Monday, April 14, 2008
Hero: German immigrant takes bullet for U.S. 'ideals'
-- Jeffrey Jamaleldine took a bullet to his chin that blew out much of his jaw and nearly killed him while deployed in Iraq last year. The sacrifice is just part of his job, he says, and he'd go back to Iraq in a second if asked.
That is something that troubles his family, especially his father. Bashir Jamaleldine says his son is fighting an unjust war for America -- a sentiment shared by the majority of Germans. He wishes his son would get back to his "German roots."
Of his son's time in Iraq, the father says, "He went there to receive this bullet. If he would not have gone there, he wouldn't have been wounded; he wouldn't be in the hospital; he wouldn't be treated by a doctor. He would be living in peace with his family." Shaking his head with his son at his side, he adds, "He is more American than German."
Jeffrey Jamaleldine, a 31-year-old U.S. Army scout who proudly wears a Stetson hat agrees with his father on one thing: His love for America is unwavering. Jeffrey Jamaleldine moved to the United States to go to college in Missouri at the age of 18 and immediately fell in love with the United States and its culture. "You can go from rags to riches there. People still believe in that. It is not something that has gotten lost,"
And when the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, happened, he felt it was time for him to do something. By accident, he says he found out that with his green card, he could join the U.S. military. And in 2006, he did just that.
Last year, he paid a heavy price for his patriotism. Pinned down in a firefight with insurgents in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, Jamaleldine was shot in the face. While many Americans would consider Jamaleldine a hero, most in his home country don't. Germans largely oppose the Iraq war. The criticism doesn't bother him. He says even after getting wounded on the battlefield, he would go fight for America again if ordered back to Iraq.
"I still don't want to die, I love life, I enjoy life," he says. "But I would still make the sacrifice to go to Iraq again if I am called. If I have to go, I will -- to stand up for what I believe in," he says,
His father looks on in disbelief as he listens to his son, now an American citizen. "Why he's more American than a German, I don't know," he says. But Jeffrey Jamaleldine says joining the military was never about that, it was about defending American ideals.
"If we have people who want to change those ideals or take them away," he says, "then there are people like me or my platoon who stand up and fight for those ideals"
[personally I think his father is right on both counts: Jeffrey is more American than German in character, and Bashir never will get why. Our gain.]
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Services See Strong Showing for March Recruiting
WASHINGTON, April 10, 2008 – All military services met or exceeded their recruiting goals for March, Defense Department officials reported today. This makes the 10th straight month the services have hit their recruiting marks. All of the services have surpassed their recruiting goals for fiscal 2008 to date.
In the reserve components, the Army Reserve and Air National Guard topped recruiting efforts, with both hitting 121 percent of their goals. The Army National Guard and the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force reserves all made 100 percent of their recruiting goals for the month.
In active-duty retention, the Army and Marine Corps continued with strong showings this month, both exceeding their year-to-date goals.
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The Success of Iraq Policy
The rough edges of the Iraq war have inspired negative rhetoric and carefully considered judgments that the war has been a total loss. The critics cite the turmoil, scramble, expense and destruction that is part of any large scale military action, and conclude that even minimal amounts war chaos are unacceptable and were unnecessary; any cost is too costly; the effort has been a failure. The problems may well have come from conducting the war with such a degree of political correctness... [snip]
Have we achieved results worth the effort and expense, both human and financial? Republicans are not sure; they think, probably. Democrats are very sure; they think, no. Iraqis think, yes. Europe thinks, maybe, finally. The Middle East thinks, yes, finally, but will not to say so... [snip]
Contrary to the dominant media narrative, the Iraq war is working out as a global strategic success, albeit not to a comfortable time schedule or cost. A Walter Chronkite-type surrender won't be necessary, this time: America had the strength to endure, analyze, correct and advance the mission, and Europe and the Middle East have seen this light. [snip]
A League of Democracies might go a long way toward cooperative international efforts at worthwhile global management projects. We had hoped for this with the League of Nations and the United Nations. If ever we can make progress on international communal sanity, we might yet look back on Iraq and its reformation with pride, and relief.
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The Problem of Western Civilization
Western civilization seems to be deathly ill with a problem that has yet to be diagnosed. Some people suggest that the rise of Islam is the principle problem that faces the Occident in contemporary times. Other people suggest that a secularization of the Western people is the main quandary. Still others suggest that a balkanization of American culture is the primary dilemma. In my opinion the aforementioned problems are only symptoms of the true problem, which is that Westerners lack the willpower to defend their civilization [snip]
When Westerners do defend their culture, they are branded “racist,” “xenophobic,” or “fascist” by either foreign enemies or domestic traitors. For example, when it comes to the debate involving immigration, La Raza, which translates into English to mean “The Race,” is an ethnocentric organization for Mexicans that quickly labels organizations that are opposed to mass and illegal immigration to the United States as “bigots.” Why is it that foreigners have a right to promote their interests, but Westerners are not allowed to promote their own national interests in their homeland without being called derogatory names? [snip]
The multiculturalists are trying to force Westerners to assimilate to ways of life that are foreign in origin rather than insist on immigrant assimilation of its culture...
[Recommended > ]
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DOTS...
Religion's evolution tests tolerance
Europe's largest mosque was built in Rome – right in the wheelhouse of Christendom. If the Vatican looked askance at this religious arriviste three kilometres from St. Peter's Basilica, it made no comment. That sumptuous mosque, opened in 1995, cost $50 million to build, a cost borne by 23 Muslim donor nations, though the bulk of funding – $35 million – was contributed by Saudi Arabia. A country which, by the way, allows no Christian churches on its soil...
