Operation North Sword 2005 against Taiwan

China on Tuesday launched major annual war games in Inner Mongolia, pitting 16,000 troops against each other in a mock battle observed by military officers from a record 24 nations in preparations for a Taiwan invasion. Code-named "North Sword 2005," the exercise was being held at the sprawling Zhurihe training base amid dry grasslands about 310 miles northeast of Beijing, the Shanghai Daily newspaper and other official media reported. Included in the mock battle was testing of missiles and targeted assassinations of Taiwanese government officials. The mock battle had several shades of reality containing live satellite video of Taiwanese officials being targeted.

Now in at least their fourth year, the exercises mark a major push toward integrated training involving the army, air force and other branches of the military in battlefield conditions. The mock assault involved hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles, more than 100 artillery pieces and a helicopter squadron, it said. It called the exercise an "rehearsed confrontation drill" involving airborne and armored brigades with no determined outcome.

Forty foreign military personnel were on hand for the exercise, but restricted saying they represented the largest number of nations invited to watch the war games since Beijing began allowing such observers in 2002. They included officers from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Australia, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang. China has vigorously stepped-up training of its 2.5 million-member armed forces in the past five years, focusing on Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing claims as its own territory.

With the settling of border disputes with Russia and Central Asian states, Beijing has been able to save money and manpower formerly deployed on its northern and eastern flanks and focus on its coastal regions. Rapid economic growth in recent years has also led to double-digit increases in budgets for the People's Liberation Army.

The military has been steadily trimming its vast but poorly trained troops and stressing high-tech warfare. It has ditched Mao Zedong's strategy of "People's war," which emphasized using rural guerrilla forces. China has become one of the biggest customers for modern planes and naval craft from Russia. Deployment of high-tech Chinese-made computer and communications equipment has also greatly boosted commanders' abilities to direct forces in the field.

Chinese government still forcible sterilizes

China’s Family Planning Agency yesterday admitted that government representatives in the central-east province of Shandong “had carried out forced abortions and sterilizations”. National Population and Family Planning Commission spokesman Yu Xuejun told Xingua that the commission and the Shandong family planning agency had sent two joint teams to investigate reports of forced abortions and sterilizations in Linyi city since early this year.

"An initial investigation indicates that illegal family planning practices that violate people's legal rights and interests do exist," he said. "Those who are responsible have been dismissed from duty. Some are under investigation, some are in detention. Further measures will be taken by departments concerned." Mr. Yu said the commission would train staff on the rule of law and require them to "correct any infringements of citizens' rights".

Through the year, more than 7,000 people were forcibly sterilized in Shandong province. The sterilizations were denounced by a blind activist, Chen Guangcheng, who was placed under house arrest after he charged the local authorities with carrying out the inhumane practice. Li Juan, a 24-year-old peasant, who lives near Linyi, said last week that she had been forced to abort her second child, a girl, in February, just two days before the baby was due. The population of China at the moment has reached the 1.3 billion mark and according to government estimates, it will peak at 1.46 billion in 2030.

Troops called to Northern border

The Minuteman Project, which a group of citizens launched last April in Arizona to protect the border against the infiltration of illegal aliens from Mexico, is expanding on Oct. 1. Minuteman volunteers will add the rest of the Mexican border and eight states along the Canadian border to their patrolling responsibilities. The group not only hopes to spot and report illegal immigrants trying to sneak into the U.S. It will ratchet up the pressure on politicians to take action against illegal immigration and picket/advertise against businesses who hire illegal immigrants.

Leaders of the Minuteman Project reportedly want to patrol the Canadian border in order to guard against terrorists, drug smugglers, and other criminal elements that they fear might try to slip across. The group claims it was formed as a result of "our government failing to do its most basic duty: protecting each state in the Union against invasion."

T J Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, credited the Minutemen with raising awareness of a problem that he said too many people overlook. "The key help that the Minuteman movement gives us is focusing public attention on the security of our borders and the difficult job that we have in maintaining it," Bonner said. "It's not necessarily doing the Border Patrol's job or even spotting illegals for them."

