Entries Tagged 'crime' ↓
August 6th, 2010 — 1389, Blogmocracy, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, U.S. law, crime, immigration, media issues
Originally published at 2.0: The Blogmocracy.
Fair and balanced? Really?
Anybody who has been following my blog posts and comments, either on 1389 Blog, on 2.0: The Blogmocracy, or anywhere else, is probably aware of my dislike for the Fox News “fair and balanced” slogan. There is no middle ground between good and evil. There is no compromise between truth and falsehood. I am uninterested in “fair and balanced” reporting. As I’ve mentioned before, the devil already has plenty enough spokesmen, and spokeswomen too. What I want instead is the whole truth and nothing but. That is what I endeavor to provide in all of my blog posts and comments.
And yes, I have previously voiced my own complaints about Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. Just for starters, a significant percentage of those who are arrested in any jurisdiction are actually innocent. The U.S. Constitution states that anyone accused of a crime is to be considered innocent until proven guilty. It is bad enough to be wrongfully arrested – and yes, that inevitably happens some of the time in every jurisdiction – without also being subjected to rough and physically uncomfortable treatment. Those who are past middle age and/or already suffering from various physical infirmities have reason to fear permanent bodily harm or death if detained in a hot desert “tent city” facility.
Evidently, only sentenced inmates are being held in the tent city; pre-trial detainees are held in the regular jail.
From their website:
The Tents Jail was begun in 1993 when Sheriff Joe Arpaio was able to obtain some surplus military tents. These tents were set up in an area adjacent to one of the existing Maricopa County Jails in Phoenix, Arizona. Sheriff Arpaio had previously decided that he would not release any inmates due to jail overcrowding, and housing sentenced inmates in the tents seemed a good solution.
Despite my prior misgivings, there is something important that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is doing right.
Immigration enforcement and Obozo’s stealth amnesty program
With the recent federal lawsuit against the State of Arizona for empowering their local and state law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law, it has become painfully clear that the Obama administration wants an unrestricted flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. The main reason for this is that the Obama regime sees them as an easily controlled and intimidated future voting bloc who will reliably support the leftist Democrat agenda. Naturally, the ICE employees who are charged with enforcing US immigration laws are disgusted with this.
Border agents vote ‘no confidence’ in ICE leadership (h/t doriangrey)
In an unprecedented move within Homeland Security special agents recently gave ICE leadership a “non confidence” vote.
The Center For Immigration Studies reported:
In an unprecedented move within the Department of Homeland Security, the special agents responsible for enforcing our nation’s immigration laws issued an exhaustive, scathing letter simply titled “VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN ICE DIRECTOR JOHN MORTON AND ODPP ASSISTANT DIRECTOR PHYLLIS COVEN” on June 11, 2010. The letter, acquired through sources, provides a litany of examples of how ICE’s mission is being skewed towards supporting an unflinching goal of amnesty by refusing to allow agents to do their job; allowing criminal aliens to roam free; depleting resources for key enforcement initiatives that preceded this administration; and misrepresenting facts and programs, demeaning the extent of the criminal alien problem and geared to support amnesty.
Read the rest.
What is Sheriff Joe Arpaio doing right?
Arpaio Responsible For 25% Of All U.S. Deportees Since 2007
Without the benefit of their state’s strict new immigration law, officers from a single Arizona county helped deport more than 26,000 immigrants from the U.S. through a federal-local partnership program that has been roundly criticized as fraught with problems.
Statistics obtained by The Associated Press show that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was responsible for deportations or forced departure of 26,146 immigrants since 2007.
That’s about a quarter of the national total of 115,841 sent out of the U.S. by officers in 64 law enforcement agencies deputized to help enforce immigration laws, some since 2006, under the so-called 287(g) program.
The tens of thousands of immigrant arrests show local officials already have a significant amount of authority to enforce immigration laws and help remove illegal immigrants from the country.
But with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio the top law officer among all those deputized, questions remain about what’s in store when Arizona gives more officers the power to enforce immigration laws. The federal government already is under fire for doing a poor job of keeping watch on local officers enforcing immigration laws and ensuring safeguards for protecting civil rights are in place.
…
Joanne Lin, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said it is alarming that one Arizona county is responsible for a disproportionate share of deportations.
The Los Angeles County’s Sheriff’s Office, a distant second to Maricopa, helped find 13,784 immigrants who were later deported or left the country. The Sheriff’s Office’s agreement with the federal government allows it to check its jails for deportable immigrants, but not to enforce immigration laws during street patrols. A renewal of the agreement is under negotiation.
An estimated 10.8 million people, about 26 percent of the state’s population, are living illegally in California, compared with 460,000, about 12 percent, in Arizona.
“These statistics bear out that you have rogue sheriffs in certain counties that are bent on targeting immigrants,” Lin said.
Read the rest.
No, Ms. Lin, what’s alarming is that other sheriffs in other counties are FAILING to do their jobs in targeting those immigrants (some legal, but most not) who have brought about a major crime wave involving not only smuggling of human beings and other contraband, but also gang warfare, widespread property damage, rape, and just about everything else in the criminal code.
Here’s another Arizona sheriff with the right idea
Arizona Sheriff: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’
(CNSNews.com) – Pinal County (Ariz.) Sheriff Paul Babeu is hopping mad at the federal government.
Babeu told CNSNews.com that rather than help law enforcement in Arizona stop the hundreds of thousands of people who come into the United States illegally, the federal government is targeting the state and its law enforcement personnel.
“What’s very troubling is the fact that at a time when we in law enforcement and our state need help from the federal government, instead of sending help they put up billboard-size signs warning our citizens to stay out of the desert in my county because of dangerous drug and human smuggling and weapons and bandits and all these other things and then, behind that, they drag us into court with the ACLU,” Babeu said.
The sheriff was referring to the law suits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Department of Justice challenging the state’s new immigration law.
“So who has partnered with the ACLU?” Babeu said in a telephone interview with CNSNews.com. “It’s the president and (Attorney General) Eric Holder himself. And that’s simply outrageous.”
Read the rest.
