U.S. Committed to Border Defense: For South Korea

The border between North and South Korea is about 160 Miles long. It is also heavily defended by about 28,600 American troops, walls, guns, searchlights, etc.

“The Mexico – United States border … runs from San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east, and traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from major urban areas to inhospitable deserts. From the Gulf of Mexico it follows the course of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) to the border crossing at El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; westward from that binational conurbation it crosses vast tracts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert, the Colorado River Delta, westward to the binational conurbation of San Diego and Tijuana before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

The border’s total length is 3,169 km (1,969 miles), according to figures given by the International Boundary and Water Commission.[1] It is the most frequently crossed international border in the world, with about 250 million people crossings every year. (Source)

North Korea has about 238 United States soldiers per mile along its border, plus the South Korean army.

“Currently, the U.S. Border Patrol employs over 20,200 agents (as of the end of fiscal year 2009), who are specifically responsible for patrolling the 6,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian international land borders and 2,000 miles of coastal waters surrounding the Florida Peninsula and the island of Puerto Rico. Agents are assigned primarily to the Mexico–United States border, where they are assigned to control drug trafficking and illegal immigration. Patrols on horseback have made a comeback since smugglers have been pushed into the more remote mountainous regions, which are hard to cover with modern tracking strategies.” (Source)

For those of you keeping score at home, that is about 2.5 INS Agents (soldiers) per mile. South Korea has 238 American soldiers per mile to defend its borders. We get 2.5 American soldiers per mile to defend ours. But wait, there’s more! Obama has just committed an additional 1200 National Guard troops to border protection. This raises the number to 2.65 soldiers per mile. If only Arizona had the the same lobbyists as South Korea!

Read The Rest At Orwell's Dreams

Will PETA Protest Itself?

When British entrepreneur Simon Buckhaven invented an electric gizmo that kills lobsters and crabs “more humanely” than the traditional method of dispatching the creatures—in a pot of boiling water—no one was surprised to see People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) jump on the bandwagon. But the “CrustaStun,” which looks a bit like a lobster photocopier, may be one contraption the animal liberation nuts wish they’d never heard of.

Last weekend, PETA arranged for a CrustaStun to be sent to a Tucson fundraiser for Child & Family Resources. The charity has prepared its “Lobster Landing” dinners the old fashioned way for years, but PETA hoped to usher in a new era of electrocution—presumably so they could protest the event next year with “Don’t Taze Me” posters and a comically demonic “Electric Chair Louie” mascot.

PETA’s crustacean triumph didn’t exactly go as planned. Here’s how Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Chronicle Herald described the eventual dispatching of 1,800 lobsters:

The animal rights group PETA bought two of the lobster devices and paid for Mr. Buckhaven and his wife to fly to the Arizona event last Saturday to demonstrate the technology.

Unfortunately, the courier service lost the two machines and the animal rights people had to look the other way as volunteers killed hundreds of lobster in boiling water for hungry supporters of the resource centre.

We’re left to wonder why, once the boiling started, the PETA activists didn’t make their point by tossing a few toasters and hair dryers in the water. Or inviting a “euthanasia technician” from PETA headquarters to make a deliciously efficient job of it.

Next year, we recommend lethal injection. With drawn butter.

Source: PETA Kills Animals

Exposing the charlatans at the Southern Poverty Law Center

The term "social engineering" never fit an entity better than it does the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This intrusive, tenacious organization has spent years attempting to recast and transform American society to fit its own peculiar ideals. Its directors are missionaries in the full sense of the word, in that they relentlessly work to stamp onto the hearts and minds of the public a distinctive belief system, which teaches what is evil and what is not.

This month, the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) has published an excellent analysis of the SPLC's attack on FAIR and other immigration reform groups, entitled, Guide to Understanding the Tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Immigration Debate." It offers much-needed insights. Besides giving the ordinary citizen an opportunity to view the insides of this "watchdog" group, the report should become a reference guide for members of the media, who generally take the easy way out when covering stories about race and/or immigration.

