And now, Exit Controls

The News: New Anti-Alien regulations have gone into effect. Under the most significant change, disclosed earlier this week, many employers could be required to fire employees who used false Social Security numbers. At the same time, federal officials would crack down on companies employing substantial numbers of illegal immigrants.

Administration officials told members of Congress on Thursday night that they would speed up construction of fences along the Mexican border, hire more Border Patrol agents and detain more of the immigrants caught illegally crossing the border.

Administration officials also said they would try to match up records of the arrival and departure of non-citizens entering and leaving the United States. Members of Congress say this exit- control system, required under a 1996 law, is essential to securing the nation’s borders, but many lawmakers say the administration has been slow in carrying out the law.

In addition, administration officials said they would train more state and local law enforcement officers to help enforce federal immigration laws. Since 2002, the federal government has trained more than 300 police and correctional officers. But members of Congress say the administration could do much more.

Administration officials said they were also planning to step up efforts to arrest and deport illegal immigrants who were members of street gangs. And they said federal agents would fan out across the country to hunt down “alien fugitives” who had been ordered to leave the United States but failed to comply.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, has repeatedly urged the administration to take action against such “alien absconders.” Under a 1986 law, employers must ask job applicants for documents to verify that they are United States citizens or immigrants authorized to work here.

The Note: I've always said, a wall has two sides. Ça commence, alors.

©Barfo, 2007
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Solzhenitsyn calls for Honesty in Self-Reflection

The News: Alexander Solzhenitsyn discussed his lates work in an interview with Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Your recent two-volume work "200 Years Together" was an attempt to overcome a taboo against discussing the common history of Russians and Jews. These two volumes have provoked mainly perplexity in the West. You say the Jews are the leading force of global capital and they are among the foremost destroyers of the bourgeoisie. Are we to conclude from your rich array of sources that the Jews carry more responsibility than others for the failed Soviet experiment?

Solzhenitsyn: I avoid exactly that which your question implies: I do not call for any sort of scorekeeping or comparisons between the moral responsibility of one people or another; moreover, I completely exclude the notion of responsibility of one nation towards another. All I am calling for is self-reflection.

You can get the answer to your question from the book itself: "Every people must answer morally for all of its past -- including that past which is shameful. Answer by what means? By attempting to comprehend: How could such a thing have been allowed? Where in all this is our error? And could it happen again? It is in that spirit, specifically, that it would behoove the Jewish people to answer, both for the revolutionary cutthroats and the ranks willing to serve them. Not to answer before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God. Just as we Russians must answer -- for the pogroms, for those merciless arsonist peasants, for those crazed revolutionary soldiers, for those savage sailors."

The Note: Ho, ho, ho... this two headed hydra talks sounds a tad like Vienna Days...

©Barfo, 2007

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U.S. Seeds Love Throughout the World

The News: According to Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, the damage wrought by the secret prisons, renditions and torture-like interrogations is still tremendous. According to Wilkerson, the US administration had arrested an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 suspects over the past year. Eighty-five percent of them were innocent, according to Wilkerson. "We really have created a mess here. A terrible mess. This has been incredibly damaging."

The Note: Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You are ignoring Bush's assurances that "our nation is generous and compassionate." By the way, throughout the 1930's the entire Nazi concentration camp population never exceeded 30,000.

©Barfo, 2007
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Success of Security Measures Not to Be Measured by Their Success

The News: President Bush pronounced, "Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car-bombing into the evening news," he said. "No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street. In places like Israel, ....

The Note: The story here isn’t that bush said Iraq should be like Israel but that he’s admitted that “security measures” are useless.

©Barfo, 2007
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New Testament on Net alleged to violate Constitution

The News: Truthout reports that, "At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic." The accusation was made by "the nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state..." [ Hmmmm...] The Officers Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides were written by Major George Kuykendall, and actually [!!! ] quote portions of the New Testament, including a passage from Galatians that asserts Paul was persecuted by the Jews. [No!] A spokeman for the group denied any anti-semitism and stated that the fellowship was simply discussing the texts as they appeared in the New Testament. "But for Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the religious teachings are not only blatantly anti-Semitic, but he believes disseminating it over the Internet tramples upon the Constitution."

The Note: Disseminating the New Testament over the internet violates the Constitution? Amazing! What sort of twisted thinking contorts itself to that conclusion? The Gospel is "anti-semitic" and ergo translates into a violation of the Establishment Clause? Plus ça change. It’s all a dissimulation in service of an ethnical cause.

©Barfo, 2007
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Fruit from a Poisonous Tree

The News: Uri Avneri,the socialist and peace-activist Israel journalist writes:

"Concerned friends recently e-mailed me some hair-raising quotes from a statement by Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of the settlers and the entire religious Zionist camp. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the rabbi decreed that it is impermissible to have compassion with the civilian population of Gaza if that imperils Israeli soldiers. His son, Shmuel, interpreted this decree on behalf of his father: if the killing of 100 Arabs is not sufficient to stop the launching of Qassam rockets at Israel, then 1000 must be killed. And if that is not sufficient, then 10,000, and 100,000 and even a million. All this to stop the Qassams, which in all the years have not succeeded in killing a dozen Jews.

"What is the connection between this "religious" view and the God who (in Genesis 18) promised not to destroy Sodom if 10 righteous people could be found there?

"What is the difference between this moral perception and that of the Nazis who executed 10 hostages for every German soldier killed by the resistance?

"The rabbi's decree did not arouse any reaction. There was no outcry, neither from his flock nor from the general public. The number of rabbis who publicly support such methods has risen to the hundreds. Most of them come from the settlements. This is a "religious" outlook that grew up in the poisoned atmosphere of the occupation, a religion of occupation. It shames the Jewish religion, present and past.

"No wonder that a person with a strong religious conscience, Avraham Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset and Head of the Jewish Agency, this week renounced Zionism and demanded to abolish the definition of Israel as a Jewish State."

The Note: No wonder that there are those of us who thought that the idea of a Jewish state was poisoned seed all along.

Avneri also points out that the occupation is destroying the Israeli Army. Yep; just as it is destroying the Ah'murkan.

©Barfo, 2007

The Unsung Compassionate USA

The News: On Friday President Bush held a press conference alongside Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Said Bush, "I don't think America gets enough credit for trying to help improve people's lives. And so my trip is to explain, as clearly as I can, that our nation is generous and compassionate; that when we see poverty, we care; that when we see illiteracy, we want to do something about it; that when we find there to be a deficiency in health care, we'll help to the extent we can." Chavez's reaction? "Gringo Go Home."

The Note: The utterly astonishing thing -- amazing beyond belief -- is that Bush actually thinks this shit will fly in Ibero-America?

©Barfo, 2007
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