Why Deport a Hero?

.COM December 30, 2007

In the ongoing war against extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military has been hampered by a shortage of Arabic speakers.

So why are authorities trying to deport U.S. Army Sgt. Hicham Benkabbou, a decorated soldier who is fluent in Arabic as well as French and English?

His offense: Not reporting an annulled marriage in his immigration papers. (Morrocan-born, he came to this country in 1998.)

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau has begun removal proceedings against him, and Sgt. Benkabbou faces deportation if he returns to American soil. At press time, he remains on combat duty in Afghanistan.

Read the rest of this weeks Parade Magazine.

And now the comment:

I believe that I am not too different from most Americans in most ways. My ancestors were immigrants too. My Native American first ancestors probably arrived between 13,000 and 40,000 years ago (depends upon which authority you believe). My Scots ancestors arrived in the early 1700s, my English ancestors also arrived in the 1700s and the Danes not until 1868.

My wife is also an immigrant, she and her parents and siblings came here in 1963.

I am not anti-immigrant. I am not anti-Hispanic. I am not anti-Asian.

Having made those qualifications, I would like to state that I am very unhappy that our government has gone for decades failing to enforce our immigration laws. Our country is now Home, literally, to millions of people who have no legal right to be here.

Many of these people have been here for many years. They have children (who often were born here and are US citizens by birthright), they have jobs, they have houses or apartments.

Most, almost all, of the people who have come here without documents, violating our laws, are here seeking a better life for themselves and their families which they expect to earn through working at jobs which pay much more than similar non-technical jobs in India, China, Pakistan, Haiti, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Salvador or Mexico will pay them.

Many if not all of the people coming here from our neighboring countries of Mexico or Central or South America are Native Americans who are discriminated against in their birth countries far beyond the discrimination which they experience here.

Still - there is no escaping the fact that these millions of people have violated our borders and our immigration laws, making of themselves criminals who are subject to apprehension and deportation under the laws of the United States.

Yet... our government, for decades, has pretended that they don't exist. The form I-9 which employers are required to complete for every person hired (which is to prove that the new hire has been checked for the right to work in the USA) are never audited.

So millions who have not complied, in even the smallest way, with our laws are ignored and are allowed to stay, pretty much unmolested, while contributing nothing other than taxes which would have been paid by an American legal resident who held the same job if the undocumented worker were not here.

Contrast this with the case of a man who has filled out the paperwork, paid the fees, and even volunteered to be part of our armed forces fighting our enemies in a serious war in a hostile country. He must have volunteered because we do not have a draft.

Does he get a pass on a technicality on his application to enter the country?

Not no..., but Hell No!

Is there a question which asks if you have had a marriage annulled before you emigrate? You know that there isn't.

There may be a question which asks if you have ever been married. But, an annulment is a dissolution of a marriage which says that you have not been married.

This man is being persecuted for a semantic issue. There are millions of people here who have not even been approved under any system for entry who are simply ignored while a person who has followed the law and become a productive and important member of our population is to be deported over an issue of definition of terms.

Where is the justice in this situation?

If you believe, as I do, that Sgt. Hicham Benkabbou deserves to be allowed to remain in this country as a valued addition to our population then please write to your representative and senators on his behalf.

The man tried to emigrate to the USA legally, and was admitted, that should guarantee him justice and not blind stupidity by the immigration people.

O.K. I'm stepping down from the soapbox now...

The Gnome

City Decides To Save Pesky Beaver Family

Beaver Said To Be Gnawing Down Too Many Trees

POSTED: 5:04 pm PST December 20, 2007

UPDATED: 7:18 pm PST December 23, 2007

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- A local beaver family who is making a mess of trees near the Kern Recreational Bike Path has been saved after a surge of response via email, blog comments, phone calls and more. Link to story...

Bleak Christmas for Zimbabweans

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) 12-24-2007 -- Thousands of Zimbabweans waited for hours to get scarce currency from the banks so they could buy food and board buses on Monday for Christmas trips to their home villages.

