Kerfuffles

Three years ago I wrote “(Canada’s Remembrance Day 2005)” in which I mentioned Canadian military forces serving in Vietnam during the era of America’s Vietnam War and the Nobel Peace Prize they were awarded for their service. I never realized the rancor that revelation would come to garner. It began when I was called a LIAR by a Canadian commenter to my own blog:

“The Canadian Armed Forces won a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in Vietnam.” What year was that? I used Google to save myself from Liberal bias, and discovered that this was a total blatant lie. (October 12, 2006)

To this day I am still being called a “LIAR” for writing facts that I found from my own research.

Political Forum Commenter: “but here is a link to the list of nobel peace prize winners. So far I do not see the Canadians on the list which leads me to believe that this blogger is a liar. They could have only made that up so if they made that up God knows what else.
Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize“

Apparently, for Canadians, the truth hurts. For Canada’s military to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for its war efforts is so discomforting to many Canadians that they refuse to believe the facts, and instead, label innocent researchers, such as myself, as LIARS! In 2005, Kerfuffles wrote in “Canada’s Remembrance Day 2005:”

In 1973, the International Commission of Control and Supervision Vietnam (ICCS) was responsible for securing the armistice that lasted two years from 1973 to 1975, known as Operation Gallant. Canada, a member of the commission, contributed Canadian Forces whose role was to monitor the cease-fire in South Vietnam, according to the Paris Peace Conference, and to arrange the release and exchange of more than 32,000 prisoners of war. **The Canadian Armed Forces won a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in Vietnam.

**The Nobel Peace Prize referenced was awarded in 1988, when United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces were awarded THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE for all peace-keeping duties up to December 1988.

On October 26, 2006 Kerfuffles wrote:

“In 1988, Canada and our peace-keeping forces shared in winning the Nobel Peace Prize. (Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, OTTAWA, Tuesday, February 3, 1998.” (See Canadian Peacekeepers and THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 1988.)

In 1988, the Nobel Committee recognized the good work that UN Peacekeepers had accomplished by awarding them the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize was awarded for United Nations-service/Korea service up until 10 December 1988, when the Nobel Peace Prize Award was granted. Therefore, these UN Peacekeepers included the Canadian peacekeeping troops of Operation Gallant, 1973, the military operation associated with the International Commission of Control and Supervision(ICCS) Vietnam whose role it was to monitor the cease-fire in South Vietnam as per the Paris Peace Accords.

Even though it offends the “peace-loving” sensitivities of many Canadians, I stand by my statement: “The Canadian Armed Forces won a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in Vietnam.” My information came from Canada’s own Canadian Veterans Affairs and Canada’s own Canadian Parliament.

Canadian Parliament, 12 March 1997
Mr. Jack Frazer: I think you will all have received a letter from the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association. In it, in the fourth paragraph, they point out that Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar said in 1988, when announcing the award:

This Nobel Peace Prize is to be shared by every member of the UN Peacekeeping Force since its inception. That meant that Nobel Peace Prize was shared equally amongst the people who qualified for it at that time.

The Government of Canada has built a peacekeeping monument here in Ottawa, but there is no way for any individual, regardless of what medals he is wearing, to indicate he or she was a valid recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize when it was given to the then peacekeepers. That is what the people in the Peacekeeping Veterans Association are keen to have: recognition that they were part of the peacekeepers who won that recognition for Canada. It could be said that others since that time have done basically the same thing, but the truth is, of course, that the Nobel Peace Prize has not been awarded since 1988, so the people before that time do qualify, the ones post that time do not qualify.

My question for Canadians is why do you diminish the sacrifice and service of your own country’s military forces just because they happened to do their peacekeeping service in Vietnam?

The Hidden Dangers of John McCain

That renowned military expert and former commander in chief of all United States Military Forces, BILL CLINTON, has surreptitiously warned us, while speaking at Aspen Colorado, that electing JOHN MCCAIN as president could be very dangerous. CLINTON implies that because JOHN MCCAIN was a Prisoner of War in Vietnam for many years, he could snap at any moment in the future and lose his temper.

HORRORS of all HORRORS! Even worse, JOHN MCCAIN could go berserk while hosting a state dinner, or even while wagging his finger at the nation on national TV. JOHN MCCAIN could become a full blown psychopath leading a nation with nukes. IMAGINE THAT? Well at least JOHN McCAIN will have an honorable excuse for his mental disturbances - he was serving his country as a young man in wartime. So what is former President BILL CLINTON’s excuse is for being a psychopath with a fiery temper? He was never anywhere near a military uniform, much less a war zone, in his youth.

