Why was the Tsarnaev family given asylum in the U.S.? VDARE has lots of good investigations. So far, though, the feds have stayed clammed up about the Bush Administration's motivations.
In that part of the world, when you try to unravel why something happened, it often turns out to be appropriately byzantine.
Both Ma and Pa Bomb moved back to Russian Dagestan awhile ago, so it's not like the government of Russia had sworn to hunt them down.
We know dad Anzor Tsarnaev isn't some "bearded fanatic" -- he's a secular guy, who got upset that his wife and kid were turning Islamic in exile. He's maybe some kind of lawyer, maybe associated with the old Soviet government, maybe with the successor Russian government. It's murky.
Were fanatic Muslims out to get him? What side was he on in the Russia vs. secular Chechen nationalist dispute of the early 1990s before all the Islamic crazies arrived.
Was asylum a high-level decision by Washington owing to dad Anzor Tsarnaev doing something for America? Perhaps, although if so, that would be just about the only time during the Bush years that immigration decisions were made in the national interest.
Maybe Anzor got in on the anti-Osama gravy train after 9/11? Bin Laden had contacts with Chechen Islamists from the 1990s onward, so maybe Anzor, who had seems to have had some sort of shadowy prosecutorial experience, positioned himself as a resource for American national security area experts on the North Caucasus at Harvard or MIT would want to consult with? [Note: sheer speculation.]
Or was it all just another mess-up on the Bush Administration's part? Perhaps nobody was trying to kill Anzor, he just wanted to get out of his own part of the world.
Or then again maybe, he had, uh, business associates who were no longer congenial. Chechens have a lot of business associates, not all of whom are congenial.
Looking up "Chechen Mafia" on Wikipedia, we find lots of interesting stuff about the blurry line between freedom fighters, gangsters, and terrorists:
The Chechen mafia (Russian: Чеченская мафия Chechenskaya mafia) is one of the largest organized crime groups operating in the former Soviet Union, ... which originally consisted of criminals of Chechen ethnicity who later also tried to recruit former Russian special military forces, police and army officers.
It has substantially decreased its presence in Moscow by 1994 after Slavic mafia groups united against their Chechen counterpart, with assistance from Russian police and the FSB (the former KGB). As it happened most of Chechen gang members returned to Chechnya and joined the rising Chechen separatist movement.
Mistaken for the Russian mafia
The Chechen mafia is often incorrectly referred to as the generic "Russian mafia" in Europe, because most people of Chechen ethnicity speak Russian and many emigrated from the Russian Federation during the wars.
According to the documentary The making of a new empire directed by Jos de Putter, the group originated in 1974 after a Chechen student at Moscow State University named Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev founded an underground opposition movement, which later became known as the widely feared Obshina.[1]
To many Chechens it was regarded as the cradle of the liberation movement, with Noukhaev embodying a persistent Chechen tradition of the bandit-warrior. By 1987 Chechen criminals had developed into a well-organized community under Nukhayev and Nikolay Suleimanov, the group forced the most influential local OC gangs (the Lyubertsy, Solntsevo, and Balashikha) out of Moscow which allowed the Chechens to occupy the dominant position.[2]
Activities
Recent reports estimated that the group's sphere of influence extends from Vladivostok to Vienna, with members involved in various areas of criminal activity ranging from automobile theft, money laundering, trafficking Chinese illegal immigrants to Japan, narcotics smuggling, and the illegal sale of plutonium. Unlike other Russian OC groups, the Obshina was considered a hybrid criminal-political entity, which used illegal proceeds to finance and arm separatists fighters during the Chechen Wars.[3]
This unique characteristic has resulted in a trend towards blurring the distinction between organized crime and terrorists groups and has confused many observers as to the Obshina's overall motivations. It is still not entirely clear whether they are more interested in creating an independent nation-state or in perpetuating regional instability so that they might continue to profit from the drug trade and other criminal activities. ...
The Chechen Mafia was also described in the book "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia" by Paul Klebnikov, a famous Russian-American journalist who was killed in Moscow in 2004.
Drug trafficking
Chechen criminal groups and guerrilla factions reportedly play a significant part in the narcotics trade in Central Asia, Russia and the Caucasus region. In the First Chechen War guerrillas used funding from a variety of rackets as well as the sale of oil. However in the Second Chechen War the fighters received huge financial backing from Saudi Arabian militant Ibn Al-Khattab, who joined with guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev and became a prominent figure in the war. This marginalized some figures such as Ruslan Gelayev, who turned to the drugs trade full time.
The Chechen mafia appears to dominate the traditional Russian mafia organizations in the drugs trade. One Tajik drug trafficker stated he preferred to sell his product to Chechen gangs rather than Russians, because of the Chechen's high-reaching contacts in both the underworld and police force. The Chechen influence runs even so far as to Murmansk, where starting from 1997 the head of the province's Internal Affairs Administration was actually a puppet for a Chechen named Vaskha Askhabov, who brought with him large-scale heroin trafficking that dominated the local underworld. Eventually Askhabov was arrested but freed in Moscow shortly afterwards, apparently thanks to his connections in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.[5]
Connections to Islamic Fundamentalism
The Chechen independence movement has gained widespread attention and support in the Islamic world and throughout the conflict foreign charity organizations and fighters from many Arab countries have volunteered their services. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, the Putin administration has made several attempts to link Chechen insurgents to Al-Qaeda. Allegations of Al-Qaeda and Taliban links to the Chechen mafia have recently appeared and well-known Chechen leaders have been at different times referred to in the media as Islamists, terrorists, and mafia bosses. ...