June 30th, 2010 — 1389, Balkans, Blogmocracy, Darko Trifunovic, Europe, Jihad Watch, Kosovo, Serbia, al Qaeda, counterjihad, crime, leftist-jihadist convergence, mainstream media, the Clintons
Originally published at 2.0: The Blogmocracy as Ignoring the Cesspool in Bosnia and Kosovo At Our Peril
By 1389AD
Under the radar
While we are all worrying about Kagan confirmation hearings, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the near-worldwide economic collapse, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats, and the Gulf oil leak, the cesspool of jihadism in the Balkans goes nearly unnoticed. It stays off the radar screen, not only in the socialist mainstream media, but also in outlets such as Fox News and most of the conservative blogosphere. And when it is mentioned, likelier than not, Serbs are blamed for violence committed by their jihadi enemies.
Why is this important?
It’s important because, for over a decade, the US and its NATO allies have devoted tremendous effort to helping the Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims to set up jihadi strongholds in the Balkans. The Balkans jihadis are quite simply the local branches of al Qaeda in Europe. At the same time, we claim to be fighting al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If you try to fight on both sides of the same war, only one things is certain: you will surely lose. And so we will. This foreign policy is not merely evil, it is completely insane. But don’t expect the media to tell you this, considering that the media played such a key role in getting the US into this untenable position to begin with. Were the mainstream media, or for that matter, anybody in the US or NATO military or governments, to admit the truth about what has been going on in the Balkans, widespread shock and disbelief would ensue. It’s anybody’s guess what would happen next.
The Muslim-controlled parts of the Balkans form a stronghold from which jihadis can easily smuggle drugs, weapons, money, propaganda, and people into the rest of Europe, and from there to the US and just about anywhere else.
See for yourself:
- Five Employees of Islamic Charity Arrested in Kosovo on Terrorism Charges
Kosovo police arrested five members of an Islamic humanitarian organization suspected of “criminal activities.”
The five suspects were associated with a humanitarian organisation called Iskrenost (Sincerity).
The arrests took place late on Friday in the southwest city of Prizren in an operation in which 120 police officers were deployed. Berisa said police confiscated a large quantity of weapons during the operation, including automatic rifles, pistols, ammunition and uniforms.
Since the Bosnian war, Jihadists have often operated under the guise of humanitarian organizations from Islamic countries and several such charities have been banned in Bosnia. …
- Bosnia: Jihadists bomb police station; analysts state the obvious and warn of more to come
As is so often the case with the Balkans, analysts are quick to attribute the problem of jihadist activity to the influence of “Wahhabism,” though without accounting for why the Wahhabists’ teachings resonate so readily with what we were told were peaceful, secularized, tolerant Muslims. To suppose otherwise, of course, raises the specter of there being something about Islam, even among our modern, moderate “friends and allies” that is not of the Wahhabists’ invention, but nonetheless generates acts like the one described below.
- Albanian’s January Killing Spree in Finland Originally Reported in England as done by “Kosovo Serb”
… However, I am going to post about the January killing spree in Finland, because I remembered that the source who sent it to me wrote the following: “I noticed one of the British channels first announced that the killer was a ‘SERB KOSOVAN’ when the news just started to unfold.” …
- British News: the “Serb Kosovans” Ibrahim and Islam Shkupolli
… In a post last week about an Albanian mass killer at a Finnish shopping mall, I mentioned that a British news channel (whose identity I’m trying to ascertain) referred to the perpetrator as a “Serb Kosovan.” Thanks to my source on this, “Serbstvo,” we have the actual video of the reporter saying this. Not the anchorwoman, but the male reporter in the field (whose name I could only discern as Roger Thomas) made the “mistake” even though the shooter’s name is clearly Ibrahim Shkupolli. Thomas isn’t even tipped off by the very next frame of his package after his mis-identification, which goes to a Shkupolli cousin in Kosovo, whose first name is “Islam.” …
- Bosnians Always Impugn Themselves
In February there was a major police action in the notorious radical stronghold of Gornja Maoca. Located at the juncture of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, and near a major roadway, this town briefly became a focus for investigators immediately after 9/11, and has come up repeatedly as a problem since. (Including as the nexus of the planned rocket attack on world leaders at Pope John Paul II’s 2005 funeral, which naturally went virtually unreported.) Here is what happened in February:
Bosnia: Police raids target radical Islamist stronghold …
- U.S. Tries to Restore Serbian Sovereignty ofer U.S.-supported “Independent” Kosovo
Did anyone else catch this gem last week from North Carolina’s WRAL news site:
Report: Judge denies extradition of Triangle terror suspect
Raleigh, N.C. — A European judge has ruled that a man arrested in Kosovo last week will not be extradited to the U.S. to face charges that he aided a suspected terrorism ring in the Triangle.
Bajram Asllani, 29, an ethnic Albanian and native of Mitrovic[a], Kosovo, was convicted of terrorism in Serbia and was under surveillance in his home country when he was arrested Thursday following an extradition request from the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He faces charges of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons.
Judge Agnieszka Kolowiecka-Milar of the European Union Rule of Law Mission denied the extradition request, ruling that Kosovo doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S., according to Bulgaria-based FAN TV. Prosecutors were relying on a 2001 agreement between the U.S. and Serbia, but Kosovo has since declared its independence and isn’t bound by that agreement, the judge ruled.
…
June 25th, 2010 — 1389, Balkans, Chicago, China, George Soros, Kosovo, Nazism, Saudi Arabia, September 11, 2001, Serbia, agent provocateur, al Qaeda, blogging, communism, conservative, corruption, counterjihad, crime, flame war, forums, hate, history, military, politics, secession, terrorism, the Clintons, treason, tyranny
By 1389
It’s time to stir the pot some more
My last post on the brouhaha at Grouchy Conservative Pundits (GCP) was harshly worded indeed, but nonetheless it was not harshly worded enough. I haven’t rattled enough cages yet. Until I start getting some hate mail, enraged comments in all kinds of languages, and maybe even some juicy death threats, I never know if I’m getting my message out, rather than just preaching to the choir.
Lots of people talk about respect…
Talk is cheap. If you’re going to play that game with me, you’ll have to ante up. I believe in giving respect ONLY where respect is due. People who want my respect have to earn it, and they cannot earn it by spewing flagrant and undeserved disrespect toward me and others, as did “Mike C.” and “Rayra” on GCP.
Intellect alone is not deserving of respect; it depends on what people do with it. I have known many people far more intelligent than those two, and who behave far better.
