I, Gringo

Okay, so what do we -- those of us who oppose open borders -- do in response to Monday?

Monday, you may have read, is when all the "undocumented migrants" (in p.c.-speak) who "live in the shadows" and supposedly fear being rounded up and sent to the Gulag will be marching down the streets of American cities carrying signs to inform us that this is their country.

My answer: we don't do anything, as far as direct response to the demonstrations. No counter-protests: useless -- the mainstream media will pretend they don't exist. They will get away with it because the counter-demos will be too small. Will your employer give you the day off work so you can go downtown to protest The Invasion? No, I didn't think so.

If you live in one of the cities affected, you don't confront the marchers, however confrontational they are. (And they will be.)

Why? Because this isn't, ultimately, a row between us and los illegals. It's between us and the greedy corporations who proclaim in season and out of season that they can't get by without an imported sub-minimum-wage servant class; between us and the corrupt Congressmen who have colluded with their big-business masters; between us and a president of the United States who, I am beginning to think, is insane. Not "insane" as a metaphor; insane in a clinical sense, who if he were an ordinary bloke instead of the highest officeholder in the land might be diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive or schizophrenic. Does he hear voices inside his head telling him that his mission in life is to Mexicanize the United States?

If you want to bring this demented episode in the history of our once and perhaps future republic to a close, those are the people who must hear you. You must make sure they hear you.

There are several organizations that will help you channel your energy most effectively, and I urge you to look them up. Go to Numbers USA, the Dan Stein Report, and the Minutemen.

Then turn the heat on. Let the people who have brought us to this crisis know that they can't get away with it anymore. Tell them that the '60s dead-enders and fence jumpers and the coyotes who enable them (for a big profit) and leftists who hate America and dud clergymen who have traded in God for political correctness have had their day and it's over. Tell them it's our turn now. Tell them America sent you. Tell them I sent you. I, Gringo.

The art of the link

Visual representation of links among political blogs during the 2004 election season. Red and blue dots represent conservative and liberal blogs, respectively; orange links go from liberal to conservative, and purple ones from conservative to liberal.

I continue to be fascinated by the way that modern software can represent data visually, often creating remarkable abstract art as a by-product.

The image above is from a paper titled "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog," by Lada Adamic of HP Labs and Natalie Glance at Intelliseek Applied Research Center. (Tip of the hat to Visual Complexity, which has many other wonderful examples of data visualization "art.")

The researchers created a database of 676 blogs judged to be liberal in political outlook and 659 judged to be conservative. The figure from their paper presented above shows the links to other blogs that were found on the sites' blogrolls (not in text citations). It was created using a computer visualization and analysis tool. The size of each blog indicates the number of other blogs that link to it.

Adamic and Glance report:

[The figure] shows the unmistakable division between the liberal and conservative political (blogo)spheres. In fact, 91% of the links originating within either the conservative or liberal communities stay within that community. An effect that may not be as apparent from the visualization is that even though we started with a balanced set of blogs, conservative blogs show a greater tendency to link. 84% of conservative blogs link to at least one other blog, and 82% receive a link. In contrast, 74% of liberal blogs link to another blog, while only 67% are linked to by another blog.

So you might conclude that conservative bloggers tend to be more of a community and liberal bloggers tend more to be rugged individualists. Or you might not. Or you might just admire the pattern they collectively made.

The little President that couldn't

George W. Bush, having convincingly demonstrated his utter incompetence in subduing Iraq and saving the American economy from itself, now argues that we must hand the United States over to Third World invaders because he is incompetent to remove them.

El Presidente's latest ploy to revive a sneak-through amnesty for illegals on behalf of big business interests, in whose pockets he travels like a baby kangaroo, is to proclaim that "massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic. It's just not going to work." (Tip of the hat to Randall Parker at ParaPundit.)

Sorry, Señor Bush, but that's a con and we see through you.

No one is advocating a round-up and deportation of the 12 to 20 million illegals in the country. There is a much easier and more effective way to accomplish the same goal. If we enforce the laws against hiring illegals -- an unthinkable notion to Señor Bush, but not to most of the Americans he considers irrelevant -- and stop rewarding border jumpers with welfare for them and automatic citizenship for their litters, the "unstoppable" flow will reverse direction. Take away the punchbowl and the party guests start to head home.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) takes El Presidente to task for claiming a false set of alternatives.