Most unfortunately, the nation did not have the expertise and guidance of BILL CLINTON to keep it from electing a former POW back in the days of President “OLD HICKORY.” Without the “insane” leadership of the man who had fought for his country in two wars, including a stint where both he and his brother were taken as prisoners of war, our nation would undoubtedly be a better one today. It was President OLD HICKORY who did indeed go berserk and create “The Democrat Party.”

Bill Clinton Warns of Mental Problems of Former POWs

The First POW President

If John McCain becomes the next President of the United States, he will make history as the first veteran of the Viet Nam War to be elected. That is a big hurdle for him, as the country has already elected two Presidents from the Viet Nam War era, who never went to war at all. One President, Bill Clinton, managed to avoid even serving in the military during a time of the universal draft.

However, if John McCain is elected to the presidentcy, he will NOT be the first Prisoner of War to hold that office. We are a warrior nation, and we have already chosen a former POW to be our leader. Have you forgotten your history? If so, here’s the answer at Blogging the Revolution.

Headwaters of War

This morning, I came upon a blog that proclaimed: “terrorism itself was not even thought about before September 11th.”

This blogger learned history from “Stewie and Family Guy,” whoever they are. Maybe “Stewie and Family Guy” never thought about “terrorism” before 2001, but others did - like the Irish and British, and the Basques and Spanish, and the Turks and Greeks, and the Communists and the Free World (which includes the U.S.). That is before we even get to tiny Israel and the Israelis who have lived with terrorism since time out of mind. Because terrorism had not been substantially inflicted against the homeland of the U.S. before September 11th, is to the credit of our government including our military who were able to keep us safe. However, many U.S. interests abroad were victims of cowardly terrorists, including the U.S. airmen asleep in the Khobar Towers, pictured here, in 1996.

When did this War on Terror begin? At the one year anniversary of September 11th, I wrote at The Spirit of September 11th, that I believe the War on Terror began almost 30 years ago in the days of Jimmy Carter, when American citizens were taken as hostages in Iran. Perhaps “Stewie and Family Guy” were not alive then, therefore are clueless.

Others believe this current war is but a new phase in an old war that began in the seventh century. The second phase of that war was fought with Sulieman and ended with the Siege of Vienna in 1683. I guess “Stewie and Family Guy” never learned about the Turks outside of the Gates of Vienna, when all of Europe was about to be overrun by the military forces of Mohammed. Europe was saved, for a few centuries, but that war never ended. Since “Stewie and Family Guy” and the blogger cited above obviously eschew the reading of history books, perhaps they could learn a bit from reading the blog “Gates of Vienna” which describes this current war as a continuation of an ancient conflict of cultures that began in the seventh century.

“When the Turks stood at the Gates of Vienna it seemed that all of Europe would be overrun by the legions of the Prophet. This war never ended. While many individual treaties were made between various states over the centuries, no truce was ever declared between Islam and the infidels, and no permanent peace was established.” (Gates of Vienna)

We are now in the third wave which began with either: 1) the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna; or 2) the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979; or 3) September 11th, 2001 - take your pick.

July 2002 ~ They Are Trying To Kill Us! ~ The first anniversary of September 11th is upon us and there is talk of a loss of interest in our fight against the evildoers. Some are hoping to wish the bad things of terrorism away. We cannot do that - we are under mortal threat. Just this week four nicely dressed young men walked into a Christian school in Pakistan and began shooting to kill the small American, Australian and European students there. Failing, because the youngsters were hidden behind strongly fortified doors, the gunmen calmly walked into a nearby woods and found some of the school’s employees hiding in a tree and shot them dead. A teacher heard the murderers exclaim “God is good!”

These people are trying to kill us! They are trying to kill our children and grandchildren!

• 1983 - 2 suicide car bombings embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut: 300 killed
• 1993 - World Trade Center bombing: only 6 killed
• 1995 - Saudi Arabia: 7 killed
• 1996 - Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia: 19 killed
• 1997 - Pakistan: 5 U.S. oil-workers murdered
• 1998 - U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam: 263 killed, 5,000 injured
• 2000, USS Cole in Yemen: 17 killed
• 2001 - World Trade Center.

When will we get the message? They are trying to kill us!

I formerly was concerned that young Americans of today were learning current news and politics from late night comics on television. This new revelation that they are learning history from cartoon characters such as Stewie and Family Guy is indeed troubling. Is there no hope for the future?