Current or former military service (assuming these people are who they say they are, and I have my doubts) in and of itself is not enough to earn my respect either; there are just as many despicable people among the military and former military as there are everywhere else. I had a recent ex-boss of that description; he was, and is, a crook who treated me like dirt and then got rid of me by transferring me to another position where I would not be paid as much as my contract specified, simply because I didn’t play along with his chicanery in manipulating department budgets. That ex-boss was one more example of the fact that the most consistently untrustworthy people out there are the ones who always talk the loudest about “having someone else’s back.” Yeah, right…with a knife between the ribs.
As far as military personnel are concerned, don’t even get me started on those US military who willingly took part in the bombing of the Serbs during the Kosovo War, or who failed (and still fail) to protect the lives, property, and freedom of the Serbs in occupied Kosovo. Every officer involved should have resigned their commissions. Those who failed to resign have genocide on their consciences, though I doubt that any of them will ever admit it.
Is he or isn’t he? Only his gardener knows for sure
As I said, I cannot determine for sure whether or not “Rayra” is a plant. It’s just as likely that “Rayra” is merely a deeply angry, confused, frightened, and mentally and emotionally unstable individual who is too impulsive to think anything through, can never admit being wrong about anything, sees no reason to learn to control his temper, has no respect for women or anybody he considers to be weaker than himself, has no interest in where anybody else is coming from, and lashes out blindly at anybody or anything that he sees as a threat to his ego or to his self-centered world view. Or he could simply be an outright psychopath; I’ve had the misfortune to be acquainted with a few of those too.
For obvious reasons, I would never WANT somebody like “Rayra” even to claim to be on my side. He is more a danger to his friends, such as they are, than to his enemies.
But whether “Rayra” is actually a plant isn’t the most important concern here. The point is that, whether “Rayra” intends it or not, his intemperate and misguided remarks further the interests of expanding the corrupt and tyrannical use of federal government power.
Why do so many people hate Russia?
As I mentioned in my earlier post, a truly irrational hatred of Russia is rife on GCP, and anybody who says a word in favor of Russia becomes a target. I have reason to believe that Russia is not only far less of a “despotism” than the US, but also it runs the country in the interest of its own citizens, its economy is growing instead of collapsing, it respects Christianity, and its leaders are loyal to their own country. Russia is nothing like its portrayal in the mainstream media.
We are acquainted with an American expat who has lived near Moscow for many years, and we get some information about what is going on in Russia from the inside. Also, one of our friends is an amateur astronomer who travels all over the world whenever there is an eclipse. He’s a rock-solid conservative Republican and has been so for many decades. He went to Russia the last time there was an eclipse there, and he liked it so much that he seriously considered blowing off the eclipse-viewing to spend more time traveling in Russia and meeting Russians.
No, I don’t agree with everything that the Russian government does, just as I will never agree with everything that any government does. We live in a fallen world and all governments are fallible. But I can well understand why, at this stage, Russia is a rival of the US and not an ally. Yes, Russia COULD have been an ally, but Americans blew the opportunity through our own selfishness and ambition. The carpetbaggers that came over to Russia from Harvard and the liberal think-tanks after the Berlin Wall came down inflicted incredible damage; they are the ones to blame for letting the oligarchs and gangsters take hold for as long as they did. Since that time, Putin and Medvedev have made considerable inroads against the oligarchs and gangsters. They’ve also instituted a flat tax that is not excessively high, they collect it even-handedly, and unlike the US, they don’t double-tax Russian citizens earning money overseas. If they’ve had to play rough against the Chechen jihadis and the media whores and NGOs that support the jihadis, then good for them.
I understand that many people continue to harbor suspicion and hatred against Russia as a result of the heritage of the Cold War. I myself was as ardent a supporter of the US during the Cold War as anybody could be. However, in the present day, such hatred against Russia is counterproductive and it sinks to the level of irrational bigotry. I haven’t observed the same degree of opprobrium leveled at China, our other Cold War enemy, even though China is much less free than Russia, China is not primarily a Christian country, China is more of a rival to us than Russia is, and the remnants of communism persist much more strongly there.
Pot, meet kettle
I would no more condemn Putin for having been in the KGB in the distant past, than I would condemn George H. W. Bush for having headed the CIA, which has done little to protect us, and much to get us into needless trouble. At least Putin is a Christian who has repented of whatever wrongdoing he has committed in that regard. Can you imagine an American president ever repenting of anything? I sure can’t. I doubt that we’ve had a real Christian president since Ronald Reagan, despite numerous photo-ops intended to prove the contrary.
Anybody can see that we have an even bigger mess in the US. What inroads has our federal government made against the Latin-American drug gangs, the SEIU, George Soros and his circle of oligarchs, the traitors at the New York Times and CNN, the traitors in the State Department, the commies in our universities, the crooks who run Detroit and Chicago, and last but not least, the jihadis that infest every corner of the US?
Shooting the messenger
Of course, it sent many people on GCP into fits of outrage to hear me say that Russia, despite its current rivalry with the US, has been cleaning up its internal messes, while the US has been sinking into an abyss. Their response was to shoot the messenger.
And why do so many people hate the Serbs?
There is plenty of evidence that they hate the Serbs over at GCP. This is ironic, considering that GCP was founded by people banned from Little Green Footballs, and considering that I was banned from Little Green Footballs for supporting the Serbs. Their antipathy toward the Serbs also serves to explain some of their hatred toward Russia, simply because the Russians have made some efforts to help the Serbs.
The US government, along with NATO and the EU, is still doing everything it can to destroy the economy and livelihood and what little remains of the sovereignty and culture of the Serbs, in order to help the jihadis to create a stronghold in the Balkans. And that includes the US military. I don’t even want to think about how many people on GCP might have been personally involved in one way or another. That’s between them and their Maker.
This foreign policy is not merely stupid, it sinks to the level of treason. The whole purpose of throwing the Serbs under the bus is to curry favor with the Saudis and other Muslim oil-producing nations. A lot of good that has done us! We would have done better just to colonize them and take over and de-Islamize the Middle East just as we once de-Nazified western Europe. As anybody could have predicted, like every other bunch of totalitarians, the jihadis are inherently evil and they will always bite the hands that feed them, which is what led to 9-11.
Does that statement surprise you? In case you don’t know, Osama bin Laden travels on a Bosnian Muslim passport granted to him by the late Alija Izetbegovic, who was literally a Nazi. It is not appropriate to invoke Godwin’s Law here, because we’re talking about an actual Nazi of the Third Reich. Notice that I do not call Izetbegovic an ex-Nazi, in that he was a lifelong unrepentant Nazi who recruited for Hitler as a young man. And the US government sided with Izetbegovic in the Bosnian War.
