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Studio representatives sent me this link to the theme song from the upcoming thriller, “,” opening August 18th. As I’ve written, the movie is about mobsters who bring and release poisonous snakes on a plane to kill a witness in a trial.
The song is okay, the video less so. But watch the part where the criminals sneak their snakes through airport security in a carry-on briefcase and a guitar case. I doubt this could happen in real life. But, hey, they let –just last week, even though he lied to the TSA screener.
For our TSA and FAM readers in the know, would it be at all possible to sneak snakes on a plane this way or some other way? It seems highly implausible/impossible and hard to believe. But do tell.

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Question: What do immigration enforcement and baseball have in common?
Answer: Tommy Lasorda and the $30,001-50,000 of your tax money Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is paying him to speak at a waste of time confab of ICE Detention and Removal Operations officials from around the country.

Desperate But Not Serious About Immigration:
ICE’s John Torres, Tommy Lasorda, Julie Myers
Beginning Monday, about 60 ICE officials–most of them regional chiefs and deputy chiefs of ICE’s Detention and Removal Operations–will spend the week listening to Lasorda and other endless speeches and eating steak dinners, all courtesy of you, the American taxpayer. That includes the two travel days that have been allotted for this exercise in waste and abuse.
What does Lasorda–whose most prominent professional experience beside baseball is serving as a spokesman for weight loss drink Slimfast–know about immigration? Nothing–unless you count importing Latino foreign nationals to play for him on the baseball diamond.
The event–for which you will also be paying $49 per day in per diem expenses, four nights of hotel stays, and roundtrip airfare per ICE attendee–begins Monday night with a steak dinner ($50 per plate, courtesy of–you guessed it–you!) and a speech by Lasorda. The speakers bureau that represents him sets the baseball figure’s fees at up to $50,000 (minimum $30,001), and we’ve confirmed with sources that ICE will, indeed, be paying Lasorda that amount. In addition to that, sources say that ICE will pay for chauffeur-driven transportation to and from Lasorda’s California home to the airport and to and from the Kansas City airport to the hotel, as well as first-class, round-trip airfare.
The conference was organized by ICE Director of Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) John Torres to promote, well, himself. It’s not that Torres’ Field Office Directors (FODs) and their deputies want to waste a week at this event, away from catching and deporting illegal aliens. Torres made their attendance mandatory. Not mandatory, but still paid for by you, are the professional photographer ICE is also transporting to the event from Dallas and the photos Mr. Torres will be posing for with each ICE attendee. Torres does not have enough money to house apprehended illegal aliens, yet he can afford to fly an ICE employee to this event to serve as full-time tax-paid bartender in a tax-funded hospitality suite for the duration of the conference.

Homeland Security’s John Torres & Michael Chertoff Announce
Their New Employee . . . Tommy Lasorda?
ICE’s DRO has never had such a conference. But Torres–who wants to head up the Department of Justice Prisoner and Alien Transport System (“Con Air”)–is desperate to promote and save himself. To do the trick, he snared FOX News Channel’s E. D. Hill to speak at and cover the event on the news network.
Plucked from the INS Office of Investigations, Torres has no experience in detention and removal of illegal aliens. His incompetence was manifested in a , withheld from the public and then finally released in May. The report cited DRO’s release to the great American abyss of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who came from terrorist-host nations, had serious criminal records, or both. Torres has done little to address the problems cited in the report.
Torres is also under scrutiny over a series of controversial appointments he has given to unqualified friends and cronies, while demoting or transferring agents with detention and removal experience out of those positions. He is under investigation over a special position he created for a woman with whom he is reportedly having an extramarital affair. She is from Kansas City, the site of the Lasorda ICE event and the location of the new position Torres has offered her. Torres created a super-secret “career review board” in order to supercede standard hiring of the most qualified detention and removal candidates for positions.
The event is being held with the approval of and attendance by Assistant Homeland Security Secretary for ICE (a/k/a “The ICE Princess”) and the site of the conference is also her hometown, which she frequently visits. So much for her testimony to a Senate committe pledging to rein in ICE’s finances and demand fiscal accountability. Although Myers , ICE’s Office of the Principle Legal Advisor will be attending. They might as well have something to do on the taxpayer’s dime, since she isn’t allowing them to do their job for her.
The conference is reminiscent of then-INS Commissioner John Ziglar’s planned wasteful conference in San Francisco, the same weekend as his son’s wedding, also in San Francisco. He left the INS soon after, and Myers will soon leave to give birth.
Also in attendance at the event will be other ICE officials such as Director of Investigations , who recently wrote a without “derogatory” criminal records. Another conference attendee, John Clark–ICE’s 2nd in command–has his own problems. He orchestrated a deal for ICE –and is, like Torres, under investigation over promising a promotion to an ICE clerical employee with whom he had a relationship.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is also expected to make an appearance at this event. And if he does, that will be the symbolic icing on the cake. He is ultimately in charge of and responsible for the capture and deportation of illegal aliens. And he is aware of this wasteful conference paid for by tax dollars meant for alien apprehension, not Tommy Lasorda.
The thousands of dollars spent for the week-long ICE party would have been better spent on the annual salary for two additional ICE detention and removal agents. Or more ICE bedspace to house apprehended aliens, sorely insufficient right now, according to the Inspector General report.
But desperate Homeland Security and ICE simply aren’t serious about stemming the tide of illegal aliens. Adam Ant was right: Desperate but not serious. And that’s the whole Lasordid affair.
****
Contact John Torres. Tell him what you think of paying Tommy Lasorda thousands from the Immigration Enforcement budget. E-mail or Phone him: 202-514-0078 or 202-514-8663; Fax: 202-353-9435.
**** UPDATE, 07/13/06: Check out . ICE is doing the only thing its incompetent execs know how to do when confronted with their own wrongdoing: deny, deny, deny. ****

