New Dilemmas in Medicine:
Three Current Controversises in Genetics,Religion, and Big Pharma.
When: Friday May 23rd 2008
9:30am - 6:45pm
Where: 777 UN Plaza (Corner Of 44th St & 1st Ave) 2nd Floor
New York NY 10017
Following the Conference will be a Cocktail Reception featuring an Argentinean Tango performance by Laura Real From 7pm to 9:30pm at the Consulate General of Romania:
200 E 38th St,(3rd ave)
New York NY 10016
212-682-9120
Registration Fees*:
General Public - $65
Students - $30
*Includes Cocktail Reception
**$30 to attend Cocktail Reception ONLY
For More Information Contact Ana Lita @
212-687-3324
analita@iheu.org
To find how to register visit our website:
www.humanistbioethics.org
Panel descriptions:
To Have the Best Child Possible -
The Coming Age of “Procreative Beneficence?”
Genetic science has the potential to provide prospective parents with unprecedented control over their unborn child’s characteristics and attributes. In vitro fertilization and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis allow couples to sort out “good” from “bad” embryos prior to the start of pregnancy. Although these technologies are almost exclusively employed to detect genetic and/or chromosomal abnormalities among embryos, their use for selection of other medical and non-medical traits is conceivable. Tomorrow’s couples may have the opportunity to select embryos that will not only be the least susceptible to disease but which also have particular hair colors, skin tones, temperaments, or other personal attributes. Advocates of these eugenic initiatives have argued that future couples will have a moral obligation to pursue these technologies whenever possible to achieve the greatest benefit for their children, a principle known as “procreative beneficence.” Still, secular and non-secular critics alike argue that use of such technologies is immoral and may be potentially devastating to children and the structure of society.
Saying “No” to Patients -
Medical Professionals as Conscientious Objectors
Central to the professional and ethical mandate of physicians, pharmacists, and other healthcare personnel is the provision of medical care consistent with the best interests of their patients. However, news of healthcare professionals refusing to provide certain types of care to their patients under the auspices of “conscientious objection” have raised questions about the role of professionals’ personal beliefs in fulfillment of their purported obligations and duties. Examples include doctors refusing to terminate pregnancies, pharmacists refusing to dispense emergency contraception, certain Catholic hospitals receiving public funds refusing to issue morning-after birth control to rape victims, and others.
Ethics and Pharmaceutical R&D
Who Should Be Responsible for Tomorrow’s Drugs?
The vast majority of prescription medications are developed and sold by private pharmaceutical companies. Under the current market-based system, however, some critics argue that pharma- ceutical companies have financial incentives to support R&D that will yield the biggest return but which may not be in the best interests of improving the health of patients worldwide. They claim, for example, that pharmaceutical companies are far more interested in producing Viagra than vaccines, and call for change in paradigm of drug design and provision. Others point to the high costs of R&D and the critical importance of blockbuster drugs to the future development of less profitable vaccines and antibiotics; without the former, they argue, there could be no breakthroughs.
Finland declared its independence from Russian rule in 1917.
In the early part of the last century Mexico declared its independence from Spain.
The list is endless…. country after country declaring themselves free from the grips of another….
On May 14th, 1948, the ‘People’s Council of the Land of Israel’ declared the following…
ACCORDINGLY, WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE’S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.
Termination of the British Mandate over Eretz- Israel (Land of Israel)??? What ‘Land of Israel’??? Whatever happened to ‘The Land of Palestine’???
In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi wrote the following… “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French…What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct…If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs…As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.” Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in “A Land of Two Peoples” ed. Mendes-Flohr.
So just who was Israel declaring their independence from? The British had no control over ‘their’ country, according to THIS report the country was populated by Palestinians at the time… not Israelis.
Just as America itself was stolen from its native population, so was Israel. In both cases the ‘justification’ continues by dehuminising the victims, both the First Nation People of North America and the Palestinians.
Perhaps that explains why the United States government has been the most loyal supporter of Israel since its inception… perhaps that explains why they allow Israel to continue with its genocidal polices against the Palestinians, are they not guilty of the same crimes against their own Native population?
There are many ‘whys’ and very few answers coming forth, but the question remains…
While Prescott Sheldon Bush made his money by selling arms to Hitler, his family cooperated with bin Laden in recent years.
There is a long history of cooperation between the Bush family and the Saudi Arabia elite. Is it a coincidence or a conspiracy is a question that has been posed for years now.
Everything started in the 1970s when the Bush family founded the Arbusto Energy company and theReuters-.--.- bin Ladens helped greatly with their money. The company dealt with oil, of course. The friendship between the two families, which are sworn enemies for the public, continued for decades. When George H. W. Bush became the director of the CIA in 1976, he helped train the guards of the Saudi royal family.
Terrorists evacuated after 9/11 attack
But let us go a little forward in history. More precisely, the 9/11 terrorist attack on the WTC. Despite the fact that 15 of 19 attackers who piloted the planes were from Saudi Arabia, the White House ordered the evacuation of the Saudis at that very time.
Reuters-.--.-It might be an absurdity, but could also be true, says the author of the House of Bush, House of Saud book. Everything goes back to the long-term connection between the Bush clan and the Saudi royal family. It is rather difficult to get information about the friendship of the Bushs with their alleged enemies because most data have been taken off of the Internet.
George W. Bush's grandfather financed Hitler
The grandfather of George W. Bush was no exception. It has been rumoured for years that he helped the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, and in a way helped him rise to power.
Prescott Sheldon Bush, a U.S. senator, was a shareholder and director of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC). According to archive documents, the company financed Hitler during World War II and issued shares to Nazi leaders at a time when all international loans had been ceased in Germany.
Through Wall Street, Prescott took action and in-.--.- cooperation with Himmler's friend, Fridrich Flitch, secured Hitler access to international loans without which he never could have financed raw materials and weapons for the war.
Confiscation of Bush's company's shares
Nine months after the United States declared war on Japan and Germany, citing the Trading with the Enemy Act, President Roosevelt ordered the confiscation of UBC shares. Several days later, the U.S. -.--.-president also ordered the confiscation of shares of the Silesian-American Corporation, the Holland American Trading Corporation and the Seamles Equipment Corporation which had been run for years by Prescott Bush and his brother-in-law, Walker Bush.
The cooperation between Bush and Hitler took place via a contract with German Steel and members of the National-Socialist Party travelled for free with Prescott's Hamburg-America Line company. To make matters worse, the Americans supplied oil and weapons to Hitler, making loads of money from it.
Standard Oil Company also cooperated with I.G. Farben
Even before World War II, the Standard Oil Company, which was managed and owned by the Rockefeller family, cooperated with I. G. Farben, a German chemical industry, and many joint-.--.- factories were located near concentration camps, including the controversial Auschwitz.
SS commander Himmler got money payments via secret Standard Oil accounts. Prisoners in the concentration camps were exploited as labour force in the factories and during the bombing of German cities, the Americans had to be careful not to drop bombs close to the chemical factories. The facilities remained intact even when most of Germany was reduced to rubble.
The reign of inseparable clans
When George Herbert Walker Bush became the president of the United States in 1980, his estate was managed by William Farish III, the descendant of Farish I, who managed the Standard Oil of New Jersey consortium (today the Exxon company) as well as Hitler's I.G. Farben company. The consortium actually opened Auschwitz with the aim of producing synthetic rubber.
The financing of the Nazis continued until 1944. After it came to light that Standard Oil was responsible, Farish was blamed, not John D. Rockefeller. And the partnership between the clans continued probably to this day.
The U.S. Congress launched an investigation, but was evidently not very successful, since it was concluded when all leads stopped with the Farish family.
