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SODERTALJE, Sweden -- Behind the wheel of his old Ford Escort, Oshin Merzoian puttered happily along snowy streets. Back home in Baghdad, he said, he always drove at crazy speeds to avoid killers and kidnappers. But here in "Little Baghdad," as this city that has accepted roughly as many Iraqi refugees as the entire United States is called, Merzoian is enjoying the luxuries of living in peace. He doesn't strap on a gun for protection, and he notes that Swedish police worry more about seat belts than roadside bombs. "Even if they remake Iraq from gold and diamonds, I wouldn't...

Obama Addresses Homophobia, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia Among Black Americansby Jason Horowitz January 20, 2008 In a speech today at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.served as pastor, Barack Obama talked about the existence of institutional racism, the sensationalizing of race "by the media" and the creeping of race as an issue into the presidential campaign. But Obama's speech will likely be remembered for his calling on the black community to do its part to fight homophobia, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Obama says in the speech: "We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them,"...

<p>A German state governor has won applause from fellow conservatives for demanding a crackdown on "criminal young foreigners." Immigrant groups and political rivals say he is playing with fire in a debate that reveals the widespread xenophobia obstructing integration in Germany.</p>

The first graders names have been omitted. This is an excerpt from a holiday letter of American family of academic liberals currently living off the government (of Australia, for now). ...other breakthroughs included the training wheels coming off the bike and an early grasp of American politics ... During the APEC meetings in Sydney, the father of his friend XXXXX, who was commander of the Australian troops in Iraq, had lunch with President Bush. XXXXX brought to the daily class 'news time' the official White House atlas given his dad. The teacher said "How special it was for your father...

Among the statements made by the teacher: What part of the country has the highest murder rate? The South. What part of the country has the highest rape rate? The South. What part of the country has the highest … church attendance? The South. Oh, wait a minute. You mean there is not a correlation between these things … You know, you go down to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, all these states that are as red as they could possibly be, as right-wing Republican as you could possibly be. When you first present these people with the economic policies of the...

The former Mexican president is touting his new memoirs in a cross-country trip Former Mexican President Vicente Fox doesn't get many breaks these days. He was slapped around on The O'Reilly Factor, had a new statue of his likeness yanked down by an angry mob in Veracruz, and along the way promoted his memoirs, which were published in English. Fox, whose U.S. tour is taking him from New York to California and points in between, stopped off in Houston on Monday, where he signed autographs, posed for photographs and spoke of his plans to follow the leads of former Presidents...

...[The building of the Trans-Texas Corridor] is all too sinister for Jerome Corsi, the Vietnam War veteran who helped lead the Swift Boat charge against John Kerry. Corsi has knitted disparate strands of each of these separate road projects to help convince fellow xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Dobbs and the John Birch Society that the corridor is the first leg of a secret federal project called the NAFTA Superhighway, a four-football-field wide monstrosity that would run from Mexico's Yucatan to Canada's Yukon... Yet even Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican candidate for president, has fallen...

Ethnic diversity's rocky road http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070827/COLUMNS/70827008 BY MORGAN LIDDICK And On the Right August 27, 2007 If you’re a damn-the-torpedoes Multiculturalist, better fasten your seat belt. Things are about to get bumpy. A few weeks ago Robert Putnam, the Harvard researcher who wrote “Bowling Alone,” a book about the weakening social fabric of the United States, released the results of his new research on the effects of multiculturalism, a doctrine which he had long promoted. They aren’t encouraging. Putnam has been working on his new project for about five years, and hesitated to bring his results into the public eye, so...

WASHINGTON -- Each year, an estimated 400,000 babies are born in the United States to mothers who are illegal immigrants. More than 25 percent of those babies are born in California. Although Congress has never passed a law saying so, no president has ever ordered it, and no court has ever ruled on the issue, each of these babies automatically becomes a U.S. citizen when it takes its first breath. That could change if legislation that Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River, joined in sponsoring in April becomes law. Lungren, who served as California's attorney general from 1990 to 1998 and...

Wikipedia defines Xenophobia as a fear or dislike of foreigners or in general of people different from one's self. A recent report by the Moscow Human Rights Bureau shows where in Russia foreign guests are most likely to encounter xenophobia.

