Monthly Archives: August 2007

China Watch, Culture Wars

Christianity…Still on the Ascent

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Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia

One of teh Chief’s favorites: Spengler writing over at Asia Times, with another offering of great interest and at least potential importance.

Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by the National Catholic Reporter’s veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world’s largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history.

There’s a lot more in this piece…among the more interesting morsels is this one:

While the Catholic Church has worked patiently for independence from the Chinese government, which sponsors a “Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association” with government-appointed bishops, the evangelicals have no infrastructure to suppress and no hierarchy to protect. In contrast to Catholic caution, John Allen observes, “Most Pentecostals would obviously welcome being arrested less frequently, but in general they are not waiting for legal or political reform before carrying out aggressive evangelization programs.”

Allen adds: “The most audacious even dream of carrying the gospel beyond the borders of China, along the old Silk Road into the Muslim world, in a campaign known as “Back to Jerusalem”. As [Time correspondent David] Aikman explains in Jesus in Beijing, some Chinese evangelicals and Pentecostals believe that the basic movement of the gospel for the last 2,000 years has been westward: from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Europe, from Europe to America, and from America to China. Now, they believe, it’s their turn to complete the loop by carrying the gospel to Muslim lands, eventually arriving in Jerusalem. Once that happens, they believe, the gospel will have been preached to the entire world.”

Aikman reports that two Protestant seminaries secretly are training missionaries for deployment in Muslim countries.

The plot thickens!

Uncategorized

Immigration and Infrastructure

Steel firm owner jailed
Illegal aliens had bogus SS numbers

The owner of Tarrasco Steel, a company that supplied workers on the Biloxi Bay Bridge, was arrested and charged with hiring illegal immigrants on projects in three states. Some had improper welding certification.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Jose S. Gonzalez, 32, at his office in Greenville Thursday, according to a news release. Tarrasco Steel was hired as a subcontractor for rebar installation services to major bridge projects in Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. The federal government considers those bridges as critical infrastructure, and they were part of routine inspections of facilities that if damaged could pose a threat to national security and public safety.

“There is a serious public safety concern when illegal aliens, who are not authorized to work in the country legally, and who do not possess valid welding certifications, are employed in the construction of bridges in our communities.” said Michael A. Holt, special agent in charge of the Customs Office of Investigations in New Orleans, in a news release. (Emphasis added.)

Another reason to be controlling the border…as if we needed any more!

National Insecurity

More UN Corruption

U.N. translator charged in U.S. visa scheme

As if we needed any more reasons to dissociate the US from the UN…

U.S. authorities today arrested a U.N. translator and two other persons on charges of running an extravagant scheme to sell U.S. visas, mostly to Russian and Uzbek nationals. Vyacheslav Manokhin, a relatively low-ranking U.N. staffer, was accused of providing requests on U.N. letterhead for U.S. visas to allow aliens to attend U.N. conferences that didn’t exist or that the visitors did not attend. The scheme had apparently been in operation for years.

“Manokhin used his position at the U.N. to make it appear as though the U.N. supported the visa applications, so that the aliens could enter the United States, purportedly to participate in conferences organized by non-government organizations, by the U.N. or by entities associated with the U.N.,” according to a statement issued yesterday by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. “In most instances, the alien was successful in obtaining a visa and entering the United States.”

Uncategorized

Afghan Roads Come to N. America?

Landmines discovered in Ontario creek

The big question about two live landmines found in a countryside culvert running under Inadale Drive between Strathroy and Mt. Brydges, Ontario yesterday is who put them there? Appearing to be attached to timers, the landmines were likely of the type used to blow up tanks, according to Strathroy-Caradoc police.

Police yesterday swarmed a country creek where children cool off in heat waves like the one this week as Canadian Forces explosives experts detonated the landmines. The creek would be a huge draw for children in the weatherman’s extreme heat alert on Ontario’s Simcoe Day long weekend.

