The Turkish quagmire .

(**)>>We all know that the Middle-East is going out , as perfectly  stated way back on  Sep. 13, 2013 - 10:58 - Sen. John McCain: White House still lacks clear Syria plan, 'old KGB agent' Putin has outsmarted Obama and attained long-coveted clout in the Middle East with maneuvering in crisis. McCain: 'Things are going to hell in a hand basket here'.  This week (1)>> Turkey added to injury. (photo above) Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian military jet along the Syrian border on Tuesday, sparking fury in Moscow that threatened to undercut efforts to create a new international coalition to confront expanding Islamic State terrorism. The Turkish strike, captured by dramatic video, marked the first time since 1952 that a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member has shot down a Russian warplane. As Russian helicopters searched for the two pilots, President Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of a “stab in the back” and  (2)>> of aiding terrorists, and state media began a propaganda blitz against Turkey. The Defense Ministry suspended military contacts, Foreign MinisterSergei Lavrov canceled a Wednesday meeting in Istanbul and Russian tourists were urged to stay away from Turkey, one of the most popular vacation destinations.Turkey will not apologize for downing a Russian fighter jet it says violated Turkish airspace near the Syrian border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an exclusive CNN interview Thursday in Ankara."I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us," he said from the Turkish capital. "Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize. Our pilots and our armed forces, they simply fulfilled their duties, which consisted of responding to ... violations of the rules of engagement. I think this is the essence." Tensions in the Middle East have escalated since the downing of the Russian warplane, with Erdogan accusing Russia of deceit and Moscow announcing it will deploy anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. A post on the Russian Defense Ministry's Facebook page showed an S-400 missile system being unloaded from a Russian cargo plane. With the battle against Islamic State on the territory of Syria going full throttle, it appears that Turkey is using the opportunity to continue its (#)>> decimation of the Kurds. Since July 24, when Turkey jumped into the Syrian cauldron, the Turkish Air Force has largely ignored Islamic State fighters, saving its smart bombs instead for Kurdish fighters who have been on the front lines battling Islamic State. Ankara has also cracked down on the Kurdish population at home, arresting more than 1,000 Kurds across Turkey. Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor for the magazine Chronicles, said the Turkish Air Force dropped the vast majority of their bombs not on Islamic State positions in Syria, but on those very groups fighting this terrorist scourge, namely the Kurds and the Syrian Army. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin chose the G20 in the Turkish city of Antalya to disclose the shocking information that terrorism is being financed by individual businessmen from 40 countries, including from member states of the G20."I provided examples related to our data on the financing of Islamic State units by natural persons in various countries. The financing comes from 40 countries, as we established, including some G20 members," Putin told reporters following the summit.This earth-shattering news barely registered a blip on the Western mainstream media radar. Yet IS does not seem to be sitting on the sidelines in Turkey. According to Jane's Intelligence Weekly, a recently leaked memo by Turkey’s national police is sounding an "urgent" alarm about the potential for IS-led or -inspired terrorist attacks within Turkey: The report warned about the presence of "sleeper cells" throughout the country—particularly in the cities of Adana, Aksaray, Ankara, Gaziantep, Istanbul, Kilis, Konya, Mersin, and Sanliurfa—comprising around 3,000 people with direct links to the insurgent group... Furthermore, in a press conference last week, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu revealed the government's concerns about the possible return of at least 700 Turkish citizens currently fighting for the Islamic State. There’s mounting

evidence that Turkey’s actions were completely uncalled for. Greece has released data revealing that they could have shot down Turkish jets over 2,000 times, for 2,244 violations of Greek airspace in 2014 alone (according to University of Thessaly statistics based on the Greek military’s count)! Even Turkish officials believe that the Russian jet had only spent 17 seconds in its airspace, hardly a reason to shoot it down. It should have known better.Russia is not taking this provocation lying down though; Putin had promised “consequences”, and by golly he will get them. While France, America and NATO have called for calm (ironic considering the fact that their implicit defense pact with Turkey has allowed it to move so rashly ) Russia has decided to calmly send the ‘Moskva’, a Slavia class cruiser, to the coast of Latakia .President Recep Tayyip Erdogan One day after saying Turkey fired missiles as "an automatic reaction to a border breach" -- and not knowing the nationality of the plane in question -- Erdogan said Saturday, "We wouldn't have wished this to happen. But, unfortunately, it did."  The powerful Turkish leader didn't lash out at Russia but appeared intent on taking the high road by claiming that "Turkey has never been in favor of triggering tensions and clashes, and we never will be.""I hope this will not happen again," Erdogan said at an event in Balikesir. "As long as our sovereign rights are not violated, our struggle will continue through diplomatic channels, adhering to international laws and agreements.The President added, "We hope that the tensions with Russia will not grow and result in more saddening incidents."

