Free Ibrahim! Berrien County in southwestern Michigan is an area of farms, orchards and beaches, just a jog around the south end of Lake Michigan, making it a recreational haunt for Chicagoans in search of respite from city life.

Ten years ago a Kurd named Ibrahim Parlak opened a Middle Eastern restaurant called Café Gulistan in the town of Harbert, and quickly earned the admiration of locals and visiting Chicagoans alike.

All that changed on July 29, 2004, when Ibrahim Parlak, owner of Café Gulistan in Harbert, Michigan, was taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that his activism for Kurdish rights in Turkey in the 1980s make him a threat to national security.

From Café Gulistan's website:

He was detained based on charges from a Turkish military court, for which he already served his sentence in Turkey in the late 1980s. He came to the U.S. 13 years ago and was granted political asylum based on the fact that he was persecuted and tortured in Turkey, but now the DHS is calling him a threat to national security for the very same reasons he was previously granted asylum.  No circumstances have changed nor has new information surfaced since the US gave Parlak asylum, and he has no criminal record or violations during his time in the U.S.

Parlak possibly faces deportation to Turkey, where he will be at risk of harm or even death.  He is an active contributing member of our society, who brings employment and culture to our community and donates time and money to local causes.  He holds pacifist beliefs and does not support or endorse violent means to any political ends.

Ibrahim Parlak
Ibrahim Parlak and his daughter

was born a Kurd in Turkey a country with numerous human rights violations against the Kurdish people.  In his homeland, Parlak experienced punishment and torture from the Turkish government - he was living a life of fear and persecution.  Parlak was not permitted to speak his own language, observe his own culture or determine the path of his own life.  He became involved in the Kurdish freedom movement, where his actions included writing for a newspaper, educating Kurds in Europe about their heritage, and raising awareness in the Kurdish community about their culture, which was being eradicated.  His work was also aimed at gaining political recognition of the Kurds as a legitimate political group, free to speak their language openly, and entitled to representation in the Turkish parliament.

He opened Café Gulistan in 1994, and worked extremely hard to make it a successful establishment and community focal point.  He has a daughter, Livia, age 7, who is a U.S. citizen by birth.  Parlak is a member of the Harbor Country Chamber of Commerce, and owns a home and restaurant in Harbert.

A local story about Ibrahim adds this: "This man has always been responsible," [Parlak's lawyer, Noel] Saleh said, adding he will appeal the detention order. "He's never fled from anything, except the persecution of the Kurdish people in Turkey."

Here are a number of additional local stories about Ibrahim.

Throughout Berrien County, local homes and merchants have posted "Free Ibrahim!" placards in their windows. This gentle man, whose restaurant's delicious food and adjoining garden of hollyhocks is legendary in these parts, has become ensnared in the house of mirrors known as the Department of Homeland Security, where he has been named as "a threat to national security for the very same reasons he was previously granted asylum."

For nearly a decade, I have eaten Ibrahim's food. I have admired his garden. I have met his family. So have thousands of local customers and visiting Chicagoans like Roger Ebert and Rev. Andrew Greeley, who also support him because they too know him.

In this situation, he is not the one behaving like a terrorist.

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First Command, last resort. Part 3. I've written before about how First Command Financial Planning bilks soldiers (in reverse chronological order, here, here, here, and here), but if you're interested in this topic don't miss this terrific post over at Iraq Now blog by Jason van Steenwyk.

Also, thanks to watchful reader R.P., we also learn that First Command Financial Planning CEO Lamar C Smith donated $1,000 to George W Bush 2004.

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"Ja, Mein Führer, wir müssen alle zusammen goosesteppen."

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The Bush twins on 9/11. What will Jenna and Barbara be doing on the upcoming third anniversary of the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans? Saying silent prayers to memorialize the victims? Lighting candles? Helping victims' families?

Nah, they're going to the gay wedding of their eyebrow waxer. Which would, of course, be kind of cool except for their unfortunate choice of Constitution-fucking parents. (NY Daily News via Wonkette.)

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Operation Death Map BC-2004. From The Sideshow, we find a map showing where the US soldiers who died in Iraq no longer live.

Notice how few came from Dick Cheney's Wyoming, the nation's No. 1 state recipient of homeland-security money per capita.

