"Oscar" Considers Old Politics in the New Newark (and I Announce for Mayor). Street Fight, a film about the ugly mayoral campaign four years ago in my city, Newark USA (that's the one in New Jersey, the real Newark, founded 1666; all the others are imitations), is up for an Academy Award for "Documentary Feature".
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PBS, on which I saw this film last July, describes it thus:

"Street Fight" covers the turbulent campaign of Cory Booker, a 32-year old Rhodes Scholar/Yale Law graduate running for mayor of Newark, N.J. against Sharpe James, the four-term incumbent twice his age.

(The PBS website also contains a longer discussion of the film at http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2005/streetfight/about.html.)
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Mayor James's side employed strong-arm tactics and name-calling but won by only 3,500 votes in a city of (then) 280,000 people (more like 300,000 now). Mayor James called Booker a "faggot white boy", even tho most people in this country would regard Booker as "black", despite his lite skin. I don't know about Booker's sexual orientation. The film showed city employees ripping down Booker campaign posters. We may face, but still do not know if we face, a replay of the 2002 campaign this year, even tho Mayor James said last time that this term would be his last term. You see, his team has quietly filed nominating petitions with the Board of Elections but asked that verification of signatures not yet be commenced, and the Mayor's office has not declared one way or the other. So is he running? or not? It makes a difference — to me, not least.
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I think politicians should stick by their pledges, for everyone should keep his word. Sharpe James said last time that this would be his last term. I have wanted to run for mayor myself, but not against James. He's done a good job, and I wouldn't stand a chance against him. But I can't wait to collect the requisite 1,159 signatures before March 16th if James doesn't announce his retirement until March 17th.
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So I lost patience, and registered as an announced candidate today, in large part to dispel the multitudinous ignorant misconceptions about Newark that handicap this city in its resurgence. And I really am a "faggot white boy" — albeit an "old boy", at 61. (Picture Brits exclaiming, "I say, old boy!" I hasten to add I do not have a British accent. I have the perfect speech of educated New Jerseyans, the purest and best English on the planet.)
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I originally intended to run a low-key, Internet-only campaign, and merely wanted to obtain from the City Clerk the form of petition one needs to submit (with 1,159 signatures) to qualify to appear on the ballot this May. But they wouldn't give me so much as a single copy of the petition form unless I registered to run. So I did, earlier today. I filled out the initial paperwork and got some petition forms. I need to read thru the materials they gave me and create a .PDF version of the petition for people to print at home, fill in, sign, and mail to me to collate with others for the Board of Elections, which I hope to do tomorrow, or the next day at latest. My slogan, which I'll need to register if I get enuf signatures to qualify for the actual campaign, will probably be something like "A bigger, better, Greater Newark" — or should it be "Faggot White Boy"?
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"Greater Newark" is a reference to a keystone of my campaign, enlarging Newark geographically by annexing the 'burbs, starting with distressed Irvington and East Orange. My campaign website will set out the major points of my program, and I will mention here and in my "Newark USA" foto-blog the URL for that website once I have finished it.
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The requirement that one collect signatures in the dead of winter is practically designed to restrict ballot access to established parties and candidates, because who can stand on the sidewalk with a clipboard for hours in freezing temperatures, trying to stop people who are rushing by to get indoors somewhere? I told the people at the City Clerk's office that I have no intention of doing that but will try to collect signatures via the Internet. No one else has, apparently, tried to do that. So in that, at least, I'm a pioneer for democratization of the process in Newark.
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There are many illegitimate measures in place all around this country to keep minor parties and independent candidates from getting on the ballot. The signature requirement in itself is one. In some countries, all you do is post a bond of, say $1,000 and your name will appear on the ballot. If you get less than 5% of the vote, you forfeit your bond. If you get more than 5%, you get that money back, whether you win office or lose. Newark, and other American jurisdictions, can easily do that, either as the sole requirement for securing a place on the ballot or as an alternative to signatures. That is, if you have more signatures than money, you opt to submit signatures and dispense with the bond. But if collecting signatures (in the middle of winter) is impractical, a would-be candidate should have an alternative mechanism for getting on the ballot. A bond is one. There might as well be others.
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The timing of Newark's election is also suspect. Why are we having a mayoral election in May, when major elections in this country are held in November? This is practically designed to minimize turnout, which helps the incumbent and major-party challengers.
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Newark elections are also nonpartisan, so you can't even tell anything about a person's stances on major issues by his party affiliation. Tho some people might argue that there are so few Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, or any other party faithful but Democrats in Newark, that's hard to know, isn't it, if party affiliation is concealed. We don't even have registration into parties, so can't know who is qualified to vote in a party primary, but presumably have open primaries — an invitation to malicious voting for the weakest candidate by stalwarts of the opposing party.
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I and others working to rebuild Newark's reputation have our work cut out for us. Ignorance of Newark knows no bounds. People in ostensibly respectable media make assertions completely out of keeping with reality, and feel no need even to check their facts. In looking for information about Cory Booker, I came across an article from Washington Monthly that refers to Newark in these dismissive, disparaging terms:

After Oxford, Booker went to Yale Law, but rather than live in New Haven, chose to commute each day from a run-down housing project in Newark, a mostly-black, heap-of-junk port city in which Booker had never lived. * * *

Booker has set up a law firm on the top floor of the tallest building in Newark, looking out over a city of run-down rowhouses.

What?!? The tallest building in Newark is the National Newark Building, which overlooks beautiful Downtown Newark (and yes, it really is) and a city where new townhouses and single-family homes are sprouting up like mushrooms. To say that Newark is "mostly-black" is statistically true, if just barely, but that's misleading for a city that is less than 54% black. My own neighborhood, Vailsburg, is predominantly black, but the Ironbound and Forest Hill (singular, unlike Forest Hills, New York) are mainly white, and most neighborhoods are mixed. Indeed, the whole of Essex County (of which Newark is county seat) is largely mixed, and you can see black people on the streets and in the stores of every municipality. We like it that way. New Jersey is a Blue State, and Essex County is about as Blue as you can get (politically speaking).
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As for "heap-of-junk port city" — !! — does this look like a heap of junk to you?

How about this view from the corner of my block?

Or this (the Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart as seen from Branch Brook Park)?

I am really tired of ignorant comments about Newark. As I say in my Resurgence City website, "Chances are, you don't know Newark, even if you think you do."
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Does Street Fight stand a chance at the Oscars? The odds say no. I found this paragraph from a longer review in L.A. Weekly at the February 27th entry to the blog "Floating Away":

"Last month, Street Fight became one of the five nominees for this year’s Best Documentary Oscar, and, like Booker himself, it’s the clear underdog in a race against cuddly penguins, mutant fish, paraplegic rugby players and free-falling Enron executives. Curry’s film doesn’t have nearly as sexy a hook — it’s about the art and artifice of local politics, and that rarely sells tickets — and so it’s no real surprise that it’s only just now arriving in theaters. Still, this is classical activist filmmaking of the first order, a movie with the power to turn hearts, change minds and, just maybe, right the wayward course of an entire city."

