Archive for April 2009

Daniel Hannan

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The UPS Foundation provided a $5000 grant to support the Centre de répit Philou, which provides respite care for handicapped children in Montreal, Canada. The UPS grant will help the organization to expand the “6-12 years old respite unit” and to purchase a mechanical lift to raise older children out of bed and bath along with a “clean chair” to assist in the bathing of older children.

http://pressroom.ups.com/mediakits/factsheet/0,1889,1520,00.html

La Raza is Spanish for The Race:

UPS GRANT TO SUPPORT NCLR’S CAMPAIGN FOR STRONGER AMERICAN COMMUNITIES

Washington, DC— NCLR (National Council of La Raza), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, announced today that UPS is presenting NCLR with a grant of $750,000 to strengthen programs and services for Latino communities throughout the nation. The UPS grant for NCLR’s Campaign for Stronger American Communities will help build the capacity of NCLR’s nearly 300 Affiliates working at the state and local levels to provide direct services or advocacy for millions of Latinos in areas such as education, health, homeownership, and workforce development, among others.

“This grant is a natural extension of UPS’s commitment to serving the communities where our employees live and work,” said Ken Sternad, President of The UPS Foundation. “We have seen over the years NCLR’s shared commitment to those communities, and we are delighted to help ensure that their important work continues.”

NCLR has a longstanding relationship with UPS, working in partnership since 1982. In addition to this generous contribution, UPS has provided extensive resources in brand consulting, which will be reflected in a refreshed NCLR logo, scheduled to be introduced later this year. The company has been a major presence at the NCLR Annual Conference for many years, and this year, UPS is the 2009 Title Sponsor of Latino Expo USA, which will be held at the NCLR 2009 Annual Conference, July 25–27 in Chicago.

http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/56993/

Michele Brown has seen Americans’ struggles with jobs first hand. She lives in hard-hit Florida, spent 20 years in the real estate business and recently had her days as a nanny cut back after her boss had his own hours reduced.

Several states with high unemployment rates are outsourcing their food stamp services to call centers in India, angering many residents. Michele Brown learned about Florida’s outsourcing when she called regarding a problem with her benefits.
(ABC News Photo Illustration)

But nothing prepared her for what happened one day when she called a toll-free line to inquire about her food stamps.

“The woman who answered the phone — it’s not like she wasn’t nice or anything — but it was kind of evident that she wasn’t in the States,” Brown said.

It turns out the woman was at a JP Morgan Chase call center in India.
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Sheriff John B. Cooke of the Weld County Sheriff’s office in Colorado has issued a press release dated April 17, 2009, announcing a threat to “kill the most number of Americans” in Greeley, Colorado, if police do not release illegal immigrants held for deportation by the Sheriff’s office.

Click here to see the PDF version of the press release.

“The letter is hand written in Spanish on the front and back of two pages of paper directing threats primarily towards judicial and law enforcement officers as targets. The bombs are not specifically described,” the press release states.

The Greeley jail, according to the press release, currently has 58 inmates in custody with ICE holds.

The press release warns residents to “be alert and mindful of their surroundings and to report suspicious activity.” It indicates that state and federal law enforcement were notified of the threat.

Air France Flight 438, from Paris, was to land at Mexico City at 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 18. Five hours before landing, the captain’s voice announced that U.S. authorities had prohibited the plane from flying over U.S. territory. The explanation: among the passengers aboard was a person who was not welcome in the United States for reasons of national security.

A few minutes later, the same voice told the startled passengers that the plane was heading for Fort-de-France, Martinique, because the detour the plan needed to take to reach its destination was too long and the fuel was insufficient.

The stopover in that French territory in the Caribbean would be only to refuel the plane. Exhaustion was becoming an issue among the passengers. But the central question, spoken in undertones, was the identity of the “terrorist” passenger, because if the “gringos” say it, “it must be because he must be a terrorist.”

Looking at those of us sitting in the back of the plane, two passengers said no terrorist could be there because “nobody there looks like a Muslim.”

Again in the air, and preparing for another four hours of travel, a man who identified himself as the copilot came to me. Trying to look discreet, he asked if I was “Mr. Calvo Ospina.” I told him yes.

“The captain wants to sleep, that’s why I came here,” he said, and he invited me to accompany him to the back of the plane. There, he told me that I was the person “responsible” for the detour. I was astonished.
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The Labour Party has become embroiled in a race row after a prospective female councillor was allegedly told she was ‘too white and Jewish’ to be selected.