He also blamed illegal aliens for eventually causing lower wages for unskilled labor jobs. "There are plenty of Americans who want their jobs. Its just most people can't afford those jobs anymore. When the jobs paid 18 dollars an hour, there was no shortage of people willing to take those jobs," Bonner said.

The Minuteman Project has won some support in Washington; D.C. U.S. Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) introduced a bill in the House last month to train civilian volunteers to help patrol the borders. They would resemble current Minuteman volunteer outfits, but would have the added benefit of federal training and certification.

Foreign Extremists

Less than two months after the first London subway terrorist bombings, the British government has crafted policies to keep out dangerous foreign ideologues. Four years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, the U.S. has yet to restore similar policies.

Until 1990, the United States had on the law books the means to exclude or deport the kinds of radical ideologues who polluted the hearts and minds of British-born but radicalized homicide bombers and Islamofascist operatives in America.

Since September 11, one thing should be clear: Mass immigration and our loophole-riddled system have facilitated alien ideologues' agendas.

Foreign radicals, propagandists and sympathizers have always threatened American security and political order. Immigration has always been exploited by America's enemies. But not until political correctness took root did we hesitate to exclude foreigners because of their dangerous beliefs.

September 11 and its aftermath -- the unveiling of many terrorist cells, high sympathy in Islamic quarters, arrests and convictions of aliens who have used American freedoms against us -- should have taught us national security isn't possible without tightening immigration loopholes.

September 11 represented al Qaeda's most successful attack within the United States. Osama bin Laden formally declared war in 1998. Harvard's Samuel Huntington writes in his book "Who Are We?" that bin Laden targeted "Americans and their allies, civilians and military" for jihad because of U.S. power, Christianity and wealth.

Four years after the fateful attack by alien zealots, we still haven't exercised common sense by reducing immigration to reasonable, manageable levels; faithfully, consistently enforcing immigration laws; or barring entry to aliens who espouse dangerous ideologies.

The latter, exclusion and deportation due to ideology, isn't about keeping out people with novel or merely theoretical, opposing political viewpoints. Rather, we're talking about the kinds of beliefs so at odds with fundamental American political principles as to border on treason if held by a U.S. citizen. We're talking about threatening, subversive ideas. Such viewpoints don't qualify as legitimate public dialogue.

Whether the threat came from aliens promoting Jacobinism, anarchism, fascism or communism, the United States always sought to bar entry of or deport the foreign advocates. This policy helped disrupt foreign conspiracies here.

Common sense dictates we should keep out foreign extremists who spew anti-American rhetoric and whip up zealotry against this nation. They obviously can do less harm from abroad than from within the country.

Ideological exclusion policies helped keep out members of subversive groups and aliens who taught or advocated dangerous ideologies throughout the 20th century, especially during the Cold War.

With the end of the Cold War, Congress effectively repealed ideological exclusion in the 1990 Immigration Act. The First Amendment was expanded to extremes and extended to extremists -- including aliens, though they owe this nation no allegiance.

The result of ideological exclusion's repeal is that only active terrorists on watchlists might be barred from entering the United States. Those promoting radical ideology must be admitted.

But we should be able to deny immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to, or to deport, aliens who studied at madrassas, trained at terrorist camps, attended anti-America rallies, side with al Qaeda and Hamas, "worshipped" at notorious Islamist mosques. Those who espouse dangerous politics (whether rooted in Marx or Mohammed) don't deserve First Amendment protection; they certainly don't deserve a visa.

Foreign ideologues have long sought to promote their beliefs and advance their causes on American soil. They've spied, spread propaganda, stolen state and industrial secrets, tried to make converts, raised funds, organized followers and otherwise exploited American freedoms.

When Congress rewrote immigration laws during the Cold War, an administration witness said, when it comes to screening aliens who hold dangerous ideologies, we should "err in favor of American security." We should take that good advice again.

Immigration policy should become a useful tool in our own national security toolkit. We should restore robust ideological exclusion and deportation laws. That's a very practical way to disrupt foreign enemies and their potential allies. It fits squarely in the mold of the Constitution not being a suicide pact.

