Tyranny Raises its Evil Face – Lawmakers fight off changes to ‘hate crimes’ bill

Tyranny Raises its Evil Face

FILED: Uncategorized

PatriotPost.US
Monday Brief
Vol. 09 No. 17
27 April 2009

THE FOUNDATION
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” –James Madison

LIBERTY
“In response to an unprecedented expansion of federal power, citizens have held hundreds of ‘tea party’ rallies around the country, and various states are considering ’sovereignty resolutions’ invoking the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth Amendments. For example, Michigan’s proposal urges ‘the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States.’ While well-intentioned, such symbolic resolutions are not likely to have the slightest impact on the federal courts, which long ago adopted a virtually unlimited construction of Congressional power. But state legislatures have a real power under the Constitution by which to resist the growth of federal power: They can petition Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution. An amendments convention is feared because its scope cannot be limited in advance. The convention convened by Congress to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation produced instead the entirely different Constitution under which we now live. Yet it is precisely the fear of a runaway convention that states can exploit to bring Congress to heel. …[A] Federalism Amendment would provide tea-party enthusiasts and other concerned Americans with a concrete and practical proposal by which we can restore our lost Constitution.” –Georgetown University professor of constitutional law Randy Barnett

INSIGHT
“It really is difficult to imagine how people who have entirely given up managing their own affairs could make a wise choice of those who are to do that for them. One should never expect a liberal, energetic, and wise government to originate in the votes of a people of servants.” –French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

GOVERNMENT
“One of the most important events of our lifetimes may have just transpired. A federal agency has decided that it has the power to regulate everything, including the air you breathe. Nominally, the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement … only applies to new-car emissions. But pretty much everyone agrees that the ruling opens the door to regulating, well, everything. According to the EPA, greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide — the gas you exhale — as well as methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. It is literally impossible to imagine a significant economic or human activity that does not involve the production of one of these gases. Don’t think just of the gas and electricity bills. Cow flatulence is a serious concern of the EPA’s already. What next? … Whether or not global warming is a crisis that warrants immediate, drastic action (I don’t think it does), and whether or not such wholesale measures would be an economic calamity (they would be), the EPA’s decision should be disturbing to people who believe in democratic, constitutional government. …[T]he EPA has launched its power grab over all that burns, breathes, burps, flies, drives and passes gas.” –National Review editor Jonah Goldberg

FAITH AND FAMILY
“If torturing terrorists works — as the Obama administration had to admit grudgingly [last] week — is it okay? No, of course not, the chattering class proudly concluded. One wonders why. What do they care? Having already accepted abortion and euthanasia — which are nothing more than the expedient killing of the unborn and the elderly — why should the expedient torture of terrorists, a lesser evil, trouble them? Oh, that’s right: the terrorists are guilty and the guilty under the ministrations of modern liberalism never suffer. Pain in modern life is for the innocent. Terrorists, we’re told by pro-abortion liberals, suffer excruciating pain while the ejected unborn and euthanized elderly feel nothing. And even if the latter do suffer pain, say these liberals, that pain is worth it. After all, abortion and euthanasia sustain a pleasant and peaceful lifestyle for the strong. Let the dead bury the dead. … Obama’s liberalism is not an opponent of human rights abuses but an embodiment of them. The CIA restricts itself to methods far less ruthless than those permitted by the platform of the Democratic Party. When will Obama bring his own platform into line with the Geneva Accords? It is a little late in the day for Obama to worry about America’s moral reputation. Resisting evil even ‘when it is hard’ hasn’t interested liberalism for at least four decades. It rests on an ideology of expedient evil and crass utilitarianism.” –Catholic World Report editor George Neumayr

CULTURE
“The debate over the just-released Justice Department memorandums on interrogation techniques ended as soon as they were dubbed the ‘torture memos.’ … Rightly considered, the memos should be a source of pride. They represent a nation of laws struggling to defend itself against a savage, lawless enemy while adhering to its legal commitments and norms. Most societies throughout human history wouldn’t have bothered. … If we had a more mature political culture, this and other questions could be examined thoroughly by a special congressional committee. (As it happens, the CIA produced a memo on the benefits of the interrogation program that has never been released.) But such an inquiry inevitably would descend into a hyperpoliticized takedown of the CIA and the Bush Justice Department for ‘war crimes.’ The frenzied reception of the ‘torture memos’ is just a preview.” –National Review editor Rich Lowry

Hate Crime Laws Criminalize Your Conscience: See Who Supports Criminalizing Your Conscience

FILED: Uncategorized

Comment: Criminalizing the conscience by way of speech codes and hate crime laws is a favored tactic of totalitarians. Specifically, these tactics were used by the immoralists–the psychopaths who controlled the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Red China, North Vietnam, and Cuba. If Hugo Chavez has not yet instituted hate crime laws, he WILL do so. When the UN finally takes control of the entire world, it WILL enact onerous hate crime laws and speech codes. On Nov. 5th, foolish Americans—seeking a savior to save them from their chaos-causing immorality—elected a spellbinding totalitarian. Yet Obama is himself a puppet on-strings. In back of him are the truly hideous psychopaths, biding their time with barely constrained impatience, waiting for totalist power to fall into their hands. If we do not fight hate crime laws today—while we still can— we will live to regret not doing so tomorrow….Linda

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lawmakers fight off changes to ‘hate crimes’ bill
Vote postponed after GOP seeks to include unborn, military, pregnant women

——————————————————————————–
Posted: April 22, 2009
5:57 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Supporters of the “hate crimes” bill spent the day fighting an “onslaught of hostile amendments” and were not able to reach a final vote after five hours of discussions today, a Washington, D.C., gay and lesbian news source reports.

According to the Washington Blade, the hearing began at 10:30 a.m. and is set to reconvene tomorrow morning, when lawmakers are scheduled to vote on H.R. 1913, or the Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a bill that some say might allow federal officials to prosecute Christians who speak out against homosexual behavior.

It has 42 co-sponsors and was introduced into the House on April 2 by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

In a speech, Conyers said, “The bill only applies to bias-motivated violent crimes and does not impinge public speech or writing in any way.”

Section 10 of the act states, “Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

However, critics cite United States Code Title 18, Section 2, as evidence of how the legislation could be used against people who merely speak out against homosexuality. It states:

Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.

They argue that under this reasoning, a Christian pastor or other teacher could be tried for openly speaking out against homosexuality if someone misconstrues their message as encouragement to commit a violent crime against another person – even if the Christian leader never advocated the offense.

There was lengthy debate about several amendments to the act today.

Republican lawmakers sought to include unborn children, military members and pregnant women in the measure, according to the report. Others tries to strip “gender identity” language from the bill.

The amendments were rejected.

Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel, has spoken out repeatedly in opposition to the act.

“The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law,” he said. “Hate crimes legislation is … [a] violation of the Fourteenth Amendment in that it elevates one class of citizen based upon their chosen sexual behaviors above other people.”

Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern, warned Christians to speak up before the legislation passes. He said they are acting like the proverbial frog in a slowly heating kettle that boils to death.

“They need to wake up and take action to oppose this threat to religious liberty.”

The following is a list of seven Republican co-sponsors of H.R.1913 alphabetized by state:

Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif.
Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.
Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill.
Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.
Rep. Anh Cao, R-La.
Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J.

The following is a list of 35 Democrat co-sponsors of the bill alphabetized by state:

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif.
Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif.
Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif.
Rep. Lynn Woolseym D-Calif.
Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.
Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla.
Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii
Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa
Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass.
Rep. John Olver, D-Mass.
Rep. Gary Peters, D-Mich.
Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn.
Rep. William Clay, D-Mo.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.
Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.
Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y.
Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.
Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.
Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-Ohio
Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, D-Ohio
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.
Rep. Raymond Green, D-Texas
Rep. James Moran, D-Va.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.

Concerned individuals may contact representatives by calling (202) 224-3121 or by searching for their last names in the U.S. House of Representatives database.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=95838

Why the Law is Foreign to Ginsburg By Selwyn Duke

Why the Law is Foreign to Ginsburg

By Selwyn Duke

There is an old saying, “A man who is capable of deceiving only others is not nearly as dangerous as a man who is capable of deceiving himself.” Truer words were never spoken. When a person lies, he is deceiving others about reality, but at least knows he is engaging in deception. But when someone rationalizes – which is when you lie to yourself – he is truly lost. He then not only bends reality for others as a by-product of bending it for himself, but he can render untruths without having to lie. This is because a lie is when you tell an untruth knowing it’s untrue. It’s much like when the ever-prevaricating George Costanza character on Seinfeld gave his advice for beating a polygraph machine, “just remember . . . it’s not a lie if you believe it.”

I think of this when I hear Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg tout the use of foreign law by American judges sworn to uphold the Constitution – that would be our constitution. Speaking about this recently at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, she said,

“I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law [when handing down court rulings] . . . .”

Well, you know what? I believe her. She and her fellow travelers really don’t understand. That is, they don’t grasp the correct legal philosophy well enough to understand what they’re rejecting.

Note that I called the legal philosophy “correct” and not “strict constructionism,” and for good reason. When you call it correct, it follows that other positions are incorrect. But what is the other side of the coin of constructionism? It would be living-document legal philosophies. To accept these categorizations implies that we just have a bunch of different credible perspectives on constitutional law, and who is to say what is correct? Call it, legal relativism. But more on this in a moment.

At her speech at Moritz College, Ginsburg served notice that – like so many in legal circles today – she is in fact very confused about her role on the bench. As an example of this, Adam Liptak at The New York Times tells us,

“She added that the failure to engage foreign decisions had resulted in diminished influence for the United States Supreme Court.

The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is ‘probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.’ There is one reason for that, she said: ‘You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.’”

This is a striking statement, and it vindicates something I’ve long believed. I once wrote that part of the problem with our judges is that they’re not content to just be judges. A judge is much like an umpire at a baseball game. It’s not his place to make or alter the rulebook (Constitution); his is simply to determine whether or not it has been violated. And whether he likes or dislikes a given rule should be of no consequence.

Yet today we have judges who would be kings. They’re not satisfied to just umpire; that’s too small a role for them. They want to be agents of activism, molders of men, shapers of society – and they want the ego satisfaction attending such status. They want to be respected by their peers around the world, fellow members of the global judicial class. This is evidenced in Ginsburg’s statements.  Why should she care if the Canadian Supreme Court is cited more than ours? Popularity doesn’t equate to perspicacity.  After all, rap stars are far more popular than the most sublime moral philosophers. And, as for the matter of whether foreigners listen to her court, here’s a newsflash: It matters not to normal Americans whether they do or not. Foreigners are not governed by American law; thus, our judges’ rulings may be irrelevant to them. And foreign rulings should certainly be irrelevant to our judges.

Thus, it seems these things matter to Ginsburg because she isn’t satisfied with her role (a common failing of man). She wants prestige and respect; she wants to set trends. Perhaps she should have started a cult. I hear there’s some land available in northwestern Guyana.

Yet, living-document justices are comforted in their misfeasance by rationalizations they conjure up to justify it. One that Ginsburg has used is to criticize the view that the Constitution is “stuck in time.” But she has it wrong. It is not stuck in time but stuck in law. Law can be changed through legal measures – in the case of the Constitution, the amendment process – but until then it’s supposed to be “stuck.” The alternative to being stuck in law is being subject to the caprice of those with greater power. This would mean that you could appear before a judge and he could rule based on whim or that a policeman could arrest you because he believed he had just experienced an epiphany about what the law should be. In other words, this thinking is no different from the rule of kings, where a Herod could deliver John the Baptist’s head on a plate to please his wife. It is why G.K. Chesterton said, “There are only two ways of governing: by a rule and by a ruler.” It is why we should have “the rule of law” and not the rule of lawyers.

And this is why some of us have likened our Supreme Court to a de facto oligarchy. After all, on what basis does an oligarchy rule? Its members make decisions guided by nothing more than the dictates of their own consciences. Thus, people can put as much lipstick on this pig as they want. They can wrap their living-document legal philosophy in a million pseudo-intellectual arguments. But, at the end of the day, it boils down to might makes right. When justices depart from constitutional constraints, they cannot be voted out of office or fired. The only thing constraining them then is their own consciences – just as with an oligarchy

This is why I would have far more respect for someone who overtly defies the law (think Martin Luther King and civil disobedience) and simply refuses to comply. For he is deceiving neither himself nor others. He is simply saying that the law is wrong, that it violates a higher law and that it’s the duty of all good people to defy it. It is the difference between an open declaration of war and the use of subterfuge and subversion.

