Archive for June 2007

Some say Ruby Ridge was the cause for the siege in Waco, Texas and other anti-government movements.

“We were a family who had been abused by the federal government and we were tired on it,” says Randy Weaver.

59-year-old Weaver holds two pictures. His son Samuel, and wife Vicki. Both were killed during a shootout with federal agents at Weaver’s home in Idaho almost 15 years ago. The stand-off, which has since been known simply as Ruby Ridge, sparked anti-government movements across the country.

“And the rest of this country is still being abused and I am waiting for them to get tired of it. And apparently, Mr. and Mrs Brown over there have.”

It is a message that Weaver told national media at a press conference Monday afternoon. It took place in front of the Brown’s home in Plainfield. WCAX reporter Adam Sullivan sat down with Weaver earlier in the day.

“I didn’t come out here to give them advice. They are thinking on their own and I am all for that,” says Weaver.

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For many years now, our nation has debated the merits of race preferences (“affirmative action”).

This debate has been conducted in our legislatures, our courts, our schools, our communities and at the ballot box. Now, our nation is engaged in a debate about immigration.

This debate is wide ranging and many people honorably and strenuously disagree over what course America should take. However, immigration and race preferences cannot be considered in isolation.

Under existing laws and policies, the majority of immigrants coming to America will automatically be eligible for race preferences and privileges not provided to the great majority of Americans.

This is unfair! As voters in California, Washington and Michigan made clear in their overwhelming support of ballot measures banning government mandated racial preferences – and as voters in five other states will have the opportunity to prove again in November 2008 – the American people strongly oppose the idea that our government should treat us differently based on race, ethnicity, sex or national origin.

They understand that while preferences were aimed at giving a helping hand to those who had historically suffered discrimination, in practice they have served above all to compound injustice, needlessly breeding resentment by systematically privileging some Americans over others.

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Oklahoma’s Governor Brad Henry has signed a sweeping immigration reform bill, House Bill 1804, that its sponsor believes will go a long way in dealing with the illegal alien problem in the state.

House Bill 1804 was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate of the Oklahoma Legislature. The measure’s sponsor, State Representative Randy Terrill, says the bill has four main topical areas: it deals with identity theft; it terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

Oklahoma is no longer “O.K.” for illegal aliens, Terrill observes. “When you put everything together in context,” he contends, “the bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them, they will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won’t stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they’re deported. And that’s exactly what House Bill 1804 does.”

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A steady growth of online groups devoted to white students has triggered a wave of concern from Ryerson University administration and students who worry the groups are fostering racism.

Administration is investigating how university policy could apply to the groups, many of which were created by Ryerson students on the networking website Facebook.

Among the user groups are “I’m a White Minority @ a Toronto University” with more than 200 members, and “Equal Rights for Whites” with more than 150.

With posts such as “white people unite” generating uproar and a surge in national media attention, the university is facing a “sensitive and complicated issue” in an electronic age where jurisdiction is unclear, said Julia Hanigsberg, general counsel for Ryerson.

“We’re talking to other universities [...] because this is something we’re all facing,” said Hanigsberg. “This isn’t something that’s unique to this university, and we want to make sure we’re dealing with it in the most appropriate way.”

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“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Master of the surreal that he was, even Lewis Carroll would have had a hard time imagining the utterly bizarre scenes that Americans are now living through in this rabbit hole of immigration reform, a strange world where Mad Hatter politicians gleefully chatter nonsense as they declare night to be day and amnesty to be punishment.

Nothing is what it seems to be in this land where barriers at the border grow and shrink, as “walls,” “fences” or “obstacles” morph from material to virtual and stretch between two miles to more than 700 miles depending on who’s talking on which hour of the day. In the shimmering Day-Glo dreamland of American politics “oppressed” and “terrified” populations “living in the shadows” march vividly in the street by the millions angrily waving foreign flags as they demand rights and privileges accorded to citizens.

Even the arithmetic of demography is tinged with the psychedelic hue of an LSD-trip, where 30 million or more people dissolve into a less alarming number of 14 million, then 12 million and finally down to just 7 million illegal immigrants. And the giggling, tittering politicos admit they don’t really have the foggiest clue as to how many are really here at all, but that’s apparently beside the point.

But perhaps the surest sign that we are now truly through the looking glass is that illegal-immigrant street-gang members are now seeking to invoke asylum laws and be allowed to remain in the United States — because they are gang members.

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Our world has changed drastically since former Vice President Al Gore invented the Internet, especially the speed and type of news we receive. Newsworthy events that might happen at 4 a.m. in Butte, Montana, or St. Petersburg, Russia, can be available to the public almost immediately. News and information are readily available to us at microwave speed.

No more waiting for the Nightly News at 10. The way our news is presented to us has also changed. News used to be the mere reporting of facts and letting the viewer decide what to believe. Now most news formats are mainly giving the audience what news programs want them to think. We sometimes get the same story on every broadcast, every night for years. Generally, there’s nonstop news coverage for murder or missing person stories. Remember O.J. Simpson, Scott Peterson, missing congressional aide Chandra Levy or the Duke University rape story.

