UPDATE - See link to Michelle Malkin below

A fellow colleague of mine has this interesting account of his weekend experience voluteering with the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps along our southern border.

This has real relevance and significance unlike certain bridges and RRs to nowhere that seem to siphon off our tax dollars.

I know this is trite. We must all remember it is, We The People, who choose and empower those who govern. This is what makes us different from the rest of the world.

If our elected reps/gov't can't or won't (e.g. border issue) protect and defend this Nation and our Constitution, then We The People are free to collectively come to their common defense.

And I don't mean in a vigilante manner either.

RBT

*****

Monday, May 21, 2006

As I sit here, tired, sunburned and sore from my weekend adventure I think back over the last two and a half days...

Friday May 19, I decided to take off and do something about the situation at our southern border of Mexico. Earlier in May I signed up for the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps in California. I felt that with all my efforts in telephone calls, faxes, E-mails, and donating money I needed to do something tangible that I would have a direct effect on helping to secure our borders.

So Friday afternoon I threw everything into the car and took off for Boulevard California. (Where in the heck was that?) I tried to get the car’s GPS to locate it to no avail! Thank goodness Mapquest knew of it ! I hit the 15 going south about 80 mph at 1:30 with little traffic heading south to San Diego. It was now 2:30 and I was just passing the 15 and the 8, now going east for the desert and 70 miles away from the destination. As the city seemed to disappear in the rear view mirror I noticed the lack of houses, business and people, and the presence of more and more desert plants, or the lack there of! Around 3:30 I hit my turn off the 8 freeway, and turned onto the 2 lane road leading into Boulevard, CA. In less than 2 minutes I was there in the middle of the town, making a right turn and now heading out of town for my destination the “Camp” I located the dusty road, and made my way to the camp check in area and then on to the tent area where I saw all of the people who drove from all over the state to be here this weekend.

I found a secluded campsite and set up my tent and camp area within 30 minutes. My neighbor had a number of people coming to his site, so I walked over and introduced myself. These people were just the ordinary people off of the street, some businessmen, some retired, some young, some middle age, some older, but all came here because they felt that they “Needed to do something that the federal government was not doing”, securing our borders! And they felt that our government was failing in its obligation to protect the securing our nations borders.

As the evening progressed we all gathered around the campfire introducing ourselves to one another and hearing why they came to participate in this effort, and to make the plans for the following 2 days. On Saturday we all came together around 8:00 to organize the collective efforts and equipment we were going to need for the weekend project. At 8:30 we all started down the road in our caravan of trucks and cars toward a undisclosed location along the border to do what we came here to do, fix the existing border fences where they were in need of repair. We arrived around 9:00 and proceeded to get the project kicked into high gear, we divided up into teams and with tools and equipment in hand we started repairing the border fences where illegals had destroyed it’s integrity, by cutting through it or digging holes under it to get access to the United States in their migrating path from Mexico.

It was an alarming site to see what the federal government “THINKS” is a border fence! Embarassed I stood in front of areas of barbed wire fence with holes large enough to drive a truck thru, it was a very disheartening feeling, I had felt all at once that our government had or was intentionally not securing our border! And now I was determined to help make a difference, I took this as a personal threat to my safety and the safety of my family and friends, and would not tolerate it any longer. As the day went on we learned how to lay barbed wire fencing making it as strong as any cattle rancher could do, some of the people in the group had been raised on farms and knew how to construct the wire fences and showed all of us newbie’s the ropes of the fence building process. After 3 hours in the 90+ degrees of hot sun and dust we had about 100 yards either repaired or reconstructed!

Around noon the chuck wagon drove up with lunch, donated by a member of one of the cities police department members and a private citizen! We all took a short break to replenish our systems with great subway sandwiches, chips and cool drinks of water. Now after lunch we moved to two different areas in need of additional repair and started working on those affected areas, it is really amazing to see what the federal government qualifies a fence to actually be! I stood in front of a 12-foot high-corrugated fence that ran for 200-300 yards with holes underneath large enough to crawl under easily, and a wire fence that would put a cattle rancher out of business if his were in such disarray! The entire area had trash strewn about it with plastic bottles, booties, plastic bags, backpacks and cans that made it look like a dumping ground. I actually thought I was at a local dump area!