The border is an expensive barrier, new study concludes Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun Published: Thursday, June 14, 2007 The Canada-U.S. border is not our friend. That's the conclusion of a new Fraser Institute study written by author and Simon Fraser University political scientist Alexander Moens. Canadian nationalists traditionally argue that the border is our last defence against cultural and economic absorption by the all-powerful, politically domineering U.S.A. But Moens presents a different, more pragmatic perspective, which has resonance in view of the panic associated with long waits for passports to enable Canadians to keep flying freely to their favourite...

Some people just don't like Mexicans -- or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that Latino kids will dumb down our schools. They think Latinos are dirty, diseased, indolent and more prone to criminal behavior. They think Latinos are just too different from us ever to become real Americans. No amount of hard, empirical evidence to the contrary, and no amount of reasoned argument or appeals to decency and fairness, will convince this small group of...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

GENEVA - Islamic countries pushed through a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion — a response largely to the furor last year over caricatures published in a Danish newspaper of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. The statement proposed by the Organization of Islamic Conference addressed what it called a "campaign" against Muslim minorities and the Islamic religion around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. The resolution, which was opposed by a number of other non-Muslim countries, "expresses deep concern at attempts...

The mammoth globe on the World Trade Bridge spins in the glow of the Texas moon, welcoming hundreds of cargo trucks from Mexico to the United States' largest inland port. Nighttime is the slowest time for the bridge. During the day, literally thousands of trucks cross the span into the U.S., headed for destinations scattered throughout the Midwest and East and north into Canada. Traffic between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, on Mexico's side of the bridge, is only expected to increase in coming years with Mexico anticipating billions of dollars in new trade, mainly from China, on its way to...

A MASSIVE road four football fields wide and running from Mexico to Canada through the heartland of the United States is being proposed amid controversy over security and the damage to the environment. The "nation's most modern roadway", proposed between Laredo in Texas and Duluth, Minnesota, along Interstate 35, would allow the US to bypass the west coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to import goods from China and the Far East into the heart of middle America via Mexico, saving both cost and time. However, critics argue that the ten-lane road would lay a swathe of concrete...

Russia starts deporting Georgian immigrants (Filed: 07/10/2006) President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia called on the West to denounce Kremlin "xenophobia" yesterday after Russia began to expel Georgian immigrants from its borders in an escalation of the dispute with its southern neighbour. Georgian citizens arrive at Tbilisi airport after being deported from Russia He said the international community should be deeply alarmed after Russia's latest retaliation in a row ostensibly sparked by last week's arrest of four Russian officers accused of spying in Georgia. Some 150 immigrants were rounded up and deported by Russian police yesterday. Officers demanded that schools draw...

John Hawkins apparently has taken on a mission to prove that the Bush Administration is not creating a North American Union to replace the United States, or a new currency -- the Amero -- to replace the U.S. dollar. Recently, in a blog debate on this website, I exchanged views with Mr. Hawkins. When Mr. Hawkins declined to respond in what the editors termed “Round 4” of that debate, I concluded Mr. Hawkins allowed me to have the final word because he lacked a convincing rejoinder. Now, we see Mr. Hawkins wants to carry on the debate but this time...

Xenophobic violence is escalating in both Russia and Ukraine, according to Nikolai Butkevich, research and advocacy director of the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union. Speaking at RFE/RL's Washington office on June 15, Butkevich detailed the increased presence of neo-Nazi groups within Russia and the failure of local political and law enforcement officials to stem the tide. Meanwhile, he said a similar phenomenon is occurring in Ukraine but is getting very little media attention. WASHINGTON, June 19, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Butkevich has been following the issue of neo-Nazi violence, anti-Semitism, and racial incidents in the former...

[snip] "Señor Weiss," a young girl asked, "why did you steal half our country?" She was referring to the northern half of Mexico lost to the United States in the war of 1846-48. "Just be patient," I half joked. "You'll get it all back." The divisive debate over illegal immigration to the United States is more than just another chapter in America's long love-hate relationship with immigrants. When virtually 100 percent of the rhetoric focuses on the estimated 50 percent of illegal immigrants who come from Mexico, it's a tragic flare-up between two old neighbors whose historic insecurities make reasoned...