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Maybe the graphic, disturbing, sickening video, out today, of our dismembered troops by Islamic terrorists in Iraq will remind some amnesiac Americans just whom we are fighting.
I’d have said the gruesome video was must viewing for all wimpy Americans. But the families of these soldiers are rightfully upset the video is posted on the net, that their brave, murdered relatives are being disgraced by Al-Qaeda in their death, over and over again–that this is what Al-Qaeda wants And they are right.
It’s enough to know that this sickening video features the swinging around of dismembered heads, that those are their dismembered penises displayed in their mouths. Done before or after their murder? We don’t know. We can only pray. This is whom we are fighting, for whom unforgivable far lefties with no shame are cheering.
The way they dismembered and displayed the bodies of our brave boys, , is the outrage of outrages. The fact that DNA was needed to identify them says it all. “Religion of Peace”? Sorry, my dictionary doesn’t include unbridled barbarism in the definition of peace.
Thomas L. Tucker and Kristian Menchaca, G-d Bless You. Rest in Peace.

Pfcs. Thomas L. Tucker & Kristian Menchaca, RIP

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A cold, stale bit of left-overs from Friday: To show America that we are safe (we aren’t) on the anniversary of the London 7/7 bombings, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff a/k/a “Mr. Burns” took a little ride on a choo choo train. Well, sort of.
He went took a brief ride on the Boston “T” (Boston’s mass transit train and subway system) to prove it was secure. If you’ve ever lived in Boston, as I did, or ridden the T, as I have, then you know it is probably the world’s most non-secure train system. Many T stops are above ground in the middle of the street. Anyone packed with explosives could easily ride one. There is no-one searching your bags on these “streetside” stops.

He may have all the Harvard degrees you could ever imagine–and use every opportunity, as he did this one, to brag about them–but Mr. Burns is the best argument of why we DON’T want a Harvard policy wonk ostensibly running anything having to do with law enforcement. A top official riding a brief second on a train doesn’t make us safer. Actually stopping illegal aliens and terrorists at the border and kicking them out of the interior does. As does stopping money laundering and smuggling by terrorists. Under Chertoff, DHS has been a whopping failure at all of these and more.
Aside from that, Chertoff doesn’t even have jurisdiction over safety on the “T.” Homeland Security has nothing to do with it, unless he’s going ahead with plans to put the Federal Air Marshals on “T” cars. And he isn’t. It’s all about the photo op, baby!
Watching Chertoff in his silly train stunt bragging about Harvard degrees makes me feel as safe as watching that 9/11 widow who tried to trademark “Let’s Roll” flying after 9/11. Yet, last week, a by our friends at Famous But Incompetent.
Safer? Nope. Less safe. And a silly Harvard Yard jaunt on a train won’t convince us otherwise. Two Harvard degrees or not.

