high. The Zakaat system is not like a state revenue collection, but Allah's `ebadah. However, if a business person decides to give more than 2.5% after deducting all the expenses including depreciation, Allah (SWT) will accept it from him. 4. Gold and silver, whether used for commerce or jewelry. Allah (SWT) states: "...And there are those who bury gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah: announce unto them a most grievous penalty. On the day when heat will be produced out of that (wealth) in the fire of hell, and with it will be branded their foreheads, their flanks and their backs. This is the (treasure) which you buried for yourselves: taste you, then, the (treasures) you buried." (Al-Qur`an, 9: 34-35). By hoarding is meant refusal to give it in the path of Allah, which includes Zakaat. In a hadith reported by Abu Hurairah (raa), the Messenger of Allah (saas) said: "For the owner or possessor of gold and silver who does not fulfill its obligation, on the Day of Resurrection it will be cast into sheets of fire and be branded on his forehead, side and back. Whenever it cools it is to be repeated for him in a day whose length is the length of fifty thousand years, until the judgement is rendered among the people." (Muslim). By its obligation is meant assessing it for Zakaat. In another version: "No possessor of a treasure who does not give its Zakaat." Zakaat is mandatory in gold and silver, irrespective of its form: in coins, raw or nugget, or jewelry for wearing, or for rent, because of the generality of evidence of Zakaat without any detail. In a report by Abdullah bin `Amr bin `Aas (raa), he related that a woman came to the Messenger of Allah with her daughter. On the daughter's wrist were two heavy gold bracelets. The Messenger asked her, "Do you pay Zakaat on this?" She replied, "No." The Messenger said: "Would it please you that Allah will encircle you with two bracelets of fire?" The reporter commented that she took them off and threw them down in front of the Messenger, and said: "They are for Allah and his Messenger." (Ahmed, Tirmidhi). The Messenger's wife reported that: "The Messenger entered into my house and saw in my hand a huge ring made of silver, so he asked, `What is this?' I replied, `I made them to beautify myself for you, O Messenger of Allah.' He inquired, `Do you give their Zakaat?' I said, `No,' or `Allah willing.' He said: `It will suffice you in the hellfire.'" (Abu Dawuud). Zakaat is due on gold when it reaches the amount of (nisaab), which is 20 Dinaar. According to a hadith, the Messenger said: "No Zakaat on you is due until it reaches 20 dinaar." (Abu Dawud) The Islamic dinaar (currency) is one mithqal, a unit of weight which weighs four and one quarter of a gram. Thus, the nisaab is 85 grams. This is equal to $30.00 US dollars. Similarly, there is no Zakaat on silver until it reaches five oqiyah, because the Messenger said: "There is no Zakaat on less then five oqiyah." (Muslim/Bukhari) Oqiyah is equal to forty Islamic dirhams. The nisaab is 200 dirhams. One dirham is equivalent to 595 grams. The zakaatable amount in both the gold and silver is a quarter of a tenth only. Paper Currency There is Zakaat on modern paper currency because it is equivalent to silver. During the early days of Islam, silver and gold were the currency of exchange minted into dirham for silver and dinaar for gold. Silver, not gold, had a larger circulation. Thus many scholars are of opinion that silver should be the standard for the paper currencies of today because that is more advantageous to the Zakaat payer, as it raises the minimum nisaab whereas gold lowers it. Although both metals are no longer circulated, they are still considered as a security against ever fluctuating paper money. Silver should be used as a standard to assess Zakaat annually, not paper currency, even if the currency is hard currency like the US dollar, Yen and Deutch Mark or Pound Sterling. Because these currencies are backed by political decisions that may not have anything to do with the economy, the value and strength of this paper money depends largely on all haram usury system of interest rates. Thus, the Zakaat payer should look up in the local newspaper's financial or business section for the price of silver which is currently about $3.82. per ounce. The nisaab, then, is 596 x .04=28.80 ounce multiplied by$3.82= 90.91. therefore. The nisaab is about $100.00, as of December 17, 1991. The nisaab should be based on the market value of the currency. If the money is hard currency, there will be no problem, but if the money is a non-marketable currency, like most currencies in the third world countries, the nisaab should be based on the black market, which realistically reflects the value of the currency on the money market. In any case, the silver rate should be used to assess the Zakaat. If the nisaab is determined, the zakaatable amount is 2.5%, or .025 multiplied by the amount. For instance, if the zakaatable amount is $56,000.00 it will be 56,000. x .025 = $1,400.00. Zakaat is due on gold, silver, and or paper currency, whether it is cash in hand or credit in the hands of borrowers. Zakaat is due on debts or cost of merchandize or rental money. If the borrower is a wealthy person that you know will pay back the debt, the lender (that is Halaal lending free of usury) should include that money in the assessment and give its Zakaat. However, one can delay Zakaat on a loan until he receives payment, then return its Zakaat for the past years that he was unable to assess for Zakaat. If the borrower is poor or is refusing to pay the debt, there will be no Zakaat on the money until the lender receives the money. Then he will assess it for Zakaat of one past due year, but there will be no Zakaat in the years before that. There is no Zakaat on precious stones such as diamonds, or metals such uranium, regardless of their value. Gold and silver, of course are assessed for Zakaat. However, if a person possesses any of these stones or metals, he should give their Zakaat like any other articles of trade. If a person possesses diamonds or any other precious stones as an edge against inflation or for ornaments, there will no Zakaat on these. How To Give Zakaat Zakaat may be assessed and returned in two ways: a) Make a record of all money earned, either daily or monthly, which has reached the nisaab and remains in the treasury. The Zakaat of that money would be due one year later on the same day the money was earned and reached nisaab. This means every month's income must be set aside and assessed for Zakaat and so will be the case for the rest of the months. For instance, the income of January, 1991 will be assessed for Zakaat in January, 1992, and the income of February, 1991 will be assessed for Zakaat in February 1992, etc. This method of assessing Zakaat is very difficult because it entails complete bookkeeping of daily or monthly earnings. b) The best way is to set a day or a month, preferably Ramadan, for your annual Zakaat return calendar, say Ramadan 1st, 1412. One year later on the same day Ramadan, 1413, your Zakaat is due and payable. Whatever is in the savings is due for Zakaat, regardless of whether all the amount in the savings reaches a year or not. For instance: if you have $20,000.00 in the savings account on the 1st of Ramadan, 1412 and one year later by the 1st of Ramadan, 1413 there is $50, 000.00, your Zakaat will be assessed for $50,000.00, that is: $50.000.00 x .025= $1,250.00. If, on the other hand, by the 1st of Ramadan, 1413 the amount in the savings is $15,000.00, your Zakaat will be for the amount in the savings, that is $15,000.00 x .025= $375.00. This method is the best because it is easy to assess, meets one's obligation and relieve one's conscience. The Recipient Of Zakaat Knowing who qualifies as recipient of Zakaat is an important aspect of Zakaat collection in Islam. Fortunately, Allah (SWT) has been merciful to us in that He Himself spelled out the people eligible to receive Zakaat. In Surah Tawbah He stated: "Alms are for the poor and the needy; and those employed to administer (the funds); for those whose hearts have been (recently) reconciled (to truth); for those in bondage and in debt; in the cause of Allah; and for the wayfarer: (thus is it) ordained by Allah, and Allah is full of knowledge and wisdom." (Al-Qur`an, 9: 60) In this verse Allah enumerated the people who deserve this divine welfare, and they are as follows: The poor and the needy. These are individuals, and those under their care, to live on. By the poor and needy is meant the people whose income or salaries, or whatever material goods they have, fall short of the cost of living in a given environment and economy. The poor and the needy should be given what will suffice them and their families for one full year. The needy who want to get married and have no means should be given enough for this purpose, and so, too, the student who needs money for tuition, rent, food, and books. The working poor should be given supplementary Zakaat. But the wealthy, or any person with enough income to live on should not be given Zakaat, even if they asked for it. Instead, they should be warned and admonished for asking for what does not belong to them. In a hadith reported by Abdullah bin `Umar, the Messenger of Allah (saas) stated: "A man keeps on asking others for something till he comes on the day of Resurrection without any piece of flesh on his face." (Bukhari/Muslim). This hadith indicates a humiliating appearance before Allah (SWT) that awaits a person who asks illegally. Some said: this hadith implies Allah will punish a person with the very limb, the face, that he used to impress on others to give him their money unlawfully. In another hadith reported by Abu Hurairah, the Messenger of Allah said: "Whoever asks people for their money so as to get rich, he is asking for flames of fire. It is up to him to ask for more or less (he should beware)." (Muslim) This hadith indicates the severity of the punishment, the more one asks the more punishment, the less one asks the less the punishment. In another hadith, reported by Hakeem bin Hizaam said: I begged the Messenger of Allah and he gave me. I begged again, and he gave me. I begged again and he gave me. He then said: "This money is green and sweet; he who receives it from people with a cheerful heart, Allah will bless him in it; he who receives it, with an avaricious mind would not be blessed in it. He will be like the person who eats without being satisfied; and the upper hand is better than the lower hand" (Muslim) This hadith gave an analogy between money and green, ripened fruit that people love to eat. Thus, it indicates that both are greatly loved but easily finished. For money that is easy come easy go, one must be careful about the punishment that awaits the illegal eater. If a person asks for Zakaat and there are no signs of wealth, and he does not know that he should not ask, or a person who is well and able, who can work, but does not; if these people do not know that it is not permissible for them to ask, it may be given anyway. In a hadith reported by Ahmed, Abu Dawud, and Nasa'e, two men came to the Messenger of Allah (saas) and asked for Zakaat. He looked at them closely and found them strong and able, he said, "If you want I will give you. But you should know that the wealthy or an able person who can work has no share in Zakaat" (Ahmad) Those who administer the Zakaat department, assigning people for collecting, bookkeeping, making lists of people eligible for Zakaat, and a financial calendar. These people will receive Zakaat as compensation for their work, even if they are wealthy. This does not include a person who works as an agent for one or two wealthy people to take Zakaat for himself. They should donate their time for Zakaat disbursement and do it with honesty and truthfulness. If they can not, they should be paid or rewarded for their time. In a hadith related by Abu Musa Al-Ashi`ari (raa), the Messenger of Allah said: "A trustworthy Muslim executor is the one who executes completely what has been entrusted to him of Zakaat money in good faith." (Bukhari) That is, he will give the Zakaat money to any of the eligible recipients of Zakaat. He should carry on the duty voluntarily, but if he can not distribute the money without being paid, the Zakaat payer should pay him for his work. The payment for the service of distributing Zakaat should not come out of Zakaat money. The new converts to Islam whose hearts we want to harmonize into the fold of Islam, either because their faith is weak or we are afraid of their being harmed, should be given Zakaat to strengthen their Iman or until we no longer fear their harm. The bonds person who has contracted with his master to buy himself out of bondage deserve Zakaat and should be given enough to pay off their debt to the master and be freed themselves; similarly, Muslim prisoners of war if their freedom is tied to monetary payment, deserve Zakaat sufficient enough to secure their release. On the other hand, if a pearson accidently killed someone and have no means to pay off the blood money, he should be helped from Zakaat funds. The people in debt are of two kinds: (A) The guarantor, who takes the responsibility of someone else's debt so as to reconcile the two warring parties, to extinguish the fire of fitnah between them. If the person requests Zakaat money to pay off this debt he should be given it, which will encourage him to continue in this noble cause. In a hadith reported by Qubaysah Al-Hilaaly (raa), he said I was under debt (hamaalah) and I came to the Messenger (saas) and begged him to help me pay it off. The Messenger told him: "Wait until we receive charity, so we will command that it be given to you." However, the Messenger stated: "O Qubaysah, begging is not permitted except for one of three categories of people: A man who has incurred debt (as guarantor to reconcile blood wit) for him begging is permissible till he pays that off, after which he must stop it; a man whose property has been destroyed by calamity which has smitten him; for him begging is permissible till he gets what will support life or will provide him reasonable subsistence; and a man who has been smitten by poverty, the genuineness of which should be confirmed by three knowledgeable members of his people; for him begging is permissible till he gets what will support him, or will provide him subsistence. Besides these three, Qubaysah, begging is forbidden for every other persons, and one who engages in such consumes that which is forbidden." (Muslim) (B) Whoever incurs debt and has no money to pay it back will be given from Zakaat to help pay his debt, whether the amount is large or small; or his creditor should be paid directly on his behalf, so long as it is paid off. Zakaat can be given in the path of Allah. By this is meant to finance a Jihad effort in the path of Allah, not for Jihad for other reasons. The fighter (mujahid) will be given as salary what will be enough for him. If he needs to buy arms or some other supplies related to the war effort, Zakaat money should be used provided the effort is to raise the banner of Islam. The wayfarer. This is the traveller who in a strange land runs out of money. He or she deserves Zakaat, enough money to take him back to his country, even if he is wealthy and can find someone to loan him the money. On his part, he should take with him on his trip sufficient money, if he is wealthy, so that he will not need Zakaat. Zakaat money can not be used to pay off other obligations, such as giving Zakaat money to people you are obligated to take care of by law; or Zakaat money can not be used to pay for hotel and food expenses. It is, however, permissible to give Zakaat to a wife or family member, provided it is not part of their daily living expense money, but is needed to pay off a debt for one's wife if she can not pay it. So is the case for one's parents if they can not pay their debt. Zakaat money may be given to members of the family for their expenses if one is not obligated to take care of them financially. The wife can pay off a debt of her husband with Zakaat money, because he may be among the eight eligible recipients and she is not obligated to spend on him as he is on her. The eight eligible recipients of Zakaat can be denied their right to Zakaat without proof from Al-Qur`an or Sunnah. In a hadith reported by Ibn Mas`ud, his wife Zaynab heard the Messenger of Allah order women to give Zakaat, so she asked the Messenger (saas): " O Messenger of Allah, you commanded us to give Zakaat, and I have jewelry that I wanted to assess for Zakaat, but my husband Abdullah bin Mas`ud claimed that his son deserves it more than anyone." The Messenger replied: Your husband Ibn Mas`ud is right. Your son deserves your charity more than anyone." In another hadith reported by Salman bin `Aamir, he said the Messenger of Allah said: " Charity to the poor is only charity, but charity to the rest of kind is charity and maintenance of relations (sillah)." (Nisaee) No loan should be written off as Zakaat because Zakaat is taken and given. Allah (SWT) said: "Of their goods take alms...." (Al-Qur`an, 9: 103) And in a Hadith the Messenger has been reported as saying: "Allah has mandated on you Zakaat to be taken from the wealthy and to be given to the poor." Thus, writing off debt is not taken. For instance, If you loan a person money, you can not write off that loan as a Zakaat. However, it could be written off as sadaqah charity. Furthermore, loan, delinquent or not, is considered an absent money, therefore, it should not be transacted in Zakaat. for Zakaat is assessed only in cash in hand. Besides, debt money is valued less than cash in the hand, and using that money for alms is like exchanging good money for bad. The assessor of alms should try to give his Zakaat to an eligible person, but if he makes a mistake and gives it to an ineligible person it is accepted. In a hadith related by Abu Hurairah, he said the Messenger said: "A man expressed his intention to give charity, so he came with his charity and placed it in the hand of an adulteress. In the morning the people were talking and saying charity was given to an adulteress last night. The donor said: O Allah, to thee be the Praise - charity to an adulteress! He then again expressed his intention to give charity, so he went out with it and placed it in the hand of a rich person. In the morning the people were talking and saying charity was given to a rich person. The donor said, O Allah to You be the praise - charity to a rich man! He then expressed his intention to give charity, so he went out with his charity and placed it in the hand of a thief. In the morning the people were talking and saying charity to the thief. So the man said, O Allah to You be the praise (what a misfortune that charity has been given) to the adulteress, the rich and the thief! Then someone came to him and told him your charity has been accepted. As for the adulteress the charity might become the means whereby she might restrain from fornication. The rich man might perhaps learn a lesson and spend from what Allah has given him, and the thief might thereby restrain from committing theft. (Muslim/ Bukhari) http://www.islamfortoday.com/beliefs.htm
30 days Plan to resemble a command economy in 30 days: free market and progress for all? Rockwell's Thirty-Day Plan By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. When Eastern Europe broke free in 1989, we all realized just how little thought had been given to the transition from socialism to capitalism. Mises had told us the collapse was coming, and we should have been prepared. As America comes to resemble a command economy, we need a transition plan here too. Yuri Maltsev proposed a "One-Day Plan" for the U. S. S. R. We're not in that bad a shape (yet), so we could do it in 30 days. DAY ONE: The federal income tax is abolished and April 15th is declared a national holiday. The 40% reduction in federal revenues is matched by a 40% cut in spending. The budget is still almost twice as big as Jimmy Carter's. DAY TWO: All other federal taxes are abolished, including the corporate income tax, the capital gains tax, the gasoline tax, "sin" taxes, excise taxes, etc. Businesses boom, and the few legitimate federal functions are funded with an inexpensive head tax. People who choose not to vote need not pay it. (Note: this was a mainstream view in the 19th century.) DAY THREE: The federal government sells all its land, freeing up tens of millions of acres for development, mining, farming, forestry, oil drilling, private parks, etc. The government uses the revenue to pay off the national debt and other liabilities. DAY FOUR: The minimum wage is reduced to zero, creating jobs for ex-federal bureaucrats at their market wage. All pro-union laws and regulations are scrapped. The jobless rate falls dramatically. DAY FIVE: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, like the rest of the Labor Department, is sent to that big hiring hall in the sky. Without detailed economic statistics, future economic planners will be blind and deaf. DAY SIX: The Department of Commerce is abolished. Big business has to make its own way in the world, without subsidies and privileges at the expense of its competitors and customers. DAY SEVEN: The plug is pulled on the Department of Energy. Oil and gas prices plummet. DAY EIGHT: All regulatory agencies, from the Interstate Commerce Commission to the Federal Trade Commission, are deep-sixed. Competition is legalized. DAY NINE: HUD is squashed like a bug. There's a buiding boom in cheap, private, apartments. DAY TEN: The interstate highways reopen as private businesses. Road entrepreneurs price travel according to consumer demand. Using modern technology, drivers get bills once a month. Credit risks-and drunks and dangerous drivers- aren't allowed on the road. Non-drivers no longer subsidize car owners. DAY ELEVEN: Government welfare is wiped out. Bums work or starve. The deserving poor find a cornucopia of private services designed to make them independent. Private charity explodes, as the American people, already the most generous in the world, find their incomes almost doubled, thanks to the tax cuts. DAY TWELVE: The Federal Reserve closes its open-market operations and stops protecting the banking industry from competition. But banks can now engage in all the non-bank financial activities previously forbidden to them. The business cycle, which is caused by monetary expansion through the credit markets, is liquidated. DAY THIRTEEN: Federal deposit insurance is scrapped. All insured deposits are redeemed from federal assets, which include the personal assets of high-level government employees. The threat of bank runs forces banks to keep 100% reserves for their demand deposits, and prudent reserves on all other accounts. There are no more inherently bankrupt banks propped up by the government, at taxpayer expense, and no more bail outs. DAY FOURTEEN: The shaky fiat dollar is defined in terms of gold, with the ratio determined by dividing the government's gold stock by all existing dollars on that day. DAY FIFTEEN: The federal government sells National and Dulles airports to the highest bidder, and stops all subsidies to other socialist airports around the country. All constraints on airline prices and service cease. It costs more to fly during peak hours than off-peak, but overall, air travel drops in price. DAY SIXTEEN: All government regulations that create and sustain cartels are abolished, including those for the post office, telephones, television, radio, and cable TV Prices plummet, and a host of new and unforeseen services becomes available. DAY SEVENTEEN: Centrally planned agriculture, as imposed by Hoover and Roosevelt, is repealed: there are no more subsidies, payments-in-kind, marketing orders, low-interest loans, etc. Farm prices drop. Entrepreneurial farmers get rich. Welfare farmers go into another line of work. The poor eat like kings. DAY EIGHTEEN: The Justice Department shutters its anti-trust division. Companies, big and small, are free to merge – up, down, or sideways. Stockholders can buy any other company, or sell their stock to anyone else. Marginal producers can no longer battle their competitors with bureaucratic weapons. DAY NINETEEN: The Department of Education flunks the constitutionality test, and is kicked out. Private charities set up remedial reading and writing programs for the former bureaucrats. Federally subsidized sex education and other anti-family programs go out of business. Local school districts become responsive to parents or close, pressured by a fast-growing private school sector (which many more parents can now afford). DAY TWENTY: All federal monuments are sold, in some cases to non-profit groups based on the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association, which owns and runs George Washington's home. The VFW buys the Vietnam memorial. There is much bidding for the Jefferson and Washington monuments. Nobody wants FDR's, so it's torn down and the land sold to a farmer. (With the federal government cut back to its constitutional size, much of Washington reverts to productive uses like agriculture, as in late 18th century.) DAY TWENTY-ONE: The computerized financial and political dossier maintained by the government on every American is erased. The public wanders through the federal offices to make sure, in a reprise of the East Berliners' visits to Stasi headquarters. DAY TWENTY-TWO: Equal rights are granted to all Americans, even members of non-victim groups. There is no affirmative action, no quotas, no set-asides, no public accommodations laws. Private property and freedom of association are fully restored. DAY TWENTY-THREE: The EPA is cleaned out, with all "clean air" and similar big-government laws repealed. Ten thousand lawyers leap from their balconies. Private property is established in air and water. Americans harmed by pollution are free to sue the polluters, who are no longer protected by the federal government. DAY TWENTY-FOUR: Americans are given complete freedom of contract, restoring rationality to malpractice and product liability law. DAY TWENTY-FIVE: Government scrambles for more assets to sell (i.e., the National Zoo, also known as Washington, D.C.) to pay off the liabilities of the privatized Social Security system. DAY TWENTY-SIX: Porno artists have to earn their own livings, as the National Endowment for the Arts tries to raise its budget through sidewalk painting sales. DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: Foreign aid is outlawed as unconstitutional, unjust, and un-economic. Foreign politicians have to steal their own money. The World Bank, IMF, and United Nations close their super- luxurious doors. DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: The American people are given the unrestricted right to keep and bear arms. DAY TWENTY-NINE: The Defense Department is reoriented towards defense. American troops come home from all around the world. We adopt a policy of armed neutrality, remembering the Founding Fathers' teaching that we could not have an empire abroad and a constitutional republic at home. DAY THIRTY: All tariffs, quotas, and trade agreements are put through the shredder. Americans can trade with anyone in the world, without barriers or subsidies. Japanese car prices drop an immediate 25%. In just 30 exhilarating days, we have established the outlines of free market. Radical? Maybe so. Me, I can't wait until Month Two. __________ Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Mises Institute and editor of LewRockwell.com. rockwell@mises.org. This article appeared in The Free Market, March 1991. Please Read This : http://www.mises.org/story/2685
What to konw about Ethanol Industry ? and the result of this political idea? another state plan ? Each year in early October my grandfather summoned my entire family to come to his farm and harvest potatoes. Hunched over on all fours, each person quietly filled their buckets with these "earth apples." Each year he used a different field for his crop. One year he would plant potatoes, the next year beets or wheat. The potato replaced the grain diet on the European continent. It became survival food, especially during the two World Wars. Dumplings, potato salad and mashed potatoes are only a few potato dishes found in a long list in the European cuisine. The easy adaptability of the potato to grow almost anywhere in the world can produce an annual crop of 322 million tons of potatoes. Many African countries greatly benefit from growing the potatoes because they make them more self-sufficient in their food production. In the age of nation building, stamping out of global warming, and driving for energy self-sufficiency, the new state appointed rival of the potato is maize, which is better known as corn – the yellow cob-born grain used in the production of ethanol fuel. As a blend with gasoline, biofuel powers automobiles and farm equipment. Its environmental friendly side effect is to reduce greenhouse gases, and some say it is the key to everlasting energy security in the future. Ethanol fuel production received its first stimulus after the Arab oil crisis in 1973. During 1978 the US federal government sealed the project with the Energy Tax Act authorizing tax exemptions by blending gasoline with 10 percent ethanol. A floodgate of free money opened up for farmers and ethanol producers as the energy and agricultural departments spent billions of dollars on subsidies. This year’s estimates are between $5.5 billion to $7.3 billion of our tax dollars to be handed out to corn growers. The incentives for farmers to grow corn in the US is not to meet the needs of a market that entails a healthy profit. Instead, they plant corn because they get paid to do so by a federal government interested in ethanol production. And as it turns out, producing ethanol is an expensive process. Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) out of Illinois, one of the largest producers of ethanol, received as much as $10 billion in subsidies between 1980 through 1997 along with favorable tax breaks costing taxpayers an average of $30 for every dollar ADM earns in profits. Add to that the $500 of federal and state subsidies it takes to reduce one metric ton of CO2-equivalent, one can literarily say that it is governments who heat up the globe by burning cash. This year corn production has already increased by 15 percent over last year. Even President Bush, not a green lover but excited about ethanol, is expecting that farmers will plant 90.5 millions of acres of corn in 2007 in order to meet the demands of ethanol production of 132 billion liters by 2017. Corn prices already went up by 50 percent. The average price per bushel of $1.95, which had held steady over the past eight years, jumped up to $3.05 in January of this year, and is expected to rise as high as $3.40. Corn is feedstock. It is consumed not only by humans but also by hogs, chickens and cattle. The drastic side-effect of higher corn prices is now reflected in the higher prices in the grocery store. The price of food went up 3.9 percent last year – faster than the inflation rate, which ranges around 2.7 in 2007. In particular, pork, beef, milk, eggs and poultry show drastic increases in their prices. So do fruits and vegetables. Considering that most people spend an average of 10 percent of their disposable income on food, higher prices in grocery reduces the spending on cars, homes or clothing. Health Nazis should also be concerned, since these higher prices drive people to cheaper processed foods that add to increased health risks in the poor segment of the population. The US Federal Government’s targeted goal is to replace gasoline with corn-based fuel as an alternative energy source. This has caught the attention of poorer countries. Mexico, for example, is gradually replacing agave, a spiky-leaved, large plant which grows on high and arid land and takes eight years to reach maturity, with corn. Agave is the main ingredient for Tequila. Mexico produced 25 to 35 percent less agave this year and farmers take less care of their agave crop in favor of higher corn prices. The World Food Program (WFP), which recently stated that it can no longer feed the poor due to the impact of biofuel demand on food prices, is foolishly encouraging African and Latin American countries to take advantage of the rising demand of biofuels by planting corn; a popular world practice that is now devastating 900 million of the world’s poorest which rely on the UN feeding program. It is quite clear that the state-inflated demand for corn is causing a global imbalance in food production. Farmers are replacing a variety of vegetables and fruits with corn due to the higher profit-per-acre corn brings. The two-year practice of crop rotation for corn drains the soil and requires more fertilizers on the following soybean crop. The additional cost ends up with the consumer. As food prices rise, it is the poor who suffer most from this inflated demand for biofuel. It is a burden that most people cannot afford as inflation keeps rising because of irresponsible spending and government debt. The federal budget for the fiscal year beginning this October called for $2.9 trillion dollars in government spending. It includes increases for all the various cabinet-level departments. Among them were a 5.4 percent increase for the Department of Energy and 3.6 percent increase for Agriculture. According to Richard M. Ebeling, President of The Freeman, the average US household would have to shell out approximately $25,845 in taxes to cover the budget. Include with it the US federal government’s pre-existing liabilities of several trillion, and the average US household would have to pay an additional $31,000 a year for 75 years to pay off the debt already incurred by government spending. How can an average income household cover the basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter when tax burdens already devour the wages of a lower income population? Poor people only become poorer as spending continues. Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul seems to be the only congressional member who understands the global effects of subsidies. During his second presidential debate the question came up about oil profits. His response was: "I don’t think the profits are the issue. The profits are okay if they’re legitimately earned in a free market. What I object to are subsidies to big corporations when we subsidize them and give them R&D (Research & Development) money. I don’t think that should be that way. They should take it out of the funds that they earn..." Here lies the answer to many of the energy questions. Let the private sector find a solution to new energy sources. Already technology advances at a rapid speed and its products remain ultimately competitive on the market where prices drop and become affordable to the average consumer. Just think of recent changes from VCRs and phonograph records to DVD’s and CD players, and the addition of cell phones and portable computers to modern life. All are now available at reasonable prices to low-income households. Industry continually comes up with new inventions that contribute highly to communication, organization and entertainment. The only sectors that remain high in cost with outrageous prices are sectors that are under government regulation and control: health care, medicine, education, housing, and now food prices. It would be a life-saving act of mercy to close these various departments of government, if people want to have a future for the next generation. The trouble caused on the global market by the federal government’s sponsored ethanol industry increasingly outweighs the good it does. The idea of sacrificing food production in the name of biofuel as a future source of energy is an irrational concept. The consequence of higher food prices due to corn production hasn’t come from consumer choice but from government coercion. If the demand for energy is increasing, and biofuel is the answer, then where will the world grow its food? The big believers in a government supported biofuel industry might have to prepare for another big tsunami to hit the shores of Third World countries and at home if this insanity isn’t stopped. Just don’t blame capitalism if and when it comes. July 21, 2007 Sabine Barnhart
Did you know that the Mexican Army is involved in helping illegals commit crimes in USA? It appears to me no matter how many faxes, emails, letters and phone calls we make to Congress requestiong they do something to ptoect us at our border, our pleas continue to land on deaf ears. Below is information about the illegal activities by the Mexican military against America, from The Minutemen. Please take a look, and give your feedback? What more can Americans do? Thanks. Please find below a special message from MinutemanHQ.com. They have some important information to share with you. Please find below a special message from MinutemanHQ.com. They have some important information to share with you. Thank you, ConservativeAlerts.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MEXICAN ARMY HAS VIOLATED OUR BORDER 253 TIMES 7558 W. Thunderbird Road Ste. 1 PMB 622 Peoria, AZ 85381 :: Phone (520) 829-3112 ALERT: OUR SOVEREIGNTY IS BEING NULLIFIED BY MEXICAN MILITARY 17—The number of times armed Mexican soldiers violated our porous borders in 2006. 29—The total number of times Mexican soldiers violated our porous borders in 2006. 253—That is the DOCUMENTED number of times Mexican soldiers and Mexican law enforcement personnel violated our porous borders in order to traffic drugs and weapons in and out of our country from 1996 to September 30, 2006. 1,000—The number of times U.S. Border Patrol agents in 2007 were attacked while attempting to secure our borders without the necessary resources from the U.S. federal government. This week, the United States House of Representatives returns to work and it our mission to ensure that they restore the $3 Billion dollars in funding they stripped towards the construction of the border fence from the Homeland Security Department’s budget. It is the constitutional duty of our elected officials to protect our national security and sovereignty of this nation, and to ensure the safety of its legal citizens, rather than continue to tolerate lawlessness and disorder. Our country cannot sustain another great wave of economic, cultural and environmental exploitation by another 12 million people illegally entering under the cover of darkness—or even in the bright desert daylight. What do these illegal entrants have to be worried about? NOTHING from those we have entrusted to govern! Our Washington lawmakers don’t care about your family’s security and well-being. That’s why they left town for Christmas last month having stripped away the same money that President Bush promised to use for the construction of a 700-plus mile physical border fence! Thus far the American people have only seen roughly 20 miles of federal border fence constructed, while our Senators would prefer to reward the illegal behavior of these illegal entrants with offers of amnesty, tax-payer provided social services, and driver’s licenses. The volunteers of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have witnessed firsthand how our country is under attack by criminal thugs who conspire with the Mexican government to do us harm through their unbridled drug trafficking, sex trafficking and violence towards our citizens. Please ACT NOW so we can demand our President and Congress defend our country from these vicious attacks and border incursions by forcefully demanding the restoration of the $3 Billion dollars previously allocated for the physical border fence. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps insists that Congress, through an emergency spending bill, immediately fund and build the border fence that was promised in the 2006 Secure Fence Act. We will not wait for the 2009 battle budgets to commence later this year in hopes of securing the border in 2010 or beyond. For years, we have been alerting the public to the chaos, violence, rapes and the foreign military-supported illegal border incursions that occur routinely at the U.S.-Mexican border. But it has taken years of work for the truth to become exposed and known to the American public. Still the U.S government continues to fail to build and fund the physical border fence, because they have not heard from you enough times. As every day goes by, there is more violence and there are more graphic examples of why we must fight to secure every border and coastline throughout the United States. If our government had already built a physical border fence, we would not have to worry that our friends, family and neighbors would be at risk from violent attacks by the rapists, thugs, drug dealers, criminal syndicates and al-Qaeda terrorists who lurk among the 12 million or more unidentified illegal aliens already living throughout America—including in your local community. We would not have to worry about statistics and government documents that detail the invasions from the Mexican Army that continue to go unpunished, and without any plan to stop them. Over 2,000 illegal entrants violate our sovereign borders on a daily basis, and if you live anywhere near these cities, you may have already seen them….. Brownsville, San Diego, El Centro, Yuma, Tucson, El Paso, Laredo and McAllen…. The volunteers of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have witnessed firsthand how our country is under attack by thugs who conspire with the Mexican government to do us harm through their drug trafficking, sex trafficking and violence towards our citizens. Please ACT NOW so we can demand our President and Congress defend our country from these vicious attacks and border incursions by forcefully demanding the restoration of the $3 Billion dollars previously allocated for the physical border fence. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 For years, the U.S. Border Patrol has been defending our country, without the resources they need to do their job, trying to protect us from those who viciously prey on our country through its open borders. The documented proof of just how dangerous a job it can be to keep our country safe continues to increase daily and yet our government still does nothing. We Minutemen must start 2008 demanding that our government restore the money for the border fence construction and put the National Guard back on our frontline—the Southern border with Mexico—AND WE MUST CONTINUE OUR ADVOCACY UNTIL THE BORDER FENCE IT BUILT AND OUR NATIONAL SECURITY IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED! Make no mistake—we are under attack! When the Mexican army escorts drug dealers across the border, they send assailants to distract and imperil our U.S. Border Patrol agents by hailing rocks, bottles, bricks and sometimes bullets, so their friends in the gangs and international drug cartels can transport their narcotics and underage girls and boys for sex trafficking into our country. While “the assailants try to distract the agents long enough to let people dash in the United States,” our border agents have become the recipients of multiple broken bones and other medical traumas which they must bravely endure, and for which we the taxpayer must foot the bill. Here are details from government documents that describe this clear and present violation of our national sovereignty: MEXICAN MILITARY ENCOUNTER (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) EL PASO – FORT HANCOCK STATION – At 2 P.M. on January 3, 2006, [Troopers] attempted to apprehend three vehicles believed to be smuggling contraband on I-10… As the vehicles approached the border, [Troopers] stated that a Mexican Military Humvee armed with a .50 caliber weapon and several soldiers were seen assisting smugglers return to Mexico… Officers then noticed several armed subjects dressed in fatigue type clothing unload the contraband into the Humvee. These subjects set fire to the stalled vehicle before leaving the area… MEXICAN POLICE INCURSION (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) TUCSON NOGALES STATION – On June 2, 2006, a Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Nogales, Arizona station encountered two Mexican Police Officers that had illegally entered into the U.S. one mile west of the Mariposa Port of Entry… the Mexican Police Officers ran back into Mexico when ordered [by Border Patrol] to remain for questioning. MEXICAN MILITARY INCURSION (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) EL CENTRO SECTOR – CALEXICO STATION – On September 16, 2006, a Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Calexico, California Station observed an individual in an olive drab uniform with a possible Mexican flag on the shoulder approximately 1230 yards north of the International Border near the Calexico POE. The individual appeared to be carrying a sidearm and was running southbound to Mexico through the vehicle lanes of the Calexico POE. The volunteers of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have witnessed firsthand how our country is under attack by thugs who conspire with the Mexican government to do us harm through their drug trafficking, sex trafficking and violence towards our citizens. Please ACT NOW so we can demand our President and Congress defend our country from these vicious attacks and border incursions by forcefully demanding the restoration of the $3 Billion dollars previously allocated for the physical border fence. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 Just a few months ago, we learned that our porous Southern border served as the gateway for “60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists [who] were smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high-powered weapons to attack an Arizona Army base.” How many more stories regarding the dangers of an open border do we need to hear about before our Washington lawmakers understand that the citizens of this country will not tolerate another 9/11 style attack? As you know, our country is generally led by weak-kneed politicians whose public policies will shift with the trends of polling numbers and elite media preferences. THEY SOMETIMES TALK THE TALK, BUT THEY RARELY WILL WALK THE WALK! Their lack of action demonstrates that our brave men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol may never get the support they need to keep our families safe—unless we make our voices heard—loud and often. While we would rather just focus on our daily activities in our local communities, we cannot afford to become inattentive, over-confident or apathetic about our Minuteman mission. You can count on the open borders lobby and the Mexican government to do all in their power to see that the National Guard is NEVER posted back on our border—they have vast influence in Washington and will use it to devastating effect—if we let them. That is why we must take action NOW and voice our outrage to the political elite who refuse to help our undermanned Border Patrol agents on the border. In fact, representatives of the Mexican government are already telling us that we have NO RIGHT to defend ourselves from attacks incurred by THEIR citizens on our Border Patrol agents. The AP reported that in November 2007, “Mexico’s acting consul general in San Diego, Richard Pineda, has insisted that U.S. authorities stop firing onto Mexico soil.” Why should U.S. citizens stop defending ourselves when the Mexican Army is helping drug dealers, criminal syndicates and terrorists invade our country? Our BP agents need support and backup. It has fallen upon the volunteers of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps to continue doing the job the government refuses to do for its citizens. The volunteers of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have witnessed firsthand how our country is under attack by thugs who conspire with the Mexican government to do us harm through their drug trafficking, sex trafficking and violence towards our citizens. Please ACT NOW so we can demand our President and Congress defend our country from these vicious attacks and border incursions by forcefully demanding the restoration of the $3 Billion dollars previously allocated for the physical border fence. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 The U.S. Border Patrol has been logging the attacks against American law officers by Mexican citizens since 1990, and they’ve seen a 31% increase during just the last year. Unfortunately, when some agents recently defended themselves against attacks from Mexican thugs, a man throwing an object at an agent was shot and killed. Fortunately, that U.S. Border Patrol agent was not punished for defending himself. However, I fear that the next attack may yield another unjust and unfortunate Ramos and Compean punishment for an agent whose sole crime will have been keeping your family and mine safe in our homes! Or even worse, it is possible that the “border war” with Mexico will intensify, and bring pressure upon our weak-willed elected officials to cave into international opinion rather than tell the Calderon government that attacks against U.S. citizens and personnel will not go unanswered. Our President needs to tell al-Qaeda coming at us through Mexico what he told al-Qaeda in September 2001: you WILL PAY for moving against America! IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TELL WASHINGTON THAT THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT SECURING OUR POROUS BORDERS NOW! The Minuteman Border Fences being built by the Minutemen Movement have been a driving force compelling the federal government to finally act to construct some fence barriers, and the ranchers along the border in Arizona say it well: “The government wasn’t doing anything until the Minutemen showed up.” Minutemen must continue to keep the pressure on and ensure that these first government spans are not just for show, and make the federal government actually “BUILD IT”—talk is cheap, and virtual fence is not an actual fence. Minutemen volunteers have warned U.S. citizens that our national security, public safety, our prosperity and very sovereignty are imperiled—that our country is being invaded by terrorists, lawbreakers and alien criminals while the politicians we’ve elected, fail to protect us. We therefore call upon every citizen to pressure all Washington lawmakers to heed the warning of these vicious physical attacks on our first line of defense, the brave men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol. Washington lawmakers need to respect the will of law-abiding Americans over the agenda of the open borders lobby and beyond their own personal political ambitions—and secure our borders NOW. Stand up against the left, and against quisling sell-out political agendas, and help the Minutemen get the job done. Get the National Guard back on the line! Help us Build the Fence NOW. Show the world that the America we love does not care for empty words. We care for action! The volunteers of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have witnessed firsthand how our country is under attack by thugs who conspire with the Mexican government to do us harm through their drug trafficking, sex trafficking and violence towards our citizens. Please ACT NOW so we can demand our President and Congress defend our country from these vicious attacks and border incursions by forcefully demanding the restoration of the $3 Billion dollars previously allocated for the physical border fence. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 We also need you to take three actions for your personal safety and our nation’s security—in the face of opposition from an alliance of liberals in the Congress, Mexico, LaRaza and the rest of the open borders lobby: 1) Continue to Build Fence Models on the Entire Southern Border! Our Fence, featured in National Geographic magazine, is the best and most affordable and effective model in the nation. Say “YES” to BUILD THE FENCE!” THE CHOICE IS UP TO YOU. 2) Complete the Minuteman Border Fence at the Hodges Ranch! Our fence construction is completely supported by private donations. The Minutemen are a volunteer organization and will only build fence sections as donations are available. Say “YES” to BUILD THE FENCE!” THE CHOICE IS UP TO YOU. 3) Help the Minutemen Keep the Pressure on—the Feds WERE building some limited fence spans, but Pelosi and the Democrats have JUST STRIPPED already approved Fence funding from the Federal Budget! The Feds have pulled appropriations for building real barrier fence, and are wasting millions of dollars on failed “virtual” fence technology allocations, stalling and delaying construction of “ACTUAL” barrier fence—because there is NO POLITICAL WILL IN WASHINGTON TO SECURE OUR BORDERS! DON’T FALL FOR THEIR PUBLIC RELATIONS “CHARM OFFENSIVE”—WE NEED TO RESTORE FUNDING, AND KEEP BUILDING! We MUST KEEP THE PRESSURE ON THEM to SUSTAIN FUNDING AND CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULES in order to get them and keep them building ACTUAL FENCE! Say “YES” to BUILD THE FENCE!” THE CHOICE IS UP TO YOU. Donate NOW so we can PRESSURE Washington TO RESTORE the funding for the Border Fence! https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 Finish the Hodges Minuteman Border Fence Now! There is hope on the horizon to demonstrate to the nation and the Feds WHAT WORKS, but it will take the same stalwart dedication you have already shown. With your support we will be able to construct a barrier that will set the Fence standard for the Feds of ACTUAL, affordable impenetrability—thwarting the attempts of illegal aliens to invade this country. It will cost about $400,000 to finish the Hodges Ranch span and install full security FOMGuard technology in the ground at $250 per foot of fence. I know it’s a lot of money. But we cannot secure America on the cheap. And this is vastly less expensive and vastly more effective than what the federal government is paying for what little physical fencing they are actually getting into the ground. Say “YES” to BUILD THE FENCE!” THE CHOICE IS UP TO YOU. We are asking everyone who has already generously sacrificed to immediately send a $50 Donation Today. Doing so would complete our current project in Bisbee, AZ, and greatly empower our allies in Congress who want to show Washington a working model of ACTUAL, affordable FENCE! Donate NOW to Build the Minuteman Border Fence https://secure.responseenterprises.com/mmfence/?a=1233 Send your support now to build the Minuteman Border Fence and show our government what it means to TRULY secure the border against events such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Join your fellow American citizens who say “Never Again!” We the people must be vigilant and prepared, and our national territory must be defended! Your country needs you now! We Minutemen and women need you now! If you are one of the thousands who have already contributed to building the Minuteman Fence, we thank you for your sacrifice—but we need you if possible to redouble your efforts and donate again. If you have never donated we ask you to join us by making a generous financial contribution AND by becoming a Minuteman Volunteer. Donate NOW so we can PRESSURE Washington into restoring funding for the Border Fence through an emergency spending bill. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 VOLUNTEER NOW to Build the Minuteman Border Fence https://secure.responseenterprises.com/mmfence/registration.php?a=1233 America needs a FENCE! IF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FAILS IN ITS CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY, WE THE CITIZENS MUST CONTINUE TO ACT. We have a monumental challenge ahead to raise $55 million for the whole southern border if necessary, and BUILD IT NOW. Nothing the federal government has undertaken or proposed will do the job properly, even if they actually followed through on their false promises. We urgently need your help for this citizen effort to succeed. With your contribution TODAY, MCDC can make America more secure by continuing to empower citizen volunteers in their active support of the Minuteman Border Fence. Help us complete the Hodges Ranch span. We CAN show the federal government what border security IS, and how IT CAN BE DONE! The Feds are ONLY building fence at all, and pretending to build fence, because the MINUTEMEN are building fence. We must keep the pressure on them, and keep the truth of this effort in front of the American people! Be sure to send this to EVERYONE you know who wants to help STOP illegal aliens at the border! Thank you! Donate NOW so we can PRESSURE Washington TO RESTORE the fence funding immediately through an emergency spending bill. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233 VOLUNTEER NOW to Build the Minuteman Border Fence https://secure.responseenterprises.com/mmfence/registration.php?a=1233 Within the next year, thousands of more thugs, terrorists and international drug cartel “soldiers” will harm our citizens unless we put the National Guard back on our Southern border. IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF OUR LAWMAKERS TO KEEP THEIR OATH OF OFFICE, PROTECT AND DEFEND AMERICA FROM ALL ENEMIES! Your support can make the difference by helping us to do the job our government refuses to do! Thank you. For the Security of America, Carmen Mercer, Vice President Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Director, Minuteman Border Fence P.S. HELP US STOP the terrorists from invading our country through its porous borders. Donate NOW so we can force Congress to restore the funding and resume immediate construction of a physical border fence. https://secure.responseenterprises.com/minutemanhq/?a=1233
Can we get news source citations for White House press releases to discern good PR from propaganda? http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/nationalsecurity/ President Bush Addresses CENTCOM Coalition Conference "Our main enemy is al Qaeda and its affiliates. Their allies choose their victims indiscriminately. They murder the innocent to advance a focused and clear ideology. They seek to establish a radical Islamic caliphate, so they can impose a brutal new order on unwilling people, much as Nazis and communists sought to do in the last century. This enemy will accept no compromise with the civilized world. Here is what the al Qaeda charter says about those who oppose their plans: 'We will not meet them halfway, and there will be no room for dialogue with them.' These enemies have embraced a cult of death. They are determined to bring days of even greater destruction on our people. They seek the world's most dangerous weapons. Against this kind of enemy, there is only one effective response: We must go on the offense, stay on the offense, and take the fight to them." President George W. Bush May 1, 2007 America and Our Allies Are Working Together to Keep Our Nations Safe On Tuesday, May 1, 2007, President Bush Addressed The CENTCOM Coalition Conference At MacDill Air Force Base In Tampa, Florida. America is joined in the fight against terrorists by more than 90 nations, including every country represented in the CENTCOM Coalition. The work of these countries has helped liberate millions of people, has kept brutal enemies on the defensive, and has helped keep millions of our citizens safe. •Currently, 64 Nations Have Military Representatives Assigned To The CENTCOM Headquarters. CENTCOM is one of nine Defense Department Unified Combatant Commands assigned operational control of U.S. combat forces. Its area of responsibility includes Iraq and Afghanistan as well as: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and the northwestern Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Arabian Gulf. America And Our Allies Are Working Together To Address The Dangers Of Our Time An Era Of New Threats Requires New Forms Of Engagement, So We Have Reinvigorated Historic Alliances, Such As NATO, And Formed New And Dynamic Coalitions To Address The Dangers Of Our Time. Our broad Coalition has protected millions of people. We have worked to stop the spread of dangerous weapons, and we have taken the fight to the enemy where they live, so we do not have to face them where we live. •Working Together, America And Our Allies Have Shared Intelligence That Has Helped Thwart Many Terrorist Plots. oWe uncovered and stopped terrorist conspiracies targeting embassies in Yemen and Singapore and ships in the Straits of Hormuz and Gibraltar. oWe stopped a Southeast Asian terror cell grooming operatives for terrorist attacks and an al-Qaeda cell seeking to develop anthrax. oBritish authorities disrupted a plot to blow up aircraft flying over the Atlantic toward the United States. •Coalition Forces Have Captured Or Killed Key Leaders Of Terrorist Networks. oPhilippine forces killed top leaders of an al-Qaeda affiliate. oSpanish police captured fugitives wanted in connection with the Madrid train bombings. oTerrorist cells have been broken up by countries including Britain, Canada, Denmark, Italy, France, Indonesia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. •America And Our Allies Have Shut Down Funding Channels And Frozen Terrorist Assets, Making It Harder For Our Enemies To Finance Attacks, Purchase Weapons, And Train Recruits. The international community through the United Nations has imposed measures to identify terrorist financiers and prevent them from using international financial systems to fund acts of terror. •America And Our Allies Are Training Local Forces To Conduct Counterterrorism Activities In Their Own Regions. oWe are helping key nations – including Indonesia, the Philippines, and Yemen – stop terrorists from establishing safe havens inside their borders. oThe Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership provides counterterrorism and military assistance to Chad, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. oThe East Africa Counterterrorism Initiative provides border security and police training to Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda. •Our Coalition Is Taking Steps To Stop Terrorists From Obtaining The World's Most Dangerous Weapons. More than 80 nations have joined the Proliferation Security Initiative and are working to stop shipments of materials related to weapons of mass destruction on land, at sea, and in the air. •America And Other Nations Have Acted Boldly To Confront Adversaries Who Threatened International Security. In Afghanistan, Coalition forces drove the Taliban from power, removed al-Qaeda training camps, and helped bring freedom to 25 million people. Our Coalition Is Going On The Offense Against The Taliban And Its Al-Qaeda Allies In Afghanistan Since Their Liberation, The Afghan People Have Made Enormous Strides. Afghans chose the first democratically-elected President in their history and held free elections for a National Assembly. The Afghan economy has doubled in size, and more than 4.6 million Afghan refugees have come home in one of the largest return movements in history. The Taliban And Its Al-Qaeda Allies Are Actively Working To Undermine This Progress And Reclaim Power, And Our Coalition – Led By NATO – Is Going On The Offense Against Them. Coalition and Afghan forces have conducted dozens of operations over the past few months to go after the enemy in their strongholds, including an operation launched this week targeting the Taliban in Helmand Province in the South. We have seized dozens of caches of weapons, ammunition, and improvised explosive devices, and we are making progress in training the growing Afghan National Army. •At Least 20 Other Nations Are Supporting Efforts To Rebuild Afghanistan. The United States appreciates these contributions, and we will stand with our partners and the Afghan people until our work is done. We Are Also Committed To Winning The Fight In Iraq After An Extensive Review, President Bush Ordered A New Strategy In Iraq And Appointed General David Petraeus To Carry That Strategy Out. This new strategy recognizes that our top priority must be to help the Iraqi government secure its capital so they can make political and economic progress. The Iraqis cannot yet do this on their own, so the President ordered reinforcements to help Iraqis secure their population, go after those inciting sectarian violence, and get their capital under control. •This Strategy Is Still In Its Early Stages, Yet At This Early Hour, We Are Seeing Some Signs That Give Us Hope. Some of the reinforcements General Petraeus requested have not yet arrived in Baghdad, and he believes it will take months before we can accurately gauge the strategy's potential for success. Yet at this early hour: oCoalition forces have captured a number of key terrorist leaders who are providing information about how al-Qaeda operates in Iraq. oCoalition forces have stopped a car bomb network, which had killed many citizens of Baghdad, and they have destroyed major car bomb factories. oThere has been a decline in sectarian violence. oIn some areas of the capital, Iraqis are returning to their neighborhoods with an increased feeling of security. •Success In Iraq Is Critical To The Security Of Free People Everywhere. Terrorists continue to unleash horrific acts of violence in Iraq, and al-Qaeda is playing a major role. Last week, General Petraeus called al-Qaeda "probably public enemy number one" in Iraq and said that al-Qaeda has made Iraq "the central front of their global campaign." America Is Deeply Grateful For The Contributions Of Nations Supporting Operations In Iraq. Today, more than 30 nations are supporting operations in Iraq. Seventeen NATO nations have contributed forces or been part of the NATO Training Mission to help train Iraqis, and Georgia also recently decided to contribute 2,000 troops. America joins in honoring the Coalition troops who have been killed in Iraq and the others who have been wounded in combat. America Is Also Grateful For The Increasing Contributions International Organizations Are Making To Iraq's Stability. •On May 3, the United Nations will host a conference in Egypt to sign an International Compact for Iraq. This agreement will bring new economic assistance in exchange for greater economic reform in Iraq. On May 4, Iraq's neighbors will meet to discuss ways to promote political reconciliation in Iraq. These meetings will be attended by Secretary Rice and senior officials from the G-8 nations. Iran and Syria have been invited to attend.
plz. help me to write the main idea of this article in the NY Times. in two pages.? November 5, 2006 Where Plan A Left Ahmad Chalabi By DEXTER FILKINS 1. London, August 2006 Many miles away in a more dangerous place the dream is ending badly. The bodies pile up. Good people stream to the borders. Leaders pile money onto planes. The center is giving way. The apartment on South Street in London is an antidote to Baghdad in nearly every respect. Where the Iraqi capital rings with chaos and violence, the sidewalks of Mayfair are quiet enough to hear your own voice above the cars. Baghdad is treeless and tan; the South Street apartment opens onto a private park filled with the lushness of an English garden. Just across the way is the Anglican church where General Eisenhower, stationed here as the commander of Allied forces during the war, came to pray. A maid greets you at the door, an elderly Lebanese woman who doubles as an Arabic teacher for the children. The parlor is neatly appointed and filled with art, most of it European, different from the Baghdad house, where most of it is Iraqi. There is “Sketch of a Woman,” by Lucien Pissarro, the French painter who propagated Impressionism in London; it catches the light nicely. The furniture is expensive, the kind that makes you hesitate to sit down. But the place has a lived-in quality too; family members come and go, clutching bags and calling to one another down the hallways. No one seems the least bit awed by the man of the house, who is dressed in a bespoke suit and carries himself like a monarch, and who, until now, hasn’t spent more than a day at a time here since before the Iraq war began. For Ahmad Chalabi, Iraq is an abstraction again. Once again, his native country is a faraway land ruled by somebody else, a place where other people die. It’s a place to be discussed, rued, plotted over, from a parlor on an expensive Western street. Iraq’s new leaders, the men who excluded Chalabi from the government they formed this spring, still call for advice — several times a day, Chalabi says. He is here in London, his longtime home in exile, temporarily, he says, taking his first vacation in five years. At lunch at a nearby restaurant an hour before, he ordered the sea bass wrapped in a banana leaf. He walks the streets unattended by armed guards. But the interlude, Chalabi says, is just that, a passing thing. His doubters will come back to him; they always have. As ever, he wears a jester’s smile, wide and blank, a mask that has carried him through crises of the first world and the third. Still, a touch of bitterness can creep into Chalabi’s voice, a hint that he has concluded that his time has come and gone. Indeed, even for a man as vain and resilient as Chalabi, his present predicament stands too large to go unacknowledged. Once Iraq’s anointed leader — anointed by the Americans — Chalabi, at age 62, is without a job, spurned by the very colleagues whose ascension he engineered. His benefactors in the White House and in the Pentagon, who once gobbled up whatever half-baked intelligence Chalabi offered, now regard him as undependable and — worse — safely ignored. Chalabi’s life work, an Iraq liberated from Saddam Hussein, a modern and democratic Iraq, is spiraling toward disintegration. Indeed, for many in the West, Chalabi has become the personification of all that has gone wrong in Iraq: the lies, the arrogance, the occupation as disaster. “The real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz,” Chalabi says, referring to his erstwhile backer, the former deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz. “They chickened out. The Pentagon guys chickened out.” Chalabi still considers Wolfowitz a friend, so he proceeds carefully. America’s big mistake, Chalabi maintains, was in failing to step out of the way after Hussein’s downfall and let the Iraqis take charge. The Iraqis, not the Americans, should have been allowed to take over immediately — the people who knew the country, who spoke the language and, most important, who could take responsibility for the chaos that was unfolding in the streets. An Iraqi government could have acted harshly, even brutally, to regain control of the place, and the Iraqis would have been without a foreigner to blame. They would have appreciated the firm hand. There would have been no guerrilla insurgency or, if there was, a small one that the new Iraqi government could have ferreted out and crushed on its own. An Iraqi leadership would have brought Moktada al-Sadr, the populist cleric, into the government and house-trained him. The Americans, in all likelihood, could have gone home. They certainly would have been home by now. “We would have taken hold of the country,” Chalabi says. “We would have revitalized the civil service immediately. We would have been able to put together a military force and an intelligence service. There would have been no insurgency. We would have had electricity. The Americans screwed it up.” Chalabi’s notion — that an Iraqi government, as opposed to an American one, could have saved the great experiment — has become one of the arguments put forth by the war’s proponents in the just-beginning debate over who lost Iraq. At best, it’s improbable: Chalabi is essentially arguing that a handful of Iraqi exiles, some of whom had not lived in the country in decades, could have put together a government and quelled the chaos that quickly engulfed the country after Hussein’s regime collapsed. They could have done this, presumably, without an army (which most wanted to dissolve) and without a police force (which was riddled with Baathists). In fact, the Americans considered the idea and dismissed it. (But not, Wolfowitz insists, because of him. His longtime aide, Kevin Kellems, said that Wolfowitz favored turning over power “as rapidly as possible to duly elected Iraqi authorities.”) The Bush administration decided to go to the United Nations and have the American role in Iraq formally described as that of an “occupying power,” a step that no Iraqi, not even the lowliest tea seller, failed to notice. They appointed L. Paul Bremer III as viceroy. Instead of empowering Iraqis, Bremer set up an advisory panel of Iraqis — one that included Chalabi — that had no power at all. The warmth that many ordinary Iraqis felt for the Americans quickly ebbed away. It’s not clear that the Americans had any other choice. But here in his London parlor, Chalabi is now contending that excluding Iraqis was the Americans’ fatal mistake. “It was a puppet show!” Chalabi exclaims again, shifting on the couch. “The worst of all worlds. We were in charge, and we had no power. We were blamed for everything the Americans did, but we couldn’t change any of it.” It’s three and a half years later now. More than 2,800 Americans are dead; more than 3,000 Iraqis die each month. The anarchy seems limitless. In May 2004, American and Iraqi agents even raided Chalabi’s home in Baghdad. He has been denounced by Bremer and by Bush and accused of passing secrets to America’s enemy, Iran. At the heart of the American decision to take over and run Iraq, Chalabi now concludes, lay a basic contempt for Iraqis, himself included. “In Wolfowitz’s mind, you couldn’t trust the Iraqis to run a democracy,” Chalabi says. “ ‘We have to teach them, give them lessons,’ in Wolfowitz’s mind. ‘We have to leave Iraq under our tutelage. The Iraqis are useless. The Iraqis are incompetent.’ “What I didn’t realize,” Chalabi says, “was that the Americans sold us out.” Turkish coffee is served, then tea. I consider Chalabi’s predicament: the Iraqi patrician, confidant of prime ministers and presidents, the M.I.T.- and University of Chicago-trained mathematics professor, owner of a Mayfair flat, complaining of being regarded, by the masters he once manipulated, as a scruffy, shiftless native. “I’ve been a friend of America, and I’ve been its enemy,” he says. “America betrays its friends. It sets them up and betrays them. I’d rather be America’s enemy.” And so he is. Sort of. With Chalabi, it’s hard to be certain, and not just because his motives are so opaque, but because he is never still. He is enigmatic, brilliant, nimble, unreliable, charming, narcissistic, finally elusive. The journey to Mayfair is a long one. What happened to Chalabi? Well, you might ask: What happened to Iraq? 2. Mushkhab, January 2005 The election is coming, and we are heading south. Twenty cars, mostly carrying men with guns. They hang out the windows, pointing their Kalashnikovs at the terrified drivers. Get out of the way or we shoot, and maybe we shoot anyway — that’s the message. But that’s Iraq. We move quickly, weaving, south in the southbound, south in the northbound. Very fast. Unbelievably fast. Drivers veer and career. We go where we want. We’re low on fuel, and a gas station beckons. It is one of the strange and singular facts of Iraqi life that despite sitting atop an ocean of oil, Iraqis must wait hours — often days — for gasoline at the pumps. Lack of refining capacity, smuggling, stealing, insurgent attacks, Soviet subsidies: it’s complicated. On the road outside Salman Pak, the line is perhaps 300 cars long. The Chalabi convoy cuts straight to the front of the line. No one protests. It’s the guns. The Iraqis wait for days, and our effrontery brings no protest. Not a peep. We get our gas and we speed away, guns out the windows. Very fast. An hour later, we arrive at our destination, Mushkhab. It’s a mostly Shiite town about 100 miles south of Baghdad. It is friendly country — to Chalabi, and still, then, to Americans. The whole town — the males, anyway — gathers round. Chalabi stands in the center, dressed in a dark gray Western suit. The Iraqis clap and read poetry; some of it they sing. It’s a tradition, a kind of serenade to the honored guest. “Hey, listen, Bush, we are Iraqis,” the poet says, and everyone is clapping. “We never bow our heads to anyone, and we won’t do it for you. We have tough guys like Chalabi on our side — be careful.” Everyone laughs. We move inside the mudhif, a tall, long, fantastic structure woven of dried river reeds, a kind of pavilion of rattan. The room is laid with hand-woven carpets, and on the walls hang framed yellowed photographs of the leaders of the tribe, Al Fatla, meeting with their British overlords many years ago. A pair of loudspeakers are set up in the front. Chalabi takes a microphone. “My Iraqi brothers, the Americans pushed out Saddam, but they did not liberate our country,” Chalabi tells the group. “We are asking you to participate in this election so that we can have an independent country. This is not just words. The Iraqi people will liberate the country.” He goes on a little more, warming to the Iraqis assembled about him. “On my way here, I saw a huge line of people waiting for gasoline,” Chalabi tells the group. “Some of them were there for two nights, carrying blankets with them. It makes me very sad to see my brothers wait for days to get gas at the station.” Shameless, huh? I thought so, too. Almost a thing of beauty. It was so outrageous I almost wanted to forgive him, as a teacher might her sassy but cleverest boy. And that’s the thing about Chalabi: he’s very difficult to dislike. It may be his secret. It was Chalabi, after all — a foreigner, an Arab — who persuaded the most powerful men and women in the United States to make the liberation of Iraq not merely a priority but an obsession. First in 1998, when Chalabi persuaded Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act (in turn leading to payments to his group, the Iraqi National Congress, exceeding $27 million over the next six years) and then, later, in persuading the Bush administration of the necessity of using force to destroy Saddam Hussein. And when it all went bad, when those nuclear weapons never turned up, the clever child shrugged and smiled. “We are heroes in error,” Chalabi told Britain’s Daily Telegraph. Almost with a wink. Lunch is served: a long table heaped with rice and roasted lamb. No seats. Everyone stands, dozens of us, and we dig in with our fingers. After a time, we prepare to leave. The table and the ground around it are littered with rice and lamb bones. We re-form into a convoy and speed toward the holy city of Najaf. By the time we arrive in Najaf, it’s dark. The fighting between American soldiers and the Mahdi Army irregulars laid waste to the city only a few months before, but on this night, Najaf seems remarkably calm. The pilgrim hotels lie in ruins, but the golden dome of the shrine of Imam Ali shimmers under a January moon. Chalabi exits his S.U.V. and strides inside through the 20-foot-high wooden doors. A clutch of Sunni leaders, whom Chalabi has agreed to show around, trail in step. The curiosities intersect: the Sunnis are not Shiites, and this is the holiest of Shiite places, the tomb of the son-in-law of the Holy Prophet and the very heart of the Shiite faith. But they are still Muslims, and they are allowed to pass. As a non-Muslim, I wait outside in the street. More unlikely than the presence of the Sunnis is their tour guide, Chalabi. Or it was unlikely. Not anymore. Chalabi, the Westernized, Western-educated mathematician, has entered his Islamist phase. It’s not terribly convincing. He does not don a turban. He has no beard. He does not pray. He does not, really, even pretend. But as a practical politician — as an exile come home to a strange land getting stranger by the day — Chalabi had to do something. Relations between Chalabi and the Bush administration began to sour almost immediately after the fall of Hussein, when the Americans decided against putting Iraqis — presumably Chalabi — in charge. Bremer considered him an egomaniac. When no W.M.D. turned up, more and more Americans came to blame Chalabi for the war. Chalabi’s association with the Americans grew more disadvantageous by the day. The break came on May 20, 2004, when the Americans, accusing Chalabi of telling the Iranian government that the Americans were eavesdropping on their secret communications, swooped in on his Baghdad compound. American troops sealed off Mansour, the neighborhood where Chalabi lived, while scores of Iraqi and American agents kicked in the compound doors. One of the Iraqis, Chalabi said, put a gun to his head. “Look, I think they tried to kill him,” Richard Perle, the former Pentagon adviser and longtime Chalabi friend, said of the American and Iraqi agents. “I think the raid on his house was intended to result in violence. They had sent 20 or 40 Humvees over there. Chalabi was being protected by a force of about 100 guys with machine guns. It is a miracle that it didn’t result in a massive shootout.” No shots were fired, but the break seemed final. Isolated, Chalabi turned to Islam — and, in particular, to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric and leader of two armed uprisings against the Americans and the Iraqi government. Sadr is an erratic and unpredictable young man who sometimes ends his sermons with apocalyptic visions of the “hidden” 12th imam revealing himself. He is also the most popular man in Iraq. In the anarchy that ensued following the fall of Hussein, Iraqis, once known for their largely secular outlook, ran headlong toward Islam. Religion and anarchy moved together: the worse conditions got in the streets, the more Islamic Iraqis became. In the three and a half years that I have known Chalabi, I never once saw him pray. Or give any indication that he harbored religious beliefs at all. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser and a devout Shiite, told me once that when he and a group of five senior Iraqi politicians visited the Imam Ali shrine in 2004, all of them prayed but Chalabi. While the others knelt, Rubaie said, Chalabi stood quietly with his hands folded in front of him. On this return visit to the Imam Ali shrine, Chalabi and his Sunni colleagues spent 10 minutes inside and exited without saying a thing. But word travels quickly down Najaf’s narrow streets, and by the time our convoy sped back to Baghdad, there were very few people in Najaf who did not know that Chalabi had come. Once, when I asked Chalabi about his flirtation with the Islamists, he answered not in terms of religion but of politics. Moktada, he explained, was not essentially dangerous but merely misunderstood, an outsider who could be coaxed into Iraq’s new democratic order. Chalabi was happy to act as the bridge, and if he benefited politically from his efforts, he was not complaining. “The Americans made a mistake when they excluded Moktada in the beginning,” Chalabi told me. “Our real business is to persuade everybody that Sadr is better inside than outside, and to provide some measure of comfort to the middle class that he is not going to eat them up.” Indeed, Chalabi and Sadr are not as unlikely a pair as they may seem. Musa al-Sadr, the late Iranian-born ayatollah and Moktada’s cousin, presided over Chalabi’s wedding in Beirut in 1971. Chalabi’s wife, Leila, is the daughter of Adel Osseiran, a leader of the Lebanese independence movement. Musa al-Sadr was the founder of Amal, which became the prototypical Shiite party in the Middle East. It seemed like a game, and not one that Chalabi liked to give away. Whenever I asked him about his coziness with Moktada, and how it squared with his own religious beliefs, I usually received a curt retort. For a time, Chalabi — and the Americans — got the better of the deal. Moktada fielded candidates in the January 2005 election, and his militia, though still untamed, fell into line behind its leader. He endorsed something less than an absolute role for Islam in the Iraqi Constitution. By early 2006, parties loyal to Sadr held the largest bloc in the Iraqi Parliament. As for Chalabi, Moktada kept him afloat a little longer. But in siding with the Islamists, Chalabi helped make them stronger than they were, and he threw his weight behind a number of trends that were only then becoming dominant: the Islamization of Iraqi society, the division of Iraq into sectarian cantons. Those trends later spiraled out of control, into the de facto civil war that is unfolding now. Some Iraqis who watched Chalabi then still don’t forgive him — and they think that ultimately, the Islamists got the better of him. “Ahmad’s problem is that Ahmad is usually the smartest man in the room, and he thinks he can control what happens,” I was told by an Iraqi official who worked with Chalabi at the time and who would speak only anonymously. “But these guys don’t care if you have a Ph.D. in math; they’ll kill you. In the end, things went way past the point where Ahmad thought they would ever go. I can’t imagine he wanted that. But he helped start it.” 3. Baghdad, October 2005 Chalabi is standing on the rooftop of his ancestral home in Khadimiya, a heavily Shiite neighborhood known for its shrine. Mansour, the area where he has lived since Hussein’s fall, has slipped into anarchy. The final round of nationwide elections is a couple of months away. For the moment, Chalabi is the deputy prime minister, behind the affable but ineffectual Ibrahim Jaafari. Across the street stand a pair of grain silos built by his father, Abdul Hadi Chalabi. Downstairs, on a wall in the sitting room, there is an old British map dating to the 1920’s, showing Baghdad, which was much smaller than it is now. North of Baghdad, in what was then farmland and what is now Khadimiya, a dot indicates a town. The dot says, “Chalabi.” At the time, Chalabi’s family owned nearly two and a half million acres throughout Iraq. Those vast holdings are reduced to the compound where Chalabi now stands. It’s about 10 acres, including the main house, which a team of workers is renovating, a large swimming pool, a grove of date palms and, in the back, a mudhif. There is a row of garages, decrepit now, where workers once serviced the machinery and trucks that brought the wheat and dates to market. “Imagine,” Chalabi says, turning to me. “And C.I.A. says I have no roots here.” Chalabi spent 45 years in exile. Under the Hashemite monarchy installed by the British after World War I, the ruling class of the new Iraq was largely made up of Sunni Muslims, as it had been under the Ottoman Turks. The Chalabis were part of the small Shiite elite; most of the rest of the Shiite majority formed a vast underclass. The remnants of that Shiite elite now form a sizable slice of the political establishment of post-Saddam Iraq. In addition to Chalabi, there is Adil Abdul Mahdi, the vice president, a Chalabi friend since boyhood; Ayad Allawi, the former president, who is a Chalabi relative by marriage; and Feisal al-Istrabadi, the deputy ambassador to the United Nations in New York. In the 1950’s, Chalabi, Mahdi and Allawi were schoolmates at Baghdad College, an elite Jesuit high school. Even in their class photos, nearly a half-century old, all three men are instantly recognizable: Mahdi, the soft-spoken intellectual; Allawi, the charming bully; and Chalabi, the boy genius in a bow tie. On July 14, 1958, King Faisal II, the British-backed monarch, was deposed and killed; a day later, the prime minister, Nuri al-Said, fled to the home of Chalabi’s sister, Thamina. She dressed Said in an abaya, the head-to-toe gown worn by women. With the army closing in, Thamina Chalabi took Said to the home of Feisal al-Istrabadi’s grandparents. Ahmad Chalabi, then 14, watched his mother and Bibiya al-Istrabadi weep as they pondered the prime minister’s fate. “Three or four hours later, Said was dead,” Chalabi told me. “He shot himself.” Chalabi fled Iraq a few months later, first for Lebanon, then England and then America, where he received a degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate from the University of Chicago. (Dissertation title: “Jacobson Radical of Group Algebras Over Fields Characteristic p.”) He did not return to Baghdad until April 11, 2003. Chalabi’s homecoming, after the U.S. invasion, was not the triumphant return he hoped it would be. What should have been his principal claim to legitimacy — his central role in toppling Saddam — never carried him very far; it became a liability as Iraq descended into chaos. In the new Iraq, Westernized elites carried less and less authority. Power belonged to the clerics and to the populists. And then there was the scandal at Petra Bank in Jordan, the outlines of which every Iraqi, no matter how dimly educated, seemed already to know: that Chalabi had been convicted in absentia for fraud and sentenced to 22 years in prison for embezzling almost $300 million. (Chalabi, who fled Jordan before he could be arrested, has long denied the charges, maintaining that they were cooked up by the Jordanian government under pressure from Saddam Hussein. Last year, the Jordanians signaled that they were willing to pardon Chalabi. But Chalabi insisted on a public apology, which the Jordanians refused to give.) Even the small army of Iraqi exiles that Chalabi had raised before the war never grew to be much more than a personal militia. One poll, conducted in early 2004, showed him to be the least trusted public figure in Iraq — even less trusted than Saddam Hussein. Dexter Filkins The suspicions that ordinary Iraqis harbored about Chalabi were never relieved by his industriousness. As oil minister and deputy prime minister, Chalabi worked night and day, often on the minutiae of Iraq’s oil pipelines and electricity lines or the precise wording, in Arabic and English, of the Iraqi Constitution. I typically went to see Chalabi at night, sometimes at 9 or 10, and usually had to wait an hour or so while he finished with his other visitors. If it was true that Chalabi had returned to Iraq with the expectation of acquiring power, it was not true that he was unwilling to work for it. Chalabi, like all Iraqi political leaders, functioned in conditions of mortal danger at nearly all times. Even when he wanted to walk into his backyard, he had to be followed by armed guards. It’s an exhausting and debilitating way to live. But while many Iraqi exiles either gave up and returned to the West, or now spend as much time outside the country as in, Chalabi stayed in Iraq almost continuously following Hussein’s fall. For all the hard work, his zigging and zagging across the political spectrum frustrated many of the Iraqi elites — his only natural constituency — especially after his flirtation with the Islamists. “I don’t think Chalabi has any credibility left,” Adnan Pachachi, the 83-year-old former foreign minister, told me before the 2005 elections. “He is not acceptable to Iraqis. People don’t like him shifting all the time. This thing with Moktada — it’s ridiculous.” One who remained true was his friend Mahdi, who seemed, perhaps from his boyhood days swimming in the Tigris with Chalabi, to carry a deeper understanding of his old friend. “This is the style of Ahmad,” Mahdi told me just before the elections. “He was a banker. He works a dossier. Each time it’s different — he invests here, he invests there, he invests elsewhere. He has had successes, he has had maybe his failures. I can work with him.” Chalabi never grasped his essential unpopularity. In the first round of elections, in January 2005, Chalabi rode into office as a member of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition pulled together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the powerful Shiite religious leader. Nearly every Shiite in Iraq voted for the U.I.A., and a name on its slate all but guaranteed a seat in the Parliament. The leadership of the U.I.A. was sharply Islamist. Nearly a year later, as the December 2005 elections approached, Chalabi veered again, away from the Islamists, away from Moktada. Chalabi publicly chided the Shiite coalition as being too Islamic-minded, declaring he didn’t want to be a member of a government that was planning to transform Iraq into an Islamist state. By that time, of course, Iraq was already quite Islamist anyway. “They’re Islamist, and I don’t want to be part of the sectarian project,” Chalabi told me just before the elections that December. I actually believed him, but given his association with Moktada, it didn’t seem that many other Iraqis would. The reality, anyway, was more complicated. In the weeks before the election, the Shiite alliance offered Chalabi and his supporters 5 seats on its 275-seat slate; Chalabi demanded 10. Some Shiite leaders told me that they had deliberately offered Chalabi a low figure in the hope that he would leave their alliance for good. Mahdi, the vice president, denied that this was true. “For four days I tried to convince him; I even threatened him,” Mahdi told me. “I said, ‘Ahmad, if you leave this room, we will be no more friends.’ I was not serious. I was only threatening.” So Chalabi went his own way. If he had wanted only a seat for himself, he could have taken his place in the Shiite alliance; plenty of other Iraqis did. In going alone, he must have known that he was risking disaster. He went ahead anyway. A few days before the election, I drove up to Chalabi’s compound in Khadimiya for a lunch he was holding for tribal leaders. In much the same fashion as in Mushkhab 11 months before, about 100 sheiks from Sadr City listened to a Chalabi speech before descending on heaps of lamb and rice. One of the sheiks, a man named Sahaeh Masif al-Kindh, approached me as he walked out. “Chalabi didn’t forget us when we were living under Saddam,” al-Kindh told me. “He was Saddam’s biggest enemy. We don’t forget that.” 4. Washington, November 2005 The second round of Iraqi elections is only a few weeks away, and the wheel is turning again. Chalabi, once in favor, then out, is back in. Ostensibly, he has been invited to Washington by Treasury Secretary John Snow to talk about the Iraqi economy. But it’s more than that. He’s going to see Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The allegations that prompted the raid on Chalabi’s compound 18 months before, that he tipped the Iranians to American eavesdropping, are mysteriously forgotten. Indeed, everything seems to have been forgotten. Chalabi is rising on the catastrophe that Iraq has become. The Bush administration is grasping for anyone who might help them. On paper at least, Chalabi has a shot at becoming prime minister. Most of the meetings are private. There is a dinner at the home of Richard Perle for some of Chalabi’s old Washington friends. One of the events, a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, is public. The room is filled. At the end of a speech, Chalabi is asked by someone in the crowd if he would like to apologize for misleading the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Chalabi nods as if he knew the question was coming. “This is an urban myth,” he says. The audience gasps. Chalabi told me later that his role as an intelligence conduit on weapons of mass destruction began shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he was contacted by the Department of Defense. Not vice versa. “They came to us and asked, ‘Can you help us find something on Saddam?’ ” he said. “We put out feelers.” By that time, the autumn of 2001, Chalabi had a long record of working with the American government in its shadow war against Hussein. Throughout the 1990’s, however, Chalabi demonstrated time and again that he would pursue his own interests, even if they clashed with those of the United States. There was the time in 1995, for instance, when Chalabi, under the employ of the C.I.A. in the Kurdish-controlled city of Erbil, launched an unauthorized attack on Hussein’s army. The attack failed to spark an uprising against Hussein; the Turks sent troops into northern Iraq; the C.I.A. was furious. It was a fiasco. “Very quickly he got out of control,” one retired C.I.A. officer who worked with Chalabi told me. “We didn’t know what he was doing over there. He was trying to provoke a war with Saddam.” Then there was the time, in 1996, when Chalabi interfered with a C.I.A. plot to topple Saddam. I heard the story not from Chalabi but from Perle, the Bush defense adviser and Chalabi friend. As Perle tells it, Chalabi called him in a panic from London, telling him that a C.I.A.-backed plot against Hussein was fatally compromised. The fact that the C.I.A.’s Iraqi front-man for the plot, Ayad Allawi, was a rival of Chalabi’s (as well as his relative) had nothing to do with his concerns, Perle said. As Perle tells it, he quickly telephoned the C.I.A. director at the time, John Deutch, who agreed to meet in downtown Washington. Perle said he spent an hour laying out Chalabi’s worries. “He was obviously concerned,” Perle said of Deutch. The plot went ahead anyway. It was a catastrophe. Hussein arrested as many as 800 people and reportedly executed dozens of high-ranking officers. As a final indignity, Hussein’s men dialed up Allawi’s headquarters in Amman, Jordan, on a C.I.A.-provided communications device they captured from the plotters and left a message: “You might as well pack up and go home.” Some people in the C.I.A. held Chalabi responsible, believing that he had spread word of the plot in order to deny Ayad Allawi the upper hand in the exile movement. “There was abiding suspicion in the agency that Chalabi blew it,” the former C.I.A. agent said. The fallout over the failed coup precipitated the C.I.A.’s decision to break ties with Chalabi. Chalabi dismisses those claims, and some in the C.I.A. from the period back him up. “Chalabi was as true to me as the day was long,” says Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. field agent in northern Iraq. “If Chalabi was going to blow the operation, why would he tell the C.I.A.?” There was the money issue, too. Throughout the 1990’s, as the C.I.A. and Congress funneled millions of dollars to Chalabi’s organization, the Iraqi National Congress, rumors swirled about corruption. One of the skeptics was W. Patrick Lang, a senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. In 1995, Lang told me, he was sitting in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, when he overheard a group of Iraqis talking about the money they had received from the American government. “I knew who these guys were, and I heard them speaking Arabic, and it was obviously Iraqi Arabic,” Lang said. “So I went over and sat next to them and listened. So what they were talking about was how to spend the Americans’ money, going on shopping trips, stuff like that. Oh, they were talking about going shopping for jewelry for women, toys for kids. Consumer goods. They were also talking about Las Vegas. ‘We will sneak out of here and go to Las Vegas. We have a lot of money now.’ ” A couple of years later, Lang said, he visited the office of Senator Trent Lott, then the Senate majority leader. After introducing an Arab businessman to Lott, Lang sat in Lott’s anteroom with a number of Capitol Hill staff members who helped draft the Iraq Liberation Act, which provided millions of dollars to Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. They were praising Chalabi: “They were talking about him, that Chalabi fits into this plan as a very worthwhile, virtuous exemplar of modernization, somebody who could help reform first Iraq and then the Middle East. They were very pleased with themselves.” Lang, an old Middle East hand who had worked in Iraq in the 1980’s, said he was stunned. “You guys need to get out more,” Lang recalls saying at the time. “It’s a fantasy.” Years later, Lang said, many of the same men who were sitting in Lott’s office that day became key players in the Pentagon’s plans for an invasion of Iraq. Which brings us back to Chalabi’s “urban myth”: the notion that he provided bogus intelligence to the Bush administration and helped persuade them — or provide the pretext — to invade Iraq. In his speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Chalabi exhorted the audience to turn to Page 108 of the Robb-Silverman report, a recently completed blue-ribbon investigation, which, he said, exonerates him. It does, in a way. The report does not say that Chalabi & Company played an important role in the events leading to the war. It says only that the Bush administration did not rely much on intelligence Chalabi handed over in making the decision to invade. “In fact, overall, C.I.A.’s postwar investigations revealed that I.N.C.-related sources had a minimal impact on prewar assessments,” the report says. This is also Chalabi’s version. In the run-up to war, he says, he provided only three defectors to the American intelligence community. “We did not vouch for any of their information,” Chalabi told me. One of the people whom the I.N.C. made available to American intelligence was Adnan Ihsan al-Haideri, who claimed that he had worked on buildings that were used to store biological, nuclear and chemical weapons equipment. Chalabi told me that he made Haideri available to American intelligence at a safe house in Bangkok. He didn’t think much of Haideri or his information, he says, and was astonished to learn later that the information he provided became a pillar of the Americans’ charges against Hussein. “We told them, ‘We don’t know who this guy is,’ ” Chalabi said. “Then the Americans spoke to him and said, ‘This guy is the mother lode.’ Can you believe that on such a basis the United States would go to war? The intelligence community regarded the I.N.C. as useless. Why would the government believe us?” Perle, from his perch on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Advisory Committee Board, backs Chalabi’s version. He was privy to much of the intelligence the administration was collecting on Hussein in the days before the war. He says that American intelligence officials began from the premise that Hussein had never destroyed his stocks of banned weapons and that he had kept his programs alive. American spies were only looking to confirm what they thought they already knew. In any event, Perle said, very little of their information came from Chalabi. “I had all the security clearances,” Perle said. “I was pretty much aware of the people that the I.N.C. was bringing to the table to talk about what they knew. Everything they did came with a disclaimer. To the best of my knowledge, there was no single important fact that was uniquely conveyed to U.S. intelligence by anyone who had been assisted by the I.N.C.” Indeed, Chalabi says, much of the most important evidence that led America to war did not come from the I.N.C.: not the report on the uranium from Niger, and not Curveball, the Iraqi defector who made bogus claims about mobile biological weapons labs. “It’s not our fault,” Chalabi says. But the story doesn’t end there. A second report, released by the Senate Intelligence Committee in September 2006, reached far more damning conclusions. The report states flatly that Chalabi’s group introduced defectors to American intelligence who directly influenced two key judgments in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which preceded the Senate vote on the Iraq war: that Hussein possessed mobile biological-weapons laboratories and that he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program. The report said that the I.N.C. provided a large volume of flawed intelligence to the United States about Iraq, saying the group “attempted to influence United States policy on Iraq by providing false information through defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.” (Five Republican senators disagreed with the report’s conclusions about the I.N.C.) Chalabi’s denials are unconvincing for another reason. His role in the preparations for war was not just as a source for American intelligence agencies. He was America’s chief public advocate for war, spreading information gathered by his own intelligence network to newspapers, magazines, television programs and Congress. (A New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, was one of Chalabi’s primary conduits; in an e-mail message sent in 2003 that has been widely quoted since, she wrote that Chalabi “has provided most of the front-page exclusives on W.M.D. to our paper” and that the Army unit she was then traveling with was “using Chalabi’s intell and document network for its own W.M.D. work.”) Indeed, the press proved even more gullible than the intelligence experts in the American government. In a June 2002 letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the I.N.C. listed 108 news articles based on information provided by the group. The list included articles concerning some of the wildest claims about Hussein, including that he had collaborated in the Sept. 11 attacks. David Kay, the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, offers one of the most compelling explanations for how pivotal Chalabi’s role was in taking America to war. Kay said that while the C.I.A. had long regarded Chalabi with suspicion, disregarding much of what he gave them, Chalabi had succeeded in persuading his more powerful friends in other parts of the government — Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, and Wolfowitz. The pressure brought by those men, Kay told me, ultimately persuaded George Tenet, director of the C.I.A., that the White House was committed to war and that there was no point in resisting it. “In my judgment, the reason George Tenet and the top of the agency came over to the argument that Iraq had W.M.D. was that they really knew that the vice president and Wolfowitz had come to that conclusion anyway,” Kay said. “They had been getting information from Chalabi for years.” Of Wolfowitz, whom he has known for years, Kay said: “He was a true believer. He thought he had the evidence. That came from the defectors. They came from Chalabi.” Kay said he continued to feel Chalabi’s influence with Wolfowitz even after the invasion, when Kay was leading the team searching for W.M.D. from mid- to late 2003. “Paul, when faced with evidence that we had developed on the ground, would say, Well, Chalabi says this, the I.N.C. says this, why are you not seeing it?” Kellems, the Wolfowitz assistant, disputed Kay’s story, saying that Tenet’s views were shared by officials across the government. “The position taken on weapons was the consensus view of the United States, including of the Clinton administration and other Western intelligence agencies — as well as that of Mr. Kay himself prior to visiting Iraq,” Kellems said. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in Bush’s first term, adds a final turn to the labyrinth. In the frantic days leading up to Powell’s speech at the United Nations in February 2003, when he laid out the case for war, Wilkerson said he spent many nights sleeping on a couch in George Tenet’s office. During those preparations, Wilkerson told me, Powell insisted that every point he would make at the U.N. had to be supported by at least three independent sources. “We had three or four sources for every item that was substantive in his presentation,” Wilkerson told me in an interview in Washington. “Powell insisted on that. But what I am hearing now, though, is that a lot of these sources sort of tinged and merged back into a single source, and that inevitably that single source seems to be either recommended by, set up by, orchestrated by, introduced by, or whatever, by somebody in the I.N.C.” Wilkerson said that the revelations, some of which he says he has heard from his own friends inside American and European intelligence agencies, have forced him to rethink how America went to war. “I have maintained pretty much the same thing that the president said, ‘Well, we all got fooled, it was lousy intelligence, and no one in the national leadership spun the intelligence,’ ” Wilkerson said. “I am having to revisit that. And that is disturbing to me.” Wilkerson raises a crucial point. Assuming that Chalabi was a source for at least some of the bogus intelligence, we might ask ourselves: so what? Was the American national security apparatus so incompetent that it could be hoodwinked by a handful of shopworn engineers and an Iraqi mathematician to take the country into war? Or is the lesson more disturbing — that Chalabi simply gave the Bush administration what it wanted to hear? “I think Chalabi and the I.N.C. were very shrewd,” Wilkerson said. “I think Chalabi understood what people wanted, and he fed it to them. From everything I’ve heard, no one says he is dumb.” 5. Tehran, November 2005 Amid the debate about Chalabi’s role in taking America to war, one little-noticed phrase in a Senate Intelligence Committee report on W.M.D. offered an important insight into Chalabi’s identity. One of the principal errors made by the Bush administration in relying on Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, the report said, was to disregard conclusions by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency that “the I.N.C. was penetrated by hostile intelligence services,” notably those of Iran. The Iran connection has long been among the most beguiling aspects of Chalabi’s career. Baer, the former C.I.A. operative, recalled sitting in a hotel lobby in Salah al-Din, in Kurdish-controlled Iraq, in 1995 while Chalabi met with the turbaned representatives of Iranian intelligence on the other side of the room. (Baer, as an American, was barred from meeting the Iranians.) Baer says he came to regard Chalabi as an Iranian asset, and still does. “He is basically beholden to the Iranians to stay viable,” Baer told me. “All his C.I.A. connections — he wouldn’t get away with that sort of thing with the Iranians unless he had proved his worth to them.” Pat Lang, the D.I.A. agent, holds a similar view: that in Chalabi, the Iranians probably saw someone who could help them achieve their long-sought goal of removing Saddam Hussein. After a time, in Lang’s view, the Iranians may have figured the Americans would leave and that Chalabi would most likely be in charge. Lang insists he is only speculating, but he says it has been clear to the American intelligence community for years that Chalabi has maintained “deep contacts” with Iranian officials. “Here is what I think happened,” Lang said. “Chalabi went and told the guys at the Ministry of Intelligence and Security in Tehran: ‘The Americans are giving me money. I’m their guy. I’m their candidate.’ And I’m sure their eyes lit up. The Iranians would reason that they could use this guy to manipulate the United States to get what they wanted. They would figure that the U.S. would invade. They would figure that we would come and we would go, and if we left Chalabi in charge, who was a good friend of theirs, they would be in good shape.” Lang’s thesis is impossible to prove, and Chalabi denies it. And even if it were true, Chalabi’s role would be difficult to discern: so many different Iranian agencies are thought to be pursuing so many different agendas in Iraq that a single Iranian national interest is difficult to identify. Still, if Lang’s and Baer’s argument is true, it would be the stuff of spy novels: Chalabi, the American-adopted champion of Iraqi democracy, a kind of double agent for one of America’s principal adversaries. In late 2005, I accompanied Chalabi on a trip to Iran, in part to solve the riddle. We drove eastward out of Baghdad, in a convoy as menacing as the one we had ridden in south to Mushkhab earlier in the year. After three hours of weaving and careering, the plains of eastern Iraq halted, and the terrain turned sharply upward into a thick ridge of arid mountains. We had come to Mehran, on one of history’s great fault lines, the historic border between the Ottoman and Persian Empires. As we crossed into Iran, the wreckage and ruin of modern Iraq gave way to swept streets and a tidy border post with shiny bathrooms. Another world. An Iranian cleric approached and shook Chalabi’s hand. Then he said something curious: “We are disappointed to hear that you won’t be staying in the Shiite alliance,” he said. “We were really hoping you’d stay.” The border between Iraq and Iran had, for the moment, disappeared. More curious, though, was the authority that Chalabi seemed to carry in Iran, which, after all, has been accused of assisting Iraqi insurgents and otherwise stirring up chaos there. For starters, Chalabi asked me if I wanted to come along on his Iranian trip only the night before he left — and then procured a visa for me in a single day: a Friday, during the Eid holiday, when the Iranian Embassy was closed. Under ordinary circumstances, an American reporter might wait weeks. Then there was the executive jet. When we arrived at the border, Chalabi ducked into a bathroom and changed out of his camouflage T-shirt and slacks and into a well-tailored blue suit. Then we drove to Ilam, where an 11-seat Fokker jet was idling on the runway of the local airport. We jumped in and took off for Tehran, flying over a dramatic landscape of canyons and ravines. We landed in Iran’s smoggy capital, and within a couple of hours, Chalabi was meeting with the highest officials of the Iranian government. One of them was Ali Larijani, the national security adviser. I interviewed Larijani the next morning. “Our relationship with Mr. Chalabi does not have anything to do with his relationship with the neocons,” he said. His red-rimmed eyes, when I met him at 7 a.m., betrayed a sleepless night. “He is a very constructive and influential figure. He is a very wise man and a very useful person for the future of Iraq.” Then came the meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president. I was with a handful of Iranian reporters who were led into a finely appointed room just outside the president’s office. First came Chalabi, dressed in a tailored suit, beaming. Then Ahmadinejad, wearing a face of childlike bewilderment. He was dressed in imitation leather shoes and bulky white athletic socks, and a suit that looked as if it had come from a Soviet department store. Only a few days before, Ahmadinejad publicly called for the destruction of Israel. He and Chalabi, who is several inches taller, stood together for photos, then retired to a private room. At the time of Chalabi’s visit, Iran and the United States were engaged in a complicated diplomatic dance; the American ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been authorized to open negotiations with the Iranians over their involvement in Iraq. Still, Chalabi insists he carried no note from the Iranians when he flew to Washington the next week. Officially, at least, Iran and the United States never got together. As ever, Chalabi had multiple agendas. One was to learn whether the Iranians would support his candidacy for the prime ministership (the same reason he traveled to the United States). It makes you wonder, in light of the Baer and Lang thesis: was Chalabi telling the Iranians, or asking them for permission? Or making a deal, based on his presumed leverage in the United States? The possibilities seemed endless. Chalabi played it cool. “The fact that Iraq’s neighbor is also a country that is majority Shia is no reason for us to accept any interference in our affairs or to compromise the integrity of Iraq,” he said after his meeting with Ahmadinejad. Richard Perle, Chalabi’s friend, discounted the idea that Chalabi might be a double agent. “Of course Chalabi has a relationship with the Iranians — you have to have a relationship with the Iranians in order to operate there,” Perle said. “The question is what kind of relationship. Is he fooling the Iranians or are the Iranians using him? I think Chalabi has been very shrewd in getting the things he has needed over the years out of the Iranians without giving anything in return.” For all of the skullduggery surrounding the trip to Iran, though, the greatest revelation came later in the day. When the meeting with Ahmadinejad ended, he asked Chalabi if there was anything he could to do to make his stay more comfortable. Chalabi said yes, in fact, there was: would he mind if he, Chalabi, took a tour of the Museum of Contemporary Art? So there we were, in the middle of the Axis of Evil, strolling past one of the finest collections of Western Modern art outside Europe and the United States: Matisse, Kandinsky, Rothko, Gauguin, Pollock, Klee, Van Gogh, five Warhols, seven Picassos and a sprawling garden of sculpture outside. The collection was assembled by Queen Farah, the shah’s wife, with the monarchy’s vast oil wealth. And now, with the mullahs in charge, the museum is largely forgotten. The day we were there, the gallery was all but empty. We had the museum’s enthusiastic English-speaking tour guide all to ourselves. “Thank you, thank you, for coming!” Noreen Motamed exclaimed, clapping her hands. We walked the empty halls. Chalabi moved through the place deliberately, nodding his head, pausing at the Degas and the Pissarro. “Wow,” Chalabi said before Jesus Rafael Soto’s painting “Canada.” “Look at that.” A retinue of Iranian officials walked with us, unmoved by the splendor. Ahmadinejad had stayed behind. For all of the furies that emanate from the halls of the Iranian government, it has taken fine care of Queen Farah’s collection. Indeed, about the only way you would know you were not in a museum in New York or London was the absence of the middle panel from Francis Bacon’s triptych “Two Figures Lying on a Bed With Attendant,” which depicts two naked men. “It is in the basement, covered,” Motamed said with disappointed eyes. Finally, we came across a pair of paintings by Marc Chagall, the 20th-century Modernist and painter of Jewish life. The display contained no mention of this fact. Chalabi gazed at the Chagalls for a time. Then, with a rueful smile, turned, to no one in particular, and said loudly: “Imagine that. They have two paintings by Marc Chagall in the middle of a museum in Tehran.” The Iranian officials seemed not to hear. 6. Baghdad, December 2005 A winter rain is falling. Chalabi is standing inside a tent in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum of eastern Baghdad. He’s talking about his plans for restoring electricity, boosting oil production and beating the insurgency. People seem to be listening, but without enthusiasm. The violence here, worsening by the day, is washing away the hopes of ordinary Iraqis. Less and less seems possible anymore. People are retreating inward, you can see it in the glaze in their eyes. As Chalabi speaks, I pull aside one of the Iraqis who had been listening. What do you think of him? I ask. “Chalabi good good,” the Iraqi man says in halting English. Whom are you going to vote for? “The Shiite alliance, of course,” the Iraqi answers. “It is the duty of all Shiite people.” When the election came, Chalabi was wiped out. His Iraqi National Congress received slightly more than 30,000 votes, only one-quarter of 1 percent of the 12 million votes cast — not enough to put even one of them, not even Chalabi, in the new Iraqi Parliament. There was grumbling in the Chalabi camp. One of his associates said of the Shiite alliance: “We know they cheated. You know how we know? Because in one area we had 5,000 forged ballots, and when they were counted, we didn’t even get that many.” He shrugged. But the truth seemed clear enough: Chalabi was finished. Chalabi, who could plausibly claim that he, more than any other Iraqi, had made the election possible, had been shunned by the very people he had worked so hard to set free. No amount of deal making or of public relations foot-work, or of endorsements from friends, was able to save him. Chalabi may have helped bring democracy to Iraq, but it was democracy that finished him. He was, in the end, a parlor politician, someone from the world of his father or grandfather, or maybe of Victorian England: a brilliant negotiator and schemer who might settle a country’s problems over a cup of tea. But in Iraq, by late 2005, real power was no longer held by the parlor men, or by politicians at all. It was held by people like Moktada al-Sadr, populist leaders with a militia and a mass following in the street. The election results were a harbinger of the civil war. Iraqis voted almost entirely along sectarian and ethnic lines: Kurds for the big Kurdish parties, Sunnis for the Sunni parties and Shiites for the big Islamist Shiite alliance. Iraqis who tried to run on a secular platform — Chalabi, for instance, and his relative, Allawi, in another party — found themselves abandoned. Just two months later, in February of this year, following the destruction of the Askariya shrine, a holy Shiite temple in Samarra, the civil war began in earnest: Shiite gunmen, who had for years been restrained by the Shiite leadership in the face of the Sunni onslaught, were finally free to retaliate. Chalabi, shut out of the government, claimed that his sin was one of miscalculation. There was some truth to this: in all likelihood, Chalabi did not lose because he had been convicted of stealing millions of dollars from a Jordanian bank. Or because of the rumors swirling around Baghdad that he had looted the treasury. Or even because he was an exile close to the Americans. No: plenty of Westernized Iraqi exiles were elected to Parliament — among them Mowaffak al-Rubaie and Adil Abdul Mahdi — who, like Chalabi, didn’t have local followings and were trailed by similar questions. Practically speaking, Chalabi lost because he had broken from the big cleric-backed Shiite alliance that swept the election. “I had not realized how polarized Iraq had become,” Chalabi told me after the election. He might have gotten a seat in the cabinet, but that didn’t work out, either. That stung: the new Iraqi government is staffed with Chalabi’s old colleagues, many of them members of the exile alliance he once led. Jalal Talabani is president. Adil Abdul Mahdi, his boyhood friend, is vice president. Barham Salih, comrade of many years, is deputy prime minister. His old confidant Zalmay Khalilzad, who played a central role in forming the new government, is the American ambassador. In the end, they couldn’t — or wouldn’t — bring him aboard. “Chalabi really made a mess of things,” said one Iraqi political leader who now occupies a key post in the government. He declined to elaborate. As anticlimactic as was Chalabi’s fall, its real meaning lay in a paradox: democratic politics no longer mattered. For three years, the American-backed enterprise in Iraq rested on the assumption that the exercise of democratic politics would drain away the anger that was driving the violence. Instead of bullets, there would be ballots. But at the culmination of that long process — two constitutions, two elections and a referendum — the violence was worse than ever. It turns out that democratic politics does not stop violence; indeed, the elections, by polarizing Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic communities, may have helped push the country into civil war. Effectively, by the fall of 2006, the overwhelming majority of Iraq had no government at all. It was a failed state. Yes, there were Iraqis — Chalabi’s friends — who went to their jobs every day, toiling dutifully and not so dutifully inside the Green Zone, which every day seemed more and more divorced from the reality outside. In the Red Zone, as the real Iraq is called, Iraq was a nightmarish, apocalyptic place, where gunmen kidnapped children and sometimes killed them, where bodies turned up at the morgue peppered by holes from electric drills and corpses lay uncollected in the streets, along with the trash, for days on end. Ahmad Chalabi devoted his whole adult life to toppling a dictator and achieving power in the place of his birth. He felled the dictator, helping along a reckless gamble that wagered the future of a nation. The gamble failed, a nation imploded and Chalabi never ascended to the throne he so coveted. But in an odd turn of fortune, the throne no longer had anything to offer. 7. London, August 2006 The conversation is wrapping up. The talk turns to the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the machinations of those around him, what the future might hold. Chalabi, in an expansive mood, gets up, goes into a closet and brings out a note that Bob Baer, the C.I.A. agent, scribbled to him in that hotel lobby when the two men plotted a coup many years before. The talk, improbably, turns to memoirs; at the moment, Baer’s, “See No Evil,” was a best seller. I ask Chalabi, who is back on the couch, if it isn’t time that he write his own. He doesn’t hesitate to answer. “Too early!” Chalabi says. “Too early!”
Oral Presentation on ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS? ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: is critical and very important issue for the United States. It is country of highest level of Immigration Legal and Illegal, immigrants. I personally stand against ILLEGAL Immigration. In March 2005 Immigration and Naturalization Service report estimates that 165,000 illegals go home each year, 50,000 are deported, and 25,000 die. But many more than that come in. in 2007 the illegal alien population is above 13 million persons. Government and academic estimates indicate that as of 2006 there were 11 to 12 million illegal aliens living in the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies estimated the illegal alien population at 10 million as of November 2004. Immigration officials estimate that the illegal alien population grows by as many as 500,000 every year. ILLEGAL IMIGRANTS NOT ONLY COME ILLEGALY INTO THIS COUNTRY BUT ALSO BREAK LAWS: They come here illegally in the first place. They don’t speak English because they come here illegally. They steal jobs for Americans and also legal Immigrants. They bring crime, Gangs, drugs etc.. They steal American identities and cause pain a suffering They commit crimes against citizens. Yes citizens commit crimes too but if an illegal kills, victimizes or injures one citizen then isn't that one too many? They take medical care from citizens. They take school funding away from citizens. (OVER $10,000 per kid per year!) Far too many work under the table and pay little to no taxes. While they get most of the same protections that citizens get. They are not medically screened so they bring a lot of diseases into the country. Our population is already growing faster then ever before in history. Current United States Population is 300million. Census Bureau’s Projection of U.S. population says that in 2050 population will grow up to 420million. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS NOT A VICTIMLESS CRIME: illegal immigration causes substantial harm to American citizens and legal immigrants, particularly those in the most sectors of our population--the poor, minorities, and children. Illegal immigration causes an huge drain on public funds. The seminal study of the costs of immigration by the National Academy of Sciences found that the taxes paid by immigrants do not cover the cost of services received by them. We cannot provide high quality education, health care, and retirement security for our own people if we continue to bring in endless numbers of poor, unskilled immigrants. Additionally, job competition by waves of illegal immigrants willing to work at substandard wages and working conditions depresses the wages of American workers, hitting hardest at minority workers and those without high school degrees. Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them and their immigration status. Illegal Alien Crime in America • 12 Americans are killed every day by illegal aliens. It translates to 4,380 Americans killed annually by illegal aliens.* • 13 Americans are killed each day by drunk illegal aliens drivers, for an annual total death toll of 4,745.* • 8 American children are victims of sexual abuse by illegal aliens every day, for an annual total of 2,920.* * Quotes from U.S. Representative Steve King, R-Iowa. In the population study of a sample of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990. About 45 percent of all offenses were drug or immigration offenses. About 15 percent were property-related offenses such as burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and property damage. About 12 percent were for violent offenses such as murder, robbery, assault, and sex-related crimes. ALSO we must secure our borders now. A nation without secure borders is no nation at all. We must secure our nation, because it makes no sense to fight terrorists abroad when our own front door is left wide open and unlocked. Together we the people must secure the future of America. BORDER SECURITY •1. The Administration Will Continue To Strengthen Security At The Border With Additional Personnel And Infrastructure. They are committed to implementing the following border security measures by December 31, 2008: •18,300 Border Patrol agents •370 miles of fencing •300 miles of vehicle barriers •105 camera and radar towers •You never know who is entering this country… oBy The End Of 2008, The US-VISIT Exit Requirement Will Be Underway At All U.S. Airports And Seaports. The Department of Homeland Security will continue to explore effective and cost-efficient means of establishing biometric exit requirements at land border crossings. oThe Administration Will Establish A New Land-Border Exit System For Guest Workers, Starting On A Pilot Basis. This will help ensure that temporary workers in the country now follow the mandate to leave when their work authorization expires. WHAT CAN WE DO? I'm doing oral Presentation on this. So can anyone tell me if this is enough of information. Should I include something else. Thank you. I will give 10 points.. Also What can we do? I did not finish that yet.. www.americanpatrol.com www.whitehouse.gov www.newswithviews.com www.fairus.org I did.. I found most of the information here. I understant there are so many Details, I cannot stay in front of the class 1 hour. I got only 5 minutes to do this.