The President of the United States, having noticed that the illegal-immigrant issue has rent asunder both the nation at large and his own core constituency, proposes now to dispatch 6,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border, thereat to provide temporary backup to an overwhelmed Border Patrol in stanching the flow of interlopers currently interloping unchecked. Millions of Americans approve and applaud, as they surely will also cheer the rest of the border-tightening plans Bush outlined in prime time last night: a bigger civilian Border Patrol to allow the troops to resume other duties, security fences to seal the line,...

Atotonilco, Mexico - They name their babies Johnny and Leslie, so certain are they that their kids' future lies in the United States. Returning migrants sprinkle English into their speech as they talk knowingly about job markets in U.S. towns. The U.S. may want to stop illegal immigration, but most Mexicans accept it as a fact of life they can't imagine changing. Mexico's economy, society and political system are built on the assumption that migration and amnesties will continue - and that the $20 billion that undocumented workers send home every year will keep coming, and almost certainly grow. In...

I just saw on Foxnews that President Bush's poll numbers have taken another dive. Gee I wonder why? Maybe the average American isn't thrilled about our President hosting the Red Chinese..complete with marching bands..and a 21 gun salute. Maybe the average American isn't thrilled that 12000 illegal aliens enter the US every day. Screw guest workers, screw the economy..if the terrorist sneak some sort of bomb in here..its all gonna be blown to hell anyways. Maybe the average American isn't thrilled that Iran was named CHAIRMAN of the disarm committee of the UN..and we don't hear A PEEP from our...

An October Surprise? by Patrick J. Buchanan President Bush says Iranians are behind the more lethal IEDs, the roadside bombs killing our troops in Iraq. Rumsfeld warns the Iranian Revolutionary Guard may now be in Iraq. Cheney says Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. McCain says, “the military option is on the table.” And Israel is getting impatient. Writes Yaakov Katz in the March 10 Jerusalem Post, “The United States has until now not done enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, a senior Defense Ministry official has told the Jerusalem Post ...” Katz quotes...

WASHINGTON — Accusing politicians of "pounding their chests" on immigration for short-term political gain, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Tuesday that the tone of the debate had been "hurtful" to him and his Mexican-born wife, Columba. Bush, the younger brother of President Bush, reserved some of his sharpest criticism for conservatives in his own Republican Party, calling it "just plain wrong" to charge illegal immigrants with a felony, as a provision passed by the Republican-led House would do. He also opposed "penalizing the children of illegal immigrants" by denying them U.S. citizenship, an idea backed by some conservatives but not...

CANCUN, Mexico - President Bush said Friday the United States believes it is important to enforce laws protecting borders and told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that was crucial to keeping prosperity alive. ADVERTISEMENT He also reiterated strong support for a "guest worker" program that would allow undocumented immigrants already in the United States to remain in the country to fill low-paying jobs that Americans won't take. Bush declined to say whether he would veto legislation that did not contain such a provision. "I want a comprehensive bill," Bush said at a joint news conference with Mexican President Vicente...

Live on CNBC . . .

For a political junkie, the Dubai ports debacle has been a bit like the movie “Pulp Fiction”—just one freaky story inside another, unfolding at a rapid pace and leading to an unexpected ending that made no darn sense and yet was really quite satisfying emotionally. I give it two thumbs way up. Unfortunately for the President, he played the part of “Marcellus Wallace” in “Port Fiction.” He talked tough at the start of the whole thing, but really took it hard in the end. (Bada bing!) And along the way we got to see Chuck Schumer support racial profiling, Hillary...

RBC, 19.12.2005, Moscow 19:03:32.The UN General Assembly has adopted an anti-Nazi resolution, initiated by Russia. Some 114 countries supported the document, with 4 states against and 57 abstentions. The resolution expresses a serious concern about the growing activity of extremist, racist and xenophobic organizations in the world. The Russian Foreign Ministry is concerned that some countries (i.e. the US and Japan) voted against the document, while many countries (all EU members) abstained. States such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia abstained as well, although these nations suffered a lot during World War II, the ministry's information and press department claimed.