"President Bush is using the mass deportation argument as a political straw man," charged Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "The fact of the matter is that no one has seriously suggested that we deport 12 million people. Nevertheless, the president continues to attack this straw man, while he refuses to exercise any of the powers he already has at his disposal to enforce the nation's immigration laws, protect American workers, and defend the homeland security of this nation."

Under the current administration, interior and work site enforcement have been virtually abandoned with the exception of extremely isolated and highly publicized raids such as ones that occurred last week. ...

"In reality, the choices we have before us are amnesty and guest workers on the one hand -- which would amount to a massive sell-out of the American middle class -- and, on the other hand, a comprehensive enforcement effort that eliminates the reasons why people come and remain in the U.S. illegally," said Stein. "There is a whole smorgasbord of options available to enforce our immigration laws, yet the president is still claiming that there is only one item on the menu."

FAIR, like Numbers USA, also emphasizes the staggering impact on the U.S. population numbers, with accompanying increases in urban sprawl, housing density, and traffic.

If current proposals to increase immigration give legal status to those currently here illegally, and create a new guest worker program were adopted, we likely will be facing the prospect of a population in 2050 of half a billion people. That would be about 200 million more persons than today (a 67% increase). If our policy makers pursue the latter course, our projection is that the country will be on a course to reaching about one billion people by the end of the century.

Well, now there's something you can look forward to for your children and grandchildren. (I don't usually resort to sarcasm, but sometimes I just can't help it.) Overpopulation is one reason -- not the only reason, but a significant one -- that most countries in places like Africa and Latin America remain mired in poverty. Resources keep falling behind ever-growing numbers. Good ol' Compassionate George wants to make sure that we are adding people at a clip like that of sub-Saharan Africa. The Lords of Business have whispered in his ear, and their servant heareth.

So now, having failed to make any rational case for amnesty and a new mass underclass, Señor Bush wants to win by avoiding the battle, on the grounds that he is powerless and incapable against the flood of illegals that his passivity is largely responsible for. But while he doesn't acknowledge it, this is still your country, not his. For how much longer is up to you.

The borders of sleep

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: 'Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast.'
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

Edward Thomas is among the poets who were popular in the time of our great grandparents and nearly forgotten today. (Ernest Dowson, another, is not quite as obscure, if only because two of his phrases became well known through adoption: "gone with the wind" and "days of wine and roses.") There is a plainness about Thomas's style, too open and direct to allow much academic exegesis; even his name is ordinary, not one that clings to the mind. Born in 1878 to Welsh parents, he seems to have spent most of his career as a penny-a-liner journalist, and would probably never have turned to poetry had he not met and been encouraged by Robert Frost in 1913. The only thing dramatic about his life seems to have been his leaving of it.

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.

Thomas's poetry distills nature, but it isn't the patented sort of "nature poetry." While using the earth and its fruits as a metaphor quarry, Thomas doesn't engage in Wordsworth-derived symbolism. I have no idea what his religious views, if any, were, but his literary method at least doesn't enlist the natural order as a manifestation of the Spirit whose "dwelling is the light of setting suns." Thomas simply uses the forms of nature as an analogue of feelings, and he word paints them in watercolors or sketches them sparingly. The effects are almost haiku-like.

I tasted deep the hour
Between the far
Owl's chuckling first soft cry
And the first star.

A long stretched hour it was;
Nothing undone
Remained; the early seeds
All safely sown.

And now, hark at the rain,
Windless and light,
Half a kiss, half a tear,
Saying good-night.

"Thomas's poetry is strengthening and consoling, not because it justifies God's ways to man or whispers of reunions beyond the grave, not because it presents great moral truths in memorable numbers, but in a more subtle and very much more effective way," Aldous Huxley wrote. "Thomas describes what is surely the characteristic emotion induced by a contact with nature -- a kind of exultant melancholy which is the nearest approach to quiet unpassionate happiness that the soul can know."

The green roads that end in the forest
Are strewn with white goose feathers this June,

Like marks left behind by some one gone to the forest
To show his track. But he has never come back.

Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest.
Round one the nettle towers; two are bathed in flowers.

An old man along the green road to the forest
Strays from one, from another a child alone.

In the thicket bordering the forest,
All day long a thrush twiddles his song.

It is old, but the trees are young in the forest,
All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep.

That oak saw the ages pass in the forest:
They were a host, but their memories are lost,

For the tree is dead: all things forget the forest
Excepting perhaps me, when now I see

The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest,
And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song.

A good selection of Edward Thomas's work can be found at this artistically designed site created by Mike Cope, obviously as a labor of love. (I thank him for the photo collage at the head of this entry, which I am afraid I shamelessly pinched from him.)

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen --
Their ghosts, if ghosts have tears, did fall -- that day ...

The men, the music piercing that solitude
And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed,
And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

Edward Thomas volunteered for service in the Great War. While on duty, on April 9, 1917, he was killed in a shell bombardment. His collected poems were published posthumously in 1920.

I have come to the borders of sleep
The unfathomable deep
Forest, where all must lose
Their way, however straight
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

UPDATE 11/13/07: I see the link to Mike Cope's beautifully designed Web site of Thomas's poetry is cold. Here's another site that has the poems.

The Sierra Club needs a spine transplant

A large part of Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona is closed, courtesy of Mexican invaders and drug traffickers. But to the Sierra Club, that's better than taking a stand against illegal immigration.

The Sierra Club agitates on behalf of the environment, except when the environment is trashed by illegal border crossers. (See here for choice photos of the invaders' dumping grounds in southern Arizona.)

For years, the Sierra Club has refused to support population stabilization and immigration reduction, preferring to concentrate its efforts on selling scenic calendars and urging people to bicycle to work.

The Club's lack of seriousness and vision was, I assumed, attributable to many of its members inhabiting loony left catchment areas such as the San Francisco Bay cities. In places like that, you buy into the whole multi-culti, p.c. ideology or else you are a pariah dog.

However, a subset of Sierra Club members calling themselves SUSPS (Support U.S. Population Stabilization) is unhappy that their organization avoids the obvious conclusion that tearaway population growth — most significantly caused by immigrants with high fertility rates — is the main reason our cities are sprawling all over creation, traffic gets worse all the time, and you have to make reservations well in advance to visit our popular national parks.

Not only that. SUSPS has found evidence that the Sierra Club has, literally, sold out.

Since 1996, leaders of the Sierra Club have refused to admit that immigration driven, rapid U.S. population growth causes massive environmental problems. And they have refused to acknowledge the need to reduce U.S. immigration levels in order to stabilize the U.S. population and protect our natural resources. Their refusal to do what common sense says is best for the environment was a mystery for nearly a decade.

Then, on Oct. 27, 2004, the Los Angeles Times revealed the answer: David Gelbaum, a super rich donor, had demanded this position from the Sierra Club in return for huge donations. Kenneth Weiss, author of the LA Times article that broke the story, quoted what David Gelbaum said to Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope:

"I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me."

In 1996 and again in 1998, the Club's leaders proved their loyalty to Gelbaum's position on immigration, first by enacting a policy of neutrality on immigration and then by aggressively opposing a referendum to overturn that policy. In 2000 and 2001, Gelbaum rewarded the Club with total donations to the Sierra Club Foundation exceeding $100 million. In 2004 and 2005, the Club's top leaders and management showed their gratitude for the donations by stifling dissent and vehemently opposing member efforts to enact an immigration reduction policy.

Is it any wonder that the Sierra Club, supposedly the environment's best friend, will not stoop to mere principle?

Human nature being what it is, the Sierra Club's surrender to greed isn't unusual. Organizations that start out dedicated to good causes all too often sink into institutional tar pits. The organization takes on a life of its own, and one that comes before any other consideration.

Maybe SUSPS can spank some sense into the Sierra Club, a big, fat, spoiled child. But my suggestion to the SUSPS members and other environmental realists is that they leave the Sierra Club in the hands of its Liberal Establishment plutocrats and instead support Numbers USA, a group that knows where those numbers are coming from and is doing everything they can to counteract the most serious environmental threat.

"Hey, Gringo, don't look now but we're taking your country."