“One mine was discovered by two teenaged girls Friday. They called police, and a second mine was found yesterday morning, only one metre away from the first.” (London Free Press, (London, Ontario) and Sun Media, August 5, 2007).

Of course there’s no terrorism link.

Uncategorized

Border Cluebat Hits RINOs

Republicans hardening stance on immigration

An anti-immigration backlash has taken hold among Republicans in the Capitol, led in some cases by the staunchest supporters – Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – of the failed Senate bill derided by many as amnesty.

Maybe they finally started to get the message after having blows of the cluebat upside their heads. D’ya think?

Constitution Watch

UPDATE: Cong to Investigate Itself!

House Forms Special Panel Over Alleged Stolen Vote
GOP Assails Decision on Food Aid for Immigrants

OK. Even the Donk Congs have been waken up by the impact of the cluebat, with 3% congressional poll approval numbers, and the flap about the votegate situation have dictated that SOMETHING extraordinary had to happen to try to repair what little is left of congressional prestige.

The House last night unanimously agreed to create a special select committee, with subpoena powers, to investigate Republican allegations that Democratic leaders had stolen a victory from the House GOP on a parliamentary vote late Thursday night.

The move capped a remarkable day that started with Republicans marching out of the House in protest near midnight Thursday, was punctuated by partisan bickering, and ended with Democratic hopes for a final legislative rush fading. Even a temporary blackout of the House chamber’s vote tally board led to suspicions and accusations of skullduggery.

While Democratic leaders hoped to leave for their August recess on a wave of legislative successes, the House instead slowed to an acrimonious crawl that threatened to stretch the legislative session into next week.

The agreement to form a special committee was extraordinary. Such powerful investigative committees are usually reserved for issues such as the Watergate scandal and the funneling of profits from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s. “I don’t know when something like this has happened before,” said House deputy historian Fred W. Beuttler. He called the decision “incredible.”

This CAN be good for the situation…but then again, based on recent history, one has to wonder.

GOP lawmakers had marched out of the House chamber about 11 p.m. Thursday, shouting “shame, shame” and saying that Democrats had “stolen” a vote on a parliamentary motion to pull an agriculture spending bill off the floor until it incorporated an explicit denial of federal benefits to illegal immigrants. The bill already would deny such benefits to illegal immigrants, and Democrats stressed that they won the vote fair and square. But a campaign has been launched, and the House has not fully recovered.

“Last night sent a clear message to the American people that there are people in this town who are willing to break rules and utilize extraordinary maneuvers just so that illegal immigrants can receive taxpayer-funded benefits,” said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-Calif.). Anger-driven delaying tactics threw into uncertainty an agenda that was to include important votes on a huge energy bill, a defense spending bill and a terrorism surveillance measure before Congress’s departure for its month-long summer recess.

Given all this, House Speaker Squeaker SanFranNan Pelosi complained about…the GOP having the nerve to DARE to stand up for itself.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of blatant obstructionism. “They’ve just been deluged by the success of the Democrats on behalf of the American people,” she said.

Uh…”deluged by the success of the Democrats…”????? Is THAT how they have reached 3% in the polls? This is clearly a case of poor situational awareness on the part of Squeaker Pelosi.

Uncategorized

Representative Government: R.I.P.?

The House of Representatives is on the verge (if not already over the edge) of self-destruction as a Constitutional representative body.

When a vote is taken, and then thrown out by the presiding leadership (the Donks of course, at this time) and re-recorded as having an outcome opposite to the original total, then the integrity of Constitutional representation has taken a bullet in the back of the head.

House erupts in chaos

In a massive flare-up of partisan tensions, Republicans walked out on a House vote late Thursday night to protest what they believed to be Democratic maneuvers to reverse an unfavorable outcome for them.

The flap represents a complete breakdown in parliamentary procedure and a distinct low for the sometimes bitterly divided chamber because members of one party have rarely, if ever, walked off the floor without casting a vote.

The rancor erupted shortly before 11 p.m. as Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) gaveled close the vote on a standard procedural measure with the outcome still in doubt.