Jews of Iraq? What about them? Of course I thought I knew it all back then. I was young, idealistic, and more than willing to put my life at risk for my convictions. It was 1947 and I wasn't quite 18 when the Iraqi authorities caught me for smuggling young Iraqi Jews like myself out of Iraq, into Iran, and then on to the Promised Land of the soon-to-be established Israel. I was an Iraqi Jew in the Zionist underground. My Iraqi jailers did everything they could to extract the names of my co-conspirators. Fifty years later, pain still throbs in my right toe-a reminder of the day my captors used pliers to remove my toenails. On another occasion, they hauled me to the flat roof of the prison, stripped me bare on a frigid January day, then threw a bucket of cold water over me. I was left there, chained to the railing, for hours. But I never once considered giving them the information they wanted. I was a true believer. My preoccupation during what I refer to as my "two years in hell" was with survival and escape. I had no interest then in the broad sweep of Jewish history in Iraq even though my family had been part of it right from the beginning. We were originally Haroons, a large and important family of the "Babylonian Diaspora." My ancestors had settled in Iraq more than 2,600 years ago-600 years before Christianity, and 1,200 years before Islam. I am descended from Jews who built the tomb of Yehezkel, a Jewish prophet of pre-biblical times. My town, where I was born in 1929, is Hillah, not far from the ancient site of Babylon. The original Jews found Babylon, with its nourishing Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to be truly a land of milk, honey, abundance-and opportunity. Although Jews, like other minorities in what became Iraq, experienced periods of oppression and discrimination depending on the rulers of the period, their general trajectory over two and one-half millennia was upward. Under the late Ottoman rule, for example, Jewish social and religious institutions, schools, and medical facilities flourished without outside interference, and Jews were prominent in government and business. As I sat there in my cell, unaware that a death sentence soon would be handed down against me, I could not have recounted any personal grievances that my family members would have lodged against the government or the Muslim majority. Our family had been treated well and had prospered, first as farmers with some 50,000 acres devoted to rice, dates and Arab horses. Then, with the Ottomans, we bought and purified gold that was shipped to Istanbul and turned into coinage. The Turks were responsible in fact for changing our name to reflect our occupation-we became Khalaschi, meaning "Makers of Pure." I did not volunteer the information to my father that I had joined the Zionist underground. He found out several months before I was arrested when he saw me writing Hebrew and using words and expressions unfamiliar to him. He was even more surprised to learn that, yes, I had decided I would soon move to Israel myself. He was scornful. "You'll come back with your tail between your legs," he predicted. About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs. But my mother and father were among the 6,000 who did not go to Israel. Although physically I never did return to Iraq-that bridge had been burned in any event-my heart has made the journey there many, many times. My father had it right. I was imprisoned at the military camp of Abu-Greib, about 7 miles from Baghdad. When the military court handed down my sentence of death by hanging, I had nothing to lose by attempting the escape I had been planning for many months. It was a strange recipe for an escape: a dab of butter, an orange peel, and some army clothing that I had asked a friend to buy for me at a flea market. I deliberately ate as much bread as I could to put on fat in anticipation of the day I became 18, when they could formally charge me with a crime and attach the 50-pound ball and chain that was standard prisoner issue. Later, after my leg had been shackled, I went on a starvation diet that often left me weak-kneed. The pat of butter was to lubricate my leg in preparation for extricating it from the metal band. The orange peel I surreptitiously stuck into the lock on the night of my planned escape, having studied how it could be placed in such a way as to keep the lock from closing. As the jailers turned to go after locking up, I put on the old army issue that was indistinguishable from what they were wearing-a long, green coat and a stocking cap that I pulled down over much of my face (it was winter). Then I just quietly opened the door and joined the departing group of soldiers as they strode down the hall and outside, and I offered a "good night" to the shift guard as I left. A friend with a car was waiting to speed me away. Later I made my way to the new state of Israel, arriving in May, 1950. My passport had my name in Arabic and English, but the English couldn't capture the "kh" sound, so it was rendered simply as Klaski. At the border, the immigration people applied the English version, which had an Eastern European, Ashkenazi ring to it. In one way, this "mistake" was my key to discovering very soon just how the Israeli caste system worked. They asked me where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I was the son of a farmer; I knew all the problems of the farm, so I volunteered to go to Dafnah, a farming kibbutz in the high Galilee. I only lasted a few weeks. The new immigrants were given the worst of everything. The food was the same, but that was the only thing that everyone had in common. For the immigrants, bad cigarettes, even bad toothpaste. Everything. I left. Then, through the Jewish Agency, I was advised to go to al-Majdal (later renamed Ashkelon), an Arab town about 9 miles from Gaza, very close to the Mediterranean. The Israeli government planned to turn it into a farmers' city, so my farm background would be an asset there. When I reported to the Labor Office in al-Majdal, they saw that I could read and write Arabic and Hebrew and they said that I could find a good-paying job with the Military Governor's office. The Arabs were under the authority of these Israeli Military Governors. A clerk handed me a bunch of forms in Arabic and Hebrew. Now it dawned on me. Before Israel could establish its farmers' city, it had to rid al-Majdal of its indigenous Palestinians. The forms were petitions to the United Nations Inspectors asking for transfer out of Israel to Gaza, which was under Egyptian control. I read over the petition. In signing, the Palestinian would be saying that he was of sound mind and body and was making the request for transfer free of pressure or duress. Of course, there was no way that they would leave without being pressured to do so. These families had been there hundreds of years, as farmers, primitive artisans, weavers. The Military Governor prohibited them from pursuing their livelihoods, just penned them up until they lost hope of resuming their normal lives. That's when they signed to leave. I was there and heard their grief. "Our hearts are in pain when we look at the orange trees that we planted with our own hands. Please let us go, let us give water to those trees. God will not be pleased with us if we leave His trees untended." I asked the Military Governor to give them relief, but he said, "No, we want them to leave." I could no longer be part of this oppression and I left. Those Palestinians who didn't sign up for transfers were taken by force-just put in trucks and dumped in Gaza. About four thousand people were driven from al-Majdal in one way or another. The few who remained were collaborators with the Israeli authorities. Subsequently, I wrote letters trying to get a government job elsewhere and I got many immediate responses asking me to come for an interview. Then they would discover that my face didn't match my Polish/Ashkenazi name. They would ask if I spoke Yiddish or Polish, and when I said I didn't, they would ask where I came by a Polish name. Desperate for a good job, I would usually say that I thought my great-grandfather was from Poland. I was advised time and again that "we'll give you a call." Eventually, three to four years after coming to Israel, I changed my name to Giladi, which is close to the code name, Gilad, that I had in the Zionist underground. Klaski wasn't doing me any good anyway, and my Eastern friends were always chiding me about the name they knew didn't go with my origins as an Iraqi Jew. I was disillusioned at what I found in the Promised Land, disillusioned personally, disillusioned at the institutionalized racism, disillusioned at what I was beginning to learn about Zionism's cruelties. The principal interest Israel had in Jews from Islamic countries was as a supply of cheap labor, especially for the farm work that was beneath the urbanized Eastern European Jews. Ben Gurion needed the "Oriental" Jews to farm the thousands of acres of land left by Palestinians who were driven out by Israeli forces in 1948. And I began to find out about the barbaric methods used to rid the fledgling state of as many Palestinians as possible. The world recoils today at the thought of bacteriological warfare, but Israel was probably the first to actually use it in the Middle East. In the 1948 war, Jewish forces would empty Arab villages of their populations, often by threats, sometimes by just gunning down a half-dozen unarmed Arabs as examples to the rest. To make sure the Arabs couldn't return to make a fresh life for themselves in these villages, the Israelis put typhus and dysentery bacteria into the water wells. Uri Mileshtin, an official historian for the Israeli Defense Force, has written and spoken about the use of bacteriological agents. According to Mileshtin, Moshe Dayan, a division commander at the time, gave orders in 1948 to remove Arabs from their villages, bulldoze their homes, and render water wells unusable with typhus and dysentery bacteria. Acre was so situated that it could practically defend itself with one big gun, so the Haganah put bacteria into the spring that fed the town. The spring was called Capri and it ran from the north near a kibbutz. The Haganah put typhus bacteria into the water going to Acre, the people got sick, and the Jewish forces occupied Acre. This worked so well that they sent a Haganah division dressed as Arabs into Gaza, where there were Egyptian forces, and the Egyptians caught them putting two cans of bacteria, typhus and dysentery, into the water supply in wanton disregard of the civilian population. "In war, there is no sentiment," one of the captured Haganah men was quoted as saying. My activism in Israel began shortly after I received a letter from the Socialist/Zionist Party asking me to help with their Arabic newspaper. When I showed up at their offices at Central House in Tel Aviv, I asked around to see just where I should report. I showed the letter to a couple of people there and, without even looking at it, they would motion me away with the words, "Room No. 8." When I saw that they weren't even reading the letter, I inquired of several others. But the response was the same, "Room No. 8," with not a glance at the paper I put in front of them. So I went to Room 8 and saw that it was the Department of Jews from Islamic Countries. I was disgusted and angry. Either I am a member of the party or I'm not. Do I have a different ideology or different politics because I am an Arab Jew? It's segregation, I thought, just like a Negroes' Department. I turned around and walked out. That was the start of my open protests. That same year I organized a demonstration in Ashkelon against Ben Gurion's racist policies and 10,000 people turned out. There wasn't much opportunity for those of us who were second class citizens to do much about it when Israel was on a war footing with outside enemies. After the 1967 war, I was in the Army myself and served in the Sinai when there was continued fighting along the Suez Canal. But the cease-fire with Egypt in 1970 gave us our opening. We took to the streets and organized politically to demand equal rights. If it's our country, if we were expected to risk our lives in a border war, then we expected equal treatment. We mounted the struggle so tenaciously and received so much publicity that the Israeli government tried to discredit our movement by calling us "Israel's Black Panthers." They were thinking in racist terms, really, in assuming the Israeli public would reject an organization whose ideology was being compared to that of radical blacks in the United States. But we saw that what we were doing was no different than what blacks in the United States were fighting against-segregation, discrimination, unequal treatment. Rather than reject the label, we adopted it proudly. I had posters of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and other civil rights activists plastered all over my office. With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Israeli-condoned Sabra and Shatilla massacres, I had had enough of Israel. I became a United States citizen and made certain to revoke my Israeli citizenship. I could never have written and published my book in Israel, not with the censorship they would impose. Even in America, I had great difficulty finding a publisher because many are subject to pressures of one kind or another from Israel and its friends. I ended up paying $60,000 from my own pocket to publish Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, virtually the entire proceeds from having sold my house in Israel. I still was afraid that the printer would back out or that legal proceedings would be initiated to stop its publication, like the Israeli government did in an attempt to prevent former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky from publishing his first book. Ben Gurion's Scandals had to be translated into English from two languages. I wrote in Hebrew when I was in Israel and hoped to publish the book there, and I wrote in Arabic when I was completing the book after coming to the U.S. But I was so worried that something would stop publication that I told the printer not to wait for the translations to be thoroughly checked and proofread. Now I realize that the publicity of a lawsuit would just have created a controversial interest in the book. I am using bank vault storage for the valuable documents that back up what I have written. These documents, including some that I illegally copied from the archives at Yad Vashem, confirm what I saw myself, what I was told by other witnesses, and what reputable historians and others have written concerning the Zionist bombings in Iraq, Arab peace overtures that were rebuffed, and incidents of violence and death inflicted by Jews on Jews in the cause of creating Israel. The Riots of 1941 If, as I have said, my family in Iraq was not persecuted personally and I knew no deprivation as a member of the Jewish minority, what led me to the steps of the gallows as a member of the Zionist underground? To answer that question, it is necessary to establish the context of the massacre that occurred in Baghdad on June 1, 1941, when several hundred Iraqi Jews were killed in riots involving junior officers of the Iraqi army. I was 12 years of age and many of those killed were my friends. I was angry, and very confused. What I didn't know at the time was that the riots most likely were stirred up by the British, in collusion with a pro-British Iraqi leadership. With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following WW I, Iraq came under British "tutelage." Amir Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein who had led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman sultan, was brought in from Mecca by the British to become King of Iraq in 1921. Many Jews were appointed to key administrative posts, including that of economics minister. Britain retained final authority over domestic and external affairs. Britain's pro-Zionist attitude in Palestine, however, triggered a growing anti-Zionist backlash in Iraq, as it did in all Arab countries. Writing at the end of 1934, Sir Francis Humphreys, Britain's Ambassador in Baghdad, noted that, while before WW I Iraqi Jews had enjoyed a more favorable position than any other minority in the country, since then "Zionism has sown dissension between Jews and Arabs, and a bitterness has grown up between the two peoples which did not previously exist." King Faisal died in 1933. He was succeeded by his son Ghazi, who died in a motor car accident in 1939. The crown then passed to Ghazi's 4-year-old son, Faisal II, whose uncle, Abd al-Ilah, was named regent. Abd al-Ilah selected Nouri el-Said as prime minister. El-Said supported the British and, as hatred of the British grew, he was forced from office in March 1940 by four senior army officers who advocated Iraq's independence from Britain. Calling themselves the Golden Square, the officers compelled the regent to name as prime minister Rashid Ali al-Kilani, leader of the National Brotherhood party. The time was 1940 and Britain was reeling from a strong German offensive. Al-Kilani and the Golden Square saw this as their opportunity to rid themselves of the British once and for all. Cautiously they began to negotiate for German support, which led the pro-British regent Abd al-Ilah to dismiss al-Kilani in January 1941. By April, however, the Golden Square officers had reinstated the prime minister. This provoked the British to send a military force into Basra on April 12, 1941. Basra, Iraq's second largest city, had a Jewish population of 30,000. Most of these Jews made their livings from import/export, money changing, retailing, as workers in the airports, railways, and ports, or as senior government employees. On the same day, April 12, supporters of the pro-British regent notified the Jewish leaders that the regent wanted to meet with them. As was their custom, the leaders brought flowers for the regent. Contrary to custom, however, the cars that drove them to the meeting place dropped them off at the site where the British soldiers were concentrated. Photographs of the Jews appeared in the following day's newspapers with the banner "Basra Jews Receive British Troops with Flowers." That same day, April 13, groups of angry Arab youths set about to take revenge against the Jews. Several Muslim notables in Basra heard of the plan and calmed things down. Later, it was learned that the regent was not in Basra at all and that the matter was a provocation by his pro-British supporters to bring about an ethnic war in order to give the British army a pretext to intervene. The British continued to land more forces in and around Basra. On May 7, 1941, their Gurkha unit, composed of Indian soldiers from that ethnic group, occupied Basra's el-Oshar quarter, a neighborhood with a large Jewish population. The soldiers, led by British officers, began looting. Many shops in the commercial district were plundered. Private homes were broken into. Cases of attempted rape were reported. Local residents, Jews and Muslims, responded with pistols and old rifles, but their bullets were no match for the soldiers' Tommy Guns. Afterwards, it was learned that the soldiers acted with the acquiescence, if not the blessing, of their British commanders. (It should be remembered that the Indian soldiers, especially those of the Gurkha unit, were known for their discipline, and it is highly unlikely they would have acted so riotously without orders.) The British goal clearly was to create chaos and to blacken the image of the pro-nationalist regime in Baghdad, thereby giving the British forces reason to proceed to the capital and to overthrow the al-Kilani government. Baghdad fell on May 30. Al-Kilani fled to Iran, along with the Golden Square officers. Radio stations run by the British reported that Regent Abd al-Ilah would be returning to the city and that thousands of Jews and others were planning to welcome him. What inflamed young Iraqis against the Jews most, however, was the radio announcer Yunas Bahri on the German station "Berlin," who reported in Arabic that Jews from Palestine were fighting alongside the British against Iraqi soldiers near the city of Faluja. The report was false. On Sunday, June 1, unarmed fighting broke out in Baghdad between Jews who were still celebrating their Shabuoth holiday and young Iraqis who thought the Jews were celebrating the return of the pro-British regent. That evening, a group of Iraqis stopped a bus, removed the Jewish passengers, murdered one and fatally wounded a second. About 8:30 the following morning, some 30 individuals in military and police uniforms opened fire along el-Amin street, a small downtown street whose jewelry, tailor and grocery shops were Jewish-owned. By 11 a.m., mobs of Iraqis with knives, switchblades and clubs were attacking Jewish homes in the area. The riots continued throughout Monday, June 2. During this time, many Muslims rose to defend their Jewish neighbors, while some Jews successfully defended themselves. There were 124 killed and 400 injured, according to a report written by a Jewish Agency messenger who was in Iraq at the time. Other estimates, possibly less reliable, put the death toll higher, as many as 500, with from 650 to 2,000 injured. From 500 to 1,300 stores and more than 1,000 homes and apartments were looted. Who was behind the rioting in the Jewish quarter? Yosef Meir, one of the most prominent activists in the Zionist underground movement in Iraq, known then as Yehoshafat, claims it was the British. Meir, who now works for the Israeli Defense Ministry, argues that, in order to make it appear that the regent was returning as the savior who would reestablish law and order, the British stirred up the riots against the most vulnerable and visible segment in the city, the Jews. And, not surprisingly, the riots ended as soon as the regent's loyal soldiers entered the capital. My own investigations as a journalist lead me to believe Meir is correct. Furthermore, I think his claims should be seen as based on documents in the archives of the Israeli Defense Ministry, the agency that published his book. Yet, even before his book came out, I had independent confirmation from a man I met in Iran in the late Forties. His name was Michael Timosian, an Iraqi Armenian. When I met him he was working as a male nurse at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan in the south of Iran. On June 2, 1941, however, he was working at the Baghdad hospital where many of the riot victims were brought. Most of these victims were Jews. Timosian said he was particularly interested in two patients whose conduct did not follow local custom. One had been hit by a bullet in his shoulder, the other by a bullet in his right knee. After the doctor removed the bullets, the staff tried to change their blood-soaked cloths. But the two men fought off their efforts, pretending to be speechless, although tests showed they could hear. To pacify them, the doctor injected them with anesthetics and, as they were sleeping, Timosian changed their cloths. He discovered that one of them had around his neck an identification tag of the type used by British troops, while the other had tattoos with Indian script on his right arm along with the familiar sword of the Gurkha. The next day when Timosian showed up for work, he was told that a British officer, his sergeant and two Indian Gurkha soldiers had come to the hospital early that morning. Staff members overheard the Gurkha soldiers talking with the wounded patients, who were not as dumb as they had pretended. The patients saluted the visitors, covered themselves with sheets and, without signing the required release forms, left the hospital with their visitors. Today there is no doubt in my mind that the anti-Jewish riots of 1941 were orchestrated by the British for geopolitical ends. David Kimche is certainly a man who was in a position to know the truth, and he has spoken publicly about British culpability. Kimche had been with British Intelligence during WW II and with the Mossad after the war. Later he became Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, the position he held in 1982 when he addressed a forum at the British Institute for International Affairs in London. In responding to hostile questions about Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the refugee camp massacres in Beirut, Kimche went on the attack, reminding the audience that there was scant concern in the British Foreign Office when British Gurkha units participated in the murder of 500 Jews in the streets of Baghdad in 1941. The Bombings of 1950-1951 The anti-Jewish riots of 1941 did more than create a pretext for the British to enter Baghdad to reinstate the pro-British regent and his pro-British prime minister, Nouri el-Said. They also gave the Zionists in Palestine a pretext to set up a Zionist underground in Iraq, first in Baghdad, then in other cities such as Basra, Amara, Hillah, Diwaneia, Abril and Karkouk. Following WW II, a succession of governments held brief power in Iraq. Zionist conquests in Palestine, particularly the massacre of Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin, emboldened the anti-British movement in Iraq. When the Iraqi government signed a new treaty of friendship with London in January 1948, riots broke out all over the country. The treaty was quickly abandoned and Baghdad demanded removal of the British military mission that had run Iraq's army for 27 years. Later in 1948, Baghdad sent an army detachment to Palestine to fight the Zionists, and when Israel declared independence in May, Iraq closed the pipeline that fed its oil to Haifa's refinery. Abd al-Ilah, however, was still regent and the British quisling, Nouri el-Said, was back as prime minister. I was in the Abu-Greib prison in 1948, where I would remain until my escape to Iran in September 1949. Six months later-the exact date was March 19, 1950-a bomb went off at the American Cultural Center and Library in Baghdad, causing property damage and injuring a number of people. The center was a favorite meeting place for young Jews. The first bomb thrown directly at Jews occurred on April 8, 1950, at 9:15 p.m. A car with three young passengers hurled the grenade at Baghdad's El-Dar El-Bida Café, where Jews were celebrating Passover. Four people were seriously injured. That night leaflets were distributed calling on Jews to leave Iraq immediately. The next day, many Jews, most of them poor with nothing to lose, jammed emigration offices to renounce their citizenship and to apply for permission to leave for Israel. So many applied, in fact, that the police had to open registration offices in Jewish schools and synagogues. On May 10, at 3 a.m., a grenade was tossed in the direction of the display window of the Jewish-owned Beit-Lawi Automobile Company, destroying part of the building. No casualties were reported. On June 3, 1950, another grenade was tossed from a speeding car in the El-Batawin area of Baghdad where most rich Jews and middle class Iraqis lived. No one was hurt, but following the explosion Zionist activists sent telegrams to Israel requesting that the quota for immigration from Iraq be increased. On June 5, at 2:30 a.m., a bomb exploded next to the Jewish-owned Stanley Shashua building on El-Rashid street, resulting in property damage but no casualties. On January 14, 1951, at 7 p.m., a grenade was thrown at a group of Jews outside the Masouda Shem-Tov Synagogue. The explosive struck a high-voltage cable, electrocuting three Jews, one a young boy, Itzhak Elmacher, and wounding over 30 others. Following the attack, the exodus of Jews jumped to between 600-700 per day. Zionist propagandists still maintain that the bombs in Iraq were set off by anti-Jewish Iraqis who wanted Jews out of their country. The terrible truth is that the grenades that killed and maimed Iraqi Jews and damaged their property were thrown by Zionist Jews. Among the most important documents in my book, I believe, are copies of two leaflets published by the Zionist underground calling on Jews to leave Iraq. One is dated March 16, 1950, the other April 8, 1950. The difference between these two is critical. Both indicate the date of publication, but only the April 8th leaflet notes the time of day: 4 p.m. Why the time of day? Such a specification was unprecedented. Even the investigating judge, Salaman El-Beit, found it suspicious. Did the 4 p.m. writers want an alibi for a bombing they knew would occur five hours later? If so, how did they know about the bombing? The judge concluded they knew because a connection existed between the Zionist underground and the bomb throwers. This, too, was the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whom I had the opportunity to meet in New York in 1988. In his book, Ropes of Sand, whose publication the CIA opposed, Eveland writes: In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. . . . Although the Iraqi police later provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of an underground Zionist organization, most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had "rescued" really just in order to increase Israel's Jewish population." Eveland doesn't detail the evidence linking the Zionists to the attacks, but in my book I do. In 1955, for example, I organized in Israel a panel of Jewish attorneys of Iraqi origin to handle claims of Iraqi Jews who still had property in Iraq. One well known attorney, who asked that I not give his name, confided in me that the laboratory tests in Iraq had confirmed that the anti-American leaflets found at the American Cultural Center bombing were typed on the same typewriter and duplicated on the same stenciling machine as the leaflets distributed by the Zionist movement just before the April 8th bombing. Tests also showed that the type of explosive used in the Beit-Lawi attack matched traces of explosives found in the suitcase of an Iraqi Jew by the name of Yosef Basri. Basri, a lawyer, together with Shalom Salih, a shoemaker, would be put on trial for the attacks in December 1951 and executed the following month. Both men were members of Hashura, the military arm of the Zionist underground. Salih ultimately confessed that he, Basri and a third man, Yosef Habaza, carried out the attacks. By the time of the executions in January 1952, all but 6,000 of an estimated 125,000 Iraqi Jews had fled to Israel. Moreover, the pro-British, pro-Zionist puppet el-Said saw to it that all of their possessions were frozen, including their cash assets. (There were ways of getting Iraqi dinars out, but when the immigrants went to exchange them in Israel they found that the Israeli government kept 50 percent of the value.) Even those Iraqi Jews who had not registered to emigrate, but who happened to be abroad, faced loss of their nationality if they didn't return within a specified time. An ancient, cultured, prosperous community had been uprooted and its people transplanted to a land dominated by East European Jews, whose culture was not only foreign but entirely hateful to them. The Ultimate Criminals Zionist Leaders. From the start they knew that in order to establish a Jewish state they had to expel the indigenous Palestinian population to the neighboring Islamic states and import Jews from these same states. * Theodor Herzl, the architect of Zionism, thought it could be done by social engineering. In his diary entry for 12 June 1885, he wrote that Zionist settlers would have to "spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country." * Vladimir Jabotinsky, Prime Minister Netanyahu's ideological progenitor, frankly admitted that such a transfer of populations could only be brought about by force. * David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, told a Zionist Conference in 1937 that any proposed Jewish state would have to "transfer Arab populations out of the area, if possible of their own free will, if not by coercion." After 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted and their lands confiscated in 1948-49, Ben Gurion had to look to the Islamic countries for Jews who could fill the resultant cheap labor market. "Emissaries" were smuggled into these countries to "convince" Jews to leave either by trickery or fear. In the case of Iraq, both methods were used: uneducated Jews were told of a Messianic Israel in which the blind see, the lame walk, and onions grow as big as melons; educated Jews had bombs thrown at them. A few years after the bombings, in the early 1950s, a book was published in Iraq, in Arabic, titled Venom of the Zionist Viper. The author was one of the Iraqi investigators of the 1950-51 bombings and, in his book, he implicates the Israelis, specifically one of the emissaries sent by Israel, Mordechai Ben-Porat. As soon as the book came out, all copies just disappeared, even from libraries. The word was that agents of the Israeli Mossad, working through the U.S. Embassy, bought up all the books and destroyed them. I tried on three different occasions to have one sent to me in Israel, but each time Israeli censors in the post office intercepted it. British Leaders. Britain always acted in its best colonial interests. For that reason Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour sent his famous 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild in exchange for Zionist support in WW I. During WW II the British were primarily concerned with keeping their client states in the Western camp, while Zionists were most concerned with the immigration of European Jews to Palestine, even if this meant cooperating with the Nazis. (In my book I document numerous instances of such dealings by Ben Gurion and the Zionist leadership.) After WW II the international chessboard pitted communists against capitalists. In many countries, including the United States and Iraq, Jews represented a large part of the Communist party. In Iraq, hundreds of Jews of the working intelligentsia occupied key positions in the hierarchy of the Communist and Socialist parties. To keep their client countries in the capitalist camp, Britain had to make sure these governments had pro-British leaders. And if, as in Iraq, these leaders were overthrown, then an anti-Jewish riot or two could prove a useful pretext to invade the capital and reinstate the "right" leaders. Moreover, if the possibility existed of removing the communist influence from Iraq by transferring the whole Jewish community to Israel, well then, why not? Particularly if the leaders of Israel and Iraq conspired in the deed. The Iraqi Leaders. Both the regent Abd al-Ilah and his prime minister Nouri el- Said took directions from London. Toward the end of 1948, el-Said, who had already met with Israel's Prime Minister Ben Gurion in Vienna, began discussing with his Iraqi and British associates the need for an exchange of populations. Iraq would send the Jews in military trucks to Israel via Jordan, and Iraq would take in some of the Palestinians Israel had been evicting. His proposal included mutual confiscation of property. London nixed the idea as too radical. El-Said then went to his back-up plan and began to create the conditions that would make the lives of Iraqi Jews so miserable they would leave for Israel. Jewish government employees were fired from their jobs; Jewish merchants were denied import/export licenses; police began to arrest Jews for trivial reasons. Still the Jews did not leave in any great numbers. In September 1949, Israel sent the spy Mordechai Ben-Porat, the one mentioned in Venom of the Zionist Viper, to Iraq. One of the first things Ben-Porat did was to approach el-Said and promise him financial incentives to have a law enacted that would lift the citizenship of Iraqi Jews. Soon after, Zionist and Iraqi representatives began formulating a rough draft of the bill, according to the model dictated by Israel through its agents in Baghdad. The bill was passed by the Iraqi parliament in March 1950. It empowered the government to issue one-time exit visas to Jews wishing to leave the country. In March, the bombings began. Sixteen years later, the Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh, published by Uri Avnery, then a Knesset member, accused Ben-Porat of the Baghdad bombings. Ben-Porat, who would become a Knesset member himself, denied the charge, but never sued the magazine for libel. And Iraqi Jews in Israel still call him Morad Abu al-Knabel, Mordechai of the Bombs. As I said, all this went well beyond the comprehension of a teenager. I knew Jews were being killed and an organization existed that could lead us to the Promised Land. So I helped in the exodus to Israel. Later, on occasions, I would bump into some of these Iraqi Jews in Israel. Not infrequently they'd express the sentiment that they could kill me for what I had done. Opportunities for Peace After the Israeli attack on the Jordanian village of Qibya in October, 1953, Ben Gurion went into voluntary exile at the Sedeh Boker kibbutz in the Negev. The Labor party then used to organize many buses for people to go visit him there, where they would see the former prime minister working with sheep. But that was only for show. Really he was writing his diary and continuing to be active behind the scenes. I went on such a tour. Ben Gurion's Scandals by N.Giladi How the Haganah and Mossad eliminated Jews. Available in our BookstoreWe were told not to try to speak to Ben Gurion, but when I saw him, I asked why, since Israel is a democracy with a parliament, does it not have a constitution? Ben Gurion said, "Look, boy"-I was 24 at the time-"if we have a constitution, we have to write in it the border of our country. And this is not our border, my dear." I asked, "Then where is the border?" He said, "Wherever the Sahal will come, this is the border." Sahal is the Israeli army. Ben Gurion told the world that Israel accepted the partition and the Arabs rejected it. Then Israel took half of the land that was promised to the Arab state. And still he was saying it was not enough. Israel needed more land. How can a country make peace with its neighbors if it wants to take their land? How can a country demand to be secure if it won't say what borders it will be satisfied with? For such a country, peace would be an inconvenience. I know now that from the beginning many Arab leaders wanted to make peace with Israel, but Israel always refused. Ben Gurion covered this up with propaganda. He said that the Arabs wanted to drive Israel into the sea and he called Gamal Abdel Nasser the Hitler of the Middle East whose foremost intent was to destroy Israel. He wanted America and Great Britain to treat Nasser like a pariah. In 1954, it seemed that America was getting less critical of Nasser. Then during a three-week period in July, several terrorist bombs were set off: at the United States Information Agency offices in Cairo and Alexandria, a British-owned theater, and the central post office in Cairo. An attempt to firebomb a cinema in Alexandria failed when the bomb went off in the pocket of one of the perpetrators. That led to the discovery that the terrorists were not anti-Western Egyptians, but were instead Israeli spies bent on souring the warming relationship between Egypt and the United States in what came to be known as the Lavon Affair. Ben Gurion was still living on his kibbutz. Moshe Sharett as prime minister was in contact with Abdel Nasser through the offices of Lord Maurice Orbach of Great Britain. Sharett asked Nasser to be lenient with the captured spies, and Nasser did all that was in his power to prevent a deterioration of the situation between the two countries. Then Ben Gurion returned as Defense Minister in February, 1955. Later that month Israeli troops attacked Egyptian military camps and Palestinian refugees in Gaza, killing 54 and injuring many more. The very night of the attack, Lord Orbach was on his way to deliver a message to Nasser, but was unable to get through because of the military action. When Orbach telephoned, Nasser's secretary told him that the attack proved that Israel did not want peace and that he was wasting his time as a mediator. In November, Ben Gurion announced in the Knesset that he was willing to meet with Abdel Nasser anywhere and at any time for the sake of peace and understanding. The next morning the Israeli military attacked an Egyptian military camp in the Sabaha region. Although Nasser felt pessimistic about achieving peace with Israel, he continued to send other mediators to try. One was through the American Friends Service Committee; another via the Prime Minister of Malta, Dom Minthoff; and still another through Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. One that looked particularly promising was through Dennis Hamilton, editor of The London Times. Nasser told Hamilton that if only he could sit and talk with Ben Gurion for two or three hours, they would be able to settle the conflict and end the state of war between the two countries. When word of this reached Ben Gurion, he arranged to meet with Hamilton. They decided to pursue the matter with the Israeli ambassador in London, Arthur Luria, as liaison. On Hamilton's third trip to Egypt, Nasser met him with the text of a Ben Gurion speech stating that Israel would not give up an inch of land and would not take back a single refugee. Hamilton knew that Ben Gurion with his mouth had undermined a peace mission and missed an opportunity to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict. Nasser even sent his friend Ibrahim Izat of the Ruz El Yusuf weekly paper to meet with Israeli leaders in order to explore the political atmosphere and find out why the attacks were taking place if Israel really wanted peace. One of the men Izat met with was Yigal Yadin, a former Chief of Staff of the army who wrote this letter to me on 14 January 1982: Dear Mr. Giladi: Your letter reminded me of an event which I nearly forgot and of which I remember only a few details. Ibrahim Izat came to me if I am not mistaken under the request of the Foreign Ministry or one of its branches; he stayed in my house and we spoke for many hours. I do not remember him saying that he came on a mission from Nasser, but I have no doubt that he let it be understood that this was with his knowledge or acquiescence.... When Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal in spite of opposition from the British and the French, Radio Cairo announced in Hebrew: If the Israeli government is not influenced by the British and the French imperialists, it will eventually result in greater understanding between the two states, and Egypt will reconsider Israel's request to have access to the Suez Canal. Israel responded that it had no designs on Egypt, but at that very moment Israeli representatives were in France planning the three-way attack that was to take place in October, 1956. All the while, Ben Gurion continued to talk about the Hitler of the Middle East. This brainwashing went on until late September, 1970, when Gamal Abdel Nasser passed away. Then, miracle of miracles, David Ben Gurion told the press: A week before he died I received an envoy from Abdel Nasser who asked to meet with me urgently in order to solve the problems between Israel and the Arab world. The public was surprised because they didn't know that Abdel Nasser had wanted this all along, but Israel sabotaged it. Nasser was not the only Arab leader who wanted to make peace with Israel. There were many others. Brigadier General Abdel Karim Qasem, before he seized power in Iraq in July, 1958, headed an underground organization that sent a delegation to Israel to make a secret agreement. Ben Gurion refused even to see him. I learned about this when I was a journalist in Israel. But whenever I tried to publish even a small part of it, the censor would stamp it "Not Allowed." Now, in Netanyahu, we are witnessing another attempt by an Israeli prime minister to fake an interest in making peace. Netanyahu and the Likud are setting Arafat up by demanding that he institute more and more repressive measures in the interest of Israeli "security." Sooner or later I suspect the Palestinians will have had enough of Arafat's strong-arm methods as Israel's quisling-and he'll be killed. Then the Israeli government will say, "See, we were ready to give him everything. You can't trust those Arabs-they kill each other. Now there's no one to even talk to about peace." Conclusion Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. Certainly it has been easier for the world to accept the Zionist lie that Jews were evicted from Muslim lands because of anti-Semitism, and that Israelis, never the Arabs, were the pursuers of peace. The truth is far more discerning: bigger players on the world stage were pulling the strings. These players, I believe, should be held accountable for their crimes, particularly when they willfully terrorized, dispossessed and killed innocent people on the altar of some ideological imperative. I believe, too, that the descendants of these leaders have a moral responsibility to compensate the victims and their descendants, and to do so not just with reparations, but by setting the historical record straight. That is why I established a panel of inquiry in Israel to seek reparations for Iraqi Jews who had been forced to leave behind their property and possessions in Iraq. That is why I joined the Black Panthers in confronting the Israeli government with the grievances of the Jews in Israel who came from Islamic lands. And that is why I have written my book and this article: to set the historical record straight. We Jews from Islamic lands did not leave our ancestral homes because of any natural enmity between Jews and Muslims. And we Arabs-I say Arab because that is the language my wife and I still speak at home-we Arabs on numerous occasions have sought peace with the State of the Jews. And finally, as a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, let me say that we Americans need to stop supporting racial discrimination in Israel and the cruel expropriation of lands in the West Bank, Gaza, South Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