This brings us to a question. If Supreme Court Justices can rule contrary to the letter and spirit of the supreme law of the land on the basis that the Constitution is not “stuck in time,” why can lower courts not apply the same reasoning to what is called “settled law” (areas where the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution “definitively”)? After all, how can law ever be “settled” if it can never be viewed as “stuck”? Why can a lower court not say, “Well, sure, the Supreme Court ruled that way five years ago, but times are a-changin’ fast. The law has a different meaning today”? If the Black Robes won’t be constrained by the Constitution, why should others be constrained by their unconstitutional precedents?

We now come to the supreme arrogance of our oligarchs-cum-jurists. For their living-law philosophy isn’t for all, is it? It’s not for the citizen; for him law is stuck in time. It’s not for the cop on the beat; interpretation isn’t his luxury. It’s not for the lower-court judge; for him precedent is to be pre-eminent. It’s not even for the president, for the laws he signs are subject to Supreme Court judgments. And judgments based on what? Not the Constitution, obviously. It is again merely their own judgment.

This raises the question of why we should respect the rulings of these usurpers. If they will not view the Constitution as being stuck in law, why should we view the law as being stuck in courts? Are the dictates of black-robed oligarchs to be viewed as the only immutable elements in an ever-changing universe of laws? Oh, ignoring court rulings would lead to a breakdown in the rule of law and this isn’t a good thing?

Exactly.

The point is that activist judges undermine the rule of law by setting an example of contempt for it. Others are then placed in the position of asking what adherence to the rule of law really means. Should they defer to court judgments made by those who don’t view themselves as constrained by law? Or, should they rather use their own judgment – as the justices are doing – as to the real meaning of the supreme law of the land, the Constitution?

This is what living-document legal rationalizations breed. And it is why I’ve often said that all our designations for jurists, such as “constructionist” and “pragmatist,” are nonsense. Because, really, there are only two kinds of justices: Good justices and bad justices. Good ones do their job and abide by the Constitution. Bad ones lawyer the law.

Hey, maybe Ginsburg and her fellow travelers should just be honest and boil this down to its bare essence. They could simply quote infamous occultist Aleister Crowley and say, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

© 2009 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

America’s Ship of State: Adrift on an Ocean of Lies – U.S. Becoming History’s Largest Welfare (Slave) State

America’s Ship of State: Adrift on an Ocean of Lies

By Alan Caruba Saturday, April 25, 2009
“The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”—H.L. Mencken

Does this make sense to you?

The President is closing in on his first hundred days in office, but records that would normally be made available during the course of a campaign or on request have not been made available.

They include:

Occidental College records
Columbia College records
Columbia Thesis paper
Selected Service Registration
Medical records
Illinois State Senate Schedule
Certified copy of original Birth Certificate
Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth
Record of baptism
This President who keeps calling for “transparency” has one of the most opaque “paper trails” of his own life. There must be a reason, right?

What is “Torture”?

The controversy over whether the United States “tortures” people known to engage in terrorist plots against our nation includes condemnations of such practices as:

Water boarding
Sleep deprivation
Food deprivation
Continuous music
Lights on all the time
Confinement to a small cell
Meanwhile, jihadist websites and others in the Middle East have shown videos of the following:

Hostages being beheaded
Homosexuals being hanged
Improvised explosive devices killing American soldiers
Snipers killing American soldiers
In some Middle Eastern nations:

Women are subject to “honor killings”
Women are gang raped based on nothing but an accusation
Women are buried up to their shoulders and stoned to death for adultery
Public floggings are a common practice
Hands are chopped off as criminal punishment
This goes on while some seek to portray America as an uncivilized nation that “tortures” in order to protect its citizens. Meanwhile, there is no reporting on our military’s free medical clinics in Afghanistan that treat people who often walk for a day or more to get there.
Heating Up Support for a New Tax:
Three days of yet another Congressional charade wrapped up this week as proponents of legislation to impose “cap and trade” restrictions on energy use—a huge tax—trotted out witnesses to declare that “global warming” requires it.

When Al Gore testified, he neglected to mention that, since leaving the office of Vice President, he has made millions from the sale of carbon credits and his investments in companies making “green” technology. This legislation would make him even more wealthy. Add this to his lies about “global warming” and then draw your own conclusion.

And, it need be said loudly and often, there is NO global warming. The planet is in a ten-year-old cooling cycle.

History’s immutable Lessons:
History is replete with examples of barbarity and deception. It is naïve to think we should be exempt just because we live in “modern” times.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/10540

U.S. Becoming History’s Largest Welfare (Slave) State

Posted: April 26, 2009
8:26 pm Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. Subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of “The Late Great USA,” a book about the careful deceptions of a powerful elite who want to undermine our nation’s sovereignty.

President Obama may be determined to use the current economic crisis as an excuse for “Obamanomics” to transform the United States into the world’s largest socialist state, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

Data emerging from the Congressional Budget Office and various international agencies, including the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, or OECD, indicate the Obama administration’s $3.6 trillion federal budget will dramatically increase government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP, on a scale that rivals even the European Union social welfare states of France, Great Britain and Germany.

Moreover, with the Obama administration suggesting the U.S. Treasury could convert bailout loans to the 19 largest U.S. banks into common stock to extend the remaining $100 billion or so of Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP funds, a government nationalization of the nation’s top banks is a real possibility, Corsi wrote.

This, following the Obama administration’s decision to fire General Motors chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner, extends central government management of the private economy under President Obama to a degree many would only expect in socialist nations.

Before President Obama took office, the OECD projected total U.S. government spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of gross domestic product, or GDP, by 2010, compared to 47.1 percent in the Eurozone, a gap of less than an 8 percent.

Only a decade earlier, U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the Eurozone, a gap of approximately 14 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cumulative deficit from 2010 to 2019 under President Obama’s proposed $3.6 trillion federal budget would total $9.3 trillion, a figure that would nearly double the nation’s current $11 trillion national debt.

Before including the Obama administration’s plan to pass a government-funded universal health care insurance program, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will increase from the current 18.2 percent of GDP, to 28.3 percent in 2050, and 35.3 percent in 2082.

Adding to the calculation the interest payments required to service the national debt, the Congressional Budget Office estimated federal spending will hit 41.8 percent of GDP in 2050 and 75.4 percent by 2082.

Including the interest payments on the Obama administration’s proposed expansion of the national debt means Congressional Budget estimates that interest payments on the national debt could reach 75.4 percent of GDP by 2082 are too low, Corsi wrote.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee and President Obama’s first choice to be secretary of Commerce, emphasized the point by telling National Public Radio on April 14, that President Obama’s proposed federal budget deficits would “take our national debt up to about 80 percent of our gross domestic product,” when a nation does not qualify for membership in the European Union if the nation’s debt is 60 percent of GDP.

The Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly warned that running federal budget deficits that result in dramatically expanding national debt by trillions of dollars in the next few years will diminish the prospects for growth in the U.S. economy.

In a letter to Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., dated May 19, 2008, Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained that trillions of dollars in projected federal deficits “would crowd out productive investment in capital in the United States” by absorbing funds from the nation’s pool of savings and absorbing foreign capital that might otherwise be invested in the U.S. private economy.

At the G20 meeting in London on April 2, French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected proposals by President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to engage in massive deficit spending to fund increased social welfare spending to stimulate the global economy out of recession.

Just prior to the G20 meeting, Merkel told the Financial Times in London that Berlin intends to be more responsible than Washington, respecting as a restraint Germany’s €1.54 trillion ($2.057 trillion) public debt – a figure that looks small in comparison to the U.S. national debt, which just topped $11 trillion.

Merkel suggested Germany was not in the same position as China.

“I think China can do much more [than Germany] to encourage domestic demand because of its massive reserves,” Merkel told the Financial Times. “We are in a completely different situation, we have negative reserves.”

China currently has nearly $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, the most held by any country in world economic history, gained largely through China’s massive and continuing positive balances of international trade with the United States.

China has committed to an $800 billion economic stimulus program of its own, having lost some 20 million jobs, largely because its manufacturing plants have had to close by the thousands as U.S. consumer demand has weakened.

Merkel further warned that President Obama was repeating the problem that caused the global economic meltdown in the first place.

Specifically, her charge was that the economy collapsed because the economic stimulus after Sept. 11 depended entirely upon the credit abundantly made available when then-Fed Chairman Greenspan held interest rates at 1 percent in 2003 and 2004.

“This crisis did not come about because we used too little money but because we created economic growth with too much money, and it was not sustainable growth,” Merkel told the Financial Times. “If we want to learn from that, the answer is not to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

On March 26, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown received a similar warning in the European Parliament, when conservative British EU Member of Parliament Daniel Hannan gave a tongue-lashing to Brown that went viral on the Internet and became the most watched clip of any kind in the world in 48 hours.

Red Alert’s author, whose books “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command” have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, said just as Hannan warned Brown “you have run out of our money,” Merkel intends for Obama to hear the same admonition from her next week.

Corsi received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For more information on Obama’s plans for socialism and for financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, “The Obama Nation.”

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=95918

U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency in Wake of Swine Flu

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said 25 percent of the stockpile for the swine flu anti-viral medication has been released as the U.S. declares a public health emergency.

FOXNews.com

Sunday, April 26, 2009

• Photos

Sunday: DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano declares a public health emergency as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs looks on (FNC).

show_baynote_guide(“ArticleGuide”);

WASHINGTON — The United States has activated an emergency plan to combat swine flu as the Obama administration announced measures Sunday to contain the sometimes deadly virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified the strain of swine flu and is prepared to distribute a quarter of the U.S. stockpile of 50 million doses of anti-viral medications in places around the country where swine flu has been located or may be expected to spread, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a briefing at the White House.

Travel advisories have not been issued by the State Department, Napolitano said, nor is the United States going to screen passengers on flights arriving from Mexico. She said funds have been freed up in case a larger response is needed.

Hand-washing, mask-wearing and other measures will help prevent the spread, Napolitano said explaining how the public can help slow potential contaminations.

“If you are sick, stay home,” Napolitano said. “Take all of those reasonable measures that will help us mitigate and contain” the illness.

People who are ill should not go on airplanes, to school or other places, added Dr. Richard Besser, the acting head of the CDC.

Besser said the United States is working with the World Health Organization, Canada and Mexico as well as other organizations to reduce the spread of the virus, which appears to have originated in Mexico and has resulted in up to 81 deaths there.

The CDC has issued advice on its Web site on how to avoid the sickness and how to react if people think they are infected.

Click here for the CDC Web site.

“Every outbreak is unique” and it’s very hard to say how long it will be before it’s contained. But Besser said since it’s near the end of flu season right now, a decline would be likely.

However, he added, “We view this more as a marathon. We do think this will continue to spread but we are taking aggressive actions to minimize the impact on people’s health.”

“Even if this outbreak is a small one we can anticipate that we may have a subsequent of follow on outbreak in several months from now,” Napolitano said.

In a press conference held Sunday, New York Governor David Paterson said the eight potential cases in Suffolk County have been tested.

“It’s a situation we’re monitoring but it seems there’s no real danger ahead,” said Gov. Paterson.

Gov. Paterson said daily updates are being given to 25,000 physicians, hospitals and health care providers.

In the U.S., 20 cases of swine flu have been confirmed in California, New York, Texas, Ohio and Kansas. Patients have ranged in age from 9 to over 50. Besser said that all the cases have resulted in recovery and one person remains hospitalized.

However, the same flu has sickened more than 1,324 in Mexico since April 13.

As the briefing was occurring, Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard announced that two more people died overnight in the capital of swine flu, and three other deaths are suspected to have been caused by the new strain. Ebrard said 73 more people have been hospitalized with influenza and authorities are investigating how many of them may have been infected with swine flu.

John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security, said President Obama has offered his full support to the Mexican government and people. Brennan said early communications and quick response will be the key to combating an outbreak.

“Early identification is vitally important,” Brennan said. “Communications have been robust and medical surveillance efforts are fully activated.”

The incubation period for swine flu is 24-48 hours. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said despite reports Obama did not have a medical exam since it’s been nine days since he left Mexico.

Gibbs said earlier Sunday that now is not the time to panic.

“We are increasing the monitoring and preparedness that we would need to have in place in order to deal with any sort of emergency, but it is of concern to the White House,” Gibbs said on “Meet the Press.”

Israel, New Zealand, Spain, France and Canada have reported suspected isolated cases after citizens from those countries returned home from Mexico.

The Israeli Health Ministry said the biggest concern is a spread of the disease from person to person.

“The main route of contamination would be from person to person and not from pigs. There is no swine flu in pigs in Israel. There are not many pigs in Israel,” said Dr. Hagai Levin.

“You can not get the swine flu from eating pork,” Napolitano said during the briefing.