The film is, unfortunately, partisan, showing things from the Booker campaign's side only, but that is largely because the James side would not cooperate. We'll know within days, one way or the other, if Street Fight can rise above March of the Penguins.
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But whether it wins or not, Street Fight has almost certainly laid a restraining hand upon a repeat of the 2002 campaign's abuses.
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Mayor James has done a great job for Newark, and simultaneously serves as a State Senator. He should stick by his pledge last time and not run for Mayor again this year. He should instead continue to work in Trenton to advance the interests of all this state's cities at the state level.
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Every Old Guard needs to be refreshed or replaced. The vision that animated a person at the beginning of his political career eventually runs out of steam. Either all of its major goals are achieved, and the person has no further vision to offer, or attempts to achieve those goals have failed, and he has nothing to replace them with.
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Newark may have gone just about as far as it can go under Sharpe James. He has done yeoman work thus far, but it's time for him to retire and let new people, with new ideas, assume the burden of taking Newark to the next stage of its resurgence. Maybe that should be Cory Booker and his team, or me and the team I will assemble if I should, by some fluke, take over City Hall. But whoever it is, the next mayor of Newark has far more to work with than the Nation thinks, and far more to celebrate than to fear.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,296.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:50 PM

 
Globalism; Mission (Almost) Accomplished. Two items.
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(1) Corporationism. A reader in Britain commented on yesterday's blog.

What a great article condemning corporate globalism! * * *
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Your mention of "Divine Efficiency" made me think of 112 Gripes about the French, a 1945 US Army booklet.

72. "The French are not as efficient as the Germans in large scale, mass production."

The French are not as efficient as the Germans in building tanks, guns, planes, flame-throwers, concentration camps and torture chambers.

The French are not efficient in starting wars. The Germans are. German efficiency is used against peaceful, decent people.

What does "efficiency" really mean? Is it only a matter of output and production charts and impressive statistics? Are the Germans more "efficient" in providing happiness or peace to their people? Are the Germans more "efficient" in building decency, kindness, respect for human life? Has German "efficiency" led to greater wisdom, better art, deeper morals, finer philosophies?

A prison is one of the most "efficient" institutions man ever created - but who wants to live in it?

We defeated Nazism. We can defeat globalist corporationism.
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(2) Iraq Almost Destroyed. The Radical Zionists who ordered the United States to destroy Iraq must be chortling happily to themselves now that the U.S. invasion has brought Iraq to the brink of civil war, a war that will complete the mission of destroying Iraq as a threat to Israel forever.
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That's not what we went into Iraq to accomplish? I'm afraid it is.
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The people of Iraq might yet surprise us, and find a way to make peace, live together, and rebuild Iraq into a major force in the region. That would end all that laffing in Israel.
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Iraq's 4,000 years of history suggest a resilience others can only envy. But current developments strain Iraq's greatness of spirit. I hope that Iraqis can pull together and rise above their current difficulties to reclaim the respect of nations.
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Iran is trying to recapture the greatness of ancient Persia. Iraq may yet reclaim the greatness of ancient Babylonia — or Assyria.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,294.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:11 PM

 
Highest Treason. The globalists who control the present U.S. Administration have no allegiance to the United States whatsoever. Many are Radical Zionists whose only devotion is to Israel. The bulk of the rest are corporationists, people whose devotion is to the interests of megacorporations, multinationals that pursue their own interests and subordinayte national interests, human rights — everything — to the best long- or short-term interests of the only entity really sacred to them. It is not the church/mosk/synagog/temple, nor the God/s beyond. Not the nationstate nor multiethnic and multireligiously diverse national union. No, their sole devotion is to The Corporation and the sacred obligation of corporate boards to pursue total power over planet Earth for the sake of Divine Efficiency in the service of Holy Profit. Their creed is Cost-Effectiveness, their Holy of Holies. People? People mean nothing.
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Only when you understand that there really are 'people' out there in the corporate boardroom who believe, with almost religious zeal, in a corporative form of natural order, and survival of the fittest, can some of the things we see emerging around us be understood.
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The Dubai Ports deal is a perfect example that makes plain the corporationist ideal held dear by the current leadership of the Bush Administration — which, however, is not held dear to the slightest degree by the great preponderance of even the Republican Party they use nor the American people they abuse.
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Corporations have no nationality, no national allegiance, no nationalism, no religion, no ethics, no decency, only an ideal of functionalism: what works for the benefit of the corporation and its shareholders — or management (on this alone is there disagreement) — should be done, no matter the cost to people who are outside the ownership/management structure.
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In their view, corporations are the ultimate achievement in human organization. They achieve the greatest efficiencies in terms of cost, and the only thing of importance is profitability. If that means you move operations from one country to another, you do it, no matter how many people you hurt — employees, neighbors dependent upon the payroll disbursed locally, local governments, state governments, national governments — anything.
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If you need to cut costs to turn an ever-higher profit for the shareholders and bring ever-more-obscene bonuses to management, you do so, no matter what you have to do to achieve that. Declare bankruptcy to void labor contracts? No problem. Default on pension obligations? No problem. Cut your retirees off without medical insurance? No problem. Slash medical coverage for current employees? No problem. Slash wages and all benefits of whatsoever description for current employees (other than top management, of course)? No problem. Cheat on taxes? No problem. Move every conceivable operation that can be moved out of high-wage areas where laws control hours, wages, benefits, and occupational safety standards as might limit profit? No problem. Turn over operations essential to national security to corporations that don't care about national security? No problem.
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Make no mistake: if they could get away with it, the people who control Bush (because he is only a puppet, not really President at all) would outsource EVERYTHING to the lowest-cost provider. Every single function in this country, from manufacturing to bookkeeping to security, would be shipped overseas, or, if a function cannot actually be moved physically, it could at least be performed by immigrants willing to work for the lowest possible wage — or nothing save room and board. If current immigration laws don't permit that, change the immigration laws!
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Every single government department would be manned by Chinese or other semi-starving foreigners paid the tiniest pittance and given no benefits of consequence, at every level up to top management, which of course would pay richly and be reserved to the elite. Americans, Canadians, Britons, Germans — everyone — would work for 50 cents an hour or die. And the 'people' at the top would reap obscene rewards in money of their own and all the things that corporate money can buy: free housing in several homes around the world, free travel, free hookers, free booze (tho drugs are frowned upon because they cut into efficiency), free caviar and champagne, free clothes, art, concerts, and every other luxury that the Owners Of The World may desire. Everyone else would scurry around like ants tending the queen.
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That is the world we are moving toward under the current leadership of the Republican Party. That is the ultimate meaning of globalism as top Republicans see it: not "One world, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All" (the slogan of the Expansionist Party), but one world where the few own everything and the rest are slaves — wage slaves and debt slaves afraid to object to the abuse they are endlessly subjected to lest they be severed from all income and all government safety-net resources, and literally starve to death if they will not submit, and serve the masters on suchever terms as the masters may decide.
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Interlocking directorates are as nothing as against today's global corporationists. Unless we wake up very soon, the interlocking fingers of the worldwide corporationist conspiracy will titen around our throats and force us to our knees. We will end up grateful if the fingers loosen so we are not murdered, and then give the corporationists everything they wish.
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That's not my kind of world. If it's not yours either, you need to recognize that the Bushites are corporationists, and they want you subservient or dead.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,290.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:20 PM