As the afternoon developed we had our American flag on its flag pole waving in the wind the “Red White and Blue” across the area, letting those on the other side that we were here to help prevent them from illegally crossing the border by repairing the fences, and making it as hard as we can to them to achieve their goals to cross the border!

As the sun started to set down into the west we picked up all of our equipment and headed back to camp, sunburned, hot, tired and with sore muscles for doing what needed to be done! And it was worth every aching muscle in our bodies to get this done. After we arrived at camp we all headed to our camps to clean up the dust and cuts from the barbed wire from our efforts of the day. Many of us that evening sat around the campfire and talked about what a great experience it was, and how proud we were to be here, even if we were really tired.

The next day, Sunday we meet early to get another stretch of fence back up to our standards, we made the long hot dusty drive to another location and setup our sunshade and equipment and then proceeded to accomplish even more than the previous day. As the hot southern sun pounded on us relentlessly we were successful in repairing hundreds of feet of fence in disrepair, or non-existing fencing. Around noon a group called “Legal Border Watchers” AKA (ACLU) arrived and started taking photos of our efforts, (ignorance is bliss in their case) and we went on about our business of protecting them from the flood of illegals across the border!

Late in the afternoon we all gathered for a photo-op around the flag and thank one another for the efforts and sacrifices that they had made of their time away from their families, and we left for camp. Arriving at camp we all cleaned up camp and packed up our trucks and cars and headed off on our long journeys home to tell our stories to our families, and to feel like the long drive home “Was really worth it”, and it felt good to be doing something that actually would help keep out illegals from entering our country in the areas where we repaired the fences!

So I say to all of you who feel you cannot do anything or feel as you want to do more, take a weekend out of your “Busy” schedules and take a stand, join us at the border to help make a difference. It is really something that all of us can do, no matter if you are 18 or 80, and live locally to the border or hundreds of miles away, just say “I can an will do it”

So for those of you who want to uphold American dream, click on this link and join the efforts:

http://www.minutemanhq.com/state/index.php?chapter=CA

and we will see you on the border next time.

Here are some of the photos from the weekend:

http://kendreger.com/v-web/gallery/album08

Update:

Michelle Malking is linking to a similar project in Arizon:

DO-IT-YOURSELF BORDER CONTROL

HT Dr. Zin at Regime Change Iran

This just went up at Dr. Zin's site.

RBT

*****

Sarah Baxter, Times Online:

For almost eight months, Amir Abbas Fakhravar was held in solitary confinement in a soundproof cell in Iran. His bare, constantly lit surroundings were all a creamy white — the walls, the floor, his clothes and the door, with a slit through which white rice would be delivered in a white bowl by guards wearing slippers to muffle their footfall.

Amnesty International calls his case the first known example of “white torture” in Iran and it nearly drove Fakhravar mad. He was stuck in a terrifying, real-life version of the George Lucas film, THX 1138, about a dystopia where dissidents are imprisoned in a white room.

“I was living with my childhood memories, but I couldn’t remember my mother’s face,” Fakhravar said. “I’d see the deformed faces of my family in my nightmares.”

Fakhravar, a 30-year-old writer and leader of the dissident Iranian student movement, who has been repeatedly jailed, emerged in Washington last week after spending 10 months on the run inside Iran. His sister was told by Revolutionary Guards that there were orders to shoot him on sight.

He surfaced at the end of last month in Dubai, where 24 hours later he was met by the leading American neoconservative, Richard Perle. Fakhravar was whisked to America last weekend and has already met congressmen and Bush officials. He said he was in Washington to spread one message only: “Regime change,” he said, breaking from Farsi into English to deliver it. READ MORE

In Iran, Bush is regarded as a liberator, Fakhravar said. “People are afraid to express what is in their hearts, but in small, private gatherings, they see him as a saviour.”

Fakhravar believes dialogue with Iran is useless. “The regime wants to have a nuclear bomb so it can wipe out a country it doesn’t like,” he said. “We don’t understand why the rest of the world doesn’t understand this.”

He hopes to warn President George Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, in person not to be lured into talks with the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which he says is lying about its plans for peaceful nuclear energy.

“If it is a matter of national pride to have it, why did they keep the programme secret for 18 years?” Fakhravar asked.

The dissident’s plain-speaking comes as the Washington establishment is divided over whether to negotiate directly with Iran.

Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, called last week for new channels to be opened with Iran. “Focusing on regime change as the road to de-nuclearisation confuses the issue,” he wrote in The Washington Post. President Ronald Reagan invited his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, to a “dialogue” after denouncing the USSR as an evil empire, the architect of realpolitik noted.