President Bush went on foreign soil today, and committed what I consider an act of political treason: Comparing the candidate of the U.S. opposition party to appeasers of Nazi Germany -- in the very nation that was carved out from the horrific calamity of the Holocaust. Bush's bizarre and beyond-appropriate detour into American presidential politics took place in the middle of what should have been an occasion for joy: A speech to Israeli's Knesset to honor that nation's 60th birthday.
But here's what he said:
JERUSALEM (CNN) – In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he wants, but as a President of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom also carries an awesome and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious breach of that high moral standard.
Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle Iran, and that's why we're having an election here at home, to sort these issues out -- hopefully with respect and not with emotional and inaccurate appeals. Not only is the president's comment a gross misrepresentation of Barack Obama's stance on the issue, but ironically, it comes just a day after his own Secretary of State, Robert Gates, said of Iran: "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them." Is Gates a Nazi appeaser-type, too? And Bush has been hardly consistent on this point, either. Look at his own dealings with oil-rich Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, linked to deadly terror attacks like Pan Am Flight 103.
But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted confines of American political debate, When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on behalf of our country, his message needs to be clear and unambiguous. Our democracy may look messy to outsiders, and we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at the end of the day we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.
We are Americans.
And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting on foreign soil to score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way beneath your country, and way beneath the people you serve. You have been handed an office once uplifted to great heights by fellow countrymen from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower, and have plunged it so deeply into the Karl-Rove-and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political destruction and survival of all costs that have lost all perspective -- and all sense of decency. To travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your possible successor in the Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the United States is, in and of itself, an act of political treason.
In another irony, this comes from an administration that has already committed such grave abuses that its former officials are becoming fearful of traveling overseas, lest they be arrested for war crimes. Despite the alleged crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration, the Democrats who control the House have until now been restrained in their use of the impeachment process, hoping that the final eight months of our American nightmare can pass by quickly. Indeed, one has to wonder how much of Bush's outrageous statement this morning arose from fear -- fear that a President Obama will go after his wrongdoing in 2009.
Today, it's a whole new ballgame. I believe this treacherous statement by a U.S. president in Israel is a signal to the Democrats in the House in Washington, that it's time to play its Constitutional role in ending this trauma, before even greater acts against the interest of America are wrongly committed in our name.
He says he clearly saw a bright flash next to the control tower of the disused Gaza international airport, occupied by Israeli forces after Cpl Gilad Shalit was seized by militants on 25 June. "I went two or three steps and the missile landed," said Nayef, 24. "I thought I was dying. I shouted 'La Ilaha Ila Allah' [There is no God but Allah]."
When Jihad's older brother Kassem, 20, arrived at the scene: "My brother was already dead. There was shrapnel in his head. Nayef was shouting 'Allah, Allah'. The missile landed about four metres from where Jihad had been standing. There was shrapnel in his body as well, his legs, everything. He had been bleeding a lot everywhere."
Jihad Abu Snaima was just the most recent of more than 37 children and teenagers under 18 killed [out of a total death toll, including militants, of 228] in the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza since 25 June, according to figures from the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights (PCHR).
Of these, the PCHR classifies 151 as "civilian", although beside non-combatants and bystanders, that total also includes militants or faction members not involved in operations against Israel at the time for example those deliberately targeted in Israeli air strikes because of their involvement in previous attacks. The Israel Defence Forces have always maintained that being under 18 does not automatically exclude a person from taking part in action against them.
The conflict in Gaza has attracted relatively little international attention, not least because for five weeks it was overshadowed by that in Lebanon. But the death toll has continued to rise.
Nayef, who was speaking from his hospital bed, has multiple shrapnel-inflicted cuts on his plaster-covered arms and legs. But he was lucky compared with Jihad. A school caretaker with a five-year-old daughter, Nayef insists the evening of Jihad's death was just a family get-together. It is normal, he said, in this Bedouin community in the Al Shouka hamlet outside the southernmost Gaza town of Rafah to socialise at each other's homes on a summer evening, and that he and Jihad were especially close.
"I was always with him. He was an innocent person, kind. He was talking to me about how he was going to inherit part of his father's land and farm it and how he was going to get married and stay here." Nayef added tearfully: "He was a boy who had hopes. He wanted to live his life." He added: "What is my daughter going to think? She is going to grow up hating the Israelis."
The family say there was no shelling in the area at the time either before or after the incident; and that they therefore presume Jihad and Nayef were targeted by a tank crew. They insist there was no activity by militants against Israeli positions on the day of the attack. "This is an open area," said Nayef. "The resistance would not go there because they would be seen."
By contrast, the Israel Defence Forces said, without specifying Al Shouka, that on 10 September it had identified and hit "two men" moving near its forces in southern Gaza crouching on the ground, and " apparently planting explosives". Nayef is adamant that on the night in question he and Jihad were merely pausing on an evening stroll to his own house.
The PCHR, which seeks to monitor every violent Palestinian death, does not only focus on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It has, for example, repeatedly condemned the killing and injuring of growing numbers of civilians, also including children, during mounting inter-Palestinian disputes in Gaza; shootings by Palestinian security forces themselves; attacks on Christian churches by Muslims protesting against the Pope; the injury of civilians, including children, by Palestinian-fired Qassam rockets which fall short of targets in Israel; and the kidnapping last month of two Fox TV employees which has deterred journalists from visiting Gaza.
But Hamdi Shaqqura of PCHR's Gaza office which accuses Israel of using repeated closures and destruction of the power supply to operate a policy of "collective punishment" in breach of international law in Gaza, argues that the excuse of "collateral damage" cannot justify the "very high" death toll in the operations since 15 June. He adds: " Israel's forces have been acting excessively and disproportionately, and this explains the high figures for the number of innocent civilians killed by them."
At the other, northern end of Gaza, close to the al-Nada apartment blocks between Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, Aref Abu Qaida, 16, was killed by an artillery shell on 1 August. Sharif Harafin, 15, said: "We had been playing football and we had just finished. I was carrying the ball. I was going to my home, and [Aref] was going to his home. I heard a loud boom and then I saw him cut to pieces."
As his family displayed Aref's shredded red baseball cap, Sharif said he saw his friend's severed head on the ground, adding: "His chest was torn out by the rocket. People were collecting parts of his body. I was crying a lot."
The IDF says that on 1 August it had fired and hit "a number of Palestinians" in "the area of Beit Lahiya" who had " approached a number of rocket launchers placed in the area". Both PCHR and local residents, including Mohammed Abu Qaida, 39, the dead boy's uncle, say that, while three other civilians were wounded, the only other death in this incident was that of Mervat Sharekh, 24, a woman who was visiting relatives from Rafah and who died in hospital an hour later.
Although the area had been shelled before, and some residents had fled in response to Israeli warnings the previous week, Mr Abu Qaida said the area had been quiet on the day except that Qassam rockets had been fired about four hours earlier from northern settlements more than a kilometre away from the flats.
The IDF said last night that, of those killed in Gaza, it had the " positive identities of over 220 gunmen killed in fighting, and can confirm their affiliation with terror organisations". The 220 figure said to be "unbelievable" by Mr Shaqqura coupled with another 20 dead which the military acknowledges as genuine civilians, is all the more strikingly at variance with PCHR figures since it produces a total exceeding the centre's own records.
Mr Shaqqura said that, at the absolute minimum, the IDF figures do not take into account the casualties under 18 which PCHR estimates at 44 and from which he said every effort is made to exclude the "rare" teenagers with militant connections or eight women killed since 25 June. " We do not believe their figures. We do not believe their investigations."
The IDF said: "Since the abduction of Cpl Gilad Shalit by the Hamas and PRC terror organisations, the IDF has been operating in the Gaza Strip against terrorist infrastructure and in order to secure the release of Cpl Shalit. In the course of the operations, the IDF engaged in intense fighting with Palestinian gunmen, who chose heavily populated areas as their battlegrounds. The IDF takes every measure to prevent harm to civilians, often at a risk to its soldiers."