Swine flu is dangerous because it changes its form and takes on characteristics like bird flu, and there is no vaccination, said Dr. Isador Rosenfeld, a FOX News contributor.

However, Baxter International Inc. of Illinois is working with the World Health Organization on a potential vaccine, the company announced Sunday.

“Baxter has the R & D pandemic planning and expertise to develop vaccines for emerging diseases and viruses,” Baxter spokesman Christopher Bona told FOX News. “Upon learnign about the swine flu outbreak, Baxter requested a sample of the virus from the WHO to begin lab testing for developing a potential experimental vaccine.”

Rosenfeld said swine flu is usually a mild infection. He suggested staying away from crowded places where people are sneezing and coughing and washing hands. But he said he’s a bit confounded about why so many people in Mexico have died because swine flu does respond to Tamiflu and other anti-viral medicines.

“This thing is treatable,” he said.

Is America Going Insane? 86% of respondants to a Channel 13 poll in Houston stated they favor secession.

Is America Going Insane?

[Found this in the archives from a couple of years ago. The answer is yes. - HAC]

After two generations of liberalism, political correctness, and now neoconservatism, I genuinely believe that it is time, and more than time, for us to ask ourselves a deadly serious question.

Is America as a nation is losing its mind? Are we becoming collectively dysfunctional and insane as a society?

Consider two recent news articles, stories that appeared on the wire services and as yet haven’t excited much comment, even from professional ghouls like Nancy Grace and the Discovery Channel.

From New Orleans comes yet another story of bizarre and lunatic crime, along with the shoplifting transvestites and other high weirdness which has been going on since Katrina. A white man, Zackery Bowen, apparently killed his girl friend, butchered her carcass, and roasted her up in a cannibal barbecue.

A NOLA online news articles states that “A suicide note in the pocket of a man who jumped off the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel late Tuesday led police to the grisly scene of his girlfriend’s murder, where they found her charred head in a pot on the stove, her legs and arms baked in the oven and the rest of her dismembered body in a trash bag in the refrigerator… The man, Zackery Bowen, a tall 28-year-old man with long blond hair, confessed in the note to have killed his girlfriend, Adriane “Addie” Hall, 30, on Oct. 5th.” (Almost two weeks ago, so Bowen had plenty of time to engage in his version of Cajun Kitchen.)

“…Detectives found two pots on the stove, one containing a the victim’s head and the other her hands and feet. Next to the pot containing the head were carrots and potatoes that had been cut up, but none had been placed in the pots.”

Sounds like quite a gumbo Bowen was making. Hopefully he followed famous Cajun chef Justin Wilson’s advice and used plenty of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce on the brisket.

No, seriously. I know people make tasteless and silly jokes about things like this, and you can rent a slasher film from the video store that shows worse stuff. But think about what has to happen to a man’s mind before he can do something like this for real. I have written some pretty heavy sade scenes in my novels, but I damned well know the difference between reality and fantasy. Somehow or other this guy Bowen’s mind just sort of melded with the Batshit Cosmos, and it’s happening to more and more people.

“In the oven were turkey-basting trays containing human legs and arms, the source said. At least one of the pans had seasoning sprinkled on the human remains, the source said…[Bowen] claimed in his note to have sexually violated the body several times, eventually passing out in a drunken stupor on the futon next to his girlfriend’s corpse. The next day, after he got off work delivering groceries, Bowen moved the body to the bathroom tub and dismembered her remains with a handsaw and knife….’He appeared to clean up the bathroom a lot after he did it,’ one officer said.”

Well, at least he’s a clean cannibal.

Interestingly, Bowen and Hall had featured a year ago in a New York Times article on how people in New Orleans were coping with Hurricane Katrina. Unlike the blacks, the white couple did not flee the city, and according to the Times, Hall developed a novel way of making sure the mostly black police force patrolled their street regularly–she flashed her breasts at every cop car that passed by. Oh, and they also lived in an apartment above a voodoo shop.

Moving right along here, comes a story from the Big Apple that vies in gruesomeness with the one from the Big Sleazy. It seems that a number of funeral home directors in Brooklyn and throughout the New York City area have been running a unique kind of “chop shop”–human organs and tissue and body parts they strip from the corpses of their clients.

According to an Associated Press article, “Seven funeral home directors linked to a scheme to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges and have agreed to cooperate with investigators….The unidentified directors secretly pleaded guilty in the probe of what investigators say was a plot to harvest bone and tissue and sell it to biomedical supply companies, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said.”

Seven of them, and judging from the article, more to come.

“The seven entered their pleas in closed courtrooms and their names were withheld, but defense attorneys said that among those cooperating was the director of a funeral home that took parts from the body of Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004.” One wonders, what body parts could that old coot have had that would still be serviceable? He must have been well into his seventies.

“Prosecutors allege Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon, and three other men secretly removed skin, bone and other parts from up to 1,000 bodies from funeral homes, without the permission of families. He allegedly made millions of dollars by selling the stolen tissue to biomedical companies that supply material for common procedures including dental implants and hip replacements.”

Up to one thousand corpses stripped down for everything from eyeballs to knuckle bones. This wasn’t just the act of some isolated insane ghoul; this was an organized and methodical business venture based on hard cash.

What was going on in these men’s minds when they did this shit? Have we become a society so completely devoid of propriety and conscience that they simply honestly didn’t see anything wrong in violating one of the most ancient religious and moral taboos, mutilating the dead, in order to make money? Has the mindless worship of money really replaced every last sense of spiritual balance and ethics in our minds?

Looks like it. In Prohibition there were bootleggers, cigarette smugglers in New York are often known as buttleggers, and now we’ve got bodleggers, apparently.

People, what in God’s name is going on here?

Okay, throughout history there have been occasional outbreaks of demented violence and macabre crime in this country, from people like Belle Gunness and Albert Fish and the infamous Benders of Kansas. But those cases occurred maybe once every half century or so, they were completely atypical, and they attracted infamy because of their incredible rarity.

In “the old days” (like when I grew up), people didn’t have to worry about Mr. Dibble the local funeral director secretly disassembling old Aunt Ida’s corpse for parts, and while guys occasionally killed their girl friends they did not subsequently cook them and serve them up as an Irish stew.

It’s almost like when the white man lost our alpha gene, we also ended up with some kind of weird, mutated crazy gene that’s now running wild. There is simply too much of this mad and bad craziness going on these days to try and explain it away as some kind of odd conjunction of sick individuals. Madness has gotten into our blood.

One theory is that since the white man has the most highly developed an complex brain of any human organism, the sheer pressure of having to live in the unnatural world of political correctness, Jew-worship, feminism, money-worship and materialism to the exclusion of all else, increasingly open sexual perversion and the browning of America has driven many white people of both sexes around the twist. This kind of weird mess is happening almost every week now.

It’s as if prolonged association with Third World savages and prolonged exposure to Jews, a psychotic people who practice paranoid schizophrenia as a religion, has contaminated and warped our minds to the breaking point. There is no “normal” any more.

It has to end, people.

America. We have to kill it, or it will kill us.

Doomer Doug on the Tree of Liberty blog states that CW-2 began on April 20 when a citizen shot an AZ traffic radar van tech, though that may be a bit premature. I love to see violent resistance to the obsequious shakedown, though would prefer see it happen to federal treasury goons instead of a civilian contracted to a lez-governed state. What a great day to begin taking this country back, though- God knows that the government provocations are numerous and increasing!

In any case, citizen dissatisfaction is nearing the boiling point as jobs vanish, taxes & expenses escalate, and the wetback invasion continues unabated.

Without the coming martial law, the ZOG will not be able to hold things together much longer as more & more citizens discover they have nothing to lose and nowhere to turn. With the sinking economy, it is inevitable that manurity crime against whites will make a sharp upturn and be met with stiff armed resistance which ZOG will attempt to crack down on, further alienating white citizens. increasing numbers of whites will realize that the ZOG is their enemy and that peaceful coexistence with manurities is a liberal pipe dream.

Noted is that last week, 86% of respondants to a Channel 13 poll in Houston stated they favor secession. Wait ’til the unemployment rate hits 25% and Gore & Soros slap their global carbon tax on us!

Viva la revolution!

Now For Something Completely Different

Sometimes I’m sure we all wonder in the privacy of our own thoughts (which is about the only place left where we’re able to wonder about these things) just how low they can go. Just how incredibly silly can political correctness get?

Well, let’s try this one for size.

USA Today reports: “Next year, San Francisco will issue municipal identification cards showing the usual name, birthdate and photo. What the card won’t include: gender. When other cities considered issuing ID cards without regard to legal status, the debate was over illegal immigrants. In San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors approved such an ID on Tuesday, transgender activists added gender to the discussion.

“Transgender is a broad term for people who do not identify with their birth sex. Those who refer to themselves as transgender include cross-dressers and transsexuals.”

In other words, being a drag queen who dresses up in women’s clothing, like being a sodomite, is now supposedly not something a strange person chooses to do, it is something they are. No. I am not making this up.

“‘The card really makes gender a non-issue,’ says Kristina Wertz, legal director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco. Wertz says legally changing a name and gender designation can be time-consuming and cost hundreds of dollars. IDs that don’t match appearance could out people and make them vulnerable to discrimination or abuse, she says.”

Does this silly woman or whatever he/she/it is really believe that with California’s draconian mandatory Political Correctness hanging over everything, there is really anyone left in San Francisco who would dare to discriminate against or abuse a drag queen? I honestly think all the normal people fled from there years ago.

“Martin Rawlings, 30, is a female-to-male transsexual.” (I.e. the bullest of bull dykes.) “When he legally changed his name in 1999, he had trouble getting his employer to change it on his paycheck. His bank, though, had changed his name. As a result, he had trouble depositing his checks. A municipal ID would have helped, he says. ‘It’s often a barrier to finding work, not having an identification that matches your presentation,’ he says.”

Okay, I guess we all need to stop worrying about the collapsing economy, the ongoing Obama Depression, Iraq and Afghanistan, millions of home foreclosures, massive illegal immigration, crumbling infrastructure, the destruction of the middle class and rampant nigger crime, and we must all concentrate on the terrible problems facing sex-change freaks.

“Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who introduced the measure, says illegal immigrants will benefit most. They will be able to open bank accounts and use the card for city services such as checking out library books. He expects others, including transgender individuals, to find it useful.”

Uh…illegals can already get pretty much anything they want in San Francisco by way of ID, benefits, free housing, free medical care etc. It’s a “sanctuary city,” which is another reason why normal people have pretty much all fled and the place is a basket case. So how will Juan and Jose and Rosalita benefit from having no gender on their Monopoly money ID cards that San Francisco gives them?

Do these idiots ever actually think about what they’re saying?

Identity and conflict and White Identity in Postmodernity

Identity and conflict

From Vanishingamerican.blogspot.com

Tom Sunic, in an Occidental Observer piece called White Identity in Postmodernity, discusses the minefield of “White identity”. He writes of how many Whites in the West, wary of expressing a White identity, choose instead a sort of neutral national identity, as with most Republicans whose identity is bound up exclusively with national patriotism and loyalty to ‘the American idea’. For many on the left particularly, who have been schooled to regard White identity as not only illegitimate but as prima facie ‘racism’, their choice is often to identify with some subculture. He cites the examples of Whites who champion the cause of Tibet or, in his words, ‘exotic Afro or Asian escapism.’ These types are very common among those who are politically leftist. Everything they do and everything they enjoy is meant to express their desired solidarity with some Third World culture or cause. They may wear ‘rasta’ dreadlocks or tattoo themselves like tribesmen of some sort or wear some kind of Third World ethnic garb, and listen to Third World music and eat exotic foods and worship at the altar of Asian religions or some kind of syncretic faith which involves Third World traditions.

Many less exotically-identified American liberals instead choose to identify with black Americans or Afrocentric culture. Their counterparts back in the 1970s and 80s may have been more likely to pick ”Native Americans” as their ersatz identity.

What seems to be the important thing in adopting such a false identity is to express solidarity with some ‘underdog’ or downtrodden group, apparently as a way of assuaging their hyper-developed consciences about history’s wrongs. For the last 40 years or so, Whites have been taught at every turn that their identity is in itself a guilt-saturated thing, because their ancestors were the authors of most wrongs in the world.

Sunic mentions that many Europeans or European-descended Americans may not discover any ethnic or racial identity without being threatened by someone else’s national identity, and he uses the example of the break-up of Yugoslavia to illustrate his point.

He also emphasizes how victimhood and victimology are at the heart of the many competing minority identities which are proliferating in the West. There is inevitably a hierarchy of victimhood, and in our country blacks and to some extent Jews enjoy primacy in this department, though the exponential increase in the number of Hispanics in our country threatens to topple the current victim-order.

