Category → Immigration
Southern Poverty Law Center issues Insane Press Release
SOUTHERN POLICY LAW CENTER
400 Washington Ave. Montgomery, AL 36104
Press Release
September 16, 2016 — Montgomery, Alabama
Today the Southern Poverty Law Center is making a long overdue, bold statement about Islamophobia and the need for cultural acceptance in the West.
“Two days ago Pope Francis called French priest Jacques Hamel a martyr and spoke badly about the men who killed him. While the SPLC always stands against murder, and we feel sad for Father Hamel, it is important to choose words carefully so as not to inflame Islamophobia and hatred towards Muslims,” says SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok.
“After two days of soul searching here at the SPLC, we have decided to bring nuance to the sad death of Father Hamel by strongly condemning the words of both Pope Francis and Father Hamel,” Potok says.
“Calling Father Hamel a ‘martyr’ casts Islam in an artificially negative light, and brings undue attention to just one small aspect of the rich belief system that Islam encompasses,” says Morris Dees, SPLC founder.
“Therefore, the SPLC calls on Pope Francis to apologize for his hurtful words, and to issue an apology on behalf of Father Hamel, for having called the men ‘Satan’. We understand that at the time of that cruel epithet Father Hamel was under some duress, however there is never any place for Islamophobia. Especially in a church,” says Dees.
Press inquiries can be directed to Wendy Via, Chief Communications Officer, at (334) 956-8200 or Toll-Free at (888) 414-7752.
#####
A Day of Infamy, Fifteen Years Later
Fifteen years ago, on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, just beginning to give testimony on hunting and land conservation issues.
Three minutes into my presentation, our entire room containing 200 people was chased out by the Capitol police, from fear of another attack like had just happened in New York and Shanksville, Pa.
Within weeks I was at the crash site, working with the National Park Service, and I went on to play a central role in shaping the Flight 93 memorial, the heroes of which I often think of.
What irks me is that since that day of infamy, America has become less safe, more politically correct, and less able to talk openly about the single force that created 9/11 (Saudi Arabia, Islam).
Hopefully we get this election right and get our great nation out of the ditch.
God bless America.
A Million Pretty Butterflies, a Million Angry Hornets
Though many people see me as a tough guy, I am not immune to emotional pain and frustration, and the past two weeks have been filled with plenty of both, and so I have danced around the issues that keep popping up in order to avoid publicly dealing with these hurtful events.
Most events are Islam-inspired, Islam-directed, Islam-implemented murders in America and France.
The mass media and social media is run by hardened political partisans who will not discuss Hillary Clinton’s illegal actions or her illegal political whitewashing by the Obama administration, who will not accurately inform the public about who is committing violence against French citizens and American police officers, and who instead direct their efforts at undermining everything that Western Civilization has stood for, lo, these past thousand years, if not past three hundred.
For example, The Mirror, a major newspaper of record in Britain, continues to describe how a white truck drove through a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, France. No real disclosure of the fact that the young Arab man was a radical Muslim. Nope; the truck drove itself. Can’t admit those motives!
For example, a young African American radical, former member of the Nation of Islam, active Black Panther member, who murders three police officers and seriously injures another four in Baton Rouge is described as a Marine. Not a former Marine, but a Marine, as if he is an active duty Marine. As if Marines routinely murder police officers. Nope, they cannot correctly ascribe his insane motives, unless the media can smear the military.
For example, Black Lives Matter – inspired murderers are described as indirect-indirect-indirect victims of police brutality, not the radical, violent, anarchist traitors they are.
For example, racist Black Lives Matter violence is routinely described as non-violent protests, despite the fact that Black Lives Matter is most accurately described as “The Klan With a Tan,” because their members are the most racist, most bigoted, most violent activists presently on American streets, in public libraries, and in university buildings across America. And what does that say about their supporters and defenders? Bigots all, each and every one.
Last week I was in New York City, surrounded by a million pretty little butterflies, young people with multiplicities of tattoos, hair colors, piercings, uncommon clothes, impractical shoes, and other accoutrements they believe really set them apart as individuals.
They were walking, sitting, talking, protesting, many striking up dramatic poses with cigarettes, and arms akimbo, men striking angular body arrangements, usually with wrists dramatically flapping.
All this self-expression is based on an utter materialism at odds with the preponderance of their social behavior and leftist political views that demonize everything required to clothe and feed them.