Thinking that any heinous or outright unfathomable crime would make the national news, I was skeptical when I received a couple of e-mails asking if I had heard of the gruesome multiple murders that occurred almost six months ago. I hadn’t. Thanks again to Al Gore, all I had to do was click on a link, and bingo, there was the story as if it had just occurred yesterday.

Sure enough, on Jan. 6 of this year, a young Knoxville, Tenn., couple had been carjacked, kidnapped, raped and murdered by four other young people from the same city. Channon Christian, a 21-year-old University of Tennessee college student, and her friend, 24-year-old Christopher Newsom, were both raped. Christian was found strangled and her body left in plastic bags inside the house where the crimes were committed. Newsom was shot and burned and his body dumped near some railroad tracks. Reports of mutilation of both bodies have not been confirmed.

You would think the same media outlets that gave us minute-by-minute updates on Don Imus, the paternity case of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, or the in, out and back in jail again Paris Hilton would have investigated this case. This had to have been the first major crime of the New Year, but there was no endless FOX News, MSNBC or CNN coverage. Where were Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Nancy Grace, Greta Van Susteren or Geraldo Rivera?

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MINISTERS finally admitted yesterday that opening Britain’s borders to mass immigration has fuelled racial tension.

A Government-backed report confirmed that chronic divisions were “bubbling under the surface” in many parts of the country.

It showed that nearly two thirds of people now believe too many immigrants have been allowed into the UK.
Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly confessed: “This is a wake-up call.”

Last night the report was being seen as vindication at last of the warnings repeatedly raised against relaxing border controls by the Daily Express and other campaigners.

Critics of Labour’s decision to relax immigration controls were vilified and decried as “racist” by ministers. But after record numbers of newcomers have swelled the population and put crippling pressure on public services and housing, ministers are now in retreat.

Britain’s immigrant population has swelled by 1.5million since Labour came to power in 1997, largely due to the controversial decision to drop restrictions on migrant labour from Eastern Europe.

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Two BNP-supporting brothers have fallen foul of education chiefs after accessing right-wing websites while teaching in schools.

Adam Walker, 38, quit his job as a technology teacher after being suspended and told he faced disciplinary action.

He used a computer at Houghton Kepier, a foundation school in Houghton-le- Spring, Tyne and Wear, during working hours to view politically extreme sites.

His brother Mark, 36, a former RAF weapons technician, was suspended from Sunnydale Comprehensive, in Shildon, County Durham, pending an internal probe.

Mark, also a technology teacher, was found to have accessed the BNP’s website during school hours.

The pair stood as BNP candidates in Tony Blair’s nearby Sedgefield constituency last month.

Married Mark, who served in the first Gulf War, admitted he had viewed the website.

He said: “I looked at the BNP site but I’ve no idea why that should be an offence. Teachers often look at sites when they are at school. I am being persecuted because of what I believe in.

“This wouldn’t be an issue if I was standing for Labour or the Tories.

“I love teaching kids and I’m a very good teacher. I’ve worked at the school almost eight years and the governors know I’m dedicated and a very hard worker.

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Two out of three people believe that there are too many migrants in Britain, according to a Government-commissioned report on how to bring the country’s increasingly diverse communities closer together.

Ruth Kelly at the launch of the commission’s report: ‘We have let in too many immigrants’

The far-reaching impact of the recent waves of immigration from eastern Europe is laid bare in the report by the Commission on Integration and Cohesion.

A Mori poll carried out for the commission found that 68 per cent of those questioned thought there were “too many migrants in Britain,” a view shared by 47 per cent of Asians and 45 per cent of black respondents.

It also showed that 56 per cent of people believed some groups - mainly immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees - receive unfair priority in the allocation of housing, health services and education.

The report said the findings showed that people “are very sensitive about perceived free-loading by other groups”.

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Separatist graduations proliferate at UCLA.

Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge. The women’s studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for 10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later.

Planning was easier before a new crop of ethnic groups pushed for inclusion. Students of Asian heritage were once content with the Asian–Pacific Islanders ceremony. But now there are separate Filipino and Vietnamese commencements, and some talk of a Cambodian one in the future. Years ago, UCLA sponsored an Iranian graduation, but the school’s commencement office couldn’t tell me if the event was still around. The entire Middle East may yet be a fertile source for UCLA commencements.

Not all ethnic and racial graduations are well attended. The 2003 figures at UCLA showed that while 300 of 855 Hispanic students attended, only 170 out of 1,874 Asian-Americans did.

Some students are presumably eligible for four or five graduations. A gay student with a Native American father and a Filipino mother could attend the Asian, Filipino, and American Indian ceremonies, plus the mainstream graduation and the Lavender Graduation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students.

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