If the World was so Safe before Bush took Office,How do you Explain this List??????? American Victims of Mideast Terrorist Attacks -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following is a listing of incidents in which Americans are known to have been killed by Middle East-based terrorists. The list will be updated as more information becomes available. The exact number of American casualties is difficult to calculate because of incomplete news reports regarding numbers and nationalities of those injured. The toll from the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center is also uncertain, but current figures place the number of dead above 3,000. The number of dead at the Pentagon and on the hijacked airliners numbered approximately 385. Since Yasser Arafat "renounced" violence in the Oslo Peace Accords on September 13, 1993, at least 53 Americans have been murdered and at least another 83 Americans have been injured by Palestinian terrorism. Excluding the September 11 attacks, approximately 700 Americans have been killed and 1,600 wounded in terrorist attacks since 1970. This list also includes injured Americans since Oslo 1993. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- February 23, 1970, Halhoul, West Bank. Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorists open fire on a busload of pilgrims killing Barbara Ertle of Michigan and wounding two other Americans. March 28-29, 1970, Beirut, Lebanon. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) fired seven rockets at the U.S. Embassy, the American Insurance Company, Bank of America and the John F. Kennedy library. September 14, 1970, En route to Amman, Jordan. The PFLP hijacked a TWA flight from Zurich, Switzerland and forced it to land in Amman. Four American citizens were injured. May 30, 1972, Ben Gurion Airport, Israel. Three members of the Japanese Red Army, acting on the PFLP's bbehalf, carried out a machine-gun and grenade attack at Israel's main airport, killing 26 and wounding 78 people. Many of the casualties were American citizens, mostly from Puerto Rico. September 5, 1972, Munich, Germany. During the Olympic Games in Munich, Black September, a front for Fatah, took hostage 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team. Nine athletes were killed including weightlifter David Berger, an American-Israeli from Cleveland, Ohio. March 2, 1973, Khartoum, Sudan. Cleo A. Noel, Jr., U.S. ambassador to Sudan, and George C. Moore, also a U.S. diplomat, were held hostage and then killed by terrorists at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. It seems likely that Fatah was responsible for the attack. September 8, 1974, Athens, Greece. TWA Flight 841, flying from Tel Aviv to New York, made a scheduled stop in Athens. Shortly after takeoff, it crashed into the Ionian Sea and all 88 passengers were killed, including 32-year-old Steven R. Lowe, husband Jeremiah Michel and wife, Kathrine Hadley Michel of Poughkeepsie, NY, Frederick and Margaret Hare of Bernardsville, NJ, Ralph H. Bosh of Madison, CT, Seldon and Etan Bard of Tuckahoe, NY, Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Stohlman of Newton, MA, Don H. Holiday of Mahwah, NJ, and Jon L. Chesire of Old Lyme, Ct; all of which were Almerican citizens. An investigation of the crash conclusively established that it was caused by explosives set in the rear cargo department of the plane. June 29, 1975, Beirut, Lebanon. The PFLP kidnapped the U.S. military attaché to Lebanon, Ernest Morgan, and demanded food, clothing and building materials for indigent residents living near Beirut harbor. The American diplomat was released after an anonymous benefactor provided food to the neighborhood. November 14, 1975, Jerusalem, Israel. Lola Nunberg, 53, of New York, was injured during a bombing attack in downtown Jerusalem. Fatah claimed responsibility for the bombing, which killed six people and wounded 38. November 21, 1975, Ramat Hamagshimim, Israel. Michael Nadler, an American-Israeli from Miami Beach, Florida, was killed when axe-wielding terrorists from the Democrat Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a PLO faction, attacked students in the Golan Heights. August 11, 1976, Istanbul, Turkey. The PFLP launched an attack on the terminal of Israel's major airline, El Al, at the Istanbul airport. Four civilians, including Harold Rosenthal of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were killed and 20 injured. January 1, 1977, Beirut, Lebanon. Frances E. Meloy, U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, and Robert O.Waring, the U.S. economic counselor, were kidnapped by PFLP members as they crossed a militia checkpoint separating the Christian from the Muslim parts of Beirut. They were later shot to death. March 11, 1978, Tel Aviv, Israel. Gail Rubin, niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff, was among 38 people shot to death by PLO terrorists on an Israeli beach. June 2, 1978, Jerusalem, Israel. Richard Fishman, a medical student from Maryland, was among six killed in a PLO bus bombing in Jerusalem. Chava Sprecher, another American citizen from Seattle, Washington, was injured. May 4, 1979, Tiberias, Israel. Haim Mark and his wife, Haya, of New Haven, Connecticut were injured in a PLO bombing attack in northern Israel. November 4, 1979, Teheran, Iran. After President Carter agreed to admit the Shah of Iran into the U.S., Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 American diplomats hostage. Thirteen hostages were soon freed, but the remaining 53 were held until their release on January 20, 1981. May 2, 1980, Hebron, West Bank. Eli Haze'ev, an American-Israeli from Alexandria, Virginia, was killed in a PLO attack on Jewish worshippers walking home from a synagogue in Hebron. July 19, 1982, Beirut, Lebanon. Hizballah members kidnapped David Dodge, acting president of the American University in Beirut. After a year in captivity, Dodge was released. Rifat Assad, head of Syrian Intelligence, helped in the negotiation with the terrorists. August 19, 1982, Paris, France. Two American citizens, Anne Van Zanten and Grace Cutler, were killed when the PLO bombed a Jewish restaurant in Paris. March 16, 1983, Beirut, Lebanon. Five American Marines were wounded in a hand grenade attack while on patrol north of Beirut International Airport. The Islamic Jihad and Al-Amal, a Shi'ite militia, claimed responsibility for the attack. April 18, 1983, Beirut, Lebanon. A truck-bomb detonated by a remote control exploded in front of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 employees, including the CIA's Middle East director, and wounding 120. Hizballah, with financial backing from Iran, was responsible for the attack. July 1, 1983, Hebron, Israel. Aharon Gross, 19, an American-Israeli from New York, was stabbed to death by PLO terrorists in the Hebron marketplace. September 29, 1983, Beirut, Lebanon. Two American marines were kidnapped by Amal members. They were released after intervention by a Lebanese army officer. October 23, 1983, Beirut, Lebanon. A truck loaded with a bomb crashed into the lobby of the U.S. Marines headquarters in Beirut, killing 241 soldiers and wounding 81. The attack was carried out by Hizballah with the help of Syrian intelligence and financed by Iran. December 19, 1983, Jerusalem, Israel. Serena Sussman, a 60-year-old tourist from Anderson, South Carolina, died from injuries from the PLO bombing of a bus in Jerusalem 13 days earlier. January 18, 1984, Beirut, Lebanon. Malcolm Kerr, a Lebanese born American who was president of the American University of Beirut, was killed by two gunmen outside his office. Hizballah said the assassination was part of the organization's plan to "drive all Americans out from Lebanon." March 7, 1984, Beirut, Lebanon. Hizballah members kidnapped Jeremy Levin, Beirut bureau chief of Cable News Network (CNN). Levin managed to escape and reach Syrian army barracks. He was later transferred to American hands. March 8, 1984, Beirut, Lebanon. Three Hizballah members kidnapped Reverend Benjamin T. Weir, while he was walking with his wife in Beirut's Manara neighborhood. Weir was released after 16 months of captivity with Syrian and Iranian assistance. March 16, 1984, Beirut, Lebanon. Hizballah kidnapped William Buckley, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Buckley was supposed to be exchanged for prisoners. However when the transaction failed to take place, he was reportedly transported to Iran. Although his body was never found, the U.S. administration declared the American diplomat dead. April 12, 1984, Torrejon, Spain. Hizballah bombed a restaurant near an U.S. Air Force base in Torrejon, Spain, wounding 83 people. September 20, 1984, Beirut, Lebanon. A suicide bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in East Beirut killed 23 people and injured 21. The American and British ambassadors were slightly injured in the attack, attributed to the Iranian backed Hizballah group. September 20, 1984, Aukar, Lebanon. Islamic Jihad detonate a van full of explosives 30 feet in front of the U.S. Embassy annex severely damaging the building, killing two U.S. servicemen and seven Lebanese employees, as well as 5 to 15 non-employees. Twenty Americans were injured, including U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew and visiting British Ambassador David Miers. An estimated 40 to 50 Lebanese were hurt. The attack came in response to the U.S. veto September 6 of a U.N. Security Council resolution. December 4, 1984, Tehran, Iran. Hizballah terrorists hijacked a Kuwait Airlines plane en route from Dubai, United Emirates, to Karachi, Pakistan. They demanded the release from Kuwaiti jails of members of Da'Wa, a group of Shiite extremists serving sentences for attacks on French and American targets on Kuwaiti territory. The terrorists forced the pilot to fly to Tehran where the terrorists murdered two passengers--American Agency for International Development employees, Charles Hegna and William Stanford. Although an Iranian special unit ended the incident by storming the plane and arresting the terrorists, the Iranian government might also have been involved in the hijacking. June 14, 1985, Between Athens and Rome. Two Hizballah members hijacked a TWA flight en route to Rome from Athens and forced the pilot to fly to Beirut. The terrorists, believed to belong to Hizballah, asked for the release of members of the group Kuwait 17 and 700 Shi'ite prisoners held in Israeli and South Lebanese prisons. The eight crewmembers and 145 passengers were held for 17 days during which one of the hostages, Robert Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver, was murdered. After being flown twice to Algiers, the aircraft returned to Beirut and the hostages were released. Later on, four Hizballah members were secretly indicted. One of them, the Hizballah senior officer Imad Mughniyah, was indicted in absentia. October 7, 1985, Between Alexandria, Egypt and Haifa, Israel. A four-member PFLP squad took over the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, as it was sailing from Alexandria, Egypt, to Israel. The squad murdered a disabled U.S. citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, by throwing him in the ocean. The rest of the passengers were held hostage for two days and later released after the terrorists turned themselves in to Egyptian authorities in return for safe passage. But U.S. Navy fighters intercepted the Egyptian aircraft flying the terrorists to Tunis and forced it to land at the NATO airbase in Italy, where the terrorists were arrested. Two of the terrorists were tried in Italy and sentenced to prison. The Italian authorities however let the two others escape on diplomatic passports. Abu Abbas, who masterminded the hijacking, was later convicted to life imprisonment in absentia. December 27, 1985, Rome, Italy. Four terrorists from Abu Nidal's organization attacked El Al offices at the Leonardo di Vinci Airport in Rome. Thirteen people, including five Americans, were killed and 74 wounded, among them two Americans. The terrorists had come from Damascus and were supported by the Syrian regime. March 30, 1986, Athens, Greece. A bomb exploded on a TWA flight from Rome as it approached Athens airport. The attack killed four U.S. citizens who were sucked through a hole made by the blast, although the plane safely landed. The bombing was attributed to the Fatah Special Operations Group's intelligence and security apparatus, headed by Abdullah Abd al-Hamid Labib, alias Colonel Hawari. April 5, 1986, West Berlin, Germany. An explosion at the "La Belle" nightclub in Berlin, frequented by American soldiers, killed three--2 U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman-and wounded 191 including 41 U.S. soldiers. Given evidence of Libyan involvement, the U.S. Air Force made a retaliatory attack against Libyan targets on April 17. Libya refused to hand over to Germany five suspects believed to be there. Others, however, were tried including Yassir Shraidi and Musbah Eter, arrested in Rome in August 1997 and extradited; and also Ali Chanaa, his wife, Verena Chanaa, and her sister, Andrea Haeusler. Shraidi, accused of masterminding the attack, was sentenced to 14 years in jail. The Libyan diplomat Musbah Eter and Ali Chanaa were both sentenced to 12 years in jail. Verena Chanaa was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Andrea Haeusler was acquitted. September 5, 1986, Karachi, Pakistan. Abu Nidal members hijacked a Pan Am flight leaving Karachi, Pakistan bound for Frankfurt, Germany and New York with 379 passengers, including 89 Americans. The terrorists forced the plane to land in Larnaca, Cyprus, where they demanded the release of two Palestinians and a Briton jailed for the murder of three Israelis there in 1985. The terrorists killed 22 of the passengers, including two American citizens and wounded many others. They were caught and indicted by a Washington grand jury in 1991. September 9, 1986, Beirut, Lebanon. Continuing its anti-American attacks, Hizballah kidnapped Frank Reed, director of the American University in Beirut, whom they accused of being "a CIA agent." He was released 44 months later. September 12, 1986, Beirut, Lebanon. Hizballah kidnapped Joseph Cicippio, the acting comptroller at the American University in Beirut. Cicippio was released five years later on December 1991. October 15, 1986, Jerusalem, Israel. Gali Klein, an American citizen, was killed in a grenade attack by Fatah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. October 21, 1986, Beirut, Lebanon. Hizballah kidnapped Edward A. Tracy, an American citizen in Beirut. He was released five years later, on August 1991. February 17, 1988, Ras-Al-Ein Tyre, Lebanon. Col. William Higgins, the American chief of the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization, was abducted by Hizballah while driving from Tyre to Nakura. The hostages demanded the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and the release of all Palestinian and Lebanese held prisoners in Israel. The U.S. government refused to answer the request. Hizballah later claimed they killed Higgins. December 21, 1988, Lockerbie, Scotland. Pan Am Flight 103 departing from Frankfurt to New York was blown up in midair, killing all 259 passengers and another 11 people on the ground in Scotland. Two Libyan agents were found responsible for planting a sophisticated suitcase bomb onboard the plane. On 14 November 1991, arrest warrants were issued for Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima and Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi. After Libya refused to extradite the suspects to stand trial, the United Nations leveled sanctions against the country in April 1992, including the freezing of Libyan assets abroad. In 1999, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi agreed to hand over the two suspects, but only if their trial was held in a neutral country and presided over by a Scottish judge. With the help of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, Al-Megrahi and Fahima were finally extradited and tried in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. Megrahi was found guilty and jailed for life, while Fahima was acquitted due to a "lack of evidence" of his involvement. After the extradition, UN sanctions against Libya were automatically lifted. January 27, 1989, Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. Three simultaneous bombings were carried out against U.S. business targets--the Turkish American Businessmen Association and the Economic Development Foundation in Istanbul, and the Metal Employees Union in Ankara. The Dev Sol (Revolutionary Left) was held responsible for the attacks. March 6, 1989, Cairo, Egypt. Two explosive devices were safely removed from the grounds of the American and British Cultural centers in Cairo. Three organizations were believed to be responsible for the attack: The January 15 organization, which had sent a letter bomb to the Israeli ambassador to London in January; the Egyptian Revolutionary Organization that from out 1984-1986 carried out attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets; and the Nasserite Organization, which had attacked British and American targets in 1988. June 12, 1989, Bosphorus Straits, Turkey. A bomb exploded aboard an unoccupied boat used by U.S. consular staff. The explosion caused extensive damage but no casualties. An organization previously unknown, the Warriors of the June 16th Movement, claimed responsibility for the attack. October 11, 1989, Izmir, Turkey. An explosive charge went off outside a U.S. military PX. Dev Sol was held responsible for the attack. February 7, 1991, Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. Dev Sol members shot and killed a U.S. civilian contractor as he was getting into his car at the Incirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey. February 28, 1991, Izmir, Turkey. Two Dev Sol gunmen shot and wounded a U.S. Air Force officer as he entered his residence in Izmir. March 28, 1991, Jubial, Saudi Arabia. Three U.S. marines were shot at and injured by an unknown terrorist while driving near Camp Three, Jubial. No organization claimed responsibility for the attack. October 28, 1991, Ankara, Turkey. Victor Marwick, an American soldier serving at the Turkish-American base, Tuslog, was killed and his wife wounded in a car bomb attack. The Turkish Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. October 28, 1991, Istanbul, Turkey. Two car bombings killed a U.S. Air Force sergeant and severely wounded an Egyptian diplomat in Istanbul. Turkish Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. November 8, 1991, Beirut, Lebanon. A 100-kg car bomb destroyed the administration building of the American University in Beirut, killing one person and wounding at least a dozen. October 12, 1992, Umm Qasr, Iraq. A U.S. soldier serving with the United Nations was stabbed and wounded near the port of Umm Qasr. No organization claimed responsibility for the attack. January 25, 1993, Virginia, United States. A Pakistani gunman opened fire on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employees standing outside of the building. Two agents, Frank Darling and Bennett Lansing, were killed and three others wounded. The assailant was never caught and reportedly fled to Pakistan. February 26, 1993, Cairo, Egypt. A bomb exploded inside a café in downtown Cairo killing three. Among the 18 wounded were two U.S. citizens. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. February 26, 1993, New York, United States. A massive van bomb exploded in an underground parking garage below the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six and wounding 1,042. Four Islamist activists were responsible for the attack. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the operation's alleged mastermind, escaped but was later arrested in Pakistan and extradited to the United States. Abd al-Hakim Murad, another suspected conspirator, was arrested by local authorities in the Philippines and handed over to the United States. The two, along with two other terrorists, were tried in the U.S. and sentenced to 240 years. April 14, 1993, Kuwait. The Iraqi intelligence service attempted to assassinate former U.S. President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait. In retaliation, the U.S. launched a cruise missile attack two months later on the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. July 5, 1993, Southeast Turkey. In eight separate incidents, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) kidnapped a total of 19 Western tourists traveling in southeastern Turkey. The hostages, including U.S. citizen Colin Patrick Starger, were released unharmed after spending several weeks in captivity. December 1, 1993, north of Jerusalem, West Bank. Yitzhak Weinstock, 19, whose family came from Los Angeles, CA, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Hamas took responsibility for the attack Sometime in 1994: near Atzmona, Gaza. U.S. citizen Mrs. Sheila Deutsch of Brooklyn, NY injured in a shooting attack. October 9, 1994. Nachshon Wachsman, 19, whose family came from New York, was kidnapped and then murdered by Hamas. October 9, 1994: Jerusalem, Israel. Shooting attack on cafe-goers in Jerusalem. U.S. citizens Scot Doberstein and Eric Goldberg were injured. March 8, 1995, Karachi, Pakistan. Two unidentified gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles opened fire on a U.S. Consulate van in Karachi, killing two U.S. diplomats, Jacqueline Keys Van Landingham and Gary C. Durell, and wounding a third, Mark McCloy. April 9, 1995, Kfar Darom and Netzarim, Gaza Strip. Two suicide attacks were carried out within a few hours of each other in Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. In the first attack a suicide bomber crashed an explosive-rigged van into an Israeli bus in Netzarim, killing eight including U.S. citizen Alisa Flatow, 20, of West Orange, NJ. More than 30 others were injured. In the second attack, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in the midst of a convoy of cars in Kfar Darom, injuring 12. The Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Shaqaqi Faction claimed responsibility for the attacks. U.S. citizens Chava Levine and Seth Klein were injured. June 15, 1995: Jerusalem, Israel. U.S. citizen Howard Tavens of Cleveland, OH was injured in a stabbing attack. July 4, 1995, Kashmir, India. In Kashmir, a previously unknown militant group, Al-Faran, with suspected links to a Kashmiri separatist group in Pakistan, took hostage six tourists, including two U.S. citizens. They demanded the release of Muslim militants held in Indian prisons. One of the U.S. citizens escaped on July 8, while on August 13 the decapitated body of the Norwegian hostage was found along with a note stating that the other hostages also would be killed if the group's demands were not met. The Indian Government refused. Both Indian and American authorities believe the rest of the hostages were most likely killed in 1996 by their jailers. August 1995, Istanbul, Turkey. A bombing of Istanbul's popular Taksim Square injured two U.S. citizens. This attack was part of a three-year-old attempt by the PKK to drive foreign tourists away from Turkey by striking at tourist sites. August 21, 1995, Jerusalem, Israel. A bus bombing in Jerusalem by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) killed four, including American Joan Davenny of New Haven, CT, and wounded more than 100. U.S. citizens injured: Chanoch Bleier, Judith Shulewitz, Bernard Batta. September 9, 1995. Ma'ale Michmash. American killed: Unborn child of Mrs. Mara Frey of Chicago. Mara Frey was injured. November 9, 1995, Algiers, Algeria. Islamic extremists set fire to a warehouse belonging to the U.S. Embassy, threatened the Algerian security guard because he was working for the United States, and demanded to know whether any U.S. citizens were present. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) probably carried out the attacks. The group had threatened to strike other foreign targets and especially U.S. objectives in Algeria, and the attack's style was similar to past GIA operations against foreign facilities. November 13, 1995, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A car bomb exploded in the parking lot outside of the Riyadh headquarters of the Office of the Program Manager/Saudi Arabian National Guard, killing seven persons, five of them U.S. citizens, and wounding 42. The blast severely damaged the three-story building, which houses a U.S. military advisory group, and several neighboring office buildings. Three groups -- the Islamic Movement for Change, the Tigers of the Gulf, and the Combatant Partisans of God -- claimed responsibility for the attack. February 25, 1996, Jerusalem, Israel. A suicide bomber blew up a commuter bus in Jerusalem, killing 26, including three U.S. citizens, and injuring 80 others, among them three other U.S. citizens. Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing. U. S. citizens killed: Sara Duker, of Teaneck, NJ, Matthew Eisenfeld of West Hartford, CT, Ira Weinstein of Bronx, NY. U.S. citizens injured: Beatrice Kramer, Steven Lapides, and Leah Stein Mousa. March 4, 1996, Tel Aviv, Israel. A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device outside the Dizengoff Center, Tel Aviv's largest shopping mall, killing 20 persons and injuring 75 others, including two U.S. citizens. Both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing. U.S. citizens injured included Julie K. Negrin of Seattle, WA. May 13, 1996, Beit-El, West Bank. Arab gunmen opened fire on a hitchhiking stand near Beit El, wounding three Israelis and killing David Boim, 17, an American-Israeli from New York. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, although either the Islamic Jihad or Hamas are suspected. U.S. citizens injured: Moshe Greenbaum, 17. June 9, 1996, outside Zekharya. Yaron Ungar, an American-Israeli, and his Israeli wife were killed in a drive-by shooting near their West Bank home. The PFLP is suspected. June 25, 1996, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. A fuel truck carrying a bomb exploded outside the U.S. military's Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, killing 19 U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 persons, including 240 U.S. personnel. Several groups claimed responsibility for the attack. In June 2001, a U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, identified Saudi Hizballah as the party responsible for the attack. The court indicated that the members of the organization, banned from Saudi Arabia, "frequently met and were trained in Lebanon, Syria, or Iran" with Libyan help. August 17, 1996, Mapourdit, Sudan. Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels kidnapped six missionaries in Mapourdit, including a U.S citizen. The SPLA released the hostages on August 28. November 1, 1996, Sudan. A breakaway group of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) kidnapped three workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), including one U.S citizen. The rebels released the hostages on December 9 in exchange for ICRC supplies and a health survey of their camp. December 3, 1996, Paris, France. A bomb exploded aboard a Paris subway train, killing four and injuring 86 persons, including a U.S. citizen. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but Algerian extremists are suspected. January 2, 1997, Major cities worldwide, United States. A series of letter bombs with Alexandria, Egypt postmarks were discovered at Al-Hayat newspaper bureaus in Washington, DC, New York, London, and Riyadh. Three similar devices, also postmarked in Egypt, were found at a prison facility in Leavenworth, Kansas. Bomb disposal experts defused all the devices, but one detonated at the Al-Hayat newspaper office in London, injuring two security guards and causing minor damage. February 23, 1997, New York, United States. A Palestinian gunman opened fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State building in New York, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claimed this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine." July 30, 1997, Jerusalem, Israel. Two bombs detonated in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, killing 15 persons, including a U.S. citizen and wounding 168 others, among them two U.S. citizens. The Izz-el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, claimed responsibility for the attack. U.S. citizens killed: Mrs. Leah Stern of Passaic, NJ. U.S. citizens injured: Dov Dalin. September 4, 1997: Jerusalem, Israel. Bombing on Ben-Yehuda Street, Jerusalem. U.S. citizens killed: Yael Botwin, 14, of Los Angeles and Jerusalem. U.S. citizens injured: Diana Campuzano of New York, Abraham Mendelson of Los Angeles, CA, Greg Salzman of New Jersey, Stuart E. Hersh of Kiryat Arba, Israel, Michael Alzer, Abraham Elias, David Keinan, Daniel Miller of Boca Raton, FL, Noam Rozenman of Jerusalem, Jenny (Yocheved) Rubin of Los Angeles, CA. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. October 30, 1997, Sanaa, Yemen. Al-Sha'if tribesmen kidnapped a U.S. businessman near Sanaa. The tribesmen sought the release of two fellow tribesmen who were arrested on smuggling charges and several public works projects they claim the government promised them. The hostage was released on November 27. November 12, 1997, Karachi, Pakistan. Two unidentified gunmen shot to death four U.S. auditors from Union Texas Petroleum and their Pakistani driver as they drove away from the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. Two groups claimed responsibility -- the Islamic Inqilabi Council, or Islamic Revolutionary Council and the Aimal Secret Committee, also known as the Aimal Khufia Action Committee. November 25, 1997, Aden, Yemen. Yemenite tribesmen kidnapped a U.S citizen, two Italians, and two unspecified Westerners near Aden to protest the eviction of a tribe member from his home. The kidnappers released the five hostages on November 27. February 6, 1998, Jerusalem, Israel. Stabbing in Jerusalem. U.S. Citizen Yosef Lepon, 17 injured. April 19, 1998, Maon, Israel. Dov Driben, a 28-year-old American-Israeli farmer was killed by terrorists near the West Bank town of Maon. One of his assailants, Issa Debavseh, a member of Fatah Tanzim, was killed on November 7, 2001, by the IDF after being on their wanted list for the murder. June 21, 1998, Beirut, Lebanon. Two hand-grenades were thrown at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. No casualties were reported. June 21, 1998, Beirut, Lebanon. Three rocket-propelled grenades attached to a crude detonator exploded near the U.S. Embassy compound in Beirut, causing no casualties and little damage. August 7, 1998, Nairobi, Kenya. A car bomb exploded at the rear entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. The attack killed a total of 292, including 12 U.S. citizens, and injured over 5,000, among them six Americans. The perpetrators belonged to al-Qaida, Usama bin Ladin's network. August 7, 1998, Dar es Sala'am, Tanzania. A car bomb exploded outside the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Sala'am, killing 11 and injuring 86. Osama bin Laden's organization al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack. Two suspects were arrested. November 21, 1998, Teheran, Iran. Members of Fedayeen Islam, shouting anti-American slogans and wielding stones and iron rods, attacked a group of American tourists in Tehran. Some of the tourists suffered minor injuries from flying glass. December 28, 1998, Mawdiyah, Yemen. Sixteen tourists--12 Britons, two Americans and two Australians--were taken hostage in the largest kidnapping in Yemen's recent history. The tourists were seized in the Abyan province (some 175 miles south of Sanaa the capital). One Briton and a Yemeni guide escaped, while the rest were taken to city of Mawdiyah. Four hostages were killed when troops closed in and two were wounded, including an American woman. The kidnappers, members of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan, an offshoot of Al-Jihad, had demanded the release from jail of their leader, Saleh Haidara al-Atwi. October 31, 1999, Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States. EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed off the U.S. coast killing all 217 people on board, including 100 Americans. Although it is not precisely clear what happened, evidence indicated that an Egyptian pilot crashed the plane for personal or political reasons. November 4, 1999, Athens, Greece. A group protesting President Clinton's visit to Greece hid a gas bomb at an American car dealership in Athens. Two cars were destroyed and several others damaged. Anti-State Action claimed responsibility for the attack, but the November 17 group was also suspected. November 12, 1999, Islamabad, Pakistan. Six rockets were fired at the U.S. Information Services cultural center and United Nations offices in Islamabad, injuring a Pakistani guard. September 29, 2000. near Jerusalem Israel. Attack on motorists. U.S. citizens injured: Avi Herman of Teaneck, NJ, Naomi Herman of Teaneck, NJ. September 29, 2000, Jerusalem, Israel. Attack on taxi passengers. U.S. citizens injured: Tuvia Grossman of Chicago, Todd Pollack of Norfolk, VA, Andrew Feibusch of New York. October 4, 2000, near Bethlehem, West Bank. U.S. citizens injured: An unidentified American tourist. October 5, 2000: near Jerusalem, Israel. Attack on a motorist. U.S. citizens injured: Rabbi Chaim Brovender of Brooklyn. October 8, 2000, Nablus, West Bank. The bullet-ridden body of Rabbi Hillel Lieberman, a U.S. citizen from Brooklyn living in the Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh, was found at the entrance to the West Bank town of Nablus. Lieberman had headed there after hearing that Palestinians had desecrated the religious site, Joseph's Tomb. No organization claimed responsibility for the murder. October 12, 2000, Aden Harbor, Yemen. A suicide squad rammed the warship the U.S.S. Cole with an explosives-laden boat killing 13 American sailors and injuring 33. The attack was likely by Osama bin Ladin's al-Qaida organization. October 30, 2000, Jerusalem, Israel. Gunmen killed Eish Kodesh Gilmor, a 25-year-old American-Israeli on duty as a security guard at the National Insurance Institute in Jerusalem. The "Martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Intifada," a group linked to Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack. Gilmor's family filed a suit in the U.S. District Court in Washington against the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, Chairman Yasser Arafat and members of Force 17, as being responsible for the attack. December 31, 2000, Ofra, Israel. Rabbi Binyamin Kahane, 34, and his wife, Talia Hertzlich Kahane, both formerly of Brooklyn, NY were killed in a drive-by shooting. Their children, Yehudit Leah Kahane, Bitya Kahane, Tzivya Kahane, Rivka Kahane, and Shlomtsion Kahane, were injured in the attack. March 28, 2001, Neve Yamin. Bombing at bus stop. U.S. citizens injured: Netanel Herskovitz, 15, formerly of Hempstead, NY. May 9, 2001, Tekoa, West Bank. Kobi Mandell, 13, of Silver Spring, MD, an American-Israeli, was found stoned to death along with a friend in a cave near the Jewish settlement of Tekoa. Two organizations, the Islamic Jihad and Hizballah-Palestine, claimed responsibility for the attack. May 29, 2001, Gush Etzion, West Bank. The Fatah Tanzim claimed responsibility for a drive-by shooting of six in the West Bank that killed two American-Israeli citizens, Samuel Berg, and his mother, Sarah Blaustein. U.S. citizens injured: Norman Blaustein of Lawrence, NY. July 19, 2001, Hebron, West Bank. Shooting attack. U.S. citizens injured: An unidentified woman from Brooklyn, NY. August 9, 2001, Jerusalem, Israel. A suicide bombing at Sbarro's, a pizzeria situated in one of the busiest areas of downtown Jerusalem, killed 15 people and wounded more than 90. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. U.S. citizens killed: Judith L. Greenbaum, 31, of New Jersey and California, Malka Roth, 15, whose family was from New York. U.S. citizens injured: David Danzig, 21, of Wynnewood, PA, Matthew P. Gordon, 25, of New York, Joanne (Chana) Nachenberg, 31, Sara Shifra Nachenberg, 2. August 18, 2001, Jerusalem, Israel. Shooting at a bus. U.S. citizen injured: Andrew Feibusch of New York. August 27, 2001, near Roglit, Israel. Shooting attack. U.S. citizen injured: Ben Dansker. September 11, 2001, New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania, United States. During a carefully coordinated attack, 19 Islamist extremists hijacked four U.S. jetliners and forced them to crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In all, 266 people perished in the four planes, and more than 3,000 people were killed on the ground. U.S. investigators determined on the basis of extensive evidence that Usama bin Ladin's al-Qaida group was responsible for the attack. The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11 en route from Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into the World Trade Center's north tower at 8:48 a.m. Eighteen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, also headed from Boston to Los Angeles, smashed into the World Trade Center's south tower. At 9:40 a.m. a third airplane, an American Airlines Boeing 757 that left Washington's Dulles International Airport for Los Angeles, crashed into the western part of the Pentagon where 24,000 people worked. The fourth plane, a United Airlines Flight 93 flying from Newark to San Francisco, crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, most likely before it could hit its target. Hundreds of firefighters, police officers and other rescue workers who arrived in the site after the first plane crash were killed or injured. November 4, 2001, Jerusalem, Israel. Shoshana Ben-Yishai, 16, of Queens, NY was killed in a shooting at a bus station. U.S. citizen injured: Shlomo Kaye. December 2, 2001, Jerusalem, Israel. Bombing on Ben-Yehuda Street, Jerusalem. U.S. citizens injured: Ziv Brill, 17, of West Hempstead, Long Island, NY, Temima Spetner, 19, of St. Louis, MI, Jason Kirshenbaum of New Rochelle, NY, Israel Hirschfield, 18, Joseph Leifer, 29, of Borough Park (Brooklyn), NY. December 18, 2001, shooting on the Jerusalem-Shilo road. U.S. citizens injured: David Rubin, 44, of Brooklyn, NY, Asher "Ruby" Rubin, 3. January 15, 2002, Bethlehem, West Bank. Avraham Boaz, 71, of New York, a dual Israeli-American citizen, was kidnapped at a PA security checkpoint in Beit Jala and murdered. January 18, 2002: Shooting in Hadera. U.S. citizen killed: Aaron Elis, 32, son of Chicago family. January 22, 2002: Shooting in Jerusalem, Israel. U.S. citizen injured: Shayna Gould, 19, of Chicago, IL January 27, 2002, Jerusalem, Israel. A Palestinian woman triggered a massive explosion in downtown Jerusalem killing one elderly Israeli and injuring more than 150, including American Mark Sokolow, his wife, and 16 and 12-year-old daughters. Sokolow had earlier survived the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, escaping from his law office on the 38th floor of the South Tower before it collapsed. February 8, 2002, Jerusalem, Israel. Stabbing in Abu Tor Peace Forest Jerusalem. U.S. citizen killed: Moranne Amit, 25 February 15, 2002, near Ramallah, West Bank. Lee Akunis was shot to death. February 16, 2002: Bombing in Karnei Shomron. U.S. citizens killed: Keren Shatsky, 14, of Brooklyn, NY and Maine, Rachel Thaler, 16, of Baltimore, MD. U.S. citizens injured: Lior Thaler, 14, of Baltimore, MD, Hillel Trattner of Chicago, IL, Ronit Yucht Trattner of Chicago, IL, Chani Friedman of New York. February 19, 2002: Shooting near Neve Dekalim. U.S. citizens injured: Moshe Saperstein of New York. February 25, 2002, Jerusalem, Israel. Moran Amit, 25, was stabbed to death in Abu Tor Peace Forest in Jerusalem. March 7, 2002, Eshel Hashomron Hotel, Ariel, Israel. A Christian tourist from Arkansas lost her right eye in an attack by a suicide bomber. March 21, 2002, Jerusalem, Israel. Bombing on a Jerusalem street. U.S. citizens injured: Alan Joseph Bauer, 37, of Chicago, Yonathon Bauer, 7 (dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship). March 24, 2002, Ofra, Israel. Shooting near Ofra. U.S. citizens killed: Esther Kleinman, 23, formerly of Chicago, IL. March 27, 2002, Netanya, Israel. U.S. citizen Hannah Rogen, 90, was killed in a suicide attack at a Passover Seder. March 31, 2002, Efrat, Israel. Bombing in Efrat. U.S. citizens injured: An unidentified American citizen. June 18, 2002, Jerusalem, Israel. Moshe Gottlieb, 70, of Los Angeles, CA was killed in a bus bombing in Jerusalem. June 19, 2002, Jerusalem, Israel. Gila Sara Kessler, 19, whose family came from New York, was killed in a bombing at a bus stop. July 31, 2002, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Nine people were killed when a bomb exploded in the main cafeteria at the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem. Five were U.S. citizens: Janis Ruth Coulter, 36, of MA; Marla Bennet, 24, of San Diego, CA; David Gritz (also a French citizen), 24, of Peru, MA; Benjamin Blutstein, 25, of Susquehanna Township, PA; and Dina Carter, 37, of NC. Israelis David Ladovsky, 29, and Levina Shapira, 53 also died in the bombing. U.S. citizens injured: Spencer Dew, 26, of Owensboro, Kentucky; Zeev Spencer; Harris Gershon; Jamie Harris. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. March 5, 2003: Bus bombing in Haifa. U.S. citizens killed: Abigail Leitel, 14, who was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire. March 7, 2003: Shooting in the victims’ home. U.S. citizens killed: Rabbi Eli Horowitz, 52, who grew up in Chicago; Dina Horowitz, 50, who grew up in Florida April 30, 2003: Bombing at a Tel Aviv pub. U.S. citizens injured: Jack Baxter, 50, of New York City. June 11, 2003: Bus bombing in Jerusalem. U.S. citizens killed: Alan Beer, 47, who grew up in Cleveland. U.S. citizens injured: Sarri Singer, 27, daughter of New Jersey State Senator Robert Singer. June 20, 2003: Shooting attack on a car driving through the West Bank. U.S. citizens killed: Tzvi Goldstein, 47, who grew up in New York; U.S. citizens injured: Eugene Goldstein, Tzvi’s father, of Long Island, New York; Lorraine Goldstein, Tzvi’s mother, of Long Island, New York; Michal Goldstein, Tzvi’s wife, who grew up in New York. August 19, 2003: Homicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem. U.S. citizens killed: Goldie Taubenfeld, 43, of New Square, New York; Shmuel Taubenfeld, 3 months, of New Square, New York; Mordechai Reinitz, 49; Yitzhak Reinitz, 9. Tehilla Nathanson, 3, of Monsey, New York; U.S. citizens injured: Mendel Reinitz, 11. September 9, 2003: Homicide bombing at a cafe in Jerusalem. David Applebaum, 51, and his daughter Nava, 20, originally of Cleveland were killed. October 15, 2003: Bombing of American convoy in the Gaza Strip: John Branchizio, 37, Mark Parson, 31, and John Martin Linde, 30, were on contract to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv through the defense contracting company Dyncorp.U.S. citizens injured: One as-yet-unnamed U.S. citizen (reportedly a diplomat). September 24, 2004: Mortar strike on a housing community: Tiferet Tratner, 24, (dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship). April 17, 2006: Homicide bombing at the Rosh Ha'ir restaurant in Tel Aviv: Daniel Wultz, 16, of Weston, Florida, died one month after receiving his wounds in this bombing. Compiled by Caroline Taillandier, a research assistant at the GLORIA center and student at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Mitchell Bard, and Alden Oreck, Avi Hein, and Elihai Braun, research assistants at the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, and Paul Teller, Deputy Director, House Republican Study Committee. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources: Chronology on Terrorist Incidents 1961-2001, State Department; "Patterns of Terrorism" reports 1995-2000; State Department Institute for Counter-Terrorism Database; Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya; Peacewatch, The Washington Institute for New East Policy; AIPAC; Ha'aretz, Republican Study Committee
Thoughts on the Indian, Would you agree? With Mexico being the undisputed Numero Uno in immigration to the United States, both legal and illegal, the battle rages on for claiming second place honors for the coveted Numero Dos award. And the current leader is—India. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) keep tabs on immigration statistics with their annual yearbooks released at the end of each fiscal year. The latest offering from September, 2004, shows India winning the battle for second place in naturalized American citizens. [Yearbook of immigration statistics for 2003 -- PDF, page 134]. “Mexico was the leading country of birth for persons naturalizing in 2003, accounting for 56,093 new citizens. Other major countries of birth for persons naturalizing in 2003 were India (29,790), the Philippines (29,081) Vietnam (25,995), the People’s Republic of China (24,014). . .” A VDARE.COM reader has described the growing Indian diaspora in the U.S. and its connection to what might be some sort of coordinated effort of gaining economic leverage or advantage. Maybe so. But could it be that Indian immigrants, like most others, are just coming to the U.S. because they can? There’s precious little (if anything) stopping them. An Indian VDARE.COM reader recently commented on Indian immigration via e-mail (comments in parentheses, etc., are from the original): From: Sasi Raj Subject: Immigration of Indians into USA an Indian Agenda (Nexus) “I want to share with you my point of view (observation). Washington (Capitol Hill) has been flooded with Indians during the period of Clinton Administration (Democrats), suggesting that migration of Indians into USA might bring more harmony in American community (except they had their own agenda, the agenda of the Indian government to increase economic immigrants into USA). This played into the hands of Indians. Every street has a engineering school since it is all free for all to get jobs in USA. Every politician in India is given permission to open one since 1985. “Indians basically are mixed race (many in modern India), and we have a very undisciplined democracy here. And they are very ethnic oriented and create a new problem in America. Even though they are mixed race they don’t mix with Black Americans (which actually, the Democrats and other Indian caucus wants the Americans to think). “What is happening is, American schools and jobs are rapidly filled up by Indians with many INDIAN-owned companies in America are ready to sponsor VISA for Indians (IGATE.com, InfoExpertsUSA.com, etc., etc). They work in nexus with Indian government’s clandestine policy. “The British were the Lighthouse for the Indians to confront America, and their TV is broadcasting and taking Anti-American agenda to Indian Homes. The population in India is over-pouring, with buses crowded like pigs traveling to slaughter house. “Indians and Pakistanis are playing a game along with the British in the name of Kashmir. Under these tangles, they mass-migrate their population to USA and Europe. “Why would anybody living in Democracy like India want to Migrate? Yet Indians are the largest migrants to USA only next to Mexicans. “These are economic migrants, and their agenda is to bring dollars to India because they can't bring it any other way. The GAS stations in USA are mostly owned by Indians, 10% of all doctors are of Indian origin, and now Software is flooding Indians into every nook and corner. Many Motels and Hotels are owned by Indian Gujaratis. If this is not checked, somehow Indians will gain political voice in USA (many are trying). “From here I can see the people are feeling successful of their government’s agenda of migrating technocrats to USA especially. First they opened standard institutions like [Indian Institute of Technology] IIT, now education has become substandard here with every street selling a degree in engineering. Yet they are allowed to get jobs in USA, because America is not paying close attention to what is going on in reality. “I don’t have to explicitly say more on this, the statistics will speak for themselves. “But India and Indians are not a progressive society, they are survivalistic in attitude and actions and thought, this is the glitch. “They are not taking hard jobs or having any hardships as previous migrants in last century had. They land in planes and grab better jobs, they bring their religion along with them (Hindu or Muslim mostly). “Many things negative can be seen in a perspective, not that I have personal prejudice against it, but I see lot of bad things. “Thanks for reading my point of view.” So move over, Mexico. If over-the-border illegal immigration is ever somehow curtailed, the second tier countries in American immigration numbers might well catch up. Illegal immigration is only part of the problem. We need reform—reduction—of legal immigration, too Rest assured, there are countless more Indians ready and waiting for jobs in America.