When I was in college in the 70s, as all this victim-veneration was just reaching a new peak, I noticed, to my surprise, that blacks did not like to share the victimhood mantle with other minority groups; there was instead a competition among the minority groups as to whose suffering was most intense or most prolonged. Blacks at that time fell back on frequent references to ’400 years of slavery’, sometimes extended to ’500 years of slavery’ or ’500 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow’ or some such claim. American Indians were enjoying a vogue in the 1970s, and there were many Ward Churchill types running around campuses, their identity being based on having supposedly had a remote ”Native American” ancestor. Asians were also in the victimhood sweepstakes, and their claims centered on past expulsions of Asian immigrants or the internment of Japanese during World War II.

But I noticed that these groups did not work together; they were all intensely ethnocentric, and quite competitive or jealous when it came to sharing the victimhood spotlight. They might put aside their rivalries to participate in some anti-White demonstration on campus but generally they were wary of each other, or outright unfriendly to one another.

As Sunic points out in his piece, when victimhood is claimed, that implies a victimizer, or a ‘monster’ as he says. It does seem to be an ironclad rule: the common thread in all the victimhood narratives is “Whitey did it.” It is Whites who are to blame in every case; there is always a Honky in the woodpile when a cry of victimhood is raised.

And as Sunic says, the victimology leads to conflict not only between the vicitims and the accused (and automatically convicted) White victimizer, but among minority groups scrambling for their place in the hierarchy and their share of the spoils. If ‘reparations’ for blacks are to be paid, there will be outcries from Hispanics, who will demand payment for the ‘theft’ of their fictional Aztlan. What happens when the spoils are no longer so plentiful?

And more importantly, what will happen when the goose that laid the golden egg is moribund?

Sunic says that an authoritarian society is necessary to manage all the divisiveness that is inherent in such an unstable system; his words are that ‘high levels of social control’ are needed. We are seeing that happening. And many of us wonder if that is not one of the reasons why our rulers have purposely introduced so much diversity into Western countries: to break up any natural cohesion and racial integrity, and to produce instability as a prelude to their further plans. Otherwise we can only conclude that our ”leaders” are utterly incompetent and clueless. Either explanation is sobering to say the least.

Sunic describes the psychological state of Western White people as being overwhelmed by the constant barrage of guilt and the clamoring by the various voices of grievance and discord. I think this is taking a toll, as he implies, and I think it may reach a tipping point before very long, unless the cacophony of complaints and accusations stops. Is this too part of the plan, I wonder?

He says that Whites don’t have the option of claiming victimhood themselves, but actually some do just that; for example in our country, those who see their immigrant ancestors as having been victimized by founding-stock Americans a hundred or so years ago are rather good at bringing up their grievances, and these same people all too often side with illegal immigrants and work towards open borders and the third-worldizing of America.

America is perhaps more disunited than other Western countries in that respect; those European countries which are monocultural and monoethnic have a decided advantage over those countries with more than one nationality within their borders. This is illustrated by the comments on this AmRen thread discussing Nick Griffin’s remarks about Black and Asian residents of the UK not being Britons. Someone asks whether ethnic Irish in the UK are ethnic foreigners, and several answer ‘yes’. A squabble then erupts between posters who appear to be Irish-descended Americans and Anglo-Americans or British posters. It’s an interesting but complicated argument, with people citing British celebrities who are supposedly ”really” Irish. There seems to be some confusion about Irish people of Anglo-Norman descent, or people of mixed English and Irish descent. So even in the United Kingdom there are elements of ethnic conflict, though among closely-related peoples. America is not the only English-speaking nation with internal divisions among close kin.

These are issues that have to be addressed, along with ideological and religious divisions in our country and other Western countries. If we lack the capacity to put aside our other differences in favor of uniting based on our kinship connection, we really don’t stand much of a chance.

White Identity in Postmodernity

Tom Sunic

April 23, 2009

We start to wonder about our identity at the moment when we are about to lose it. Our grandparents never asked questions about the meaning of identity; they never worried about who they were. They took for granted their affiliation to their religion, to their tribe, and to their race. It is with the rising tide of multiculturalism, followed by the waning of the traditional nation-state that identity becomes a problem.

The term “identity” has become fashionable because it can mean everything and nothing at the same time. It is no accident that it is much in vogue today because, as noted in a recent publication of the Institut für Staatspolitik, “it has a resonance more scientific than ‘national consciousness‘ or ‘national soul.‘”

After the tragic experience Europeans had with their brands of nationalisms during World War II and its minor extension during the recent Yugoslav war,  the European political class prefers to use neutral terms such as ” national identity.” The old expression “national consciousness,” which in the German language has a particularly strong resonance (i.e., Volksbewusstsein) or in the French language conscience nationale, smacks of fascist vocabulary and must be prudently avoided.

By contrast, the expression “national identity” sounds neutral. It can be used by all — even by those who reject their national identity or who discard the notion of racial pride. Even the icons of the left often give lip service to national pride by posing with patriotic symbols.

Barack Obama, American Patriot

It is true that when a White European or White American speaks of the “national conscience” of his ingroup, the mainstream media will automatically point to the rising spectre of racism.  In the postmodern world, the barren term “identity” provides a certificate for decent civic consciousness, excluding any suspicion of xenophobia or the rejection of the Other.

Most White Europeans and White Americans resort to “functional” identities with no ties to their racial or cultural identity. Psychological research shows that Whites have fairly strong identities as Whites at the unconscious level — what Kevin MacDonald terms “implicit Whiteness.” But at the explicit, conscious level they identify themselves as Americans, or Christians, or classical music fans.

Indeed, for many Whites in the postmodern world, identity is expressed by the choice of different life styles and adherence to exotic mores. These new postmodern trendy identities replace the old identities derived from our racial and cultural heritage.

For example, an ever growing  number of Whites, while gleefully expressing their French, American, English or German roots, extol bizarre supranational and transnational identities. They gladly embrace exotic Afro or Asian escapism,  or the rap music of urban America. They detect their new identity not in the primeval White vicinity of their own village, but places as far away from their actual lives as possible.

Alain De Benoist observes that in postmodern society, individuals often seek alternative identities by identifying with trade marks, logos, or exotic imagery. If a new fashion dictates that new identity must be sought in Jewish Kabbala or in the mimicry of the life style of a Negro tribe from Timbuktu,  it will be gladly embraced.

Madonna proudly sporting her identity as a Kabbalist

Quite possibly modern European Americans or Europeans at large cannot become racially conscious without first facing serious physical threat by someone else’s well defined identity.  Witness the break-up of Yugoslavia, when many Croats discovered an intense form of national identity thanks to the onslaught of Yugoslav communist tanks.   

Victimology: A negative identity

In a multiethnic and multicultural society, the identity of different ethnic groups is incompatible with liberal individualism. On the one hand liberalism preaches the free market with happy consumers as the ultimate identity for all; yet on the other, the very dynamics of liberalism cannot dispense with the conflicting racial and ethnic identities in its own multicultural body politic.

In fact, as ironic as this may sound. multiculturalism (which is the fraudulent euphemism for multiracialism),  presents the biggest  threat to the liberal system This is because it provokes the sentiments of victimology among its different ethnic and racial constituents.  Modern multicultural society, as the former Yugoslavia has shown and as modern US is showing daily, is a fragile system prone to racial and ethnic tension. Pierre André Taguieff a French left-leaning writer and politically  correct dissident, notes, that “particularly interethnic rivalry can be radicalized by the slightest spark (a minor event ) and merge into a conflict resembling a civil war.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the political class claims its identity by constant resurrection of the fascist straw man and the forever looming anti-Semite. Even if that anti-Semite bogeyman is not around, he must be reinvented in order to provide credibility to the liberal system. Over and over again.

At the beginning of the third millennium, one can hear on all wavelengths endless horror stories about the evil Hitler — a man who is surely destined to live forever in infamy.  It appears that liberal democracy cannot function at all without using the negative Other.

The Jewish Holocaust has become a critical component of identity for the Western world in need of new quasi-religious symbolism — the culture of the Holocaust. In 2005, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Horst Köhler, tearfully declared in the Israeli Knesset that the responsibility for Shoah is part of German identity.” (“Die Verantwortung für die Schoa ist Teil der deutschen Identität.) Similarly, the former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder declared that  “the remembrance of the Shoah  belongs to our identity.”

Think about that. If taken literally, it would mean that one could not think of oneself as a German without also thinking about the role of Germans in the Holocaust. To be a German is to have the mark of Cain branded on one’s forehead.

This culture of the Holocaust is staunchly maintained by the judicial system in Europe. The perception of either real or surreal anti-Semitic identity triggers judicial wrath. Any academic who questions the modern Jewish narrative can easily land into the claws of the Criminal Code — the dreaded German StGB, Section 130, or the French “Loi Fabius- Gayssot.”

There is an obvious double standard here. It is widely permissible to exercise one’s own identity by cracking jokes against “fat Krauts”  or  “stinking Frogs.” or “hypocrite  Wasps.” One can go even go so far as to utter a mild joke against proverbial “camel riders.”  But a minor joke about Jewry is unthinkable in the media and political circles of America and Europe. One can criticize the Other by invoking free speech, provided that the Other is not a Jew.

Ersatz-substitute identities

In their desperate search of a non-racial identity, White Europeans resort to ersatz identities. For instance, they espouse the Palestinian or Tibetan identity or the identity of some distant Third World tribe as if it was their own identity. They will spot some lost Indian tribe in the Amazon forest and then, with all vicarious passion, strive to protect and preserve it.

But when it comes to defining and preserving their own racial identity — let alone preserve their race, they remain silent. To say aloud “I am proud of being a White European” smacks of racism.

Such substitute or foreign-inspired ersatz identity is particularly strong when it is couched in the narrative of victimology. Europeans are keen at erecting monuments to exotic tribes that they never heard of until the day before yesterday — especially ones that may have been victimized by Europeans. Days of atonement keep accumulating on the calendar. Every White European or American politician is obliged to pay moral and financial tributes to peoples whose identity has nothing in common with his own.

While Western media and opinion makers assure us that history is creeping toward an end, we are witnessing a staggering demand for the revival of non-European micro-identities, often couched in self-centred victimhoods. And each of those non-European victimhoods requires an expanding number of its domestic dead and foreign culprits. Culprits are always White Europeans, who are forced to practice the ritual of remorse.

The old sense of the tragic, which until recently was the fundamental pillar of the old Greco-Roman historical memory in Europe, cedes its place to Levantine- inspired jeremiads for victimhoods of Asian and African tribes. Slowly but surely, the European sense of the tragic is supplemented by a fixation on non-European identities.

What a scandal if a White European or American statesman fails to display remorse for the past suffering of some non-European people! What counts is the endless enumeration of non-European victims of the European past.

In this postmodern “battle of memories,” victimhoods cannot be equal. Some must take precedence over others, and it’s quite obvious that the Jewish Holocaust is the apex of victimhood in the postmodern West.

But there is a grave danger for all. Given the victimological atmosphere that prevails today in the multiracial West, each non-European tribe, race, or community is led to believe that its own victimology is unique. This is a dangerous phenomenon because each victimology competes with other victimologies for pride of place.

The story of the 20th century is that the greatest mass murders in history — the mass murders of communism — were made possible by the Marxist ideology of victimization and they were rationalized in the name of tolerance and so-called human rights. The communist ideology of victimization resulted in the dehumanization of dissident intellectuals and political opponents, and even whole groups of people — with monstrous consequences.

The spirit of victimhood must search for its negative identity by negating and abolishing the Other, who is henceforth no longer perceived as human, but depicted as a monster. The spirit of victimology does not serve to prevent the conflict. It renders the conflict inevitable.

The diverse identities in the multicultural West are a severe problem. On the one hand, modern liberal Western societies require that each non-European ethnic group receives an appropriate identity and its right to historical grievance; yet on the other, liberal societies are unable to function well in an environment beset by ethnic Balkanization.

In particular, the contest of diverse victimologies makes the functioning of the liberal system extremely precarious. In essence, each victimological spirit in multiracial society is confrontational and discriminatory. It creates a climate that promotes divisiveness in the society. The only way such societies can function is with high levels of social control. This prospect is doubtlessly viewed quite positively by postmodern intellectuals. But it will lead to alienation and disengagement for the great majority — especially for Whites who cannot claim victimhood and who are forced to witness the disintegration of their once homogeneous communities.

American and European societies are facing a schizoid situation. On the one hand, they are being overwhelmed by the rhetoric of negative identities derived from guilt feelings — the various anti-colonial victimologies and the endless palaver about past European fascist crimes. Yet on the other hand, one can barely hear a word about gigantic crimes committed by Communists and their liberal allies during and after WWII — crimes committed to avenge the Marxist victimology of the class struggle.