This collaboration with the jihadis in the Balkans has been going on ever since Reagan left office. I have grave doubts about the moral worth of the American people for consistently electing governments that support our enemies in this way. How am I supposed to be loyal to a government that is collaborating with our enemies? If I had been in Norway during the Second World War, should I have been loyal to Vidkun Quisling?
I harbor a faint hope that enough people in some state, somewhere in the US, will see the light in time to secede from a Quisling federal government that is deliberately laying us open to our enemies, so that at least some part of the US will be salvaged. If the turnaround doesn’t happen very soon, long before the 2012 election, it will be too late, and the America that we thought we knew will exist in name only.
Some will insist on remaining under the US federal government no matter what, so that their livelihood (and maybe their lives) will be bled away to support a socialist/jihadi federal tyranny that has chosen to represent not “American exceptionalism” or the “city on a hill” but the worst of all possible worlds. That’s their choice, but let them not claim their willful blindness as moral superiority.
January 9th, 2009 — FAIL, IT profession, India, U.S. law, corruption, crime, economic collapse, government regulation, graphic arts, humor, outsourcing, tech industry
Click thumbnail to view original, then click again to view full size. The text is worth a closer look.
What a tragic irony!
In case you haven’t heard, Satyam was the fourth-largest IT outsourcing company in India, with 55,000 employees (or so they claimed). The CEO, Ramalinga Raju, recently resigned after admitting massive financial fraud. As of this writing, the company is almost out of cash.
Here we go again…
Satyam has done business with companies and governments in over 60 countries, including the U.S. This scandal appears to be even larger in scope than the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal of late 2001. Price Waterhouse, the Indian subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers, is facing close scrutiny over having signed off on Satyam’s audits.
Obviously, the much-touted Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after the Enron/Arthur Andersen debacle did nothing to prevent the recent collapse of the U.S. real estate, stock market, and financial sector. The take-home lesson is that once any corporation becomes multinational in scope, and politically well-connected, no laws, no regulations, no bureaucratic restructuring can possibly keep it honest if its management chooses to do otherwise.
Another reason why outsourcing is wrong
Outsourcing and offshoring are always and everywhere the enemies of accountability. The further away one’s trading partners are located, the harder it is to comprehend what they are up to, and that will never change.
Why corporate cheating is contagious
Whenever one major company in an industry has been “cooking the books” to promote or exaggerate its own success, what effect do you suppose that has? Think about it! Every other executive, every other company in that industry will be pressured to match or exceed the cheater’s inflated results, by fair means or foul, or face the wrath of board members and stockholders.
Some news links and other sources:
Perhaps some of this would be funny if it were not so sad.
Note: The screen capture was taken by 1389AD from www.satyam.com, shortly after the announcement. The pixelated area was blurred in the original.
February 23rd, 2008 — 2008 US Elections, Balkans, Bush family, Doctor Bulldog and Ronin, Europe, Gates of Vienna, Islam, Israel, Jihad Watch, Kosovo, Orthodox Christianity, Russia, Serbia, corruption, counterjihad, crime, terrorism, the Clintons
Today’s Links:
Atlas Shrugs:
BalkanInsight.com:
Brisbane Times:
Byzantine Sacred Art Blog:
DhimmiWatch:
Diario de América / America’s Daily:
Doctor Bulldog & Ronin:
EarthTimes:
- Gates of Vienna:
- Gray Falcon:
- Herald Sun (Australia):
- Independent (Ireland):
- Independent (UK):
- Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy:
- Jerusalem Post:
- PipelineNews.org:
Republican Riot:
SerbBlog:
The Brussels Journal:
Winds Of Jihad:
World Net Daily:
Yahoo! News:
Yale Daily News:
Our Category Links:
- 1389 Blog Category Links:
1389 Message Blog Category Links:
February 4th, 2008 — Balkans, Bush family, Europe, Kosovo, Russia, Serbia, U.S. State Department, corruption, crime, election fraud, tyranny
(Updated information below.)
So who COUNTED the votes in Serbia?
We may never know for sure.
Let’s begin by looking at how much effort the US and the EU have put into manipulating the outcome of the recent election in Serbia:
Let me start by saying that I don’t care one whit who wins Serbia’s election for president. I am an American and the US is my country, not Serbia. As far as I am concerned, Serbian citizens have as much right to elect “a savior” or “an idiot” as we Americans do (and will do in the near future), and no other country (or countries) calling themselves “progressive democracies” have any right whatever to interfere in their election process.
However, this is NOT what is happening with Serbia. Western leaders, impatient with the Serbian election process, are acting like a bunch of bullies by trying to force Serbia’s citizens into electing the West’s “chosen one” candidate, Boris Tadic, and unfortunately, the Western media (both print and internet) are cooperating in this extortion.
Last week, in the Brussels Journal , the EU went after Eurovision song winner Marija Serifovic for singing & speaking at a rally for Tadic’s rival, Nikolic:
“the singer now appears to support Tomislav Nikolic, the eurosceptic nationalist candidate of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), who won the first round of the Serbian presidential elections last Sunday (20 January). Ms Serifovic participated in rallies organised by Mr Nikolic, including one in December in the Serbian town of Kragujevac and one on 15 January in Belgrade, singing her winning song, “Molitva” (Prayer).”[SerbBlog note: Marija Serifovic is also an ethnic Roma, AKA "Gypsy", so the title "nationalist" gets put in the proper context here. The EU wants to punish Serifovic for simply supporting a candidate who is not "pro-EU".]
Then consider the following statements & news stories in recent days on Serbia’s hot-button issue “Kosovo”:
“Senior western diplomats say the precise timing now (on Kosovo’s independence declaration) depends on whether the next Serbian president is Boris Tadic, the pro-western liberal incumbent, or Tomislav Nikolic, a pro-Russian nationalist…..If Nikolic, the conservative, gets elected, then no one in Europe will see any benefit in waiting any longer with the independence declaration….If Mr Tadic returns to power, however, diplomats say EU states would see merit in delaying Kosovo’s independence by a few weeks, seeking to flesh out an agreement on closer EU-Serbian relations”
“Kosovo will declare independence from Serbia with Western backing the weekend after the February 3 Serbian presidential election if the nationalist candidate (Nikolic) wins, political sources said on Wednesday. “If (Tomislav) Nikolic wins, it’s the 9th or 10th,” one of the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity….If pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic wins the closely-fought race, Kosovo Albanians would be expected to wait until the following weekend, and possibly until after a meeting of European Union foreign ministers on February 18, the source said. The West is “pushing for February,” the source added. The United States and major EU powers are trying to “coordinate” a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority province after almost two years of negotiations with Serbia ended in failure in December.”