The forgotten war in the Middle East
* 25 June: Palestinian gunmen from the Hamas-linked Izzedine al-Qassam brigades cross from Gaza into Israel and launch a raid on an Israeli military patrol. Two Israeli soldiers are killed, four wounded and one, Cpl Gilad Shalit, is captured and taken back into Gaza.
* 28 June: Israel masses troops before launching a reoccupation of the Gaza Strip under the codename Operation Summer Rains. Civilian casualties mount as Israeli forces search the Khan Younis refugee camp for Cpl Shalit.
* 12 July: Mimicking the tactics of Palestinian militants, Hizbollah launches mortars and rockets into northern Israel from southern Lebanon to divert attention from a cross-border raid that ambushes an Israeli military patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two others. The raid threatens to draw the whole Middle East into conflict.
* 13 July: International attention is diverted from Gaza as Israel launches a full military invasion of southern Lebanon in response to Hizbollah's attack. The mounting civilian death toll across Gaza pales in comparison to Lebanon as Israeli jets pummel infrastructure.
* 24 July: As world powers frantically search for a UN-backed ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel increases its bombardment of the Gaza Strip in an attempt to force Palestinian militants to release Cpl Shalit. Under the codename Operation Samson's Pillars, Israeli jets pound Gaza's roads and buildings, including the power station.
* 14 August: UN approves a ceasefire for Lebanon after four weeks of fighting which has left approximately 1,500 Lebanese and 150 Israelis dead. International community continues to ignore the conflict in Gaza over fears that Lebanon could slip back into warfare unless a UN peacekeeping force arrives in the region.
* Mid-August-present: Israel continues to carry out air strikes and raids in Gaza. At least 33 civilians have been killed since the beginning of August, 10 of whom were under the age of 18.
Names of children under the age of 18 killed during the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza since 25 June, according to the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights
Bara Nasser Habib, 3 (hit by shrapnel to the head and body, Gaza City, 26 July)
Shahed Saleh Al-Sheikh Eid, 3 days old (bled to death after airstrike, Al-Shouka, 4 August)
Rajaa Salam Abu Shaban, 3 (died of fractured skull in air raid, Gaza City, 9 August)
Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by a shell, Al-Shoukha, 10 september)
Khaled Nidal Wahba, 15 months (died of wounds from an airstrike, 10 July)
Rawan Farid Hajjaj, 6 (killed with his mother and sister in an airstrike, Gaza City, 8 July)
Anwar Ismail Abdul Ghani Atallah, 12 (shot in the head, Erez, 5 July)
Shadi Yousef Omar 16 (shot in the chest by IDF, Beit Lahya, 7 July)
Mahfouth Farid Nuseir, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
Ahmad Ghalib Abu Amsha, 16, (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
Ahmad Fathi Shabat, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
Walid Mahmoud El-Zeinati, 12 (died of shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 11 July)
Basma Salmeya, 16 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)
Somaya Salmeya, 17 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)
Aya Salmeya, 9 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Yehya Salmeya, 10 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Nasr Salmeya, 7 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Huda Salmeya, 13 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Eman Salmeya, 12 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Raji Omar Jaber Daifallah, 16 (died of shrapnel wounds from missile, Gaza City, 13 July)
Ali Kamel Al-Najjar, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)
Ahmed Ali Al-Na'ami, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)
Ahmed Rawhi Abu Abdu, 14 (killed by drone missile, Al Nusairat refugee camp, 19 July)
Mohammed 'awad Muhra, 14 (killed by Israeli bullet to the chest, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 20 July)
Fadwa Faisal Al-'arrouqi, 13 (died from shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 20 July)
Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)
Khitam Mohammed Rebhi Tayeh, 11 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)
Ashraf 'abdullah 'awad Abu Zaher 14 (shot in the back, Khan Younis, 25 July)
Nahid Mohammed Fawzi Al-Shanbari, 16 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 31 July)
'aaref Ahmed Abu Qaida, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 1 August)
Anis Salem Abu Awad, 12 (killed by airstike, Al-Shouka, 2 August)
Ammar Rajaa Al-Natour, 17 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
Kifah Rajaa Al-Natour, 15 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
Ibrahim Suleiman Al-Rumailat, 13 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
Ahmed Yousef 'abed 'aashour, 13 (killed by missile fire, Beit Hanoun, 14 August)
Mohammed 'abdullah Al-Ziq, 14 (killed by drone missile, Gaza City, 29 August)
Nidal 'abdul 'aziz Al-Dahdouh, 14 (killed by rifle fire, Gaza City, 30 August)
Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Rafah, 10 September)
White House press secretary Dana Perino flatly rejected the idea that the Knesset remark was aimed in any way at Obama. The remark is fairly typical for Bush speeches, and Gordon Johndroe, a national security spokesman for the president, said the president was referring to "a wide range of people who have talked to or suggested we talk to Hamas, Hezbollah or their state sponsors" over a long period of time.
One such person most recently was former President Carter, who held talks with Hamas leaders, prompting criticism from Bush officials.
Still, even as the White House said Bush meant no dig at the Democrat, Perino couldn't resist the opportunity to get in a small one.
"I understand when you're running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you. That is not always true. And it is not true in this case," she said.
In Columbus, Ohio, the GOP's nominee-in-waiting, John McCain, told reporters he took Bush at his word that he wasn't referring to Obama — but he also used the opportunity to portray Obama as naive, inexperienced and lacking judgment.
Said McCain: "This does bring up an issue that we will be discussing with the American people and that is why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama, want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?"
Obama says he would meet with heads of state in places like Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Rival Hillary Rodham Clinton says those meetings could be used for propaganda and her first response will be outreach through other diplomatic channels.
The number of registered Republicans nationwide is now < 16% of the general population. This overly noisy and obnoxious minority is responsible for one of the most catastrophic political, financial and military collapses in US history. Blunder after blunder piled on top of mismanagement and overt corruption has taken the republicans to the brink of destruction.
And it appears that there is nothing left of the preening self-important republican ass-kissers here on craigslist - like JG (remember him?) - except a few prancing propaganda jackasses selling lies and smears for the GOP.
oh yes - Obama is a muslim. sure sure sure. Obama is a commie. sure sure sure. go take a nap. its over. the fascist neocon revolution FAILED and you best leave town, lest your own personal Mussolini moment comes a-knocking on your door.
We gained this wound because our mothers, idealized in modern culture (since now we believed men were responsible for the evil in the world), abused us in feminine ways without our recognizing it as abuse. And with feminine forms of abuse unrecognized, there was no stigma or consequence to mothers for such abuse. Indeed, like the German fathers, they believed that their words and actions were good parenting. And, just as German mothers feared to stand up to the physically abusive fathers, so modern fathers are ashamed to stand up to psychologically abusive mothers. The damage to the soul of the child remains unrecognized. And, with no public consciousness of the destructiveness of such forms of abuse, there is little possibility for large numbers of people to recover as adults. Our mother wound today remains massive, universal, and unhealed.