I'm talking as slowly as I can

White legged Touristicus americanus

Britain's Sunday Telegraph reports that the U.S. State Department and "several leading U.S. companies" are publishing a guide for Americans overseas, to give us Yanks pointers on how not to come on like the loudmouthed, bragging, pushy oafs that the rest of the world knows us to be.

Among the "simple suggestions" for how you can "help your country while traveling for your company" are:

• Think as big as you like but talk and act smaller. (In many countries, any form of boasting is considered very rude. Talking about wealth, power or status - corporate or personal - can create resentment.)

• Listen at least as much as you talk. (By all means, talk about America and your life in our country. But also ask people you're visiting about themselves and their way of life.)

• Save the lectures for your kids. (Whatever your subject of discussion, let it be a discussion not a lecture. Justified or not, the US is seen as imposing its will on the world.)

• Think a little locally. (Try to find a few topics that are important in the local popular culture. Remember, most people in the world have little or no interest in the World Series or the Super Bowl. What we call "soccer" is football everywhere else. And it's the most popular sport on the planet.)

• Slow down. (We talk fast, eat fast, move fast, live fast. Many cultures do not.)

• Speak lower and slower. (A loud voice is often perceived as bragging. A fast talker can be seen as aggressive and threatening.)

• Your religion is your religion and not necessarily theirs. (Religion is usually considered deeply personal, not a subject for public discussions.)

• If you talk politics, talk - don't argue. (Steer clear of arguments about American politics, even if someone is attacking US politicians or policies. Agree to disagree.)

This is an excellent idea. Who wants to be the Ugly American? Perhaps I can add my own two dinars worth (notice I didn't say two cents -- thinking locally!) with a sample of correct conversational style.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Al-Zarqawi, and your friends here (afraid I didn't catch their names). Well, Mr. Al-Zarqawi, I suppose this has something to do with ransom, you hear a lot of talk around town -- yes, I pride myself on being a good listener, not much gets by me! I mean, I'm not bragging or anything; actually, things do get by me sometimes. Well, often, really.

"Anyway, I don't see a problem. I'm not really an important person, you know. That CEO title, it's just kind of a courtesy, gives me something to talk about on the golf course -- that is, the hawking sports club. If you'll just phone my company's CFO, I'm sure we can sort this out in no time -- uh, I'm not going too fast for you, am I? I'm a man of the world, I know not everybody likes to get right down to business like we Americans!

"So, I take it I can look forward to a few days of your hospitality? No problem. These quarters look perfectly fine. I like this minimalist, bare-walls look you've done the place in, just a Persian, sorry, Iraqi carpet and those ammunition chests converted into tables, hey, my interior decorator on Park Avenue hasn't got anything on you boys!

[Dead silence.]

"Okay, well as I said, I'm an excellent listener, just thought you might want to ... so what's for dinner? Do I dare hope for sheep's eyeballs? That's a delicacy that's tough to find back home, yes, even in New York. Are you a soccer fan, Mr. Al-Zarqawi? How about those Baghdad Camels, eh? What do you figure for their chances of making it to the playoffs?

"Let's see, what else ... would you like to look at some photos I keep in my wallet of my kids? Do you have any of your own, Mr. Al-Zarqawi? Sure is tough to raise them these days, they have so many temptations we didn't when we were growing up, don't you think? You'll notice I haven't said a word about my politics or asked about yours. We can agree to disagree, don't you agree? I'm sure you and your friends here just want to get ahead -- say, am I talking too fast? Just a habit, I know not everybody talks like Marty Scorsese on speed the way we New Yorkers do. I'm ... sure ... you ... and ... your ... friends ... here ... just ... want ... to ... get ... a ... head ... "

"Goodness, that's quite a sword you've got there. I'll bet that'd fetch a pretty penny in the antiques trade, I know a man on Third Avenue, if you're ever interested ... you don't find authentic native craftsmanship like that very often these days. What? Allahu Akbar? Well, Mr. Al-Zarqawi, your religion is yours, it's not a subject I ordinarily get into. My mother always used to say there are two things you shouldn't bring up at the -- "

Growth: The great superstition?