Who cares, they think, they are living in a pampered un-reality of Twitter hashtags and imaginary grievances.
Such a slavish shallowness exists completely at odds with the hard realities surrounding these young people. But America’s material success has put these kids to sleep. Heck, material success has even allowed them to turn against America and blame her for a whole litany of imaginary and ridiculous crimes.
These kids are America’s future.
Meanwhile, it’s serious people in suits, in offices, and driving trucks and trains and planes that keep everything moving forward for the pretty little butterflies, content as they are to flit from one flowery cafe to another, dependent as they are on everything being made for and delivered to them by someone else.
What worries me is that buzzing around the edges of our comfy little world, and getting closer all the time, is a horde of a million angry hornets.
Hornets are incredibly carnivorous and aggressive, though some hornet species lay their eggs on the host body and fly away. A month or a year later, their eggs hatch and their little babies burrow inside, and then eat their way out from inside of the now-dying host.
See a metaphor here, dear reader?
Western civilization is filled to the brim with soft, gentle, kind, clueless little pretty butterflies. They gently fly and float from one soft spot to another, incorrectly believing the whole world is like this. New York City just has a concentration of them.
Meanwhile, misdirected leaders in Western Civilization have allowed the horde of angry hornets to come inside our cozy little home, and they refuse to spray the cloud of angry hornets buzzing furiously around us with deadly bug spray, before we all get stung. Most of our leaders are themselves sweet little butterflies, living in a cocoon of armed guards and high fences, while themselves denouncing private gun ownership and strong walls keeping our tax-paying citizens safe.
Human civilizations come and go. History demonstrates they always do. Today’s powerhouse nation becomes tomorrow’s lunch for a more powerful opponent. Refugees stream from one place to another, fleeing bloody murder and rapine and slavery. That is history, but it is also happening right now in the Middle East and North Africa, places run by Muslims.
That stuff is coming to Western Civilization.
The million angry hornets will eat the million gentle, pretty little butterflies.
Orlando shooting = immigration policy overhaul
The Muslim shooter of 49 innocent Americans in Orlando made his political and personal positions clear for a long time, in tweets, videos, facebook posts, and then recorded telephone 911 calls from the bloody floor of the bar he shot up.
Omar Mateen stated up front for months that he was a follower of ISIS, and he was following the plain dictates of Islam.
The Koran explicitly lists the cruel punishments for gays and infidels, and Omar Mateen followed through like a good Muslim.
The mainstream media is doing everything they can to digress, ignore, avoid, and pretend that the cause of this horrendous event is anything but what it is: Another Islamic attack on Americans.
Islam is a philosophy incompatible with Western civilization. Oh, Americans have big hearts, and we are always trying to find ways to make everyone under the sun feel welcome. But that should not involve committing national suicide. That is the very definition of political correctness.
Trying to punish law-abiding Americans for the actions of insane immigrants and followers of insane belief systems makes no sense, and we will not abide efforts by liberals like US Senator Bob Casey to strip Americans of their Constitutional rights.
The irony is that the Left wants to strip us of our rights for committing thought crimes, ie “hate crimes,” while the actual haters are allowed to roam freely among us, committing crimes in the name of their inhuman belief system.
The failure of the Left in its response to the Orlando shooting is overwhelming. America is being split into citizens who see plainly what is wrong, ie anti-gay violence by religiously correct Muslims, and those who ignore the obvious outcomes of their defective immigration policies.
Think you’re nuts? You’re in good company
Lots of Americans wonder just how normal they are. Yes, we are told constantly that normal is relative, and while that’s not true, it is true that lots of us are nuts.
Want proof?
Go food shopping. Bring a long list of items. Start in the fruit section and end at the other end of the store, probably the dairy aisle. About half way through you’ll be muttering to yourself, trying to figure out what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Listen carefully. Lots of others around you are also thoughtfully contemplating being lost amidst the richness. They, too, are quietly muttering.
By the time you are three quarters done, people have given up any pretense of quiet. People at the end of their shopping list are outright talking out loud to themselves. Not even trying to hide it.
Living the iPhone lifestyle leaves most of us blathering fools, struggling to connect the myriad dots we’ve happily forced upon our otherwise easier lives. Dots of the kids, dots for meals, dots for significant dates, and dots for the food items we went shopping for.
Take heart. You’re not alone.
A special note on the other insanity, this one a political and cultural craziness justifying violence against peaceful political opponents who merely assemble to hear a political candidate they like speak.