TOKYO, Nov. 14 - A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of." In another comic book, "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive." The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples...

Brussels - After two weeks of violent urban unrest in France, Muslim communities in the country will face long-term retaliation, a Euro MP said Thursday, urging the French government to take action and condemn revenge attacks against Moslems. French politicians had failed to give immediate assurance that they would support the country's unity, leaving citizens in a state of disarray and shock, British socialist MEP Claude Moraes said. With no ethnic monitoring, France could not know the level of discrimination in the country, Moraes said, comparing the situation in France with Britain. French police also had no guidelines for dealing...

MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman has warned that his organization intends to wage a legal battle against a UNESCO convention passed last week that would allow countries to protect themselves against what they regard as a cultural invasion by America. "If countries start passing laws that are in contravention of World Trade Organization rules, there will be conflict," Glickman told a film industry conference in Beaune, France on Friday. He expressed concerns that some nations will use the UNESCO "cultural exception" to impose limitations on the number of U.S. films that can be distributed in their countries or to impose special...

(Via Geopolitical Review) Europeans Grow More Intolerant of Immigrants-Study VIENNA (Reuters) - Europeans are becoming more intolerant of immigrants and one in five want them sent home, a study released Tuesday by the European Union racism watchdog showed. The study, based on pan-EU opinion surveys between 1997 and 2003, found a significant increase in support for the view that there were limits to a so-called multicultural society. There was also a significant increase in the minority of people who supported repatriating immigrants, to 20 percent, the study said, without providing the scale of either increase. "The European Union is confronted...

Jan. 22, 2005 22:39 | Updated Jan. 24, 2005 18:18 German party protests tribute to victims By ASSOCIATED PRESS BERLIN A top leader of Germany's main Jewish group called on Germans to fight more strongly against far-right groups on Saturday, a day after legislators from a nationalist party walked out of a state parliament to protest a tribute honoring victims of Nazi aggression. All 12 members of the National Democratic Party stood up and headed for the door of the eastern state of Saxony's parliament Friday after parliament president Erich Iltgen called for a moment of silence to mark the...

AJAX, Ontario ROB MacARTHUR, a part-time music promoter, has a cardboard box full of nearly 60 CD's at his bar in this town half an hour east of Toronto, sent to him by independent Canadian musicians hoping for a shot at getting their songs on the radio. For many of these artists the odds are slim, admits Mr. MacArthur, who is a guitarist in country bands himself. The music is good, but there isn't enough space on the radio for everyone, said the 43-year-old, who with his long gray hair and ready smile has the look of an aging country...

A Paris court has ruled that an acclaimed new film by the director of Amelie is not French enough to vie for French prizes. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, a French story filmed in French, has drawn rave reviews. But a court judged it was too American to compete in French film festivals, including Cannes.

What do we do. I'm totally frustrated. This affected my family. We had a car stolen and wrecked by underage Mexican gang members. We recovered nothing as it was an older car and only had liability. There isn't a petition I haven't signed, I've written letters, I joined anti-amnesty sites. He can't force this down our throats. What's even more interesting is "NO" to amnesty seem to be the most bi-partisan issue of all. Does ANYONE know what is going on? What do we do now?

Obviously, Katie Couric & others are anxious to "start the healing" by consulting their Dr Phils of the world, but what will the Dr Phils NOT tell their Blue State clients? Read on for some easy predictions.....#1 "Its the Red Staters who are intolerant, not you". #2 "Be polite, but never compromise your core beliefs". #3 Its THEM who are Xenophobic, not you.

With tacit state approval, GEOFFREY YORK reports, xenophobia has reared its ugly head. By GEOFFREY YORK Globe and Mail Update BEIJING — By taxi and bicycle, the young men arrived near the Japanese embassy. They carried loudspeakers and sirens and giant red Chinese flags. They wore shirts with anti-Japanese slogans.It could mean only one thing. The Chinese patriots were on the prowl again. "Flag-holder, come to the front," shouted an organizer as the patriots began to march. "Hold it higher, so that everyone can see!" They waved their flags and unfurled two red banners denouncing Japan, and marched down the...