Canada’s Good $en$e - During the Vietnam Era

In March of 2007, there was a comment entered at my blog “Kerfuffles & Flourishes” about our peaceable northern neighbor: “Canada had the good sense to stay out of the Vietnam war.” I thought to myself, “God bless Canuckistan and please, God, save the world from any more of her peacekeeping efforts!”

Oh Yes - that is what Canadians believe, that they had the “good $en$e” to stay out of the Vietnam War. However, … history tells the story differently. Although Canada didn’t send a fighting force - Canada sent a lot of other things - like war materiel that didn’t go directly to Vietnam, lest Canada’s ruse be discovered. In fact, Canada was so busy manufacturing war materiel for the American forces in Vietnam that the entire country was booming like a well-oiled machine. And the Canadian government had the “good $en$e” to not tell its citizens just why the country was basking in economic good fortune, with unemployment below 4%, instead letting them believe that the manna falling from the heavens was their reward for being good little peacekeepers.

Canada’s “good $en$e” to stay out of the Vietnam War brought them record sales of iron ore, lead, zinc, copper, nickel, asbestos, and oil to the United States, not to mention the warplane components and arms sales. Although fighting the scourge of communism in Vietnam was offensive to Canadian sensibilities, American “blood money” was not. In June 1968, the new Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, officially declared that there was absolutely no immorality involved in selling arms to the United States during the war in Vietnam, any more than it was “to sell them nickel and asbestos and airplane components.”

During the Vietnam era, Canadians were too busy protesting the US involvement in Vietnam to make any efforts to discover their own country’s super secret role in the production of Agent Orange, a weapon that would harm thousands of innocents. The government and manufacturers were claiming that they were shipping an everyday common herbicide that Canadians used to kill weeds in home gardens, under power lines and along railroad tracks. Even though it would wipe out entire jungles in Vietnam, Canadians were told that it was perfectly safe for people, and never, ever did the name of the herbicide, “Agent Orange” pass from their lips.

Oh yeah - Canadians had the “good $en$e to stay out of Vietnam” by selling the Agent Orange to the US army, which at the time was involved in Vietnam. Since it was American planes that sprayed the Agent Orange, wiping out thousands upon thousands of acres of trees and crops in Vietnam, Canadians could continue to live free and guiltless. The fact that Agent Orange was more than a harmless herbicide, that it contained poisonous dioxins, was an American failing, and no fault nor moral problem for Canadian manufacturers, … whose government leaders had had the “good $en$e” to financially profit from the Vietnam War, instead of fighting in it.

And if you don’t believe Kerfuffles, listen to voices from history describing “Canada’s War Profiteering” at Canada’s own CBC (The CBC Digital Archives Website): Supplying the War Machine: “The Uniroyal plant in Elmira, Ont., was one of seven suppliers producing Agent Orange for the U.S. military.” Or you can continue to believe the statement of the Canadian government’s report to parliament in 1970: “no research carried out by the Department of National Defence has affected the use of chemicals in Vietnam.”

When I mentioned at another blog, “Kerfuffles & Flourishes,” that I was planning to write about Canada’s role with Agent Orange and explain why all those Vietnam refugees taken in by Canada, were forced to leave their native land, one Canadian commenter replied: “Yeah we know: guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but all those Vietnamese who had Agent Orange dropped on them by the Americans were killed by Canada! Hilarious!” (The Comment)

If Bill Clinton was the “First Black President,” what will Barack Obama be when he is elected?

South Dakota native and former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern gave us the answer when he joined Barack Obama campaigning in Sioux Falls. Senator McGovern declared “Obama Is a Second ‘Lincoln’.”

During good Senator McGovern’s 1972 Democratic presidential campaign a young Hillary Clinton worked her heart out as a political organizer in South Texas for him. He described Bill and Hillary Clinton as “my treasured friends all these years,” and the former Senator became an ardent supporter of her presidential bid. However, when the going got tough for Hillary, and she lost the state of North Carolina, Senator McGovern flip-flopped for his “treasured friend.” He is now a big supporter of Obama. As McGovern spoke to a crowd of 7,000, and with his words placed Obama upon the same pedestal that Abraham Lincoln has occupied all of these last many scores of years, Republicans were chortling in their sleeves.