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Even though it came out over two years ago that he was a top Al-Qaeda terrorist leader, the Muslim Students Association at the University of Southern California continued to celebrate their favorite Islamic convert, Adam “Yahiye” Gadahn a/k/a Azzam Al-Amriki (“Azzam the American”)–the man on several Al-Qaeda Videos including the latest one, released last week by ABC News. More on Adam Gadahn , , and .
As late as yesterday, we could still access this page of Gadahn’s “work.” It was since apparently pulled, but still accessible through the magic of Google’s cached pages. The writing of “Yehiye Adam Gadahn,” the piece entitled “Becoming Muslim,” is on the pages of USC’s website. We note the piece comes under the official heading, “USC-MSA [Muslim Students Association] Compendium of Muslim Texts.”
We also note that another page is apparently missing: “Becoming an Islamic Terrorist,” by Yehiye Adam Gadahn.

Muslim Student Association Hero &
Al Qaeda Leader Yehiye Adam Gadahn a/k/a “Azzam Al-Amriki” Then & Now
Besides being reviled at Gadahn’s attacks on Christianity, Judaism, and Israel, we found this part hilarious:

Having been around Muslims in my formative years, I knew well that they were not the bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists that the news media and the televangelists paint them to be.

Now that we know Gadahn is one of the top Al-Qaeda terrorist leaders–one of the chief bloodthirsty barbarians–and that he’s endorsed by the Muslim Student Association (the largest Muslim student group in America), we have to say that the televangelists he derides may not have been far off the mark.
Although ABC claims that Gadahn finally revealed himself in this latest tape as an Al-Qaeda leader, appearing with Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, ABC reporter Brian Ross, himself, reported two years ago, that Gadahn was the man behind a scarf on Qaeda videos, in which he warned that America would face “rivers of blood” as the result of many coming Qaeda attacks. Well over two years ago, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft held a special live national telecast saying Gadahn was wanted and was an Al-Qaeda operative.
The Muslim Student Association of USC knew quite well who Yehiye Adam Gadahn was. But they continued to celebrate the him, one of the top Al-Qaeda leaders, and his status as a Muslim, until they got caught (by our reader, Lowell S.), early this week and took the page down.
You can tell a lot about a party by the company they keep. And Adam Gadahn is all we need to know about the Muslim Student Association (a manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorist group from which Qaeda, Arafat, and HAMAS emanated).
So what were they saying about someone hijacking their religion? Looks like they’re celebrating the hijacker.
And BTW, they and most Muslim groups in America are still celebrating , the extremist who converted Adam Gadahn into the Muslim that he is today. And so is the Prez, who invited him to the White House and accepted a Koran from him, while touting the “Religion of Peace” line.
Thanks again to reader Lowell S. for the tip. He wrote:

Maybe they should change the name of their athletic teams to the “USC Trojan Horses.”

Maybe, indeed.

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America’s Black David Duke has a grandson in Nike’s elite basketball camp. But instead of derision, the obsequious sports press is celebrating.
The Nation of Islam’s loony leader, Louis Farrakhan, loves lecturing Black America not to become pro athletes or entertainers, but instead to pull themselves up by the bootstraps . . . and hate Jews, Asians, Arabs, “Crackers,” and every other group possible.
(No big deal that he, himself, made his millions not from bootstrap-pulling, but by tax scams, bilking and scamming his followers, and a few unrepaid $5 million “loans” from fellow loon, Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi.)
Now, there is a Black American and Nation of Islam member who has not taken Calypso Louie’s advice: his grandson, Mustapha Farrakhan.

Mustapha Farrakhan & Father Louis, Son/Grandson Mustapha Farrakhan
Along with the son of Michael Jordan, Mustapha Farrakhan, a college and NBA hopeful, is attending Nike basketball camp, where he is being eyed by a handful of college scouts.
Since his father, also named Mustapha Farrakhan, is a “Supreme Captain” of the Nation of Islam, it’s a sure bet grandson Mustapha hates Jews and “Crackers” just like dear old granddaddy.
In an issue of the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, “The Final Call,” Louis Farrakhan says that his son Mustapha (father of the hoops player) supports the establishment of the United States of Africa in place of the America:

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
I, my son and Supreme Captain, Mustapha Farrakhan, Akbar Muhammad, Sultan Muhammad, and my daughter and nurse, Fatima Farrakhan Muhammad were among those who were blessed to be present at the end of the 38 years of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and, to witness the beginning or the birth of the African Union toward the ultimate United States of Africa. . . .
May Allah bless the Leaders of the African Continent. May He bless Brother Muammar Gadhafi that he will not be discouraged in pursuing the idea of the United States of Africa to its ultimate conclusion, and, may Allah bless the sons and daughters of Africa to form a united front wherever we are found to encourage the African Union to ultimately become the United States of Africa.