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"Nothing against you personally." While Bush pretends not to notice his Swift Boat Liar Brigade, Tom Tomorrow of This Modern World receives a letter which he is told (by its author Jacob Smith) not to take personally:

You Fucking lousy liberal you have no idea about what america is all about you dont want a leader just a pansy ass faggot who will bow down and give in to your every request some one who will let other countries run all over us some one who will weaken our defences (military) ship all our jobs over seas you do not want a leader just a blow hard bullshitter that would rather get a blowjob in public office than do his job!!! Us defending our country and spreading democracy is what gives you the right to spread your bullshit so called intelectual comedic media. Its people like you and The ACLU that are the demise of this country fat assed lazy cocksuckers on welfare getting a free ride off the working class you fucking dope smoking hippie commie faggot fuck. Fuck Off and Die, Thank you Thats all I had to say Fuck head.

Tom Tomorrow is told not to take this personally, Jacob Smith says in a followup letter, just like John Kerry is not supposed to take personally the attacks on his record by another coward cut from the same cloth, the chickenhawk-in-chief.

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973

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I'm no conservative, but this is pretty good: "The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush" by William Bryk.

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Cheatsheet for Log Cabin Republicans: the Christian hanky code.

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Daniel Pearl's family to Dick Cheney: "Shut up."

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Why 9/11 victims deserved their deaths, according to Alan Keyes.

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First Command, last resort. Part 2. Hey! Here's a sales idea! Before teenage soldiers offer to die for their country, let's trick them into buying some ludicrously expensive life insurance:

Nicholas Stachler was 19 years old when he reported for basic training with the Army at Fort Benning, Ga., before shipping out for 11 months to Iraq.

A gentle, trusting man, he had only weeks earlier graduated from high school with a handful of trophies in hockey and soccer, middling grades and hardly a clue about how to handle his money. He had held only casual jobs, baby-sitting and mowing lawns, and had never opened a checking account. The bus trip to boot camp, from the foothills of the Appalachians in southern Ohio to the kudzu-covered fields of western Georgia, took him farther from home than he had ever been.

About six weeks into his training, he tasted one of the less honorable traditions of military life: a compulsory classroom briefing on personal finance that was a life-insurance sales pitch in disguise.

As he remembers the class and as base investigative records show, two insurance agents quick-stepped him and his classmates through a stack of paperwork, pointing out where they should sign their names and where they should scribble their initials. They were given no time to read the documents and no copies to keep.

Stachler says he thought he had arranged to have $100 a month deducted from his pay for an Army-endorsed savings plan or mutual fund. When he returned from Iraq, he found that he had not been saving the money at all. He had been paying $100 a month in premiums for an insurance policy that promised him some cash value far down the road and a death benefit that was almost certainly less than $44,000, a small amount compared with the $250,000 in life insurance he had through a military-sponsored plan that cost him $16.25 a month.

[...]

A young Marine at Camp Pendleton, Calif., for example, was sold a 20-year insurance policy last fall that gave him a death benefit of just under $28,000, plus some cash value far in the future, in exchange for $6,600 in premiums paid in the first seven years. That was more than 14 times what the same death benefit would have cost him under his military-sponsored plan.

Another product heavily promoted to military people is a type of mutual fund in which 50 percent of first-year contributions are consumed as fees, a deal considered so expensive that such funds all but disappeared from the civilian market almost 20 years ago.

[...]

The companies selling financial services in the military market try to recruit former military people to be their agents, people who can fit smoothly into receptions like the one at Fort Bliss.

Few companies have more fervently embraced this form of salesmanship, called affinity marketing, than First Command, a 46-year-old financial services company originally known by the awkward name USPA and IRA. The company said all of the 300,000 families that it serves are headed by former or active-duty commissioned officers or higher-ranking noncommissioned officers; it does not serve lower-ranking service people. And almost all of its 1,007 agents have served in the military or “have military connections.” None, it says, have been cited for rule violations.

Yes, it's yet another First Command Financial Planning story.

Somehow selling overpriced life insurance and scammy investments to potentially doomed teenagers seems, how shall I put this, evil incarnate.

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September 1, New York City: Shut it down.

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Were federal air marshals forced to play dress-up for the Democratic Convention in Boston?

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James McGreevey and Golan Cipel: an alternate theory. Via xymphora.

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