The use of narcotics profits to finance the Chechen separatist movement and its links to Islamists groups has been suggested by various intelligence agencies.
The Chechen mafia presence in Argentina has been linked primarily to the use of Argentina as a transit country for Andean cocaine shipments to Europe in fishing treaters and cargo ships, arms trafficking to Brazil and Colombia, and money laundering. In the so-called "tri-border" area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay - which is home to a sizable Arab Muslim population[citation needed] - Argentine intelligence sources have detected contacts between Chechen separatist groups and "Islamic terrorists" and suspect Chechen use of these networks for arms smuggling purposes.[6]
As you'll recall, immediately after 9/11, the Bush Administration's #3 man in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, formally recommended to the President that America respond to the destruction of the Twin Towers by bombing Paraguay.
On the other side of the globe, to finance their separatist movement, Islamist leader Shamil Basayev and his Chechen followers transported Afghan heroin through Abkhazia to the Black Sea or through Turkey to Cyprus and then on to Europe.[7]
In 1998 it was reported by Riyad 'Alam-al-Din in Nicosia and an unidentified Al-Watan al-'Arabi correspondent in Moscow that Osama bin Ladin dispatched a delegation to the Chechen Republic made up of his group and representatives of the Taliban. Secret meetings were held in the outskirts of Grozny with some members of the Chechen Mafia to put the final touches on "the nuclear warheads deal." Allegedly the deal cost $30 million in cash from Osama bin Ladin's treasury and a grant of two tons of Afghan heroin donated by the Taliban. It was claimed that bin Ladin resorted to the services of the Chechen Mafia after many of his aides, some specializing in nuclear physics, failed in their attempts to acquire nuclear technology and equipment.[8] However, these reports have yet to be confirmed by outside sources.
Yeah, I haven't heard of anything like that in a long time. On the other hand, Chechen fighters provided the rear guard that allowed bin Laden to escape the American trap at Tora Bora. So, there was some contact.
In summary, there's plenty of material here for just about any conspiracy theory you want to dream up about the Tsarnaevs.
So, what's my bet?
The smart money, no matter what the question, is always on: The Bush Administration screwed up.
Posts
69 comments:
In the so-called "tri-border" area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay - which is home to a sizable Arab Muslim population[citation needed] - Argentine intelligence sources have detected contacts between Chechen separatist groups and "Islamic terrorists" and suspect Chechen use of these networks for arms smuggling purposes.
What's the deal on this place? I've heard vague references to this particular golden triangle for about a decade, but it's always appropriately murky.
My understanding is that bad people who do bad things are always granted asylum in nice Western countries, on the basis that other bad people want to hurt them.
In this case it is likely as simple as "We're Chechens, we fight the Russians, so they persecute us, so let us into your country".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ3XV0fOhRs
Have you seen this interview?Very emotional.
One thing that is going to add a further dimension to this story is the very real possibility that the Tamerlan, and quite likely Dzhokhar as well, were involved in a truly brutal triple murder in Waltham, apparently the very night Dzhokhar got his citizenship (again, the ironic date of Sept 11 2012).
One of the three men murdered was a very good friend of Tamerlan, but had been involved in getting Dzhokahar to use pot.
What was the tell that Tamerlan was the murderer?
That all of the men murdered were done so Chechen style: according to reports, each had his throat slit ear to ear, with his head pulled back -- just as it was done in the infamous video of the Chechen soldiers killing the Russian soldiers.
A gruesome detail not likely to have occurred by chance.
This story is never going to go away.
It really is astounding to consider all the ways in which this story undermines the multiculturalist agenda.
In the wake of this story, how far gone does one have to be to believe all cultures are equal? No ordinary mortal could manage that; I think it would require a PhD from an Ivy League university to manufacture that level of denial.
From my understanding it's relatively simple to claim asylum. There's really no need to have connections to Al Qaeda or anything fancy like that, all you have to do is just claim somebody back home is trying to get you.
http://voicesofny.org/2012/12/asylum-fraud-arrests-dont-surprise-many-in-chinatown/
Of course for most people in Chechnya that is probably true in one form or the other, so maybe we should just get it over with and let them all in now.
You're opening Pandora's box. If you start investigating the Chechen mafia, then how can you ignore the Russian Jewish mafia? And no one wants to look to closely at that, I'm sure.
"The smart money, no matter what the question, is always on: The Bush Administration screwed up."
Amen to that. I had developed a kind of grotesque fascination watching Dumbaya Adminstration make policy decisions. It seemed 95% of the time, I would think what should be done and they would do exactly the opposite.
A bit OT. I had been curious how that the Bomb Brothers abductee,the one whose car they took and whose ATM card they forced him to use for cash, had not been killed. Now we have the answer, but not the headline:
Brothers' Abductee Spared because "He wasn't an American"
"Why was the Tsarnaev family given asylum in the U.S.?"