Growth — in the economic sense — seems to be the ultimate value of our age. To see how economists, politicians, and journalists fling the word around, you'd think it had a religious significance ... if, that is, religion were still in style in most of the Western world.

I don't get it. I've never gotten it. What does "growth" mean? More of everything? Bigger numbers? Why is that something to worship?

Maybe everyone else understands something about growth that I don't. Anyway, occasionally (not often) I happen to run across someone else expressing Doubts.

Bill Bonner publishes a daily on-line newsletter called The Daily Reckoning, with his and various columnists' views about the follies of the financial markets. Although it's a come-on for various investing schemes — not exactly in the mainstream and best approached with caution — it's generally well written, sassy, and entertaining. Recently Bonner included an extended quote from James Kunstler, author of a book called The Long Emergency, which I hereby pass on:

Americans ought to regard the word 'growth' with trepidation.

When invoked by presidents and economists, it is meant to imply ideas like 'more' or 'better.' It's a habit of thinking left over from the exuberant phase of the industrial age, when there was always more of everything to get. Nowadays, though, as we enter the terminal years of cheap energy, the word 'growth' invokes a new set of ideas.

For instance, 'impossible.' With the price of oil edging toward $70-a-barrel now, and likely to flirt with $100 by the end of the year, the effect will be higher costs for virtually all products and services, and tremendous stress on every socioeconomic organism from the family to government at all levels to the Ford Motor Car Corporation. The only 'growth' we might expect under these conditions is the growth in our exertions to stay where we are, and the truth is that many of the weak will simply fall behind.

Another idea that 'growth' might invoke would be a fear of an unstoppable rising population competing for scarcer resources: incomes, energy, food, shelter. Surely this is one of the specters behind the illegal immigration issue, a dawning recognition that the American cornucopia is becoming an emptier basket, with fewer fruits, less energy, and not many gold nuggets left in it.

The cheap energy era led us into a climax of surpluses, and these surpluses represented the general 'more-ness' and 'better-ness' of late industrial society. In a post cheap energy world, accumulated surpluses will be meager to nonexistent. There is bound to be a scramble for whatever is left. Geopolitically, this means a contest for the world's remaining oil, which tends to be concentrated in just a few places. In each nation, there is likely to be a parallel scramble for whatever fruits, gold nuggets, and therms are still to be had, throwing off a lot of red-hot political sparks that will burn people. A lot of the remaining energy worldwide will be devoted to these scrambles, and thus essentially wasted.

Most economists would disagree in whole or part. Their refrain is that there have always been doomsayers claiming we are running out of resources, but we find new deposits, get more efficient in extracting them, and so on. And so far, they've been right. But I still can't help wondering: granted that we can't know exactly the quantities of resources that are still available, and no doubt we can continue to find better ways to drag and squeeze them from our big round rock, are they infinite?

For the first time I can recall, questions about "peak oil" and shortages of minerals such as copper and silver are starting to be taken seriously by respectable (if that's a recommendation) technologists and theorists. This time there's a new factor: not just possibly shrinking supply, but monster increase in demand, especially from two awakening giants: China and India.

Kunstler continues:

There are many ways of viewing this 'growth' predicament, and some strategies we can turn to in the face of it. An obvious one is to change our behavior, to stop acting as though our destructive, terminal, and futile activities were beneficial or indispensable. For instance, we could yield to the reality that the age of mass motoring will have to end.

Instead of desperately seeking 'alternative fuels' to run our 100 million cars, we could make an effort to restore our railroads. Instead of a million McHousing starts out in the meadows and cornfields, we could repair our existing towns and cities. There is no reason why they cannot be rewarding, beautiful places. There may well be greater benefit in walking more and driving less. The well-off Americans who have visited Europe over the past several decades invariably notice this.

Anyway, we are going to need every meadow, cornfield, and pasture that we have, because as cheap energy wanes, we are going to be desperate to grow enough food to feed ourselves — another reason to be wary of alt.fuel fantasies based on growing crops dedicated to gasoline substitutes.

There is some good sense here, but I think the emphasis is misplaced. None of his suggestions are going to be more than a temporary answer, even if feasible at all, unless we accept that growth is the problem. In particular, population growth, whether it's caused by Jewish families on Long Island, Mormons on the edge of the Great Basin, or Mexicans in California. More is more. And I, for one, am not willing to sacrifice driving my car or moving into a central city because Mr. Kunstler tells me that's how "well-off" Americans perceive Europe.

