Archive for January 2009

The relentlessly harsh Republican campaign against immigrants has always hidden a streak of racialist extremism. Now after several high-water years, the Republican tide has gone out, leaving exposed the nativism of fringe right-wingers clinging to what they hope will be a wedge issue.

Last week at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft.

The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. Rather than “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” as President Bush and Karl Rove once tried to do, the report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to double down on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out.
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On Thursday night, police found 18 pounds of methamphetamine from Mexico in an Elkhart home during a raid. Officials say it’s the purest form of the drug they’ve ever seen, and some of it likely had already been distributed in the area.

If it seems like meth is an issue you’ve been hearing a lot about, the drugs found Thursday are symptomatic of a unique problem. Unlike people who make the drug in their homes and distribute it to a relatively tight circle of people, the methamphetamine police seized Thursday is pure, police said.

The distribution of that raw product — a problem Elkhart police say they battled a few years ago — appears to be back in Elkhart County.

“We do not want this stuff to take another foothold in the community like it once did,” said Curtis T. Hill, Jr., prosecuting attorney of Elkhart County.

The investigation has been ongoing since November, Hill said, but events unfolded this week that led to Thursday’s raid.

On Monday, police arrested 24-year-old Edgar Humberto Reyes, at the time in possession of $8,500 worth of cocaine. His charges include possession of, and intent to deal, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. He faces up to 150 years in prison.

On Thursday, police made two separate arrests in Elkhart: Miguel Esqueda and Oswaldo Quizaman, both 29 years old.

Esqueda has been charged with possession and intent to deliver methamphetamine and cocaine. He could face hundreds of years in prison.

Thursday’s raid was at the home where Quizaman lived with his three young children. The methamphetamine — known as “ice” because it’s the highest grade of meth from Mexico — lay behind a doghouse in the garage.
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Standing before the Siegessaule, the Victory Column that commemorates Prussia’s triumphs over Denmark, Austria and France in the wars that birthed the Second Reich, Barack Obama declared himself a “citizen of the world” and spoke of “a world that stands as one.”

Globalists rejoiced. And the election of this son of a white teenager from Kansas and a black academic from Kenya is said to have ushered us into the new “post-racial” age.

Are we deluding ourselves? Worldwide, the mightiest force of the 20th century, ethnonationalism—that creator and destroyer of nations and empires; that enduring drive of peoples for a nation-state where their faith and culture is dominant and their race or tribe is supreme—seems more manifest than ever.

“Vote Reflects Racial Divide” ran the banner in The Washington Times over Tuesday’s story datelined, “Santa Cruz, Bolivia.” It began:

“The Bolivian vote to approve a new constitution backed by leftist President Evo Morales reflected racial divisions between the nation’s Indian majority and those with European ancestry.”

Provinces where mestizo and Europeans predominate voted down the constitution. But it carried with huge majorities the Indian tribes of the western highlands, for this constitution is about group rights.

In 2005, Morales came to office resolved to redistribute wealth and power away from Europeans to his own Aymara tribe and other “indigenous peoples” he contends were robbed by the Europeans who began to arrive 500 years ago, in the time of Columbus.

Pizarro’s victory over the Incan Empire is to be overturned.
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Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials.

Los Angeles Police Department officers question MS-13 members in 2007.

The major findings in a report by the Justice Department’s National Gang Intelligence Center, which has not been publicly released, conclude gangs are the “primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs” and several are “capable” of competing with major U.S.-based Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.

“A rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships” with U.S. and foreign drug-trafficking organizations and other criminal groups to “gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs,” the report concludes.

The gang population estimate is up 200,000 since 2005.

Bruce Ferrell, chairman of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association, whose group monitors gang activity in 10 states, says the number of gang members may be even higher than the report’s estimate.
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To my essay Western Civilization and Socratic Dialogue, Dymphna of the Gates of Vienna blog wrote a comment about Greek vs. Chinese ways of thinking. This is an interesting subject which I will explore further here, with an emphasis on mathematical astronomy. The Danish nobleman and astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), born in Scania or Skåne in southern Sweden, then a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, from 1600 until his death in 1601 was assisted by theGerman mathematical astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), who published his Astronomia nova in 1609 with calculations of the elliptical orbit of Mars based on Brahe’s careful observations. The English scholar Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1726) has no equal in the history of science, with the possible exception of Albert Einstein. Yet even he did not work in isolation.