It’s hypocrisy to blame the victim. But here it is, masquerading as news in most mainstream media outlets.
This insanity is new to America but old to Europe and other countries. We’ve seen it in South American countries wracked by corruption and government failure. We’ve seen it in the Middle East the past few years. We’ve seen it in Weimar Germany.
None of the other examples of political street violence bode well for where America is or will end up. At a certain point the Trump supporters will rally and defend themselves. At a certain point bystanders will come to their aid, with weapons.
Hillary and Bernie have not discouraged their followers from committing violence. Instead they’ve poured gas on the fire. It’s terrifying. It’s hard not to feel like we are watching the end of America. Where this all goes is anyone’s guess. Violence is both wrong and unsustainable. Human nature can only turn so many cheeks before the desire to self defend sets in.
Much more to be said about this insanity posing as political dissent. But let’s just leave it at this: Be careful what you start. When that ball gets rolling, there’s no turning back. America is the best nation ever, but it’s still subject to human flaws. Our Constitution did not find a way to stop people from committing crimes. It merely placed the power in the hands of The People, and if that power comes from the end of a gun, look out.
Memorial Day, aka Thank You Day
How Americans came to take their success and security for granted is a mystery. It is also dangerous, because much was lost to gain what we now are giving away for free, as if it is ours to give away at all.
Our security belongs to future citizens.
Are so many of our citizens really eyeballs deep in TV entertainment, to the point where they ignore the real problems around us?
All of the happiness, wealth, success, security we enjoy are attributable to mostly men who risked and sacrificed their lives and limbs that the rest of us can BBQ in the back yard in peace.
Obama’s apology to Japan for the US winning the brutal war that Japan started is representative of the weak and shallow thinking dominant in America today. It passes for “thoughtful,” but it is disrespectful to our servicemen who sacrificed for us.
On Monday, Americans officially remember the many men, and a few women, who gave everything so that our daily lives can be enjoyed peacefully. I thank you, each and every one of you, for what you did for me and my family.
This weekend is devoted to those departed and wounded servicemen.
In their honor, fly the flag, or salute it, or have your family say the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag as part of our collective remembrance and thanks. These are tokens of respect and appreciation.
Every action leads to opposite reaction
As anti-freedom gun-grabbers continue on in their march for government supremacy over the citizenry, they seem surprised when that same citizenry reacts.
Take Barack Hussein Obama, for example. Like Rapist-In-Chief Bill Clinton before him, Obama’s anti gun crusading has driven millions of Americans to either buy guns for the first time, or to buy even more guns and ammunition than they had before.
As the federal government and its Big Government allies in the mainstream media, academia, and activist groups amplify their assaults on citizen liberties, the citizens begin to coalesce into like-minded groups. In the beginning of America these were known as militia. Today they are simply loosely knit groups of advocates for the First Amendment, Second Amendment, and Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. They are reacting to the illegal and unconstitutional pressures being brought to bear on them collectively and individually, pressures under the color of “law.”
Today I watched as Shira Goodman and a bearded man with her walked around the crowd in the Pennsylvania State Capitol rotunda, where the annual Second Amendment rally was held. Shira and I have debated on live TV before. She represents CeaseFirePA, an anti-freedom and Big Government group. I imagine she was counting the number of people at the rally. It is true that the number of people at any given rally are an indication of the political strength they represent.
The place was packed. From top to bottom, side to side, you could barely move. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people today. Contrast that with the 25 people who showed up for CeaseFirePA’s rally two weeks ago.
Shira looked sallow and grim faced. The bearded man with her looked frightened, and he tightly clutched some case he was carrying.
We rally participants were fired up, and when one of the speakers (Rep. Daryl Metcalf, I think) pointed out that today we had shown up unarmed, and rue the day when we do show up armed, we loudly roared our support.
The political Left has been on an anti-America warpath for so long that it appears they do not realize how far they are pushing so many citizens. For decades normal Americans have conceded little and big victories to the Left, often with a sense of resignation that “things are changing.”
What is different about the gun issue, now, and different about now versus twenty years ago, is that an entire two generations of Americans have watched the Big Government Left practically swamp the average citizen.
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. The less our liberties and freedoms, the fewer our rights.
In a nation like America, based on laws and citizenship, the Left’s policy wins are increasingly perpendicular to the trajectory of America the nation and most of its citizens.
That is “the silent majority.”