A riot police officer monitors people in a bank line on the day before Christmas in Harare, Zimbabwe on Monday.

"We call this the festive season but where is there any joy?" said housewife and mother Mildred Chikutu, who got into a line before dawn to withdraw the maximum allowed in a day, 50 million Zimbabwe dollars -- 25 U.S. dollars at the dominant black market rate -- enough to buy a hamburger.

"You queue for money, and that's only the beginning of the queuing," she said, heading into a nearby supermarket where many shelves were bare of basic goods. A line had formed at the bakery counter.

Inflation-- the world's highest -- was about 8,000 percent officially in September, but independent estimates put it nearer 100,000 percent.

With cash itself in short supply, the central bank has supplied new high denomination notes, the largest worth 750,000 Zimbabwe dollars --
The rest of the story...

A Related story..

And: 'Baas era has come to an end'

Suicide Bomber Kills 50 in Crowded Mosque

A militant blew himself up on Friday in the middle of a Pakistani congregation during prayers to celebrate Eid, killing about 50 people in an apparent attempt on a top politician's life.

REUTERS

Caps of police and other worshippers are scattered on the ground after the suicide bombing.

A suicide bomber killed at least 50 people on Friday in a mosque in the home compound of Pakistan's former interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, in what appeared to be a political attack on the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha. About 100 people were injured.

The bomb, packed with ball bearings and nails, ripped through a crowd of hundreds at a mosque in Sherpao's home compound in a village called Sherpao, not far from Peshawar. The suspected bomber sat in a middle row among the worshippers and set off his bomb as prayers ended and people gathered around Sherpao to greet him, according to Reuters.

Story continues here.

Shadow Government

12-23-2007

Remember back in mid to late September 2001, after the
World Trade Center was brought down there were things
said about Vice President Cheney hiding out in Pahrump,
Nevada and about the "Shadow Government"?

There were allusions to, or illusions of, someone or some
group being responsible other than the group of Saudis
who were, according to the government, the perpetrators.

I have been doing a little ad hoc investigation of the ideas
of some of the people currently reporting on anomalous
events which they claim are occurring around the world
in space and sometimes in near Earth orbit.

I don't have any reason to suppose that any of this stuff is
true beyond the fact that someone is willing to go way out
on a limb and report that it is happening, or has happened.

With that disclaimer, I'll proceed: these reports are what's
going on...

1) It seems that some of the stars above us are not stars at all...
as you shall see. A young man by the name of John Lenard Walson
has discovered a new way to extend the capabilities of small
telescopes and has been able to achieve optical resolutions -
at almost the diffraction limit - not commonly achievable.
With this new-found ability, he has proceeded to videotape,
night and day, many strange and heretofore unseen objects
in earth orbit. The resulting astrophotographic video footage
has revealed a raft of machines, hardware, satellites, spacecraft
and possibly space ships which otherwise appear as 'stars'...
if they appear at all. To read more - with pictures and video.

2)"I read your report concerning the U. S. military space
program and found that it struck a cord from my past.
In the mid 80s I was stationed at Los Angeles Air station,
California, as a medic. This, I was informed, was where
Air Force personnel and private military contractors
designed the Space Shuttle.

Without getting to the many rumors of advanced research
that I heard while stationed there, I can tell you that my
fellow Air Men and I were solicited for duty in a new division
of the Air Force. At the time we were told that it would be called
the "Space Force."

The story continues..here.

3)Terrorism is the practice of the deliberate inflicting (either
directly or indirectly) of harm, injury, death and destruction
upon a civilian target sufficient to cause horror, revulsion or
dispair among civilian populations and their political leaders,
with the goal of causing those populations or political leaders
to act in a way desired by the terrorists.

This definition does not exclude states as perpetrators of
terrorism. The 9/11 attack was a terrorist act perpetrated, not by
non-state agents, but rather by agents of one or more states.
Examination of the evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion
that one of those states was the U.S.A. To learn more click here.

As for items numbers one and two I have no opinion as to the
validity of the reports. I'm definitely in a wait and see mode.