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(**)>>We all know that the Middle-East is going out.  The Middle East, that is, all of Arabia and Persia, has been a basket case since before I was born. Deeply dysfunctional societies that rival sub Sahara Africa for poverty and violence. If I were to choose a primary cause, it would be Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was the fulcrum of Sunni Arabism because of its financial and political clout. So successful were they  in cultivating their view of the Middle East as a homogenous Sunni zone from Morocco to Iraq that it was not until recently that people learned just how heterogenous the Middle East is. Kurds, ten percent of Syrians, suffered under a pan-Arabist vision of a United Arab Republic and then a Syrian Arab Republic that denied their existence. Christians make up ten percent of the population. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States suppressed their Shiite populations. Of course, Sunnis are not alone in promoting an illusory homogeneity. Iranian Azeris make up twenty percent of Iran. Turkey has long denied that Kurds there are anything but a unique brand of Turk. Israel, in fact, is half-filled by Jewish Arabs who could not survive in the Sunni Pan-Arab myth perpetrated by the Saudis, the Sunni benefactors in the region.(#)>> decimation of the Kurds. President Obama has stated in the past that he does not believe that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians, so is it any surprise that Obama is fully behind Erdogan as they both commit genocide against the Kurds?(1)>> Turkey.  This damning report on rapidly re-islamizing Turkey’s support for the Islamic State from last year is updated with fresh documentation, corroborating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s charge that Turkey is an “accomplice to terrorists.” Putin and French President Hollande just conducted a meeting in Moscow, indicating Russia and France will cooperate more closely in targeting ISIS’ oil transport lines, one of the key components of Turkey’s aid to the Islamic State, as detailed below. (2)>> of aiding terrorists. Through last summer, many Turks also made a great deal of money by smuggling oil looted from Iraq, making hundreds if not thousands of regular Turks complicit in putting funds into IS’ accounts. So support for IS among the Turkish public could grow if the right ideological and financial benefits can be exploited by the group and are left unchecked by the government.

The Thanksgiving of Capt. John Smith.

Here is one of the images of the Pilgrims that has captivated Americans

for a century and half . No so close.

This week  we all will celebrating (**)>> Thanksgiving , with all the fine trappings of Turkey , mash potatoes , cranberry. We all have taken under consideration that the idea that "religious pilgrims" came over to the new world to start a new life . These images are no so historic  . The Mayflower , disembarkation of William Bradford and the (1)>> Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. Has been part of what we call " Americana" and my not be so real as our images of General George Custer. So what's the real ? Over a hundred travelers embarked on the voyage of the Mayflower in September 1620. Less than one third were Separatists. The rest were immigrants, adventurers, and speculators. It’s fair to say that the Pilgrims left England to find religious freedom, but that wasn’t the primary motive that propelled them to North America.Remember that the Pilgrims went first to Holland, settling eventually in the city of Leiden. There they encountered a religious tolerance almost unheard of in that day and age. Bradford and Edward Winslow both wrote glowingly of their experience. In Leiden, God had allowed them, in Bradford’s estimation, “to come as near the primitive pattern of the first churches as any other church of these later times.” God had blessed them with “much peace and liberty,” Winslow echoed. If you visit Plymouth today, you’ll find a distinctive rock about the size of your living-room sofa embedded in the sandy beach, sheltered by a classical Greek portico and labeled with a sign erected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts proclaiming, “Plymouth Rock: Landing Place of the Pilgrims.” It’s not hard to picture simple English folk huddled on that rock, envisioning through eyes of faith the great nation that would spring from their humble beginning.

Except that’s probably not what happened.

New England  as presented by Capitan John Smith to sell the
idea of English land claims to the New World 

