Haiti speech

The dreadful destruction visited on Haiti by the earthquake is a genuine humanitarian crisis. But I suspect it is a crisis that our rulers will not let go to waste.

Haiti needs all the help — well, almost all the help — we can offer. It is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. At the best of times, it hardly has the resources to cope with an emergency; in a full-blown disaster it is virtually helpless. I am more than happy for a portion of my tax money to go for whatever the United States can supply in medical and reconstruction aid. And I'm glad to live in a country where many will volunteer their expertise and labor to reduce suffering in Haiti.

But.

I have $20 that says that within a few days, Little Daddy Obama will call his panting spaniels in the media to a press conference and announce that he has "directed" the Citizenship and Immigration Services to provide tens of thousands of green cards to Haitians to settle in the United States.*

Anybody want to take the other end of the bet?

Obama may be slow off the mark when it comes to standing up to Muslim aggression, but when it's a question of race replacement for "his" country, no gazelle can keep up with him.

____________________

* The Citizenship and Immigration Services web site offers green cards for families, jobs, refugee or asylum status, and "other ways." Citizenship may be granted through naturalization, parents, or a "naturalization test." And don't forget humanitarian parole, battered spouse, children and parents (battered parents?), victims of human trafficking and other crimes, "special situations," and "temporary protected status." Who are they kidding? The word "temporary" in connection with government means "get it now and we'll forget to tell you when time's up."

Reid, his lips

On no account did I ever expect to be defending Harry Reid. But the reaction to his reported comments (in private) about Obama — you know, "light-skinned" and "no Negro dialect" — is insane. And it's mostly Republicans who are having a phony attack of the vapors for political advantage.

Of course I understand that "Negro" has been out of date since the 1960s, replaced by "black" or "African American," the latter of which is silly: we don't speak of "English Americans," "Scots-Irish Americans," or "German Americans," and almost never these days of "Italian Americans," etc. But "Negro" is not a term of disparagement. It was long used by white liberals, including those who were active in the civil rights movement.

"Light-skinned"? Well, that is a fact, is it not? A political fact, and Harry Reid is a politician. Politicians make calculations all the time based on their own and other politicians' racial and ethnic characteristics. It is quite possible that Reid was implying that a light-skinned half-black man had an epidermis asset, one that darker blacks lacked. If that advantage is a fact, it's indeed unfair. But speaking of it is realpolitik, not a sign of racial prejudice.

"No Negro dialect"? Please. Everyone knows that liberals and the media (okay, redundant) swooned over Barack Obama because he is a "black" man who speaks without the typical dialect. Would Obama have risen to his present height (or sunk to his present depth) if he spoke Ebonics? No. By the same token, Republicans would be loath to nominate as a presidential candidate a white man from Mississippi with a strong regional accent — not the same as a dialect, but close enough in principle.

Every time we have a contrived incident like this, someone like Mary C. Curtis calls for a racial dialogue.

Just a few days away from the holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is it too much to ask that we honor his memory by finally having that honest conversation on race and privilege that we threaten to do each time there's a blow-up?

That comes at the end of a long article in which Ms. Curtis cites Archie Bunker in a 1970s TV show as proof that whites judge blacks by their degree of blackness; claims that "when Middle America's favorite football hero, pitchman and bad actor O.J. Simpson became public enemy No. 1, Time magazine's cover wasted no time in darkening him up" (citation from a credible source, if you wouldn't mind?); goes into a riff about James Madison's slave quarters; claims that "I missed out on a part in the fourth-grade play because my light-skinned, long-haired friend 'looked like a princess,' according to my nun nemesis"; claims that "in the 2008 election, more than a few white folks – breathing a sigh of relief – told me they believed Barack Obama wasn't really black because he had a white parent, ignoring that few people white or black in America are pure anything" (race is only a social construct, except when someone wants an affirmative action job or reparations); and adds that "In [other whites], you could see the familiar mind game in which people with a stereotype of a certain group declare a person who doesn't fit it as somehow different or exceptional because that's so much easier than changing that stereotypical view."

Something tells what me Ms. Curtis means by an "honest conversation" is: We scold, you cringe and pay up. You are all slavemasters, we are all victims. Any other kind of honest conversation is racism.

What was that about stereotyping?