Steve, you're overthinking this - kinda like the way you did with your "conspiracy" post earlier.
The refugee asylum system is no different than majority of government programs - sounds good on paper but terrible execution and easily exploited - it's largely a scam and well known in the immigrant community. I know because I have personally used it and know other people who have as well.
My claim was that I was a homosexual from an Eastern European country where homosexuals were persecuted. My immigration lawyer suggested the story and filed the paperwork ... Needless to say, I am not a homosexual and even if I were, I would not have been persecuted back home (then again, the reigning view here is that even in the US homos are persecuted so not a hard case).
My friends' claims were that they were persecuted as Gypsies (excuse me ... Roma) back home - which is funny because they are ex Olympic rowers and look it too - not the easily persecuted type. Furthermore, one of them is blonde with blue eyes. They learned a few words of the Roma language and passed the immigration review. The judge was oblivious to what a Gypsie looks or sounds like (or too politically correct to notice anything amiss).
So the Tsarnaevs must have had an easy time being granted asylee status - as a racial minority, political dissidents, religious outcasts, war refugees ... whatever, you pick a category.
"the blurry line between freedom fighters, gangsters, and terrorists": shame on you, Mr iSteve, for twaddling like this. Look, "freedom fighters" and "gangsters" are defined in terms of purpose or purported purpose, whereas terrorists are users of a particular technique. Thus John Brown, of whom you presumably used to sing, was both freedom fighter (purported purpose - and indeed genuine purpose, as far as I can tell) and terrorist (technique). It's really not terribly difficult, is it?
Are we sure there's only about two hundred Chechens in the US? Since it's a part of Russia couldn't some just have claimed to be Russian? Especially if they were living outside of Chechenia at the time of application, in other areas of Russia or even Kazakhstan. Possibly the family left because of the level of violence there at the time, with the parents returning as things settled down. Since nobody here knows anything how could they be wary of them? The Czechs made a public statement so as to clue people in to the fact that they weren't the same. But I've met people that didn't even know what a Czech was.
It's very plausible that Tamerlan was involved in some type of racketeering or illegal hustling. It seems doubtful he was home watching daytime television while his wife worked long hours and collected welfare as a supplement. Probably was small fry, though.
Latest reporting shows that Obama gave the bombers and the entire family welfare as they were on terrorist watch lists.
So, Obama will go Bush one better. Far better, IIRC.
"Bush admin screwed up" -- good bet.
Question: why did the Tsarnaev's drive to the MIT campus Thursday night, several hours after the security photos of them blanketed the Boston area?
Does anything think they might have driven to the MIT campus to meet someone? And Officer Collier saw something, the dummies panicked, and killed him (putting his body back in the car)?
In any case, that they drove to MIT puzzles me. Why there?
Just asking.
Interesting stuff. Albanians are another candidate for the new mafia for the same reasons as Chechens: clans, mountains, vendettas as a mechanism for selecting violent traits etc, spreading around the world because of the betrayal of western borders by the globalists thereby creating the opportunity for the diaspora to network globally as organized crime.
I also wonder whether Tamerlan was known to the Boston PD as a petty drug dealer.
His best American friend was a fellow palooka named Brendan Mess (not a made up name) whose throat was slit on 9/11/11, with two other guys. Unsolved murder; bodies were sprinkled with dope.
How does someone slit the throats of three grown men? Helps to be big, but the killer may have incapacitated them beforehand with heroin-laced joints.
OK, speculation here: this wasn't a "drug deal gone bad," Tamerlan was practicing killing infidels. He probably helped himself to their cash even though money was found elsewhere in the apartment.
Maybe this is all crazy talk, but I strongly suspect Tamerlan had to have been known to the Boston cops as a petty dealer.
If so, was he on the payroll and is that the reason no one even questioned him in the gruesome murder of his one American friend?
This whole thing stinks to high paradise, complete with 72 virgins.
Some pretty magnificent writing lately, Steve. I link to your Taki article here:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/04/liberalism-and-illiberal-immigrants.html
It has substantially decreased its presence in Moscow by 1994 after Slavic mafia groups united against their Chechen counterpart, with assistance from Russian police and the FSB (the former KGB).
I'd be more interested to know if the Russian Mafiya is actually a Russian Mafiya now, as in, a Slavic Mafia. Last I heard, it was a "Russian" Jewish Mafiya. The boss of all bosses until recently was Jew, IIRC. But I seem to remember something about a big Jew boss being bumped off recently; was that the same fellow?
Anyway, I'd be delighted to know that the Russian Mafiya was actually in Slavic hands now, but I'd need something more than assertions, and accusations that I'm an "ANTI-SEMITE!!!", to satisfy me in that regard.
You seem to be madly handwaving here.
Ultimately the statistics for banning immigration to prevent terrorism make about as much sense as banning banana peels to stop people falling down the stairs.
The issue of skewing elections is a lot more important and based in some kind of defensible evidence.