 
More Bird-Flu (and Other) Stupidity. India, a country in which tens of millions of people live perpetually at the edge of starvation, is killing and throwing away hundreds of thousands of chickens because of irrationally excessive fear of bird flu, even tho not one single person in the entire country's population of over a BILLION has died from it!
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There is a vaccine against bird flu that is 100% effective.
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Moreover, even if some chickens are infected, it doesn't mean anything:

In countries where avian flu is present in poultry, the virus may be present in meat and eggs from affected birds. Even if the virus is present in meat or eggs, several factors will contribute to preventing or limiting its effects on people. First, the virus is easily killed by cooking. Second, even if it is still present after cooking, the virus is destroyed by saliva and by gastric acid, as well as the fact that there are very few receptors the virus needs to enter the body in the gut.

Human stupidity, cowardice, and irration know no bounds.
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In the U.S., iWon.com's Internet poll today showed 57% of Americans "Somewhat" or "Very" concerned about the spread of bird flu to the United States, even tho we haven't found so much as one single case in any of billions of birds that live in or overfly this enormous country.
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I hate stupidity. I hate cowardice. I hate irration. Can't we selectively breed away stupidity?
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We really do need a major eugenics push. On a planet as overpopulated as Earth, we really need to find ways to stop stupid people from reproducing and encourage smart, sensible people to do more than replace themselves. We need a massive shift from a predominantly stupid to a predominantly smart population, but are getting the opposite.
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With the advent of many contraceptive devices and techniques, smart people have put off having children to permit them to establish themselves. Sometimes they find they have put it off so long that they lose interest or become infertile.
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Stupid people, however, do not use contraception, and do not plan for the future, but bring multiple children per stupid female into a life of hardship and, all too often, neglect and abuse.
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Vasectomy of husbands accomplishes nothing, nowadays, given that a large majority of children in the U.S. are being born out of wedlock or as the result of adultery. Fortunately, that is less common in traditional societies in the Third World. But still, anyone who has had cats knows that it is not enuf to sterilize some of the males. As long as you leave any male fertile and do not spay the females, you're gonna get kittens. Since only women have babies, it is women's fertility that controls whether babies are or are not conceived.
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So we've got to find ways to induce stupid human females to have themselves sterilized, at least temporarily. There used to be a device, Norplant, a long-term hormone delivery system inserted under the skin that kept women from having babies for five years at a time. But, like everything nowadays, some adverse impacts (apparently not including death) caused the manufacturer (Wyeth, headquartered about 15 miles from me) to withdraw this option from the United States and even subsidize the removal of the implant before its expiration date. It established the Norplant Foundation for that purpose, then changed its name to the Contraception Foundation.
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It's hard to know if the health objections to Norplant were legitimate or just more of the irrational caterwauling we hear endlessly from the big babies that almost everybody in this country seems to have become.
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Tubal ligation (a woman's having her fallopian "tubes tied" as to prevent pregnancy) is 99.9% effective. The 0.1% failure rate occurs because the surgery is performed improperly or, in rare cases, the body finds a way to create a new channel between ovaries and uterus. Epigee.org says of costs:

The initial cost of a tubal ligation can be expensive [s/b "high"; "costs" are not "expensive"], ranging between $1,000 and $3,000. However, because the effects are permanent and long lasting, it may be a more cost-effective solution for some women. Some private insurance companies may also cover some of the cost.* * *

For women that are sure that they do not want any more children, or any children at all, having a tubal ligation can be a successful means of birth control. Although tubal ligation reversal surgery is available, all women should consider having their tubes tied as a permanent solution. Therefore, it is best to take your time and talk with your doctor as well as your partner so that you can be sure that this is the right decision for you.

WebMD, however, is not so dire about the irreversibility of tubal ligation. It asks, but does not in absolute terms answer, the question "Is Tubal Ligation Reversible?" It seems to say it is.

The surgery to reanastomose tubes is called 'tubal reversal surgery'. * * *

The hospital stay may be as short as one or two nights. Postoperative recovery may take three to six weeks. The price is somewhere around $7,000-$10,000, and it's usually not paid for by insurance[ ] companies.

Other websites say it is reversible, but with difficulty and expense, and not always successful; or successfully reversible in 60 to 80% of cases.
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But even if tubal ligation cannot in a particular woman be reversed, in vitro fertilization ("IVF") may still be possible, since the eggs are still in her ovaries and can be removed from them, fertilized outside her body, then reinserted into her uterus, in effect taking a surgical detour around the blockage.
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Discussions of tubal ligation — to snip or not to snip? — typically do not put things in context. For one thing, infertility occurs naturally in a significant number of people. For another, pregnancy entails serious health risks, and childbirth is still a major cause of death around the world. Moreover, having babies is medically expensive, and raising them is phenomenally expensive.
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Consider naturally occurring infertility. Even if some women who undergo tubal ligation are rendered thereby permanently infertile, except perhaps via IVF (an enormously expensive and often failed technology), so what?

6.1 million people [were] infertile in the US 1997 (American Society of Reproductive Medicine)

10.1% of reproductive age population infertile in the US 1997 (American Society of Reproductive Medicine)

Infertility equally affects men and women in the US (American Society of Reproductive Medicine)

Because one or both partners of a couple interested in having children may be naturally infertile,

About one in six couples are experiencing difficulties in conceiving a child.

So being unable to have a child is not a unique tragedy. Moreover, there are a great many orphans and abandoned children in the world who could be adopted by naturally childless people (couples or individuals). In the United States alone, a country of excellent health conditions and relatively little orphaning thru disease, civil disturbances, and natural disasters,

About 130,000 of the 540,000 children in foster care nationwide are waiting to be adopted. About 50,000 a year actually get adopted, says Carol Emig of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care.

In the past five years, thanks largely to increased federal financial incentives and state initiatives to adopt, 33 states and Washington, D.C., have doubled their adoptions from foster care, Emig says.

But experts note that many children — especially those who are older and disabled — remain unadopted [permanently]. "There is no line at the door for kids with special needs of any age," Pertman says. "People want healthy infants first and then move on from there."

In the rest of the world, there are huge numbers of orphaned and abandoned children, literally millions who will never find adoptive parents in their own country. Yet we continue not only to let just anybody have children but even permit the infertile to spend tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments per couple and produce litters of five and even seven children due to fertility treatment gone mad.
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Infertility is a blessing upon this planet. We need more infertility, not more children; more smart people and fewer stupid people having children; and more responsible behavior on the part of childless people regarding children already here.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,288.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:13 PM

 
Anti-American Fundamentalists. As topical humorists might say, "You can't make this stuff up."
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My friend Joe from Belleville (the northern suburb I'd like Newark to annex) sent me a link to an AOL News story from February 21st:

They call themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, and they are more than 5,000 strong, forming to counter anti-gay protests held by the Rev. Fred Phelps at military funerals.