Details remain fuzzy, but numerous Republicans argued afterward that they had secured a 215-213 win on their motion to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. Democrats, however, argued the measure was deadlocked at 214-214 and failed, members and aides on both sides of the aisle said afterward.

Some additional information noted at NRO:

JUST PLAIN CHEATING [David Freddoso]

They just replayed the whole mess from the House last night on C-Span. I spoke to Novak and he doesn’t remember anything quite like this happening before. Pretty outrageous, really. It is about as blatant an abuse of power as you can have in a legislative body, to cheat on a vote total. (Emphasis added)

The Chief thinks that Freddoso understates this.

Republicans were playing a game that the minority usually plays — you have your guys vote with the other side, then have them change at the last minute. This forces the majority to come up with votes quickly. Although on close issues they would rather spare their endangered members in swing districts and give them a free vote, the majority leadership then has to tell their endangered members to bite their tongues and vote the party line.

Two Democrats changed their votes to ensure that the measure would fail, but then three Republicans did the same. The vote total was 215-213 in favor of the Republican motion to recommit. At that moment, Rep. Mike McNulty ( D-N.Y.), who was in the Speaker’s chair, gavelled out the vote, thinking that it was a tie and the motion had failed. But he had miscounted — the motion had actually passed. The Democrats were only able to change this by cheating and changing more votes after the gavel.

Although they did not do so for hours, the House clerk’s office finally did put a record of the vote online this morning, with the measure failing by a vote of 216-212.

What’s to say.  Just a bit worse than before, so no big deal?  NOT!

America’s at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to start shooting the bastards. — Claire Wolfe

Uncategorized

Editor Killing w/Islamic Connection

Police: Gun Linked to Journalist’s Death

Police are testing guns recovered from raids in which authorities arrested seven members of an Oakland Black Muslim splinter group who investigators suspect were involved in the killing of a journalist and two others. Police Lt. Ersie Joyner said one of the guns found during the raids is thought to be the weapon that a masked attacker used Thursday morning to slay Chauncey Bailey, a journalist who was walking to work.

Bailey, 57, was the editor of the Oakland Post, and had been working on a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery before he was ambushed and slain, his colleagues said.

The “Religion of Peace” doing it’s little thing again. Surprise, surprise, surprise!

Uncategorized

Sic Transit Gloria Britannia?

A modern Macchiavel

The Chief recently completed re-reading The Birth of Britain, the first volume of Churchill’s classic History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which among other things of some note, documents the centuries-long struggle towards a system of limited government founded in some concept of inherent rights of Englishmen.

SO, when I noted this posting from Samizdata, notes a matter of governmental philosophy (dare one say ideology?) a fully conscious effort to transform Britain into Orwell’s “Airstrip One”, with an deliberately engineered death of the concept of individual rights, the contrast with Churchill’s accounts couldn’t have been stronger.

This week (BBC’s) File on 4 did the first really serious, probing investigation into HM Government’s National Identity Scheme that there has been in any media yet. You can listen to it here, and it is full of fascinating things for the attentive listener.

The most extraordinary is this testimony from IT consultant Peter Tomlinson:

The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from the Home Office.

Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely puzzled.

This is the first really solid public evidence I have seen that the scheme really is [or was?] intended by strategists at the highest level as a complete population management system and revolution in the nature of government, rather than being one by accident. That it is the emanation of a philosophy of government. It is it is not always good to have one’s analysis confirmed. In this case I would prefer not to have been vindicated.

Remember Philip Gould? He’s one of those high-level strategists.

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords’ views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.

The philosophy is probably best summed up by a word from Foucault: governmentalism. Christopher Booker to the contrary, it is not a ‘mental’ creed of “The Mad Officals” but a pervasive pragmatism – using the natural history of humanity the better to shepherd it. The better shepherd is a member of the new innominate politico-bureaucratic class: maybe a civil ‘servant’, maybe a politician, maybe officially neither.