As regards item number three I will go out on my own personal
limb and state for the record that I do not subscribe to any of the
theories based upon supposed pre- setting of explosive charges
in WTC 1 or 2.

Nor do I believe that the government of The United States
destroyed the towers and the people in them. I am not a physicist
nor an architect nor an engineer so I cannot speak from a position
of technical expertise on this subject- I just don't buy it.

Regarding the shadow government:

THE SECRET SHADOW GOVERNMENT
A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
By Richard Boylan Ph.D.
page 1 of 2

The secret "shadow" government is the large organisational network which operates alongside the officially elected and appointed government of the United States of America. Just as with the official government, the secret government has functional branches.

Just as with the official government, the Shadow

Government has functional branches. However,

unlike the official government,the purpose of the

non-executive branches of the Shadow Government

is simply to distribute various functions, but not to

achieve a system of checks and balances, as was

supposed to happen constitutionally between the

executive, legislative and judicial branches of the

U.S. Government. That is because the Shadow

Government is a creature of a powerful elite,

who need not fear being dominated

by an instrument of their own creation.

Read the rest...

Sleep well...

We need to show more sympathy for these people.

They travel miles in extreme heat...

They risk their lives crossing a border.

They get paid very low wages.

They do jobs that most Americans won't do or are
afraid to do.

They live in crowded conditions among a hostile
people who speak a different language.

They rarely get to see their families.

They face adversity all day every day.

I'm not talking about "undocumented" Mexican
workers or others illegally working in our country.

I'm talking about our troops.

Doesn't it seem strange that Congress is willing to
lavish all kinds of social benefits on illegals,
but won't support our troops and is now
threatening to de-fund them?

Spy planes to recharge by clinging to power lines

• 11:08 18 December 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• Paul Marks

The next time you see something flapping in the breeze on an overhead power line, squint a little harder. It may not be a plastic bag or the remnants of a party balloon, but a tiny spy plane stealing power from the line to recharge its batteries.

The idea comes from the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio, US, which wants to operate extended surveillance missions using remote-controlled planes with a wingspan of about a metre, but has been struggling to find a way to refuel to extend the plane's limited flight duration. Read more...

The Electric Sun/Earth Connection Confirmed

12/17/2007
By Michael Goodspeed

The day of this writing, December 13, 2007, is the 140th anniversary of the birth of the Norwegian-born physicist Kristian Birkeland. It was Birkeland who correctly hypothesized in the early 20th century that electric currents from the Sun power the earth's auroras. For many decades, the scientific mainstream largely rejected Birkeland’s thesis, favoring instead the idea that Earth's magnetosphere is an impenetrable envelope, "squeezed" by the solar wind to induce auroral activity. Only when satellites detected the magnetic signatures of electric currents in the aurora in 1973 was Birkeland's hypothesis irrefutably validated -- Read the article

Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster

Smaller asteroids may pose greater danger than previously believed.
December 17, 2007

“The asteroid that caused the extensive damage was much smaller than we had thought,”
says Sandia investigator Mark Boslough of the impact that occurred June 30, 1908.

“That such a small object can do this kind of destruction suggests that smaller asteroids
are something to consider. Their smaller size indicates such collisions are not as improbable as we had believed.”
Read the story.

IED's explode near Olympia home!!!

03:29 PM PST on Tuesday, December 18, 2007

KING5.com Staff

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Several homemade explosive devices exploded outside a residence Tuesday morning, prompting a call to the bomb squad.

Olympia Police say sometime Tuesday morning, somebody placed several chemically-activated improvised explosive devices around the home in the 3100 block of Longinaker Drive SE.

Several of the devices exploded, leaving debris but no damage.

A Washington State Patrol Bomb squad responded and cleared out the scene.

Surrender as an option

Alongside the Bin Laden crowd,
he seems almost tame... Although he caused
millions to die.

You have to wonder why so many of the news-people in the United States seem to have the opinion that the U.S. is always the bad guy in any international action.