Reporters, editorialists, and feature writers are notorious for accepting, without further investigation, reams of data and materials disseminated to them by a cluster of self-appointed overseers of American society, among the most prominent, the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. [See also here and here.]

Thanks to the fawning acceptance granted them by the establishment media, these groups, and several more like them, have acquired an almost quasi-governmental status in the public mind. When they spread lies, there are few people who will risk inevitable public denigration and stand up to challenge them. In regard to the SPLC, FAIR's new report does just that.

FAIR was founded in 1979, and is the country’s largest immigration reform group. It has more than 250,000 members whose aims are to improve border security, stop illegal immigration, and promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest. Sensible immigration reform would enhance national security, improve the economy, preserve our environment, and protect jobs for American citizens.

Such goals have earned FAIR the designation of a "hate" group by the SPLC. Other immigration reform organizations also have incurred the wrath of the SPLC. They include, but are not limited to the two next largest groups, i.e., the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Numbers USA. These groups are reputable organizations that handle in a respectful manner what has become a volatile subject. Yet, the SPLC makes it clear that any individual or group that emphasizes the need for immigration reform of any kind is a "hater" and, hence, an enemy of American society.

Although the SPLC claims to take no position on immigration policy, for more than a decade it has acted as a bully by attacking citizens who even suggest that our borders should be monitored, or that the immigration population should be limited. According to the FAIR guide, "In countless articles and 'investigative reports,' the SPLC concluded that just about everyone actively opposed to amnesty and mass immigration was a 'nativist' a 'white supremacist,' or had ties to such groups and individuals."

The SPLC is well known for its ever-growing list of "hate groups" and individual "haters," often referred to as the SPLC's "hit list." Lacking an objective criteria for what constitutes "hate," the SPLC uses its own inscrutable standards. There are some hints, however, that point to a consistency in its multicultural emphasis. Not satisfied with customary, voluntary activity between races, its directors give the impression that they would like to engineer more aggressive policies, in order to bring about greater racial interaction.

In the SPLC's universe, race and how one deals with it, is an important component in determining who is good and who is bad. In order to put the full kibosh on perceived enemies, the SPLC will slap the "racist" tag on them, just for good measure. This was never clearer than in the case of the Mormon polygamous sect in Eldorado, Texas, where, last year, over 400 children were temporarily kidnapped by the government and removed from their parents. With all the troubles faced by these people in just trying to navigate around the intrusions by outsiders, while coping with a system they did not understand, the SPLC came along and declared the group "racist."

In trying to figure out the SPLC's bizarre intervention in this case, one might wonder if the charge of racism was based on the early history of the Mormon church (the sect still adheres to the church's early beliefs on race) or, given the SPLC's propensity for racial meddling, was the charge based on the fact that the men in this sect apparently had no colored wives? Might the lack of any bi-racial children disturb these diversity-minded social engineers?

SPLC leaders are relentless in their venomous attacks on those who they claim try to "retreat from the government and press." On the SPLC "hate" list, there are dozens of little religious groups that do not subscribe to establishment religion. Some believe in their group's special "chosenness" by the Deity. They each wish to have the freedom to worship in accord with their beliefs. You know, exercising the kind of freedom that Americans possessed in an earlier time – even to living separately, if they so determined – before it became mandatory to stay in view of the government and the press.

Groups like the ADL and SPLC, however, refuse to leave such gatherings alone. Instead, these religious sects (some with only a handful of members) are added to "hate" lists and brought to the attention of the public. Members of such faiths are suspect, not for their peculiar doctrines, but because, according to the "watchdogs," no citizens should be allowed to operate on the outside or fringe of what is considered "mainstream" society. Outsiders who prefer to behave in such a manner are clearly not engaging in "inclusive" practices and, hence, could very well be haters of members of other groups and, therefore, "dangerous."