The last spot on English soil that the “Pilgrims” touched before departing aboard the Mayflower was Plymouth, England. They were forced to put into that port and never intended to be there. The place where they chose to settle shortly after their arrival in the New World was Plymouth, New England. The harbor had already been given that name. And they never intended to settle there. So, by strange coincidence, the Pilgrims went from Plymouth to Plymouth–two places they never meant to be.In April 1614, Captain John Smith (then 34 years old) arrived off the coast of New England, as he would name it, with two ships out of London, the Francesand the Queen Anne. He had promised his investors that he would search for gold and copper along the shores of what is now Maine and Massachusetts. If that didn’t pan out (and he had little expectation it would), he had a back-up plan to hunt whales. But, as he related in his 1616 book, A Description of New England, the whaling worked out about as well as the hunt for gold. “We found this whale fishing a costly conclusion,” he wrote, “we saw many and spent much time in chasing them, but could not kill any.” After Smith presented his map to King James, a teenage Prince Charles was given leave to rename many of the locations for the version to be published. Rivers, mountains, islands, capes and Native settlements received English names. This is somewhat confusing in the case of Native settlements which are depicted on Smith’s map as though they were existing English towns with English names such as “London,” “Oxford,” and “Plimouth.” In fact there were no permanent English settlements at the time of Smith’s exploration, despite how it may appear on the map at first glance. A few of Prince Charles’s names have stuck. Among them Cape Ann, the Charles River and…Plymouth.Six years after Smith’s exploration, the Pilgrims set out for the New World. A good portion of the Separatist congregation that had been living in exile in Holland boarded a small vessel, the Speedwell, in Delfshaven and sailed to England. There they met up with another vessel, the Mayflower, in Southampton. Aboard the Mayflower were more members of the Separatist congregation who had been in England as well as a good number of “Strangers”–men and women who had signed on to the venture seeking a brighter future and not necessarily concerned with religious matters. The two ships were to sail together to the northern part of Virginia Colony. Europeans who arrived in North America before the Pilgrims also engaged in such observances. There is evidence of a thanksgiving service held in 1564 near present-day Jacksonville, Fla., by French Huguenots . The next year, Spanish documents refer to a thanksgiving Mass celebrated at St. Augustine by conquistadores (who would soon slaughter the Huguenots). Texas historians say Spanish colonists celebrated thanksgiving with the Manso Indians near present-day El Paso in 1598, not early enough to beat out Florida but still a generation before the celebration in Massachusetts. Among English settlers, there is evidence of a thanksgiving celebration in 1607 at a short-lived colony on the coast of Maine, and of two others among Virginia colonists in 1610 and 1619.The lack of awe inspired by Plymouth Rock is in inverse proportion to the story of how the Pilgrims came to stand upon it. Every grade school student knows the tale of the Mayflower. In 1620, its pilgrim sojourners fled religious persecution from the established Church of England. They embarked on a long and treacherous voyage across the Atlantic in the leaky, top-heavy Mayflower. Landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the Pilgrims befriended the native occupants, endured many hardships, then, after a successful first harvest in the New World, celebrated a Thanksgiving feast with their Native American friends in the autumn of 1621.That story is true, as far as it goes, but the story your grade school history book omitted is downright fascinating, and every Catholic should know of it. Before boarding the Mayflower, the Pilgrims were called “Separatists.” The religious “persecution” they came here to flee consisted mostly of their determination to purge the remnants of Catholicism from the established Church of England.  They were not anti-monarchists. They just wanted their king to be tolerant. The Mayflower Compact was not just an acknowledgement of royal authority. It was also a wise effort to remind Pilgrims and non-Pilgrim employees of the Company aboard that they were all in it together. They were a bit grim. They allowed non-Pilgrims to take Christmas off but quashed any fun. They survived better than single, male adventurers because they had families and a larger purpose, as well as because they found Massasoit a both self-interested and civil ally, as were they. Well, someone quite forgot about post civil war England and the fact that many of the pilgrims were fleeing England after the collapse of the commonwealth and the fall of Cromwell... anyway - they weren't a bunch of happy go lucky lovies for sure and they did set out to remove (physically) the nations that were there thousands of years before they decided to land on Plymouth Rock. There's a well known such episode when they made a point of "gifting" the local native Americans with blankets they knew were infected with smallpox that killed well over half that tribe. Or that they made a point of treating them as subhuman... nice people. As can be said by native Americans especially: Plymouth Rock landed on us!

The UN-Thankful for Captain John Smith 

And there's no question that his work as an explorer and mapmaker helped create "English America" and spurred colonization to the New World.“He surveyed the whole of the area from what is now the Canadian border all the way down to Cape Cod," says Firstbtook. "And he published two years later his map of New England and also a book called A Description of New England." Many of Smith's names for places stuck, such as the Charles River, Charlestown, Boston and Salem. And it turns out that Smith was responsible for Plymouth getting its name several years before the Pilgrims even arrived.Smith first called the place Accomack, but then during an audience with Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, he said the prince could change some names if he wished. So Accomack became New Plymouth.“Smith really identified Plymouth as an excellent place [for colonization] with a good harbor, and 'only in need of industrious people' — that was how he framed it," Firstbrook says.The Pilgrims toyed with the idea of hiring Smith to come with them, given Smith's vast experience in the New World, but eventually settled for purchasing his map and guidebook. He was described as a difficult and truculent man.  Smith’s vision for the New World was one of colonization by Englishmen and he mainly ignored any rights to the land that the indigenous people had. In 1614, six years before the arrival of the Mayflower, Captain John Smith – the same man rescued by Pocahontas in another famous tale – led two British vessels to the coast of Maine to barter for fish and furs. When Smith departed from the Maine shore, he left a lieutenant, Thomas Hunt, in command to load his ship with dried fish.Without consultation, Thomas Hunt sailed his ship south to what is now called Cape Cod Bay. Anchored off the coast of Patuxet (now Plymouth) in 1614, Hunt and his men invited two dozen curious native villagers aboard the ship. One of them was Squanto. Once aboard, the Indians – as the Europeans came to call them – were forced into irons in the ship’s hold. Kidnapped from their homes and families, they were taken on a six-week journey across the Atlantic. Not all the captives survived the voyage. Those who did survive, Squanto among them, were brought to Malaga off the coast of Spain to be sold as slaves.And I may mention here a special work of God's providence. There was a proud and very profane young man; one of the sea-men, of a lusty, able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be condemning the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations, and told them, that he hoped to help to cast half of them over board before they came to their journey's end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses fell on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(**)>> Thanksgiving. Many countries celebrate Thanksgiving. England celebrates it on the 4th of July.We celebrate Thanksgiving Day not because of the Pilgrims, but because of President Lincoln's Proclamation making Thanksgiving Day a National Holiday.  By the President of the United States A Proclamation  .  The true history is up for debate. I like to think of Thanksgiving as a way to be thankful for the harvest from my garden and yours. For the food we are blessed to share with family and friends. And for the Thanksgiving story? It's just a legend. Legends usually come from some small grain of truth and grow to become an ideal. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone. I hope you may share with family and friends...and you are safe and healthy.