Whites in Europe and America have to overcome the sense of territorial rootedness and intra-ethnic infighting. European racial and cultural identity stretches from Argentina to Sweden and to Russia and to many other places on the globe.

Even more importantly, White people must explicitly accept a White identity. This explicit White  identity does not imply that Whites are superior to other peoples or that other peoples are not also unique and have a right to maintain their uniqueness. It merely states that we are a unique people with a unique culture and that both our people and our culture are worth preserving.

White identity can best be preserved in the transcendental sphere of its own uniqueness. But White uniqueness need not and should not come at the price of denying the uniqueness of other peoples and other races.

Tom Sunic (http://www.tomsunic.info/; http://doctorsunic.netfirms.com/) is an author, former political science professor in the USA, translator and former Croat diplomat. He is the author of Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age ( 2007).

Open borders flu – it would seem that even a deadly epidemic on the scale of the 1918 occurrence would not end our insane openness.

Open borders flu

Below are several links to stories on the Mexican flu outbreak:

California expects to find more new flu cases

Officials Say 8 NYC Prep School Students Probably Have Swine Flu

More cases of swine flu reported; WHO warns of ‘health emergency’

UK crew member in hospital after Mexico flight

BBC Have Your Say: Mexico flu: Your experiences

The last link above is from the BBC website, with readers in Mexico giving first-person accounts of the situation.

Over at Free Republic, there is a thread essentially denouncing all the news stories as so much media hype and propaganda. The original poster scoffs at the whole idea of a new strain of flu, and believes it’s media-invented, or some kind of government-generated hype. A majority of the comments agree, with only a few on that thread believing there may be something to all the hype and hysteria.

I am keeping an open mind; I remember well how, a few years ago, there was the flurry of scare stories about SARS, the respiratory bug that seemed to be killing people in China, or people who had lately visited there. Then, starting a few years ago, there has been a constant flow of stories about possible Avian flu pandemics; that has somewhat died down now, but when it was at its height, I wondered why, exactly, the media (or the health authorities, or whoever was feeding the media) wanted to create fear around the possibility. After all, the authorities and the media seemed to say that there was little that could be done to prevent such an outbreak or even to contain it, much less to prevent it. So why generate so much anxiety and concern about something over which, apparently, we have no control?

At the time of the SARS scare, I wondered why on earth there was no effort to control our borders and to assiduously screen anybody who had recently been in the infected areas. Of course since the epidemic happened in 2003, I’ve concluded that our insane elites’ dedication to open borders and ‘globalization’ override any petty concerns for public health and safety.

The worldwide influenza epidemic of 1918 was aided, so it’s said, by the mass movements of peoples associated with World War I.
Considering the differences in mass transportation and the globalizing of our world, plus the huge overall increase in population, I would venture to guess that there are many, many more people on the move around the planet now than at any time in human history, and it is a wonder that we haven’t yet had a devastating global pandemic thanks to this widespread nomadism that is happening today. Couple the unprecedented movements of large numbers of people with the poor hygiene and health that prevails in many parts of the world, especially the parts of the world which send immigrants to the First World, and such an epidemic seems highly likely, sooner or later.

And given the fact that we now seem to have a ‘thou shalt not close the borders’ commandment governing our policies, it would seem that even a deadly epidemic on the scale of the 1918 occurrence would not end our insane openness.

We might say that borders are our country’s immune system, and that we now have a seriously impaired immune system, no longer defending against invaders. And what the open borders crowd vilifies as ‘xenophobia’ is just our psychological immune response to potential threats. Liberalism and the cult of ‘diversity and inclusion’ is the destruction of our immune system, the equivalent, really, of AIDS in a nation.
Open borders = tempting fate.

So what should be the proper reaction to these flu stories? I don’t believe we should panic or become unnecessarily fearful, but on the other hand I can’t join the scoffers’ chorus and say that it’s all hype and nothing to worry about. I think we have to exercise sensible precautions, such as avoiding travel to affected areas, and avoiding contact with anyone who exhibits any suspicious symptoms. It would be bad if this thing spreads, and people resort to panic buying of food, water, and other necessities. It’s always sensible, however, to have enough food and water on hand in case of any kind of emergency such as a natural disaster, so many of us probably have such things on hand.

One thing I haven’t read in the stories that have appeared is a definite incubation period. It’s important to know how long it takes for symptoms to develop once someone has contracted the virus. If the incubation period is short, that makes it worse.

If any of you have information to share or any reports of illness where you are, share them here, please, and of course offer your opinions on this situation.

Update: Apparently, Guatemala is acting to tighten up their border with Mexico,. (H/T Elsinore at Cordelia For Lear)
And there are some informative posts on the flu story, with many good links, here and here.

Liberals say “the GOP is dead” and they are right

I love my country too…

From Free Republic:
I love my country…..and I won’t give it up!

I’m tired of hearing the refrain….”the GOP is dead”….and “the country is going down the tubes the way of Western European socialist countries”.

I’m sorry, I won’t accept that.

I’m willing to bet most of the people parrotting these lines are old, grizzled, bitter men who are cynical bastards to begin with.

Here’s the deal…..I’m a 20-something conservative who loves his country and the values, traditions, and institutions it was founded on. I refuse to accept that it is all for naught at this point.

He goes on to list the discouraging argument he hears from ‘conservatives’:

Common refrains I hear are:

1. Demographics are changing this country and eliminating any chance of a conservative renewal.

A: Well, Irish Catholics not too long ago voted straight ticket Democrat 100% of the time. Blacks were solidly Republican until the 1960s. Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let’s start winning some arguments! It aint’ that hard if you really try.

2. Young people are indoctrinated in schools and universities.

A: Hogwash. Another baby-boomer argument. The students at University of Missouri were NOT a bunch of brainwashed lefty ideolgues.
[...]
Final comments:

I believe in the power of goodness. America is a special place. Freedom is a universal value. The GOP and the conservative movement et al needs to start pushing this hardcore.
[...]
All you moronic, cynical old nellies can just bother not responding to this post. This is for optimistic freedom-loving Americans ONLY.

God bless all of you, and God bless America…the country I love.”

Well, I guess I am one of those ‘moronic, cynical old nellies’ the poster despises.

There is that idea, so often expressed by mainstream Republican types, that to be ‘conservative’, one must be optimistic all the time. Anything else is labeled a ‘liberal’ attitude; only liberals find fault with things as they are. I don’t know how or when this kind of attitude became mandatory among the mainstream GOP types; I am going to guess it was probably during the Reagan era, when Republican triumphalism and smug optimism seemed to be the thing. The belief was apparently that the country was returning to its ‘conservative’ roots and the future was rosy — as long as people voted GOP and stayed optimistic. The optimism seems unwarranted, in retrospect, as things have undoubtedly gotten steadily worse from a conservative standpoint. Of course this young man probably cannot see that, since it appears he was probably born after Reagan’s presidency and has little historical perspective.

His contention that colleges do not indoctrinate their students is not supported by any facts; he merely says that his school (apparently the University of Missouri) was not liberal. So it seems, however, that his college education did not teach him anything about argument and debate; providing an anecdote does not prove his assertions.

He also takes a swipe at ‘baby-boomers’, whom he obviously dislikes; this seems distressingly common these days. I would guess his grandparents could have been boomers, if not his parents. To my mind, respect for elders is a must for real conservatives; how is it possible to be ”conservative” in any way and loathe the generations before you? Sure, the boomers were in many cases notoriously liberal, but it appears the later generations are even more so, considering the numbers of them who voted for the current regime. Again, exceptions do not disprove the rule.

It appears that, as with far too many Americans, he considers ‘conservative’ and Republican to be one and the same; surely he should be able to see that this is far from true. All he has to do is to look at the party leadership, or at the pathetic candidate who was just defeated at the polls, to see how very un-conservative his beloved Republican Party is.

The first complaint on his list was about the demographic changes harming the prospects of his beloved GOP. He does not believe that this will be the case. Obviously he’s been listening to Karl Rove, George Bush, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and all the others who foolishly believe that the Hispanics who are here in the tens of millions will one day vote Republican:

“Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let’s start winning some arguments! It aint’ that hard if you really try.”

Only the most stubborn and blind Republican can continue to wallow in that kind of fantasy about winning over Hispanic voters (who are supposedly really ”conservative” at heart) and bringing minorities en masse into the Republican fold. This thinking is rooted in the idea that the Democrats are ‘holding minorities back’ with their socialism, and that if only minorities learned about the wonders of the free market and the Protestant work ethic, they would be staunch Republicans and all-American success stories. He totally discounts any inherent differences among the races. Little does he realize, it seems, how very liberal his own thinking is. And he caps off the bit about demographics with a flourish of the race card, saying that the ‘demographic argument’ is ‘borderline racism’.

Sometimes when I encounter people like this who believe themselves conservative while holding many core liberal ideas, I wonder if it is worth it to try to open their minds a little bit and examine their liberal presuppositions. If I meet someone who is as vehement as this young man seems to be, I tend to write them off; he seems very fixed in his thinking, and he’s certain he is ‘conservative’ and right. Such people are very hard to get through to; if I tried to engage this young man in a discussion he would probably think me to be one of those ‘right-wing extremists’ or one of those ‘cynical old nellies.’ I think he is one of those who stubbornly holds to his beliefs despite evidence to the contrary in the real world, and in many instances, this stubbornness is rooted in the determination to be ”optimistic” as he describes himself.

Is conservatism optimistic as a rule? I think conservatism above all should be realistic. Being aware of the world’s essential imperfections and imperfectibility, and above all, being cognizant of the fact that human nature is flawed and limited tends to rein in any tendency to blind faith in a rosy future, or any utopian schemes such as the liberals love to envision.

Being optimistic is good only as long as we temper it with realism and humility and a little skepticism. If I don’t see these traits or at least the potential for them in someone, I don’t attempt to try to reason and argue with them. I suppose I have come to choose my battles a little more carefully. I only hope that this young man and the others out there who may be like him will come to realistic views on the world, and above all, I hope he will come to realize that patriotism should mean, above all, a commitment to his people, to his kin and home and faith, (if he has one).

Putting all his hope and faith in a political party or in some abstract universal idea like ”freedom” will lead to eternal disappointment and frustration. I hope that he and others like him will look to the wisdom of earlier times rather than the dubious ‘wisdom’ of Limbaugh or Hannity or Beck.

I hope he learns that if he truly wants to conserve, then conserving one’s people and heritage is at the top of the list.

Locust: all true, look at the numbers, since Regan, the Latino share of the republican vote has been shrinking, in every Latino nation socialism is in and capitalism is on its way out, blacks overwhelmingly believe to be a republican is to be white, I’m not surprised, we cannot win this fight at the ballot box, too many whites are deluded into believing everything will be OK, when every single day our nation declines a little further, and every so often we fall off the edge of sanity only to land deeper into the abyss of national suicide.  Republicans cannot win this fight they are only holding back what needs to be done.

more Great posts from guywhite.wordpress.com

Ladies, Sluts and Slobs

Expat Abroad has an entry on Arab women wanting to take care of themselves. Rather than looking down on anyone who who doesn’t wear sweat pants and a $5 t-shirt, they say, “I Enjoy Taking Care of My Beauty”.

That’s true in almost any society outside of the West. Fred Reed had an article about Asian women being attractive because they choose to take care of themselves. I’ve seen the same in countries as diverse as Argentina and the Czech Republic.

Expat thinks it has to do with the Protestant ethic, but it’s probably the result of anti-feminine feminism.

By taking care of yourself, a woman is making herself look more female. The goal of feminism is the opposite. “Never mind the hormone-body hair connection, women should be just as happy having chest hair as men.” I am not exaggerating here, there are many books written on female body hair pride.

Feminists get crew cuts like men, wear shapeless clothes, laugh like men even though it is (usually) unnatural for them. They adopt the worst of male actions: swearing, scratching their butts. Notice that feminists never try to copy the best of male abilities: fixing things with your own hands, taking risk onto yourself to protect your spouse, etc.

A woman who “takes care of her beauty” makes herself just the opposite of the feminist goal of a non-gendered society. Such a woman will get clothes and make-up that make her look more feminine.

Just as the feminist-supporting media is teaching young men that the only two options is to be either an asshole or a doormat, they are teaching young women that their only two options is to dress like a cheap slut or a disgusting slob.

The reality is that there’s a third option. Sarah Palin dresses very well as far as I am concerned. (here, here and here)

You can say that she has all the money in the world to buy clothes, and that’s true. But it’s also true that her clothes have a feminine cut (going in around the waist, etc), to accentuate her positive and hide her negatives, while also presenting a high-class look.