This is the heart of the SPLC philosophy that it conveys in its massive, annual fundraising mailings to thousands of subscribers, in which fearful scenarios are painted of a society ridden with racists, xenophobes, and potential domestic terrorists.

This month, black Professor Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, made the Southern Poverty Law Center's hit list. Deemed an "apologist for white supremacists" by SPLC's Mark Potok, Swain earned this ad hominem attack because she had dared to offer a favorable review of the documentary film, A Conversation About Race. [See my review here.]

The film, produced by Craig Bodeker, is focused on interviews with a diverse group of people of various ages and ethnic backgrounds. They each get to offer their opinions on the racism that they supposedly observe in the world around them. It is Bodeker's suspicion that genuine racism in today's America is a "myth." Many of the responses offered by the interviewees in this film inadvertently appear to confirm this suspicion. In spite of the SPLC's attempt to shame her, Professor Swain stands by her assertion that Bodeker's film would be useful in classrooms to stimulate honest discussions on the subject of race.

Those who are familiar with the history of the SPLC know that this organization does not seek honesty. Like its other counterparts, it is determined to remain entrenched in its self-appointed role as caretaker and guardian of Americans' thoughts and social habits. Professor Swain is yet another target to have encountered the SPLC's tactic of character assassination. In the coming days we will learn to what extent it will follow through with its usual "link and smear" maneuvers and poisonous press releases. (Of course, as a vocal critic of open borders immigration policies, Swain could never win the approval of the SPLC.)

The FAIR guide cites several investigative articles that have been done on the SPLC. They include critical pieces in The Nation magazine, Harper's magazine, and the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser newspaper. Each describes how the SPLC skews, exaggerates and manipulates data to fit its biased perspectives on race, along with information about its questionable fundraising tactics.

As the FAIR guide suggests, an honest analysis of the immigration issue is possible if, after receiving press releases and other data from SPLC directors, journalists would feel obligated to test the accuracy of their information, question their motives, seek out responses to their allegations about other citizens and, most primary, distinguish between advocacy and news reporting.

Source: Issues and Views

Frederick Douglass on Cheap Labor

Below is an article by Frederick Douglass from the August 17, 1871 issue of his newspaper, "The New National Era." America had its cheap labor lobby back in 1871, and it has one today in the form of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ImmigrationWorks, and Bill Gates himself testifying before Congress for more H-1B visas. Frederick Douglass attacked the cheap-labor lobby's "fair-seeming phrases" immediately in the first sentence. We all know that today's cheap labor lobby has similar "fair-seeming phrases" that I will not repeat here since they are all over the mainstream media. The issues that deeply concerned Frederick Douglass in 1871 are very relevant today.

Note 1: In 1996, the Center for Immigration Studies published an excellent historical review of the thoughts of African-Americans on immigration. Click here to view it.
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Cheap Labor
by Frederick Douglass

How vast and bottomless is the abyss of meanness, cruelty, and crime sometimes concealed under fair-seeming phrases. Take the one we have made the caption of this article as an illustration. Ostensibly the demand for cheap labor is made in the interest of improvement and general civilization. It tells of increased wealth and of marvellous transformations of the old and the worthless into the new and valuable. It speaks of increased travelling facilities and larger commercial relations; of long lines of railway graded, and meandering canals constructed; of splendid cities built, and flourishing towns multiplied; of rich mines developed, and useful metals made abundant; of capacious ships on every sea abroad, and of amply cultivated fields at home; in a word, it speaks of national prosperity, greatness, and happiness. Alas! however, this is but the outside of the cup and the platter--the beautiful marble without, with its dead men's bones within.