(1)>> Mayflower Pilgrims.  Religious freedom was not at all what they wanted. Of course, they wanted to practice their religion unhindered, but they regarded Holland, a 17th-century society with real religious freedom, as a land where its members were exposed to too many ideas and temptations. They craved the isolation that they would have in the new world. One thing many people may not know is the fact that the Puritans of Plymouth Colony were intolerant to those who differed from their religion. The Puritans believed in infant baptism while the Baptists (specifically the Seventh Day Baptists) believed in adult baptism. This resulted in arrests, trials and excommunications from the church in Plymouth.As a result, John Clarke (to whom I'm related) petitioned Charles I (and his son Charles II after the British revolution) to grant a charter for the Rhode Island colony. This is where the very "first" Baptist church in North America was (and is) located. There wasn't any religious freedom or tolerance in the Pilgrim colonies. It was that religion's way or you were cast out of the community into the wilderness. And it was unlikely that you would be welcomed with open arms by any others since it would mean having to give up your religious beliefs and "convert" to the belief system of the new community.  So much for religious tolerance.....

" a betrayal of our values" . Syrian refugee Myth.

With the so called "Syrian Refugee" Crisis . I decided to write this in regards to the "guilt trip" we are being so infused with . First of all , President Obama said on Monday morning that the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed more than 100 people on Friday should not affect the small intake of Syrian refugees into the United States. The comments were a direct rebuke to the governors of Alabama and Michigan, who announced over the weekend that their states would no longer resettle Syrian refugees because of security concerns. They were joined by the governors of Texasand Arkansas on Monday morning. While no Syrians have settled in Alabama since the start of the country's uprising in 2011, Michigan is home to a large Arab and Middle Eastern community and at least 200 Syrians have found homes there, according to data compiled by the New York Times. That number was likely to rise after the Obama administration's announcement in September that the US would take in at least  (3)>> 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, a nearly tenfold increase in the number of Syrians who have settled here since 2012.  (1)>> "Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values," he said during remarks at the G20 economic summit in Antalya, Turkey. “We are a nation of immigrants.” It is every American politician’s incantation, usually prefatory to some shibboleth lauding “strength in our diversity.” The creed of America as nation-of-immigrants (hereafter the “NOI creed”) is now unquestioned by Americans and foreigners alike.  The fact over the last decade President Obama was trying to get to our gullibility ?  The American backlash against refugees is based largely on the fear that a Paris-style attack could be replicated in America if the US began to shoulder its burden of the refugee crisis.

One BIG LIE after Another....

Back in 2010 we were all again reminded by him when he was fighting against immigration reform with the American GOP Congress . President Obama heralded America as a (2)>> "nation of immigrants" defined not by blood or birth, but by "fidelity to the shared values that we all hold so dear."   Are we  Americans to think that all the people who came here to this continent came here "out of love" to start " anew" ?. Think how many "whitewashed" history books we have to rewrite .Misrepresenting the process of European colonization of North America, making everyone an immigrant, serves to preserve the "official story" of a mostly benign and benevolent USA, and to mask the fact that the pre-US independence settlers, were, well, settlers, colonial setters, just as they were in Africa and India, or the Spanish in Central and South America.  Buried beneath the tons of propaganda — from the landing of the English "pilgrims" (fanatic Protestant Christian evangelicals) to James Fennimore Cooper’s phenomenally popular "Last of the Mohicans" claiming "natural rights" to not only the indigenous peoples territories but also to the territories claimed by other European powers — is the fact that the founding of the United States was a division of the Anglo empire, with the US becoming a parallel empire to Great Britain. From day one, as was specified in the Northwest Ordinance that preceded the US Constitution, the new republic for empire (as Jefferson called the US) envisioned the future shape of what is now the lower 48 states of the US. They drew up rough maps, specifying the first territory to conquer as the "Northwest Territory," ergo the title of the ordinance. That territory was the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region, which was filled with indigenous farming communities.
Welcome all , put them on Welfare .