Don’t expect the gushing press to ask him about those views or whether he agrees with the anti-Semitic, anti-White bigotry of dear old dad. They didn’t. The sports press just fawned over his “celebrity” family ties. They’d hate to cause an issue for members of the many ethnic groups his grandfather openly derides. There’s no New York Times-style “public’s right to know” ethos here.
Instead, AP’s Michael Marot reports to us that Mustapha Farrakhan “likes sports and music. He attends church each Sunday and avoids controversy.” Memo to clueless AP reporter Marot: Uh, that would be a mosque, actually. As far as controversy, it’s hard to avoid it when your dad and granddad are America’s Black grand wizards.
And AP reporter Marot seems not to notice. Instead, his report contains only comments like these:

“I think he’s developed the right way under the circumstances,” the father said. “Basketball-wise, he’s focused on that and stays away from politics, and that’s good for him.”

Huh?!
Are hatred of and conspiracy theories against Jews and White people mere “politics”? Would they let a son of David Duke or an officer of the Klan get away with comments like that? The man making these comments is a “Supreme Captain” in a ministry of hate.
Yet, he’s allowed to make comments about the Farrakhan name that go absolutely unchallenged:

“We’ve always taught that a good name is better than silver or gold so anything you do as a service to your community or humanity makes your name stronger,” the father said. “You try not to do anything that would damage your name.”

But the Farrakhan name is already damaged. Louis Farrakhan has done more than damage his name, but also the names of the many millions of people he’s defamed and slandered to Black America, in the name of his phony bootstrap philosophy partnered with Black supremacy.
The elite basketball camp is called Nike All-America Camp. But there’s nothing All-American about the Farrakhan brand of hate.
Nor is there much American about Michael Marot, the dizzy AP sports reporter who deliberately glosses over the real story at hand.
Because Marot failed to ask it, the question remains about Mustapha Farrakhan:
Like grandfather, like grandson?

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**** Scroll Down for Update ****
It’s 7/11, today. And it’s also the 79th birthday of one of my favorite stores and pieces of Americana: .
In honor of that, most (but not all) 7-Eleven outlets are giving away free measuring in at 7.11 ounces.
Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) might think you need to be an Indian-American to enter a 7-Eleven (he joked about it and then had to apologize). But I’m happy to go to the store for conveniences and Slurpees on a hot summer day.
I’m also happy to know Indians like , owner of my local 7-Eleven outlet, and a great example of how hard work and the entrepreneurial spirit can help you live the American dream. He was the first in the nation purveyor of Kosher Slurpees and one of the biggest sellers of Slurpees, even during cold Michigan winters. He put his kids through medical and law school with the profits.

Read more about why I and .
**** UPDATE: In response to readers who asked, here is an article on what makes a Slurpee kosher. Kosher Slurpee flavor list is here.
Believe it or not, many beverages in America use crushed insect abdomens–yuck!–as dyes in various flavors, making them not kosher. (The Wall Street Journal did an excellent piece on this, several months ago.) Other beverages use a sugar derived from dairy products as a diet sweetener. Kosher consumers do not eat meat/poultry and dairy ingredients within hours of each other, so we cannot eat meat/poultry after eating anything with dairy-derived ingredients.
Thanks to American Jewish History Blog by Menachem Butler for the links.

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has a disturbing, but predictable, front-page piece on Hezbollah. And yet another headline that says it all:

Mideast Democracy: One Violent Group Finds It Works Just Fine: Joining Lebanese Government Helps Hezbolllah to Resist U.S. Demands to Disarm; Firing Rockets Into Israel, Too

In January, I wrote about my view that . And I was right.
The WSJ article details how Bush’s push for “democracy” and free elections in the Mid-East has strengthened more than ever the terrorist group that murdered 300 U.S. Marines and civilians.
(The article mentions the scary alliance between Hezbollah and former Christian leader Michel Aoun, which I . The Aounyeens are a very small group of the Maronite Christian pie in Lebanon, most of whom would never break bread with Hezbollah. Ever.)