Phelps believes American deaths in Iraq are divine punishment for a country that he says harbors homosexuals. His protesters carry signs thanking God for so-called IEDs -- explosives that are a major killer of soldiers in Iraq.

The bikers shield the families of dead soldiers from the protesters, and overshadow the jeers with patriotic chants and a sea of red, white and blue flags.

I suppose it might be thought refreshing to find Radical Rightists hostile to militarists, and we are all safest when the forces of regression are split among themselves, but this is just plain sad. In a couple of ways.
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First, no matter what you think of the war (and I am, as regular readers know, profoundly opposed), it is disgraceful to attack the dead and increase the pain of grieving survivors.
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Second, it's sad to see a "church" that has got Jesus's message so completely wrong. Where genuine Christians say "God Is Love", Phelps says God is hate. Where Jesus said 'He who believeth in me shall have everlasting life', Phelps says Christianity is death. Jesus held each person, individually, to account for his sins, and offered forgiveness if s/he repented. Phelps will have none of that but blames everyone for the (supposed) sins of some. Why doesn't he blame himself? If the Nation is responsible, and he is part of the Nation, surely he deserves to die as much as anyone, no? Especially is that so in that some of the soldiers killed were surely as antigay as he.
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With so much going on in a country the size of the United States, the insane fixation of some "religious" loons on homosexuality in particular suggests a homosexual problem in their members. Why is this so important to them? Homosexuality is important to homosexuals, and people who are afraid they're homosexual, but not at all important to well-adjusted heterosexuals — who have their own lives to live and have many other concerns far more important than other people's sex lives.
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Rightwing nuts made similar claims about Hurricane Katrina being God's punishment for wickedness — for abortion, sexual libertinism, you-name-it — as tho God is so stupid and unfair that He can't sort out the good from the bad but punishes everyone for the 'sins' of some. That throws a monkey wrench into the premise of the Vietnam-era teeshirt slogan "Kill Them All. Let God Sort Them Out", doesn't it? Apparently God can't sort them out either but kills the good with the bad.
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That's the Old Testament God-of-Wrath crap: God so hated the sins of one species that he drowned the world and killed all human beings except one family and every member of every land-dwelling species but one pair. Giraffes, rabbits, koalas, kittens, puppies all had to die for the sins of some men! Lunacy — no: evil lunacy.
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Christianity rejected that insane theology, the same kind of crap as believed by primitives who threw virgins down volcanoes to appease their own God of Wrath. Jesus posited a loving God, and, six centuries later, Islam spoke of God as "The Compassionate, The Merciful". Rev. Phelps will have none of it, but insists on hounding the dead beyond death, even people who were as antihomosexual as he and who may have shared almost all of his theological views!

At least 14 states are considering laws aimed at the funeral protesters, who at a recent memorial service at Fort Campbell wrapped themselves in upside-down American flags. They danced and sang impromptu songs peppered with vulgarities that condemned homosexuals and soldiers.

These measures would forbid demonstrations within 300 feet, or within earshot of mourners. We really have to pass laws against obscenely insensitive behavior by fundamentalist loons. I am pleased to say to antigay rightwingers: "Those are your people, not ours. Aren't you proud?"
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,287.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:34 PM

 
Citizenship, at Last? William Shatner was on CBS's Late Late Show a few days ago, and an exchange with host Craig Ferguson suggests that Shatner is finally ready to take U.S. citizenship. Ferguson, who is from Scotland, has been very public about having embarked on the naturalization process, and somehow the subject of being nervous about taking the test came up, whereupon Shatner said that he is also scared of his upcoming test! Well, it's about time.
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Shatner was born in Montreal in March 1931 and was in his first Hollywood TV show by 1954, so he has been here for at least 52 years without taking U.S. citizenship! Now, at nearly 75 (he looks terrific for almost 75), he is finally taking the steps to become a U.S. citizen. Why do we allow this? How little do we respect ourselves that we permit foreigners to come into this country and take very good jobs away from citizens, live here as of right, but refuse our citizenship for decades?
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We need to reform our laws to forbid foreigners to live here for more than 10 years without taking citizenship. If they want to retain foreign nationality, they should be expelled from the United States and forbidden re-entry.
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A minor scandal about expedited naturalization for athletes recently came to the fore in connection with the Olympics. A female Canadian ice-dancer, Tanith Belbin, moved (presumably with her parents) to the Detroit area at age 14 in 1998. While there, she met an American boy, then age 16, who needed a partner for ice-dancing, and they clicked. Then a scandalous discussion took place.
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You see, they wanted to work toward being a team in the Olympics, but were of different nationalities, and Olympic rules do not permit foreigners on Olympic national teams. So this American boy actually thought about renouncing his U.S. citizenship so he could ice-dance for Canada! Only the fact that the coach they wanted to work with operated in the U.S. influenced the female half of the team to decide to opt for U.S. citizenship, even tho she'd been living here for years and had taken no steps to take citizenship until this Olympic issue arose.

"It came down to really a question of logistics," said Agosto [the American], who grew up in Chicago. "It was much easier to have Tanith live here and train here than have me live in Canada and come across the border to train and prove I was spending enough time in Canada to meet their residency requirements."

So, U.S. citizenship is only a matter of logistics to you? Then get out of this country and stay out. Take Canadian citizenship, Chinese citizenship, anything that is convenient. Just get out of here.
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Instead, they decided it was more convenient for Belbin to become a U.S. citizen, and we permitted that. U.S. citizenship is only a matter of convenience for applicants, not a sincere desire to assume U.S. allegiance. And we permit these people who have no devotion to this country to take our citizenship. Why?

Immigration rules were changed in 2002 to allow "aliens of extraordinary ability" -- scientists, artists, educators and athletes -- to apply for a green card and visa at the same time rather than waiting 18 to 24 months [as insignificant ordinary people have to]. But because Belbin had applied before 2002, she was stuck under the old rules. * * *

Eventually, though, their legal team got the attention of Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who pushed for legislation to speed up the immigration process. After getting caught up in a larger legislative fight for several weeks, the bill was approved Dec. 21. * * *

Finally, ... Bush signed the measure that allowed Belbin and others like her who began their naturalization process before July 2002 to take advantage of the changes in immigration rules. The new measure also shortened the residency requirement from five to three years between the receipt of the green card and the date of their eligibility for naturalization.