I like that last line in the Reuters story — “after almost two years of negotiations with Serbia failed”. To anyone who has been following this story for the last “two years”, there were absolutely NO “negotiations” between Serbia and the Albanians on Kosovo. Both Condoleeza Rice and President Bush had already released statements months before these “negotiations” began, saying “Kosovo will become independent”, and they simply continued that same drumbeat through out the sham meetings between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians . What that created was a sad display with Serbia on one side of the table, turning itself inside out to give the Albanians anything they wanted short of handing over their sovereign Serbian territory, and the Kosovo Albanians on the other side of the table, (with their US and EU backing) basically “buffing their nails” until the so-called “negotiations” were over, because the Albanians knew that the West had already committed to legitimize the theft of Kosovo. So why bother to even call it negotiations when the US & EU had already decided the outcome, beforehand? So that the uninformed, stupid or the corrupt, could believe and promote our US & EU governments’ lies when they say , “We tried, it failed, and then we had to do something”.
Now if the sham negotiations weren’t bad enough, the West isn’t even bothering to hide their extortion tactics anymore in the Serbian presidential elections. The message to Serbia’s citizens is clear, “Elect Nikolic and we will amputate Kosovo with a meat-ax soon, you will get no anesthetic and we will let the Albanians kill as many Kosovo Serbs as they want (and then blame it on you). Or elect “our man” Tadic and we might (if we feel like it) give you a couple of aspirin for the pain of amputating Kosovo from you and let a few more Serbs live.” It’s a “lose-lose” proposition for Serbia, as anyone can see — just as it is designed to be.
However, since the demise of Milosevic, all that Western intimidation of Serbia seems to have ever done is to drive Serbia closer to Russia. Russia’s support of Serbia in the UN Security Council on the Kosovo issue, and the Russian Gasprom deal signed with Serbia last week (which sunk the EU/US Nabucco plan and likely cost US State Department #3 man, Nicholas Burns, his job) has done more for Serbia than Western promises (and bombing) have done in the last 17 years. Combine this with the Serbian concept of “inat” (stubborn defiance in the face of bullies) and this all works in Nikolic’s favor, regardless of whether Nikolic is worth a damn or not.
But on the other hand, hope springs eternal in the human breast. For the life of them, Serbs still cannot understand why the US & EU would wish to continue punishing them and stealing their land. Serbs are Christians who speak multiple European languages and their kids want the same security & toys that other normal European kids have — and so do their parents. Based on this commonality, some Serbs believe that this torture has to stop soon — perhaps if they jump through just one more humiliating hoop then the West will see them for who they really are, perhaps if they elect just one more “pro-Western leader” then the West will recognize that Serbs ARE Europeans. This slim hope (or “wishful thinking”, depending on who you talk to) of one day maybe joining that EU “fun & goodies fraternity”, is all that Boris Tadic has to offer them. And the West knows this — which is why they had to throw in the ham-handed “club them if they don’t vote for Tadic” pressure to make the alternative even less attractive.
The big question that remains to be answered about this Western intimidation of Serbian voters to vote for Tadic in the upcoming run-off, is: “Will it work? Or will it backfire?”
Ultimately, Serbian citizens can (and should) be the ONLY ones to answer that, when they vote in the run-off election on February 3rd. It’s their fate to decide, not ours.
“It’s their fate to decide, not ours.”
Would that this were so!
According to news reports, this is what happened:
Program Director of the election monitoring agency Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) Marko Blagojevic stated tonight that, based on 100 percent of the processed sample, it can be assessed that voters in Serbia entrusted Boris Tadic with another term in the office. Blagojevic stated that Tadic won some 2.6 % votes more than his rival Tomislav Nikolic and that difference is between 120.000 and 130.000 votes. Blagojevic announced that the turn-out was about 67% in the second round of presidential elections, which means some 4.5 million voters. Earlier, Executive Director of the CESID Zoran Lucic told the press conference that it can be stated that Tadic is the President of Serbia considering the big difference in the number of votes.
Radio Serbia has more.
Here’s the bottom line:
How can we possibly trust the outcome of a manipulated election?
The problem is that this election is already tainted. Once it has become so obvious that the US and the EU have an intense, vested interest in subverting an election in Serbia, how are we supposed to believe these US and EU politicians and “international observers” when they proclaim that this election is legitimate and clean?
From what was indicated by various interviews, polls, and so forth, before the runoff election, it was not at all clear that a majority of Serbs would have been willing to follow Tadic in taking the EU route.
EU membership is not worth the price
Take a good look at what’s happened in the EU lately. What with the Lisbon treaty chicanery, the bureaucratic strangulation, and the persistent sellout to jihadism, the EU is clearly turning into an ugly dictatorship itself. Maybe all of the noise that Western politicians and journalists make about Vladimir Putin supposedly being a “dictator” is only a distraction from the very real dictatorship that is taking shape in the EU.
I should be accustomed to this by now…
Like M.V. Pejakovich, I, 1389, am a US citizen, and I find it disgraceful that my own country’s government is manipulating an election somewhere else. It would be wrong no matter what the motives, but in this case, our own politicians are corrupt and they want to sell out the Balkans to petrodollar interests. It’s disgusting. But I suppose I ought to be used to it by now, considering how much vote fraud goes on in the US.
Yes, it’s very sad indeed. And although the decision is not mine to make, I would be sorry to see any more countries fall under the sway of the EU or of any organization like it.
Update:
Severing of Kosovo Province Enters the Final Stage with Boris Gump Reelected
Together with ecstatic long-winded congratulatory messages from the U.S. State Department, Javier Solana and the EU-presiding Slovenia to Boris Tadic and the “Serbian people”, after the Yellow leader barely squeezed through to get reelected as Serbian president, Serbia has received another, much more sincere, sobering message the very next day: that the illegal and unlawful EU mission to southern Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija has been approved by the EU.