Some neoconservatives, including William Kristol of the Weekly Standard magazine, are rethinking their blanket hostility to talks and wondering if there is a hawkish way to speak directly to Tehran. They fear that relying on Europe is merely allowing Iran more time to develop the bomb.

Ehud Olmert, the new Israeli prime minister, arrives in Washington tomorrow for his first summit with Bush. “Olmert will try to get Bush’s approval for an Israeli military strike on Iran in the event that the West backs down,” a well-informed Israeli source said. If diplomacy fails, however, the view inside the Pentagon is that American airstrikes would be quicker and more effective than anything the Israelis could muster.

Additional reporting: Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv

Times Online UK

HT Dr. Zin at Regime Change Iran

RBT

*****

David Horovitz, The Jerusalem Post:

Iran is denying reports that it has passed legislation requiring its Jews to wear yellow cloth strips to single them out, its Christians to wear a red version and Zoroastrians a blue one.

Some are unpersuaded. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Rabbi Marvin Hier, for instance, is adamant "that the national uniform law was passed and that certain colors were selected for Jews and other minorities." But Teheran is adamant and scandalized. The reports of such Nazi-echoed branding "are slanderous accusations… a smear campaign," according to an outraged Iranian government spokesman.

So that's all right then? We can all relax? Hardly. READ MORE

Whether or not President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Islamist regime are yet publicly marking out their non-Muslim second-class citizens is not the point. Iran has moved much further already. It is deep into a relentless campaign to delegitimize Jews and other infidels everywhere. It has leapt over a first step of denigrating its own minorities to the second step of denigrating them the world over.

In Ahmadinejad's world view, and in his vicious daily rhetoric, Israel has no right to exist, and will be wiped out, because the Jews have no right to a country of their own. And if a world without the United States seems unrealistic now, then it is a dream, he tells his followers, that must not be abandoned.

Some world leaders, with a misplaced sense of what their own self-interest requires, persist in discounting Ahmadinejad as an immature leader who talks a good war but wouldn't dare get into one. Such willful self-delusion unfortunately ignores the facts of Iran's well-developed missile program, its global terror network and, most troubling of course, its self-hyped progress toward a nuclear capability.

In the Nazi-era 60 and more years ago, mass killing required a veritable industry and a great deal of time - and thus the creation of a wide environment that would tolerate if not participate in it. Man's fiendish capacity for improving its ability to kill itself has ensured a series of terrible advances since then. Today, when the will for genocide is there, the way is easier and swifter.

This weekend's news reports, true or false, should not be shocking anyone into action. The shock should long since have registered. Israel may be on the front line, but the whole world is facing a regime that threatens all of our most basic freedoms, and that is dangerously far down the road to obtaining the means to realize the threat.

It may not be too late to stop Iran without a resort to military intervention. But it will certainly be too late if concerted international action is not initiated very soon.

The NY Sun is sticking with it's story with this continued update. RBT is posting it in its entirety because of its importance and also in case the Mullahs' net police decide to block IP addresses on this story.

RBT

*****

May 22, 2006
A Vote of Thanks Is Expressed By Iranian Jews

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 22, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/33126

CAIRO, Egypt - A leading spokesman for Iranian Jews is thanking the world for its outcry over a report that the mullahs were readying legislation that would require Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities to wear distinguishing markers.

While the legislation considered in the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, so far does not create a dress code for Iran's Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians - an echo of Nazi laws that required Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and communists to wear distinctive armbands and badges - the spokesman, Sam Kermanian, said yesterday that he suspected early reports of this kind may have been a trial balloon.

"I am not sure if we have the whole picture. The person who originally reported this, Amir Taheri, is someone with fantastic credibility. In my heart, I think there must have been something that triggered this," Mr. Kermanian said.

Mr. Kermanian, who is the secretary-general of the Iranian American Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, spent hours over the weekend on the phone with Tehran trying to determine the accuracy of a report in the New York Post by Mr. Taheri and a stronger piece in Canada's National Post that said the proposed regulations would require Jews to wear special badges, evoking memories of the yellow Stars of David that Jews were obliged to wear in Nazi Germany.