Citizenship is not a matter of convenience. It should mean something, at least to us who grant it. If the only reason somebody wants to take U.S. citizenship is to compete on our Olympic team, that's not good enuf. There should be some question, somewhere in the process, "Why do you want to become an American?", and if the answer is, essentially, "Convenience", the applicant should be rejected and deported.
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It is also outrageous that some people get a fast track to citizenship but others have to wait. The mere fact that they actually did win the Silver Medal in ice-dancing is insufficient reason to give an ice-dancer special treatment under law. Where is the "equal protection of the laws" that everyone is supposed to have under our Constitution? A hard-working nurse or bus driver who wants to become a U.S. citizen because they love this country but is shunted aside while some foreign athlete jumps ahead, should sue to have the courts void this evil law. First come, first served. That's the American way.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,287.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:06 PM

 
Ports; Castro. Two items.
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Import Controls on Stupidity. Two days ago, Arnold Ahlert of the New York Post asked "Is there anything that can unite Americans of different political persuasions?" At the time, there seemed very little that might do that. Since then, however, a huge scandal affecting the management of American ports has arisen, and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have united to reproach the President. Since Port Newark is one of the six seaports in question, let me comment.
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Regular readers of this blog will know that I am enormously pro-Arab. But they will also know that I am militantly anti-globalist in the sense that I oppose giving over rights to foreigners that should be held only by Americans.
+
So how do I come down on this question?
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I am utterly and unalterably opposed to ANY foreign country controlling ANY PART of ANY American port. I didn't know a British firm had any kind of control over the operations of any American port, much less six major U.S. ports. Had I known it, I would have opposed it. I don't want British, Canadian, Arab, Chinese, French, Russian, South African, Brazilian, or any other foreign company in charge of any aspect of port security in the United States whatsoever. Period.
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I am certainly not specially hostile to the United Arab Emirates. Quite the contrary. I am proudly pro-Arab, and I believe my older brother has had mutually profitable business relationships with the U.A.E. But I know full well that most of the world is fundamentally corrupt, and that most people who operate businesses, customs checks, and governmental operations in most of this planet's 193 countries feel that personal loyalties, family obligations, etc., trump any duty they undertake in filling a job with any company or government agency. Again, I have my older brother to thank, in part, for this understanding. He has told me stories about the way Philippine Customs operates.
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If you are a Filipino who has traveled abroad and bought something overseas that you want to bring in duty-free even tho there should properly be a tariff imposed upon it, you arrange to arrive at the (air)port when someone you know — a member of your extended family, a family friend, a close personal friend, an acquaintance — is working the line at Customs, and you bring it across thru his (her) line. Maybe you pay a little bribe. Maybe s/he does it as a favor, without monetary consideration. But the government doesn't get the duty owed (in any sense of the word "duty").
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That's the way most of the world works. We have tried in this country to operate like angels, and indeed to export our standards around the globe with prohibitions on bribery for American corporations. But the bulk of this planet is thoroughly corrupt.
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The exact same dynamics of family loyalty or friendship favor that operate to clear expensive imports thru Customs in Manila may well operate equally to clear dirty bombs thru ports managed by any Third World country. Republicans are right (in this case, not just "Right") to oppose this ports deal. Democrats are right. And the Republican collective leadership/cabal has, I suspect, seriously misjudged the willingness of Members of Congress, of their own party or the loyal opposition, to permit foreigners to endanger Americans in controlling things that only Americans should control. If Dubya dares to stand by his commitment to ram this deal thru over the popularly supported objection of Congress by vetoing any legislation to void it, he is almost certain to suffer his first Congressional override. Republicans will not face elections little more than eight months from now having consented to have foxes watch over the chicken coop.
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Is Castro Dying? A couple of days ago, I was struck by the feeling that Fidel Castro had died or was about to die. I have heard nothing to that effect on the news, so have explained away that feeling as wishful thinking. But the guy is getting old, and is going to die sooner or later. What will take his place?
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Will his brother be able to fill the imprint left in his glove by Fidel's iron fist? Will suchever successor as Fidel may have chosen be able to maintain Fidel's dictatorship? Or is Fidel Castro one of those unique characters in history (albeit a minor character in his case, in that Cuba is a nothing in world-history terms) who manage somehow to impose personal dictatorial rule that no one can inherit?
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Has Castro succeeded in creating a Latin version of "The Soviet Man", that perfect Communist automaton who truly believes in the madness that is Communism and will strive to perfect The Revolution to the end of his days? Or will the death of Castro mean the death of Cuban Communism? It will be very interesting to find out — the sooner the better.
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The United States Government has been craven in its behavior relative to the odious dictator Fidel Castro. When has Dubya demanded "regime change" in Havana? Exactly never. Which is more important to us, "regime change" in Baghdad or Tehran? or "regime change" in Havana? I say Havana.
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Millions of people raised in East Germany have been permanently crippled by Communism. Given freedom, they wrapped their broken chains around them in order to remain immobilized and useless. I have seen the same problem here. Gay men, freed from the restraints of intolerance in many parts of this country, have literally put themselves in chains — and I do not use "literally" to mean "figuratively".
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Freedom is hard. It requires you to work, to assume responsibility for your acts and your future. If you fail when being driven on a forced march, that's one thing. You can blame the slave-drivers steering you, and lashing you if you deviated from the mandated path. But if you fail when walking on your own, that's far worse. You have no one to blame but yourself.
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Oddly, Russians, who have suffered centuries of oppression, have adjusted to freedom better than East(ern) Germans, who suffered forcible direction for only some 45 years. Cubans have suffered Communist brainwashing and total control for 47 years, thus far. If Fidel dies tomorrow (or died two days ago, as I first thought/hoped), and his entire regime collapses, how long will it take Cubans to bounce back from their oppression? No one knows.
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Scientists have managed to create metal objects with "memory" of their original cast form. Such objects can be bent, twisted, crushed, but as soon as the distorting force is removed, they bounce back to their original shape.
+
Some people are like that. Many are not. When Fidel dies, will Cuba regain its freedom? Or will Cubans internalize their oppression and carry it forward into the indefinite future? One never knows. Russians and Chinese, who endured century after century of tightfisted control, have jumped to make the most of the opportunities afforded them by freedom. Only some gay men in the United States have embraced the freedom that we who fought for them, for decades, won for them. Others have insisted on remaining self-despising, closeted, and unfree.
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So I guess the answer is that they become free who want to be free, and they remain oppressed who want to be oppressed. Freedom is more difficult than dictation. You have to make your own decisions, and live with the consequences of your choices. You make a mistake, you can't blame anybody else for your misery. It is so much easier to bitch about failure than to succeed.
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Which way will the Cuban people bounce? I look forward to finding out.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,279.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:16 AM

 
Thumping for War. Radical Zionists are trying hard to get the United States to crush the new government of Palestine and invade Syria and Iran before their emerging alliance succeeds in destroying Israel (and replacing it with a united, multireligious and multiethnic Palestine). Their propaganda machine is moving into high gear, and looks soon to hit fever pitch. The pro-Israel lobby is willing to do anything to inflame U.S. opinion into embarking upon another hugely costly and destructive war for Israel, as they fite Islam to the last American.
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Two op-ed pieces today in Radical Zionism's U.S. mouthpiece, the New York Post, address different parts of the self-same puzzle: how to destroy the threats to Israel, first by manipulating U.S. power into destroying a democratically elected government in Palestine (so much for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars being to bring democracy to the Middle East), then into invading both Syria and Iran.
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The first piece, by the stupid Jewish columnist John Podhoretz (who got his job only because he is the son of a man who earned his own distinction), reports that Israel is withholding $50 million a month of taxes, paid by Palestinians, from the government those taxes were supposed to go to. I sent the following short emailed letter to the editor about that.