What is this feminine abuse? It is the separation of the child from his or her trust in their own mind, their own feelings. It is the substitution of the mother's self-serving, subjective determination of right and wrong, of guilt and innocence, for a repeatable, objective standard. It is the crushing of natural emotional expression in the child because such expression is felt by the mother to be distasteful, distressing or inconvenient. As always in abuse, it is the exercise of coercive power in the interest of the exerciser, in this case the mother, and against the interest of the child. It is a form of what Anne Miller calls "poisonous pedagogy". She writes, "Since training in many cultures begins in infancy during the initial symbiotic relationship between mother and child, this early conditioning makes it virtually impossible for the child to discover what is actually happening to him. The child's dependence on his or her parents' love also makes it impossible in later years to recognize these traumatizations, which often remain hidden behind the early idealization of the parents for the rest of the child's life." 13
Archetypal feminine abuses are indirect (exercised through others such as the father or siblings), psychological or emotional ("you should be ashamed of yourself", or "stop your crying at once"), covert (often communicated by no more than a glance that says, "You're such a disappointment"), manipulative (you can't understand because you're not a woman/not an adult/etc.), and psychologically rather than physically incestuous ("let me tell you what your father is really like"). Such behaviour is seen as adequate parenting, not ideal perhaps, but not really harmful. Nowhere is it a criminal offense, as are the masculine forms of child abuse. Yet, I argue that it is at least as damaging as are the masculine abuses with which we are familiar, but that the wounds it produces are different. Fundamentally, it is built on the use of shame to control behaviour (as opposed to the dark masculine which uses fear for the same purpose). Where fear attacks the will, shame kills the soul. In her book Shame: Spiritual Suicide, Vicki Underland Rosow says that shame is systemic in our western culture, and gives examples of its use in religion, politics, education, helping professions, and science.
So we, in the West, because of our childrearing practice, possess a massive, ubiquitous, archetypally feminine wound in our psyches, of which we are unconscious, and which I call the mother wound. According to this thesis, then, we are ripe for the appearance of an evil feminine ideology to exploit this wound. This ideology is already among us, and its name is feminism.
Feminism Firstly, it is important to say to what I refer with the name feminism. A standard defense against any criticism of feminism is that it is no one thing, but many shades of beliefs and affiliations, such as liberal feminism, socialist or marxist feminism, radical feminism, ecofeminism, etc. Of course these branches exist, but this is irrelevant. Any ideology is identified by its basic tenets, which remain unchanged across all its variations, since it is they that unite the varieties under the one banner. In the case of feminism, all branches share the same basic belief that history has been a story of general oppression of women by men. Indeed, this is acknowledged by feminists as the essential, defining principle, for example, by Alison M. Jaggar and Paula Rothenberg Struhl in their book Feminist Frameworks, where they say, "... the conservative view of womenÕs situation in society is not feminist, because it denies that women are oppressed." 14
Further, I want to be very clear that it is not my intention, nor would I consider it valid, to indict feminism based on the words or actions of any radical elements or 'lunatic fringe'. Only the consistent messages of its major, acknowledged spokespersons and the major policies that it has pursued will be used here to build a case. My focus is on modern, mainstream feminism, which for brevity I will refer to simply as feminism. And, while my research indicates that the same phenomenon is operating throughout the Western world, I will confine my examples to North American feminism, since this is the area that I know best.
Feminism is an Evil Ideology If feminism is indeed an ideology which is exploiting a ubiquitous 'mother wound', then the forms it has taken will exactly match and repeat the feminine forms of child abuse, just as Nazism matched the German masculine mode. Is this the case? It is non-hierarchical: indeed, feminists make much of their peer-level, consensual processes, and there are no national or international 'heads' or chiefs of the feminist movement. Similarly, it is indirect, in that nowhere is there an overtly feminist legislature, university, law court or military, or even a female one. Rather, feminism exerts its power indirectly, having those in positions of power do its bidding without needing itself to hold those positions in order to achieve its aims. In this it operates exactly like the mother in post-war families, where the father's authority seems to be intact, yet it is the mother's will that rules.
Feminism is subjective rather than objective, driven by women's feelings about what is right--which exactly reflects the way that mothers decided what was right in modern families. In issues of law, where objectivity and repeatability are vital, feminism has successfully argued that any unwelcome or hostile feeling in a woman is to be regarded as establishing sexual harassment. And modern anti-stalking legislation discards hard-won fundamental freedoms such as equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, and rights to freedom of association and to property (for men) in order to ensure that "no one [is made to] feel afraid and unsafe in their own home or community" 15 (emphasis added). Extensive feminist writing on gender equality is simply rationalizations of women's feelings of inequality, for when analyzed carefully, modern feminist arguments always reveal themselves to be built not on objective gender equality but on female superiority. Even feminist philosophy, now founded in post-modern constructivism, standpoint theory and "women's ways of knowing", is essentially subjective.
Like post-war mothers, feminism portrays itself as the virtuous victim struggling to correct male injustices. Requests for change are never presented as simply, "Let's work together to achieve this goal ...", but always as grievances, as arguments that women are owed more money, more power, more rights, more ... consumption of society's production. The argument is always moral in nature, always filled with angst and outrage, and always favours women. Feminists do not mention the many ways that women enjoy gender advantage over men--except to deny their reality or their import--because they never feel any disadvantage but their own.
Finally, and most importantly, feminism gets its way through the inculcation of shame. Here is the lever, the engine of modern social control: a lever that can be operated only by or on behalf of women. For, when we were tiny, it was our mothers who convinced us that we were unworthy except when we pleased them, no good unless we had their approval. The deep sense of shame that was planted in the psyches of both boys and girls, that I call the mother wound, now provides the means for feminists to effectively control every area of social power. Male--and female--legislators, judges, academics, managers, all re-experience those intense feelings of shame and unworthiness they felt as children, when angry women say or imply that they are bad. Indeed, their whole lives have been built around reassuring themselves that they are worthy through good works, public accomplishment or financial success. However, none of these external defenses can stand for long against feminist shaming if the inner psyche still carries the mother wound, still gives to Woman the ultimate power to determine its worth.
Just how powerful is shame as a coercive technique? Powerful, wealthy men gave up their lives to save those of women and children on the Titanic in 1912. Why? Because of the shame they would feel as a coward, if they didn't. In wartime, average men will run directly into machine gun fire, knowing they will die a meaningless death, rather than face the shame they would feel if they fled the battle. Shame is the most intense psychological pain we can feel. We usually prefer to die. It's that big.
I have shown, very briefly, that the forms adopted by ideological feminism match those of modern, archetypally feminine child abuse. But does feminism meet the definition of an evil ideology? Let us see.
Firstly, does feminism seek unearned privilege--rights without responsibilities? A major plank of modern feminism from the beginning has been reproductive rights; specifically, a woman's right to abort an unwanted child. Has feminism sought to address the issues of others affected by this right, such as the fetus, the father or society? No, feminists have universally repudiated all responsibility to such others. They demandÑand have receivedÑthe unilateral right to abort an unborn child, or not, as they choose. (Note that this is a brand new right, and not one that men ever had.) In 1969, Betty Friedan said, "Only one voice needs to be heard on the question of whether a woman will or will not bear a child, and that is the voice of the woman herself: her own conscience, her own conscious choice." 16 Fetuses have no rights at all, since, feminists argue, "A woman's body, a woman's choice". This emotive, shaming slogan ignores all the ways that a fetus is unique from all other female body parts--for example that it can grow into a person, that it is the result of a sexual act with a man, and that it can be male or female--in favour of the obscuring argument that it is enclosed in and fed by the woman's body. And so we have the iniquitous situation that the father has no say in whether his offspring lives or dies, is not even required to be notified of the pregnancy, yet is legally obliged to support the child if the woman chooses to keep it--and whether he intended or wishes to be a father or not. And society, again with no say in the woman's choice, yet must foot the bills for welfare moms. Saying to a woman, "If you didn't want a child, you shouldn't have had sex" is met by feminists with howls of outrage and accusations of discrimination--yet this is exactly what those same feminists say to men in the same situation. Clearly, in women's area of traditional responsibility--reproduction--feminism wants no gender equality, but rather has sought and won rights for women and responsibilities for men.