And I take this stand not because I wouldn't make sacrifices for the common good, but because I don't think these sacrifices would be of any real use. We've got to stop exalting growth and accommodating it (as though we can). Everything else is just tinkering.

Civil War II

You won't see photos like these in the mainstream media, which the Liberal Establishment keeps on a short leash, but some enterprising bloggers infiltrated the demonstrations and brought back pictures of los illegals showing their true colors.

Is it too late to prevent Civil War II? I hope not. But the signs aren't encouraging.

The immigration disaster is quickly degenerating into a case of an irresistible force and an immovable object.

For years, big business has been cynically allowed to violate laws against hiring illegals; border enforcement reduced to a vaudeville show. Jorge Bush-Gonzales and his ruling junta have made it clear that the country is to be force fed with the poorest, most unskilled Mexicans, Salvadoreans, Guatemalans, and other products of dysfunctional cultures. He will not be satisfied until the United States is turned into an oligarchy of international business interests, a vast class of Third World servants, and an ever-diminishing middle class bled white to pay for for the social service bureaucracy, stepped-up law enforcement, and extra prisons necessitated by a Hispanic servant class.

With the president of the United States, hand in hand with left-wing loonies like Ted Kennedy, so determined to ignore the wishes of mere ordinary Americans (not to mention the laws of the country and common sense), is it any wonder that the Invaders figure that they've received a gold-edged invitation to come sup off the rich table of El Norte?

At the same time, if amnesty is passed, even the three million annual "undocumented" immigrants (as the mainstream propaganda media refer to them) will seem like a mere trickle compared to the numbers of border jumpers to follow them. How can we expect them not to, once we have signaled that anyone in any of the world's countless failed states just has to make it across the border to be permanently situated in the land of milk and honey?

But, but, but. This is America, with its tradition of people standing tall against tyranny, not a kingdom of whimpering serfs. When The Invasion becomes so overwhelming that no one (except corporate multi-millionaires who will live behind razor-wire fences patrolled by armed guards, just like the ruling class in Mexico City) can escape the ensuing social decay, a point will be reached when large numbers are willing to risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in an armed resistance.

I neither urge such an outcome nor wish to romanticize it. It will be ugly. A lot of people, driven to desperation because no one gives a toss about their rights compared with the supposed rights of law-breaking, America-despising mobs, will feel that they are pushed to the wall. They will become the immovable object.

There is still time to keep los illegals from becoming the irresistible force. A few weeks from now, it may no longer be possible to say that.

Your move.

A day without immigrants? How about 10 years?

You are America? How so?

Because you took advantage of our laxness to enter the country illegally, thereby "jumping the queue" ahead of thousands of others patiently waiting to immigrate legally? So we should welcome you because you're cleverer than all the suckers who played by the rules.

Because you're here millions strong? So we should welcome you because you think we're too weak-minded to enforce our own laws and we'll tumble for you because we're intimidated.

Because you do jobs Americans won't do? So we should welcome you because you are willing to drive down the cost of labor so far that no American who isn't used to your wretched standard of living can compete with you.

Because you're an important part of the American economy? So we should welcome you because you work here and send most of your tax-free income back to Mexico or Guatemala or wherever, while you are served by our hospitals and social welfare system paid for by others.

Because you're poor? So we should welcome you in order that the United States can become another banana republic with a tiny elite class and masses of peasants, just like where you used to live, and we need not feel guilty about being a rich country, because we won't be.

Because you say so? So we should welcome you because you come from a corrupt culture where power is all, and the only thing that matters is what you can get away with.

Tell you what.

Instead of giving us a day without your precious services, why don't you really stick it to us. Head back en masse to where you are a legal resident. That's right, the whole lot of you. And don't just force us to rub by for a day without your doing the jobs we won't do. Stay away for 10 years! That should bring us to our knees. As your President -- no, not Jorge W. Bush-Gonzales; your other President -- said, we'll be begging you to come back.

So 10 years and a day from now, meet us just on the other side of the fence (your side). Then let's talk.