Money only needed for legal California Driver’s License

Veronica Rivera's scam was simple. She would park her luxury sedan at Oakland's Claremont Avenue DMV, whip out her cell phone, chat a bit in Tagalog, and the cash would flow. Her clients were illegal immigrants desperate for a driver's license. For a hefty price, she got them one, no questions asked. The operation apparently netted her and her partners inside the DMV several hundred thousand dollars. Then the money came to an end. She and her main partner, Frances Aliganga, were arrested and indicted by a federal grand jury on twelve felony charges, and now each face up to 55 years in prison.

The early-August arrests made headlines around the Bay Area, but a closer look at recently unsealed documents reveals that flaws in the DMV's policies and computer system made it startlingly easy for Aliganga to issue real drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants. The documents also raise serious questions about how many other California DMV employees also may have sold IDs to people here illegally. While investigating Rivera and Aliganga's operation, the FBI also uncovered two similar -- but apparently separate -- scams operating out of the same office. The presence of three fraudulent-license rings in one office, along with the ease with which they were able to operate undetected, suggests the statewide scope of such fraud could be vast.
The following account of the nineteen-month undercover investigation is based on information provided by the California Department of Motor Vehicles and a synthesis of three sworn FBI affidavits. One was signed by Special Agent Jason Richards, the other two by Special Agent Susan Sivok. Both are members of the FBI's Northern California Public Corruption Squad.
As with most public corruption cases, the investigation began with a tip. In November 2003, investigators learned that two illegal immigrants had received drivers' licenses at the Claremont branch, one of the busiest DMV offices in Northern California.

Once they started looking, DMV officials quickly determined that employee Frances Aliganga had processed the two licenses in May and October 2003. Aliganga had transferred to Claremont in April 2001 and was promoted four months later to a more responsible position as licensing registration examiner. The $40,000-a-year job gave her the authority to process license paperwork and conduct both the written and driving tests -- essentially without supervision.

Once they examined the two bogus records, DMV officials realized what Aliganga had done. For both, she simply typed the same fake Social Security number -- 000-11-2222 -- into agency computers. Officials immediately ran a report and discovered that she had used the same number 56 other times without being detected.

DMV investigators then interviewed several of the 56 people. Three identified a photo of Aliganga and said they had paid her bribes of $1,000 to $2,800 for licenses. A fourth admitted to paying a woman named "Veronica" $3,000 for a license and gave investigators a cell-phone number that was registered to Rivera.

In February, the FBI decided to go undercover. "I don't think there's anything more damaging than having somebody condemn themselves in their own words on tape," FBI spokeswoman LaRae Quy said in an interview.

On February 27, 2004, an undercover operative identified in affidavits as Agent 1 dialed the cell phone of Rivera, a five-foot-four-inch, 125-pound Filipina who also goes by the name Veronica Antonio. Affecting a thick Hispanic accent, Agent 1 asked about buying a driver's license, and Rivera said it would cost $3,000. She told Agent 1 to get half of the money and call her back in a week.

On March 5, Agent 1 met Rivera in person for the first time. The brash driver's-license broker, who has never worked for the DMV, flashed a page in her calendar, showing the names of some of her other clients. Business was so good, she boasted, that she had a waiting list. Agent 1 paid her $1,500 cash.

After several phone conversations, Agent 1 and Rivera met again. This time, the agent wore a wire for their rendezvous in Rivera's BMW outside the DMV. Rivera told Agent 1 she had set up a meeting inside the branch between the agent and an employee whom she called "the only Filipino lady inside." Rivera then described the employee and sent Agent 1 in. The agent walked by the long lines of people and immediately met with Aliganga, who instructed the agent to have a photo taken and sign documents.

Another DMV employee snapped the agent's photo and administered a written exam. Even though Agent 1 "intentionally marked the wrong answer on the overwhelming majority of questions," according to an affidavit, Aliganga "tossed the exam aside, barely (if at all) glancing at it." The agent went back outside and got into Rivera's car.
Minutes later, Rivera's cell rang, and she began speaking in Tagalog. An FBI review of phone records later showed that the call came from Aliganga. After another call, Rivera instructed the agent to walk back inside and go directly to the driver's-license window. There, Aliganga gave Agent 1 a handwritten temporary license. Agent 1 returned to Rivera's car and handed her the other $1,500.