Why don't the warmongers understand that their wars are the cause of terrorism? source: http://www.fff.org/comment/com1001d.asp The handwringing about the would-be Christmas Day airplane bomber and the politicians’ tiresome declarations that it will never happen again miss the point: As long as the U.S. government pursues its imperial program of invasion, regime change, occupation, and sponsorship of corrupt governments in the Muslim world, Americans will be targets for avengers. This does not excuse the killing of innocents — it merely points out an inevitable chain of events. It’s either foreign intervention and retaliatory terrorism or nonintervention and security. There’s no third way. We can’t eat our cake and have it too. Every empire has reaped a terrorist whirlwind. “Terror” is the tactic that the weak use against the strong. The U.S. government unleashes the most powerful “conventional” weapons known to man, including pilotless killer drones operated like videogames thousands of miles away. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab sewed an explosive into his underwear and ended up burning himself. It is disgraceful that the choice between terrorism and security is rarely publicly discussed in terms of the choice between American imperialism and nonintervention. The empire is treated as a given — even by most so-called progressives — as though it were ordained by history. The American people are expected to believe that the very existence of their society depends on the U.S. government’s policing the globe and using whatever violence it deems appropriate (that is, whenever things do not suit the interests of U.S. policymakers and their economic partners in the “private” sector). But this picture is precisely upside down. It is the imperial program and the inevitable “war on terror” that threatens Americans’ way of life — not to mention the very lives of people in the lands that “our” government tramples. Government in the United States has long regarded the liberties of Americans as inconveniences standing in the way of bigger, nobler projects. Since the attacks of September 11 — not a bolt from the blue but a roughly predictable consequence of U.S. foreign intervention — the usurpations have accelerated. The “war on terror” functions like a blank check both to justify curtailment of particular freedoms (such as freedom from surveillance) and to instill an embarrassing submissiveness in a people whose predecessors rebelled against similar oppression. Imagine the first few generations of Americans letting themselves be treated the way we are treated at airports. “You may not leave your seat beginning one hour before landing.” “Oh, okay. Whatever you say, dear leader, as long as you protect me.” When the TSA begins requiring passengers effectively to strip in front of the newest inspection devices, who will raise a word in protest? The sad irony is that none of these measures — and nothing even more severe — will make us safer. What we call terrorism will always be cheap, flexible, and at least one step ahead of the plodding, clueless authorities. Al-Qaeda is not an organization. It’s an idea and an open-ended set of tactics. Clear it out of Afghanistan — and it appears in Pakistan or Yemen or New Jersey. When you step back and take a broader view, the U.S. government looks like a big, pathetic, stupid giant trying to catch a pesky, clever mouse. The terrorists’ advantage lies in the fact that bureaucracies are institutionally stupid. Do we really need more proof after the Christmas Day incident? Just as the SEC couldn’t see Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent activities even when handed reams of evidence, so the vaunted “national security apparatus” — for which Americans are compelled to pay hundreds of billions of dollars every year — couldn’t stop a kid from Nigeria wearing explosive briefs from getting on a plane, despite warnings from his own father as well as other solid information. The “protection” forced on us by the U.S. government is an outright fraud. It can never deliver on its promise to keep us safe because big organizations like the Department of Homeland Security (!) are too riven by interagency rivalries, informational distortions, and hierarchical tone-deafness to work effectively. (The same is true for businesses that grow large because of anti-competitive government privileges.) Letting private companies protect themselves at their own expense would have to work better. Does this mean we must remain vulnerable? No. We’ll find a reasonable degree of safety when America comes home. ---------------------- By the way, the "leftist" who wrote this article is the editor of the Freeman magazine, published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). FEE is one of the oldest free market think tanks and one of the most consistent. The website on which the source article was posted is the Future of Freedom Foundation, another free market think tank.
do u know that islam is not terrorist? THE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION: "THERE IS NO TERROR IN ISLAM" Some analysts have said that this policy conceals a hidden agenda and is no more than a show designed to get the Muslim world on its side. There certainly may be some truth in this, for America is pursuing this policy for its own national ends. But there is another obvious fact: No matter what the facts may be, this policy will enable Islam to become known by more people and will allow the West to correct its erroneous opinion about Islam. Signs of this are already visible. Samuel Huntington's 1993 thesis about a "clash of civilizations" between the West and the Islamic world has never been accepted by the American administration. This is an important advance. The White House countered this claim at the outset and, in subsequent events that brought it head to head with some Muslims, made it clear that it had no negative feeling about the Muslim world or Islamic values. America has never targeted Islam in reaction to thThe same view was stated several times by variously ranking members of the government. In a speech made in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, John Beryle, acting assistant secretary for the American State Department's Bureau of Newly Independent States, explained his government's attitude toward Islam: The United States abhors terrorism and we reject extremism, but we have great respect for Islam… I draw this distinction forcefully, because so many people fail to draw it at all. Some believe that the United States opposes Islam, that the Cold War has been replaced by a clash of civilizations. Others, including some in my own country, believe that terrorism is somehow related to Islam. They are both wrong. The distinction I want you to understand is this: the United States opposes those who use terrorist methods. We do not oppose any religion. We distinguish our friends from our enemies on the basis of actions, not beliefs… Americans recognize Islam as one of the world's great faiths. It is practiced on every continent. As Westerners, we acknowledge Islam as a historic civilizing force among the many that have influenced and enriched our own culture. The legacy of Islam, which reached into our civilization via the conquest of Spain at just about the same time it arrived in Uzbekistan, brought us, as it brought you, a rich scientific, artistic, and cultural heritage, as well as a tradition of tolerance. Beryle continued his speech by quoting Surat al-Baqara: 62 and Surat al-Ma'ida: 69, and concluded: Those who have faith, and those of the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabaeans - whosoever has faith in God and the Last Day and works wholesome deeds - their wage awaits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be upon them, neither shall they sorrow (Surat al-Ma'ida: 69). These are the words of tolerance. They stand as a striking demonstration that tolerance is part of the foundation of Islam, that fundamental Islam should be a force for tolerance, that extremism is not truly Islamic… I wonder whether there is any other nation on earth in which so many people have been converted to Islam over the past several decades. Islam in the United States is becoming more widespread, better known, and more influential. For five years now the end of Ramadan has been celebrated with a feast in the White House. A similar tradition was established in the Pentagon and this year included the first-ever Muslim chaplains to serve in the U.S. military. The Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, held her second annual Iftaar Dinner at the State Department on December 21. Similar celebrations occur all across the U.S. Muslims are becoming an important and respected part of the American mosaic… And finally, from the Koran, Sura 2, ayat 256: "Let there be no compulsion in religion." 5 This attitude of the American administration did not change after the events of 9/11. Some days after the attack, President Bush visited the Islamic Center in Washington and stressed in his speech that Islam and terror could not be mentioned together because Islam was a religion of peace: The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war. When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race - out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect. 6 Words like these have been repeated time and again after 9/11 by high-level officials. For example, White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer, when asked whether this attack had been the result of a clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity, said: "This attack had nothing to do with Islam. This attack was a perversion of Islam." 7 American State Officials Praise Islam The fact that American state officials recognize that there is no connection between Islam and terrorism shows that they know what kind of religion Islam is. As they get to know Islam, they naturally come to admire it and often mention it in their speeches. This has been noticeable especially in the last three presidential administrations. So, the idea put forward by theorists after the Cold War that Islam would be America's next target has come to nothing. But there is an important point here: Some of the American government's decisions with regard to the Muslim world must be examined in the light of the advantages that it hopes to gain as a nation from its international policy and strategies. These decisions must not be confused with the American administration's and people's interest in Islam. This book examines the following topics: the approach of American state officials and the general public toward Islam in the last few years, the fact that Islam is always a topic on the public agenda, and the resulting rapid rise of Islam. This is certainly a remarkable historical development that, when considered from these aspects, should make every Muslim happy, enthusiastic, and excited. As we said earlier, the American government's approach toward Islam began in the 1990s and reached its high point during the Clinton administration. Clinton was the first to commend Islam and its moral teachings in his speeches, and the first to issue invitations to the White House on Islamic holidays. Under Clinton, for the first time invitations were arranged at the administration's top level for Muslims to attend an iftar meal. Subsequently, this became a tradition. When Clinton spoke about Islamic morality, one of the topics that he dwelt upon was the compatibility of Islamic moral values with those of the West. Clinton believed that "Devotion to family and to society, to faith and good works-are in harmony with the best of Western ideals."8 In another speech he said; That is why we welcome Islam in America. It enriches our country with Islam's teachings of self-discipline, compassion, and commitment to family. 9 And on another occasion, he said that Islam was highly regarded by America: America is made stronger by the core values of Islam-commitment to family, commitment to family, compassion for the disadvantaged, and respect for difference. 10 Hillary Clinton, who began the tradition of inviting Muslims to the White House, once stated during one of these gatherings that she admired the following things about Islam: Universal values - love of family and community, mutual respect, education, and the deepest yearning of all - to live in peace - values that can strengthen us as a people and strengthen the United States as a nation. 11 The Secretary of State at the time, Madeline Albright, in an article that she wrote for State Magazine, "Learning More about Islam," drew attention to a very important point and said that the American people must learn about Islam.12 As a result of her comment, State Department officials prepared a report on how people could familiarize themselves with Islam: Our society can solve it through education, people-to-people exchanges, and by encouraging responsible reporting in the mass media and accurate portrayal in the movie industry. 13 The decision of the Clinton administration that the people should be taught the truth about Islam is extremely important. As we shall see in the following pages, priority has been given to this, especially since 9/11, and newspapers, television, and other media outlets have presented news, programs, and inquiries. President Bush's approach to Muslims began with his election campaign. Known to be a religious person, Bush received support from a significant section of American Muslims during his campaign. For this reason, he is constantly engaged in dialogue with Muslim communities. The 9/11 attack has become a vehicle by which he has been able to assert more often the closeness he feels toward Muslims, and frequently to remind his fellow citizens to understand Islam correctly and establish good relationships with Muslims. During one speech, he stated that: The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qur'an. It teaches the value and importance of charity, mercy, and peace. And it is one of the fastest growing religions in America, with millions of American believers today… The Holy Qur'an says: "Piety does not lie in turning your face to the East or West. Piety lies in believing in God." (2: 177) 14 The American Government's Iftar Invitation Another important development that shows the coming together of the American administration and American Muslims is the iftar invitation, which has become a tradition in the last few years. Each invitation provides the opportunity for dialogue between the two groups. The tradition of hosting of Muslims in the White House was started by Hillary Clinton, who received them to offer them Eid congratulations. For the first time in 2001, Muslims were invited to an iftar meal in the White House that the president had organized. As stated earlier, these iftar invitations began in the State Department with the participation of the then-Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. It is often said that these invitations were very important for developing relations between Muslims and the American people, a project on which Albright laid great importance. In Ramadan 2000, at the second iftar meal, she described these efforts: I am very, very pleased to welcome you all to the Department of State. And as many of you know, we had a similar Iftaar Dinner here last year for the first time, and tonight we continue what I hope will become a tradition that lives on for many years to come... The month of Ramadan and the daily fast are powerful reminders for Muslims of the centrality of God and of the potency of the message conveyed through the Prophet Mohammed... I am pleased that since last year the State Department has inaugurated a new website entitled "Islam in America." Its purpose is to help people everywhere learn more about the positive force that Islam has become in American life and about the growing role of Muslim Americans as they are there to play a role in ensuring the security, prosperity, and freedom of our land. Equally vital are the international exchange and people-to-people programs we conduct with Muslim-majority nations. These efforts bring distinguished Muslim visitors to our shores to exchange views and promote understanding... We are strongly encouraging young Muslim Americans to apply to the Foreign Service as part of our overall effort to attract talent and promote diversity, and we have had a lively discussion at my table on that subject. Together, during the past few years, we have made an important beginning in providing that answer, not only through these dinners but also through our religious freedom roundtables, open forums, conferences, and seminars. We have established and expanded a dialogue, but obviously much more remains to be done. It is vital for Muslim Americans to know and have access to American policymakers. It is even more vital to become policymakers. 15 As we see, the State Department regarded it as its duty to build a bridge between the Muslim community and the American people and administration. This played an important role in the rising interest in Islam. This speech was very important, for it showed what an influential position Islam had gained in America. Ten years earlier, American Muslims had lived a cloistered social existence encountering many difficulties in their daily lives, but now they have been invited by the Secretary of State to be directors of American policy. These iftar invitations have continued under her successor Colin Powell. During his short address on November 29, 2001, at a State Department iftar meal, he stressed the following basic points: Ramadan is a time of prayer and fasting for followers of the Muslim religion. This year, it is also a time of reflection for all Americans. Less than three months after the tragedy of September 11th, we were all examining our lives and reaffirming the importance of family, faith, and country. In fact, this year marks the first Ramadan for many non-Muslim Americans who have been made aware of the great significance of this period for the first time in their lives. But there remains much ignorance and confusion about Islam, and that presents an opportunity for those of us who are not Muslim to learn from those of you who are. I hope that all of you here will seek out opportunities to talk with non-Muslims throughout your communities about your faith; to help all of us learn from, understand, and appreciate one another; and that you will encourage others in turn to talk to you about their faith. And I heard some wonderful stories at my table about how you are doing that, reaching out to Christians and Jews, and letting everybody know we are all -- we are all creatures and children of a benevolent God, and we must come to understand that to love one another is being faithful to our God. I was very moved by some of the conversations that we had at our table, as we talked about discrimination, we talked about profiling, as we talked about how we have to be sensitive to each other and to be sensitive to the diversity that we all represent. This touched me deeply, because I am a minority. I have been profiled. I will never forget my background; I will never forget what those who came before me did so that I could be in this position today ... I will always be sensitive to the issues that have been raised this evening… 16 The Defense Department also has hosted iftar meals. This tradition, which goes back officially to 1998, consists of an iftar meal ordinarily arranged by the deputy secretary of defense and attended by Muslims working in the department and the army. At the 1999 iftar meal, the then-Deputy Secretary of Defense, John Hamre, said: I am very honored to be invited to be here tonight. A little over a year ago I was invited to address the first Iftar celebrated here at the Department of Defense. The fact that you would ask me back for a second time is a tremendous honor. I am very grateful. As I said last year, I am a Lutheran in my own religious background and not a Muslim, so I cannot fully appreciate how important this Night of Power is for all of you. But I can understand why this Night of Power is deeply important to you, because I am a religious person myself. I can understand how moving it is, in this season of dedication, that all of you have spent the entire day focusing on your relationship with God.... I believe that vision in our Constitution springs directly from our shared religious values. There is not a word in the Constitution for which a good Muslim would not fight…. It is the same ideal expressed in the Holy Koran: "O mankind, I created you from a single pair and made you into nations and tribes that ye may know each other, not that ye may despise each other." 17 Hamre's address was notable for his declaration of personal religiosity, the closeness and love he showed toward Muslims, and for quoting the Qur'an. The Defense Department's third iftar meal was held on November 30, 2001, and attended by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. He began his address with the words As-Sallamu alaykum, which he learned while serving as ambassador to Indonesia, and continued: Each time faithful Muslims gather in prayer and in peace, you reclaim your faith and reaffirm the great gift that Islam has been to humanity through the centuries. Mohammed said that those who provide a fasting person with something to eat will be blessed as though they themselves had fasted. As we gather tonight in this spirit of generosity, we are mindful of the great blessings that we enjoy. We are thankful to share them with others. 18 Hillary Clinton first invited Muslims to the White House for the Ramadan Eid in 1996, and on every subsequent occasion gave significant messages to those in attendance. Among those who attempted to explain what Ramadan means for Muslims was Huma Abedin. Mrs. Clinton said that she personally learned a lot from this woman, and frequently mentioned the special importance she placed in establishing dialogue with Muslims. At the 1999 reception, she even said she prayed for this: I have been told that a common Muslim prayer tells us: "No struggle is easy unless you make it easy for us. And only you, my Lord, can make a hardship easy to overcome." With God's help, and with the kind of determination, courage, and hope that is lived out in the lives of all of you and millions of others around our country and throughout the world, I believe that we can do more together to help build a more peaceful, prosperous, and hopeful future in which all of God's children can live in peace and fulfill their God-given promise. 19 This tradition begun by Hillary Clinton was continued by Bill Clinton during his final year as president, when he personally received Muslim guests for the Ramadan holiday. The meal began with quotations from the Qur'an. Bill Clinton also quoted from the Qur'an in his address, and frequently expressed his interest in Islam: And I thought it was particularly moving that the Imam read the passage from the Koran that said that Allah created nations and tribes that we might know one another, not that we might despise one another. There's a wonderful passage in the Hebrew Torah, which warns people never to turn aside the stranger, for it is like turning aside the most high God. And the Christian Bible says that people should love their neighbor as themselves. But it's quite wonderful to say that Allah created the nations and tribes that they might know one another better, recognizing that people have to organize their thoughts and categorize their ideas, but that does not mean we should be divided one from another... Let me say, also, that there is much that the world can learn from Islam. It is now practiced by one of every four people on Earth. Americans are learning more in our schools and universities. Indeed, I remember that our daughter took a course on Islamic history in high school and read large portions of the Koran, and came home at night and educated her parents about it, and later asked us questions about it… I ask all of you to help with that, to share the wellsprings of your faith with those who are different, to help people understand the values and the humanity that we share in common, and the texture and fabric and fiber and core of the beliefs and practices of Islam... The Koran also teaches, in addition, to the fact that we should do unto others as we wish to have done to us, and reject for others what we would reject for ourselves, but we should also make a commitment to live in peace… 20 Under the present Bush administration, for the first time in American history a president organized an iftar meal. This meal was attended by the ambassadors of Muslim countries and the heads of Muslim organizations. In his address, the president commended Islam and called for dialogue and understanding among different faiths: Ramadan is a time of fasting and prayer for the Muslim faithful. So tonight we are reminded of God's greatness and His commandments to live in peace and to help neighbors in need… All the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements. Ramadan and the upcoming holiday season are a good time for people of different faiths to learn more about each other. And the more we learn, the more we find that many commitments are broadly shared. We share a commitment to family, to protect and love our children. We share a belief in God's justice and man's moral responsibility. And we share the same hope for a future of peace. We have much in common and much to learn from one another. 21 All of these iftar meals and the addresses given at them are very significant for the relationship between Muslims and the American administration, and indicate that Muslims have begun to influence American society and culture. The relations between Americans and Muslims are not limited to these invitations and various talks, for Muslims are now an inseparable part of America and active at every level of social life. A most significant example of this is their position within the American army.
Check this out One more stat to our corner? NRA-ILA Grassroots Alert Vol. 13, No. 14 04/07/06 States with updates this issue: Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. RIGHT-TO-CARRY NOW LAW IN NEBRASKA! On April 5, Governor Dave Heineman (R) signed Legislative Bill 454 into law, making Right-to-Carry the law of the land in Nebraska! "It took over a decade to bring Right-to-Carry to the good citizens of Nebraska, but those years of hard work have paid off tremendously," declared NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox. "I want to thank Governor Dave Heineman, and Senator Jeanne Combs (R-32), for their support and their efforts in giving Nebraskans the right to protect themselves and their loved ones. Senator Combs' dedication and persistence was vital in ensuring passage of this measure through the state legislature." LB 454 passed with bi-partisan support, as Nebraska senators voted 33-12 in favor of the measure. The bill allows law-abiding Nebraskans who undergo a background check and apply for a permit to carry a concealed firearm for self-protection. Two weeks ago, legislators in neighboring Kansas overrode Governor Sebelius' (D) veto to bring Right-to-Carry to that state as well. Now, of all the 50 states, only Wisconsin and Illinois flatly refuse to recognize the right of law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms for self-protection against criminal attack. "Once again, on behalf of our NRA members in Nebraska, I want to thank all the legislators who voted to bring Right-to-Carry to their state," concluded Cox. "And as always, we appreciate the commitment and participation of our members in Nebraska for their part in making it happen." To view this legislation use the "Bills" feature at the following link http://alisdb.legislature.state.al.us/acas/ACASLogin.asp GOVERNOR RILEY SIGNS ALABAMA "CASTLE DOCTRINE" INTO LAW! On April 4, Alabama Governor Bob Riley (R) signed NRA-backed "Castle Doctrine" bill SB 283 into law. Senator Larry Means (D-10), and Representative Albert Hall (D-22), sponsored the self-defense bill. With overwhelming support, SB 283 passed the Alabama House by a vote of 82 to 9, and the Alabama State Senate by a vote of 30 to 2. ILA's Chris W. Cox, stated, "We thank Governor Riley for signing this vital legislation into law for the people of Alabama. Law-abiding citizens now have the choice to defend themselves and their families in the face of attack without fear of criminal prosecution and civil litigation." The "Castle Doctrine" bill removes the "duty to retreat" if an individual is attacked in his or her home, vehicle, place of business, or any other place he or she has a legal right to be. This legislation also states that victims may use necessary force to defend themselves against the attacker. "I would like to thank the bill's sponsors, Senator Means and Representative Hall, and the Alabama State Senators and State Representatives who supported this bill. As always, we also thank all the NRA members and lawful gun owners who contacted their representatives and urged them to support this vital self-defense measure," concluded Cox. SUPPORT HR 5092-- "THE BATFE MODERNIZATION AND REFORM ACT OF 2006" On April 5, the leaders of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security--Representatives Howard Coble (R-N.C.), and Bobby Scott (D-Va.)--joined forces to introduce H.R. 5092, the "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) Modernization and Reform Act of 2006." This bipartisan bill is a critical first step toward finally reforming BATFE. First and foremost, H.R. 5092 totally revises the system of administrative penalties for licensed dealers, manufacturers and importers of firearms. Today, for most violations, BATFE can only give an FFL holder a warning, or totally revoke the license. This bill would allow fines or license suspensions for less serious violations, while allowing license revocation for the kind of serious violations that would block an investigation or put guns in the hands of criminals. H.R. 5092 also clarifies the standard for violations-allowing penalties for intentional, purposeful violations of the law, but not for simple paperwork mistakes. Congress thought it had fixed this problem in 1986 when it passed the Firearms Owners' Protection Act, but the government has ignored that law-and has even argued in court that the 1986 changes were "without practical significance." The bill also improves the process by which BATFE imposes these penalties, notably by allowing FFLs to appeal BATFE penalties to a neutral administrative law judge, rather than to an employee of BATFE itself. H.R. 5092 would change BATFE's enforcement operations in several ways, from requiring the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice to review of BATFE gun show enforcement operations, to demanding that the Bureau establish clear investigative guidelines. Finally, the bill would focus BATFE's efforts on violations of firearms, explosives, arson, alcohol and tobacco laws, rather than non-jurisdictional areas. Please be sure to contact your U.S. Representative at (202) 225-3121, and urge him or her to cosponsor and support H.R. 5092, the "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Modernization and Reform Act of 2006!" SENATOR VITTER INTRODUCES S. 2599--THE SENATE VERSION OF THE "DISASTER RECOVERY PERSONAL PROTECTION ACT OF 2006" On April 7, U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-La.) introduced S. 2599--the Senate companion bill to H.R. 5013, the "Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006" introduced on March 28, by U.S. Congressman Bobby Jindal (R-La.). This NRA-supported bill would amend federal emergency statute laws to prohibit local authorities from confiscating lawfully owned firearms during times of disaster. Thirty three states have "emergency powers" laws that give the government permission to suspend or limit gun sales, and to prohibit or restrict citizens from transporting or carrying firearms--something NRA-ILA is working to change. In some states, authorities can seize guns outright from citizens who have committed no crime--and who would then be defenseless against disorder. Please be sure to contact your U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative, and urge them to cosponsor and support S. 2599, and H.R. 5013, respectively, the "Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006!" You can reach your Senators at (202) 224-3121 and your Representative at (202) 225-3121. SUPPORT H.R. 5005, THE "FIREARMS CORRECTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS ACT" Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) recently introduced H.R. 5005, the "Firearms Corrections and Improvements Act," which would make a variety of technical changes to federal firearm laws. The bill would roll back unnecessary restrictions, correct errors, and codify longstanding congressional policies in the arena of firearms laws. Among its provisions, H.R. 5005 would: permanently ban taxes or "user fees" on background checks by the federal instant check system--fees that Congress has prohibited in annual appropriations riders since 1998; permanently ban creation of a centralized electronic index of dealers' records--a threat to gun owners' privacy that Congress has barred through appropriations riders for a decade; codify limits on disclosure of trace records--which Congress has already limited through a series of appropriations riders over the past few years, out of concern for gun owners' privacy and the confidentiality of law enforcement records; and repeal of obsolete language from the Brady Act's "interim" waiting period provisions, that expired in 1998. Please be sure to contact your U.S. Representative at (202) 225-3121, and urge him or her to cosponsor and support H.R. 5005, the "Firearms Corrections and Improvements Act!" PLAN TO ATTEND FREE MILWAUKEE GRASSROOTS WORKSHOP! The NRA-ILA Grassroots Division will host its FREE Grassroots Workshop in conjunction with NRA's Annual Meetings in Milwaukee. This Workshop has been a regular part of NRA's Annual Meetings for a decade. At this event, you will hear from NRA officers, NRA staff, and your fellow NRA members on what you can do in your own community to ensure victory for the Second Amendment in this year's elections. We will also discuss how you can work with your local Election Volunteer Coordinator (EVC). Your EVC is a local NRA member who is working with the various pro-gun campaigns in his area to provide critically-needed volunteer support for a variety of activities, including: phone banks, precinct walks, literature drops, voter registration drives, Get Out The Vote & Election Day activities, etc. EVCs also promote NRA-ILA's legislative agenda at the federal and state levels. With the 2006 campaign season in full swing, it is critical that we start implementing our grassroots battle plan to ensure we are ready to meet these electoral challenges head on as Election Day 2006 approaches. Rest assured, the anti-gunners are already doubling their efforts to ensure the defeat of pro-Second Amendment candidates in critical elections across the country, so we must ensure we are prepared to defeat their efforts at every turn. Workshop details are: NRA-ILA Grassroots Workshop-FREE! Friday, May 19, 2006, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 Noon (Registration & free continental breakfast-8:00 - 9:00 a.m.) Hilton Milwaukee City Center Crystal Ballroom 509 W. Wisconsin Avenue Milwaukee, WI 53203 To reserve your seat, or for more information, please call NRA-ILA at (800) 392-VOTE (8683). You may also register on-line at www.nraam.org/seminars/grassroots.asp. We hope to see you in Milwaukee on Friday, May 19! NRA-ILA "MIX N' MINGLES" How often do you get the opportunity to mix n' mingle with NRA-ILA Headquarters staff and fellow NRA members in your community, to earn FREE NRA items, and to assist with the efforts of candidates seeking office in your area? Well, in preparation for the 2006 elections, you will have the opportunity to do just that. This election year, NRA-ILA will be hosting FREE NRA-ILA Mix N' Mingles across the country. These events will provide NRA members with training on what they can do locally to propel candidates to victory this election season. The meetings also provide attendees the opportunity to meet and socialize with lawmakers, candidates and their staffs, NRA-ILA Headquarters staff, and fellow area NRA members--and to earn FREE NRA fraternal items such as hats, pocketknives, buttons, etc. Mix N' Mingles, including materials, food, beverages, and NRA items, are FREE! Mix N' Mingle events are scheduled for: - Eau Claire, WI -- 05/23/06 - Ashland, WI -- 05/24/06 NRA members who have access to the Internet can go to www.nraila.org/workshops/ to reserve their seats on-line. NRA members are encouraged to check this website address frequently to see if any upcoming "Mix N' Mingles" are scheduled in their area. NRA members may also contact the NRA-ILA Grassroots Division at (800) 392-VOTE (8683) for details and to reserve their seats. A LOOK AT THE STATES (***For all of the action items below, you can find contact information for your legislators by using the "Write Your Representatives" tool at www.NRAILA.org. As always, thank you for your support.***) States with updates this issue: Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. ARIZONA The Arizona Department of Game and Fish is hosting an area meeting to discuss locations for a new shooting range in Northern Arizona. Your presence is needed to help show support this new local shooting range. This meeting will be held Saturday, April 15, from 10:00 a.m., to 2:00 p.m., at the Northern Arizona University du Bois Center located at 306 E. Pine Knoll Drive, Flagstaff, 86011. Please mark you calendar for this date! For more information please contact: Mark Meyer at (480) 967-1343 or via e-mail at mmeyer@lsdaz.com. More meetings will be scheduled in the future, so please keep checking the NRA-ILA website for updates. After working closely with NRA leadership in Arizona, State Representative Pamela Gorman (R-6) has withdrawn her amendment, regarding state operated shooting ranges, from SB 1291. We here at NRA realize we have a strong ally in Representative Gorman, who will work to protect Arizona ranges and your Second Amendment rights. Please take a moment to send Representative Gorman a note thanking her for working with the NRA to resolve this issue and encourage her to continue to work with us to protect Arizona's gun owners and sportsmen. State Representative Gorman's e-mail address is pgorman@azleg.gov. CONNECTICUT As we have been reporting, the anti-gun crowd has redoubled their efforts to pass last year's proposal to make it a crime to fail to report the loss or theft of a firearm within 72 hours from when you "knew or should have known" of the theft. This year's version is outrageous! H.B. 5818, now includes language that would subject gun owners to criminal investigation and jeopardy of prosecution even if they report the theft because a court will now be given the ability to decide whether the firearm was stored in such a manner that provided "substantial and unjustifiable risk" that it would be stolen. Even worse, if the police recover the firearm before the gun owner has discovered it missing and made the report, it will be considered automatic evidence of guilt of violation of this proposed law, as well as guilt of an illegal transfer. Conviction of the "illegal transfer," which is a felony, would permanently end your right to own a firearm! In response to the large number of phone calls that are coming in from legitimate gun owners, Connecticut Against Gun Violence has put out desperate pleas to the anti-gun crowd asking them to write, e-mail and call lawmakers in an effort to drown out your voice! If you have not contacted your legislators yet, we urge you to do so today! The Public Safety and Security Committee could consider HB 5818 as early as next week. The Public Safety and Security Committee can be reached at (860) 240-0570. For more information on the Public Safety and Security Committee please visit www.cga.ct.gov/ps/. DELAWARE The Delaware House of Representatives may be voting as early as Tuesday on H.B. 359, sponsored by Representative Deborah Hudson (R-12), the NRA-backed "shall-issue" Right-to-Carry bill. This bill would allow law-abiding citizens that fulfilled the requirements for a concealed weapons permit to be granted a permit without discrimination. Your State Representative needs to hear from you! Please take the time to call or e-mail your State Representative TODAY and respectfully urge him or her to support HB 359 when it comes before them for consideration. The future of Right-to-Carry in Delaware depends on it! IDAHO Thanks to the efforts of NRA members across the State of Idaho who sent thousands of e-mails and made countless phone calls to State lawmakers, four important bills have become law in the state and a fifth is on the way. Senator Gerry Sweet (R-20) and Representative Bill Sali (R-21) co-sponsored three NRA-supported bills: House Bill 686 will protect non-profit shooting ranges and gun clubs from having taxes imposed on their range fees and membership dues; Senate Bill 1401, "Emergency Powers" legislation, will prevent government officials from imposing restrictions on the lawful possession, transfer, sale, transport, storage, display or use of firearms and ammunition during a disaster emergency; and Senate Bill 1428, "Right-to-Carry" reform legislation, that extends the concealed weapon license from four to five years and, like driver's licenses, requires renewal notices be sent out prior to license expiration. This bill also provides an exemption from the concealed weapon license requirement for a person who possesses a concealed weapon while on property he or she owns or leases. Senator Skip Brandt (R-8) proposed House Bill 608, legislation that creates an NRA motor vehicle license plate. This bill has also become law, so look to sign up for a special NRA license plate in the near future. The fifth bill, Senate Bill 1441, is "Castle Doctrine" legislation that would provide immunity from civil action for anyone who has used lawful force in self-defense. Under SB 1441, if a criminal attacks a victim and the victim successfully defends him or herself and, in the process, injures or kills the criminal, then neither the criminal nor the criminal's family can obtain a judgment against the victim for damages. This bill, carried by Senators Mel Richardson (R-32) and Joyce Broadsword (R-2), has passed both the Senate and House and is headed to the Governor's desk. ILLINOIS Thanks to the efforts of those who contacted their State Representative, H.B. 4853 passed the House with an NRA-supported amendment that excludes ammunition. The House concurred on this legislation with the Senate offered and NRA-supported amendment overwhelmingly by voting 115 to 1. Without this important amendment, H.B. 4853 as originally passed by the House could have been used to target ammunition manufacturers, distributors, users, and owners of property where firearms are lawfully discharged. This legislation will now head to the Governor's desk. LOUISIANA On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary C Committee reported out S.B. 93, by Senator Joe McPherson (D-29), NRA-backed legislation amending the state's emergency powers act to prohibit the seizure and confiscation of legally possessed firearms in the unfortunate event of another natural disaster in the State of Louisiana. The full Senate could vote the bill on as early as Monday afternoon. Please e-mail and call your State Senators on Monday morning and urge them to support SB 93. Although an official agenda had not been posted as when this Alert went to print, it is expected the House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee may hold hearings on the House versions of measures to end New Orleans-style gun confiscations during a state of emergency: H.B. 36 by Representative Pete Schneider (R-90), H.B. 136 by Representative Troy Hebert (D-49), H.B. 172 by Representative Danny Martiny (R-79), and HB 760 by Representative Steve Scalise (R-82). Please email and call the members of the committee and urge them to support these measures. The committee normally meets on Wednesday and Thursday mornings in Room 6 of the State Capitol. To contact your state lawmakers, check the committee's schedule, and agenda, or for a list of committee members, please call the PULS line at (225) 342-2456 (from the Baton Rouge area) or (800) 256-3793 (outside the Baton Rouge area) or visit http://senate.legis.state.la.us/Senators, http://house.louisiana.gov, and http://www.legis.state.la.us MAINE Representative Josh Tardy (R-Newport) is offering an important amendment that adds two important provisions to L.D.1938, "An Act To Protect Victims of Domestic Violence." The "Tardy Amendment" would do the following: (1) Allow the court to order a person seeking a "protection from abuse" order--who is proven to be in "bad faith"--to pay damages and reasonable attorney's fees to the defendant and; (2) Makes law enforcement officials responsible for damage to firearms resulting from a lack of reasonable care, which are seized, surrendered or relinquished. Presently, the possibility of "bad faith" orders within the court system create a "shadow of doubt"--hurting the true victims of domestic violence. This measure would help eliminate "bad faith" orders from occurring, thus furthering validity for all legitimate "protection from abuse" proceedings. Furthermore, relinquished firearms are often damaged and sometimes never returned to the owner after a "protection from abuse" order is terminated. This amendment would correct that problem. Similar language recently passed the Pennsylvania Legislature and was supported by all stakeholders, including gun owners as well as domestic violence organizations. This measure passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support. Please call your State Legislator today and respectfully ask him or her to support the "Tardy Amendment!" Your State Legislator can be contacted in Augusta at (800) 423-2900. MICHIGAN Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) signed two pro-gun bills, both sponsored by Representative Rick Jones (R-71). H.B. 4643 addresses a problem with concealed pistol licenses (CPL) being renewed in a timely fashion. Apparently, the Detroit area was taking 9 to 10 months to renew concealed pistol licenses! HB 4643 corrects the renewal process by requiring a proper renewal to be completed within 60 days or the license is extended for 180 days or until the permit is renewed. H.B. 4642 allows a licensed spouse to carry or transport another licensed spouse's inspected pistol. A thank you goes out to Governor Granholm for signing these two important Right-to-Carry reform bills into law. NEW YORK On April 9, members of the Assembly Health Committee are set to consider A. 6608A, sponsored by Assemblywoman Ginny Fields (D-5), an NRA-supported bill that would protect existing shooting ranges from new noise ordinances and nuisance lawsuits aimed at shutting them down. A. 6608A provides that facilities must comply with noise ordinances in place at the time of construction of the range. The Senate companion bill to A 6608A, S. 3353A, is sponsored by Senator Dale Volker (R-59) and could be voted on by the full Senate at any time. Please contact your lawmakers today and urge them to support A. 6606A and S. 3353A. The general phone number to the Senate is (518) 455-2800. The general phone number for the Assembly is (518) 455-4100. SOUTH CAROLINA Thanks to phone calls from NRA members H. 4681, introduced by Representative Mike Pitts (R-14), unanimously passed the House Judiciary Committee's Constitutional Laws Subcommittee with an added amendment that further strengthens the bill. H 4681 will now come before the full Judiciary Committee. This legislation would remove the ability of local governments to restrict the use, sale, or transportation of firearms during a state of emergency, and would also prohibit South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) from releasing the personal information of Right-to-Carry (RTC) permit holders unless the request for the information is part of an investigation by law enforcement. Please contact the members of the House Judiciary Committee and urge them to support H 4681. A list of the members of the Judiciary Committee can be found by going to www.scstatehouse.net/html-pages/housecommlst.html#jud TEXAS Primary runoff elections will be held on Tuesday, April 11. Please check www.nrapvf.org to see whether a runoff election is being held in your area and to see how the candidates measure up on issues of importance to gun owners and sportsmen. Spread the word to your family, friends, and co-workers about the primary runoff elections, because every vote counts!