Here is The Oxford Guide to the History of Physics and Astronomy, page 227:

“In 1679, Newton learned of Robert Hooke’s idea that orbital or curved motion could be explained by a combination of a linear inertial component along the orbit’s tangent and a continual falling inward toward the center. Newton wrote that he had never before heard of this ‘hypothesis.’ But he perceived a connection between Hooke’s suggestion and Johannes Kepler’s law of areas, and showed that they implied that the tendency toward the center in planetary elliptical orbits must vary as the inverse square of the distance from the Sun. He informed no one about this great breakthrough. In 1684 Newton received a visit from Edmond Halley, who asked for help in solving a problem that had stumped everyone in London: the force that produces planetary elliptical orbits. Newton replied that he had already solved it. He wrote up his solution in a little tract called De motu. While revising and expanding it, he discovered that the same force that keeps the planets in orbit must cause perturbations in the orbital motions of other planets, the key to the great principle and law of universal gravitation….In 1687 he published his resulting masterpiece, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).”

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In Grimsby, 1000 British construction workers demonstrated in support of “British jobs for British workers” and in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 836 British voters returned their ballot papers marked in support of the British National Party.

Newcastle City Council
Fenham Ward
Thursday 29th January 2009
Mitzi Emery (Lib-Dem) 1049
Helen McStravick (Lab) 1025
Kenneth Booth (BNP) 836
Sarah Armstrong (Con) 186
BNP Percentage: 27.0%
May 2008: Lib-Dem 1491, Lab 1188, BNP 295, Con 290.

At the city’s local council local elections in 2008, when Fenham ward was last fought, the British National Party polled 295 votes which was just 9% of the total vote. Last night BNP candidate Ken Booth, received 836 votes, 27% of the vote, and trebled the level of BNP support in the ward.
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The general strike in Guadeloupe running in tandem with the situation in Europe took a dramatic turn for the worse yesterday and I regret that it will be necessary to remove the entire Swan charter fleet from the island base in Pointe a Pitre.

Three of our captains are long term residents of the island and they strongly support this action - they feel it has become necessary to do this to preserve not only their own safety but ensure the continued integrity of our Caribbean operations.

Two yachts have already left but two captains are waiting to see how the situation develops as they have domestic responsibilities which would make leaving the island for any length of time difficult. But they will leave if they have to.
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The CBC reports that a school in New Brunswick no longer requires students to sing the anthem every day, in order not to upset some parents who might not like it:

Erik Millett, the school’s principal, said he made the decision partly to accommodate parents who didn’t want their children taking part in the daily anthem. He would not say why the parents didn’t want their kids taking part, citing privacy reasons.

“We try to balance the needs of every student, and we want every student to feel welcome in our school,” Millett said.

“If we need to make some accommodations or exceptions, then we’ll try to put those in place regardless of what the issue is.”

That’s right: in Canada it’s imperative to accommodate everyone, no matter what their request might be. And it’s more important to respect their “privacy” than to explain why they might object. Because it’s just a country; it’s not like it’s important or anything.

While some states fared better than others, December was a cruel month for many workers nationwide, and economists predict job losses will continue for the rest of this year.

All 50 states recorded an increase in the jobless rate in December and an overall spike since last year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday (Jan. 27). The national unemployment rate rose from 6.8 percent to 7.2 percent — compared with 4.9 percent a year ago.

The numbers of people losing jobs last month varied widely from state to state.

Michigan (10.6 percent) and Rhode Island (10 percent) posted the highest rates of unemployment, while Wyoming (3.4 percent) and North Dakota (3.5 percent) had the lowest. Ten states had jobless rates significantly higher than the national average and 22 states reported much lower rates.
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The introduction of hate crime legislation brings a subjective element into the legal system. Where typically Lady Justice is blind and only takes objective facts into consideration, disregarding the position and the opinions of those committing the crimes, she may now apply the law unequally and selectively. Our societies subsequently risk losing an important principle of Western law, viz. equality under the law. Europe has already gone further down this road than America, but the U.S. is following fast in Europe’s tracks.

“If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I’d be arrested for hate speech,” Pat Condell, a British stand-up comedian, says in a youtube video released earlier this week. Mr. Condell, though a comedian by profession, is not joking. He knows how two years ago a British television crew which went undercover in British mosques and taped sermons inciting to violence against non-Muslims, was itself charged by the police and Crown Prosecution Service for “stirring up racial hatred” against Muslims, while the preachers were left undisturbed. According to the police and the public prosecutor the words of the preachers had been “taken out of context,” while the “context” of the makers of the television program was filled in by their accusers: their aim was said to be to stir up anti-Muslim feelings among the public.

Prosecutors and judges are no longer interested in what actually and objectively happened. Instead they focus on the intentions which they claim motivated those who acted. No longer is Lady Justice blind to anything except the facts; she is blind to the facts, but claims to be a clairvoyant about everything else.
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