Over the next several months, Rivera gave the agent several more temporary licenses as each one expired. Agents also tailed Rivera, who drove either a BMW or a Mercedes, from her Daly City house to the Claremont DMV, where she met people in the parking lot and sent them inside to Aliganga. The FBI also rifled through the trash at Rivera's home and tailed Aliganga in her Mercedes from the Claremont DMV to her home in Fairfield.
In the spring of this year, the bureau placed two more agents undercover. Agent 2 called Rivera in early May and told her about having "passed" through the US border without a visa -- essentially admitting illegal entry to the United States. A few weeks later, Agent 2 also told Rivera that a friend (Agent 3) was in town for only a few weeks and needed an ID right away. Aliganga processed Agent 3's request, while a friend of Aliganga -- 43-year-old DMV employee Brachelle Fifer of Oakland -- did the same for Agent 2. On June 9, Agent 2's license arrived in the mail inside a handwritten envelope postmarked Oakland. Agent 3's ID came in the mail five days later.

In late June, the FBI arrested Rivera, 54, and Aliganga, 53. Both confessed and said they used Fifer occasionally when Aliganga was not available. Fifer, however, appeared to be getting scammed, too. While Rivera collected anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 per license, the two told investigators that they paid Fifer only $100 each when she helped them. Fifer also was arrested and indicted. In searches of Rivera's car and home, agents also found her 2004 and 2005 calendars, which provided the details of her operation, including the names of more than two hundred customers.

It's a myth that computer crimes are usually committed by hackers. In reality, it's often low-level employees who find a flaw in the security system of a corporation or public agency. "We see it all the time: You entrust employees with too much information, especially low-paid, transient workers," said Lt. Richard Nichelman of the Northern California Computer Crimes Task Force, whose agency was not involved in the DMV investigation. "It's a safeguard issue."
Safeguards were clearly lacking in the DMV's computer system. Although the system was set up to flag the use of bogus or stolen Social Security numbers by cross-checking them with the computers of the Social Security Administration, it had one fatal flaw -- it trusted employees too much.

It's unclear exactly when Aliganga discovered the flaw, but sometime after she was promoted in August 2001, she realized that she could repeatedly use the same phony Social Security number and the computer would accept it -- and her bosses wouldn't notice. But more importantly, the system also let her override the Social Security Administration cross-check, DMV spokesman Steve Haskins acknowledged. Haskins would not say how long the flaw existed, nor would he say what steps the DMV took to fix it. Apparently it took more than one, because at some point during the investigation, Aliganga stopped using the bogus Social Security number and began using actual -- but stolen -- numbers. When asked if it was still possible for a DMV worker to get away with what Aliganga did, he said: "We have taken a closer look and we have reconfigured our system and closed the loophole."

But the evidence uncovered by the FBI's investigation suggests that Rivera and Aliganga's ring might just be a tiny part of the problem. Besides Aliganga and Fifer, two other Claremont DMV employees, Stephanie Denise Davis, 37, and Leneka T. Pendergrass, 27, both of Oakland, also were arrested and indicted for processing fraudulent drivers' licenses. Both also are accused of gaming the DMV computers, but they apparently operated separate scams unrelated to the one run by Aliganga and Rivera. Pendergrass also is accused of manipulating the DMV computer so that she could register vehicles that had not passed the state smog test.
Haskins and FBI spokeswoman Quy said the Claremont sting was a part of a wider investigation of DMV offices around the state and nation, but neither would comment on whether investigators have run reports to find out whether any other DMV employees also ever keyed in fake or stolen Social Security numbers. Nor would Haskins provide an estimate of how many other illegal IDs may have been issued statewide.