And just today a new example of the sage. A strategy memo has leaked to the Daily Mirror’s sharp political editor Kevin Maguire. Lord Gould allegedly writes:

No-one in Britain should have any doubt about what you stand for, what you want to achieve. You should position yourself as a powerful, muscular modernisation politician with the power and the determination to change Britain. You should aim to be a great reforming PM.

You have to meet this mood for change. You have to exemplify renewal and a fresh start. Your Premiership has to have a dynamism and an energy that pulls people along in its slipstream. You must become the change that Britain needs.

There is a name for this, too. It is one of the most widely used populist techniques in world politics: Strong Man government, tribal leadership, caudillismo. A national security state, presided over by a Big Man – has “a nation of freemen, a polite and commercial people” (Blackstone), really come to that? When exactly did liberty become such a minority taste in Britain that it were possible?

Having a lot of personal British roots, makes it even sadder to consider the efforts over their to try to persuade the once (and hopefully once again) stalwart Brits to sell their hard-won political birthright for a mess of EngSoc pottage.

It’s even worse to realize that there are others of the same ilk seeking to lead US down the same sorry path.

Keep your powder dry!

National Insecurity

Donk Candidate a Pakistan Warhawk?!

Obama warns Pakistan on terror

HUH?

Sen. Barack Obama yesterday said he would send U.S. troops into Pakistan if President Pervez Musharraf fails to more aggressively hunt down and eliminate al Qaeda strongholds and terrorist training camps there.

“Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan,” said Mr. Obama, setting benchmarks on millions of dollars in future military aid to Pakistan.

Let’s see now? B. Hussein Obama expresses repeated statements of total opposition to the war in Iraq. given the situation in northwestern Pakistan’s tribal areas, a large US intervention would make Iraq look like a cakewalk.

The Illinois Democrat acknowledged the military and political difficulties of such an effort in the “wind-swept deserts and cave-dotted mountains.” He said it would be difficult to convince nomadic tribes living there with few ties to the Musharraf regime or any government that the U.S. is not there to occupy their lands. “It’s a tough place. But that is no excuse,” Mr. Obama said.

Uh…what’s so magical about the need to do this in Pakistan that doesn’t apply in Iraq, or for that matter, Syria, and Iran?

B. Hussein Obama is apparently untroubled by the presence of logical consistency in his consciousness.

Uncategorized

Reality Check on Gas Prices

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Price at the pump driven by aging U.S. refineries

Attention American motorists: It is not ExxonMobil or Middle Eastern oil producers who are driving the price of gasoline you pay at the pump.

It is shortages of gas and other problems at aging refineries in your neighborhoods.

Well DUH! We haven’t built any new refineries in over 30 years, while demand for gas has increased. Get a clue!

SD Politics

Senator Still Missing in Action

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Johnson won’t be attending re-election fundraiser

From Dave Krantz in the Argus:

An invitation to an upcoming fundraiser for Sen. Tim Johnson’s re-election leaves the impression with some that the senator, not seen in public since a brain hemorrhage in December, will attend the event.

That is simply not the case, says Julianne Fisher, Johnson’s press secretary. Fisher told me the two-term Democrat is not scheduled to be there.

With all the glowing and optimistic reports on the Senators recovery from Donk exSen Daschle and others, one MIGHT think that something would be heard from the Senator himself. One is sure that there are excellent reasons for this not happening yet, but then that might tend to make one think that the state of recovery is reported…reflecting a more optimistic rather than realistic view.

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Bad Day in Twin Cities

Seven dead, more than 60 injured in Minneapolis bridge collapse

A busy highway bridge that spans the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour Wednesday, killing seven people, injuring more than 60, and sending dozens of cars, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water below.

Minneapolis Fire Chief Jim Clack said the death toll could rise. He said officials could see at least 50 vehicles in the water.

With a still undetermined number of vehicles that went into the river, unfortunately the toll is likely to go higher.

Kind of makes you think…how often do we drive over/under a bridge?