One doesn’t really need to read between the lines to realize Western leaders have breathed a huge sigh of relief certainly not because they were concerned for Serbia’s wellbeing, but simply because they understand Tadic’s razor-edge victory as a green light to proceed with the final stage of their plan of amputating Kosovo province from the rest of Serbia.
According to Tanjug, which cites its sources within the EU in Brussels, the European Union adopted on Monday, in an “urgent procedure”, a document dubbed “Joint Action” on the “legal and financial bases for sending a EU mission” to Kosovo and Metohija. Since the procedure was so urgent, one has to wonder if the EU heads were only waiting for their own candidate for Serbian presidency to declare victory, eager to push the approval of the Ahtisaari-planned EU mission through on the very same day.
Serbian news agency reports that only “a single formal step remains” until the EU mission is sent to Kosovo — a decision by the Council of Ministers on the adoption of the “Operative Plan” which gives the go-ahead for sending the mission. The mission would be dispatched only a day after the “Operative Plan” is adopted.
All this despite Serbian government’s firm opposition to sending the EU mission without an adequate UN Security Council decision, since on its own, the mission has no legal basis and it directly represents the first step of the implementation of rejected Ahtisaari plan on “supervised independence” of southern Serbian province.
But the EU now believes it doesn’t need a UN SC approval, or the approval of the Serbian government, since the man who refused to put his signature on a document that articulated unambiguous opposition to the EU mission being sent to Kosovo, offered to him by Prime Minister Kostunica in return for endorsement for the second round of elections, has been reelected anyway. And if Serbian president has no objections to the EU mission being sent to the territory of the country he’s sworn to protect, they figure that there are no obstacles to sending the mission.
“Serbian People” or Hungarian, Croat, Albanian and Muslim Citizens of Serbia?
The showering praises and gushing congratulatory messages that have poured from Washington, Brussels and Ljubljana when it was announced Tadic has managed to scrape a victory in Serbian presidential elections inevitably speak of “Serbian people” who have “chosen the European integrations” by giving their votes to Tadic.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters he had congratulated Boris Tadic and “Serbian people” on Tadic’s reelection, while Slovenians eulogized to the “Serbian people who have confirmed their support for democratic and European path of their homeland.” Although West’s collective desire to sell the whole deal as a Serbian choice is understandable, being that they desperately need to portray Tadic’s reelection as Serbian consent to the loss of Kosovo-Metohija province, the fact remains that Tadic’s narrow victory was neither a referendum on letting go of 15% of Serbia’s historic territory, nor the expression of the wish of predominantly Serbian nationals.
Understandably, all the praises ignore the fact that Tadic has barely managed to win by less than half percent above the necessary 50%, or 2.6 percentage points more than Tomislav Nikolic, which translates to a difference of around 100,000 votes between the two candidates. More importantly, they willfully ignore Serbia’s widely diverse, multi-ethnic society in which the sizable national minorities, such as Vojvodina Hungarians and Croats, as well as Presevo Valley Albanians and Raska (Sandzak) region Muslims (who call themselves “Bosniaks”) have voted in droves during the election runoffs, with the single goal: to prevent Tomislav Nikolic from winning.
One only needs to take a look at votes cast during the first round of elections, held on January 20, to find that the Hungarian representative, Ishtvan Pastor of Hungarian Coalition party in Vojvodina, was given almost all the votes that represent a difference between Tadic and Nikolic: 93,039 votes from Serbia’s ethnic Hungarians. At the same time, an equally marginal figure, Cedomir Jovanovic, backed by the Serbia’s Albanians and other Muslims as the only Serbian politician who supports severing of Kosovo-Metohija province, gained 219,689 votes two weeks prior to Tadic’s miserable victory. Everyone who knows the first thing about Cheda the Junkie and LSD LDP fanaticism knows fully well that they would rather pour gasoline over their heads and get collectively incinerated than see Tomislav Nikolic anywhere near a presidential office.
According to the local news sources, large communities of Hungarians and Croats populating mainly north of Serbia, have been pouring into the polling stations on Sunday, February 3, with military discipline, not so much to show support for Tadic, as to make sure Nikolic gets defeated. Some local TV stations have reported that “every single Hungarian in Vojvodina” voted against Tomislav Nikolic on February 3.
Meanwhile, according to Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti, British ambassador to Serbia Stephen Wordsworth allowed himself a luxury to publicly call the Albanians and other Muslims from Presevo Valley and Raska region to step up to the plate and cast their votes in order to ensure Nikolic loses the presidential bid. Readily responding, two Muslim parties from the Raska region have bragged about their help in defeating Nikolic on the very same day, announcing in the Serbian media that all the Raska Muslims “showed unity” by unanimously voting for Tadic.
British government has also financed CESID, a parallel structure to Serbia’s RIK (Republic’s Electoral Commission) to “count” the votes in the election runoff, and Stephen Wordsworth, the uncrowned king of cynicism, was among the first to congratulate “Serbian people” on the election results.
No Confusion in Kosovo-Metohija: Nikolic Wins Resounding 73.66% of Votes
How the actual Serbs voted is most obvious in the province of Kosovo-Metohija, where Albanians pretended no election whatsoever is taking place, so none of them took part, and where Tomislav Nikolic defeated Tadic with resounding 73.66% of votes won. Therefore, if the presidential elections in Serbia were a kind of “referendum” on the fate of Kosovo-Metohija province, Kosovo residents, whose opinion should matter far more than that of Novi Sad Hungarians, have stated their view in crystal-clear terms.
Crude EU Meddling in Serbia Elections
Right after the first round of elections, when Tomislav Nikolic surged to the top with 40% of votes won among 9 candidates, it became clear that “Serbian people” are determined to vote Boris Gump out of the office and replace him with the seasoned politician who places national interests above his personal or party-interests, and who has no intention to follow the foreign diktat, or tolerate West’s extortions, blackmails and rotten carrots.
Three days later, Reuters reporter Ellie Tzortzi noted the patently obvious EU interference in Serbian presidential elections, warning that “the EU must be wary of charges it is meddling to help pro-Western President Boris Tadic defeat nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, just as Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province prepares to declare independence with the EU’s blessing.”
In order to boost Tadic’s prospects of defeating the challenger, the EU was prepared to offer Serbia the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA)—considered the very doorstep to the full EU membership—on January 28, only few days before the scheduled runoff. Tzortzi quoted Danish Prime Minister as saying “it would be a good idea” to sign a formal agreement “before the second round of the Serbian presidential election to demonstrate the positive EU attitude,” and briefly mentions that such opinion was shared by all representatives of the EU-member states, including the EU leadership, except for Netherlands and Belgium.