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Saudi Arabia is prime source of terror funds, U.S. says
Washington - Saudi Arabia remains the world's leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counter-terrorism official said Tuesday. Stuart A. Levey, a Treasury undersecretary, told a Senate committee that the Saudi government had not taken important steps to go after those who finance terrorist organizations or to prevent wealthy donors from bankrolling extremism through charitable contributions...
[and where does Saudi Arabia get its money? We need to start drilling.]
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Drop Dead, Colombia
Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocks a trade deal with America's closest South American ally.
THE YEAR 2008 may enter history as the time when the Democratic Party lost its way on trade. Already, the party's presidential candidates have engaged in an unseemly contest to adopt the most protectionist posture, suggesting that, if elected, they might pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yesterday, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared her intention to change the procedural rules governing the proposed trade promotion agreement with Colombia. President Bush submitted the pact to Congress on Tuesday for a vote within the next 90 legislative days, as required by the "fast-track" authority under which the U.S. negotiated the deal with Colombia. Ms. Pelosi says she'll ask the House to undo that rule.
That political turf-staking, and the Democrats' decreasingly credible claims of a death-squad campaign against Colombia's trade unionists, constitutes all that's left of the case against the agreement. Economically, it should be a no-brainer -- especially at a time of rising U.S. joblessness. At the moment, Colombian exports to the United States already enjoy preferences. The trade agreement would make those permanent, but it would also give U.S. firms free access to Colombia for the first time, thus creating U.S. jobs. Politically, too, the agreement is in the American interest, as a reward to a friendly, democratic government that has made tremendous strides on human rights, despite harassment from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.
Perhaps Colombia's government and people will understand. We don't.
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Obama Pledges to Fight Special Interests...at AFL-CIO Rally
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[the title will do. Evidently recognizing irony isn't among the senator's strengths]
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U.N. Official Calls for Study Of Neocons' Role in 9/11
When last we left our unhinged and wacky friends who believe the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks, they were busy trying to recover from a History Channel gut punch that tore so many holes in their "theories" that that the fabric of the truther movement was rent asunder.
Now Trutherism has invaded the United Nations - with spectacularly ridiculous results:
On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
While Mr. Falk's specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the "9-11 official version." On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, "It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation..."
First, this is an example of the kind of morons they have serving on the UN Human Rights Committee.
[actually, that point will do - the place is UNsalvageable]
http://www.nysun.com/news/foreign/un-official-calls-study-neocons-role-911
An Inconvenient Announcement
On the same week in which the European Union (EU) admitted that its carbon cap-and-trade system is failing miserably, Al Gore shamelessly equated his latest global warming project with fighting Nazism in World War II, the Civil Rights Movement and the moon landing.
As one might expect, Gore’s proposed solution lies in even more big-government bureaucratic mandates from Washington, D.C. As he told the Washington Post, “the path to recovery runs right through Washington.”
But according to the EU’s website, its cap-and-trade scheme was marred by inherent flaws. Consequently, they were forced to recalibrate emissions limits and the number of credits, and the program proved a miserable failure. Instead of the intended decline in emissions, they have risen approximately 1% each year since the program’s inception.
Lest Al Gore’s devotees dismiss the EU’s miserable failure as an anomaly, Japan’s climate-change scheme has failed just as badly. The home country of Kyoto was itself supposed to reduce its emissions by 6% below 1990 levels, but its emission levels have actually risen steadily as well.
Across the EU, energy-intensive businesses are relocating their operations and employment overseas. Conditions in the EU have deteriorated so badly that the European Roundtable of Industrialists has written the EU to warn that the EU’s Kyoto mandates are eroding businesses’ ability to compete in the world economy.
Ignoring these inconvenient truths, climate change alarmists nevertheless insist that the United States dive into the same self-destructive schemes. The American Council for Capital Formation, as one example, estimates that a cap-and-trade law would cost 3.7 million American jobs, reduce gross national product by 2.6%, increase fuel costs even more and punish the average American household some $1,760 each year.
Hopefully, Americans will prove unwilling to pay this economic price for a scheme that fails to reduce emissions or benefit the environment.
[only if they're aware of these facts - forwarding, anyone?]
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Buy a Carbon Offset, Save the Planet?
Just a year ago, Gloria Estela Gonzalez, a professor in Middlebury, Vt., and her husband and two sons thought they were living the greenest lifestyle possible: They made compost, they drove a Prius, they recycled. But when Gonzalez's then 10-year-old son Matias Van Order Gonazalez got upset after reading about global warming in a children's almanac, the family decided to do even more: Buy carbon credits...
[are you paying attention America? No, not the credit scam - the fact that this theory is being pushed to our children - 'upset after reading about GW in a children's almanac'?! the tactic should cause outrage regardless of subject - shouldn't it? time for home schooling...]
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Some Wicked Friends of Public Schools
[...oops, guess not]
A lamentable appellate court decision this month in California shows, there is a dark side to government trying to control the education of children. When compulsory education of children slides into compulsory education of children in a politically correct manner, then compulsory education becomes a mere pretext to indoctrinate.
There are many effective systems of teaching children basic skills and the building blocks of learning. Homeschooling can work. Private schools can work. Public schools also can work. It is fair for society to insist that parents make sure that children grow up literate and conversant with basic science, history and mathematics. It is unfair for society to insist that parents only follow a prescribed path to the education of their children...
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