Now let’s compare that to Rosie O’Donnell’s outfit: all-black, going straight down. Is Rosie poor?

Look at Patricia Ireland. This is a typical feminist: she doesn’t color her hair, wears a male-looking hair cut, no makeup, male shirt.

Another typical feminist is Donna Haraway: doesn’t color her hair, wears clothes that don’t fit and have no shape.

This is the image being bombarded on American women.

I am not surprised that many young (and sometimes not so young) women dress like cheap whores in response. If you want to be feminine, but aren’t taught how to be a lady, it wouldn’t be particularly illogical for you to show the top half of your breasts and the bottom half of your butt.

Below are two typical American girls, in this case pretty ones so that you won’t think that I am just picking on O’Donnell types.

This is the typical look for their age: half naked, cheap t-shirts/jeans and no idea about how to put on makeup. The one in long jeans also looks like she doesn’t know how to walk like a lady. They are a butt-scratch away from being the world’s skinniest construction workers. You know how I found the image? I searched for “typical American woman”.

Compare it with this, this or this. I found these images on a Russian women blog, which is run by an American man who lives there now. Russian women rebelled against Communist feminism, while American women dress in degrading (in every way) clothing. Sarah Palin may have more money than you do, but Russian women almost always have less.

Feminism supports women? To paraphrase one of my friends, “feminism my ass!”

It is normal for a woman to want to be attractive and to present an image of success and high-class. Since time immemorial, girls spent their youth learning to be ladies (just as boys learned to be gentlemen). Then feminists showed up and said that the only reason women are women and men are men is that we teach our kids to be a certain way, and there’s no human nature and no such thing as “normal”. Any differences, even acknowledging that men and women have different standards of attractive body types, is a “double-standard.”

But men can’t be women, they can just be messed up men, just as women can be either ladies or messed up women, but never “normal” men.

No doubt this is where feminists will respond with, “so what are you saying, that we should be barefoot and naked, sitting at home illiterate cooking for you?”

And that’s precisely why we have what we have today. The only other option presented by the left is the above. No, I wouldn’t want to teach my daughter to be her future husband’s slave. I want my kids, regardless of gender, to be well-educated, productive, respected.

But being respected also means not being a slob or a slut. Going to college does not mean becoming “more male” and sitting with your legs spread in construction worker-style jeans.

American women complain that men are attracted to sluts. That’s not (usually) true. But just as a woman – in the absence of a proper gentleman – would prefer an asshole to a doormat (the choice about which men always complain) because at least the former reminds her of a man and the latter is seen as completely asexual, similarly men would prefer a slut to a slob because, again, the former reminds them of femininity while the latter is just disgusting. But just as men don’t have to be either assholes or doormats, women don’t have to be either sluts or slobs.

What kind of a society have we degenerated into that Moslem women have more to say about taking care of yourself than Americans?

All Grossly Violent Rape In Oslo Is By Moslems

From Arthur Kemp’s blog:

The state-owned Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (Norsk rikskringkasting AS) or NRK has broken ranks with the rest of the controlled media in Europe and has openly declared an emergency over the Third World origin of sexual assaults in that country.

In a remarkable broadcast last week, NRK reported that “immigrants from Kurdistan and North Africa” are behind most cases of aggravated sexual assault in Norway.

According to the NRK, police figures from Olso reveal that over the past three years, they have investigated a total of 41 cases of rape in that city. All of these assaults, reports NRK, were carried out by “non-western immigrants to Norway.”

According to the Norwegian police, the rapists terrorising the beautiful white women of Oslo are of “a Kurdish or African background” and all have one thing in common, “namely the use of gross violence.”

How about that.

Buy South African Soap!

Yesterday South Africa held its fourth elections since blacks gained the right to vote. According to the preliminary results, the winner Jacob Zuma got over 66.67% which will allow it to enact legislation and change the Constitution unchallenged.

Freedom Front Plus that represents white conservatives received under 1% while the Democratic Alliance that mostly represents White and Coloured (South African for mixed-race) liberals will become the official opposition. (The old National Party has since joined the ANC and the Conservative Party is now the “plus” of the Freedom Front.)

Zuma belongs to the leftist wing of the African National Congress, so South Africa is expected to shift further to the left than it was under Thabo Mbeki. During his victory rally, he sang with the crowd apartheid-era song “Bring Me My Machine Gun”. His supporters paraded with coffins decorated with the insignia of other parties.

He also has some very interesting ideas. For example, Zuma’s solution to pregnancy in South African teenagers is to confiscate their babies and have the mothers taken to colleges and “forced” to obtain degrees. He also believes that the ANC will rule the South Africa until Jesus returns.

Zuma is a polygamist who’s had 4 wives (he divorced one since and another killed herself). That, however, wasn’t enough to satisfy him because he also has another 3 fiancees. He so far produced 18 children.

But all those women weren’t enough and in 2005, Zuma was charged with rape of the 31 year old daughter of a deceased struggle comrade. (He was also earlier prosecuted for corruption.) The woman was known to have AIDS. Zuma acknowledged having consensual sex without a condom, but explained that he wasn’t afraid of getting the disease because he used soap.

I therefore invite everyone to buy South African soap that cures AIDS. African medicine, everyone!

Only in Africa can a polygamist who thinks AIDS is cured by soap can get elected president!

Post

In a fragile world, a swine flu pandemic would have geopolitical consequences – Also: The big economic impact may trigger new financial crises.

In a fragile world, a swine flu pandemic would have geopolitical consequences

Also: The big economic impact may trigger new financial crises.

Right now officials are still unsure, but by mid-week they’ll have a pretty good indication of how serious the new swine flu outbreak is — how many people are likely to get sick, how many people are likely to die, and how much the outbreak will affect the economy.

Experts have been saying for years that the world is overdue for a major flu pandemic, such as occurred 3 times in the 20th century. It may or may not be avian (bird) flu, and it may or may not be the current swine flu outbreak, but it’s going to happen.

When it does, here are the estimated costs of flu pandemic: Some $3-5 trillion in worldwide economic loss, about 20% of that in the US, and the deaths of 50-100 million people.

In ordinary times, the world might be able to absorb this kind of loss without catastrophic consequences. But things are different today. The world is very fragile. I’ve described today’s world as being in the Age of Great Compromises, because the leaders of every country are committed to maintaining the status quo, for fear that any change will trigger a war or financial catastrophe.

However, today’s world is already on the edge of disaster. The Fed and central bankers around the world are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, patching up every financial institution before it can collapse.

An analysis by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph shows how futile this effort is. Evans-Pritchard frames the growing financial crisis in simple macroeconomic terms: There simply is not enough money in the world anymore.

“The world is running out of capital. We cannot take it for granted that the global bond markets will prove deep enough to fund the $6 trillion or so needed for the Obama fiscal package, US-European bank bail-outs, and ballooning deficits almost everywhere. …It looked easy for Western governments during the credit bubble, when China, Russia, emerging Asia, and petro-powers were accumulating $1.3 trillion a year in reserves, recycling this wealth back into US Treasuries and agency debt, or European bonds.

The tap has been turned off. These countries have become net sellers. Central bank holdings have fallen by $248bn to $6.7 trillion over the last six months. The oil crash has forced both Russia and Venezuela to slash reserves by a third. China let slip last week that it would use more of its $40bn monthly surplus to shore up growth at home and invest in harder assets – perhaps mining companies.”

This is the stuff of a deflationary spiral. During the bubble there was too much money in the world, causing asset prices to inflate artificially. Today there’s a shortage of $6 trillion in the world, just to help economies to survive.

Furthermore, this $6 trillion shortage isn’t a static value. Money is vanishing as governments, financial firms and hedge funds reduce leverage and write down the values of the toxic assets in their portfolios. It’s quite possible that an additional trillion dollars or so disappears every month. The central banks of the world can’t possible “print money” with quantitative easing that quickly. They simply can’t keep up.

And now we face the possibility of a swine flu pandemic that could cost the economies of the world another $5 trillion dollars. This is something that destroys the status quo that the world’s leaders want to preserve at all costs.

The Evans-Pritchard article points out that:

“Great bankruptcies change the world. Spain’s defaults under Philip II ruined the Catholic banking dynasties of Italy and south Germany, shifting the locus of financial power to Amsterdam. Anglo-Dutch forces were able to halt the Counter-Reformation, free northern Europe from absolutism, and break into North America.Who knows what revolution may come from this crisis if it ever reaches defaults. My hunch is that it would expose Europe’s deep fatigue – brutally so – reducing the Old World to a backwater. Whether US hegemony remains intact is an open question. I would bet on US-China condominium for a quarter century, or just G2 for short.”

The above references the great Spanish bankruptcy of 1557, the major bankruptcy that preceded Tulipomania (1637).

But there’s an even better historical example — the Black Plague of 1347-51. Here’s a map showing the spread of the bubonic plague:

Spread of Bubonic Plague in Europe, 1347-51 (Source: urbancartography.com)

According to one history of the Black Plague, “In Milan, when the plague struck, all the occupants of any victim’s house, whether sick or well, were walled up inside together and left to die. Such draconian measures seemed to have been partially successful; mortality rates were lower in Milan than in other cities.”

These kinds of emergency measures might be taken again, if the outbreak turns into a highly pathogenic bird flu pandemic.

The Black Plague came at a time when things were already terrible in Europe. There had been a huge currency bubble in Italy for two decades, and Italian banks started collapsing in 1343.

In France, the Hundred Years War had been raging, and the English won a huge victory by capturing the port of Calais on August 4, 1347, destroying France’s economy.

The biblical book of Revelations characterizes a crisis war with the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death. Europe suffered all of those things in the 1340s-50s, and the continent was devastated.

Today, the world is headed for a new banking and financial crisis, a new world war, and new famines. The swine flu virus might fizzle, but if it doesn’t, then it will be the new pestilence.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Swine Flu Pandemic thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.

Also see the Financial Topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Read the entire thread for discussions on how to protect your money.) (27-Apr-2009)

Wall Street Journal and Birinyi Associates are lying about P/E ratios – The stock market will fall below Dow 3000 with 100% certainty. Any belief otherwise is simply wishful thinking.

Wall Street Journal and Birinyi Associates are lying about P/E ratios

Their figures don’t make sense, and they differ from everyone else’s.

I’ve complained many dozens of times on this web site for several years that journalists and analysts constantly lie about price/earnings ratios (also called “valuations”), in order to support the stock market bubble. But what’s going on at the Wall Street Journal really takes the cake. These people have no shame.

Last month I wrote “Analysts and journalists freak out as Q4 2008 earnings turn negative.” In that article, I provided several different sources for current price/earnings ratios, including the Decision Point Earnings Summary, the Comstock Funds page, and a spreadsheet file from Standard & Poors.

Let’s take a look at the latest figures from the official Standard & Poors spreadsheet:

                 Estimated Price/Earnings ratios based on
    Period     Operating Earnings         "As reported" earnings
    -------    ------------------         ----------------------
    Q4 2010        11.21                           24.07
    Q3 2010        11.77                           24.58
    Q2 2010        12.36                           25.38
    Q1 2010        13.17                           27.57
    Q4 2009        14.11                           29.82
    Q3 2009        19.73                         -464.52
    Q2 2009        19.95                         1932.00
    Q1 2009        18.82                          127.64

As I wrote last month, “operating earnings” is essentially a meaningless figure, supposedly equal to earnings, but not counting so-called one-time expenses. Since writing down toxic assets is a “one-time expense,” the tens of trillions of dollars in losses from toxic assets are being ignored in “operating earnings,” although their fraudulent nominal value was of course included with “earnings” during the credit bubble.

The only valid values for P/E ratios are based on “as reported” earnings — that is earnings that public corporations report every quarter, following very strict accounting rules.

The figures 127.64, 1932.00 and -462.52 look like errors, but they’re not. They’re based on the previous year’s earnings (“12 month trailing earnings”). Earnings turned negative in Q4, so they’re small but still positive for the entire past year. By Q3 of this year, it’s estimated that earnings for the trailing year will be negative, so the P/E ratio turns negative.

This should be a really huge news story, especially for WSJ and CNBC and for other financial media. Instead, they’re doing worse than ignoring it; they’re making up numbers to hide from the public what’s going on.

I would also add that the principal financial bloggers are ignoring this as well. I don’t follow all of these blogs every day, but I’ve never seen any mention of this huge story on Nouriel Roubini’s blog, Michael (“Mish”) Shedlock’s blog, the Calculated Risk blog, the MinyanVille blog, Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog, or the Financial Times alphaville blog.