So how can we "welcome" the refugees when in analyzing new Census reports, the Center for Immigration Studies found that immigrant families with one or more children use welfare far more than "native" American families. Three-fourths of immigrant households using welfare are headed by legal immigrants. Legal immigration is supposed to benefit the country, yet so many legal immigrants are not able to support themselves or their children. This raises important questions about the selection criteria used for legal immigration. The media loves offering false analogies to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. But the Jews were a stateless people then. They had no country of their own go to. Muslims have more countries than nearly every other religion on the planet. They choose to go to the wealthiest Western countries, rejecting Slovenia and Bulgaria for Germany and Sweden, because they want money and they want easy money.Syrian Muslims are not refugees. They’re migrants. Only Christians and other non-Muslims are refugees. The costs are amazing we can't do this for our homeless vets , or homeless Americans : Upon arrival in the United States, each refugee is eligible for a $1,975 arrival and placement grant that is managed by one of nine refugee resettlement agencies working with the federal government. At least $1,125 of that grant must be spent on housing, including a bed for each person, basic furniture such as a couch, kitchen items including dishes and silverware, and weather-appropriate clothing. The remainder is used to cover additional costs for the aid agency. Low-income refugee families with children may be eligible for temporary assistance for needy families, a welfare program in which state rules govern eligibility and the amount of money families receive, for up to five years. Immigrants without children or otherwise not eligible for the temporary assistance program qualify for the refugee cash assistance program run by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Eligibility for that program lasts eight months.Elderly, blind or disabled refugees may be eligible for cash assistance through the Supplemental Security Income program for up to nine years. THIS BLEW ME AWAY : HEALTH CARE:Low-income refugees may be eligible for Medicaid for up to seven years. While immigrants to the U.S. are not generally eligible for Medicaid, refugees invited to move to the U.S. are exempt. Each state determines which refugees meet the eligibility requirements. Those who don't qualify for Medicaid can receive refugee medical assistance for up to eight months.WORK:Refugees must register with the Social Security Administration after arrival and are almost immediately eligible for a work permit. Social services, including job placement programs, are available to refugees for up to five years. (4)>> OTHER ASSISTANCE:Low-income refugees may also be eligible for food-assistance programs. Obama's Syrian refugee plan to cost $55 billion ! A recent analysis finds that admitting 10,000 refugees to the United States presents a net lifetime cost to taxpayers of $6.5 billion, meaning that under the current plan to admit 85,000 refugees this fiscal year, taxpayers will be on the hook for $55 billion. For the cost of resettling one refugee in America, we could successfully resettle 12 refugees in the region. Creating safe-zones in Syria and the region is a vastly more effective and compassionate strategy. With immigration at a record high, deficits surging, wages flat-lining, schools overcrowding, crime rising, and terrorism threats increasing, it is time to place priority on protecting the safety of Americans and their financial security. We face a real crisis.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>> "Slamming the door". Unfortunately, in this 'war of words' ... those who control the semantics, in this case the illegal alien lobby, guarantees that the choice of words and phrases used will essentially control the debate.  That is why the pro-illegals crowd will NEVER use the word"illegal" in conjunction with "immigrants," so that when they refer to our country as a "nation of immigrants," they are able to obfuscate and blur what should be a perfectly clear view of very contrary facts! In a very subtle but complex way, the illegal alien lobby is getting most Americans to submissively place themselves on par with those illegal "immigrants" who are invading our 'nation of immigrants!'  By controlling the dialogue the pro-crowd has taken the issue out of our control, and placed it in the hands of those countries who are exporting their citizens.  It is a form of psychological warfare, using propaganda as a support for illegal aliens, primarily from Hispanic and Latino countries, who are demographically overwhelming our country.  It is propaganda meant to disarm Americans so that we will not resist the "human tsunami" of some 23 million illegal aliens that have already invaded and balkanized America, and continue to arrive at a rate of 10,000 per day.(1-8)  Unfortunately the pacification seems to be working, since most Americans, along with the media, have readily accepted the notion that 'we are a nation of immigrants' as being true and factual! (2)>> "nation of immigrants" By 1776, British colonists—mostly English, but with strong Scottish, Welsh, and Irish contingents, along with New York’s Dutch colonials and later German arrivals—had created an American branch of British civilization. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, they were long-settled: almost 170 years in Virginia, over 150 in Massachusetts. At great effort—and at the expense of the Indians they uprooted and the African slaves they imported—colonial Americans formed a nation in their own image. The diversity of their settlements reflected the variety of their British origins. David Hackett Fischer’s magisterial Albion’s Seed traces four great British colonial migrations that leave their mark still: Puritans from East Anglia to New England, Cavaliers from the West Country to Virginia, Quakers from the Midlands to the Delaware, and northern Britons, including the Scots-Irish, to the American backcountry.(3)>> 10,000 Syrian refugees.  House Democrats on Thursday sent President Obama an unmistakable warning that they don't trust his plan to resettle thousands of Syrian refugees in the United States, and that they need to hear more details about that plan. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers voted with the GOP to overwhelmingly pass legislation that many would say would halt Obama's plan to resettle 10,000 Syrians in the United States. The vote resulted in enough Democratic support to override a veto of the bill, which President Obama has promised.(4)>> OTHER ASSISTANCE. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops posted a PDF on their website breaking down available assistance for refugees resettled in the United States. The information is based on a reportfrom the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The Paris attacks . Serious opinion .