When told of the investigation and the flaws it uncovered at the DMV, some legislative leaders expressed dismay. "This is a chilling revelation," said state Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, a Southern California Republican who has opposed calls for state-sanctioned driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. "Who knows if the next Mohammed Atta may have already bought a license from a corrupt DMV employee?" Hollingsworth said that he hoped the DMV was thoroughly investigating whether fraud was rampant in the agency: "Who knows how many other times these scams have been replicated throughout the state?" Aliganga's attorney would not comment on the investigation, and Fifer's attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment. Rivera's attorney, Paul Delano Wolf of Oakland, would neither admit nor deny the evidence laid out in the FBI affidavits. But he defended Rivera's actions, portraying her as someone who was providing a service to undocumented Latino immigrants who are barred by law from obtaining drivers' licenses and California IDs. "This case is about their plight in this country," he said. When asked whether his client was really just exploiting the immigrants for financial gain, he said evidence in the case will show that "DMV employees" -- presumably Aliganga -- set the prices they charged for the licenses and IDs. He also said of his client: "I don't think the folks she helped believe they were being exploited."

Minuteman group treated unfairly in media

Forget all of the economic, racial, compassionate and moral arguments surrounding the immigration issue in Arizona. Instead we should focus on how immigration affects our national security - how it contributes to rising crime rates, human deaths and general sense of disorder along the border.

The Minuteman group is often criticized, and many of these criticisms appear to not have merit. The group tends to attract negative attention toward Mexican nationals who break U.S. law to enter, then continue to break the law stating a lack of common sense. For one thing, a regular flow of news about deaths and violent crime along the border supports the idea that illegal immigration leads to worsening crime rates. It has gotten so dangerous along the border that Arizona and New Mexico have declared their border regions to be in a state of emergency. The Minuteman group's message reinforces that the security situation on the border is dire.

Faced with accusations of racism among their volunteers, Chris Simcox and the Minutemen consistently assert that they condemn and avoid racism, white supremacy and violence at all costs. They tell all of their volunteers to keep their personal racist feelings to themselves. Their Web site is plastered with this warning to potential racist and violent volunteers: "If one single individual steps over the line for their personal gratification, we are all stained with that irresponsible behavior, and labeled forever as a fringe element that embarrasses all who are counting on us to make this historic statement." In this way, they present themselves as a constitutionally protected group of peaceful assemblers, simply helping the government while making a statement about the situation on the border.

Another small detail - and this is where liberals can really learn something - is the amazing ability of Simcox to appear calm when faced with a raging liberal at an interview and in a debate. Rather than get sucked in, overheated and lose his temper, Simcox tends to sit back and relax, and laugh at any liberal who loses their temper with him. He is always taking the higher ground and making liberals (who claim that Simcox is a nutcase) look like nutcases themselves.

Illegal immigrant breeds lawlessness

Huntsville police officer Daniel Howard Golden's death would be every much a tragedy even if an American citizen had killed him with a properly registered firearm. The murder suspect is an undocumented Mexican, who police said used forged identification papers of a dead person, and who had no legitimate access to a firearm. The circumstances do, however, make you wonder what role the federal government's illegal open-borders policy may have had in the killing.

Officer Daniel Howard Golden, 27, died Monday outside a Hispanic grocery/restaurant when he answered a domestic disturbance call. Police charged 31-year-old Benito Albarran with capital murder. Police are not sure if the suspect worked at the store, but they suspect he had a connection.

Lawlessness breeds lawlessness. When officials don't enforce one law, all laws suffer disrespect. Millions of illegal aliens have overrun our borders because we embrace their work ethic. We pretend not to know that they are illegal because we don't wish to have that information.

Verification of legal immigrant workers is a farce. Local police don't even bother arresting them until they commit a crime. That's because of federal government policy, not U.S. law or indifference. The Immigration Act of 1990 sets an annual immigration ceiling of 675,000 per year. That includes immigrants from all over the world and not just people from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

It's easy to place blame when tragedy occurs. It's easier to hold every individual responsible for his or her actions. Some of the responsibility for what happened in Huntsville, however, belongs with the federal government and its lax enforcement of U.S. law. Americans should demand the law be enforced or that Congress enact changes to reflect the reality of immigration.