One way for journalists and analysts to “cheat” is to use made-up “operating earnings,” and that’s what a lot of them have been doing. But you can see from the above table that the current P/E is 19.95 for Q2, based on current S&P 500 index of about 850.

As we’ll show below, the Wall Street Journal is reporting a current P/E of 13.09. Well, where the hell did that number come from?

Before going into that, let’s see what a couple of other financial firms are reporting.

First, let’s take a look at the following chart. There’s a price/earnings ratio chart at the bottom of this web site’s home page, and it gets updated automatically every week. Here’s last Friday’s version of the chart:

S&P 500 Price/Earnings ratio and S&P 500-stock Index as of 17-Apr-2009. (Source: MarketGauge ® by DataView, LLC)

If you look at the far right side of this chart, where the red circle is, you can see a huge spike in the last weeks, sending the P/E ratio off the chart, up above 40.

Next, let’s take a look at the chart from the Decision Point Earnings Summary:

Earnings, price/earnings ratios, yields and prices — 1926 to the present (Source: Decision Point)

Once again, if you look at the area of the red circle, you can see the huge spike, off the chart.

So it’s not as if everyone is following WSJ’s lead.

Now let’s look at what WSJ has been doing. And I’d like to thank “Freddyv” in the Generational Dynamics forum. He has been following this issue and working on it for several months, and much of this analysis comes from him.

Let’s look at the following two charts from the Wall Street Journal site:

Wall Street Journal P/E charts. Top: 29-Jan-2009. Bottom: 24-Apr-2009. (Source: WSJ)

The top chart, from January 29, 2009, shows an S&P 500 ratio of 15.72. Supposedly, that figure is: “P/E data on as-reported basis from Birinyi Associates.” But that figure is already a lie. If you look at the above two charts from MarketGauge and Decision Point, you can see the P/E ratio was above 18 all year, and has been well above 15 for ten years.

There’s no way that the January 29 figure is based on “as-reported” earnings, as the chart claims. In fact, even “operating earnings” don’t justify that figure, so I have no idea what figures they made up to justify that figure.

But it gets worse in the latest chart, for April 24, 2009, shown on the bottom.

First of all, notice that the claim “P/E data on as-reported basis from Birinyi Associates” has been removed. “Freddyv” says that they removed that claim when he wrote to the WSJ demanding an explanation. The WSJ didn’t respond to him, of course, but they did remove this obvious lie from their web site.

But even if they’re using “operating earnings,” where the hell did 13.09 come from? The official numbers from Standard & Poors are much higher than that, as we saw above.

Not only that, 13.09 is lower than the January 29 figure, 15.72, but the S&P 500 index is almost the same. How is that possible?

There is no way to justify these figures rationally. So where did they come from?

Well, WSJ gets the figures from Birinyi Associates, and we can get a clue from the Birinyi Associates web site. Here’s what it says right at the top of the home page:

“Our approach is to understand the psychology and the history of the market.Birinyi Associates is a stock market research and money management firm. Our approach is to understand the psychology and history of the market, and most importantly the actions of investors. Much of our effort involves Money Flows, or what has traditionally been called ticker tape analysis.

Our daily, weekly and monthly research provides detailed market analysis as well as individual stock picks to individual and institutional investors. From our Chart of the Day to our Reminiscences newsletter, we believe that all of our services will prove to be a profitable investment of your time.

Please take the Birinyi Tour to learn which service is right for you and Subscribe today!”

I’m sorry, Dear Reader, but I can’t stop laughing every time I read this. The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg News, and financial journalism in general have sunk so low that they actually depend on garbage like this. I’ll make the same remark that I made in “Vile ‘teabagging’ jokes signal the deterioration of CNN and NBC news:” I don’t see how the financial journalists could become any worse (though I’m sure they’ll find a way).

So, apparently, Birinyi Associates do not depend on actual figures to reach their conclusions. They’re a touchy-feely group of analysts. They analyze the psychology of the investor, possibly confirm their estimates with a handy Ouija Board and the local soothsayer, and pass those numbers on to the Wall Street Journal for publication. Incredible!!! They’re an embarassment to the financial community and to the financial journalism community, but they’re the norm today.

And so, Dear Reader, that’s how the Wall Street Journal arrived at the P/E ratio value of 13.09.

And that brings us back to the question that everyone wants an answer to: How long will the current stock market rally last?

As I wrote last month, the stock market fell 90% from 1929 to 1932, but during that three year period, there were numerous rallies, one as long as five months. So the current rally is not exceptional, even in the current worsening financial crisis. But how long will it last?

We can get a clue by comparing today’s stock market fall to the one from 1929 to 1932. Here’s a chart from dshort.com that compares them:

1929-32 versus today – Four Bad Bears (Source: dshort.com)

In the above chart, compare the period 1929-32 (shown in grey) to the period since October 2007 (shown in blue). In particular, if you look at the current rally (the end of the blue line), it appears to be leveling off, which indicates that the rally is just about at an end. If you compare the current rally with previous rallies in 2008 and in 1930-32, you can see that if history repeats itself, then we can expect a sharp plunge in the next few weeks.

For more thoughts about the path of the stock market today, check out “Timing the Depression” on Matt Stiles’ Futronomics blog. This article has some of the latest charts showing the worldwide economic collapse.

But whether the rally ends now or later, it must end because corporate earnings are crashing, and because price/earnings ratios are going through the roof. This is not a “maybe,” and this is not something that will happen unless President Obama does “X”. There is nothing that can be done.

This shameful episode of lying by the WSJ about P/E ratios is nothing new. I’ve been giving similar examples for years.

This is just one more example of why you’ll never get a straight answer about anything from WSJ or CNBC or any of the other financial media, or even from the financial bloggers, even from the “doom and gloom” Nouriel Roubini.

Once again, I would like to warn web site readers against the easy seduction of believing that “the worst is over,” that “there’ll be nothing worse than long recession” and that “there won’t be a panic.”

There is absolutely no possibility that any of these things are true. There is no theoretical support for any of these views, and there are no historical examples of these scenarios. The stock market will fall below Dow 3000 with 100% certainty. Any belief otherwise is simply wishful thinking.

Nothing has changed. The Law of Mean Reversion has not been repealed by the Wall Street Journal or the Obama administration. Since the stock market has been far overpriced since 1995, as I described in “How to compute the ‘real value’ of the stock market,” and since the Law of Mean Reversion still applies, there must still a generational panic and crash in store.

It could come next week, next month or thereafter, but it’s coming with absolute certainty, and nothing that has happened or is being planned has any possibility of stopping it, no matter how many manufactured numbers the Wall Street Journal publishes.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Financial Topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Read the entire thread for discussions on how to protect your money.) (26-Apr-2009)

Obama Positioning For Backdoor Gun Control By Treaty

By Chuck Baldwin

On his recent trip to Central America, President Barack Obama did more than cozy up to Marxist dictators; he also signed onto an international treaty that could, in effect, be used as backdoor gun control. It appears that Obama wants to use international treaties to do what congressional legislation is not able to do: further restrict the right of the American people to keep and bear arms.

Obama is using the oft-disproved contention that “90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States” as the stated basis of his support for the international treaty he is promoting. The treaty is formally known as the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA) treaty. The Bill Clinton administration signed the treaty back in 1997, but the U.S. Senate has never ratified the treaty. Obama intends to change that.

To date, 33 nations in the western hemisphere have signed the treaty. The U.S. is one of four nations that have yet to ratify it. According to one senior Obama administration official, passing the treaty is a “high priority” for the President.

If ratified, the treaty would require the United States to adopt “strict licensing requirements, mark firearms when they are made and imported to make them easier to trace, and establish a process for sharing information between national law enforcement agencies investigating [gun] smuggling.”

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee promises to “work for its [the CIFTA treaty's] approval by the Senate.”

Should the Senate ratify CIFTA, Americans who reload ammunition would be required to get a license from the government, and factory guns and ammunition would be priced almost out of existence due to governmental requirements to “mark” each one manufactured. Even the simple act of adding an after-market piece of equipment to a firearm, such as a scope or bipod, or reassembling a gun after cleaning it could fall into the category of “illicit manufacturing” of firearms and require government license and oversight.

In addition, CIFTA would authorize the U.S. federal government (and open the door to international entities) to supervise and regulate virtually the entire American firearms industry.

Making matters worse is the fact that, as a treaty, this Act does not have to be passed by both houses of Congress, nor is it subject to judicial oversight. All Obama needs to do in order to enact this unconstitutional and egregious form of gun control is convince a Democratic-controlled Senate to pass it.

Obviously, the United Nations, from its very inception, has been one of the world’s most ardent gun control proponents. As anyone who has ever driven by the U.N. building in New York City knows, a huge statue of an American-made revolver with its barrel twisted in the shape of a pretzel greets every visitor. The CIFTA treaty is one of the U.N.’s pet projects in order to achieve this long-held ambition.

Of course, Obama is a longtime liberal radical when it comes to the Second Amendment. As a senator, he voted against the Second Amendment at every opportunity. He has never seen a piece of gun control legislation that he did not support. And as I have said before in this column, gun control is high on the list of priorities for the newly elected President Barack Obama.

For Obama to intimate that 90% of the firearms used by Mexican drug cartels come from the United States reveals either a truly dishonest and deceptive mind or a totally misinformed and naïve one. Many studies have thoroughly debunked the 90% myth, including one by William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott in a recent Fox News report. According to these researchers, the real number is closer to 17%.

According to La Jeunesse and Lott, Mexican drug cartels, which control billions of dollars, obtain the overwhelming majority of their guns from the Black Market, Russian crime syndicates, South America, China, Guatemala, and even from the Mexican army.

In fact, Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar: AK-47s from China; fragmentation grenades from South Korea; shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc dealers; assault weapons from China; and explosives from Korea–just to name a few sources.

In addition, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo, more than 150,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted in just the last six years. The vast majority of them took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

And please do not forget that corruption within the Mexican government is rampant. Many news sources have covered stories of how drug cartels bribe Mexican officials. An article in the New York Times last year reported, “One of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels made huge cash payments to officials in the Mexican attorney general’s office in exchange for confidential information on anti-drug operations . . . the cartel might have had an informant inside the American embassy.”

The Mexican drug cartels control a multi-billion dollar enterprise that has more than enough resources to obtain planeloads of weapons from all over the world. For Obama to assert that 90% of the Mexican drug cartels’ firearms come from the United States is a bald-faced lie!

Again, either Obama is stupid and naïve or he is deliberately lying to the American people in order to “sell” the CIFTA treaty to the U.S. Senate. I think we all know that Mr. Obama is anything but stupid and naïve.

Read more about the CIFTA treaty here.

In addition to the CIFTA treaty, liberal Chicago Democrat Congressman Bobby Rush has introduced H.R. 45 in the House of Representatives. This bill is anything but subtle. It is an in-your-face gun control bill that would make “Mr. Gun Control,” the late Senator Howard Metzenbaum, shout Hallelujah.

H.R. 45 would require a federal license for all handguns and semiautomatics, including the ones you already possess. It would require handgun and semi-auto owners to be thumbprinted at a police station and sign a certificate that the gun will not be kept in a place where it could be used for the defense of the gun owner’s family.

Read more about H.R. 45 at Gunowners.org.

In all likelihood, H.R. 45 is probably a long shot at passing both houses of Congress, although gun owners should never take any proposed gun control bill for granted. The CIFTA treaty, however, is much more dangerous due to its subtlety and subterfuge, the less cumbersome process of passage, and the fact that it makes U.S. gun owners subject to international gun control laws.

All in all, freedom in America is on the Obama White House chopping block.

And this much is certain: if the American people do not retain the right to keep and bear arms, every other freedom we hold dear will quickly disappear as well. Moreover, if we do retain the right to keep and bear arms, it will only be because enough of us—and our state and federal legislators—resist the tyrannical gun control machinations of Barack Obama.

And that means defeating the CIFTA treaty and H.R. 45.

Dr. Chuck Baldwin is the pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. He hosts a weekly radio show. His website is here.

Immigration Hitting American Workers Hard

VDAWDI Vindicated—Immigration Hitting American Workers Hard

By Peter Brimelow and Edwin S. Rubenstein

So gargantuan is America’s post-1965 immigration disaster that there is now an immigration dimension to every public issue. Nowhere is this more so than in employment—and nowhere is the phenomenon more pressing, given that unemployment has now reached a level (8.5 percent) not seen since 1983—and is projected to reach double digits by year end.

As usual, the federal government’s statistics on immigration’s impact of on employment are so fragmentary that it almost appears someone doesn’t want to know. Specifically, it does not release monthly data on immigrant vs. native-born American employment.