 I send my condolences and sympathies to all the families and victims who died in the Paris attacks  . 

This hast  be one of the worst attacks on the European continent. It's horrible  to imagine it , it seems that there are no safe zones in this violent world.   Its also an act of war, the French government has to act . There are so many details that the terrorists were paramilitary , there is no escaping the facts that they  (2)>> had weapons , and bombs  .  The French Republic was invaded by the enemy that it fed and harbored.  I have to get to nitty gritty of the problem, in many aspects the French government is to blame .  There is a tremendous controversy these days about (1)>> the no-go zones in France. Which have been havens for breeding extremists who migrate , and infiltrate . Set up enclaves for Jihadists. The whole European continent could be ready to explode again.  There is abundant evidence that there really are no-go zones, despite all the denial. See this video, and more: here is a video about how Muslims plotted to ambush Swedish police with firebombs. Another video shows riots that followed police trying to make an arrest in a Belgian Muslim suburb. Here is video of Muslim riots in Trappes, France. And here is a video showing the plight of the remaining French women in a Muslim-dominated area of France. Here is a video showing Muslim youths running amok in Paris. In Paris, Muslims firebombed a bus with fifty passengers inside, and Muslim riots are spiraling out of control in Sweden. Sounds crazy , but the  (3)>>French "openness" was a major contributor as to why the terrorists were able to succeed . The influx of immigrants from the middle-east , the lack of a sound national security law makes the door wide open. Raise questions about how effective France's efforts have been to improve security following the Charlie Hebdo killings, and whether lawmakers there will change their position on immigration in the face of Europe's refugee crisis. France's response will have to be carefully measured to prevent isolating, and perhaps further radicalizing, members of its Muslim community . It is mind boggling that the European Union, as well as it member states, do not deny citizenship to those who have gone to Syria to wage jihad and then return, to France and elsewhere. The reason is that it would make someone "stateless" and is a violation of international law. Obviously this is absurd at this point in time. Passports should be confiscated when these potential killers leave France (or the U.S.) and citizenship permanently revoked. The European Union has dithered on this issue with horrible consequences. The precise origins of the terrorists are not known, but we could have a "cautionary guess">>4

Terrorism &  rise of the  Police State.

Are we becoming a police state? Is anyone seriously even asking that question anymore? The question shd be, "What can we do to end this police state?" Is there anything we can do at this point? Restore the 4th group wasn't even advocating the repeal of the Patriot Act but just the repeal of some parts of it. Are Americans that cowardly or unable to think for themselves that we can't see that the Patriot Act needs to be repealed entirely? Unfortunately, the police state tends to harass women, minorities and poor people, so some wealthy people living in their gated communities might be unaffected. Since Americans have been conditioned toward selfishness, they don't care unless it affects them directly. So the emphasis is on attacking poor people who don't have the resources to defend themselves. By the time this starts to affect the affluent it'll be way too late to turn things around. Two primary groups: One, Islamic extremist groups themselves, who use the clampdown as “evidence” that there is supposedly no room for Muslims in the secular West that has declared war on Islam; and two, Europe’s growing far-right, who will use the attacks as “evidence” that there is supposedly no room for Muslims in the secular West that should declare war on Islam.Many civil liberties advocates fear it might be. We have seen this all before; it should be oddly familiar. The reaction to the horrific January 2015 Paris attacks was equally predictable; the knee-jerk Islamophobia ignored the crucial context for the tragic attack — namely the fact that it was was the catastrophic U.S.-led war on Iraq and torture at Abu Ghraib, not Charlie Hebdo cartoons, that radicalized the shooters. Also ignored was the fact that the extremist attackers were sons of émigrés from Algeria, a country that for decades bled profusely under barbarous French colonialism, which only ended after an even bloodier war of independence in 1962 that left hundreds of thousands of Algerians dead. There are, it is often claimed, some five million Muslims in France, making it the largest Muslim community in western Europe. In fact, there are five million people of North African origin in France. Most are secular. A growing number have, in recent years, become attracted to Islam. But even today, according to a 2011 poll by the l’Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (Ifop), only 40% call themselves “observant Muslims” – and only 25% attend Friday prayers. It was in the wake of the January attacks that France expanded its already towering surveillance state. The Guardian in an article titled, “France passes new surveillance law in wake of Charlie Hebdo attack,” reported:The new law will allow authorities to spy on the digital and mobile phone communications of anyone linked to a “terrorist” inquiry without prior authorisation from a judge. It forces internet service providers and phone companies to give up data upon request.Intelligence services will have the right to place cameras and recording devices in private homes and install so-called keylogger devices that record every key stroke on a targeted computer in real time. The authorities will be able to keep recordings for a month and metadata for five years.One of the most contentious elements of the bill is that it allows intelligence services to vacuum up metadata, which would then be subject to analysis for potentially suspicious behaviour. The metadata would be anonymous, but intelligence agents could follow up with a request to an independent panel for deeper surveillance that could yield the identity of users.Despite having allegedly lacked these capabilities before the “Charlie Hebo attack,” it would be revealed shortly after that indeed, French security agencies were extensively familiar with the attackers years beforehand – letting the suspects “drop from their radars” just 6 months before the attack occurred, precisely the amount of time generally required for planning and executing such an attack. France’s police state apparatus is one of the continent’s toughest. Article 13 of its 2014-19 defense appropriation legislation permits monitoring, collecting and maintaining Internet user data.Without judicial oversight. Requiring ISPs and web sites to provide government with information on users’ activities.Authorizes government surveillance over any conduct deemed potentially harmful to French “scientific or economic potential.” La Quadrature du Net calls itself an NGO involved in “defend(ing) the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet.”