In Canada, a feminist initiative of the moment is pay equity. A Human Rights Tribunal has ordered the federal government to pay approximately five billion dollars to (mostly) female government workers, because their work was "undervalued" with respect to that of men. This argument is totally fallacious. Unequal pay for equal work and discrimination in hiring (the real equality issues) have been illegal in North America for years. Any woman who wanted the higher paying 'male' work could have competed for it like the men. The fact is, salaries are set by market demand: where many people desire a particular kind of employment (such as clerical office work), the supply forces salaries down. And that's as it should be, since the price of production then represents the real costs. (Communist Russia went broke trying to make the market serve ideological goals.) What the pay equity advocates really want is the cushy, attractive office work they desire, and the higher salaries of the less desirable (hence higher paid) jobs. They want to be subsidised on the backs of others. They want to increase their consumption without any increase in their production. They want a legal entitlement to it. And they're getting it.
The third aspect of an evil ideology is the maintenance of an image of total and perpetual moral righteousness. Many of the examples already discussed have already made this apparent, so I will confine myself to exposing the basic strategies employed.
If one is pursuing goals (women's advantage) which must be disguised, then it is vital to have devices by which meaningful debate can be avoided or deflected. Feminism has three basic strategies for this: 1. Where there is a difference in society between men's and women's roles, ignore the real causes and present the difference always as evidence of male oppression and discrimination against women--and demand compensatory programs (e.g., abortion on demand, sexual harassment, pay equity, censorship of pornography, etc.). 2. Where there is no difference between men's and women's roles, or such differences as do exist already favour women, create biased studies and statistics to argue that women are disadvantaged. Claim that difference as evidence of male oppression and demand compensatory programs (e.g., women's health, violence against women). If necessary, introduce "violence against women and children" as an emotional trump card to shut down debate of the real issues. (e.g., allegations of child or wife abuse in child custody cases). 3. If anyone opposes or criticises feminist claims, silence or isolate them through shame, by accusing them of "backlash", i.e., of being opposed the equality of women in order to maintain their own selfish or oppressive behaviour. (Note that this also works against women, who are said to be "colonized" by the patriarchy.) Summary: Never, under any circumstances, yield the moral high ground. It seems that feminism, not love, means never having to say you're sorry! (e.g., the contortions that feminists are performing as they rationalize their support for Bill Clinton in the face of behaviour that, in anyone else, they would condemn. As, indeed, they condemned United States Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas for the alleged 'crime' of making suggestive or lewd personal comments in the workplace.)
Conclusion I have tried to sketch a picture of where I believe we are today, and how we got here. I want to finish with some words about where I think we are going.
What is the ultimate objective of modern feminism? Feminists sincerely believe that it is equality that they seek. But it is not. Because they are unconsciously acting out of the mother wound, their goal is to regress women to the state of childhood: i.e., rights without responsibilities, consumption without production. For men, they have the opposite objective: responsibilities without rights. People with responsibilities but no rights are slaves. We are currently headed, unconsciously but inevitably, for a world in which women are children and men are slaves. Not until we recognize the truth of this and recoil in horror as a whole culture, will we wake up from this nightmare.
The situation is very grave, but the real war has not yet begun. We are still appeasing feminists, trying to give them enough of what they want so that we won't have to confront them in their power, much as the allies did with Hitler in 1936-39. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. In fact, as then, it will lead to disaster.
The coming war is unavoidable. At a psychological level, we have to take women off the pedestal, and we won't do that as a culture until we see the evil that they do, as we already have with men. But we are very attached to idealizing women. 'Motherhood' is our last great god(dess), and so it will take massive suffering before we will be willing to see women's dark side and let them be fully human.
The war I refer to will not be a physical war--that would be an archetypal masculine form. Rather, it will be a spiritual war, a war about meaning and life purpose and what is true. It will need not physical soldiers, but people who have done their own healing and become emotionally and morally strong, who are recovering from being controlled through shame. In the short term, I believe that we will see increasing levels of violence and delinquency as traditional social restraints break down, increasingly strident claims that it is all the fault of men, ever-greater penalization of men and 'protection' of women and children, and rising levels of psychological distress, despair and suicide. Feminism will become ever more virulent and radical. We will know that we have won, that we are beginning to emerge from it when anger and fear finally turn to grief, when we see massive grief across our whole culture, grief at what we have done, at what we have allowed to happen to our children and to ourselves.
I can only guess how long this process will take: probably at least twenty years. Comparing it to the situation in Nazi Germany, two things stand out. The first is that the mother wound is deeper than the father wound, because our relationship with out mother is the first and deepest relationship we make. That, of course, is why we did the father work first--it was easier. And so the working out of the mother wound will be harder and more distressing, and perhaps require more suffering before we are finished with it. And the second thing is that there are no "allies" waiting in the wings to save us. We must do what Nazi Germany was unable to do: we must find the resources to recognizze and to battle this evil from within our own culture, even while still possessed and blinded by the power of our mother wound. I don't know how we will do it, but I see no alternative.
I realize, as I write these words, that most will deny them, that it is no small thing for us to recognize the truth about the system that we are immersed in. It is as difficult as recognizing the truth about our families. Indeed, it is recognizing the truth about our families. This is not comfortably remote, like Nazism is now for most of us, but archetypally powerful in our psyches right now. It is significant, perhaps, that there was no effective resistance to Nazism within Germany, from the beginning to the end of the Third Reich. Consider what that means. Despite all of the atrocities, the loss of personal freedoms, the social and political abuses, and the massive financial and personal costs of the war, Nazism yet enjoyed apparent popular support throughout Germany until the end. Clearly, it satisfied a vital need. That is the kind of challenge that I believe we are facing.
I want to end on a more positive note. On the other side of this challenge lies cultural maturity, social consciousness. The mother wound is the last ubiquitous psychological wound. When it, too, is healed, we will, for the very first time in all of history, be conscious as a culture of all the forms of archetypal childhood abuse, and their consequences in later life. We will work out and recover from our shame issues just as we do now with our physical and sexual abuse issues, and we will begin, for the first time ever, to transact consciously rather than codependently with each other as the general pattern of social intercourse. What forms of government, of entertainment, of social discourse we will then create and enjoy, I can hardly imagine. I probably won't be alive to see it. But I intend to live to help it come to pass.
References --
1 King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, Harper Collins 1990, p.9.
2 Collected Works #9, Carl Gustav Jung, Bollinger, paragraph 99.
3 The Psychology of the Unconscious, 1916, Carl Gustav Jung, in Collected Works #7, Bollinger, pp.60, 74.
4 Introduction to M. Esther Harding, WomenÕs Mysteries, Carl Gustav Jung, in Collected Works #18, Bollinger.
5 A Blue Fire: Selected Writings, James Hillman, Harper Collins, N.Y., 1991, p.24.
7 For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence, Alice Miller, pub. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, N.Y., 1983, p.146.
8 The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness, Alice Miller, Doubleday, 1990, p.54.
9 Liberating the Heart: Spirituality and Jungian Psychology, Lawrence W. Jaffe, Inner City Books, Toronto, 1990, p.112.
10 The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth, M. Scott Peck, Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, NY, 1978, p.278.
12 ÒMale and Masculine: An Interview with Robert A JohnsonÓ by Bert Hoff, in MenÕs Voices: A Quarterly Journal, Vol 1 #3, Summer/Fall Ô98, The WhiteRock Alternative, Seattle, WA, p23.
13 For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence, Alice Miller,Farrar/Strauss/Giroux, NY, 1983, p.4.
14 Feminist Frameworks, Alison M. Jaggar & Paula Rothenberg Struhl, McGraw-Hill, 1978, p.69.
15 ÒManitoba Legislation on Stalking and Domestic ViolenceÓ by David Shackleton, in Everyman: A MenÕs Journal, #34, Nov/Dec Ô98, Ottawa, ON, p55.
16 ÒAbortion: A WomanÕs Civil RightÓ speech by Betty Friedan to the First National Conference for Repeal of Abortion Laws, Chicago, 1969, in It Changed My Life:Writings on the WomenÕs Movement, Betty Friedan, Random House 1976, p123.
