Interesting Stuff # 61

Terrorist Loophole: Senate Bill Disarms Law Enforcement

All of the 9/11 hijackers’ encounters with local law enforcement were missed opportunities of tragic dimensions. If even one of the police officers had made an arrest, the terrorist plot might have been unraveled.

Lesson Learned
In the wake of the attacks, the Department of Justice announced the conclusion of a new Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion: state and local police officers do have the legal authority to arrest any deportable illegal alien….

Police departments across the country responded to the lessons of 9/11 and the OLC opinion by exercising their inherent arrest authority with renewed determination. The number of calls to LESC by local police officers who had arrested illegal aliens nearly doubled, reaching 504,678 in FY 2005—or 1,383 calls per day, on average. Local police have become a crucial participant in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Disarming Law Enforcement
The Senate’s immigration reform proposal would change all of that. Section 240D would restrict local police to arresting aliens for criminal violations of immigration law only, not civil violations. The results would be disastrous.

All of the hijackers who committed immigration violations committed civil violations. Under the bill, police officers would have no power to arrest such terrorists.

Tony Blair Calls For Major Reform of the United Nations

Taliban Offensive Shot to Pieces

The last two weeks have seen an ambitious Taliban offensive shot to pieces. As many as a thousand Taliban gunmen, in half a dozen different groups, have passed over the Pakistani border, or been gathered within Afghanistan, and sent off to try and take control of remote villages and districts. The offensive was a major failure, with nearly half the Taliban getting killed, wounded or captured. Afghan and Coalition casualties were much less, although you wouldn't know that from the mass media reports (which made it all look like a Taliban victory). The Taliban faced more mobile opponents, who had better intelligence….The Afghan and British governments are both accusing Pakistan of looking the other way as Taliban groups set up shop and openly operate in Pakistani border areas. Pakistan denies this, but anyone who is bold enough to travel to these areas, will see evidence of Taliban presence (including enforcement of conservative Islamic lifestyle practices.) In truth, the Pakistani government has never controlled many areas along the border, and is only now, for the first time in its history, trying to exert control.

German Nobel Laureate: America's Crimes "Systematic, Constant, Infamous and Merciless"

Hollywood Caters to a Ravenous Global Appetite (So, don’t make “American-centric” movies; America bashing sells, for Hollywood and abroad )

Growing in India: Food for the world (America created the “green revolution” that makes this now possible)

India has become the back office of the world," Mittal said during a recent interview at his headquarters in Delhi. Referring to business-process outsourcing, he added: "What we are trying to create here is BPO in the agricultural sector. We will grow for the world."

The vision is to link India's small farmers to global supply chains in agriculture, just as its software writers and call-center workers have been linked to other segments of the global economy. Farmers would move from staples like wheat to higher-value crops like okra and onions, Alphonso mangoes, spices, shrimp, Darjeeling tea, long-grain basmati rice, cashew nuts, milk and buffalo meat.

Big companies, foreign and domestic, would aggregate the crops harvested from scores of small farms, process them into value-added products like sausages or fruit purées, and get them to Western hypermarket customers through a "cold chain" of refrigerated trucks, ocean vessels and cargo planes.

China Syndrome: Capitalism does not necessarily lead to democracy

China has stalled in a "trapped transition," Pei argues, because its Communist leaders insist on maintaining power and taking a gradual approach to market reforms. This is not part of a strategy for political liberalization; instead, China's leaders have been at pains to shore up their monopoly on power. The dividends of economic reform are used to "strengthen their repressive capacity and co-opt potential opposition groups, especially counterelites." Seeing even limited erosion of their political power causes them to "intensify their efforts to maximize current income while maintaining a high level of repression to deter challengers." …
The "trapped transition" is not sustainable. Democracy may come, not led willingly by the Communist party, but, says Pei, "more likely as the result of a sudden crisis brought on by years of corruption, mismanagement, and institutional decay." It is not a criticism to say that Pei doesn't offer much in the way of policy recommendations. He offers an indictment of the claim that economic development will lead to democracy, rebuking the premise upon which U.S. policy toward China has been based under presidents of both parties.

Haditha Makes Abu Ghraib Look Like A Picnic