NPI Blog: News and Commentary

If there were any doubt that the rules of the international game have changed for good, the events of the past few days should have dispelled it. On Monday, President Bush demanded that Russia’s leaders reject their parliament’s appeal to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Within 24 hours, Bush had his response: President Medvedev announced Russia’s recognition of the two contested Georgian enclaves.

The Russian message was unmistakable: the outcome of the war triggered by Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia on August 7 is non-negotiable - and nothing the titans of the US empire do or say is going to reverse it. After that, the British foreign secretary David Miliband’s posturing yesterday in Kiev about building a “coalition against Russian aggression” merely looked foolish.

That this month’s events in the Caucasus signal an international turning point is no longer in question. The comparisons with August 1914 are of course ridiculous, and even the speculation about a new cold war overdone. For all the manoeuvres in the Black Sea and nuclear-backed threats, the standoff between Russia and the US is not remotely comparable to the events that led up to the first world war. Nor do the current tensions have anything like the ideological and global dimensions that shaped the 40-year confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union.
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The head of the Arizona Police Association says illegal immigration is a federal issue and the government is providing no direction on how to deal with it.

Dale Norris said a policy must be adopted soon or problems associated with illegal immigration will balloon.

Smugglers have become increasingly violent and do not care who they have to hurt or kill to get drugs and people across the border, Norris said.

“As we make the consequences of the smuggling act harsher on the people doing it, their resistance to being arrested is going to get higher and higher.”

Border Patrol agents are frustrated at the lack of federal leadership, said Norris.

“You can see the frustration that they’re facing. `Why am I out here risking my life to arrest people when you’re behind my back talking about, well, the ones that get past you, maybe we won’t do anything with them.’”
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HATTIESBURG — Eight detainees from Monday’s immigration raid on Howard Industries in Laurel used stolen identities, including one of a dead person, to gain employment, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The eight appeared in U.S. District Court for a preliminary and detention hearing.

Prosecutors displayed as proof fraudulent resident alien cards, Social Security cards along with Howard Industries employment verification forms.

U.S. Magistrate Mike Parker ordered all held without bond because they could “assume another identity (and) easily flee.”

If convicted of aggravated identity theft, each could face up to two years in prison or a $250,000 fine or both.
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The author of a book on cannibalism in Maori history has been accused of racism in a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

Historian Paul Moon is defending his book This Horrid Practice and stands by his research.

“I spent several years researching this book, using an enormous body of documentation, and I’m not about to denounce it just because it upsets a few people,” he told the New Zealand Herald.

An anonymous complaint said the book “describes the whole of Maori society as violent and dangerous. This is a clearly racist view claiming a whole ethnic group has these traits”.

The commission has so far taken no action on the complaint.

The book suggests that consuming vanquished enemies’ mana had little to do with the underlying reason for Maori cannibalism. Instead, cannibalism, in pre-colonial times was simply about “rage and humiliation”.

Dr Moon said he approached the topic “honestly” and applied standard methods of research to it.

“I think it’s just very sad that it’s come to this stage that when you write about certain topics in New Zealand history you get complaints and accusations of racism levelled at you.”
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The present Labour Government are pretty unpopular at the moment to put it mildly, but while people grapple with the high cost of motoring, astronomical increases in gas and electricity charges, rising food prices and higher mortgages, one proposed Labour policy may have escaped most people’s attention but if it becomes law, around 45 per cent of the population will become the victims of one of the most blatant acts of discrimination ever seen in this country.

This Labour government under the direction of its deputy leader Harriet Harman are proposing to make it law that if a white male applies for a job for which he is qualified to do, the government would actively discourage his potential employer from offering him the job so that preference could be given to candidates of a different gender or to applicants who are from an ethnic minority background.

Now this means that if this Labour government policy becomes law, white men will stand a chance of gaining employment only if they are competing on a short list with other white men, in effect a form of employment apartheid.
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A shocking discovery by the American government reveals that modern American women are twice as likely to remain childless as 30 years ago. A survey by the US Census Bureau showed that one in five women in America is remaining childless throughout their lives. According to the report, American women these days are either choosing not to have children or are facing a steep decline in fertility.

Allowing an annual state wise fertility analysis, data from a massive sample of 3 million addresses across the US in the American Community Survey has been used for the first time. The report gives a statistical understanding of fertility issues.

The report’s author, Jane Dye, mentioned, “The proportion of childless women has been increasing steadily by about one percentage point a year. It used to be sort of expected that there was a phase of life where you had children, and a lot of women aren’t doing that now.”

Jennifer Manlove, a researcher specialising in teenage pregnancies with the organisation Child Trends further added, “Women are waiting longer to finish their education so childbearing starts later.”

The report claims that nearly 20 % of women aged between 40 to 44 years have no children. Also women in that age group who do have children have an average of 1.9 children much less than the mean average of 3.1 children in 1976.
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Dear Editor:

I read in your paper that immigration raids were done in St. John’s and its surroundings but what about Jennings, Jennings Extension and Bolans?

There are so many illegal immigrants living in those villages that they will soon outnumber Antiguans.

Some of the women are even selling themselves and advertising their services on flyers at the public bus stops.

Imagine that!

A couple of years ago, these villages used to be so quiet with everybody knowing who his/her neighbours are but these days everyday is a new face with a different accent.
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Newly updated census data confirm that the United States is in the midst of unprecedented population growth. Today, we are a nation of about 305 million, and in three decades we will reach the 400-million mark.

Left undeterred, this will be the single greatest growth spurt in our history, as we expand by 135 million additional people by 2050.

I find it noteworthy that neither presidential candidate has addressed whether we’re equipped to handle such rapid expansion - and I think I can explain the silence.

Try putting aside who’s causing the growth, what they look like, and where they come from. Instead, imagine the population pop is being fueled by native-born American women.

Don’t you think we’d be hearing concerns from environmentalists about the emissions onslaught brought on by more than 100 million more potential drivers? Wouldn’t somebody express concern about our ability to educate so many new youngsters? Or treat them in emergency rooms? Or provide them with social services and police protection?
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The average score on the SAT remained steady for the class of 2008 — with the critical reading (502), mathematics (515) and writing (494) scores all unchanged from last year.

As is typically the case, the College Board said that the results were encouraging. “Student interest and participation in the SAT has grown to historic levels, and our outreach into minority, low-income and other underserved student groups is yielding tremendous results,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the board.

What College Board officials didn’t note, however, was that this year’s overall flat scores are the result of averaging out very different results for different ethnic and racial groups. Asian and white students saw their scores increase this year, by 5 and 4 points, respectively, across the three parts of the SAT. Score averages for minority groups other than Asians were down by 6 to 8 points across the three exams.
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Why did Jamaicans, led by triple world record-setter Usain “Lightning” Bolt, dominate the 100 and 200 meter sprints in the 2008 Olympics?

This question can be answered at two very different levels: the superficial and the fundamental.

The former, the horserace type of question—i.e., Why did the Jamaicans surge ahead of the Americans between 2004 and 2008?—is the more interesting one to most people. They want to know which Thoroughbred to bet on in the next race, not why Thoroughbreds are faster than Clydesdales.

In contrast, more fundamental questions about matters that don’t change rapidly—e.g., Why have people related to Usain Bolt genealogically, men of West African descent, made up all 56 qualifiers for the finals of the 100 meter dash in the last seven consecutive Olympics?—are not terribly welcome.

It’s not just that the answers tend to imply profoundly unsettling things about humanity. But also … how do you make money off them?
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