When that failed, the EU heads devised a non-SAA “political agreement”, which is quite unique in the sense that no other country wishing to join the union was ever proposed anything similar and, more importantly, which offers no territorial guarantees to Serbia but, through some cosmetic, superficial benefits, such as relaxed visa regimes and trade conditions, intends to anesthetize the Serbs in order to sever their Kosovo province with less noise, mess and fuss. They announced this “offer” few days before the February 3 election runoffs, as something that will be available to Serbia for signing on February 7.
But the rotten carrot and British ambassador’s crude interventions in the midst of Serbian election were far from being the only ways the Western officials have been influencing the outcome of the presidential elections in Serbia. As Neil Clark aptly noted, “the US and the EU have made [...] quite clear [...] the consequences which would follow if the Serbs decided to elect the Radical Party’s Tomislav Nikolic [...], a man they describe as “ultra nationalist”, as their country’s new President this weekend. If Serbia does not vote the ‘right way’, the country faces ‘isolation’ and will be treated as ‘the Belarus of Europe’, western officials have warned”.
Foreign-Owned Media in Serbia Unleash Ferocious Pro-Tadic, Anti-Nikolic Campaign
Serbian media, almost entirely owned by the German, British and American corporations, has been running a similar pro-Tadic, anti-Nikolic campaign throughout, reaching the fever-pitch after the first round of elections. Serbian citizens were exposed to toxic daily fumes generated by the numerous op-eds, articles and “analysis” extolling the virtues of joining the EU, while at the same time exploiting the fears of “going back into the 1990s” — the poverty, isolation and wars, even suggesting the possibility of economic sanctions and another round of NATO bombardment (?!). The choice, as presented by the Yellow party politicians and Soros-owned media in Serbia was clear: either the bright and sunny future in the European Utopia (Boris Tadic), or return to the dark and gloomy hellhole from the time of bruising sanctions, Western aggression and merciless punishment (Tomislav Nikolic).
Apart from the unrelenting media campaign almost without exception drumming up Tadic as the only acceptable candidate, the Yellow camp showed they are not above the basest, sleaziest tricks to help them stay in power.
Yellow Camp’s Sleaze
One of the slimiest moves of Tadic’s supporters was to invent the alleged “endorsement” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as if he personally favors Tadic over Nikolic. Even though Russian leadership, in stark contrast to the Western officials, has demonstrated an admirable level of chivalry and non-interference in staying neutral all the way and allowing citizens of Serbia to vote according to their conscious, Tadic’s team understood fully well they urgently need every inch of support they can pry, so they brazenly manufactured Putin’s support.
Being that Kremlin office takes care of even the small details and niceties such as expressions of condolences, presidential birthdays, congratulatory messages and similar, and that Tadic’s birthday happens to fall on January 15, Tadic has once again received a birthday card from President Putin’s office, just like the year before and the one before that and every year since he became Serbian president in 2004. But, unlike ever before, this time around the entirely innocent, non-committal wish for a happy birthday that coincided with the election in Serbia, was fervently publicized and advertised throughout Serbia, as Putin’s personal endorsement of Boris Tadic in the presidential elections.
According to some reports, Tadic has fought tooth-and-nail to squeeze into the Serbian government delegation on the occasion of signing the agreement with Russian energy giant, Gazprom. Such an occasion, although immensely important for Serbian state, has in no way necessitated the presence of Boris Tadic, being that it was the deal worked out by the Serbian government and Prime Minister Kostunica and that members of Tadic’s party within the government were expressly against the agreement, almost ruining the whole deal if it wasn’t for direct intervention of the Serbian Premier. But, nevertheless, using and abusing every opportunity for catching some limelight and hijacking some of the credit for any positive development was a primal urge, capable of overriding any sense of common decency.
A Wretched Victory No One Would Wish
Add to all that a relentless smear campaign against Tomislav Nikolic (charged of using services of an American PR agency to “brush-up” his public appearances, a malicious lie that was quickly denied by the agency cited; accused of planning to assign a prime ministerial post to Vojislav Seselj, rotting in the Hague prison for five years while awaiting his “trial” for politically incorrect opinions and verbal offenses to start, etc.), the reports of Tadic’s supporters visiting Serbian voters in person, door-to-door, and offering paychecks in return for votes given to Tadic and payment of utility bills, or the delivery of insulting hand-out packages of flower, sugar and cooking oil given by the Yellows to the poor and disillusioned voters on the eve of the runoffs, and still, despite everything, Boris Gump has barely managed to scrape measly half percent above the margin to get reelected.
Apart from being overwhelmingly suspicious and quite questionable, Boris Tadic’s “victory” is probably the saddest, most pathetic and morally wretched feat no decent man would ever wish for himself. For who could possibly rejoice and celebrate the victory of a man widely expected to assist in cheerful dismemberment of a state he is supposed to serve and protect?
More:
February 2nd, 2008 — Islam, Winds of Jihad, crime, military, security, smiley, treason
Update:
Maj. Steve Coughlin, the expert on terrorism who was fired from the Pentagon at the behest of a jihadist mole, is back to work, and with a well-deserved promotion. Great news!
But we still have some work to do – we need to hold our officials’ feet to the fire, so that they do a thorough housecleaning at the Pentagon to remove Hesham Islam and other jihadist moles, along with those who aid and abet their careers.
From the “Only in America” department:
* Hesham Islam, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, with his ridiculously cooked CV, should have never been given a security clearance. Hesham Islam is your picture book mole:
Hesham Islam is responsible, according to earlier reports, for the firing of Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon’s only expert on Islamic law. But now the questions about Islam himself, and what his intentions really are, are increasing.
Federal authorities say a high-level Muslim Pentagon aide, who led a campaign to silence a Pentagon intelligence analyst for taking a hard line against Islam, is running an “influence operation” on behalf of U.S. Muslim groups fronting for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Hesham H. Islam, a special assistant to deputy Defense secretary Gordon England, recently criticized Maj. Stephen Coughlin, one of the military’s leading authorities on Islamic war doctrine, for making the connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism.
After Islam lodged complaints, Coughlin’s contract with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon was not renewed.