Israel is stealing Palestinian tax moneys and pretends it has the right to do so. Not content with stealing over $3 billion a year from American taxpayers, it is now (according to John Podhoretz) also stealing $600 million a year from Palestinian taxpayers! And Israelis wonder why the entire world, except for the ruling class and "End Times" fundamentalist Christians in the United States only, hates Israel. How, pray, is the Palestinian government supposed to enforce the laws, give Palestinians hope that peace can work by providing them economic opportunity, and restrain terrorists without money?
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Plainly Israel does not want peace. It wants Palestine. It claims to want the Palestinian Authority to control terrorism, but at the exact same time prevents it from doing so by actually blowing up police stations and now stealing the tax moneys the Palestinians need to create the rule of law. When Palestinians endlessly frustrated by Israeli two-facedness erupt in rage, the Israelis will use that as pretext to murder children for the capital offense of throwing rocks, in order to push back the day when Arabs outnumber Jews in Occupied Palestine. But that day is coming, Jews are leaving, and the insane, stupid Zionist experiment will end in failure, after killing untold tens of thousands of people, almost all of them Arabs, for nothing. While Israel, which is in its End Times, hangs on, Americans will be required to turn over billions of dollars and sacrifice thousands of its young people on the altar of Zionism.
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How long will it be before every single American understands that Zionism is irredeemably evil?

(Responsive to "Phantom 'Break'", column by John Podhoretz in the New York Post of February 21, 2006)
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The second anti-Moslem piece is by the Iranian exile Amir Taheri, an ostensible Moslem whom the Post trots out regularly to prove that it is not anti-Moslem, tho of course it is. I sent this emailed comment to the letters department.

Amir Taheri may think it clever to call the former government of Saddam Hussein "Saddamites", which is presumably to be read exactly as tho written "Sodomites", but is it really a good idea to use antihomosexual bigotry to inflame anti-Arab bigotry? Hasn't it occurred to him, and the Post, which published that disgraceful epithet, that if you want American opinion to unite against Iran's ambitions, then making anti-Iranian activism equate with antihomosexual bigotry might be counterproductive? Apparently not. You have apparently made the judgment that defending Israel (after all, no one in the U.S. would give a damn about Iran if it were where North Korea is rather than within striking range of Israel) can be done only by waging full-scale war against Iran -- another ground invasion by hundreds of thousands of American troops, costing another $400 billion and thousands more dead Americans — and American liberals will never go for that, so you must roll right over them using the tank of antigay viciousness to keep the lunatic notion of another war over 7,000 miles from our shores from being rejected out of hand. Zionists really are crazy.

(Responsive to "Bad Ideas for Stopping Iran", column by Amir Taheri in the New York Post of February 21, 2006)
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Americans must understand that Radical Zionists will try to make the United States invade every country that remotely endangers Israel. They don't care how many Americans die. They don't care if we have to spend trillions of dollars and consign the next ten generations of Americans to a crushing national debt. As far as Zionists are concerned, there is no price too high for Americans to pay.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,277.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:32 PM

 
Unity Despite Diversity. Arnold Ahlert asks today in the New York Post, "Is there anything that can unite Americans of different political persuasions?" I emailed the following short letter to the editor in response.

Americans tend to see themselves as divided. The rest of the world sees us as all too united. From chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" and "We're No. 1!" at the Olympics to national identification with individual victims of tragedy (a fire, bus crash, a single murder in Aruba), to thrilling to a brilliant rendition of the national anthem by Whitney Houston, to a hundred other ways, we show every day that we have gone much further toward national oneness than the partisans among us acknowledge. You can't expect 300 million people to have a single mind. But on one thing everyone seems to agree. Despite differences in politics, religion, race, sexual orientation, or any other particularity, we are all bound together by one thing above all others: the national credo set out in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address, and all those other best words of our best selves. What exactly they mean is where we divide, but that we all believe in the great experiment the Founders set us upon is what holds us together past the many bad times to the ever-better times. Nothing else unites us. Nothing else could.

(Responsive to "The Pains that Bind", column by Arnold Ahlert in the New York Post of February 20, 2006)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,276.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:44 PM

 
The Castration and Lesbianization of Sport. Straight men have long retreated to sports as their refuge from the domination of their lives by women, but now women are invading and destroying the manliness of sports.
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One major media outlet after another has hired women to report on all-male sports. It's getting to be odd that men's sports are reported by men. Lesbian losers, women who have no life and wish to God they were men, are being hired to intrude women into the last corner of existence that (heterosexual) men had retained for men alone: sports. Now, if a man wants to know which all-male team won a hockey, football, or basketball game, he must listen to a woman. Why?
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Straight American men are being pushed more and more into a corner of subservience to women, in all areas, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (or 366 quadrennially). They are required to pretend that they want women around every instant of their existence, because not to want women to be on them every second of every day of every year of their lives would be to express something akin to homosexuality, and they wouldn't want to be thought "queer".
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Sensing straight men's fear of being thought "queer", feminists are ripping men's cultural balls off and imposing female omnipresence and omnipotence. Men are to have no power in any area of life anymore. Women are to be the gatekeepers of everything, including sports scores.
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American "men", pitiful imitations of maleness as most of the world sees things, preserve a semblance of manhood by making war — with a female-ridden military — upon helpless Third World countries that cannot resist modern technology, then inflict upon them the female domination that American men suffer. Misery does, after all, love company.
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If truth be told, all men, wheresoever situate, are more comfortable with Taliban versions of female roles than Radical Lesbian Feminist roles. But of course, American men cannot say that aloud, because they are castrated losers. "Men" in some European 'cuntries'* are even worse, hard (sorry: difficult) tho that may be to believe.
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And for what? Do real, heterosexual women want men to be castrated losers? Of what value to them would castrated men be?
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Women today are very confused. They have been told endlessly that they should want sensitive men, who cry in the movies and bare their souls to their mate.
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In reality, women hate that.
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We have tried to ignore biology and pretend we are above it. Women can be men in everything but anatomy, and that's fine; men can, for all practical purposes, be women, overriding their testes, and that's fine. But testes don't stop working just because some lesbian feminist asserts that men must 'rise above biology'. And women don't stop wanting to be penetrated, dominated, and taken care of by masterful men.
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People should stop playing stupid games with reality.
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Biology is not fantasy. Fantasy is not biology. Men do not need a female interlocutor to explain men's sports to men.
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Women should back off, lest they find that Taliban is a universal impulse among men who still have their balls.
____________________