Just some Yo Momma Jokes? http://www.101funjokes.com/yo_momma_jokes.htm Yo momma so poor... Her face is on the front of a food stamp. That your family ate Cornflakes with a fork to save milk. When I visited her trailer, 2 cockroaches tripped me and a Rat tried to steal me wallet. She waves an ice lolly around and calls it Air conditioning. Burglars break into yo momma's home and leave money. When I told her about the last supper she thought the food stamps had run out. The building society repossessed her cardboard box. She watches television on an Etch-A-Sketch. Each night she goes to KFC to lick other folk's fingers She can't even afford to go to the free clinic. When I saw her kickin a can down the road I asked yo momma what she was doing....'Moving' she replied. I caught her trying to use food stamps in the Gobstopper machine. When I rang her doorbell, SHE said 'Ding-Dong' I asked her where the 'facilities were' and she replied - "Pick a corner...ANY corner..." I visited yo momma's house, tore down the cob webs and she screamed - "Who's tearing down the drapes!!!!" I walked into her home, asked if I could use her toilet, and she said "Sure thing, it's 4th tree on your right..." Only time she smelled Hot Food was when a rich bloke farted... When I saw her wobbling down the street with 1 shoe, I hollered - "Lost a shoe?", and she said - "Nope...just found one..." She hangs the Toilet paper out to dry. Closest thing to a car she owns is a low-riding Shopping trolley....with a box on it... She had to take out a second mortgage on her cardboard box. Even Beggars give you money. She bounces food stamps. She can't even afford to pay attention. She uses cardboard and ribena as bread and wine substitutes. She uses chewing gum as a band aid. She lives in a 2-story Cracker Jack box. She uses white-out as a tooth filler. She can't afford a mop - she stands on her head in order to mop the floor... Her idea of Desert was to go outside and collect the 'yellow snow'...and yo loved it, didn't ya! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yo momma so short she can hang glides Doritos. Yo momma's like a "Happy Meal" small, cheap and greasy. Yo momma is like a toilet; fat, white, and smells like shit. Yo momma's so short, she can sit on a dime and swing her legs. Yo momma so stupid, she took a spoon to the Super Bowl. Yo momma's so short, she does back flips under the bed. Yo Mama so old... She left her purse on Noah's Ark. Jurassic Park brought back the memories... When she ran the 100 meter dash, they timed yo mama with a sundial. She still owes Moses a dollar. When she was at school...there was No history class! She uses her hot flushes to heat her cup of Tea She's got the first autographed Koran. She co-wrote the 4th Commandment. When I asked for Her ID yo mama handed me a rock She even made Yoda jealous. She recalls When the Grand Canyon was a ditch. The fire department are on standby when you light her birthday cake When She gave birth, You came out with Dentures. She sat in front of Jesus in 1st grade Her first job was as Cain and Abel's baby-sitter. Her birthday expired. When Moses parted the Red Sea, he found yo mama fishing on the other side! She got the first copy of the Ten Commandments. Her social security number is 000-000-001 She's got Adam and Eve's autograph She starting to fart out Mummy dust Her zip code is 00001. She used to baby sit Yoda She uses chewing gum as a band aid. She used to cut Betty Rubble's hair She used to gang bang with the Flintstones She was once a waitress at the last supper Spielberg hired her as historical consultant on Jurassic Park She was the only Creature in Jurassic Park they never had to animate She uses T-Rex dropping as fertilizer. She was co-author of the Dead Sea scrolls When God said 'let there be light', yo mama was the one flicking on the light switch. She baby-sat for Pythagorus She used to get sermon tips from Zeus. She offered odds of 4 to 1 on Adam eating the apple They call her Captain Caveman She's more ancient than everything seen on the Antiques Road Show She the only one at the old folks home with a senior citizens discount. Mel Gibson hired yo mama to offer insights on what life was like with William Wallace She got told to act Her own age...and she died. She farts out dust. Her birth certificate says "Expired" on it. She used to baby-sit Pascal She invented the term 'oldest profession in the world' She's in Jesus's yearbook! She sat behind Yoda in the third grade. Your momma so fat... When she hauls butt she has to make two trips. When she dances she makes the band skip. When she was diagnosed with the flesh eating disease the doctor gave your momma 13 years to live. She puts mayonnaise on aspirin. Her butt has its own congressman. Her cereal bowl came with a lifeguard. When she goes to the zoo the elephants throw your momma peanuts. Her high school graduation picture was an aerial photograph. Her driver's license says "Picture continued on other side." The back of her neck looks like a pack of hot dogs. "Place Your Ad Here" is printed on each of your momma's butt cheeks. All the restaurants in town have signs that say: "Maximum Occupancy: 240 Patrons OR Your Momma" When she ran away, they had to use all four sides of the milk carton. When she gets in an elevator, it HAS to go down. She was born with a silver shovel in her mouth. She's got smaller fat women orbiting around her. When I yell "Kool-Aid," she comes crashing through the wall. She could sell shade. When she crosses the street, cars look out for yo momma. People jog around her for exercise. I ran around her twice and got lost. She gets runs in her jeans. Her blood type is Ragu. When she goes to a restaurant, she doesn't get a menu, she gets an estimate. If she got her shoes shined, she'd have to take his word for it! She has to put her belt on with a boomerang. When she turns around, people throw her a welcome back party. She can't even jump to a conclusion. She went to the movies and sat next to everyone. Her belly button doesn't have lint, it has sweaters. She can't even fit in the chat room. She put on her lipstick with a paint-roller. She has more chins than a Chinese phonebook. Yo momma's so fat; she went to the movies and sat next to everyone! Yo momma's so fat; she went to the salad bar and pulled up a chair. Yo momma's so fat; she won Miss Bessie the Cow @YEAR@. Yo momma's so fat; she's got Amtrak written on her leg. Yo momma's so fat; she's got her own post code. Yo momma's so fat; she's got her own zip code! Yo momma's so fat; she's in two time zones at the same time! Yo momma's so fat; she's on both sides of the family! Yo momma's so fat; she's sits on coal and farts out a diamond. Yo momma's so fat; she's works in the movies -- as the screen. Yo momma's so fat; the Aids quilt wouldn't cover her. Yo momma's so fat, the airline charges her round trip for each flight. Yo momma's so fat, the animals at the zoo feed her. Yo momma's so fat, the highway patrol made her wear Caution! Wide Turn. Yo momma's so fat; they have to grease the bath tub to get her out! Yo momma's so fat, they invented super extra strength ultra Slim Fast. Yo momma's so fat; they mistake her for a country. Yo momma's so fat, to her light food means under 4 Tons. Yo momma's so fat; to lose a few pounds she takes off her girdle. Yo momma's so fat, when I got on top of her my ears popped. Yo momma's so fat, when a cop saw her he told her Hey you two break it up! Yo momma's so fat, when her beeper goes off people think she's backing up. Yo momma's so fat, when she bungee jumps she brings down the bridge too. Yo momma's so fat, when she dances at a concert the whole band skips. Yo momma's so fat, when she falls it measures on the Richter scale! Yo momma's so fat; when she fell in love she broke it! Yo momma's so fat, when she gets on the scale it says to be continued. Yo momma's so fat, when she goes to parties people scream Kool-Aid! Yo momma's so fat, when she has sex she has to give directions! Yo momma's so fat, when she has to haul ass it takes two trips! Yo momma's so fat, when she lies on the beach no one else gets sun! Yo momma's so fat, when she moons people they turn into Werewolves. Yo momma's so fat, when she puts her foot down she clears rain forests. Yo momma's so fat, when she sings, it's over! Yo momma's so fat; when she sits on my face I can't hear the stereo. Yo momma's so fat, when she sweats everyone around her wears raincoats! Yo momma's so fat, when she tripped over on 4th Ave she landed on 12th. Yo momma's so fat, when she turns around it’s her birthday. Yo momma's so fat; when she turns around they throw her a welcome-back party. Yo momma's so fat; when she walks in high heels she strikes oil. Yo momma's so fat; when she walks she leaves snail tracks.... Yo momma's so fat, when she wears her X jacket helicopters try to land. Yo momma's so fat, when she wears red all the kids scream Kool-Aid! Yo momma's so fat, when you get on top of her your ears pop! Yo momma's so fat; when you put her in a Jacuzzi she makes her own gravy! Yo momma's so fat, whenever she goes to the beach the tide comes in! Yo momma's so fat; you can slap her thighs and ride the waves in! Yo momma's so fat, you can't tell if she is coming or going... Yo momma's so fat, your family portrait has stretch marks. Yo mama is so skinny Yo mama so skinny she hula hoops with a cheerio Yo mama so skinny she has to wear a belt with spandex. Yo mama so skinny she turned sideways and dissapeared. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yo mama is so lazy Yo mama so lazy she thinks a two-income family is where yo daddy has two jobs. Yo mama so lazy she's got a remote control just to operate her remote! Yo mama so lazy that she came in last place in a recent snail marathon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yo mama is so tall Yo mama so tall she tripped over a rock and hit her head on the moon. Yo mama so tall she tripped in Michigan and hit her head in Florida. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yo mama is so short Yo mama so short she poses for trophies! Yo mama so short you can see her feet on her drivers lisence! Yo mama so short she has to use a ladder to pick up a dime. Yo mama so short she can play handball on the curb. Yo mama so short she does backflips under the bed. Yo mama so short she models for trophys.
answer as much as you can [i dare you]? When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny? Are eyebrows considered facial hair? If a baby's leg pops out at 11:59PM but his head doesn't come out until 12:01, which day was he born on? In the song Yankee Doodle, is he calling the horse or the feather "macaroni"? Is there a time limit on fortune cookie predictions? Since bread is square, then why is sandwich meat round? Do they have the word "dictionary" in the dictionary? Can you daydream at night? Why is it that on a phone or calculator the number five has a little dot on it? Can crop circles be square? If ghosts can walk through walls and glide down stairs, why don't they fall through the floor? Is it legal to travel down a road in reverse, as long as your following the direction of the traffic? When Atheists go to court, do they have to swear on the bible? Why is vanilla ice cream white when vanilla extract is brown? Can animals commit suicide? What do you do when you see an endangered animal that is eating an endangered plant? If a doctor suddenly had a heart attack while doing surgery, would the other doctors work on the doctor or the patient? How can something be "new" and "improved"? if it's new, what was it improving on? Why aren't drapes double sided so it looks nice on the inside and outside of your home? When two people marry, they say, "you may kiss the bride". What do they say if two MEN get married? Why is it that when we "skate on thin ice", we can "get in hot water"? Why do people say beans beans the magical fruit when beans are vegetables? If laughter is the best medicine, who's the idiot who said they 'died laughing'? If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches? Why are the little styrofoam pieces called peanuts? Why does the Easter bunny carry eggs? Rabbits don't lay eggs. Do siamese twins pay for one ticket or two tickets when they go to movies and concerts? Why are they called 'Jolly Ranchers'? Who said that the ranchers were jolly? Why does caregiver and caretaker mean the same thing? Can a short person "talk down" to a taller person? If a bald person works as a chef at a restaurant, do they have to wear a hairnet? If milk goes bad if not refrigerated, does it go bad if the cow isnt refrigerated? How fast do hotcakes sell? Do prison buses have emergency exits? Do astronauts change their clocks when they move over different time zones in space? Can a black person join the kkk? When lightning strikes the ocean why don't all the fish die? When there's two men who "get married", do they both go to the same bachelor party? If a guy that was about to die in the electric chair had a heart attack should they save him? Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? Do Jewish vampires avoid crosses or Stars of David? If London Bridge is standing why is there a song about it falling down? Why is it that before 9/11 they always showed the emergency broadcast system test, and on 9/11 they never used it? If a nursing mother had her nipples pierced would the milk come out of all three holes? Who was Sadie Hawkins? If a stripper gets breast implants can she write it off on her taxes as a business expense? Why do we sing "Rock a bye baby" to lull a baby to sleep when the song is about putting your baby in a tree and letting the wind crash the cradle on the ground? If parents say, "Never take candy from strangers" then why do we celebrate Halloween? Do the minutes on the movie boxes include the previews, credits, and special features, or just the movie itself? Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale? What does PU stand for (as in "PU, that stinks!")? Why do we put suits in a garment bag and put garments in a suitcase? Can cannibals be arrested for being under the influence of alcohol (e.g. drunk-driving) if they have eaten someone who was drunk? What is the stage of a reptile when it has eggs in it but they haven't been laid. Are they pregnant? If Mars had earthquakes would they be called marsquakes? Why do people never say "it's only a game" when they're winning? If an ambulance is on its way to save someone, and it runs someone over, does it stop to help them? Why is it called a funny bone, when if you hit it, it's not funny at all? Do you yawn in your sleep? Why do dogs like the smell of other dogs butts? If a cannible was on death row could he ask for the last guy that was electricuted for his last meal? Do Chinese people get English sayings tattooed on their bodies? Do glow-in-the-dark objects stop glowing when somebody turns the lights on? If you died with braces on would they take them off? If someone has their nose pierced, have a cold, and take thier nose ring out. Does snot come out of the piercing hole? How come lemon washing up liquid contains real lemons, but lemon juice contains artificial flavorings. Do you wake up or open your eyes first? Did Noah have woodpeckers on the ark? If he did, where did he keep them? Why are builders afraid to have a 13th floor but book publishers aren't afraid to have a Chapter 11? How do you handcuff a one-armed man? If the FBI breaks your door down do they have to pay for it? In some books, why do they have blank pages at the very end? Why can't donuts be square? Why put a towel in the dirty clothes basket if when you get out of the shower you are clean? What happens to an irrisitable force when it hits an immovable object? If there's a speed of sound and a speed of light is there a speed of smell? Why do overalls have bel loops, since they are held up at the top by the straps? Do people in prison celebrate halloween.... if so how? Do the security guards at airports have to go through airport security when they get to work? Why are all of the Harry Potter spells in Latin if they're English? What do Greeks say when they don't understand something? What happens if a queen gives birth to a pair of siamese twins? Who gets to be king? Do all-boys schools have girls bathrooms? Conversely, do all-girls schools have boys bathrooms? Are children who act in rated 'R' movies allowed to see them? How come cats butts go up when you pet them? What would happen to the sea's water level if every boat in the World was taken out of the water at the same time? How come you never see a billboard being put up by the highway? Do the English people eat English muffins, or are they just called muffins? How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't grow in it? Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors? Why does Jello have a smell when you add the powder in the water, but when it "gels" the smell is gone? Why are dogs noses always wet? If a bee is allergic to pollen would it get the hives? Why do people say "heads up" when you should duck? Why is it OK for dudes to slap other dudes' asses in football, but not in any other situation? Why does triangularly cut bread taste better than square bread? If one man says, "it was an uphill battle," and another says, "it went downhill from there," how could they both be having troubles? Why does a round pizza come in a square box? At what point in man's evolution did he start wiping his ass? Do bald people get Dandruff? Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white? Why do superheros wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes? If you get cheated by the Better Business Bureau, who do you complain to? When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their signs? Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet? Can you cry under water? Why Does Pluto Live in a dog house, eat dog food, etc. but Goofy, who is also a dog, lives in a condo and drives a car? If you blew a bubble in space would it pop? Are children who use sign language allowed to talk with their mouth full? How come all of the planets are spherical? How did the first women ever to shave their legs know that the skin wouldn't just peel right off? when a pregnant lady has twins, is there 1 or 2 umbilical cords? Why doesn't Winnie the Pooh ever get stung by the bees he messes with? Why do they put holes in crackers? Can you still say "Put it where the sun don't shine " on a nude beach? What do people in China call their good plates? How come toy hippos are always blue, or purple, when real hippos are brown? Why don't woodpeckers get headaches when they slam their head on a tree all day? If someone owns a piece of land, do they own it all the way to the center of the earth? If an escalotor breaks down, does it become stairs? Why do they call him Donkey Kong if he is not a donkey? Why do they say a football team is the 'world champion' when they don't play anybody outside the US? Do stuttering people stutter when they're thinking to themselves? If you put a chameleon in a room full of mirrors, what color would it turn? What are the handles for corn on the cob called? Why do British people never sound British when they sing? Why do we press the start button to turn off the computer? Do your eyes change color when you die? Were Mary and Joseph's surname Christ before Jesus was born? If a bunch of cats jump on top of each other, is it still called a dog pile? Do sheep get static cling when they rub against one another? In libraries, do they put the bible in the fiction or non-fiction section? How old are you before it can be said you died of old age? If K.F.C Stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Why do they play sweet home Alabama on the comercials? If people with one arm go to get their nails done, do they pay half price? What type of animal is Snuffaluffagus? If you had a three story house and were in the second floor, isn't it possible that you can be upstairs and downstairs at the same time? Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane? If a king is gay and marries another guy what is that guy to the royal family? Why do they call it "getting your dog fixed" if afterwards it doesn't work anymore? Does a 'Marks-A-Lot' marker, mark any more than a regular marker? If you really could dig a hole to China, and you did, and you fell in, would you stop in the middle because of gravity? If the funeral procession is at night, do folks drive with their headlights off? What happens when you put a lightsaber in water? On Gilligan's Island, how did Ginger have so many different outfits when they were only going on a 3 hour tour? If I had my legs amputated, would I have to change my height and weight on my driver's license? If nobody buys a ticket to a movie do they still show it? How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink? Do movie producers still say lights, camera, and action when it is a dark scene? What do you call male ballerinas? How does Freddy Kruger wipe his butt? Why people are so scared of mice,which are much smaller than us, when no one seems to be scared of Micky Mouse, who is bigger than us? Why are the numbers on a calculator and a phone reversed? Why are plastic bears the only animal you can get honey from? Why can't you get honey from a plastic bee? Can bald men get lice? When your photo is taken for your driver's license, why do they tell you to smile? If you are stopped by the police and asked for your license, are you going to be smiling? Do butterflies remember life as a caterpillar? If you undergo chemotherapy do you lose your pubic hairs? Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized? Does the postman deliver his own mail? Why does toilet bowl cleaner only come in the color blue? What happens when you put hand sanitizer on a place other then your hand? Why are women and men's shoe sizes different? Can you "stare off into space" when you're in space? Where do people in Hell tell other people to go? Is "vice-versa" to a dyslexic just plain redundant? How come you can kill a deer and put it up on your wall. but it's illegal to keep one as a pet? Why do we say we're head over heels when we're happy? Isn't that the way we normally are? If prunes are dehydrated plums, where does prune juice come from? Is it appropriate to say "good mourning" at a funeral? If there's an exception to every rule, is there an exception to that rule? When you're caught "between a rock and a hard place", is the rock not hard? Was Jesus a virgin when he died? Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer? Doesn't a lightning rod on top of church show a lack of faith? Who coined the phrase, 'coined the phrase?' If there were a thousand seaguls in an airplane while its flying, each weighing two pounds a piece, but they were all flying in the airplane, would the airplane weigh 2000 pounds more? If you soak a raisin in water, does it turn back into a grape? How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered? Why do they call steam rollers, steam rollers? They don't produce, get rid of, or have anythong to do with steam What is another word for "thesaurus"?
Some Funny && Crazy Thoughts? When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny? Are eyebrows considered facial hair? If a baby's leg pops out at 11:59PM but his head doesn't come out until 12:01, which day was he born on? In the song Yankee Doodle, is he calling the horse or the feather "macaroni"? Is there a time limit on fortune cookie predictions? Since bread is square, then why is sandwich meat round? Do they have the word "dictionary" in the dictionary? Can you daydream at night? Why is it that on a phone or calculator the number five has a little dot on it? Can crop circles be square? If ghosts can walk through walls and glide down stairs, why don't they fall through the floor? Is it legal to travel down a road in reverse, as long as your following the direction of the traffic? When Atheists go to court, do they have to swear on the bible? Why is vanilla ice cream white when vanilla extract is brown? Can animals commit suicide? What do you do when you see an endangered animal that is eating an endangered plant? If a doctor suddenly had a heart attack while doing surgery, would the other doctors work on the doctor or the patient? How can something be "new" and "improved"? if it's new, what was it improving on? Why aren't drapes double sided so it looks nice on the inside and outside of your home? When two people marry, they say, "you may kiss the bride". What do they say if two MEN get married? Why is it that when we "skate on thin ice", we can "get in hot water"? Why do people say beans beans the magical fruit when beans are vegetables? If laughter is the best medicine, who's the idiot who said they 'died laughing'? If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches? Why are the little styrofoam pieces called peanuts? Why does the Easter bunny carry eggs? Rabbits don't lay eggs. Do siamese twins pay for one ticket or two tickets when they go to movies and concerts? Why are they called 'Jolly Ranchers'? Who said that the ranchers were jolly? Why does caregiver and caretaker mean the same thing? Can a short person "talk down" to a taller person? If a bald person works as a chef at a restaurant, do they have to wear a hairnet? If milk goes bad if not refrigerated, does it go bad if the cow isnt refrigerated? How fast do hotcakes sell? Do prison buses have emergency exits? Do astronauts change their clocks when they move over different time zones in space? Can a black person join the kkk? When lightning strikes the ocean why don't all the fish die? When there's two men who "get married", do they both go to the same bachelor party? If a guy that was about to die in the electric chair had a heart attack should they save him? Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? Do Jewish vampires avoid crosses or Stars of David? If London Bridge is standing why is there a song about it falling down? Why is it that before 9/11 they always showed the emergency broadcast system test, and on 9/11 they never used it? If a nursing mother had her nipples pierced would the milk come out of all three holes? Who was Sadie Hawkins? If a stripper gets breast implants can she write it off on her taxes as a business expense? Why do we sing "Rock a bye baby" to lull a baby to sleep when the song is about putting your baby in a tree and letting the wind crash the cradle on the ground? If parents say, "Never take candy from strangers" then why do we celebrate Halloween? Do the minutes on the movie boxes include the previews, credits, and special features, or just the movie itself? Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale? What does PU stand for (as in "PU, that stinks!")? Why do we put suits in a garment bag and put garments in a suitcase? Can cannibals be arrested for being under the influence of alcohol (e.g. drunk-driving) if they have eaten someone who was drunk? What is the stage of a reptile when it has eggs in it but they haven't been laid. Are they pregnant? If Mars had earthquakes would they be called marsquakes? Why do people never say "it's only a game" when they're winning? If an ambulance is on its way to save someone, and it runs someone over, does it stop to help them? Why is it called a funny bone, when if you hit it, it's not funny at all? Do you yawn in your sleep? Why do dogs like the smell of other dogs butts? If a cannible was on death row could he ask for the last guy that was electricuted for his last meal? Do Chinese people get English sayings tattooed on their bodies? Do glow-in-the-dark objects stop glowing when somebody turns the lights on? If you died with braces on would they take them off? If someone has their nose pierced, have a cold, and take thier nose ring out. Does snot come out of the piercing hole? How come lemon washing up liquid contains real lemons, but lemon juice contains artificial flavorings. Do you wake up or open your eyes first? Did Noah have woodpeckers on the ark? If he did, where did he keep them? Why are builders afraid to have a 13th floor but book publishers aren't afraid to have a Chapter 11? How do you handcuff a one-armed man? If the FBI breaks your door down do they have to pay for it? In some books, why do they have blank pages at the very end? Why can't donuts be square? Why put a towel in the dirty clothes basket if when you get out of the shower you are clean? What happens to an irrisitable force when it hits an immovable object? If there's a speed of sound and a speed of light is there a speed of smell? Why do overalls have bel loops, since they are held up at the top by the straps? Do people in prison celebrate halloween.... if so how? Do the security guards at airports have to go through airport security when they get to work? Why are all of the Harry Potter spells in Latin if they're English? What do Greeks say when they don't understand something? What happens if a queen gives birth to a pair of siamese twins? Who gets to be king? Do all-boys schools have girls bathrooms? Conversely, do all-girls schools have boys bathrooms? Are children who act in rated 'R' movies allowed to see them? How come cats butts go up when you pet them? What would happen to the sea's water level if every boat in the World was taken out of the water at the same time? How come you never see a billboard being put up by the highway? Do the English people eat English muffins, or are they just called muffins? How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't grow in it? Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors? Why does Jello have a smell when you add the powder in the water, but when it "gels" the smell is gone? Why are dogs noses always wet? If a bee is allergic to pollen would it get the hives? Why do people say "heads up" when you should duck? Why is it OK for dudes to slap other dudes' asses in football, but not in any other situation? Why does triangularly cut bread taste better than square bread? If one man says, "it was an uphill battle," and another says, "it went downhill from there," how could they both be having troubles? Why does a round pizza come in a square box? At what point in man's evolution did he start wiping his ***? Do bald people get Dandruff? Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white? Why do superheros wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes? If you get cheated by the Better Business Bureau, who do you complain to? When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their signs? Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet? Can you cry under water? Why Does Pluto Live in a dog house, eat dog food, etc. but Goofy, who is also a dog, lives in a condo and drives a car? If you blew a bubble in space would it pop? Are children who use sign language allowed to talk with their mouth full? How come all of the planets are spherical? How did the first women ever to shave their legs know that the skin wouldn't just peel right off? when a pregnant lady has twins, is there 1 or 2 umbilical cords? Why doesn't Winnie the Pooh ever get stung by the bees he messes with? Why do they put holes in crackers? Can you still say "Put it where the sun don't shine " on a nude beach? What do people in China call their good plates? How come toy hippos are always blue, or purple, when real hippos are brown? Why don't woodpeckers get headaches when they slam their head on a tree all day? If someone owns a piece of land, do they own it all the way to the center of the earth? If an escalotor breaks down, does it become stairs? Why do they call him Donkey Kong if he is not a donkey? Why do they say a football team is the 'world champion' when they don't play anybody outside the US? Do stuttering people stutter when they're thinking to themselves? If you put a chameleon in a room full of mirrors, what color would it turn? What are the handles for corn on the cob called? Why do British people never sound British when they sing? Why do we press the start button to turn off the computer? Do your eyes change color when you die? Were Mary and Joseph's surname Christ before Jesus was born? If a bunch of cats jump on top of each other, is it still called a dog pile? Do sheep get static cling when they rub against one another? In libraries, do they put the bible in the fiction or non-fiction section? How old are you before it can be said you died of old age? If K.F.C Stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Why do they play sweet home Alabama on the comercials? If people with one arm go to get their nails done, do they pay half price? What type of animal is Snuffaluffagus? If you had a three story house and were in the second floor, isn't it possible that you can be upstairs and downstairs at the same time? Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane? If a king is gay and marries another guy what is that guy to the royal family? Why do they call it "getting your dog fixed" if afterwards it doesn't work anymore? Does a 'Marks-A-Lot' marker, mark any more than a regular marker? If you really could dig a hole to China, and you did, and you fell in, would you stop in the middle because of gravity? If the funeral procession is at night, do folks drive with their headlights off? What happens when you put a lightsaber in water? On Gilligan's Island, how did Ginger have so many different outfits when they were only going on a 3 hour tour? If I had my legs amputated, would I have to change my height and weight on my driver's license? If nobody buys a ticket to a movie do they still show it? How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink? Do movie producers still say lights, camera, and action when it is a dark scene? What do you call male ballerinas? How does Freddy Kruger wipe his butt? Why people are so scared of mice,which are much smaller than us, when no one seems to be scared of Micky Mouse, who is bigger than us? Why are the numbers on a calculator and a phone reversed? Why are plastic bears the only animal you can get honey from? Why can't you get honey from a plastic bee? Can bald men get lice? When your photo is taken for your driver's license, why do they tell you to smile? If you are stopped by the police and asked for your license, are you going to be smiling? Do butterflies remember life as a caterpillar? If you undergo chemotherapy do you lose your pubic hairs? Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized? Does the postman deliver his own mail? Why does toilet bowl cleaner only come in the color blue? What happens when you put hand sanitizer on a place other then your hand? Why are women and men's shoe sizes different? Can you "stare off into space" when you're in space? Where do people in Hell tell other people to go? Is "vice-versa" to a dyslexic just plain redundant? How come you can kill a deer and put it up on your wall. but it's illegal to keep one as a pet? Why do we say we're head over heels when we're happy? Isn't that the way we normally are? If prunes are dehydrated plums, where does prune juice come from? Is it appropriate to say "good mourning" at a funeral? If there's an exception to every rule, is there an exception to that rule? When you're caught "between a rock and a hard place", is the rock not hard? Was Jesus a virgin when he died? Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer? Doesn't a lightning rod on top of church show a lack of faith? Who coined the phrase, 'coined the phrase?' If there were a thousand seaguls in an airplane while its flying, each weighing two pounds a piece, but they were all flying in the airplane, would the airplane weigh 2000 pounds more? If you soak a raisin in water, does it turn back into a grape? How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered? Why do they call steam rollers, steam rollers? They don't produce, get rid of, or have anythong to do with steam What is another word for "thesaurus"?