17 Canadian Supreme Court ÒButlerÓ decision, 1992.
David Shackleton is a thinker and writer on gender, and editor and publisher of Everyman: A Men's Journal. He specifically requests comments and correspondence about the ideas and arguments in this essay, as he is now expanding this thesis into a book. Contact him at PO Box 4617, Stn. E, Ottawa, ON K1S 5H8. E-mail: editor@everyman.org - http://www.everyman.org
WHAT IF 20 MILLION ILLEGALS VACATED? The sad thing about this notion is that there’s much more likely to be 38 million illegals here now. Clinton’s CHAIN MIGRATION would permit 272 additional family members over the border for everyone she or Obama give amnesty.
Of course they’re working on AMNESTY without saying the “A” word. Such as driver’s licenses which is a defacto citizenship. No papers, no waiting in lines, no fines, no back taxes and no learning stupid gringo English. Just go from state to state like you’re here to stay! But then they are! WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE SYSTEM...
IF THE MEXICANS WERE SENT PACKING through policies of ATTRITION...
HILLARY’S IS.... “THERE’S NO ILLEGAL WOMEN IN NEVADA!.... WALL STREET SAYS SO!”..... ACTUALLY 25% OF THE POPULATION OF NEVADA IS ILLEGAL!
BARACK OBAMA COMES TO SANCTUARY CITY LOS ANGELES WHERE THE DAY BEFORE, ONCE AGAIN, MEXICAN GANGS WERE “ETHNICALLY CLEANSING” THEIR DRUG MARKETS, i.e., MURDERING BLACKS AND ALL OBAMA HAD TO SAY WAS SI, SI TO DRIVER’S LICENSE AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS’ VOTES!
States with the highest number of foreclosed homes, are also states overrun with illegals. Las Vegas has one of the highest rates of foreclosures. Harry “La Raza” Reid’s state of Nevada is now 24% illegal and breeding fast!
Sanctuary city and county of Los Angeles would save nearly 40 million PER MONTH on welfare to illegals. There are now nearly 1000 Mexican gang related murders in Los Angeles that cost almost a million each to prosecute. These gangs have spread all over the state. Add that to the cost of the Mexican crime wave, prison jails costs, stolen cars, uninsured driver deaths and the figure is mighty impressive. No wonder Mexico sends their poor over our border!
Where do we send our poor? Every year there are 1.5 million illegals walk right over our borders, many right to the hospital to give birth at your cost. Every year there are 1.5 million Americans that fall into poverty. There are millions facing foreclosure as wages for Americans have been depressed 200 billion per year due to the Mexican occupation.
Tina Griego, journalist for the Denver Rocky Mountain News wrote a column titled, 'Mexican Visitor's Lament' -- 10/25/07.
She interviewed Mexican journalist Evangelina Hernandez while visiting Denver last week. Hernandez said, 'They (The illegal aliens) pay rent, buy groceries, buy clothes...What Happens to your country's economy if 20 million people go away?' That's a good question - it deserves an answer.
Over 80 percent of Americans demand secured borders and illegal migration stopped. But what would happen if all 20 million or more vacated America? The answers may surprise you!
In California, if 3.5 million illegal aliens moved back to Mexico, it would leave an extra $10.2 billion to spend on overloaded school systems, bankrupt hospitals and overrun prisons. It would leave highways cleaner, safer and less congested. Everyone could understand one another as English became the dominant language again.
In Colorado, 500,000 illegal migrants, plus their 300,000 kids and grand-kids - would move back 'home', mostly to Mexico. That would save Coloradans an estimated $2 billion (other experts say $7 billion) annually in taxes that pay for schooling, medical, social-services and incarceration costs. It means 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver alone. Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs, and the terror that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens. Denver Officer Don Young and hundreds of Colorado victims would not have suffered death, accidents, rapes and other crimes by illegals. Denver Public Schools would not suffer a 67 percent drop-out/flunk-out rate because of thousands of illegal alien students speaking 41 different languages. At least 200,000 vehicles would vanish from our gridlocked cities in Colorado. Denver 's four percent unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage.
In Florida, 1.5 million illegals would return the Sunshine State back to America, the rule of law, and English.
In Chicago, Illinois, 2.1 million illegals would free up hospitals, schools, prisons and highways for a safer, cleaner and more crime-free experience.
If 20 million illegal aliens returned 'home' the U.S. Economy would return to the rule of law. Employers would hire legal American citizens at a living wage. Everyone would pay their fair share of taxes because they wouldn't be working off the books. That would result in an additional $401 Billion in IRS income taxes collected annually, and an equal amount for local, state and city coffers. No more push '1' for Spanish or '2' for English. No more confusion in American schools that now must contend with over 100 languages that degrade the educational system for American kids. Our overcrowded schools would lose more than two million illegal alien kids at a cost of billions in ESL and free breakfasts and lunches. We would lose 500,000 illegal criminal alien inmates at a cost of more than $1.6 billion annually. That includes 15,000 MS-13 gang members who distribute $130 billion in drugs annually would vacate our country.
In cities like L.A., 20,000 members of the ' 18th Street Gang' would vanish from our nation. No more Mexican forgery gangs for ID theft from Americans! No more foreign rapists and child molesters! Losing more than 20
million people would clear up our crowded highways and gridlock. Cleaner air and less drinking and driving American deaths by illegal aliens!
America's economy is drained. Taxpayers are harmed. Employers get rich. Over $80 billion annually wouldn't return to the aliens' home countries by cash transfers. Illegal migrants earned half that money untaxed, which further drains America's economy – which currently suffers an $8.7 trillion debt. At least 400,000 anchor babies would not be born in our country, costing us $109 billion per year per cycle. At least 86 hospitals in California, Georgia and Florida would still be operating instead of being bankrupt out of existence because illegals pay nothing via the EMTOLA Act. Americans wouldn't suffer thousands of TB and hepatitis cases rampant in our country-brought in by illegals unscreened at our borders. Our cities would see 20 million less people driving, polluting and grid locking our cities. It would also put the 'progressives' on the horns of a dilemma; illegal aliens and their family’s cause 11 percent of our greenhouse gases.
Over one million of Mexico 's poorest citizens now live inside and along our border from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California in what the New York Times called, 'colonias' or new neighborhoods. Trouble is, those living areas resemble Bombay and Calcutta where grinding poverty, filth, diseases, drugs, crimes, no sanitation and worse. They live without sewage, clean water, streets, electricity, roads or any kind of sanitation. The New York Times reported them to be America’s new ' Third World ' inside our own country. Within 20 years, at
their current growth rate, they expect 20 million residents of those colonias. (I've seen them personally in Texas
and Arizona; it's sickening beyond anything you can imagine.) By enforcing our laws, we could repatriate them
back to Mexico. We should invite 20 million aliens to go home, fix their own countries and/or make a better life
in Mexico. We already invite a million people into our country legally more than all other countries combined
annually. We cannot and must not allow anarchy at our borders, more anarchy within our borders and growing
lawlessness at every level in our nation. It's time to stand up for our country, our culture, our civilization and our way of life.
Interesting Statistics. Here are 14 reasons illegal aliens should vacate America, and I hope they are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them:
1. $11 billion to $22 billion dollars are spent each year on welfare to illegal aliens.
2.$2.2 billion dollars are spent each year on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
3. $2.5 billion dollars are spent each year on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
4. $12 billion dollars are spent each year on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
5.$17 billion dollars are spent each year for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
6.$3 Million Dollars PER DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
7.30% percent of all federal prison inmates are illegal aliens.
8.$90 billion dollars are spent each year on illegal aliens for welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
9.$200 billion dollars per year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
10.The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.
11.During the year 2005, there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our southern border with as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from terrorist countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroine, and marijuana crossed into the U.S. from the southern border.
12.The National Policy Institute, estimates that the total cost of mass deportation would between $206 and $230 billion, or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.
13.In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
14.The dark side of illegal immigration: Nearly one million sex crimes are committed by illegal immigrants in the United States.