There is something in the air in America ... it changes everyone into a Republican, a homeowner, a taxpayer. Take the worst mafia killer from the meanest hell hole in the world (preferably one that we bombed, but this is optional), get him an E-Z mortgage, send his kids to our public schools ... and Republicans will win victory after victory and we'll all get RICH.
If you don't believe this, you're a commie fascist racist loser who hates the American Dream.
Signed,
George (fire in the mind) W. Bush
George P. Bush
Karls Jr. Rove
Ayn Rand Paul
Punch and Judy
Arriba Rubio
and The Chamber of Commerce
(we tried to get Obama to sign, but couldn't get a tee time)
The father is no lawyer - he is an auto mechanic.
This series of posts about the brothers sums up the point of hbd - predictive power.
"Ultimately the statistics for banning immigration to prevent terrorism make about as much sense as banning banana peels to stop people falling down the stairs."
Suppose that, say, 80% of terrorism comes from immigrants.
Then if you cut the number of immigrants by 1/2, the amount of terrorism is cut by 40%. Cut the number of immigrants by 90%, and the amount of terrorism cut is 72%. (Of course, we first have to wait for the current immigrants to pass through their young male terrorist stage -- and hope that their children don't go through the same phase with the same number of terrorists.)
Sure, you are throwing out some baby with the bathwater.
But the question with immigration has always been, where's the baby? Or, perhaps, how much baby is there, really?
>banning immigration to prevent terrorism<
The broader point is that joke borders undermine the nation in many ways. Terrorism is a subset of this point. For discussion of other bad effects of joke borders, explore iSteve and check out VDARE.com
the best part is how janet napolitano is saying there's no further investigation necessary here, it's case closed on the whole deal guys.
ORLY? this tamerlan guy just went off to train by himself? there was NOBODY helping him learn how to kill americans? who paid for it all? who instructed him? who were his advisors?
then again, we already knew janet napolitano was our enemy. our open, explicit enemy, who doesn't even pretend to hide it. she'd rather gloss over the bomber brothers and her plans to destroy the US through open borders, while profiling old stock americans, especially veterans who gave their time and risked their lives to protect the country, as "the real" threat to the US.
My guess is that the Tsarnaev's were just another family that was placed. No upper levels involved. I wouldn't be surprised if fraud was involved. The anonymous comment from a fellow fraudster has enough plausibility to buy.
Then if you cut the number of immigrants by 1/2, the amount of terrorism is cut by 40%. Cut the number of immigrants by 90%, and the amount of terrorism cut is 72%. (Of course, we first have to wait for the current immigrants to pass through their young male terrorist stage -- and hope that their children don't go through the same phase with the same number of terrorists.)
Fuzzy math. You're assuming that the rate of terrorism is constant for various immigrant groups.
Why are Chechen granted refugee asylum when generally they face no well-grounded fear of persecution, evinced by the fact that the Tsarev family moves quite freely between the US and Russia.
Why were 500,000 +/- Soviet Jews granted refugee asylum in the US from the 1970s-1990s when there is even less evidence that they were oppressed by the Soviet state than there is evidence that the Chechen's have been oppressed? US immigration politics is just power politics. Special, connected interests use the policy for their own ends. No concern is made for the welfare of the American peopole.
More Republicans For Immigration
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/immigration-reform-grover-norquist-support#start-of-comments
Steve, British BBC Journalist Misha Glenny obersves in McMafia that pretty much most organized crime groups are also terrorist organizations, Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRGC, Al Qaeda, the Chechens (who he describes at length in the book), are jihadist organizations. FARC, MS-13, and other South American operations are also terrorist organizations.
Some start out as pure terrorist/guerilla organizations and branch out into crime, some start out as criminal enterprises and branch out into terrorism to protect them, but the general operation is the same.
That's another good reason to avoid importing lots of foreigners (or any really). Far too many are likely to be organized criminals.
The Boston Globe reports that the Russians told the FBI numerous times, repeatedly, after the initial warning, that the Tsarnaev brothers were terrorist risks with extensive contacts with jihadists.
My guess, only a guess, is that the FBI backed off because Holder sent down a memo to "leave Muslims alone" to make himself and Obama happy. After all, Obama said he would stand with the Muslims against America.
Ayn Rand Paul
Wandering off-topic a bit: I know she's supposed to be the uber-libertarian, but is it really safe to assume that she'd be right there with the Bushes and Rubios if she were alive today? The big theme of her books is her love for the people who create wealth, but she's also very hard on the tycoons who try to become wealthier without producing more, which is what the cheap labor lobby is all about. I assume she'd be for open borders if a Francisco D'Anconia wanted into the country, but her portrayal of Mexico in Atlas doesn't make me think she'd want millions of eaters flowing over the border from any people's republic. Even the guys at the top, such as Carlos Slim with his monopoly, are far more James Taggart than D'Anconia.
Just wondering. I'm not a Randian, but sometimes I wonder what she would think of her "movement" that now idolizes the "faceless masses" and claims they're the fix for our economic doldrums, when she seemed to think they were incidental to wealth production at best.
"Suppose that, say, 80% of terrorism comes from immigrants."
Even if 100% of terrorism is from immigrants it doesn't matter. Terrorism doesn't matter. If you could specifically identify individuals maybe it would be worthwhile, but banning swathes of legitimate activities? No.