Islam also was upset with briefings Coughlin recently prepared for the U.S. military warning that major U.S. Muslim groups were fronting for the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Egypt.
Islam, who was born and raised in Egypt, is heavily involved with one of the groups – the Islamic Society of North America, which U.S. prosecutors last year named as a member of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror-funding case.
Islam has persuaded his boss, England, to conduct various outreach with ISNA, including hosting the group’s leaders in the Pentagon and speaking at its annual convention.
More from World Net Daily
Sheik Yer’mami reported earlier that Hesham Islam is -and always was- a lobbyist on behalf of rabid jihadists to provide mosques, Koran’s and halal food for the Koranimals in Gitmo and also organized the Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain Abuhena Mohammed Saifulislam who catered to al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo and fought to establish the first mosque in Marine Corps history.
But now the story got into the MSM, thanks to the bloggers:
By Bill Gertz – Islam probed
The Pentagon is looking into conflicting statements about the background of Hesham Islam, a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England who was the focus of a dispute with a Joint Staff counterterrorism analyst.
Mr. Islam faced tough questions about his background posed by veteran journalist Claudia Rosett, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who covered the United Nations oil-for-food scandal with Iraq. Last week, Miss Rosett took the Pentagon to task by uncovering serious discrepancies about the Egyptian-born Islam that no one at the Pentagon seems willing to answer.
Writing in National Review Online, Miss Rosett revealed that certain claims about Mr. Islam’s background don’t fit.
Shortly after she wrote about the discrepancies contained in a Pentagon-written article on Mr. Islam’s background, the Pentagon removed the biography from its Web site, DefenseLink.mil.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said “that piece was taken down in an attempt to reduce the rhetoric and the emotion surrounding this issue while we try to determine the facts.”
The Pentagon does not comment on such personnel matters, he noted. “That said, we are looking into the matter and trying to reconcile conflicting statements.”
Mr. Morrell called later to clarify that the conflicting statements being probed relate to whether or not Mr. Islam used the term “Christian zealot with a pen” in describing Mr. Coughlin, and not about discrepancies in Mr. Islam’s background.
Mr. Islam has come under fire from supporters of Stephen Coughlin, the Joint Staff analyst on counterterrorism whose contract was not renewed. The action followed a meeting between Mr. Coughlin and Mr. Islam several weeks ago when the two clashed over Mr. Coughlin’s views on the Islamic law roots of terrorism.
After refusing comment to Inside the Ring, Kevin Wensing, a spokesman for Mr. Islam, now says that reports in this space that Mr. Islam called Mr. Coughlin a “Christian zealot with a pen” did not take place during the meeting.
Queries to other Pentagon officials familiar with the issue said the phrase was used by Mr. Islam after the meeting, not during it.
No action was taken against Mr. Islam, a Muslim adviser and confidant of Mr. England, for the anti-Christian comments.
Mr. Islam could not be reached for comment.
Miss Rosett tried — and failed — to get straight answers from Mr. Wensing about why Mr. Islam claimed that when he was 7 his family was bombed by Israeli jets at his home in Cairo, when there is no evidence the Israelis bombed the Egyptian capital during the 1967 war.
Also, Mr. Wensing could not explain why Mr. Islam said in his biography that he was on a freighter sunk by an Iranian torpedo in the Persian Gulf when there is no record of the ship being sunk.
According to his 1992 master’s thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School, Mr. Islam is highly critical of Israel and the influence of American Jews on U.S. politics, noting that U.S. ties to Israel have harmed relations to other states in the Middle East.
Diana West: A defining moment
Analyzing the GWB befuddlement:
In 2007 Mr. Bush highlighted the aggression of “Sunni extremists” and “Shia extremists.” In 2006, he warned against “radical Islam.” In 2008, the president merely decried “assassins,” “bombs,” “extremists” and “terrorists.” Why the fuzzy focus? Why declare a “defining ideological struggle” without defining the ideologies involved?
February 1st, 2008 — 2008 US Elections, Blogburst: stop the Murdoch Flight 93 memorial, Europe, Islam, Jawa Report, September 11, 2001, activism, blog censorship, counterjihad, crime, enemy propaganda
A plea from Tom Burnett Sr. to the wonderful people of Somerset
(The ad copy below is running in tomorrow’s Somerset Daily American.)
My son Tom confronted a terrible moment of truth. Faced with a plot against our nation, he and the other heroes of Flight 93 fought back, and at the cost of their lives, foiled that plot to destroy the White House or the Capitol. Now it is time for the rest of us to face our moment of truth. Flight 93 has been re-hijacked, and I am requesting that if you can, you go down to the public meeting of the Memorial Project at Somerset Courthouse Saturday, sign up to comment at the end, and demand that a proper investigation be conducted.
THIS was no accident:
The Memorial Project held an open design competition in time of war, in-viting the entire world to enter. Guess who joined in? That group of trees that sits roughly in the position of the star on an Islamic flag is the crash site. Who do YOU think is being memorialized here?
A second Islamic feature that I also protested when I served on the Stage II jury is the minaret-like Tower of Voices , formed in the shape of a crescent, with its top cut at an angle so that its crescent arms reach up into the sky.
Upturned crescents are a standard mosque adornment in many Muslim countries.
Every iota of this original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called “redesign.” That is why Congressman Tancredo asked the Park Service this autumn to scrap the existing design entirely. Instead of getting rid of the giant crescent as Tancredo demanded back in 2005, architect Paul Murdoch only disguised it with a few surrounding trees.
Also remaining are those d—-d 44 glass blocks on the flight path. (There were forty passengers and crew and four Islamic terrorists on Flight 93.) The Memorial Project acknowledges the 40 blocks inscribed with the names of my son and the other heroes, and they acknowledge the three inscribed with the 9/11 date, but they pretend not to know about this one: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site.
When this 44th glass block is pointed out, Project Partners say that it can’t be counted with the other blocks because it is not the same size. What? Because the capstone to the terrorist memorializing block count is magnificent, that is supposed to make it okay?
For every Islamic or terrorist memorializing feature of the crescent design, the Park Service has another equally phony excuse. Please read the exposé below of the Park Service’s fraudulent investigation, and please come to the meeting on Saturday to demand state and Congressional investigations into the Flight 93 memorial.
Tom Burnett Sr.
February 2008
PDF of ad copy here.
Non-locals who want to help, please contact your senators and representatives!