“(A)dvocat(ing) for the adaption of French and European legislation to the founding principles of the Internet…”

“(M)ost notably the free circulation of knowledge.” Unrestricted free expression. It commented on Article 13 of France’s defense bill. Saying it “turned (France) into a surveillance state.”

“(By) drastically extend(ing) the exceptional regime of extrajudicial surveillance against terrorism, for broad motives, including for the purpose of ‘preserving scientific and economic interests of France which could enable total.surveillance of political activists, journalists, corporate watchdogs, etc.’

“(T)his is a totally unacceptable breach of the separation of powers and an enabler for catastrophic violations of fundamental rights on a massive scale…”

New French anti-terrorism legislation adds more draconian measures. Civil liberties were eviscerated with little debate.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>> the no-go zones.   There are probably many more Muslim ghettos eight years on from this 2006 post via The 751 No-Go Zones of France :: Daniel Pipes.They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are convienently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations and map delineations. What are they? Those places in France that the French state does not control. They range from two zones in the medieval town of Carcassone to twelve in the heavily Muslim town of Marseilles, with hardly a town in France lacking in its ZUS. The ZUS came into existence in late 1996 and according to a 2004 estimate, nearly 5 million people live in them.  The French Interior Ministry has created a new type of no-go zone, called Zones de Sécurité Prioritaires (ZSP), or Priority Security Zones. The first batch contains 15 of them, basically the Muslim-majority regions of major cities like Lille, Paris, Strasbourg, Lyons, and Marseilles, as well as in French Guyana.  (2)>> had weapons , and bombs  . There is always a clue to how such an attack may have been funded , suspicions arise . The Kalashnikov's  , and wearing suicide belts , Eight Is- state terrorists. France outlaws most gun ownership and it’s almost impossible to legally acquire a high-powered rifle such as an AK-47, so where did the weapons in the Nov. 13 terror attack—not to mention the bloody January assault by Islamic terrorists on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine and the 2012 shootings by a militant in Toulouse—come from? The answer: Eastern Europe, most likely, where the trafficking of deadly small arms is big, shady business. And where local authorities find it difficult to intervene. The seizures likely made just a tiny dent in the pool of available weapons. “The fact that a Kalashnikov or a rocket launcher can be acquired for as little as 300 to 700 Euros in some parts of the EU indicates their ready availability for [organized crime groups], street gangs or groups orchestrating high-profile attacks resulting in significant numbers of casualties,” Europol, the EU’s law-enforcement agency, explained in a policy brief. (3)>>French "openness". France has had a history of open arms to welcome immigrants into their country.   Unfortunately in this day and age that might not be such a good thing.  If each year we add 300k immigrants and refugees, voting patterns change QUICKLY. we all know how these islamic terrorists attack happen. White liberals support mass refugee propaganda on the tv by showing little kids dying but when we see news on other station the 99% of the refugees are well fed men. It is like you have no idea what is happening in Europe. Ignorance is not bliss. >>4"cautionary guess". The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for the catastrophic attacks in the French capital, calling them “the first of the storm” and mocking France as a “capital of prostitution and obscenity,” according to statements released in multiple languages on one of the terror group’s encrypted messaging accounts.The remarks came in a communiqué published in Arabic, English and French on the Islamic State’s account on Telegram, a messaging platform, and then distributed via its supporters on Twitter, according to a transcript provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist propaganda.