You may not think immigration is a legitimate activity for other reasons, and I may agree, but terrorism isn't a good reason.
And furthermore you'll find that almost no terrorism is caused by immigrants in the US. In fact, has there even been another such attack? US terrorists are foreigners who have foreign citizenship (9/11) and home-grown loonies (Oklahoma, mass shootings, etc.).
It's like banning guns to stop Newtown. Or banning Disneyland to stop foreign air traffic into the US.
don't forget that the tsarnaev brothers are HALF dagestani avar.
I think it would require a PhD from an Ivy League university to manufacture that level of denial.
Unfortunately that's whom our elite are...
Suppose that, say, 80% of terrorism comes from immigrants.
Then if you cut the number of immigrants by 1/2, the amount of terrorism is cut by 40%. Cut the number of immigrants by 90%, and the amount of terrorism cut is 72%.
You probably want to say "40 points" and "72 points".
vory v zakone. they have been operating in asia since the days of stalin. often called the russian mafia, it is not ethnically russian at all but comprised of people from the southern provinces. sometimes they are all called "albanians" for the sake of expediency.
what is interesting, and i've been saying this for a week, is that THE DAY AFTER THE BOMBING a huge indictment came down in new york against 34 asian/russian gangsters. here is the link:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/April13/TokhtakhounovetalArrestsPR/Tokhtakhounov,%20Alimzhan%20et%20al.%20Indictment.pdf
and supposedly the brothers were on their way to new york on thursday to "celebrate." one of the indicted is still in russia. he is the "vor" or boss of the vory. he is from the uyghur province in china but is hiding in russia. yesterday 21 people were killed in uyghur province. some new outlets called them "terrorists" and other news outlets called them "gang members."
this uyghur vor, aka the "little taiwanese" is also under indictment for rigging the salt lake city olympics for gambling purposes. he was arrested in italy a few years ago, but italy refused to honor the extradition. so he fled to russia where he is still in hiding.
I'm going to speculate here . . .
Perhaps Pa Bomb was let in to the U.S. and then later returned to Russia was because he was a double agent. Here's a money quote from your post: "Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, the Putin administration has made several attempts to link Chechen insurgents to Al-Qaeda."
Perhaps Pa Bomb was considered an intelligence asset by U.S. authorities but was actually working for Putin and passing off disinformation to the Americans.
Risto
Off Topic: Steve, I know you are busy with analysis of the Super Bomber Bros. saga, but I really wanted to see your take on this article in NY Magazine. It's about conflict between Hasidim and NAMs (and some white liberals) in East Ramapo. It ties in with a lot of your perennial themes and I would love to see your take on it.
Them and Them
I can't believe Steve Sailor hasn't already thought of this one. If Chechen asylum seekers got some kind of politically motivated special treatment in the United States, it would certainly have been as a result of a russophobic atmosphere stoked by groups like The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (formerly American Committee for Peace in Chechnya). At the time of Beslan, The Guardian had a great piece about this neocon outfit, "Chechnya's American Friends" ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/usa.russia )
A few days ago, someone around here mentioned that they suspected that this story about Tsanarev being kicked out of the mosque was diversionary on the part of the mosque. Kicked out of mosque for MLK rant
It’s looking more and more like they were correct: The mosque attended by the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon double bombing has been associated with other terrorism suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism
Both articles refer to "Islamic Society of Boston mosque"
Diana, the urban campuses of Boston and Cambridge have boundaries that, to be charitable, are fuzzy. At any rate, if they were on their home turf, the Borat Brothers would have to drive through MIT's campus to get to Memorial Drive, which follows the Charles River on the Cambridge side, to get to the Mass Turnpike and thence to I-95 and NYC, their purported destination.
It is a sign of the End Times. I pretty much agree with Whiskey at 12:55.
Ayn Rand Paul
Wandering off-topic a bit: I know she's supposed to be the uber-libertarian, but is it really safe to assume that she'd be right there with the Bushes and Rubios if she were alive today? The big theme of her books is her love for the people who create wealth, but she's also very hard on the tycoons who try to become wealthier without producing more, which is what the cheap labor lobby is all about. I assume she'd be for open borders if a Francisco D'Anconia wanted into the country, but her portrayal of Mexico in Atlas doesn't make me think she'd want millions of eaters flowing over the border from any people's republic. Even the guys at the top, such as Carlos Slim with his monopoly, are far more James Taggart than D'Anconia.
Just wondering. I'm not a Randian, but sometimes I wonder what she would think of her "movement" that now idolizes the "faceless masses" and claims they're the fix for our economic doldrums, when she seemed to think they were incidental to wealth production at best. Not certain about that, I had a friend Eric who was a fan of hers and he lived in Santa Ana Ca until around 1985, he disliked Mexicans because they were too family oriented and like blacks more since they were more into the indivdual. Eric Moved to Minnesota where he actually got paid better since their were no Mexicans in the workplace compared to Santa Ana. He was a low skilled machinsts.
"Why are Chechen granted refugee asylum when generally they face no well-grounded fear of persecution, evinced by the fact that the Tsarev family moves quite freely between the US and Russia."