“Democracy” Strengthen Hezbollah & Leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah
Here are some of the scary, but foreseeable details, as reported by the WSJournal on Mid-East Democracy, Hezbollah-Style:

Today, it’s [Hezbollah] stronger than ever. The group, once disdainful of domestic politics, filled the power vacuum of Syria’s departure by joining Lebanon’s governing coalition. That has given Hezbollah new clout, including control over two ministries.
It also has helped the group elude a big threat: international pressure, led by the U.S. and France, to disarm. Over the past year “Hezbollah built a big shield over its military wing,” says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University.
How the militant [DS: that means terrorist] group turned adversity to opportunity reveals a conundrum for the Bush administration: Rather than resisting Washington’s democracy drive, some radical Islamic groups, including organizations the U.S. deems terrorist, are using it to promote their agendas. . . .
The top priority, says [Hezbollah Political Director Nawar] Saheli, was derailing the international effort to disarm. . . . The number of seats Hezbollah could win in Parliament was limited by Lebanon’s complex power-sharing formula. Even so, Mr. Saheli sensed the value of producing a big voter turnout for Hezbollah. The group’s campaign efforts in effect turned into a referendum on whether it should be able to keep its armed military wing.
During the three-week campaign, Mr. Saheli says, he visited up to 15 villages a day. Skipping other issues such as education, he hammered a single theme: Protect “the resistance [to Israel].” . . . Often, he says, he ended speeches with a harangue against the U.S. “The Americans have a big project against the Arab world. . . . And we must resist.
Voters, especially in Shiite-dominated areas, loved it. When the results came in June 2005, Hezbollah and a few parties it had aligned with were huge winners, taking the maximum 35 parliamentary seats available to Shiite Muslims.
Though Hezbollah had fielded candidates in previous elections, it had always remained an opposition party. this time, Mr. Saheli and his bloc accepted an invitation to join a coalition government. They asked for two important ministries, energy and labor.
And they made another demand: that all major government decisions, including the question of Hezbollah’s weapons, be decided through consensual agreement rather than by a straight vote of the cabinet ministers. Coalition partners–the biggest was the Future Movement, led by a son of the slain Mr. Hariri–needed Shiite representation in their government, and agreed to the conditions. That gave Hezbollah the power to veto just about anything it opposed.

Just , and have always believed. This is the Mid-East, not the Mid-West (as Israeli Moshe Arens so famously said). We cannot expect that democracy will mean the end of terrorism there. We can only expect that it will mean the enhancement of it and its threat to us, here, on our shores.
Hezbollah killed more Americans than any other terrorist group besides Al-Qaeda, and it is part of the Al-Qaeda network, training insurgent terrorists against our troops in Iraq and providing them explosives, as well as joining Qaeda in the Khobar Towers bombing.
And its status as a proxy for Iran against us, as well as its threat to our ally Israel, are now greater than ever. Reports the WSJournal:

Amid tension over Iran’s nuclear facilities, Hezbollah also draws scrutiny because it has close ties to Iran. Hezbollah has an estimated 15,000 missiles pointed at Israel from land it controls in southern Lebanon. Some U.S. and Israeli officials worry that if there ever were a military confrontation between the West and Iran, Hezbollah could become a proxy for Iran and step up attacks on Israel. . . .
The risk was underscored in late May as Israel and Hezbollah had their most ferocious skirmish in years. Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel and hit a military base [DS: and constantly shells Israeli civilians and residential areas, too] . . . . “Hezbollah is a big nightmare for us,” says an Israeli military commander, Lt. Col. Ishai Efroni.

A nightmare made ever bigger by the Bush push for “democracy” in a Muslim Mid-East that uses it to foment more terror on the innocent.

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Welcome to “Super Size Me,” the Sequel.
In May, “Fast Food Nation,” a fiction movie based on the Eric Schlosser book of the same name (taglines: “What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World;” “The Dark Side of the All-American Meal”), debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. The film will be distributed this fall by News Corp’s Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Both movie and book blame the nation’s fast-food chains for our country’s obesity problem. Starring uber-slacker Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, the movie sounds horrid, down to the sob story about illegal aliens.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the movie

tells the story of an executive from a hamburger chain called Mickey’s [DS: hmmm . . . which real-life chain could “Mickey’s” be?] who visits a Colorado meatpacking town to determine why there’s something wrong with the meat in the company’s popular sandwich, the Big One. The plant is staffed with illegal immigrants who work in unpleasant conditions. Other story lines include a teenager who works at a Mickey’s who is frightened by a strig of robberies at nearby fast-food restaurants.