Some Questions ;P ? When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny? Are eyebrows considered facial hair? If a baby's leg pops out at 11:59PM but his head doesn't come out until 12:01, which day was he born on? In the song Yankee Doodle, is he calling the horse or the feather "macaroni"? Is there a time limit on fortune cookie predictions? Since bread is square, then why is sandwich meat round? Do they have the word "dictionary" in the dictionary? Can you daydream at night? Why is it that on a phone or calculator the number five has a little dot on it? Can crop circles be square? If ghosts can walk through walls and glide down stairs, why don't they fall through the floor? Is it legal to travel down a road in reverse, as long as your following the direction of the traffic? When Atheists go to court, do they have to swear on the bible? Why is vanilla ice cream white when vanilla extract is brown? Can animals commit suicide? What do you do when you see an endangered animal that is eating an endangered plant? If a doctor suddenly had a heart attack while doing surgery, would the other doctors work on the doctor or the patient? How can something be "new" and "improved"? if it's new, what was it improving on? Why aren't drapes double sided so it looks nice on the inside and outside of your home? When two people marry, they say, "you may kiss the bride". What do they say if two MEN get married? Why is it that when we "skate on thin ice", we can "get in hot water"? Why do people say beans beans the magical fruit when beans are vegetables? If laughter is the best medicine, who's the idiot who said they 'died laughing'? If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches? Why are the little styrofoam pieces called peanuts? Why does the Easter bunny carry eggs? Rabbits don't lay eggs. Do siamese twins pay for one ticket or two tickets when they go to movies and concerts? Why are they called 'Jolly Ranchers'? Who said that the ranchers were jolly? Why does caregiver and caretaker mean the same thing? Can a short person "talk down" to a taller person? If a bald person works as a chef at a restaurant, do they have to wear a hairnet? If milk goes bad if not refrigerated, does it go bad if the cow isnt refrigerated? How fast do hotcakes sell? Do prison buses have emergency exits? Do astronauts change their clocks when they move over different time zones in space? Can a black person join the kkk? When lightning strikes the ocean why don't all the fish die? When there's two men who "get married", do they both go to the same bachelor party? If a guy that was about to die in the electric chair had a heart attack should they save him? Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? Do Jewish vampires avoid crosses or Stars of David? If London Bridge is standing why is there a song about it falling down? Why is it that before 9/11 they always showed the emergency broadcast system test, and on 9/11 they never used it? If a nursing mother had her nipples pierced would the milk come out of all three holes? Who was Sadie Hawkins? If a stripper gets breast implants can she write it off on her taxes as a business expense? Why do we sing "Rock a bye baby" to lull a baby to sleep when the song is about putting your baby in a tree and letting the wind crash the cradle on the ground? If parents say, "Never take candy from strangers" then why do we celebrate Halloween? Do the minutes on the movie boxes include the previews, credits, and special features, or just the movie itself? Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale? What does PU stand for (as in "PU, that stinks!")? Why do we put suits in a garment bag and put garments in a suitcase? Can cannibals be arrested for being under the influence of alcohol (e.g. drunk-driving) if they have eaten someone who was drunk? What is the stage of a reptile when it has eggs in it but they haven't been laid. Are they pregnant? If Mars had earthquakes would they be called marsquakes? Why do people never say "it's only a game" when they're winning? If an ambulance is on its way to save someone, and it runs someone over, does it stop to help them? Why is it called a funny bone, when if you hit it, it's not funny at all? Do you yawn in your sleep? Why do dogs like the smell of other dogs butts? If a cannible was on death row could he ask for the last guy that was electricuted for his last meal? Do Chinese people get English sayings tattooed on their bodies? Do glow-in-the-dark objects stop glowing when somebody turns the lights on? If you died with braces on would they take them off? If someone has their nose pierced, have a cold, and take thier nose ring out. Does snot come out of the piercing hole? How come lemon washing up liquid contains real lemons, but lemon juice contains artificial flavorings. Do you wake up or open your eyes first? Did Noah have woodpeckers on the ark? If he did, where did he keep them? Why are builders afraid to have a 13th floor but book publishers aren't afraid to have a Chapter 11? How do you handcuff a one-armed man? If the FBI breaks your door down do they have to pay for it? In some books, why do they have blank pages at the very end? Why can't donuts be square? Why put a towel in the dirty clothes basket if when you get out of the shower you are clean? What happens to an irrisitable force when it hits an immovable object? If there's a speed of sound and a speed of light is there a speed of smell? Why do overalls have bel loops, since they are held up at the top by the straps? Do people in prison celebrate halloween.... if so how? Do the security guards at airports have to go through airport security when they get to work? Why are all of the Harry Potter spells in Latin if they're English? What do Greeks say when they don't understand something? What happens if a queen gives birth to a pair of siamese twins? Who gets to be king? Do all-boys schools have girls bathrooms? Conversely, do all-girls schools have boys bathrooms? Are children who act in rated 'R' movies allowed to see them? How come cats butts go up when you pet them? What would happen to the sea's water level if every boat in the World was taken out of the water at the same time? How come you never see a billboard being put up by the highway? Do the English people eat English muffins, or are they just called muffins? How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't grow in it? Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors? Why does Jello have a smell when you add the powder in the water, but when it "gels" the smell is gone? Why are dogs noses always wet? If a bee is allergic to pollen would it get the hives? Why do people say "heads up" when you should duck? Why is it OK for dudes to slap other dudes' asses in football, but not in any other situation? Why does triangularly cut bread taste better than square bread? If one man says, "it was an uphill battle," and another says, "it went downhill from there," how could they both be having troubles? Why does a round pizza come in a square box? At what point in man's evolution did he start wiping his ass? Do bald people get Dandruff? Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white? Why do superheros wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes? If you get cheated by the Better Business Bureau, who do you complain to? When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their signs? Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet? Can you cry under water? Why Does Pluto Live in a dog house, eat dog food, etc. but Goofy, who is also a dog, lives in a condo and drives a car? If you blew a bubble in space would it pop? Are children who use sign language allowed to talk with their mouth full? How come all of the planets are spherical? How did the first women ever to shave their legs know that the skin wouldn't just peel right off? when a pregnant lady has twins, is there 1 or 2 umbilical cords? Why doesn't Winnie the Pooh ever get stung by the bees he messes with? Why do they put holes in crackers? Can you still say "Put it where the sun don't shine " on a nude beach? What do people in China call their good plates? How come toy hippos are always blue, or purple, when real hippos are brown? Why don't woodpeckers get headaches when they slam their head on a tree all day? If someone owns a piece of land, do they own it all the way to the center of the earth? If an escalotor breaks down, does it become stairs? Why do they call him Donkey Kong if he is not a donkey? Why do they say a football team is the 'world champion' when they don't play anybody outside the US? Do stuttering people stutter when they're thinking to themselves? If you put a chameleon in a room full of mirrors, what color would it turn? What are the handles for corn on the cob called? Why do British people never sound British when they sing? Why do we press the start button to turn off the computer? Do your eyes change color when you die? Were Mary and Joseph's surname Christ before Jesus was born? If a bunch of cats jump on top of each other, is it still called a dog pile? Do sheep get static cling when they rub against one another? In libraries, do they put the bible in the fiction or non-fiction section? How old are you before it can be said you died of old age? If K.F.C Stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Why do they play sweet home Alabama on the comercials? If people with one arm go to get their nails done, do they pay half price? What type of animal is Snuffaluffagus? If you had a three story house and were in the second floor, isn't it possible that you can be upstairs and downstairs at the same time? Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane? If a king is gay and marries another guy what is that guy to the royal family? Why do they call it "getting your dog fixed" if afterwards it doesn't work anymore? Does a 'Marks-A-Lot' marker, mark any more than a regular marker? If you really could dig a hole to China, and you did, and you fell in, would you stop in the middle because of gravity? If the funeral procession is at night, do folks drive with their headlights off? What happens when you put a lightsaber in water? On Gilligan's Island, how did Ginger have so many different outfits when they were only going on a 3 hour tour? If I had my legs amputated, would I have to change my height and weight on my driver's license? If nobody buys a ticket to a movie do they still show it? How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink? Do movie producers still say lights, camera, and action when it is a dark scene? What do you call male ballerinas? How does Freddy Kruger wipe his butt? Why people are so scared of mice,which are much smaller than us, when no one seems to be scared of Micky Mouse, who is bigger than us? Why are the numbers on a calculator and a phone reversed? Why are plastic bears the only animal you can get honey from? Why can't you get honey from a plastic bee? Can bald men get lice? When your photo is taken for your driver's license, why do they tell you to smile? If you are stopped by the police and asked for your license, are you going to be smiling? Do butterflies remember life as a caterpillar? If you undergo chemotherapy do you lose your pubic hairs? Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized? Does the postman deliver his own mail? Why does toilet bowl cleaner only come in the color blue? What happens when you put hand sanitizer on a place other then your hand? Why are women and men's shoe sizes different? Can you "stare off into space" when you're in space? Where do people in Hell tell other people to go? Is "vice-versa" to a dyslexic just plain redundant? How come you can kill a deer and put it up on your wall. but it's illegal to keep one as a pet? Why do we say we're head over heels when we're happy? Isn't that the way we normally are? If prunes are dehydrated plums, where does prune juice come from? Is it appropriate to say "good mourning" at a funeral? If there's an exception to every rule, is there an exception to that rule? When you're caught "between a rock and a hard place", is the rock not hard? Was Jesus a virgin when he died? Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer? Doesn't a lightning rod on top of church show a lack of faith? Who coined the phrase, 'coined the phrase?' If there were a thousand seaguls in an airplane while its flying, each weighing two pounds a piece, but they were all flying in the airplane, would the airplane weigh 2000 pounds more? If you soak a raisin in water, does it turn back into a grape? How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered? Why do they call steam rollers, steam rollers? They don't produce, get rid of, or have anythong to do with steam What is another word for "thesaurus"?
citizenship english question translate to arabic ? any one new anywebsite hit me up ? INS Citizenship Test Questions The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) administers a test to all immigrants applying for citizenship. For years, these questions have been selected from among the following list of 100. How would you do? Many, you will find simple. Others are not so easy. In all cases, the answer USCIS wants to hear is given. (Study Materials and Guides) NOTE: New Test Questions Coming Oct. 1, 2008 On Oct. 1, 2008 The USCIS will switch a new set of test questions. All applicants who file for naturalization on or after October 1, 2008 will be required to take the redesigned test. For those applicants who file prior to October 1, 2008 but are not interviewed until after October , 2008 (but before October 1, 2009), there will be an option of taking the new test or the current one. ________________________________________ Current USCIS Test Questions (Click on the question to see the answer.) 1. What are the colors of our flag? 2. How many stars are there in our flag? 3. What color are the stars on our flag? 4. What do the stars on the flag mean? 5. How many stripes are there in the flag? 6. What color are the stripes? 7. What do the stripes on the flag mean? 8. How many states are there in the Union? 9. What is the 4th of July? 10. What is the date of Independence Day? 11. Independence from whom? 12. What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War? 13. Who was the first President of the United States? 14. Who is the President of the United States today? 15. Who is the vice-president of the United States today? 16. Who elects the President of the United States? 17. Who becomes President of the United States if the President should die? 18. For how long do we elect the President? 19. What is the Constitution? 20. Can the Constitution be changed? 21. What do we call a change to the Constitution? 22. How many changes or amendments are there to the Constitution? 23. How many branches are there in our government? 24. What are the three branches of our government? 25. What is the legislative branch of our government? 26. Who makes the laws in the United States? 27. What is the Congress? 28. What are the duties of Congress? 29. Who elects the Congress? 30. How many senators are there in Congress? 31. Can you name the two senators from your state? 32. For how long do we elect each senator? 33. How many representatives are there in Congress? 34. For how long do we elect the representatives? 35. What is the executive branch of our government? 36. What is the judiciary branch of our government? 37. What are the duties of the Supreme Court? 38. What is the supreme court law of the United States? 39. What is the Bill of Rights? 40. What is the capital of your state? 41. Who is the current governor of your state? 42. Who becomes President of the United States if the President and the vice-president should die? 43. Who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? 44. Can you name thirteen original states? 45. Who said, "Give me liberty or give me death."? 46. Which countries were our enemies during World War II? 47. What are the 49th and 50th states of the Union? 48. How many terms can the President serve? 49. Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.? 50. Who is the head of your local government? 51. According to the Constitution, a person must meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to become President. Name one of these requirements. 52. Why are there 100 Senators in the Senate? 53. Who selects the Supreme Court justice? 54. How many Supreme Court justice are there? 55. Why did the Pilgrims come to America? 56. What is the head executive of a state government called? 57. What is the head executive of a city government called? 58. What holiday was celebrated for the first time by the Americans colonists? 59. Who was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence? 60. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted? 61. What is the basic belief of the Declaration of Independence? 62. What is the national anthem of the United States? 63. Who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner? 64. Where does freedom of speech come from? 65. What is a minimum voting age in the United States? 66. Who signs bills into law? 67. What is the highest court in the United States? 68. Who was the President during the Civil War? 69. What did the Emancipation Declaration do? 70. What special group advises the President? 71. Which President is called the "Father of our country"? 72. What Immigration and Naturalization Service form is used to apply to become a naturalized citizen? 73. Who helped the Pilgrims in America? 74. What is the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America? 75. What are the 13 original states of the U.S. called? 76. Name 3 rights of freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. 77. Who has the power to declare the war? 78. What kind of government does the United States have? 79. Which President freed the slaves? 80. In what year was the Constitution written? 81. What are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution called? 82. Name one purpose of the United Nations? 83. Where does Congress meet? 84. Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? 85. What is the introduction to the Constitution called? 86. Name one benefit of being citizen of the United States. 87. What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens? 88. What is the United States Capitol? 89. What is the White House? 90. Where is the White House located? 91. What is the name of the President's official home? 92. Name the right guaranteed by the first amendment. 93. Who is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military? 94. Which President was the first Commander in Chief of the U.S. military? 95. In what month do we vote for the President? 96. In what month is the new President inaugurated? 97. How many times may a Senator be re-elected? 98. How many times may a Congressman be re-elected? 99. What are the 2 major political parties in the U.S. today? 100. How many states are there in the United States today? ________________________________________ 1. What are the colors of our flag? Red, White, and Blue. 2. How many stars are there in our flag? 50 3. What color are the stars on our flag? White. 4. What do the stars on the flag mean? One for each state in the Union. 5. How many stripes are there in the flag? 13 6. What color are the stripes? Red and White. 7. What do the stripes on the flag mean? They represent the original 13 states. 8. How many states are there in the Union? 50 9. What is the 4th of July? Independence Day. 10. What is the date of Independence Day? July 4th 11. Independence from whom? England 12. What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War? England 13. Who was the first President of the United States? George Washington 14. Who is the President of the United States today? Currently George W. Bush 15. Who is the vice-president of the United States today? Currently Richard B. ("Dick") Cheney 16. Who elects the President of the United States? The electoral college 17. Who becomes President of the United States if the President should die? Vice - President 18. For how long do we elect the President? Four years 19. What is the Constitution? The supreme law of the land 20. Can the Constitution be changed? Yes 21. What do we call a change to the Constitution? An Amendment 22. How many changes or amendments are there to the Constitution? 27 23. How many branches are there in our government? 3 24. What are the three branches of our government? Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary 25. What is the legislative branch of our government? Congress 26. Who makes the laws in the United States? Congress 27. What is the Congress? The Senate and the House of Representatives 28. What are the duties of Congress? To make laws 29. Who elects the Congress? The people 30. How many senators are there in Congress? 100 31. Can you name the two senators from your state? (insert local information) 32. For how long do we elect each senator? 6 years 33. How many representatives are there in Congress? 435 34. For how long do we elect the representatives? 2 years 35. What is the executive branch of our government? The President, vice president, cabinet, and departments under the cabinet members 36. What is the judiciary branch of our government? The Supreme Court 37. What are the duties of the Supreme Court? To interpret laws 38. What is the supreme court law of the United States? The Constitution 39. What is the Bill of Rights? The first 10 amendments of the Constitution 40. What is the capital of your state? (insert local information) 41. Who is the current governor of your state? (insert local information) 42. Who becomes President of the United States if the President and the vice-president should die? Speaker of the House of Representative 43. Who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? William Rehnquist (or whoever is next) 44. Can you name thirteen original states? Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Rhode Island, and Maryland. 45. Who said, "Give me liberty or give me death."? Patrick Henry 46. Which countries were our enemies during World War II? Germany, Italy, and Japan 47. What are the 49th and 50th states of the Union? Hawaii and Alaska 48. How many terms can the President serve? 2 49. Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.? A civil rights leader 50. Who is the head of your local government? (insert local information) 51. According to the Constitution, a person must meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to become President. Name one of these requirements. Must be a natural born citizen of the United States; must be at least 35 years old by the time he/she will serve; must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years. 52. Why are there 100 Senators in the Senate? Two (2) from each state 53. Who selects the Supreme Court justice? Appointed by the President 54. How many Supreme Court justice are there? Nine (9) 55. Why did the Pilgrims come to America? For religious freedom 56. What is the head executive of a state government called? Governor 57. What is the head executive of a city government called? Mayor 58. What holiday was celebrated for the first time by the Americans colonists? Thanksgiving 59. Who was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence? Thomas Jefferson 60. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted? July 4, 1776 61. What is the basic belief of the Declaration of Independence? That all men are created equal 62. What is the national anthem of the United States? The Star-Spangled Banner 63. Who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner? Francis Scott Key 64. Where does freedom of speech come from? The Bill of Rights 65. What is a minimum voting age in the United States? Eighteen (18) 66. Who signs bills into law? The President 67. What is the highest court in the United States? The Supreme Court 68. Who was the President during the Civil War? Abraham Lincoln 69. What did the Emancipation Declaration do? Freed many slaves 70. What special group advises the President? The Cabinet 71. Which President is called the "Father of our country"? George Washington 72. What Immigration and Naturalization Service form is used to apply to become a naturalized citizen? Form N-400, Application to File Petition for Naturalization 73. Who helped the Pilgrims in America? The American-Indians (Native Americans) 74. What is the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America? The Mayflower 75. What are the 13 original states of the U.S. called? Colonies 76. Name 3 rights of freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The right of freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and requesting change of government. The right to bear arms (the right to have weapons or own a gun, though subject to certain regulations). The government may not quarter, or house, soldiers in the people's homes during peacetime without the people's consent. The government may not search or take a person's property without a warrant. A person may not be tried twice for the same crime and does not have to testify against him/herself. A person charged with a crime still has some rights, such as the right to a trial and to have a lawyer. The right to trial by jury in most cases. Protects people against excessive or unreasonable fines or cruel and unusual punishment. The people have rights other than those mentioned in the Constitution. Any power not given to the federal government by the Constitution is a power of either the state or the people. 77. Who has the power to declare the war? The Congress 78. What kind of government does the United States have? Democracy 79. Which President freed the slaves? Abraham Lincoln 80. In what year was the Constitution written? 1787 81. What are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution called? The Bill of Rights 82. Name one purpose of the United Nations? For countries to discuss and try to resolve world problems, to provide economic aid to many countries. 83. Where does Congress meet? In the Capitol in Washington, D.C. 84. Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Everyone (citizens and non-citizens) living in U.S. 85. What is the introduction to the Constitution called? The Preamble 86. Name one benefit of being citizen of the United States. Obtain federal government jobs, travel with U.S. passport, petition for close relatives to come to the U.S. to live. 87. What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens? The right to vote 88. What is the United States Capitol? The place where Congress meets 89. What is the White House? The President's official home 90. Where is the White House located? Washington, D.C. (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.) 91. What is the name of the President's official home? The White House 92. Name the right guaranteed by the first amendment. Freedom of: speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and requesting change of the government. 93. Who is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military? The President 94. Which President was the first Commander in Chief of the U.S. military? George Washington 95. In what month do we vote for the President? November 96. In what month is the new President inaugurated? January 97. How many times may a Senator be re-elected? There is no limit 98. How many times may a Congressman be re-elected? There is no limit 99. What are the 2 major political parties in the U.S. today? Democratic and Republican 100. How many states are there in the United States today? Fifty (50) New Naturalization Test Questions Beginning on Oct. 1, 2008, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will replace the set of questions currently used as part of the citizenship test with the questions listed here. All applicants who file for naturalization on or after October 1, 2008 will be required to take the new test. For those applicants who file prior to October 1, 2008 but are not interviewed until after October , 2008 (but before October 1, 2009), there will be an option of taking the new test or the current one. New Test Questions and Answers Some questions have more than one correct answer. In those cases, all acceptable answers are shown. All answers are shown exactly as worded by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. * If you are 65 years old or older and have been a legal permanent resident of the United States for 20 or more years, you may study just the questions that have been marked with an asterisk. AMERICAN GOVERNMENT A. Principles of American Democracy 1. What is the supreme law of the land? A: The Constitution 2. What does the Constitution do? A: sets up the government A: defines the government A: protects basic rights of Americans 3. The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words? A: We the People 4. What is an amendment? A: a change (to the Constitution) A: an addition (to the Constitution) 5. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? A: The Bill of Rights 6. What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?* A: speech A: religion A: assembly A: press A: petition the government 7. How many amendments does the Constitution have? A: twenty-seven (27) 8. What did the Declaration of Independence do? A: announced our independence (from Great Britain) A: declared our independence (from Great Britain) A: said that the United States is free (from Great Britain) 9. What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence? A: life A: liberty A: pursuit of happiness 10. What is freedom of religion? A: You can practice any religion, or not practice a religion. 11. What is the economic system in the United States?* A: capitalist economy A: market economy 12. What is the "rule of law"? A: Everyone must follow the law. A: Leaders must obey the law. A: Government must obey the law. A: No one is above the law. B. System of Government 13. Name one branch or part of the government.* A: Congress A: legislative A: President A: executive A: the courts A: judicial 14. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful? A: checks and balances A: separation of powers 15. Who is in charge of the executive branch? A: the President 16. Who makes federal laws? A: Congress A: Senate and House (of Representatives) A: (U.S. or national) legislature 17. What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?* A: the Senate and House (of Representatives) 18. How many U.S. Senators are there? A: one hundred (100) 19. We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years? A: six (6) 20. Who is one of your state's U.S. Senators?* A: Answers will vary. [For District of Columbia residents and residents of U.S. territories, the answer is that D.C. (or the territory where the applicant lives) has no U.S. Senators.] * If you are 65 years old or older and have been a legal permanent resident of the United States for 20 or more years, you may study just the questions that have been marked with an asterisk. 21. The House of Representatives has how many voting members? A: four hundred thirty-five (435) 22. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years? A: two (2) 23. Name your U.S. Representative. A: Answers will vary. [Residents of territories with nonvoting Delegates or resident Commissioners may provide the name of that Delegate or Commissioner. Also acceptable is any statement that the territory has no (voting) Representatives in Congress.] 24. Who does a U.S. Senator represent? A: all people of the state 25. Why do some states have more Representatives than other states? A: (because of) the state's population A: (because) they have more people A: (because) some states have more people 26. We elect a President for how many years? A: four (4) 27. In what month do we vote for President?* A: November 28. What is the name of the President of the United States now?* A: George W. Bush A: George Bush A: Bush 29. What is the name of the Vice President of the United States now? A: Richard Cheney A: Dick Cheney A: Cheney 30. If the President can no longer serve, who becomes President? A: the Vice President 31. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President? A: the Speaker of the House 32. Who is the Commander in Chief of the military? A: the President 33. Who signs bills to become laws? A: the President 34. Who vetoes bills? A: the President 35. What does the President's Cabinet do? A: advises the President 36. What are two Cabinet-level positions? A: Secretary of Agriculture A: Secretary of Commerce A: Secretary of Defense A: Secretary of Education A: Secretary of Energy A: Secretary of Health and Human Services A: Secretary of Homeland Security A: Secretary of Housing and Urban Development A: Secretary of Interior A: Secretary of State A: Secretary of Transportation A: Secretary of Treasury A: Secretary of Veterans' Affairs A: Secretary of Labor A: Attorney General 37. does the judicial branch do? A: reviews laws A: explains laws A: resolves disputes (disagreements) A: decides if a law goes against the Constitution 38. What is the highest court in the United States? A: the Supreme Court 39. How many justices are on the Supreme Court? A: nine (9) 40. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States? A: John Roberts (John G. Roberts, Jr.) * If you are 65 years old or older and have been a legal permanent resident of the United States for 20 or more years, you may study just the questions that have been marked with an asterisk. 41. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government? A: to print money A: to declare war A: to create an army A: to make treaties 42. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states? A: provide schooling and education A: provide protection (police) A: provide safety (fire departments) A: give a driver's license A: approve zoning and land use 43. Who is the Governor of your state? A: Answers will vary. [Residents of the District of Columbia and U.S. territories without a Governor should say "we don't have a Governor."] 44. What is the capital of your state?* A: Answers will vary. [District of Columbia residents should answer that D.C. is not a state and does not have a capital. Residents of U.S. territories should name the capital of the territory.] 45. What are the two major political parties in the United States?* A: Democratic and Republican 46. What is the political party of the President now? A: Republican (Party) 47. What is the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives now? A: (Nancy) Pelosi C: Rights and Responsibilities 48. There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them. A: Citizens eighteen (18) and older (can vote). A: You don't have to pay (a poll tax) to vote. A: Any citizen can vote. (Women and men can vote.) A: A male citizen of any race (can vote). 49. What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?* A: serve on a jury A: vote 50. What are two rights only for United States citizens? A: apply for a federal job A: vote A: run for office A: carry a U.S. passport 51. What are two rights of everyone living in the United States? A: freedom of expression A: freedom of speech A: freedom of assembly A: freedom to petition the government A: freedom of worship A: the right to bear arms 52. What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance? A: the United States A: the flag 53. What is one promise you make when you become a United States citizen? A: give up loyalty to other countries A: defend the Constitution and laws of the United States A: obey the laws of the United States A: serve in the U.S. military (if needed) A: serve (do important work for) the nation (if needed) A: be loyal to the United States 54. How old do citizens have to be to vote for President?* A: eighteen (18) and older 55. What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy? A: vote A: join a political party A: help with a campaign A: join a civic group A: join a community group A: give an elected official your opinion on an issue A: call Senators and Representatives A: publicly support or oppose an issue or policy A: run for office A: write to a newspaper 56. When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms?* A: April 15 57. When must all men register for the Selective Service? A: at age eighteen (18) A: between eighteen (18) and twenty-six (26) AMERICAN HISTORY A: Colonial Period and Independence 58. What is one reason colonists came to America? A: freedom A: political liberty A: religious freedom A: economic opportunity A: practice their religion A: escape persecution 59. Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived? A: Native Americans A: American Indians 60. What group of people was taken to America and sold as slaves? A: Africans A: people from Africa * If you are 65 years old or older and have been a legal permanent resident of the United States for 20 or more years, you may study just the questions that have been marked with an asterisk. 61. Why did the colonists fight the British? A: because of high taxes (taxation without representation) A: because the British army stayed in their houses (boarding, quartering) A: because they didn't have self-government 62. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? A: (Thomas) Jefferson 63. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted? A: July 4, 1776 64. There were 13 original states. Name three. A: New Hampshire A: Massachusetts A: Rhode Island A: Connecticut A: New York A: New Jersey A: Pennsylvania A: Delaware A: Maryland A: Virginia A: North Carolina A: South Carolina A: Georgia 65. What happened at the Constitutional Convention? A: The Constitution was written. A: The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. 66. When was the Constitution written? A: 1787 67. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers. A: (James) Madison A: (Alexander) Hamilton A: (John) Jay A: Publius 68. What is one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for? A: U.S. diplomat A: oldest member of the Constitutional Convention A: first Postmaster General of the United States A: writer of "Poor Richard's Almanac" A: started the first free libraries 69. Who is the "Father of Our Country"? A: (George) Washington 70. Who was the first President?* A: (George) Washington B: 1800s 71. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803? A: the Louisiana Territory A: Louisiana 72. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s. A: War of 1812 A: Mexican-American War A: Civil War A: Spanish-American War 73. Name the U.S. war between the North and the South. A: the Civil War A: the War between the States 74. Name one problem that led to the Civil War. A: slavery A: economic reasons A: states' rights 75. What was one important thing that Abraham Lincoln did?* A: freed the slaves (Emancipation Proclamation) A: saved (or preserved) the Union A: led the United States during the Civil War 76. What did the Emancipation Proclamation do? A: freed the slaves A: freed slaves in the Confederacy A: freed slaves in the Confederate states A: freed slaves in most Southern states 77. What did Susan B. Anthony do? A: fought for women's rights A: fought for civil rights C: Recent American History and Other Important Historical Information 78. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1900s.* A: World War I A: World War II A: Korean War A: Vietnam War A: (Persian) Gulf War 79. Who was President during World War I? A: (Woodrow) Wilson 80. Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II? A: (Franklin) Roosevelt * If you are 65 years old or older and have been a legal permanent resident of the United States for 20 or more years, you may study just the questions that have been marked with an asterisk. 81. Who did the United States fight in World War II? A: Japan, Germany and Italy 82. Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in? A: World War II 83. During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States? A: Communism 84. What movement tried to end racial discrimination? A: civil rights (movement) 85. What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?* A: fought for civil rights A: worked for equality for all Americans 86. What major event happened on September 11, 2001 in the United States? A: Terrorists attacked the United States. 87. Name one American Indian tribe in the United States. [Adjudicators will be supplied with a complete list.] A: Cherokee A: Navajo A: Sioux A: Chippewa A: Choctaw A: Pueblo A: Apache A: Iroquois A: Creek A: Blackfeet A: Seminole A: Cheyenne A: Arawak A: Shawnee A: Mohegan A: Huron A: Oneida A: Lakota A: Crow A: Teton A: Hopi A: Inuit INTEGRATED CIVICS A: Geography 88. Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States. A: Missouri (River) A: Mississippi (River) 89. What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States? A: Pacific (Ocean) 90. What ocean is on the East Coast of the United States? A: Atlantic (Ocean) 91. Name one U.S. territory. A: Puerto Rico A: U.S. Virgin Islands A: American Samoa A: Northern Mariana Islands A: Guam 92. Name one state that borders Canada. A: Maine A: New Hampshire A: Vermont A: New York A: Pennsylvania A: Ohio A: Michigan A: Minnesota A: North Dakota A: Montana A: Idaho A: Washington A: Alaska 93. Name one state that borders Mexico. A: California A: Arizona A: New Mexico A: Texas 94. What is the capital of the United States?* A: Washington, D.C. 95. Where is the Statue of Liberty?* A: New York (Harbor) A: Liberty Island [Also acceptable are New Jersey, near New York City, and on the Hudson (River).] B. Symbols 96. Why does the flag have 13 stripes? A: because there were 13 original colonies A: because the stripes represent the original colonies 97. Why does the flag have 50 stars?* A: because there is one star for each state A: because each star represents a state A: because there are 50 states 98. What is the name of the national anthem? A: The Star-Spangled Banner C: Holidays 99. When do we celebrate Independence Day?* A: July 4 100. Name two national U.S. holidays. A: New Year's Day A: Martin Luther King, Jr., Day A: Presidents' Day A: Memorial Day A: Independence Day A: Labor Day A: Columbus Day A: Veterans Day A: Thanksgiving A: Christmas
Need help proofreading? “The Government’s Response to Hurricane Katrina” Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive natural disaster to ever hit America. Over 90,000 square miles of land was destroyed, about the size of the United Kingdom. In Mississippi, the storm obliterated coastal communities and left thousands destitute. New Orleans was overwhelmed by flooding. Along the Gulf Coast, tens of thousands suffered without basic essentials for almost a week. More than 1500 people died and not just from the storm alone. Suffering continued in the days and weeks after the storm passed because of the government’s failure at all levels to plan, prepare for and respond aggressively to the storm. In this paper, will explain how the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina greatly affected the nation and the many factors that show the government’s inability to plan, prepare for, and respond to national catastrophes lead to one of the most talked about event in history. The first factor is the long term warnings that went unheeded. Before Hurricane Katrina, government officials knew for forty years of the potentially devastating threat of a catastrophic hurricane to the Gulf region and the destruction it could cause. Government officials had plenty of time to prepare for a catastrophic hurricane but refused to heed the warnings of past hurricanes to the gulf coast. For example when New Orleans experienced flooding in some areas of remarkably similar proportions from Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and when Hurricane Camille devastated the Gulf Coast in 1969 (NOAA/ National Weather Services). When Hurricane George hit the Gulf in 1998, the state of Louisiana to ask FEMA for assistance with catastrophic hurricane planning but little was accomplished in the six years of planning. With six years of planning, the government should have had time to develop and test a catastrophic hurricane plan. In 2004, numerous experts and governmental officials had been anticipating an increase in violent hurricanes, and New Orleans’ special and growing vulnerability to catastrophic flooding due to changing geological and other conditions. If these facts were known, why weren’t plans made in order to prevent a disaster such as this from happening? It seems as though that officials at every level of government did not appear to grasp the magnitude of the storm’s potential for destruction before it made landfall despite strongly worded advisories from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and personal warnings from NHC Director Max Mayfield. Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and the mayor of New Orleans to discuss the effect Hurricane Katrina might have on their regions. Mayfield even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas (Lush). If Mayfield was so worried about the effects of the storm, why weren’t his advice heeded and the necessary precautions taken to reduce the effects of Hurricane Katrina? The second factor was the terrible decisions in the days before the hurricane hit. Some coastal towns in Mississippi went to extraordinary lengths to get citizens to evacuate, including sending people door-to-door to convince people to move out of harm’s way. While New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin only orders a mandatory evacuation of all residents from the city of New Orleans. Yet instead of asking for assistance to help residents who lacked the means to leave the city, he orders the Superdome to be opened as a shelter of last resort. The Superdome proved to be more like a prison than a shelter. More than 20,000 people were forced to reside inside the Superdome without working plumbing, food, water, and other necessities for nearly two weeks. Yet Ray Nagin decided that this was appropriate shelter for those people instead of evacuating everyone out of the city. Hurricane Katrina’s devastating effects were felt before the storm even reached the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. In the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Katrina battered the offshore energy infrastructure and forced the evacuation of more than 75 percent of the Gulf’s 819 manned oil platforms. Two days before landfall, U.S. energy companies estimated that the approaching storm had already reduced Gulf of Mexico oil production by more than a third. The government knew that if Hurricane Katrina had that much force to evacuate 819 manned oil platforms, that the havoc it would reap on the New Orleans would be devastating. Despite the understanding of the Gulf Coast’s vulnerability to hurricane devastation, officials braced for Katrina with full awareness of critical deficiencies in their plans and enormous holes in their resources. While Katrina’s destructive force could not be denied, state and local officials did not have enough of the resources at their disposal. And even though the Governors of the three affected states requested, and President Bush issued, emergency declarations before the Hurricane hit, none of it actually prepared citizens for what they were about to experience. Another terrible decision was the lack of transportation and supplies. FEMA failed to approach other federal agencies for help with transportation to ensure that the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana had the means to evacuate their citizens. The City of New Orleans was unprepared to help pe