Did you do it? No. Did I? No. Did anyone here? No.
So, who did it? Well, who controls the elite institutions of this country? There is your answer.
Chechens are not our enemy. They didn't force themselves here and have ZERO control of US foreign policy, media, academia, and immigration.
Some other group controls the elite institutions. THAT is why we have the kind of immigration policy and the kind of the immigration-prostitute-politicians we do.
I hear Chechen, Chechen, Chechen, but not enough of "WHO let the Chechens in?"
At any rate, as long as Chechens are mainly targeting the blues who hate us, it aint no skin off my nose.
When decent citizen-neighbor Zimmerman was nearly killed and just barely saved his life by defending himself from a hateful thug, did libs show any sympathy for him? No, they denounced him as a white supremacist Nazi. If libs do this to a mixed-race Hispanic, guess how they feel about white cons?
The hell with blues.
Let blues sing the blues with the diversity hornet hive they're playing with.
I heard some weather underground people accidentally blew themselves up while making bombs. Well, in the recent case, it looks like the diversity bomb blew up in blue faces. Aint no skin off my nose. I didn't let the Chechens in. But I welcome them as long as they settle in blue regions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvyBzHcZ8M
The nude bomb that denuded the deluded blue boobs.
You may not think immigration is a legitimate activity for other reasons, and I may agree, but terrorism isn't a good reason.
It's like banning guns to stop Newtown.
Do you want to be right or do you want to win? Look at your own example: do the anti-gun forces get guns banned by making reasonable arguments based on the facts? No, because there aren't any; half of their reasons don't make sense and the other half are outright lies. They do it anyway by appealing to people's fears, ignorance, and prejudices.
I'm not saying we should outright lie, but we shouldn't discard opportunities to sway people with rhetoric and emotion because they aren't based on good enough "reasons."
Yup, Bush was a chimp.
I can hear the howls already, but Obama is a much better man intellectually - and i couldn't give a fig about all this 'race and IQ' nonsense.
And Obama's a monkey.
High bar you've set there, sir. At least 120 IQ. USA! USA! USA!
Don't let the door it you in the ass on the way out. Make sure to visit as many MLK Boulevards - on foot - as possible.
This series of posts about the brothers sums up the point of hbd - predictive power.
The black race sums that up the predictive power of race nicely. E.g., the 4/20 pot fest that got shot up. I saw the headline, thought "TNB" and moved on. Didn't even remember it until someone at SBPDL confirmed it, and I thought, "yep, TNB." I didn't even bother to hunt down confirmation, just took whoever it was at his word. Why bother? There are tens of thousands of other, valid confirmations, if that one turns out to be false. One might as well confirm a drop from the ocean is salt water.
Steve, British BBC Journalist Misha Glenny obersves in McMafia that pretty much most organized crime groups are also terrorist organizations
Nonsense. Also, WTF does "pretty much most" mean? 49.9%? 50.9%? What? WTF does that even mean?
"WHO let the Chechens in?"
Who let tha WOGs out? Who-who-who?
I'm not saying we should outright lie
I am. BAMN.
I think you need a "the" in the title before "whole", Steve, unless you are attempting to ape non-English speech patterns. Feel free to delete this.
To: Anonymous 4/24/13, 3:54 PM,
Thanks for the explanation as to why the Bomb Bros were driving thru the MIT campus. Driving thru, not to.
Rest in peace, Officer Collier.
"Fuzzy math. You're assuming that the rate of terrorism is constant for various immigrant groups."
If you cut immigration across the board, then all groups by definition will be equally represented.
"Even if 100% of terrorism is from immigrants it doesn't matter. Terrorism doesn't matter. If you could specifically identify individuals maybe it would be worthwhile, but banning swathes of legitimate activities? No."
Yes, if terrorism just doesn't matter, then it just doesn't matter.
But, you know, some people think it does.
And one might think of the cut in terrorism as being a cut in the likelihood of terrorism, not merely a cut in actual terrorist acts, which may be small in number. Living in a country secure from terrorism is a good unto itself.
I would, though, combine the increase in terrorism with the concomitant increase in crime rates in immigrants to give a still better reason to see a major downside to immigration. Ordinary crime, of course, hits many more people.
"You probably want to say "40 points" and "72 points"."
Huh?
>Terrorism doesn't matter. If you could specifically identify individuals maybe it would be worthwhile, but banning swathes of legitimate activities? No.<
Crime doesn't matter. If you could specifically identify individuals maybe it would be worthwhile, but keeping your doors locked at night? No.
Notice that "individuals." It's instructive.
>I'm not a Randian, but sometimes I wonder what she would think of her "movement"<
The Objectivist position is now and always has been this: open borders, but no welfare state. Personally, Ayn Rand (born Alissa Rosenbaum) was very supportive of open borders. Someone once asked her about it (I believe you can find the exchange in Ayn Rand Answers). She replied that no one should expect her to have any sympathy for border regulations of any kind, because she emigrated from Russia in 1926. On the question of d'Anconia vs. faceless masses, her position was that IQ doesn't exist, that with hard work anyone can make himself into a d'Anconia or into someone worthy of working for d'Anconia. She relented on IQ, in the aforementioned book, by stating that it didn't really exist but that a rational individual could increase his by 50 points by applying free will. She said the American Indians deserved extermination, fundamentally for failing to do this; ditto Palestinians and other "savages" (regardless of race, which she called "unimportant"). I see nothing in the idea that her movement differs from her.