Cheap Labor, is a phrase that has no cheering music for the masses. Those who demand it, and seek to acquire it, have but little sympathy with common humanity. It is the cry of the few against the many. When we inquire who are the men that are continually vociferating for cheap labor, we find not the poor, the simple, and the lowly; not the class who dig and toil for their daily bread; not the landless, feeble, and defenseless portion of society, but the rich and powerful, the crafty and scheming, those who live by the sweat of other men's faces, and who have no intention of cheapening labor by adding themselves to the laboring forces of society. It is the deceitful cry of the fortunate against the unfortunate, of the idle against the industrious, of the taper-fingered dandy against the hard-handed working man. Labor is a noble word, and expresses a noble idea. Cheap labor, too, seems harmless enough, sounds well to hear, and looks well upon paper.

But what does it mean? Who does it bless or benefit? The answer is already more than indicated. A moment's thought will show that cheap labor in the mouths of those who seek it, means not cheap labor, but the opposite. It means not cheap labor, but dear labor. Not abundant labor, but scarce labor; not more work, but more workmen. It means that condition of things in which the laborers shall be so largely in excess of the work needed to be done, that the capitalist shall be able to command all the laborers he wants, at prices only enough to keep the laborer above the point of starvation. It means ease and luxury to the rich, wretchedness and misery to the poor.

The former slave owners of the South want cheap labor; they want it from Germany and from Ireland; they want it from China and Japan; they want it from anywhere in the world, but from Africa. They want to be independent of their former slaves, and bring their noses to the grindstone. They are not alone in this want, nor is their want a new one. The African slave trade with all its train of horrors, was instituted and carried on to supply the opulent landholding inhabitants of this country with cheap labor; and the same lust for gain, the same love of ease, and loathing of labor, which originated that infernal traffic, discloses itself in the modern cry for cheap labor and the fair-seeming schemes for supplying the demand. So rapidly does one evil succeed another, and so closely does the succeeding evil resemble the one destroyed, that only a very comprehensive view can afford a basis of faith in the possibility of reform, and a recognition of the fact of human progress.

In our paper last week we took occasion to say a word of the ``Coolie Trade'' now prosecuted in the interest of cheap labor, and as kindred in character and results to the African slave trade of other days. Our reading on the subject since that writing, shows the points of resemblance between the two schemes to be more striking than they at that time appeared, and the coolie trade but little behind its predecessor in every species of baseness and cruelty.

It is now three centuries since the first recognition of the slave trade by our authority in England. It was during the reign of the great Queen Elizabeth, in 1562, and it is remarkable that the great princess, while sustaining the scheme in furtherance of cheap labor, professed great abhorrence of bringing away the Africans without their ``consent.'' According to her the Negroes came (to use a soft phrase of the American Colonization Society) to be colonized with ``their own consent.'' The same scrupulous regard for the rights of volition appears in the contracts and schemes by which Coolies are transported from India, China, and other parts of the globe. What all these pretensions were worth in regard to the African slave-trader, the history of that traffic as told by Thomas Clarkson and by a thousand witnesses, has abundantly shown.

The trade of the slave-trader across the sea was a track of blood. Her wake drew into it a procession of hungry sharks to feast upon human flesh, diseased, dead, and dying. The slaves were literally stowed between decks, without regard to health, comfort, or decency. The great thought of captains, owners, consignees, and others, was to make the most money they could in the shortest possible time. Human nature is the same now as then. The Coolie Trade is giving us examples of this unchanged character. The rights of a Coolie in California, in Peru, in Jamaica, in Trinidad, and on board the vessels bearing them to these countries, are scarcely more guarded than were those of the Negro slaves brought to our shores a century ago. The sufferings of these people while in transit are almost as heart-rending as any that attended the African slave trade. For the manner of procuring Coolies, for the inhumanity to which they are subjected, and of all that appertains to one feature of this new effort to supply certain parts of the world with cheap labor, we cannot do better than to refer our readers to the quiet and evidently truthful statement in another column of one of the Coolies rescued from the ship Dolores Ugarte, on board which ship six hundred Coolies perished by fire, deserted and left to their fate by captain and crew.

Source: Numbers USA