They seem to blame the U.S. government for the September 11, 2001 attack (some even apparently believe that our government executed the destruction of WTC and the pentagon) as though had we been more sensitive to the concerns of Bin Laden et al we could have talked them out of attacking.

There was a time in U.S. history when the attitude was expressed thusly:
"Millions for defense but not one red cent for tribute." Conversely there was, more recently, a time when many of our people believed: "Better Red than dead."

The terrifying Soviet Empire that engendered the latter reaction went down under its own weight 17 years ago so our imminent surrender was rendered unnecessary, much to the chagrin of some of our more left-leaning compatriots.

Now, at the end of 2007, we have a new threat to which they want to surrender: but this time the adversary is not simply another economic model which doesn't allow private citizens to go into business for themselves.

This adversary, instead, wants to control your very thoughts and tell you how you can dress, wants to dictate to you what religion you can follow and wants to suspend all the rights which you have under the U.S. Constitution and replace them with obligations imposed upon you by a religion, unchanged since 622 AD, which will replace the body of law which we have now.

Our media people act as if they believe that we should surrender to this adversary and thereby prove what nice unprejudiced co-operative folks we are.

The adversary we now face is a corps of people of vision who seek to remake the world, by whatever means necessary, into their own dark and merciless version of an Islamic Caliphate.

They interpret the law in a narrow and harsh way and believe that the only way to deal with those who fail to follow their interpretation is death. They like beheading as a way to make an example of the "transgressor".

ONE BIG SHIP

USS REAGAN PASSING THE ARIZONA MEMORIAL, BEAUTIFUL!

Seeing it next to the Arizona Memorial really puts its size into perspective....
IT IS ENORMOUS

THE USS RONALD REAGAN CVN 76
When the Bridge pipes "Man the Rail" there is a lot of rail to man on this beauty, shoulder to shoulder, around 4.5 acres. Her displacement is about 100,000 tons with full complement.

Capability:
Top speed exceeds 30 knots, powered by two nuclear
reactors that can operate for more than 20 years without refueling

1. Expected to operate in the fleet for about 50 years
2. Carries over 80 combat aircraft
3. Three arresting cables can stop a 28-ton aircraft going 150 miles per hour in about 400 feet

Size:
Towers 20 stories above the waterline

1. 1092 feet long; about as long as the Stratosphere Tower is tall
2. Flight deck covers 4.5 acres
3. 4 bronze propellers, each 21 feet across, weighing 66,200 pounds
4. 2 rudders, each 29 by 22 feet and weighing 50 tons
5. 4 high speed aircraft elevators, each over 4,000 square feet

Capacity:
Home to about 6,000 Navy personnel

1. Carries enough food and supplies to operate for 90 days
2. 18,150 meals served daily
3. Distillation plants make 400,000 gallons of fresh water from sea water daily,
enough for 2000 homes
4. Nearly 30,000 light fixtures and 1,325 miles of cable and wiring, 1,400 telephones
5. 14,000 pillowcases and 28,000 sheets

This magnificent ship allows the U.S. Navy to project airpower to almost anyplace on
Earth. There are those who do not feel that for the U.S. to have such a capability is a
good thing. Unfortunately some people with that attitude live in the United States...

Is history repeating itself???

General Vo Nguyen Giap was a brilliant, highly respected leader of the North Vietnam military. The following quote is from his memoirs currently found in the Vietnam war memorial in Hanoi:

"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender!

It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it.

But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!"

General Giap has published his memoirs and
confirmed what many Americans knew:
The Vietnam war was not lost in Vietnam --
it was lost at home.

The exact same scenario, sponsored by the US media, is currently well
underway. It exposes the enormous power of a biased media to cut out the heart and will of the American public.

A truism worthy of note: Do not fear the enemy,
for they can take only your life. Fear the
media far more, for they will destroy your honour.

I will always remember the role of Walter Cronkite,
Hanoi Jane Fonda, John Kerrey, & George
McGovern, as well as the anti-war activists at the
1968 Dem convention in Chicago.

Forty years later in 2008 will we witness the same thing?