On the question of d'Anconia vs. faceless masses, her position was that IQ doesn't exist, that with hard work anyone can make himself into a d'Anconia or into someone worthy of working for d'Anconia. She relented on IQ, in the aforementioned book, by stating that it didn't really exist but that a rational individual could increase his by 50 points by applying free will. She said the American Indians deserved extermination, fundamentally for failing to do this; ditto Palestinians and other "savages" (regardless of race, which she called "unimportant"). I see nothing in the idea that her movement differs from her.
Thanks for the info; I've read her novels, but not much of her interviews and such. Sounds like pretty much what I figured. She was clueless about IQ, obviously, but I don't know how much was widely known about it then.
Still, it sounds like she would want prospective immigrations to apply their will toward becoming valuable producers before coming here. That's different from the Bush/Rove/Rubio egalitarian position that says they're already guaranteed to be productive by dint of being immigrants regardless of their skills or intelligence or record of winding up on welfare or in jail, as if immigration is a magic dust you can sprinkle on the workforce and culture of a nation that will always make it better.
Chechnya is not monolithic. The Chechens living in the Northern plains have different motivations than Chechens living in the mountainous region of south Chechnya, which is why Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev, founder of the Chechen mafia, and a law student at first, recommended the division of Chechnya into North Chechnya and South Chechnya.
Not all Chechens are Muslim fanatics and those more secular Chechens were never allied with al Qaeda.
Did you get this mafia idea from Daily Beast or Boston.com?
"Thanks for the info; I've read her novels, but not much of her interviews and such."
and the randian cult?
As a Brazilian, and someone who´s been there, my conclusion is it´s a pretty interesting place. Depending on which side of the border it´s Tijuana on steroids(paraguay) and then Argentina would be the San Diego, with Brazil inbetween. Brazil is such a huge economy, mixed with paraguay´s lawlessness, that people all over the world have flocked there to make some money. It´s also not a bad place to live, being next to South America´s Niagara Falls(foz de iguacu).
A local once claimed to me that 180 languages are spoken in the Brazilian´s side city. and he says there are a lot of muslims, something you don´t think of in Brazil, and something I personally have never seen. So it is entirely possible to be have chechan, among other muslim terrorists, doing whatever they do.
"Chechnya is not monolithic. The Chechens living in the Northern plains have different motivations than Chechens living in the mountainous region of south Chechnya,"
That reminds me that my political outlook has a lot to do with growing up in the flatlands of the San Fernando Valley and thus identifying with average Americans. If I'd grown up a mile to the south in the Hollywood Hills, I'd probably identify politically with elites and disparage average Americans.
"That reminds me that my political outlook has a lot to do with growing up in the flatlands of the San Fernando Valley and thus identifying with average Americans. If I'd grown up a mile to the south in the Hollywood Hills, I'd probably identify politically with elites and disparage average Americans."
I'm very glad you grew up where you did, to the parents you had.
"Bourbon said...
Off Topic: Steve, I know you are busy with analysis of the Super Bomber Bros. saga, but I really wanted to see your take on this article in NY Magazine. It's about conflict between Hasidim and NAMs (and some white liberals) in East Ramapo. It ties in with a lot of your perennial themes and I would love to see your take on it."
Interesting article. This is the sort of thing WNs would like to do if they could get their s*** together: start a settlement of like-minded people, just focus on bare basics in life, no propaganda through movies. Then vote in their own candidates in local elections, who would then act in a mercantilist fashion. (Of course, we all know that mercantilism as embraced by Great Britain during the beginning and middle of her empire was an abject failure that no one would ever want to repeat.)
Why reinvent the wheel? If we could somehow "borrow" their documents and ceremonies etc., that's all we'd really need. We'd have to dumb it down a bit perhaps, but it could work. Naturally, the Hasids would be really, really mad. They'd probably nail whoever did that to a cross, but by then the secret would be out. I have absolutely no idea why this sort of thing hasn't been done before.
"Thanks for the info; I've read her novels, but not much of her interviews and such."
and the randian cult?
No, none of them, I don't think. I did read Barbara Branden's book, but of course she was out of the cult by then. That made it clear that Rand was a little nuts, at least about some things (if you couldn't tell that from Dagny). Atlas is a great novel, but it would have been even better without the author tracts about atheism and trying to explain Dagny's extreme hypergamy as economics.
Anyway, my point was just that her books ooze exceptionalism -- American exceptionalism at that, since even the foreign heroes in Atlas worship and defend America against the rest of the world, which is portrayed as a gray mass of ineffectual looters. It's hard to picture the person who wrote that teaming up with the likes of Bush/Rubio, who say that exceptionalism either doesn't exist or is irrelevant, and that the miners in D'Anconia's failed Mexican mines should all be brought to the US to save our economy and our culture.