The system ate Obama's homework

"Ultimately the buck stops with me," our Commander-in-Absentia said yesterday. It was a pathetic attempt to associate himself with President Truman's famous line. Except there was a difference: Harry Truman didn't give himself the wiggle room of "ultimately."

Having crowned himself as the buck stopper when there's no one else to blame, he released the results of a no-doubt carefully calibrated report. The Washington Times says:

The report points to "a series of human errors" that kept the government from stopping the attempted bombing, including one involving someone in the government apparently misspelling the suspected bomber's name in a database search. But Mr. Obama and his team repeatedly blamed the system rather than any individuals.

Right, mistakes were made.

What a truly craven person this presidential impostor is. The system, the system, the system. As if the system ran itself, untouchable, with its supposed managers and administrators no more than swivel-chair dummies appointed to fill slots in an organization chart.

If we lived in an age where honor was a living concept, several people would have resigned for their failure to do the job they were meant to do, viz., protect the American public. Failing that, the top banana should have given them a couple of hours to clear out their desks.

But that would imply a government network of real, not rhetorical, responsibility. That is the last thing the Failed Messiah wants, because it would hold him, not an abstract system, responsible. Not ultimately, but here and now.

Mr. Obama said the country remains at war with terrorists and he ordered security agencies to strengthen their analyzing practices so that information that could prevent an attack would not fall through the cracks. He also called on intelligence officials to re-evaluate the process of placing suspected terrorists on the no-fly list.

As reported in the Washington Post, "In a memo to department and agency heads outlining 'corrective actions,' Obama ordered Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair to 'immediately reaffirm and clarify roles and responsibilities' of counterterrorism agencies 'in synchronizing, correlating and analyzing all sources of intelligence related to terrorism.'"

Once more, the language of a hands-off bureaucrat: "Re-evaluate the process." "Reaffirm and clarify roles and responsibilities." Study the situation more carefully. I want another report on my desk in 60 days!

"We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them," he said.

Who's this "we," chief? You and your legal beagles have determined that captured "enemies" are to be treated as civilian criminals, even though their lawbreaking ("alleged") took place 5,000 miles from American soil. Nor is our enemy simply al Qaeda, which is only the most violent and famous wing of militant Islam. But I guess talking about Islam strikes too close to home with you.

J'accuse!

Shouting at your wife may get you a criminal record in France

— Daily Mail, Jan. 6

Married couples in France could end up with criminal records for insulting each other during arguments.

Under a new law, France is to become the first country in the world to ban 'psychological violence' within marriage. The law would apply to cohabiting couples and to both men and women.

It would cover men who shout at their wives and women who hurl abuse at their husbands - although it was not clear last night if nagging would be viewed as breaking the law.

France, damn it, you're just like your mother! Er, sorry, didn't mean that. Forget I said it … please, put down the phone. What will the neighbors think when la police show up at the door?

Insofar as the Daily Mail reporter could find anyone to quote, there is opposition to the law. But only because of doubts about how it could be enforced. Well, yeah. What is the government going to do, install a Shout-O-Meter in every home? Change the wedding ceremony so it includes an exchange of rings followed by an exchange of miniature recording devices?

No one quoted seems to find anything repugnant about the principle of a "Raise Your Voice, Go to Jail" law. But while this legislation is laughable, it's serious, terribly serious.

The soft totalitarian state continues to metastasize. Not even in the two greatest tyrannies of modern times, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, did it occur to the rulers to regulate private relationships between couples.

Among the forces behind this loathsome intrusion into people's lives is radical feminism. The law will inevitably used by women with a grudge against a man, or men. Even in this age of feminized males, I can't see very many men making themselves targets of derision by calling the cops to complain about their wives accusing them in no uncertain terms of being a waste of space.

But that's the least of it. Here is a further extension of the bane of modern Western society, the nanny state mentality. It's the frame of mind that sees every human problem as something for The State to fix. According to this way of thinking, individuals are incapable of arriving at their own solutions; the solutions must be imposed.

Can verbal abuse in a relationship be hurtful? Of course. And women are just as capable of saying wounding things as men. But in a sane traditionalist view, if you find yourself in such a situation you have basically two alternatives: you work it out or you leave the relationship. Either way, it's your life and your responsibility.