Yes, it is true that millions of invaders have been ushered in by treasonous Federal servants, in an effort to tilt the vote balance forever in the favor of one Santa Claus after another, dispensing free things paid for by hard working taxpayers.
But the real result is a deep and building undercurrent of resentment. Call it the “Tea Party,” conservative movement, whatever, it is a groundswell of formerly free citizens fearful of losing the America they love and worked hard to create.
Statists like Shira Goodman and her friends at CeaseFirePA are so completely devoted to Big Government that they cannot comprehend a citizen rebellion. Like a horse, their blinders are so big that they cannot see what is happening around them. Sure, Marxists like Mark Potok at the Southern Poverty Law Center, another anti-freedom, anti-Christian outpost, are constantly cited by their Left friends in the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets. But that cat is out of the bag, and putting it back in is not going to happen without a hell of a fight and lots of scratches.
One wishes that all these crusading pushers would leave the citizens alone, so that we can go back to our lives, liberty, and pursuit of our happiness. But it ain’t gonna happen. These guys will just keep on pushing until the citizens have nowhere to turn.
And then look out.
Invasives & Sustainability
Invasives present a challenge to sustainability because they quickly fill gaps where natives take longer to grow and thrive. Natives evolved in their environment over long periods of time and they perform certain key services and functions that are necessary for the overall system to function properly.
As non-native invasives proliferate, they choke out the natives and reduce their ecosystem services. Almost always, the non-native invasives perform limited or no services, despite showy appearances. Their presence is totally unsustainable and is ruinous if left unchecked.
A day or so ago while walking on my favorite rail-trail, it was impossible to ignore the sickly sweet smell of Japanese honeysuckle, a huge invasive nearly everywhere in Pennsylvania. For whatever reason, Japanese honeysuckle has spread like wildlfire in the past few years. My only neighbor’s property is like Ground Zero, so whatever fight I am carrying on at my place is limited in effect by the invasive sanctuary across the boundary line. Like a shrub explosion.
Sure, the ruby throated hummingbirds benefit from honeysuckle, and who doesn’t like watching the gentle, delicate little birds flit around?
But this much honeysuckle is quickly crowding out native trees that benefit our native wildlife. Occasionally deer will browse the tender tips of a honeysuckle shrub, but after the first inch it’s just tough woody debris that deer won’t eat. So it grows pretty much unchallenged. And boy does it ever grow!
Along with Japanese honeysuckle comes barberry, multiflora rose, and autumn or Russian olive, often all popping up unannounced in large clumps. Interesting, isn’t it, that they all appear together? Once in a while a nasty ailanthus (“Tree of Heaven”) will push its way in among the other invaders.
After years of battling these non-native invasives, I have come to rely on pulling up the barberry by hand, usually with the aid of a length of re-bar, and spraying the smaller olives, honeysuckle, and multiflora rose with glyphosate. Sawing substantially into the larger honeysuckle shrubs and spraying the cut with glyphosate usually does the trick; it works much better than trying to spray the whole big shrub.
Intriguing, don’t you think, that the biggest advocates of fighting non-native invasives are the ones most aggressively pushing non-native invasives in the form of lawbreaking illegal border crashers?
Recently I was on the West Coast, in an area in the grip of a Biblical-size drought. Water scarcity is becoming a serious problem. Public demand for water far outstrips supply. A drive through the Central Valley revealed apocryphal “Dustbowl” conditions, with signs everywhere warning about the consequences of poor water management.
It is not a sustainable situation. Yet this area also holds the greatest number of illegal invaders in America, who put an unsustainable demand on other public services besides water. Public transportation, public schools, roads, highways, sewage treatment, public spaces like parks, police, fire and hospital services are all stretched way beyond capacity by the presence of the non-native, non-tax-paying invasives.
And yet the voting citizens of Los Angeles and California continue to aggressively vote for unsustainability.
Boggles the mind.
Israel’s Independence Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, So Where are We Today?
Israel Independence Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day are here.
Obviously these two milestones are related in the sense that out of the ashes of the European genocide against Europe’s Jewish minority (not to be confused with the similar and nearly simultaneous Muslim Arab ethnic cleansing of the Jewish minority once living in the Middle East, now presently applied to Christians there) arose the modern state of Israel on the soil of the ancient state of Israel.