Ben Carson's Dilemma.

Remember in order to be "elected" in politics you have to at least be "educated" to a degree . Ben Carson may now be viewed in the more extreme of the fringe right . Forget Donald Trump , and his outrageous statements . Carson is the king of saying things  that would be  (**)>> controversial if not silly . This week Ben Carson is our winner for the stupid .  Ben Carson has given comedy writers and Twitter wags in the past weeks, it’s his stubborn belief that the Biblical prophet Joseph built the pyramids that’s captured the public’s imagination the most. Self-serious pundits, meanwhile, bemoan this spasm of ridicule on a subject properly relegated to strange-smelling occult bookstores and dusty UseNet forums.Here’s the problem:  (1)>> Carson’s pyramid theory isn’t really religious, not in the sense that it is a part of official Seventh Day Adventist church doctrine. Carson appears to have extrapolated from official church doctrine regarding Biblical infallibility and Scripture as an “authentic and historical account” that the grain Joseph collected during the “seven years of plenty” must have been stored somewhere—and at some point he alighted on the same theory that briefly swept the world’s intelligentsia in the sixth century. (As one does.) Indeed, for a certain subsection of voters, Carson’s pyramid theory isn’t proof Adventists’ beliefs are a little strange, but rather have come around to polite society consensus in at least one respect—they’re not as virulently anti-Catholic they used to be. Hence, my personal favorite headline of the cycle: “Ben Carson Agrees With Gregory of Tours.” Real-estate mogul Donald Trump has repeatedly mocked presidential rival Ben Carson since it was revealed that Carson believes an unusual theory about the Egyptian pyramids."I think it's a ridiculous situation. I mean he's talking about the pyramids were made for grain," Trump said of Carson during a Fox Business interview on Friday. "And if you look at the pyramids, they're solid."  Carson has other problems as well. In a report highly touted by  (2)>>CNN the day before, the network looked into the soft-spoken doctor's claims of being a violent young teenager.In his acclaimed memoir "Gifted Hands," Carson described incidents such as attempting to stab a friend, throwing a rock at another kid, and trying to attack his mother with a hammer. He said he then had an epiphany and became the calm person he is today. There now appears that he "lied" habitually to further his cause . Trump has questioned Carson several times about a childhood story in his autobiography "Gifted Hands" in which Carson described once trying to stab a friend or relative. He also questioned a story Carson has told about hitting his mother with a hammer. “It's a strange situation when you talk about hitting your mother on the head with the hammer," Trump said on ABC's "This Week." "It's a weird deal going on and I hope it all works out because I don’t want to see Ben have problems over this stuff.”

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>Carson’s pyramid theory isn’t really religious, Carson said that :  "My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids in order to store grain," he said. "And all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But you know, it would have to be something awfully big, if you stop and think about it. And I don't think it would just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain." (2)>>CNN the day before.  I think he shot himself in the foot with all these revelations about West Point, something about hitting his mom with a hammer, attempting to stab or shoot someone.  CNN in late breaking news has obtained information that presidential candidate ben carson has admitted to being involved in a criminal conspiracy to commit theft, senior investigative reporter Dana bash is standing by, so tell me dana, what is the story, well Anderson I am standing outside carsons old high school, we have information that when carson was a junior in high school, carson in conjunction with his first base coach possible entered into a conspiracy to steal second base. we have contacted carson who said, when asked if there was a conspiracy with his coach he said, the coach told me to go on the first pitch. carson appeared to very calm when asked about the theft and appeared to be proud of it.. we contacted carsons campaign manager and asked him if carson ever returned the stolen base, his response was ,are you f-----n kidding me, and yes anderson he was not happy with the question democratic candidate hillary clinton when told of the crime said, although the statue of limitations have run out on the theft, she would use her contacts in the obama justice department to ascertain ifcarson and the coach could be still prosecuted for acting in a criminal conspiracy,,clinton added any one running for the highest office in the land must be above any dishonest behavior. (**)>> controversial if not silly . We've been putting up with almost 8 years of Obama's "controversial statements" (and ACTIONS) and less than half the nation seems to care nor mind about them. So screw it. Nothing matters. Say whatever you want, it doesn't phase me, and I won't think any less of you. I don't even care how good of a president you will be. The pairing of Obama/Bush has lowered the bar so much (and I should really include Bill Clinton as the third) that my next door neighbor could be president and do just as good a job. In fact, we could have a computer randomly pick a name from the list of registered voters and they get their shot running the nation. It doesn't matter. Anyone can do the job. ANYONE. And probably just as well, and just as badly.