Elaina Cohen claims that Labour councillor Mahmood Hussain said he would not support her application for an inner-city ward because ‘my Muslim members don’t want you because you are Jewish’.

Mrs Cohen, 50, has made an official complaint about the alleged remarks made by Mr Hussain, a Muslim and former lord mayor of Birmingham.

She said: ‘I am shocked and upset that a member of the Labour Party in this day and age could even think something like that, let alone say it.

‘People should not be allowed to make racist comments like that. If someone in the party feels I cannot represent them because of my colour or religion, that’s ridiculous.

‘I felt particularly aggrieved because I have worked across all sections of the community, particularly with the Muslim section, and have been on official visits to Pakistan.’

Mrs Cohen had applied to stand as a Labour councillor for the Birmingham ward of East Handsworth and Lozells, which has a high Asian and Afro-Caribbean population.
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Two events on June 6 might denote the death of the “slacker” as an American cultural archetype. The first was the largest monthly jump in the US unemployment rate in two decades, due to an unexpectedly large number of young entrants into the labor market. The second was the release of the film Kung Fu Panda, which transposes the ubiquitous slacker-makes-good story line into the incongruous setting of Chinese martial arts.

America might be the first country in recorded history whose culture celebrates not only indolence but also the sheer absence of ability. Byronic loafing is the birthright of genius, but slacking has become the entitlement of every young American. American popular culture puts a special premium on doing nothing, which is what the protagonists of such popular television series as Friends, Sex in the City, The Office and Seinfeld did. Aristocrats throughout history loafed because they could afford to. Until very recently, so could Americans. That has come to a sudden and ignoble end, on which more later.

The popularity of slacking is evident from the success of films on the subject. Well, they knew their demographics those who crafted Kung Fu Panda, in which a fat and feckless panda who in two easy lessons becomes a kung fu master. As film critic Carina Chocano lamented in the Los Angeles Times, “The slacker panda whose favorite word is ‘awesome’ is singled out for heroism when all the other characters have worked long and hard (the definition of kung fu) and sacrificed for what they’ve accomplished. The message - believe in yourself even when all evidence suggests you shouldn’t - is annoyingly familiar and frankly overdue for a serious debunking.” A young martial-arts practitioner of my acquaintance said it more simply: “Who made this movie? I want to rip out his trachea.”
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The scorching spring heat brought with it a wave of gun violence yesterday, with 14 people shot in eight incidents throughout the city.

In Harlem, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the head as hundreds of teens gathered on West 121st Street and Lenox Avenue at around 1:20 a.m.

The youth, Chris Owens, was at St. Luke’s Hospital in critical condition and on life support, police sources said.

“My nephew got hit in the head with a .45,” said the boy’s uncle. “How do you think I feel? I can’t even speak.”

Two others, including a correction officer, were hit in the legs and expected to recover.

In The Bronx last night, a man was shot in the head and listed in critical condition, after a 5:19 p.m. assault at 1820 Pelham Parkway, cops said. The shooter fled immediately.

The overnight bloodbath began at 11:45 p.m. Saturday in The Bronx, at Story and Colgate avenues, where a man, 44, was shot four times in the torso. He was not expected to survive.
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The nation’s most populous county has vowed to continue offering illegal immigrants free medical care even as other municipalities throughout its state are forced by a financial crisis to eliminate the costly perk.

With the nation’s highest illegal immigrant population (around 3 million), California annually spends about $775 million to provide them with free medical care at its county facilities. But an unprecedented budget crisis has led officials in several counties to cut the service amid protests that the move is unconstitutional.

Earlier this year Sacramento County cut publicly financed health care to about 4,000 illegal immigrants to save $2.4 million and Contra Costa County, one of nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, followed by eliminating the service to 5,500 illegal aliens to save approximately $6 million. Yolo County, also in northern California, is scheduled to vote on a similar measure next month to save a much-needed $1.2 million by banning around 1,200 illegal immigrants who currently benefit from free medical care.

But in the south, the state’s largest county—Los Angeles—assures that there is no plan to ban taxpayer-financed health services to its illegal residents. In a newspaper report published this week, the director of L.A. County’s health services department says that, despite significant projected deficits and concerns about further cuts in state funding, the county will continue to provide illegal aliens with free medical care.
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There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution’s principal tasks was “to alter people’s actual psychology”. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people’s psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males”. He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive”.

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government’s anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.” Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: “If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings.” It took him five years to clear his name.
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