* "Cuntry" is a spelling that has actually been suggested by spelling reformers for my Simpler Spelling Word of the Day website. It has problems.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,273.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:04 AM

 
Recreating Mammoths. Two TV shows in recent days sent me searching the Internet to find out what, if anything, scientists are doing to recreate extinct species for which we have DNA.
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The first was an episode of PBS's science program Nova about amber, that mentioned the hope that scientists might find dinosaur DNA in mosquitoes trapped in ancient sap. My little state, New Jersey, has a lot of amber, but I was too concerned with other matters at the time to watch that program in its entirety. Nova's website says that successfully retrieving intact dinosaur DNA from amber-encased mosquitoes is most unlikely.
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You will recall that Hollywood made a couple of movies about recreating dinosaurs from recovered DNA. Those evil films were nothing but another stage on which the sado-masochistic monsters who control filmic media could play out their demented fantasies of violence and death — as entertainment. Appallingly, the films made a lot of money. But the science has been ridiculed.
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Charles Osgood of CBS considered the matter on radio in 2002 and found that scientists have already managed to resurrect some antique features of modern creatures.

In "Jurassic Park," researchers recreated long-extinct dinosaurs from blood preserved in mosquito amber. While that's probably impossible, scientists say they may hatch a dinosaur from a chicken egg by the end of the century. In fact, UCLA scientists have recently re-created chickens with teeth and snakes with rudimentary legs, vestiges of their long lost ancestors.

One of the problems with recreating dinosaurs is that they died out a very long time ago (125 million years), and finding amber that contains dinosaur DNA in any form, be it blood within mosquitoes (how long would a mosquito's proboscis (needle) have to be to reach blood in a dinosaur's skin??) or skin cells rubbed off on tree trunks, is a challenge. But there are much more recently-extinct animals from which we do in fact have intact DNA.
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Today, Discovery's Science Channel broadcast Mastodon In Your Backyard — The Ultimate Guide, which discussed theories about why mastodons died out. That reminded me of woolly mammoths found intact in Siberia.
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In 1984 I visited then-Leningrad, RSFSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia) and made a point of visiting the Zoological Museum. I took these fotos. The first is a view of the skeleton of a mammoth.

The second is of a stuffed mammoth(!) in the in Hall of Mammoths.

This is not a reconstruction from fossils but an actual skin-and-bones mammoth as found in permafrost. The end of the trunk, not visible here, was shortened for having been eaten by dogs when the carcass was exposed to the elements in 1905. The mammoth's awkward position is that in which it was found, the way it apparently landed on falling into a ravine, where it died and was frozen in flesh and time for 40,000 years. (I'm missing the cable for my scanner, so cannot re-scan at larger size these fotos that were scaled down for the Expansionist Party's Russia page, but you get the idea.)
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The Zoological Museum's website shows at the top a better foto, of a baby mammoth (poor little thing) found intact and now displayed in a glass case.
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Every now and then another frozen mammoth is discovered in Russia, in excellent condition, the meat even being edible. Plainly there is mammoth DNA aplenty for scientists to use to try to recreate this extinct species. There may also be DNA from mastodons, an even more ancient, related species that also did not die out until some 10,000 years ago, in actual bones, not fossils. Dwarf mammoths are believed to have died out on Wrangell Island as recently as 4,000 years ago, so there may as well be dwarf-mammoth DNA around to manipulate. Is anybody working to resurrect these ancient animals? I checked the Internet.

A group of privately funded Japanese scientists has a mammoth project for Siberia -- a safari park they hope might eventually feature a genetic hybrid of the extinct woolly mammals and modern-day elephants.

Siberia is not the only place such a park might be located. Alaska or the colder portions of the Great Plains might also be a good place for such critters to roam.
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I don't know why this has attracted so little public attention. I find it very exciting.
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There's something else that warrants public attention: the theory that has achieved greatest popularity about why mammoths and mastodons went extinct — human over-hunting.

Most scholars now agree that hunters—more than climate change or a mystery epidemic—are what doomed the mammoths.

Scientists have found marks on bones that indicated the corpses were butchered, and even holes in skulls and the like that suggest that primitive peoples did not merely find dead animals and harvest the meat, but actually killed them to eat.
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There's a problem with this, and the assertion that a number of other species were also wiped out by early man: primitives, we are told over and over, lived in balance with nature. Yet American Indians and Eskimos wiped out mammoths, mastodons, and other species? Hmm. Did their famed reverence for animals and careful balancing act with nature develop from realization that previous profligate behavior had robbed them of rich sources of meat? After how many extinctions? How long did it take before they realized that you can't predate upon nature with no concern for the consequences, but must at best harvest animals, or domesticate them, not drive them into extinction?
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Something is wrong. Either people did not hunt animals to extinction or early man did not have reverence for nature. One of the other. Not both.
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(On a related note, the morons who run the Bronx Zoo have decided to phase out their elephant exhibit, one of the very most favorite areas of the Zoo for almost everyone, because of cost. Couldn't some super-rich Republican establish an endowment not just to maintain the present exhibit but even to increase the herd and make it even more interesting? The elephant is, after all, the symbol of the Republican Party. Shouldn't our Replutocrats be offended that the City of New York wants to drive elephants out of the Nation's largest urban center?)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,273. CBS, however, said this evening that it is 2,275.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:42 PM