If we think there's anything to talk about.

On the curious incident of the police officer that did nothing in the night-time

Burglars will be allowed to escape without punishment under new instructions sent to all police forces. Police have been told they can let them off the threat of a court appearance and instead allow them to go with a caution.

The same leniency will be shown to criminals responsible for more than 60 other different offences, ranging from arson through vandalism to sex with underage girls.

London Daily Mail, April 3, 2006

On Her Majesty's Service
Royal Crime Prevention Central Unit
Office of the Commissioner
3, Flinders Lane
London W1, United Kingdom

MEMO

TO: All Detective Chief Inspectors, Detective Inspectors, Detective Constables, Police Constables under My command
FROM: Commissioner Sir Hampton Twill-Pongemarston
DATE: 2 April 2006
SUBJECT: Rationalisation of policing resources

I am sure that I need not remind you of the personpower and budgetary limitations under which we currently work. Following a meeting at Whitehall yesterday with the Semi-Permanent Undersecretary for the Exchequer (Acting), a decision has been taken to readjust policing resources in aid of their more targeted and rational use. In brief, we are to concentrate on those aspects of duty that are of highest priority in maintaining the multi-cultural ethos which is so central to British life today.

Therefore, henceforth, I adjure and command you to readjust your application of the power and authority you exercise. You will note in Appendix C, Section 2 of this memo a list of some 60 offences which are to be responded to as minor nuisances rather than as crimes. These downgraded offences include burglary, arson (except the act of lighting a cigarette in a public place or any private place where such an act might reasonably offend any person in the same or neighbouring jurisdiction), vandalism of property whose value is estimated at less than 350,000 pounds, hijacking of automobiles … well, I shan't take up any more of your valuable time listing them all; please read the appendix before going on duty.

With the resources thus freed from attempting to prevent or solve petty, "no-fault" crimes, I hereby instruct you to turn your attention to the prevention of offences against protected classes rather than mere individuals.

All police constables are to be assigned to guard protesters from our beloved Muslim community, particularly those that may receive prejudiced public reaction based on their exercise of the right to the free and open expression of their completely legal agitation in favour of instituting Sharia law in these islands, promising "another 9/11", proclaiming "Holocaust: You ain't seen nothing yet", and the like. Such citizens are under constant threat of Islamophobic responses from retrograde persons who have not been re-educated in the ways of modern, multi-cultural Britain.

Detective inspectors not otherwise occupied with major crimes such as smoking or public display of the Union Jack within a three-mile radius of any mosque are to be reassigned to undercover duty in pubs and betting parlours. They are to arrest forthwith any customers overheard criticising squatter's rights, homosexual marriage, or immigration. DCIs, I expect a full and complete report from you, on my desk at 8.00 a.m. each morning, detailing numbers of arrests. And I want evidence that will make the Crown Prosecutor's Officers smile and that will stand up in court!

I know that I am asking a lot of you; but serious disrespect has reached an unacceptable level in this country, and these new resources brought to bear on it are our best hope for a just and egalitarian society. To all women (and you too, men) who will be holding the line against extremist forces that would undermine our gorgeous mosaic, I can only say, "Kooma-zawa-zawa!" — a phrase I learned many years ago in service in East Africa during the unfortunate misunderstanding with the Mau-Mau community. It means, "Do your duty". And be careful: it's dangerous out there.

Seduced again?

Big business figures it's about to have its sweet way with the United States of America once again.

It's doing everything it can to wear down the resistance of the majority to having their country recast in the mold of a colonial plantation, complete with an endless supply of cheap workers to exploit. Since Americans over a few centuries have developed certain, er, regrettable habits like middle-class tastes, unions, and that sort of nonsense, there's nothing for it but to import an army's worth of Latin American immigrants who are more, shall we say, pliable.

Okay, so they bring with them TB, gangs, English-language illiteracy, and a culture of corruption. And since every baby dispensed from every womb automatically becomes a U.S. citizen, in law at least, you can look forward to prodigious increases in population, urban sprawl, and traffic. Who cares? Business is business.

Of course, every able seducer knows the right words. In this case, it's mindless platitudes like "we're a nation of immigrants" and "doing the jobs Americans won't do" (for sub-sub-par wages).