While George McGovern was describing Barack Obama as “a second Abraham Lincoln,” Republicans were seeing Obama as a second George McGovern, an antiwar liberal about to be blown away in a wartime general election by a strong national defense candidate. Years ago it was Richard Nixon, the hawk, who defeated peacenik George McGovern with electoral college totals of 520 to 17, in the second biggest landslide in American history. Like the Democrats’ Al Gore after him, George McGovern did not even win his home state.

Barack Obama - “America’s Second George McGovern.”

Obama - A Second Lincoln

It was the “Fear of Freedom” which begot the murder yesterday of a woman freedom fighter, Benazir Bhutto. She was a Muslim woman, a Muslim mother who, because she believed in freedom, was martyred in her own native Muslim land of Pakistan by her fellow Muslim brothers.

Where religions, creeds, nations and lands espouse “Fear of Freedom”, truth becomes an unknown commodity. All truth is from God; freedom is God’s gift to all of mankind. Those who teach “Fear of Freedom” to their people are enemies of the true God. Yesterday’s tragic murder of a woman for her belief in freedom is one more example of the “Fear of Freedom’s” tyranny of the human mind, its debasement of the human soul and its degradation of human life on earth.

Thank God for the man named Jesus who preached freedom. Jesus taught HIS followers to seek freedom, not to fear it, and hence influenced HIS civilized world to carry freedom’s torch: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John Chapter 8).

“I’m standing up for the principle of democracy. I’m standing up for moderation. And I’m standing up for hope for all the people in Pakistan who today are poor and miserable and really quite desperate..” ~~ Benazir Bhutto, CNN Interview of 28 September 2007.

In 1775, Patrick Henry declared “Give me Liberty or Give me Death,” at Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. That declaration set the course for revolution and independence for Americans. It was the cry that has reverberated in the hearts of mankind ever since. Many freedom lovers around the world have met death in their quest for liberty for themselves and others.

Today it was the American educated, woman freedom fighter, Benazir Bhutto, who was martyred in the name of freedom in her own native land of Pakistan. Today, it was a Muslim woman, murdered in a Muslim land, by her fellow male Muslims.

The news story is at BBC News; Christopher Hitchens names her “A Daughter of Destiny

The image, Benazir Bhutto last moments-5, is subject to copyright by PAKlSTAN. It is posted here with permission via the Flickr API by Kerfuffles.

If Americans were really serious about reforming immigration they would stop blaming the illegal immigrants and put the onus where it belongs – on WASHINGTON.

If Americans were truly serious, they would elect a 100% brand new United States Congress and a new President who would drive a bulldozer through both the Immigration and Naturalization Service (I.N.S.) and the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.). While our soldiers are bleeding and dying in foreign lands to protect the homeland against terrorists who want nothing more than to enter the United States and do their dastardly deeds, high level administrators of those two aforementioned agencies have been accepting bribes to allow any illegal with $50,000 to become embedded in American society and obtain legal status and citizenship.

Take the case of just one high level government employee, Robert T. Schofield, 57, who recently pled guilty in a Virginia court to taking more than $600,000 in bribes, yet was originally charged with accepting more than $8.1 million in return for fraudulent green cards. Of the more than 200 illegal immigrants who received U.S. citizenship from Schofield, fewer than a dozen have been located. What are all the others up to at this very moment in time?

When we get smart enough to replace of 100% of the United States Congress, let’s consider keeping Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) who in July 2006, sent a letter to the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) of D.H.S. regarding the arrest of Mr. Schofield, demanding to know how “a man with this history was in a supervisory position in [USCIS], where he could exploit his position of trust to sell U.S. citizenship to the highest bidder?” (CitizensForEthics.org)

Those who want to claim that Robert T. Schofield was just ONE bad apple in the INS-DHS barrel of apples, are themselves sandy-headed ostriches. Mr. Schofield flaunted much of his chicanery in the open. In fact, it was his outrageous brazenness, not his criminality, that finally forced law enforcement to take action. Schofield had supervisors who could not have been ignorant of his modus operandi. American taxpayers need to ask themselves why. Why did those charged with overseeing the activities of Mr. Schofield’s supervisors look the other way and why was he promoted and further rewarded by his superiors, even after his criminalities and indiscretions were found out?

Common sense tells one that Robert T. Schofield is but the tip of the iceberg. It is an understatement to declare that “it’s nothing new.” The New York Times wrote about the corruption rife at I.N.S. in 1994: In Immigration Labyrinth, Corruption Comes Easily by STEPHEN ENGELBERG.