Because of this malfeasance, in 2004 we unveiled our proprietary effort to track American worker displacement: the VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (VDAWDI). We tracked monthly growth of Hispanic versus non-Hispanic employment, expressing both as an index number of 100 as of the start of the Bush Administration in January 2001. We used Hispanics as a proxy for immigrant employment because such a high fraction of working age Hispancs (54 percent) a are immigrants.

VDAWDI rose dramatically from January 2001 to late 2007, when it reached 124.1.. Then it stalled and finally declined when employment collapsed in late 2008.

But despite the recent decline, Hispanic (= immigrant) employment is still (as of March 2009) up a whopping 22 percent. In contrast, non-Hispanic (= American) employment was actually lower than it was at the start of the Bush administration.

Once a year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does release data on immigrant employment. It did so on March 26^th of this year.

In general, this foreign-born employment data confirm our long-standing estimates of American Worker Displacement. If anything, we were too conservative. Specifically, in 2008, immigrant employment was, on average, 33.7% higher than in 2000, whereas native-born employment was only 3.8% higher. This compares to VDAWDI’s figures: a 22 percent gain for immigrants versus a slight decline for natives from January 2001 to March 2009.

Table 1 Native- v. Foreign-born Employment, 2000-2008
	Total (1,000s)		Change from prior year		% change from prior year
Year	US-born	Foreign-born	US-born	Foreign-born	US-born	Foreign-born
2000	118,254	16,954	492	1,228	0.4%	7.8%
2001	117,627	17,445	(627)	491	-0.5%	2.9%
2002	117,546	18,991	(81)	1,546	-0.1%	8.9%
2003	118,005	19,731	459	740	0.4%	3.9%
2004	118,997	20,256	992	525	0.8%	2.7%
2005	120,708	21,022	1,711	766	1.4%	3.8%
2006	122,202	22,225	1,494	1,203	1.2%	5.7%
2007	123,079	22,967	877	742	0.7%	3.3%
2008	122,703	22,660	(376)	(307)	-0.3%	-1.3%
Change, 2000-2008	4,449	5,706
% change, 2000-2008	3.8%	33.7%
Source: BLS, “Foreign-born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics in 2008,” News Release, March 26, 2009. (2007, 2008) PDF Unpublished BLS data. (2000-2006)

(Foreign-born workers include legal immigrants, illegal aliens, refugees, and workers here on temporary work visas. These are annual averages, and only partially reflect the economic meltdown that started in late 2008.)

The unemployment rate for immigrants had been below that of natives since 2005. But it reached parity in 2008, when 5.8 percent of both groups were unemployed. Interestingly, for Hispanic immigrants unemployment was 6.9 percent in 2008, up from 4.9 percent the prior year.

In 2008, the number of foreign-born persons employed in the U.S. fell by 307,000, or by 1.3 percent. This was the first such decline since BLS employment surveys started collecting information on nativity in 1996.

In 2008, native-born employment fell by 0.3 percent in 2008, or less than one-quarter the decline in immigrant employment. This is a sharp break from the recent past, when the growth rate of jobs held by immigrants was many times greater than growth in jobs held by native-born workers. (Table 2.)

Equally remarkable is the fact that Hispanic immigrants accounted for all of last year’s decline: their employment fell by 338,000, or 3.0 percent. In contrast, employment of non-Hispanic immigrants rose by 31,000, or 0.3 percent. Perhaps this is because Hispanics are disproportionately lower skilled, and more vulnerable.

Immigrants accounted for 15.6 percent of total employment in 2008, down slightly from 15.7 percent in 2007. Lest we forget: as recently as 2000 only 12.5 percent of U.S. workers were foreign born.

But incredibly, despite hard economic times in the U.S., the just-released Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the influx of job seekers from abroad continues.

The foreign-born population of working age (16-years and older) grew by 300,000 in 2008, to a record 35.3 million. That’s below the million-plus inflows recorded in the previous two years. But still, in percentage terms the immigrant population of working age grew slightly faster than its U.S.-born counterpart—0.9 percent versus 0.8 percent, respectively, in 2008. [See Table 2.]

Table 2 US-born v. Foreign-born Working Age Population, 2000-2008
	Total (1,000s)		Change from prior year		% change from prior year
Year	US-born	Foreign-born	US-born	Foreign-born	US-born	Foreign-born
2000	183,173	26,527	524	1,423	0.3%	5.7%
2001	184,410	27,455	1,237	928	0.7%	3.5%
2002	187,474	30,096	3,064	2,641	1.7%	9.6%
2003	189,837	31,331	2,363	1,235	1.3%	4.1%
2004	191,594	31,763	1,757	432	0.9%	1.4%
2005	193,525	32,558	1,931	795	1.0%	2.5%
2006	195,082	33,733	1,557	1,175	0.8%	3.6%
2007	196,850	35,017	1,768	1,284	0.9%	3.8%
2008	198,471	35,317	1,621	300	0.8%	0.9%
Change, 2000-2008	15,298	8,790
% change, 2000-2008	8.4%	33.1%
Source: BLS, “Foreign-born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics in 2008,” News Release, March 26, 2009. (Similar reports for earlier years.)[PDF]

Of particular interest: in 2008, non-Hispanic immigrants accounted for all the working age population growth. The Hispanic immigrant population was virtually unchanged. This is again consistent with reports stating that while the illegal alien invasion has slowed, those already here do not appear to be returning home en masse. [Illegal Immigrants Stay In U.S. Despite Recession, By Cam Simpson, WSJ, January 14, 2009]

The long-term prognosis for the U.S. labor force is not materially affected by the recent reversals in immigrant employment. Should immigrant and native job growth continue at the pace of 2000-2008, the immigrant share of U.S. employment will approach an incredible 50 percent by mid-century. Remember, this does include their native-born children. Pre-1965 stock Americans will be really squeezed:

U.S. Employment by Nativity, 2000-2050 (number in thousands)
	Total	US Born	Foreign Born	% Foreign-born
2000	135,208	118,254	16,954	12.5%
2008	145,363	122,703	22,660	15.6%
Projections based on 2000-08 employment growth:
2010	148,019	123,841	24,364	16.5%
2025	169,546	132,721	41,974	24.8%
2050	212,605	148,957	103,919	48.9%

Immigrants remain a large and rapidly growing share of workers lacking basic educational skills. In 2008 48 percent of all adult workers with less than a High School diploma were foreign born. From 2000 to 2008 the number of immigrant high school dropouts rose by 29 percent. And this probably underestimates the true dropout rate for immigrants, because many are counted as high school graduates if they completed school in their country of origin—regardless of the local standards.

In contrast, the number of native born dropouts shrank by 19.7 percent. Basically, government policy is undoing efforts to educate the American population,

Yet the unemployment rate for foreign born dropouts in 2008 was 7.7 percent—considerably below the 10.1 percent rate for U.S.-born dropouts.

Talk about displacement! Of course, high school dropouts are not typically Wall Street Journal readers. So they don’t count.

In fact, the immigrant workforce is increasingly bi-modal, i.e., overrepresented at the top, as well as the bottom, of the educational spectrum. From 2000 to 2008 the number of immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or better grew by 50.1 percent versus 20 percent growth in U.S.-born degree holders over the same period.

It’s trendy, and apparently politically acceptable, to blame outsourcing for the nagging unemployment problem among college-educated Americans. A frequently cited study by economic consultants Forrester Research [November 11, 2002] says 3.3 million white-collar jobs will be lost to foreign outsourcing in the next 12 years. That’s an average of 275,000 jobs lost per year.

But in 2008 alone 222,000 foreign-born college graduates (FBCGs) entered the labor force. Since 2000 we’ve absorbed 2.4 million FBCGs. The influx must inevitably displace Americans in the short run, whatever its long-term benefits. And it shows no sign of reversing despite the recession.

Unemployment isn’t the entire story. There is also underemployment—as reflected in falling real wages of displaced native-born workers. Displaced natives may find work in other fields, but usually at far lower pay levels. The negative effect occurs regardless of whether the immigrant workers are legal or illegal, temporary or permanent, educated or uneducated.

Harvard economist George Borjas finds that immigration reduces the average wages of native born high school dropouts by 7.4 percent. Native born college graduates suffered a 3.6 percent loss in wage due to competition from immigrants with similar levels of education. [Increasing the Supply of Labor Through Immigration Measuring the Impact on Native-born Workers May 2004]

Borjas’ estimates are based on immigration through the year 2000. Today (2008) the foreign-born share of dropouts is 32 percent higher, and the college-educated share is larger by 21 percent.

America’s immigration disaster is really coming home to roost in the recession. But you will only read about it here on VDARE.COM.

Peter Brimelow (email him) is editor of VDARE.COM and author of the much-denounced Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, (Random House – 1995) and The Worm in the Apple (HarperCollins – 2003)

The Rooted and the Rootless

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Does Barack Obama understand the people he leads? Do his aides?

These may seem cheeky questions to ask of a team that just won the presidency. But there is something in their cool, insouciant, blasé demeanor, in the face of insults to their country, that suggests there yet exists a chasm—between them and us.

Now, the change since the 1960s in the character of the nation has been great. The moral and social sappers spawned by that decade have done their work well. But Middle America yet remains a blood-and-soil, family-and-faith, God-and-country kind of nation.

We are not Europe—yet.

Most Americans remain visceral patriots. It’s in the DNA.

What almost cost Bill Clinton the presidency in 1992 was not that he had opposed the Vietnam War, but that, it was said, he marched against his country while in a foreign country.

When Barack confided to friends in San Francisco that he was having trouble in Pennsylvania because these folks “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them … as a way to explain their frustrations,” he revealed that he does not really understand a part of the nation he now leads.

It is this part of America that does not comprehend how the president could sit in Trinidad and listen to the scrub stock of the hemisphere trash our country—and say nothing.

To Obama’s supporters, he may have behaved as a rational leader ought: Be pleasant and friendly, smile, ignore taunts and insults, rise above all that, communicate, seek common ground.

That is who Obama is, friends say. On a personal level, there is surely nothing wrong with so conducting oneself. But Obama is now president of the United States. He represents our country, not just himself.

The other America is hardwired another way. It believes, as Merle Haggard sang, “If you’re running’ down my country, man, you’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.”

At Columbia, Harvard Law and the University of Chicago—where Barack, the son of a single mom, shuttled from Hawaii to Indonesia and back—a black kid in a strange Muslim world, then in a white world, by his own admission unrooted, learned how to get along. And he is surrounded by aides with advanced degrees from elite colleges who react just like him.

But if they don’t wish to lose the country, they had better begin to understand the rest of America—as the 1960s’ liberals never did.

When columnist Tom Wicker famously wrote, after the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention, “These were our children in the streets, and the Chicago police beat them up,” a Gallup poll recorded that 56 percent of Americans interviewed approved of the Chicago cops.

To most Americans, it was the cops who were “our children,” and the country was delighted the obnoxious and over-privileged brats had gotten what they deserved.

When students marched down Wall Street in 1969 to protest the “dirty immoral war” in Vietnam, the construction workers of Pete Brennan’s building trades waded in. Liberals could not understand how the working class—the proletariat, for Pete’s sake!—so detested them.

Ever since the Social Democrats voted to a man for the Kaiser’s war credits in 1914, the left has felt itself repeatedly betrayed by the economic class in which they have always invested so much hope.

This divide here is not Republicans versus Democrat, so much as it is NASCAR versus The New York Times.

When the Dubai Ports deal became public and America exploded, Times neocon columnist David Brooks was as stunned as his neoliberal colleague Tom Friedman. The “pitchfork-wielding xenophobes” were out of their cages, and a new Dark Age was upon us.

When during the Panama Canal debate Ronald Reagan declared: “We bought it. We paid for it. It’s ours. And we’re gonna keep it,” and crowds came roaring to their feet, the elites could not comprehend it, because they do not understand what Pascal meant when he said, “The heart has reasons that the mind knows not.”

Rooted people love the things of the heart: God, country, family and faith. The weapons of the mind have been given to us, they believe, to defend the things of the heart.

Knowledge follows love; it does not precede it.

Most Americans have grown to love America long before they read the Constitution, or the Federalist Papers. There are heroes in Arlington who never learned to read. A true nation is an extended family. If fathers or sons do not defend it, it is their conduct that is indefensible.

Obama may be popular today, but he will lose the country and his presidency if he lets the perception take hold that he, the personification of American sovereignty, does not react as a normal patriot.

The Obamaites may not like Sarah Palin‘s phraseology. But they need someone in their councils who is rooted in the Real America.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book is Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, reviewed here by Paul Craig Roberts.