Oh, I get it: Fast food restaurants cause crime. Ri-i-i-i-ght. Gimme a break.
Schlosser is also the author of “Reefer Madness,” and it sounds like he’s smoked one to many in his quest to get pot decriminalized and fast food criminalized. Great priorities this man has.
He’s gone on a tour of middle schools in cities throughout America. So glad that he’s able to do what PETA never could–poison the minds of America’s kids against companies that provide an inexpensive, lawful (and yummy) product and jobs to millions of Americans.
For the record, my religious dietary restrictions prevent me from eating “McDonald’s” and the offerings of fast food chains (I’ve never eaten a Big Mac or a Whopper). But they have every right to serve America the convenience to which we are now accustomed and for which we have created a market. It is not their responsibility to exercise personal responsibility and appetite and waistline discipline for us.
So why is Rupert Murdoch attaching himself and his “conservative” News Corp to this very un-conservative and outlandish project?
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!
When the movie comes out, show him that bashing America’s fast food restaurants and blaming them for our problems is not very $$$$$$-able. Ditto for whining about the working conditions of illegal alien lawbreakers at meat-packing plants who drove down wages and took jobs away from lawful Americans.

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Every Friday, USA Today has a separate Weekend section featuring “Destinations & Diversions.” Normally, we enjoy reading this relaxing section, which features exotic Americana plus charming, glamorous locales we’ll never get to see.
But not this past Friday. To mark the Friday just after Independence Day, USA Today’s Travel page featured the article, “These Tours Explore the Harsher Side of Reality,” a page on travel tours that allow you to:
* Live as an illegal immigrant;
* See how U.S. drug and military policy have “hurt” Colombia (we learned a new word, “counter-narcotics”–their word for the drug war);
* Explore “Sexual Rights” (their euphemism for gay marriage) and “Social Justice” in South America; and
* Build “Peaceful Resistance” to the “U.S. War” on Colombia.

On Your Vacation, Live Like an Illegal
We can’t believe these trips are tax-deductible, but they are. That means you, the U.S. taxpayer, are subsidizing them.
Check out what you are paying for. Here are more of the details of what you get to see on trips ranging from $750-$2,900. It’s really unbelievable:

Mexico: Beyond Borders: Health, Labor and Environment
Length: Four days
Organizer: Global Exchange
Details: The non-profit human rights group takes participants on a tour of the U.S.-Mexican border around Tijuana, showing working conditions and evidence of environmental degradation. Stops include a foreign-owned maquiladora assembly factory on the Mexico side of the border to see working conditions and a meeting with women’s rights groups to learn about abuses. Global Exchange’s Reality Tour division offers similar trips to more than two dozen other troubled areas, including Afghanistan, Guatemala and Iran.
Cost: $750

That one is supposed to convince you that the illegal alien invasion is okay. We wonder what the tour of Iran is like? Perhaps to convince us that Iranian nuclear weapons and wishes to wipe Jews off the map are okay, too?

U.S. Policy in Colombia: Drugs, Military Aid and Human Rights
Length: 11 days
Organizer: Witness for Peace
Details: The faith-based non-profit organization [DS: Actually, wacko far-left] aims to show the brutal effects of four decades of turmoil. . . . The tour will include visits to communities affected by U.S. military aid and counter-narcotics efforts, along with meetings with U.S. and Colombian government officials. Witness for Peace also offers trips to Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico with a goal of providing U.S. citizens with the tools they need to create positive social, political and economic change through non-violent advocacy and action.
Cost: $1,275

Question: Which U.S. “officials” are idiotic enough to meet with these twits? Nothing better to do at the office that day?

Sexual Rights and Social Justice in South America
Length: 7 days
Organizer: MADRE
Details: The women’s human rights organization visits Buenos Aires during the Gay Pride celebration to examine the successes and challenges of South America’s burgeoning sexual rights movement. Participants will meet with lesbian, gay, faith-based and community activists, and explore the relationship of sexual rights to other social movements gaining momentum throughout South America. MADRE, which works with women’s community-based groups worldwide, also offers Voyages with a Vision trips to Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Kenya. They are designed as an opportunity to learn about women’s human rights struggles.
Cost: $2,900 (estimated), including airfare from New York.

Oh, I get it: Women’s rights = gay rights. $2,900 to find that bunk out? Gee, someoneone has money to burn.

Building Peaceful Resistance to the “Other War”: A Human Rights Delegation to Colombia
Length: 15 days
Organizer: Fellowship of Reconciliation
Details: The non-profit human rights group offers trips to examine the ongoing drug war, U.S. military intervention and the growing peaceful resistance movement. Meet with indigenous, Afro-Colombian, youth and women’s organizations, as well as Colombian and U.S. government officials, and travel to the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.
Cost: $1,300

Gee, when did President Bush say he was recruiting for a “human rights” delegation to Colombia? Does Juan Valdez know about this? Again, who are the “U.S. government officials” that are wasting time meeting with these trouble-makers? We’d love to know.