The National Post story turned out to be incorrect. Over the weekend, the representative of Iran's Jewish community in the Iranian legislature, Maurice Motamed, denied that the proposed dress code changes would require minorities to wear distinctive clothing or badges. The chairman of the parliament's cultural committee, Emad Afroogh, also told wire services that the initial reports of such restrictions were "worthless."

A summary of the legislation that appeared on the Majlis Web site contained no specific language designating special dress codes or markers for minorities, either. Nonetheless, the regime in Tehran has been more brutal to its opponents in recent months. A video surfaced over the weekend of the leader of Iran's striking bus drivers, Mansour Osanloo, discussing and showing the results of his torture, including a gash on his chin and a hole in his tongue, at the hands of his jailors earlier this year. The torture of Mr. Osanloo was first reported by The New York Sun in March.

A Canadian-American reformist philosopher, Ramin Jahanbegloo, also remains in prison after being arrested at the Tehran airport on April 27 despite increasing international pressure.

Mr. Taheri, for his part, is sticking to his story. In a May 20 dispatch for the New York Post, Mr. Taheri wrote that the new Iranian law would envision separate clothing guidelines for ethnic and religious minorities, to "enable Muslims to instantly recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake."

An Iranian-American anti-regime activist living in New York, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, said the formal legislation does not contain language on the special insignias, but added that Mr. Taheri was correct in saying this measure is being discussed and considered.

"I have spoken to quite a few people and it is a subject being discussed," she said. "This is about being able to decipher who is who, so they can pinpoint the dissidents who make trouble for the regime and determine what ethnic group they come from."

Some who fear that President Bush may be planning a land war against Iran, or at least the aerial bombing of its suspected nuclear facilities, pounced on the fact that the central claim of the National Post story has not been confirmed. On his Web log yesterday, the former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Juan Cole, called the original National Post story a "black psy-ops operation," implying it was deliberately planted to demonize President Ahmadinejad.

But the prospect of a dress code for non-Muslims in an Iranian theocracy is not so far-fetched. Iranian religious leaders historically mandated dress codes for non-Muslims. The country's current constitution already carves out special status for non-Muslims, prohibiting them from obtaining senior posts in either the army or government. Muslims in Iran officially enjoy preference over non-Muslims in gaining admission to universities.

A national ordinance enacted in 2000 and 2001 requires all non-Muslim butchers, grocers, and purveyors of food to post a form in the window of their place of business warning Muslims that they do not share their faith. At the time it was put in place, the code was defended on the grounds that it enforced Islamic dietary law.

Yesterday, Mr. Kermanian said he was grateful for the outpouring of international support after the report of the badges legislation first surfaced. "Our community was heartened to see so much international support on the subject," he said. "And considering the anti-Semitic environment in Iran, which exists due to government-sanctioned propaganda, this sort of support is a matter of great comfort to us now."

May 22, 2006 Edition

I thought I would start a new thread on this developing story re the Iranian Islamic Dress Code. The more who are running this to ground the better for finding the real truth.

See my two cents worth in these comments I've posted at other sites continuing to follow and update this story.

Regime Change Iran
All Things Beautifil
Kobayashi Maru
Atlas Shrugs
Roger L. Simon
Hotair.com

RBT

Good Morning Alexandra and All

I'm glad your are continuing to follow this story. The more the better for finding the real truth.

See my two cents worth I've been posting around the Blogos this morning.

RBT

*****
[Kobayashi Maru]

KBM

Atlas is continuing to follow this story this morning and I posted this comment in her thread.

[...]

Good Morning Super Babe,

The world must never forget the "Big Lie" and "The Final Solution." Also Hitler wasn't the originator of this Evil and madness as some have noted this has strong Islamic historical roots.

We must stick on this story like stink on poop and run it to ground. There is no excuse in the free world for Final Solutions with the interconnectivity of the Net, the Blogos and the Army of Davids Effect

Lose the Army of Davids!

I posted this comment below in your other thread and thought it appropriate here too.

Go get them girl!

*****

It ain't over until the fat lady sings. The fat lady hasn't sung yet.

Dr. Zin has returned home and is commenting. See this piece re the dangers of not dealing with Evil starring us in the face. There is historical precedence for this unlike Rathergate and "fake but accurate" nonsense of the LL and the MSM.

[...]

UPDATE - Dr. Zin is now back and commenting on the Islamic dress code story from yst. See his thoughts here and follow his site Regime Change Iran as this story continues to develop.