Twenty-one years ago, voters here chose Federico Peña as the city's first Hispanic mayor. Eight years later, they elected Wellington Webb as their first black mayor. Webb won a contest in which both candidates were African-American - and 68% of voters were white. Then last year, Denver picked its first white mayor in 20 years. Today, Census data show that racial and ethnic minorities in Denver now outnumber whites. No surprise here: Demographic shifts have rolled through Colorado's capital city for decades. "It's nice to see the demographics are catching up to my appointments," jokes Mayor John Hickenlooper, a brew...

Something to think about: American doesn't mean white; keep in mind how this country was founded, the melting pot has evolved to include a few new shades but the fact remains the same that we are all Americans. I may not look like everyone else, but I feel the same attachment to this country - please don't make me feel unwelcome.

1. The Assembly considers racism not as an opinion but as a crime. The relevant international legal instrument to combat racism is the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The Assembly deplores that Andorra, Moldova and San Marino have not yet ratified this instrument. 2. Adequate legal instruments to combat racism already exist in some Council of Europe member states. The difficulties of combating racism on the Internet arise from the nature of this means of disseminating information itself and from the legal obstacles to the implementation of provisions against hate speech.

PARIS (AP) - Experts gathered in Paris on Wednesday seeking a common approach to combatting racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic propaganda on the Internet, believed to be a chief factor in rising numbers of hate crimes. Officials from more than 60 countries were attending the two-day conference aimed at finding ways to keep racist information off the Web without compromising free speech and freedom of expression. The dilemma, acute because the Internet is both global and tough to regulate, was shown by the widespread and illegal sharing of music online that has confounded record companies. Terror groups have also used the...

You might think a city the size of Baltimore has seen everything – particularly when it comes to brutal crimes. It's not the case. It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of the emotional reaction to a heinous crime in the city committed last week – the barbaric decapitation murders of three young children. No one has been tried for the crimes yet, but two men have been charged. They are both illegal aliens thought by some police sources to be involved in smuggling of human beings across the Mexican border. They are Policarpio Espinoza, 22, and Adan Espinoza Canela,...

Peter O'Brien suggests that liberalism leads to xenophobia when it finds it cannot reshape people to its model of life."We are none of us tolerant in what concerns us deeply and entirely." Peter O'Brien opened his remarks on the rise of anti-Islamic movements among mainstream Europeans with this quotation from Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He then went on to explore contemporary relations between Muslim immigrants and the mostly Christian mainstream of Europe in a May 24 talk in the Public Policy building at UCLA. O'Brien is a professor of political science at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. His visit to UCLA...

It's only a short step from feeling angry to feeling angry at someone, especially if that person is of a different social group, sex or ethnicity. At least that is what psychologists who are investigating the link between emotions and prejudice are finding. In a study that measured how emotional states affected views of outsiders, the researchers, from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, found that anger increased the likelihood of a negative reaction to members of a different group and that sadness or a neutral emotion did not. The study will appear in the May issue...

Some of Buchanan's nonsense: "Neocons believe the Palestinian Authority must be crushed, Arafat eliminated, and the Golan Heights, West Bank, and East Jerusalem held by Israel forever. They want Hezbollah eradicated, Syria denatured, the Saudi monarchy brought down. Let them so believe. But their agenda is not America’s agenda, and their fight is not America’s fight."

Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should a cop arrest an illegal gangbanger for...

    BRUCE BARTONA 'European Union' Model for the Americas or a New Homeland Called Aztlan?   "The effort to unite the economies of the Americas into a single free-trade area began at the Summit of the Americas, which was held in December 1994 in Miami. The heads of state and government of the 34 democracies in the region agreed to construct the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), in which barriers to trade and investment will be progressively eliminated. They agreed to complete negotiations towards this agreement by the year 2005 and to achieve substantial progress toward building...

London (CNSNews.com) - An European agency responsible for monitoring racism has suppressed a report on anti-Semitism because it found that Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents, an author of the study alleged Monday. The Vienna-based European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) commissioned the report by the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Berlin's Technical University after an upsurge in anti-Semitic violence in early 2002.The EUMC declined to release the findings after senior officials at the monitoring center said that there were problems with the data used.But Juliane Wetzel, a co-author of the report,...