Here in America most Jewish communities spend a full 24-hour period on Holocaust Remembrance Day reading the names of Nazi victims. By reading their names, they are in some small but meaningful way not forgotten. And by remembering them as people, larger society is supposed to remember what happened so that people, and government, do the necessary things so genocide does not happen again.
This is all sound logic to me, although it is questionable whether it works, or not.
Why am I sounding a bit skeptical here? Because the evidence isn’t supportive that this approach works, in the sense that it does not inspire humans around the globe to treat one another better, much less treat Jews any better. The evidence in front of us demonstrates that Holocaust Remembrance Day, with all its universalist activities, primarily appeals to Jews, their friends, and liberal-minded news reporters. Meanwhile, plenty of genocide is going on ever since, namely in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kurdistan, and now once again in the Middle East, where Muslim Arabs are sadistically rampaging among the religious and ethnic minorities among them.
And Israel has been under sustained and increasing attempted genocide from the day it was founded in 1948. Every libel, slander, lie and contrivance has been drummed up to delegitimize Israel and to justify the ceaseless murders of unarmed Jews within and outside Israel. Boycotts, divestment from Israeli companies, and sanctions against Israeli academic institutions and the government of Israel are proof that Israel, and Jews, receive an incredibly harsh and unjustified treatment from a world that really ought to know better.
Making things even worse, and totally odd to me and to most people I know, is the overwhelmingly liberal mindset American Jews maintain. Their liberal political views, on a policy-by-policy basis, are completely contrary to the Torah (the Bible) to which their ancestors swore loyalty and which created Western Civilization.
Abortion-on-demand and as a form of birth control, faith in big government, rejection of religion’s role in good government, gun control, you name it, every single one of the politically correct issues that liberal Jews believe in are at odds with their own founding document, the Bible.
One would logically conclude that a group of people who had recently undergone such incredibly painful and devastating attacks, round-ups, shot on sight, murder in the street, painful medical experiments, gassing, bodies burnt to hide the atrocity, and so on, you would think that the survivors and heirs would adopt a more self-preserving view. That is the conclusion that their friends have arrived at and said is needed many times, and asked why Jews don’t, for many years.
You know, why do most Jews vote for people and policies that are against their own interests? Like for Obama, or against gun rights?
That American Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of intense gun regulation is without question. Public surveys show it. Even more to the point are the lists of leaders on gun regulation; nearly all of them are Jews – Past and present US Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Metzenbaum, Lautenberg, Boxer – joined by an endless list of Jewish members of Congress, and not to mention the actual leaders of gun regulation, Josh Sugarmann, Shira Goodman, to name but a few, and not to mention the Jewish donors to anti-gun rights groups, like Bloomberg and Hechinger, to name but a few.
More locally, two years ago I sat in on a meeting between my then-newly elected state senator Democrat Rob Teplitz and a group of citizens gathered at a local Harrisburg synagogue. As the morning Boy Scout function there was the drawing attraction, and not everyone there was Jewish, there was one group of men who had just completed their prayers and who had then gathered to join in the following meeting with Senator Teplitz. Either the first or second question of the event came from a man in that group, who asked Senator Teplitz when he was going to become an ardent and active advocate for serious gun regulation. Heads nodded in agreement around the table, and Teplitz responded that he would be neither “too pro gun nor too anti gun.”
Further confusing many Americans is how vociferously anti-Israel so many American Jews have become. Whether by strongly supporting an obviously anti-Israel Obama or by actively participating in anti-Israel actions and activities, lots of American Jews clearly are at war with the one nation designed to protect them should the very things they are remembering now begin to happen once again.
Why would a tiny group of people, who have experienced such awful tragedies and injustices over and over again, seek to both disarm themselves and their fellow citizens in favor of big government, which has never anywhere been a friend to Jews or liberty, and also disarm and undermine the one country capable of protecting Jews should the you-know-what hit the fan?
Folks, I know you are moved by recalling victims and inured to maintaining victimhood. It is practically the Jewish identity to the point where “Holocaust worship” has been decried by the more religiously observant Jews; you know, the Bible believers.
If you really want to remember the European Holocaust and say “Never Again!” in a way that means something, then be able to defend yourself. Get a 12-gauge pump shotgun, learn to use it with buckshot and store it safely, and support a strong Israel capable of easily defending itself against all attackers. That’s it.
Otherwise, you just make people ask “Do Jews today really remember what happened, and do they really understand how important Israel is to them?”
In other words, people just must ask “are Jews really so smart?”