There is truth to this story and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. President MAD and the Mad Mullahs as Dr. Zin notes are pursuing an incrementalistic strategy.

RBT has this further analogy. A frog will die in a pot of boiling water if brought slowly to a boil!

Read More

UPDATE - Dr. Zin is now back and commenting on the Islamic dress code story from yst. See his thoughts here and follow his site Regime Change Iran as this story continues to develop.

There is truth to this story and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. President MAD and the Mad Mullahs as Dr. Zin notes are pursuing an incrementalists strategy.

RBT has this further analogy. A frog will die in a pot of boiling water if brought slowly to a boil!

RBT

*****

If you haven't seen this AP piece - read it now!

This is what we're all taking about [RE the Mad Mullahs' Dress Code]. This is where the Mad Mullahs of Iran are going, if you extrapolate the thoughts of others who have the personal experience and knowledge to know [e.g. Bernard Lewis - see link below].

This is the terminal point or end game of Iranian President MAD, Imam Yazdi, and their crew from the 12th Century.

I don't give a damn what the LL, MSM, UN, and the others who are in denial or want to appease this Evil starring them in the face, think or may say!

There is no moral equivalency of Islamofascism in the modern world. This is Tolkien's war of Good vs. Evil.

See my comments in this excellent thread over at Winds of Change started by A.L.:

What to do About Iran, Indeed

Our political correctness, penchant to steer clear, and to give great deference to the religion of Islam is likely to bite us in the butt.

[...]

More in line with my recent thinking there is no moral equivalency with Islamofascism. I would encourage all to read Robert Spencer's reply to Dean Esmay regarding the Religion of Peace.

Here, Here, and Here

Read more from Jihad Watch VP Fitzgerald. Both Spencer and Fitsgerald make compelling arguments that if we, infidels, wait for the RoP to encounter its own period of enlightenment or reformation it may be too late!

Also don't miss the online link to PBS' Frontpage link to "Memory of the Camps" that appears at the bottom of this story.

And don't mess with Texans and don't mess with Texas!

OK I'm done now so go back to your Sunday easy chair :--)

RBT

*****

With Her Family, a Death Camp Survivor Returns, 'Feeling I Should See These Places Again'
2006-05-19

Associated Press

By VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press Writer

BERLIN--At the entrance to the subway on a busy Berlin square, a black sign with yellow letters spells out the names of a dozen Nazi death camps.

"We must never be allowed to forget these places of horror," says an admonition in German. All around, life bustles on.

I pick out two names: Ravensbrueck and Bergen-Belsen. These are the camps that my mother survived, places we would revisit during our family trip to Germany.

Belsen was where Anne Frank died, succumbing to typhus just weeks before British liberators rolled into the camp. Suffering the same disease there was Anna Zetko, now Dobnik, my mother. She held on long enough to be freed, to get medical care, to live her life. And now, more than half a century later, to return.

"I had the feeling," my mother said, "that I should see these places again, and after so many years, relive these memories and bring flowers to the friends who died there."

In the autumn of 1944, Anna Zetko was working against the Nazis and their Italian allies, the Fascists led by Benito Mussolini. She was a 19-year-old who was raised Roman Catholic, born in an ethnically Slavic land governed by Italy; it's now part of independent Slovenia.

She was arrested with other youths in Trieste, Italy, tortured, then deported to Germany in cattle cars. From Berlin, the captives traveled to the Ravensbrueck camp.

Our family trip eerily followed this route, but in a sleek train filled with gregarious families heading for a day in the countryside.

At the camp gate, my mother said, "I remember very well this entrance."

"I should see these places again"

[...]

The names of about 50,000 of Belsen's 120,000 prisoners _ who died, who was liberated _ are listed in a book that is a continuing project for the staff of the camp memorial, updated through interviews with former Belsen inmates.

The latest edition contains my mother's name.

"Just after the war, because of physical weakness while recovering from typhus, I couldn't remember my name or where I came from," she says. "Slowly, it came back and I wrote it down. And now, walking around, I think, I can look at this place, remembering the time when I couldn't remember."

As she scanned the landscape where so many bodies once lay, only a few wild flowers sprouted. But one night, asleep at home in Boston after the German trip, my mother saw a new Belsen in a dream _ as she wishes it would look now:

"White flowers completely covered the graves, blossoming as far as you could see."

___

On the Net:

Memory of the Camps documentary film: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/

[...]

READ MORE