The total cost is a whopping $338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!!!
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The Emerging Third World U.S.
Francis Ferguson
OpEd News
February 26, 2008
I have an expression I present to my economics classes. It has a certain impact: the US is a third world nation, we just haven’t realized it yet. Our emerging status isn’t obvious. Products remain relatively cheap (energy excluded) despite the falling value of the dollar against most foreign currencies. But there are real signs.
Most Americans who are paying attention have noticed a long term decline in manufacturing jobs in the US. Quarter after quarter, year after year, the government reports job gains, but those gains are primarily in service industries: health care (we’re not talking doctors, here), restaurants and bars, retail trade and, until recently, construction. A close examination of the figures will usually reveal a decline in manufacturing jobs. This is not an accident.
The loss of American manufacturing jobs is largely the result of American firms moving their manufacturing off shore, to labor markets in which workers earn a tiny fraction of US wages. Once the globalization process began in earnest, it became impossible for many American firms to maintain US production even if the wished to. Keeping jobs here would render these firm uncompetitive as the rivals moved to take advantage of peasant wages in places like China , India and other developing nations.
Over the past 30 years, American manufacturing has moved offshore at an accelerating rate. Walk through any big box store (or any other for that matter) and look where things are made. Overwhelmingly, it’s China or other developing nations. The process is inexorable. With “Globalization” we have opened the world’s borders to free trade in goods and services. On the one hand, this has presented opportunities for US manufacturers to expand profits by shifting production to countries where wages are a tiny fraction of those in the United States. Goods made abroad can be sold at an attractive price in the US while still allowing producers to increase the difference between price and total cost, otherwise known a profit. Those companies with a sense of national pride and identity are, finally, forced to move some or all of their production offshore in order to survive.
Aside from the short term charm of finding bargains on the shopping rack, there are serious consequences here. Let’s look them. The first problem is the disappearance of the American “living wage”. The only reason Americans have managed to avoid confronting their declining real income per capita it by increasing the number of family members working. There was a time, in American mythology at least, when people accepted that one working family member could support 4 people at a reasonable standard of living. This was the vision of America Nixon and Krushchev debated, famously, at an exhibit of the postulated US living standards presented in the Soviet Union. This was the Ozzie and Harriet version of American life which was broadcast to the world and to the home audience as standard: the norm. It wasn’t, of course, but it was close enough to what middle America saw around them to be at least plausible. The incomes implicit in that early 1960’s view of American life may have improved until the early 1970’s (there was a war going on and war is always good for employment and incomes), but since that time statistics indicate that the real (inflation adjusted) incomes of American working people have actually declined.
Already, young people are finding no jobs, or a universe of job opportunities which pay poverty wages… This is a problem that is not going away. It’s going to get worse.
A revealing example of this is the February 12th 2008 decision by General Motors to offer buyouts to all 74,000 union hourly workers. This followed closely a similar action by Ford. This would include severance packages for all employees, varying in terms depending on years of service. Relatively new employee’s would get a lump sum payment for leaving and forfeiting all health and post retirement benefits. The new workers, waiting in the wings, will earn on average $16 and hour as opposed to the current average $28 an hour. That rounds to a 43% reduction in income, and little is revealed about what benefits these new workers will receive, or whether or not the will have union representation—though I expect they will. Here is an example of a central, traditional area of American employment were workers are moving from an average of $58,240 pre-tax per year to $33,280 pre-tax. Obviously, these people have a surprising readjustment to make. They’re just the prominent tip of the iceberg. Already, young people are finding no jobs, or a universe of job opportunities which pay poverty wages. It’s why so many young workers (and unemployed youngsters) live at home
ASK HILLARY ABOUT NAFTA! What would Hillary’s CHAIN MIGRATION do? Except quadruple the number of illiterate Mexican gang!
This is a problem that is not going away. It’s going to get worse. Several convergent forces are leading to US economic destabilization. One force driving this tragedy is free trade, also called globalization. One of the more profound spokesmen on this subject is Paul Craig Roberts an economist in the Reagan Administration who has written extensively on the topic and lends support to the argument that globalization is on the verge of ruining the US economy.
The loss of American manufacturing jobs is largely the result of American firms moving their manufacturing off shore, to labor markets in which workers earn a tiny fraction of US wages. Once the globalization process began in earnest, it became impossible for many American firms to maintain US production even if the wished to. Keeping jobs here would render these firm uncompetitive as the rivals moved to take advantage of peasant wages in places like China , India and other developing nations. Even signature American enterprises such as Boing are moving larger segments of their airliner manufacturing to other countries. The finished sub-assemblies for the 777 Dreamliner, for example, are flown to Seattle for final assembly. Highly skilled professionals, such as radiologists (medical doctors specializing in interpreting X-rays) are finding their work sent via high speed communications to much lower paid radiologists in places like India. The effect of allowing the unimpeded flow of capital and goods and services between nations is precisely the same as allowing the free movement of people across borders. In the end, we will experience a relative equalization of wages, world wide. Obviously, those in the current Third World will find wages improving. With billions of impoverished workers waiting in the “wings”, US workers will find their wage declines much more starting and profound than the increases granted to the struggling poor of the developing world.
have financed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The ultimate point, here, is the absolute unsustainability of the US’s position. We cannot expect our trading partners to hold dollars in unlimited quantities, and as we’ve no hope of being able to achieve a positive balance of trade, that’s exactly what we are effectively seeking. That nations are cautiously moving out of dollar holdings is revealed by the rather steady overall decline in the value of the dollar over the past three years. This will continue.
With the falling dollar, rising import prices and declining wages and salaries for American workers, the US is headed for a radically different lifestyle. Until US wages fall far enough to make us competitive with workers in developing nations, our decline will continue. Globalization let this evil genie out of it’s bottle, and it’s not clear that anything can force it back.
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The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
ARRIVAL OF ALIENS OUTS U.S. WORKERS
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 10, 2006
An Alabama employment agency that sent 70 laborers and construction workers to job sites in that state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina says the men were sent home after just two weeks on the job by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for less.
Linda Swope, who operates Complete Employment Services Inc. in Mobile, Ala., told The Washington Times last week that the workers -- whom she described as U.S. citizens, residents of Alabama and predominantly black -- had been "urgently requested" by contractors hired to rebuild and clear devastated areas of the state, but were told to leave three job sites when the foreign workers showed up.
"After Katrina, our company had 70 workers on the job the first day, but the companies decided they didn't need them anymore because the Mexicans had arrived," Mrs. Swope said. "I assure you it is not true that Americans don't want to work.
"We had been told that 270 jobs might be available, and we could have filled every one of them with men from this area, most of whom lost their jobs because of the hurricane," she said. "When we told the guys they would not be needed, they actually cried ... and we cried with them. This is a shame." Mrs. Swope said employment agencies throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi faced similar problems, when thousands of men from Mexico and several Central and South American countries -- many in crowded buses and trucks -- came into the three states after Katrina, looking for employment and willing to work for less money.
The number of foreign workers who flooded the area after the hurricane has been estimated at more than 30,000. Many of them have been identified by law-enforcement authorities and others as illegal aliens.
The Gulf Coast Latin American Association noted in a report that whether those workers will remain after the cleanup work is completed is not clear, but the longer those jobs last, the more likely it is that the workers will settle permanently. After Hurricane Andrew hit southeastern Florida in 1992, the association said, the construction boom attracted large numbers of Hispanic immigrants to several areas, including Homestead, Fla., where the Latino population doubled during the 1990s.
Many of the illegal aliens came into the Gulf Coast states not only from south of the border but also from California, Arizona and Texas, responding to the demand for workers. U.S. Border Patrol officials in the three states have reported an increase in the number of illegals apprehended.