 
"C" is for "Chutzpah". Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the Katrina hurricane disaster, is shown on TV today daring to grade other people's performance and giving himself a "C". I'd suggest Brown deserves a "K", as in "Katrina".
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Southern Sunbelt. AOL today hilites on its welcome screen a story headlined, "Why Mexico Is the New Florida: Coolest Spots Offer Low Costs and Fewer Crowds". Altho that article deals with tourism, it should make people think about what might have been had the "All-Mexico Movement" prevailed after the Mexican War of 1846-48.
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That Expansionist movement advocated that the entire territory of Mexico be taken by the United States after the defeat of Mexico, and eventually be brought into the Union as several states. It failed not just because there was a large population of mixed race that the white ruling class of the United States had qualms about giving representation in Congress and votes for President, but, even more importantly, the Nation was then fiercely divided over the issue of slavery and the annexation of all of Mexico would have complicated the matter.
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Mexico adjoined the slave states, but was hostile to slavery. Facing the triumph of abolitionism within a few decades at most if the boundaries between slave states and free remained the same, slavers wanted to be 'free' to extend slavery into any conquered territory that adjoined slave states. The rest of the Nation refused, but passed the Wilmot Proviso barring such extension. That meant that any new states to be created from Mexico would join the forces of abolition, so slave states opposed annexing anything but the relatively empty northern third of Mexico (not counting Texas, which had already been annexed, as a slave state), which they could then populate, by westward migration, with pro-slavery settlers.
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Oddly, powerful forces in the North also opposed annexation, for different reasons. Some Northerners had reservations about giving millions of Indians and mestizos the vote. Others had moral objections to imposing American civilization by force. They felt that Mexicans had the right to be independent and govern themselves without outside impositions.
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So the U.S. rejected annexation of populous southern Mexico for reasons of racism, slavery, and naivete. Mexico went on to "enjoy" the fruits of democracy by suffering dictatorship, a bloody civil war that killed a million people (almost twice the toll of ours, against a population half ours, 15 million for Mexico in 1910 as against 31 million for the U.S. in 1860), then decades of one-party rule.
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The northern half of Mexico (including Texas) annexed to the U.S. became prosperous Sunbelt states, with a total population today of about 75 million. The southern half, Mexico today, has a population of 106 million, most of them hideously poor by American standards — which is the largest part of why millions want out of Mexico proper and into former-Mexico and other parts of the United States. Escaping a culture of inequality and social immobility is the other big reason for mass emigration.
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Mexico's misery didn't have to happen.
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Had all of Mexico been annexed, the population of Mexico today might be in the range of 80 million, and the standard of living three or four times as high. (Mexican per capita income is at best about $10,000; U.S., about $40,000. Per capita income is a statistical measure that divides gross national income by the number of people in a country. It does not mean that the typical person makes that much.)
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Instead of being a wretched, corrupt society from which millions of people try desperately to flee, Mexico could instead be a group of prosperous Sunbelt states where retirees from snow country could flock to enjoy their golden years. But you don't see much migration from the United States to independent Mexico, do you?
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It's not too late to bring Mexico into the Union. Slavery is gone, so that shouldn't affect votes in the U.S. Congress. Racism is much attenuated. Americans who are linguistically insecure would worry about the future of English in admitting 106 million speakers of Spanish, but there would still be three times as many speakers of English, we are absorbing more words from Spanish every year, and long-term Latino residents do learn English. Their children often abandon Spanish. Our economies are now deeply interdependent, and there are already calls for relaxation of immigration controls at least for temporary workers. The European Union has full freedom of movement within its economic zone; NAFTA does not. Free movement has not ravaged Europe. It wouldn't ravage us.
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Some of the Founders of the United States envisioned a Hemispheric federal union from Point Barrow to Tierra del Fuego. That's a vision to conjure with, and annexing Mexico would be a big step in that direction.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,272.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:47 PM

 
Koran Arrives. Months ago I contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to request a free Koran. I had heard some news report that CAIR was offering free Korans to Americans, and thought that a great idea. So I put in my request and got a notice that they had run out and it would be awhile before they got in a new supply. Good sign — lots of people want to see for themselves what the Koran does and does not say.
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After several months, my Koran finally arrived at the beginning of this week. It's a big book (11.5" x 8.5" x 2.25"), made in Britain in quite a beautiful edition that contains some Arabic text on most pages, in both Arabic script and romanic transliteration. In looking to see if it uses British spellings (which offend me), I chanced to open to a reference to Christians, in Surah 5, that seems at first reading, out of context, to deny the godhood of Jesus. I believe Jesus is regarded as a prophet, or Apostle, by Islam, but I'll have to read the entire Surah to get a clearer idea. Since there are different areas of the Koran that refer to Jesus, all of them have to be considered before one can make a final conclusion. There are 1,040 pages in this edition, so it will take a long time to get thru it.
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Actually, this book is called The Message of the Quran rather than simply The Quran (I'm not sure how that should be pronounced, so will continue to use the English, "Koran"). I assume that is because Islam says that only the Arabic version is authentic; translation risks error, so this is only a best guess at what the Arabic means. I don't read Arabic, so must rely on the carefulness of translators. What I will not rely upon, however, is the interpretations put into the many footnotes. I can read English. If the actual words don't say what the notes say they say, I will judge for myself which is valid.
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Projecting Racism Onto Others. As I am writing this, I have Oprah on in the background, and today's show deals with two middle-class families, one white, one black, posing as the "opposite race" thru prosthetics and makeup. The black family retains its hideous chip on the shoulder wherever they go, and dare to say that the white family, which does not experience racist discrimination when in black mode, is just not seeing the truth. No. The black people are distorting everything, even in whiteface. Nothing white people can do will change the preconception of those particular black people that white society is antiblack. Even when the white guy made up as black gets excellent service and no attitude, and reports that, the black father effectively calls him a dumbass or liar for not seeing the racism. What a load of crap.
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I suspect the truth is that those blacks are projecting onto white people the contempt they feel for their own race. The fault is not in whites but in the people who see racism everywhere. To them, racism is everywhere — because they carry it around inside them.
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What people in service occupations detect, and which may affect service, is a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, and the black family on Oprah today has one the size of the Titanic.
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They became indignant about a conversation in which the white guy made up to be black uses the word "nigga" as (other) blacks use it, in an all-black context. The actual-black father insists that the white father not do that again, even tho the word "nigga" is uttered endlessly among blacks. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood. I see black TV. I've ridden the bus on innumerable occasions surrounded by blacks talking among themselves. Cut the crap! "Nigga" is one of the most commonly uttered words in black conversation among people not "boozhy" (bourgeois), and everybody knows it. So well understood is this that the entry for "nigga" at The Urban Dictionary says:

Nigga is a word which evolved from the derogative term "nigger". Tupac best defined the distinction between the two.

NIGGER- a black man with a slavery chain around his neck.

NIGGA- a black man with a gold chain on his neck.

Whom do the blacks on Oprah think they're fooling?
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Another filmed conversation, with a white woman who says that blacks take pride in being dumb, also elicits indignation. Oh? Why is it that smart black kids who pay attention in school are attacked by blacks as 'trying to be white'? Why does black music insist on bad grammar in preference to good, even tho the writers know full well how to write perfect English? Why does the black subculture insist on affecting an accent, so their race can be discerned even over the telephone? Why is the white high school dropout rate 7% but the black rate 12%? In some urban districts, dropout rates among black males are over 50%!

An analysis of graduation data by Johns Hopkins researcher Robert Balfanz for The Star Editorial Board reveals that high schools in four Marion County township districts are as much dropout factories -- graduating less than 50 percent of black males -- as those in [Indianapolis public schools].

Surely that demonstrates an absolute lack of respect for education and intelligence. Doesn't that equate with taking pride in being dumb?
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Did white people force black males to drop out of school? No, they most assuredly did not. White culture doesn't make fun of intelligence and effectively say that real blacks do badly in school, that school is uncool and the street is the place to be.
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White people are getting very tired of being told that blacks are blameless victims of white monstrousness. We can build schools, but we can't keep blacks going to them. Compulsory education lasts only to age 16. Could we enforce compulsory education thru to graduation? I doubt it.
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So stop blaming whitey. We have between little and nothing to do with black failure, and we're not accepting excuses anymore. Keep the blame where it belongs: with a subculture that praises ignorance, stupidity, and criminality. That's not the majority culture. That's not the culture of the black middle class, which is doing fine in this society despite "racism". That's the culture of poverty. Anyone who clings to that culture deserves failure, and is practically guaranteed to achieve it.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,274.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:13 PM