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We are learning more about the suspects wanted in several high-end burglaries across Oakland County. In some cases – hundreds of thousands of dollars in valuables are gone, and it’s believed an international crime ring is behind it all, so-called crime tourists. "If you see something, say something," said Sheriff Michael Bouchard, calling on residents to look for anything out of the ordinary. He says that transnational gangs are coming primarily from South America targeting wealthy communities in the US. Bouchard said they are casing and targeting high-end residences, grabbing cash, jewelry, watches, precious metals, high-end purses, and electronics. "We...

Note: The following text is a quote: Remarks by Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden at the 78th Interpol General Assembly SINGAPORE ~ Monday, October 12, 2009 In Bucharest, a little over a year ago, my predecessor U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Mark Filip, joined by the Romanian Prosecutor General, announced criminal charges in a case that was emblematic of the evolution of transnational organized crime. That case charged that a racketeering enterprise in Romania joined forces with other criminals around the world -- including street gangs in Los Angeles -- to use the Internet to defraud thousands of people and...

Note: The following text is a quote: September 11, 2009 ICE works with local law enforcement to arrest 23 gang members BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Twenty men, two women and one juvenile with ties to the violent gangs Sureno-13, La Quemada, MS 13, Brown Pride 13, Southside Locotes, Lejion Negra (Mexico) and Judas 13 (Mexico) are facing deportation following a four-day enforcement operation involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and several local law enforcement agencies. The arrests were made as part of an ongoing initiative by ICE's National Gang Unit dubbed Operation Community Shield. As part of the initiative, ICE...

Most thoughtful observers of the contemporary American polity are astonished that the highly partisan fight over the future of Iraq has almost entirely obscured the larger problem of which the Iraqi theater is but one front: the truly global conflict against Islamofascist ideologues and their enablers that is best described as the War for the Free World. If the ominous nature of this wider struggle to the death -- and the potentially grave implications for our society should we fail to wage it successfully -- are being lost on too many Americans, practically none of them is paying attention to...

Chairmen Lugar and Coleman, Members of the Committee. I appreciate the invitation to testify before your Committee. You asked me to place the issue of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative within the context of North American cooperation and border control and to relate it to the recent report by an Independent Task Force on the Future of North America sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The Chairs and Vice Chairs of the three nation, 31-person Task Force were John F. Manley and Tom d’Aquino of Canada, Pedro Aspe and Andres Rozental of Mexico, and William F....

It appears there is hard evidence to prove that employers are using the H-1B visa program to hire cheap labor; that is, to pay lower wages than the national average for programming jobs. According to “The Bottom of the Pay Scale: Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers — F.Y. 2004,” a report by Programmers Guild board member John Miano, non-U.S. citizens working in the United States on an H-1B visa are paid “significantly less than their American counterparts.” How much less? “On average, applications for H-1B workers in computer occupations were for wages $13,000 less than Americans in the same occupation...

For decades, federal officials have ignored the pleas of American citizens to secure our borders against an immense, ongoing migration invasion that includes not only millions of “common variety” illegal aliens, but also drug traffickers, terrorists, and other violent criminals. Now, under the pretense of providing security, the Bush administration is adopting an outrageous policy that, in effect, does away with our borders with Mexico and Canada altogether. Regular readers of THE NEW AMERICAN know that this magazine has been warning that this direct assault on our nationhood was coming, that it is part and parcel of the NAFTA-CAFTA-FTAA process....

ORLANDO -- What's in an acronym? Apparently not a lot of business if the acronym is CAFTA and the region is Central Florida. Although the Bush administration is ardently pushing for approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, even the pact's supporters admit few businesses locally or statewide are clamoring to do business with Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. "I can't tell you who will benefit because I don't know who will benefit," says Barney Bishop, president of Tallahassee-based Associated Industries of Florida, a pro-CAFTA group which represents 10,000 businesses. "It's not an...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The Moroccan mission to the United Nations has announced it arrested six U.N. peacekeeping soldiers in Congo accused of sexually abusing local girls and discharged the contingent's commander. Fred Eckhard, the U.N. secretary-general's spokesman, on Monday said the announcement over the weekend showed "the Morrocan authorities attach as much importance to eradicating sexual abuse within U.N. peacekeeping missions as does the U.N." "The mission hopes that the vigorous and public reaction of Morocco will serve as an example and that other troop contributing countries will follow," he added. There have been more than 150 allegations of...

“While organized crime is not a new phenomenon today, some governments find their authority besieged at home and their foreign policy interests imperiled abroad. Drug trafficking, links between drug traffickers and terrorists, smuggling of illegal aliens, massive financial and bank fraud, arms smuggling, potential involvement in the theft and sale of nuclear material, political intimidation, and corruption all constitute a poisonous brew—a mixture potentially as deadly as what we faced during the cold war.”--R. James Woolsey, Former Director of Central Intelligence and Transnational Threats Initiative Steering Committee Member. From what I’ve recently discovered, that “poisonous brew” is being served to...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Plans are underway to observe the 2nd anniversary of the September 11th atrocities. This time around there will be less ceremony, something simpler and planer. In the squeaky voice of New York City's least illustrious Mayor, [t]his will be the second time that we as friends, as families, and as one community, will gather to remember a tragic day which has become synonymous with not only great sorrow and loss, but also courage and resilience. O.K., there's no gainsaying these words. But where, in all the possible reactions to an act of war against innocent civilians on our own shore,...

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, on October 5, 2001, Francis Fukuyama declared that his "end of history" thesis remains valid twelve years after he first presented it shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama’s core argument was that after the defeat of Communism and National Socialism, no serious ideological competitor to Western-style liberal democracy was likely to emerge in the future. Thus, in terms of political philosophy, liberal democracy is the end of the evolutionary process. To be sure, there will be wars and terrorism, but no alternative ideology with a universal appeal...