Some of the migrants who did get jobs in the Gulf states also were mistreated, records show. Two class-action lawsuits are pending in federal court in New Orleans in which thousands of migrant workers said they never were paid, although many worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week and were required to remove toxic contamination from hurricane-ravaged buildings.
Some of the named companies were working on contracts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government agencies.
Government estimates put at 400,000 the number of jobs lost in the Gulf region as a result of Katrina, which displaced more than 1.5 million people, and many of those workers left the area to seek employment elsewhere because available construction, laborer and cleanup jobs in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi had been filled by foreign workers, including illegal aliens.
President Bush last week signed the Katrina Emergency Assistance Act of 2006, which extended for 13 weeks unemployment compensation benefits to more than 140,000 residents of the Gulf states who were displaced from their jobs by Katrina. Their benefits, funded by FEMA, had expired March 4.
Would-be employers in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, awash in cleanup and reconstruction jobs, faced little in the way of legal problems in hiring the illegal aliens after Katrina because the Department of Homeland Security temporarily suspended the sanctioning of employers who hired workers unable to document their citizenship.
Mr. Bush also had suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires local contractors to pay "prevailing" wages, in the areas hit by Katrina to encourage reconstruction and cleanup.
"The men we sent to jobs in Alabama were local fellows looking for work, men who needed jobs," Mrs. Swope said.
On the very day of a special election to fill a vacated congressional seat this week in Mississippi, The New York Times accused the Republican candidate of running racist ads against his Democratic opponent.
Talk about dirty tricks! By The New York Times, that is.
The Republican thus accused of racism narrowly lost the election the night the Times article appeared, so I guess the Times can proclaim: "Mission Accomplished."
The ad in question, on behalf of Republican Greg Davis, pointed out that Barack Obama had endorsed Davis' opponent, Travis Childers -- another in a long line of fake-American goobers claiming to be "conservative Democrats," but who get to Congress and promptly vote to ban guns, surrender in Iraq and fund full-term abortions.
These days, I guess you can call yourself a "conservative Democrat" if you refrain from being sworn into Congress with your hand on a Quran.
The ad showed a clip of Obama's pastor g-damning America and mentioned Obama's recent remarks ridiculing rural folks for clinging to guns. It then concluded that Childers "took Obama's endorsement over our conservative values."
The Republicans had also run ads connecting Childers with other Washington liberals, such as Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry. (Times editors are still looking for the racist angle to those ads.)
To call that ad racist is a monstrous libel. Greg Davis and the Mississippi Republicans should bring a defamation action against The New York Times -- although such an action might be perceived as "racist" because some black people work at the Times.
Republicans are constantly linking the local hayseed Democrat to national liberals like John Kerry. The technique goes back at least to Michael Dukakis in 1988.
It is beyond outrageous for liberals to complain about the practice of linking Democrats to the national party when their calculated strategy in race after race in the red states has been to run Democratic candidates who appear to be Americans. They're not Americans. They're liberals! I don't care how much hay is sticking out of their straw hats.
In the 2006 midterm elections, Sen. Chuck Schumer and erstwhile ballerina Rep. Rahm Emanuel (now there's a couple of raw-boned Americans for you!) famously rounded up yokels from the local square dance contests to run as "macho Dems" -- as the Times admiringly called them. Schumer and the ballerina were hailed for their brilliant strategy to fool the hayseeds.
The phony blue-collar Democrats won their elections by driving around in pickup trucks and shooting guns, then moved to Washington and began voting against war in Iraq and in favor of taxpayer-funded abortions.
One of the Democrats' paragons of regular guy-ness that year was Jon Tester of Montana, who wore cowboy boots and had a buzz cut. The crew cut absolutely transfixed liberals in places like Manhattan. Search "Jon Tester and crew cut" on Google, and you'll get more than 200,000 hits. Even this tonsorial affectation was a liberal fake-out, inasmuch as Tester has no military service.
After campaigning throughout Montana in a pickup truck, Tester got to Washington and compiled a voting record more liberal than Chuck Schumer's, according to the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (Tester: 95 percent; Schumer: 90 percent). Tester also has a 100 percent rating from the pro-abortion group NARAL. There's your truck driving, gun-totin' Democrat.
Sen. Bob Casey Jr. was another consumer fraud perpetrated on voters in 2006 by the Democrats. Casey ran for office on the strength of his father's name and his alleged pro-life position. It was the pro-life position of his father -- the popular Democratic governor of Pennsylvania -- that disqualified Casey Sr. from speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.
Despite rumors that Schumer had assured Hillary Clinton that Casey was not really pro-life, the good people of Pennsylvania made him their senator, throwing out Rick Santorum, the kind of pro-lifer who actually opposes abortion.
In Casey's first year in office, he voted in favor of an amendment to a foreign appropriations bill introduced by the fanatically pro-abortion Barbara Boxer that overturned U.S. policy against providing taxpayer money to groups that perform abortions overseas. It also granted overseas abortion providers taxpayer money. There's a "pro-life Democrat" for you.
In elections in the patriotic parts of the country, Democrats keep producing candidates that look like they're out of a Norman Rockwell painting but vote like Karl Marx -- which is to say, they vote like the typical member of the Democratic Party. Naturally, Republicans respond to this tactic by linking the local phonies to the national party.
As soon as the Democrats stop running these mountebanks, Republicans will stop exposing them as lickspittles for their liberal masters in Washington.
Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," and most recently, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans."
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Remember this key element, if you are not aware. The last Republican congress, with two weeks to go before the Democrats took over the majority, passed a modification of Marshall LAW. MOST DO NOT KNOW THIS....and Bush signed the bill into law. Why weren't the Democrats screaming? Have they ever screamed? No! Why not? The are protecting Pelosi and many many other Democrats for one thing, who the Bushies have so much dirt on, that if she did not rule out impeachment, they'd have enough to throw the lot into jail forever. This neocon Whitehouse plan was extremely well-oiled and thought out.
So this modified Marshall Law basically lets Bush declare it with virtually nothing to prove minus any dangers or threats....just his hunch. Best people read the congressional record on this law. It's there.
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So what doies this all mean? If Hilary or Obama are projected winners of an election in NOv., and the electronic machines can't do anything about it,
Bush /Chaney will indeed declare Marchall Law, cancelling the elections. This administration is laden with malignant megalomaniac narcissists (these are psychological terms known by psychiatrists and must be taken seriously), who will NOT give up power.
Looking beyond that, the Democrats have ZERo shot of overturning this Marchall Law's modification....the neocon majority Catholic Supreme Court's 5 member majority (the annionted ones) is a rubber stamp....so many have been greased in the pockets for this. It is an Illuminati vision. Read about this group running the world.
People here keep thinking 2004 would have fixed the country. Wrong. 2008 will not either.
There is more. If you look at the bigger picture in terms of the US Senate, this senate's minority, the Republicans, have been severe obstructionisists. They have filibustered more than 70 bills, refusing to allow even one vote be taken on any othf them, virtually stalling and congressional aid/programs for the country's majority democrats, for housing, roads, health care, the poor and middle class, other things. Obstructionist charges in court will would up in the same suprmeme court and get a Bush rubber stamp. It is high lawlessness in so many areas. and we people are virtually powerless.
Make no mistake, this plan which stemmed from Chaney's Project for America for a New Century, his 1990s far right wing think tank, also plans to eliminate 4.3 billion people from the planet. It was even on their website before people caught wind of this, and was removed.
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Also, and rarely considered, if Bush declares Marshall law, and Stevens, the old Democrat on the supreme court resigns, Bush will put ANOTHER NEOCON on that bench.
The Majoirty will then expand to 6 neocons, thereby making it veto-proof for his strict constructionist plans.
The idea is to undo the bill of rights in the constitution. The idea is to rid the USA of anyone whoi isn't one of the boys. The idea is that by going back to the ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTIONALIST PROVISIONS whe