Category: News and politics

Suppose You Were an Illegal Immigrant in Mexico…

Suppose You Were an Illegal Immigrant in Mexico… – by Christopher Chantrill
But just read what Mexico wrote into its 1917 constitution on the matter of foreigners, as told by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.. He’s reporting on a paper Mexico's Glass House by J. Michael Waller.

In Article 33 of the constitution: "Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country." You mean, like take part in mammoth demonstrations and marches?

In brief, Waller writes:

* Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.
* Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.
* Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
* Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
* Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
* Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
* Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.
* Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

Hispanic immigrants do the 3D jobs – dirty, dangerous and difficult.

From Tom Barnett's Blog:

Nice piece by David Brooks today on immigration ("Immigrants to Be Proud Of," NYT, 30 March 2006). All sorts of arguments about how Hispanic families tend to be–relatively speaking–paragons of family values.

My arguments tend to be more grubby. Hispanic immigrants do the 3D jobs a lot–as in, dirty, dangerous and difficult. They earn every year upwards of a half trillion in wages. They spend over 90 percent here in the States and sent a mere fraction to families back home, yielding a cash flow that, in Latin America alone, is roughly ten times what America sends the entire Gap annually in Official Developmental Aid.

Tom Friedman Interview on NPR

Tom Friedman may be best known for his best-seller about globalization "The Earth is Flat", but his 3 Pulitzer Prizes have come from his Middle East Expertise.

The most frightening thing the United States could do to Iran, short of attacking it, is to leave Iraq, says New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The second most frightening thing for Iran, he says, would be a U.S. success in Iraq.

Listen to this interview with Terry Gross on NPR's "fresh Air".(In Windows Media PLayer)

And if you would like to hear some earlier interviews. 

North Korea Exporting Fake $100 Bills

North Korea Might Be Exporting Fake $100 Bills
China’s central bank warned its lenders about an influx of high-quality counterfeit American $100 bills — which the United States alleges are made by North Korea — as the spread of the forgeries moves toward the center of a standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

Governments around Asia are stepping up surveillance for the bogus currency, which law-enforcement officials have dubbed supernotes because they are so difficult to distinguish from genuine money

U.S. Makes Seized Iraqi Documents Public

HoustonChronicle.com – U.S. Makes Seized Iraqi Documents Public
— The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded.
The Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto. The idea of the government turning over a massive database to volunteers is revolutionary _ and not only to them.

AP FRIDAY NIGHT CLARIFICATION ON BUSH/KATRINA VIDEO

Now that all the hysterical “gotcha” headlines have convinced the public that Bush lied in the oft repeated ABC TV interview about the levee breach, here comes the embarrasing retraction, which will invariably be a footnote in the ongoing news coverage; thus continuing the public’s misperception. Supposedly AP had the tape, of Bush being briefed at his ranch before Katrina hit, in their vault for months and only “found” it just now.
the Associated Press reporter, who narrated the videotape, implies that Mr. Bush lied when he said after the storm that nobody had anticipated “the breach of the levees.” This is supposed to be contradicted by the video footage of a pre-landfall briefing in which the National Hurricane Center told the President of the possibility that “the levees will be topped [emphasis added].” But in fact the New Orleans levee system wasn’t topped; it was breached, just as Mr. Bush said — and there’s a big difference between the two. The levees being topped by the storm surge would have caused damage, but arguably much less severe than what happened after the structural failure that actually occurred.

AP FRIDAY NIGHT CLARIFICATION ON BUSH/KATRINA VIDEO
Fri Mar 03 2006 19:48:29 ET

Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.
The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.
The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn’t until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

Here is some background on the levee failures and successes in New Orleans – the distinction between topping and breaching is clear. And a last thought – saying that Bush did not lie about this is different from saying that the Federal response to Katrina was A-OK.  Katrina: What went right

Don’t Fear the Bubble That Bursts

Don’t Fear the Bubble That Bursts – New York Times
So there is a good argument that society has a compelling interest in keeping house prices from getting too high. Reasonable prices allow young, middle-class families to buy a house without going into too much debt. They also let people live where they want.

A Port in the Storm Over Dubai

A Port in the Storm Over Dubai – New York Times
Since January 2005, every container entering the truck gates of two of the world’s busiest container terminals, in Hong Kong, has passed through scanning and radiation detection devices. Images of the containers’ contents are then stored on computers so that they can be scrutinized by American or other customs authorities almost in real time. Customs inspectors can then issue orders not to load a container that worries them.

So why not take advantage of the sudden interest in Port Security and mandate that such scrutiny be applied to everything coming to America?

The Real Focus for Port Security

Stephen E. Flynn, a specialist in maritime security at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that although the company is state-owned, several members of its top management are Americans — including its general counsel, a senior vice president and its outgoing chief operating officer, Edward H. Bilkey, who is a former U.S. Navy officer. And since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States has increasingly depended on such foreign port operators to cooperate in inspecting cargo before it heads for U.S. shores.

“It’s a global network at the end of the day that we’re trying to secure here,” Flynn said. “And that doesn’t happen by the United States owning every bit of it. What we should be focusing on instead is the question, are the security standards adequate?”

Critics voiced strong doubts about whether the existing procedures are commensurate with the threat. “There are not enough Customs and Border Protection inspectors at the nation’s ports to handle the incoming traffic that we have now, and our guys at the ports are being told that they can’t do any overtime,” said Charles Showalter, president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which represents officers who inspect ships. “That combination often results in uninspected ships being left unattended in port overnight.”

Concerns over insufficient inspectors worry many security experts far more than the issue of who owns the companies managing the terminals.

Flynn cited a litany of unsettling practices, such as the lack of any screening for the thousands of truck drivers, many of whom are immigrants, hauling containers from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., to railway lines.

“What I hope for out of this whole debate is that, as Americans suddenly realize most of our marine terminals are managed by foreign-owned companies, they ask, given that that’s a reality, how do we secure it?” Flynn said. “I also hope this current situation doesn’t lead to a feeding frenzy [against foreign operators], because if we want things to be secure over here, we’re going to have to work with foreign counterparts.”

 

US prepares military blitz against Iran’s nuclear sites

Click here to see the potential targets

Remember, there are two ongoing attempts to convert the entire world to Islam. The Shia movement, which got traction in the 1980s when radical clerics took control of Iran, have been threatened by the Sunni movement al Qaeda, which rose to prominence in the 1990s. Over 80 percent of the world’s Moslems are Sunni, and radical Sunnis (like the ones who run al Qaeda) believe the Shia are heretics and must be killed if they do not accept  Sunni religious practices and beliefs. Thus, in the Arab world (which is very, very Sunni), Iran getting nuclear weapons is seen as a religious, as well as a military, threat.