They say, "You can't do anything about 11 (or 12, or 20) million 'immigrants' who are already here." Or, "The border is 2,000 miles long. How are you going to stop anybody crossing it?" As though anyone in the government has actually tried. As though illegals aren't caught and released routinely. As though anyone has been prosecuted or fined for employing illegals. (No large-scale deportation is needed. If they didn't get hired, the great majority of los illegals would "deport" themselves.)

Numbers USA gets it:

The immigration battle is the most important part of a larger, long-term battle over whether the United States should remain primarily a self-governing nation state, or whether it should merge in various ways with other countries and give over more and more decision-making to global bodies. The latter is being pursued by both Pres. Bush and his many globalist-business Republican supporters and by many Democrats who are guided by neo-Marxist ideologies concerning nations. Most Americans don't realize that the high-immigration pressures are mainly at the service of those two camps.

I'm a big fan of Numbers USA. They put the immigration issues in the right context: not just of national sovereignty, or border security, or even the rule of law, but quality of life. Check out their explanation of the symptoms of population inflation — which has already been severly aggravated by the immigration welcome wagon, and will be even more if we don't start acting like free people instead of bowing, white-gloved servants to international business interests.

Besides, Numbers USA is one political action group that doesn't just whinge about how awful things are. When this outfit says action, they mean it. Right now they are giving no rest to Senators who want to make open borders a done deal.

If you want to know what you can do, please go to the Numbers USA site.

Frankly, I'm tired of writing about this subject. It shouldn't be necessary, because The Invasion never should have been allowed to happen in the first place, and the current proposed legislation to legalize and expand it should not have entered the brain of any life form higher than a dung beetle — no, not even Ted Kennedy's.

But Congress is this close to committing the most disastrous piece of legislation in our lifetimes. Have a care. And rediscover one of the joys our ancestors knew: slapping the face of a would-be seducer.

April in Paris: It's not about love this time

The Times of London has a sickening story about the barbarism into which France, once considered by many the epitome of civilization, has sunk. (Tip of the hat: Jay Reding.)

Forget the French idyll portrayed in such books as A Year in Provence. France is being forced to confront her dark side as details emerge of horrific crimes in the suburbs.

Testimony from this grim underbelly, the immigrant banlieues — literally “places of banishment” — has fortified the elite’s view of young immigrants on the wrong side of the Paris ring road as “barbarians at the gate”.

For years the Parisian establishment has quaked at the prospect of angry hordes invading their affluent heartland and last week that nightmare came true as gangs of hooded youths robbed and bludgeoned white students attending anti-government demonstrations.

Read the rest of the story, if you can stand to. It's a powerful corrective to all the smiley-face Liberal Establishment cant about the gorgeous mosaic of multi-culturalism.

All countries do stupid things at times, but a successful country has ways of undoing them. The United States, for all its faults, can change course -- for instance, in reversing the softness in criminal sentencing that got out of hand in the '70s and '80s. France, by contrast, looks like a prime example of a state that lacks any self-correcting mechanism. It is clearly not responsible to the will of its citizens, as we see when farmers, students, and anyone who feels hard done by goes into strike or street theater mode, feeling there is no other way to be heard.

French political leaders have the standard charcteristics of oligarchs, including a pathological inability to say, "We made a mistake." But they did. France foolishly opened its arms wide to large-scale Muslim immigration, and the bill has come due. Creating an unsustainable welfare state, partly based on immigrant labor, is a related blunder.

But the unwillingness to acknowledge wrong policies means that the country's powerful must carry on playing let's-pretend until, perhaps, the whole society comes crashing down, torn apart by its own refusal to engage in reality testing.

Barbarians at the gate? For the moment, perhaps. Soon, I am afraid, they will be inside the door, battle axes clanging on the grand staircase.

Deep in the heart of taxes

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. It's render-unto-Caesar time. (Non-U.S. readers: we donate our annual membership dues for the United States, or file to get back what we have already over-donated, by April 15). Your blogger is, shall we say, preoccupied.

Ben Franklin held this truth to be self-evident, that nothing is certain except death and taxes. There is, however, one difference between those certainties. Death is not real.