Up and down the East Coast, the word quickly spread through immigrant communities. Come to the Northern Virginia offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Bring cash. Buy the right to live or work in the United States.

Smooth-talking middlemen took care of the details, bribing immigration service employees with gold jewelry, free vacations and cash-filled envelopes passed hand to hand in the aisles of a nearby department store. Ghanaians, Lebanese and Salvadorans, among others, flocked to what quickly became a multicultural bazaar. Most came from the Washington area, but others drove hundreds of miles and scribbled phony local addresses.

… “We let it happen,” one employee involved in the case said in a recent interview. “There was no supervision to tighten down on us, and we let it go real wild.”

Altogether, the I.N.S. said, they had fraudulently given more than 4,000 people permission to work and sold legal residency to 1,000 more immigrants who did not qualify.

In the cases of abuse described in 1994, the senior managers of I.N.S. claimed to be largely unaware of any abuse, insisting that only a small minority of the agency’s employees succumb to temptation, and that those who did take bribes were “entry-level employees — some earning barely more than the minimum wage.” That is not what Mr. Schofield was, nor his superiors who were complicit in his treachery.

For ten years the government had investigated numerous allegations that Schofield was on the take. In 1991, Schofield, as an I.N.S. special agent, botched investigation of an Asian brothel in Washington by engaging in an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with an informant. When he was demoted for ‘conduct unbecoming a government employee,’ he absconded to the Far East where he used his two government issued credit cards to support himself. How Schofield managed to legally return to Washington and whether he repaid American taxpayers for the $36,000 credit card fraud is clouded by bureaucratic murkiness, but return he did. He rose in the ranks, and when the new Department of Homeland Security took over I.N.S. functions in 2003, Robert T. Schofield surfaced as a supervisor tasked by higher ups with protecting the Homeland.

So let’s hear no more of elaborate regulatory schemes to be administered by these same congressmen, senators, presidential candidates and Robert T. Schofields. Schofield miscreants continue their betrayals in these government agencies; “civil servants” who are more interested in lining their pockets than in protecting their own homeland. It is shameful to say the least, when other, better Americans are putting their lives on the line to protect us from the evildoers.

“Immigration Official Pleads Guilty” - WaPo December 2006

Last night I suffered through the debate of the presidential candidates of the Party of Appeasement (Democrats). Obviously they know little of history and none has ever read of the fierce battles between Christians and Norsemen during Europe’s Middle Ages. Not one has ever heard of the Dane-geld or read the simple poetry of Britian’s Rudyard Kipling.

“The Dane-geld” by Rudyard Kipling

… “We invaded you last night —
we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ‘em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: —
“Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:–

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
Nor matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

The slave trade that forever stained America’s psyche began in Europe with the followers of Mohamed. It was the knowledge that they were following anti-Christian mores, which brought Americans to their senses about the matter, not to mention the realization that white Christians were its victims as well as black Africans. When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence a condemnation of America’s slave trade, which comment was later deleted, he condemned “the Christian King of Great Britain” for practicing “this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers.” The “infidel powers” to whom Jefferson alluded were none other than the Muslim Barbary pirates.

How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night? (“Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates” by Christopher Hitchens)

Jefferson’s new nation found itself immediately at war with North Africa’s Islamic potentates who occupied the lands that are today Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. No longer under the protection of the British Royal Navy, the Founding Fathers had to decide how to secure free navigation of the seas for the new United States of America.

In March of 1785, Jefferson and John Adams were in London to meet Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman of Tripoli and inquire of him why it was that Barbary states felt a right to impede American ships, pirating their cargo and enslaving their crews and passengers. America’s two most illustrious Founding Fathers were told by the “Mussulman” Ambassador: “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president, he refused to accede to the Barbary pirates of Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. This refusal brought about the first “war” the U.S. would fight as a country. The first line of the Marine hymn, “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” references the 600-mile march across the Libyan Desert of a group of Navy men and others to capture the port city of Derna, Tripoli. It took a concerted effort by England, France, Spain, and the United States to end over 400 years of Muslim piracy on the Barbary Coast. (“Happy Birthday Marines” by Edna Barney)

It seems that it was our beloved Democrat Thomas Jefferson who first decided to make war upon the Muslim Barbaries instead of appeasing them. President George W. Bush is struggling to follow in Jefferson’s mighty footsteps as the ancient battle continues. Give thanks for Jefferson and say a prayer for George W.

“TJ and the Barbaries” by Kerfuffles
“Jefferson’s War on Terror” by Edna Barney