The more The State takes on the role of arbiter of personal behavior, the greater the number of people who forget or never learn to develop their own character. It becomes a premature second childhood — no, not really, since the authorities' intervention in every corner of life means the first childhood cannot be outgrown.

Authoritarian states masquerading as therapists welcome a citizenry that is dependent not only economically, but emotionally. Learned helplessness is the tyrant's great enabler.

Material witness

Psychical researcher Michael Roll describes his experience with materialization of spirits on the "Other Side" in an interview with Lou Bondi on Maltese TV. (Tip of the hat: The Campaign for Philosophical Freedom.)

Materialization (or physical) mediumship is the rarest kind. Most mediums can see, hear, or sense spirits. Materialization mediums are apparently able to provide a quasi-physical substance that enables spirits who have passed from this life to return in temporary physical bodies. Bizarre? You bet. But distinguished scientists such as Sir William Crookes and Professor Brian Josephson (with whom Michael Roll has conducted experiments) have demonstrated it.

In this interview, the host seems somewhat skeptical, but asks reasonable questions. And he gives Roll plenty of time to answer -- no "sound bites" here. Would such a program be made for American TV? It's unlikely.

To accommodate the necessary bandwidth, the interview is divided into six parts. When each part concludes, you are presented with the opportunity to go to the next part, although they don't seem to be in the right order. But they are labeled correctly.

I really don't have much to add. Roll seems intelligent and sincere, and what he says coincides with a good deal of anecdotal evidence, as well as some spiritual teachings.

Carlos Saura's Fados

Fado is a type of traditional Portuguese music, still popular in its original mode as well as updated forms. In its combination of nostalgia, regret, romanticism, and sensuousness it occupies a similar place in Portuguese culture as flamenco does in Spain. Like flamenco, it echoes with lost times and lost loves. But fado is sweeter, more rounded, the accents less jabbing. Its exotic element comes from Africa and Brazil, rather than North Africa as in flamenco.

But fado is little known outside its own country (I italicize fado because, unlike flamenco, it has not entered the English language -- MS Word puts it on that platform of faint red dots that means, "Typo alert").

The director Carlos Saura has made a beautiful film featuring fado performers that could be a revelation to many who are unfamiliar with the art form. Indeed, although I have several prized CDs of fado singing, it quite expanded my appreciation.

This is a documentary -- wait, don't roll your eyeballs. It's nothing like those pseudo-intellectual music documentaries on PBS where you get a 90-second clip of the musician followed by five minutes of a talking head explaining what you've just seen and heard and why you should love it. Fados (the film) has no narration, no musicians struggling to conceptualize what they do, no politics except for a brief and relevant look back at the military dictatorship Portugal suffered under in the early 1970s. Saura trusts his audience's ability to appreciate his subject without editorializing, and bless him for that.

The movie contains about a dozen performing groups, and they're allowed to complete their songs full-length, without interruption. We see and hear how fado sounded in earlier generations; there's even a re-creation of a 19th-century performance. The basic instrumentation is a guitar and something whose name I don't know: it looks like a lute or a Middle Eastern oud, but sounds like a mandolin. In more modern arrangements, it is supplemented with a variety of others.

The movie gives us examples of how fado has blossomed to include bluesy, jazzy, marching, and other varieties. I could have done without the hip-hop version, which (un-musicological as I am) seems to me to violate the music's spirit, but it isn't awful.

Not surprisingly, fado has inspired choreographers to match the music's mood, and dancers accompany some of the performances, their art ranging from the ballet-like to the modern. I am not normally a dance fan, but I found most of this captivating with its svelte moves and colorful costumes.

Did I mention the singing? Well, I won't try to describe it. You have to hear (and see) the vocalists in Fados.

Saura has provided just the right degree of production values: enough for attractive and interesting settings, not so much as to be distracting. One unusual effect: some of the musicians are back-projected so you see them and their "ghosts" simultaneously. As a variation, there is a time delay so you see the performers in real time as well as what they were doing a second or two ago. It sounds contrived, and might be annoying if overworked, but Saura knows when enough is enough; he and his cinematographer show imagination and taste.

I've tried to give just enough description so that you will know if Fados is a film for you. It's available for rental, of course, from Netflix.