Surely today she'd be able to see that Bush and Rubio have a lot more in common with Wesley Mouch and Dr. Stadler than they do with Rearden and Galt. If not, I'd have to assume she'd really lost her mind.
"Steve, British BBC Journalist Misha Glenny obersves in McMafia that pretty much most organized crime groups are also terrorist organizations"
Other way round. Most terrorist organizations get involved with organized crime to fund their activities leading to an overlap.
although i suppose he could have been talking about how organized crime *uses* terror to operate.
>sounds like she would want prospective immigrations to apply their will toward becoming valuable producers before coming here<
On the contrary, her position was that the reason people come to the US is to flee statism, and once here, they can at last unleash their productive power. If they flop, it's the government's fault. This differs not at all from the Bush/Rove/Rubio position you described.
She isn't worthy of having your common sense projected on to her, C. Her novels are better than Gaiman's, though. Just remember her first one ends with an evil border guard shooting the heroine dead.
That reminds me that my political outlook has a lot to do with growing up in the flatlands of the San Fernando Valley and thus identifying with average Americans. If I'd grown up a mile to the south in the Hollywood Hills, I'd probably identify politically with elites and disparage average Americans.
I grew up going to school and church with elite types. I identify more with them than average American-Americans. But I still don't align with them politically, and tend to only disparage average American-Americans for being suckers for elite types. On the other hand, I did grow up in a neighborhood with more poor black kids than rich white kids.
I wound up choosing my loyalties deliberately, much the same way one might do proofs in geometry. I think the values my parents transmitted to me had much more to do with it than my geographical or socioeconomic background.
David,
That's interesting, thanks. It doesn't fit with the way she portrayed her characters, but I realize she was very good at compartmentalizing and contradicting herself in her absolutism. And she wouldn't be the first author to miss the point of her own stories. As you say, I'm probably trying too hard to make sense of her positions.
I still don't understand why they shot Officer Collier. Shooting a cop is kind of saying, "Catch me if you can."
Did they want to go down in a blaze of glory?
They wanted another gun. Not satisfied with that explanation. They had a gun, and explosives. They could have gotten another gun in a less risky way.
This is so weird.
WTF happened to Sean Collier - WHY???
>Bush/Rubio, who say that exceptionalism either doesn't exist or is irrelevant<
?
You're talking about Jeb Bush, the brother of the former president, and Marco Rubio, the potential Republican candidate for president, right?
American exceptionalism in this context means America is the Great Baptism. Here on the City on a Hill, we shall wash the unwashed masses of the world clean, we shall turn them into Republican voters, we shall liberate their infinite productive power by freeing them from the statism of their benighted and uncivilized inferior homelands.
This isn't American exceptionalism? (I believe you may be confusing exclusion with exception.)
The Bush/Rubio position could be called the lazy white man's burden. "Bring 'em in to be fixed; house calls are too hard these days."
In exchange we'll get stuff, too. Like yummy food (e.g., tacos), maids and nannies, 3rd world wage rates for the goyishkopfs, and a general neutering of those terrifying anti-Semitic shits who cause our stomachs to flip over and our limbs to tremble with fear whenever they say "hi." Our neighbors? Nazis is more like it! What the F do they mean "hi"? Haters!
David,
When I said Bush/Rubio deny exceptionalism, I was talking about the kind of personal excelling that Rand's heroes have in their bones. To the kind of people who wrote NCLB or this amnesty bill, no one is born with an exceptional brain; he just gets lucky or works extra hard. No one is exceptionally virtuous or crime-prone; we're all born the same until society either lifts us up or slaps us down. (Whether Rand admitted it or not, her heroes were clearly exceptional people from birth. Their environment didn't make them that way, and hard work was a symptom of who they were, not a cause.)
You have a point about Bush/Rubio believing America is the Great Baptism, but wouldn't they deny believing that if you asked them? After all, if America needs to baptize immigrants, that implies there's something wrong with them in the first place. Only sinners need baptism. I keep hearing about how Mexican immigrants are so wonderful already -- so hard working, so Catholic, so conservative, so family values, so whatever. I don't hear about how America will assimilate them and make them better; I hear about how they will make America better by bringing their superior culture and work ethic. Sounds to me like they're supposed to baptize us.
C I think we are describing what the politicians say for public consumption merely.
In the old days, the party line was that we help them. ("We should generously open our borders to the suffering masses who are yearning to breathe free in the best country on earth.") But nowadays, that line might sound kinda imperialistic or elitist or racist or something, so now we mostly hear "Immigrants will save America with their superior ways" instead.
I don't believe the amnesty-pushers really believe either one of those lines.
It seems more likely that what they really want is what's good for their own bottom line - depressed wages and more Democrat voters.
>we're all born the same until society either lifts us up or slaps us down<
The commanding heights are full-on nurture (as against nature) when it comes to us plebs. We duke it out at the bottom while they cash enormous subsidy checks at the top.
I don't believe the amnesty-pushers really believe either one of those lines.
It seems more likely that what they really want is what's good for their own bottom line - depressed wages and more Democrat voters.
David,
Agreed. All the reasons they claim to have are lies, which is probably why they don't even make consistent sense with each other.
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