R.P. Barr

9/11 and the future of Islam

Today marks not only the ninth anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, but also Eid ul-Ftir, which is the biggest holiday on the Islamic calendar.  Eid is a three-day celebration at the end of Ramadan when Muslims fast all day, every day for a month.  The holiday moves every year, sometimes it coincides with Christmas, sometimes with Easter, and at everyplace in between.  This year the holiday concludes on 9/11.  This is unfortunate, because it has forced many American mosques to cut back on their festivities out of fear that some non-Muslims would accuse them of celebrating the 2001 tragedy.

Despite George W. Bush’s repeated insistence at the time that Islam as a religion was not to blame for the attacks, he made the grievous—some would say calculated—error of treating the mass murder like an act of war.  Only nations can engage in war, and al-Qaeda did not have that standing,  The attack was a criminal act, and should have been labeled as such.  It was wrong to elevate a band of terrorists to nation-equivilance.  Now, here we are.

 With misunderstanding poisoning the air already, I thought this might be a good time to speculate on the future. 

 The first hard fact is that Muslim populations are growing.  Western populations are stabilizing or falling.  The amount of potable fresh water in the world is declining.  People who live in places that are historically dry are already migrating to places with more rainfall and fresh water resources--not to mention jobs and political freedom.

 The Middle East, the land of Arabs, Persians and Turks, was once the scientific center of the world.  There was also a vast Ottoman Empire the stretched from Caspian Sea to the Horn of Africa, from Hungary to Algeria.  Islam was embraced by people from China to Spain.  Then came the crusades, with the lesson that education is less important than religious solidarity and military might.  The empire deteriorated and the momentum of scientific achievement moved across the Mediterranean to Europe.

There are those in the Muslim world, al-Qaeda among them, who would like to see their empire rise again.  Waves of babies and immigrants will cause a number of changes, but they are not going to bring about a new empire to counterbalance the West.

 To create a pan-Islamic empire, first, Muslims have to stop killing each other.  In the old empire, everything was ruled by a Sultan who was also Caliph.  As sultan, he managed secular affairs, and as caliph, he was the leader of the faith.  With todays hardened sects, who would lead Islam? A Sunni or a Shiite or something else?  Until the warring parties can unite and declare that all Muslims are Muslims, there will not be an empire.

 They will also have to stop killing their women and their children.  Oppression of half the population is an incredible waste of human resources.  Independence of thought and action is not incompatible with Islam, but it is essential to modernization and the economic independence from the West. Education must be more secular than religious, including science, history and advanced mathmatics.  Muslims in the United States, Canada and Europe have proven that these goals can be achieved without destroying the faith.  Now, the Middle East must learn the same thing.

If these changes occur before the oil runs out, then a new Islamic empire can arise—if that’s what they really want.  Personally, I don’t see it happening.  Therefore, we had better learn to live together.

Waiting for Reality to Blink

I am old enough to remember a time when liberals were pie-in-the-sky delusional and conservatives staunch realists.  Remember world peace and flower power versus stay-in-school and the work ethic.  The positions on the reality scale have now reversed.  Who’d have thunk it?

One example is from NPR [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129305280], a little microcosm of the larger economy.  Modoc County, California has only one hospital, and it is on economic life support.  If the hospital doesn’t get an infusion of cash, it may have to close its doors.  The nearest alternative is hours away—that's in the summer time when the roads are clear.  There are a number of elderly in the area who depend on the hospital for their very survival.  In addition, the hospital is the largest employer in the county.  If it closes, so will a lot of other things.  Property values will fall, and the consequent further drop in county revenues will cause other cutbacks to services.  The only apparent solution is a property tax increase to save the hospital.  It is opposed by at least one man who is funding the anti-tax-increase movement.  The problem with preaching fiscal responsibilty at this point is that there may be no-one left to hear the lesson.  What's more important, your point or your life?

There is a similar psychology at work regarding Islamic mosques.  The anti-mosque legion in New York does not want a place where Moslems can peacefully gather and engage in recreational activities as well as sometimes pray.  Remember a few months ago when these same people (probably), did not want to try and punish Muslem terrorists in lower Manhatten either?  And, if a few blocks from the place where New Yorkers cannot even erect a memorial in nine years time, is too close, then what is the reason for objecting to a mosque in Tennessee where they allow church members to handle poisonous snakes?  Or in California where enemas are given for entertainment and getting high passes for a religious experience?

This anti-Islamic sentiment is not only bigoted, it is delusional and dangerous.  

Look at the guy who went around stabbing and slashing African-Americans (and a few who resembled African-Americans).  We know what kind of person does that.  We know the profile.  --Except this guy was from Israel.  Okay, new profile.  We've read about the settlers who attack Palestinian children on their way to school.  He just couldn’t find any Palestinians.  -–Wait a minute, he was an Israeli Arab, not a Jew.  That’s easier.  We know about Hamas and that bunch.  Maybe he was trying to start a race war in the U.S.  --Except that he wasn’t Moslem.  He was an Israeli Arab Christian.  Stuff that in your profile and smoke it.

Then there were the killers who escaped from prison in Arizona.  A nasty trio, illegal immigrants from south of the border, right?  Nope.  Good ol’ American white boys.

 9/11 was a bad thing, but in spite of the horrific death toll, it was only one attack.  We lose more Americans to drunk drivers on a regular basis.  And, most Moslems don’t drink.

 Our economy is in the crapper thanks to a bunch of mostly white Christians and Jews who pushed us off a cliff for a quick profit.  You've got to look at who your real enemies are.

 There are a couple million Moslems in the United States, and they are nearly all here legally, unlike the devout Roman Catholics that are flocking over the border.  The other thing about American Moslems is that they are not trying to kill us.  Even with a few radicalized young men, they are not nearly as dangerous as the ethnic organized crime groups who are also nearly exclusively Christian.

 Worldwide, there are 1.5 billion Moslems who may not like us very much—although many do—but are not trying to kill us.  A handful of them are using their religion to manipulate the ignorant.  They are practicing the lessons of Machiavelli.  If you are unhappy with your lot in life, blame the other, the outsider.  People will put up with the failures of their leaders if they feel threatened.

 In this country, there are some who have read The Prince, but I see a stronger influence by a more modern political thinker: Joseph Goebbels who was proponent and perfector of the “big lie.”  In case you’ve forgotten, the theory was that if you tell a big lie boldly enough and often enough, the masses will come to believe it.  Call a social liberal both a Nazi and a communist; say that he is foreign born despite all evidence to the contrary, and that he is a Moslem only a year or two after attacking him for going to his choice of churches—say those things often enough and loud enough and they will gain traction.  Goebblels would be so proud.

Straddling the Border

The United States has a responsibility for what is going on in Mexico and on the border with Arizona.  The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is largely responsible for the massive poverty and unemployment on the other side of our borders.  U.S. companies set up factories in border towns—at the cost of jobs in this country—only to shift those factories and jobs to China and other places where people work for even less.  Our ethanol requirements for vehicle fuel have driven up the price of corn which is an essential part of the Mexican diet.  The U.S. also provides a market for illegal drugs that established smuggling gangs out of the unemployed in the border cities.  Then, we failed to control the shipments of guns across the border to arm the gangs.  Then, the federal government made it very hard for smugglers and illegal immigrants to cross the border in Texas and California—the places of first choice--leaving Arizona as the next best choice. 

Having created a disaster that points at Arizona, we criticize the way that Arizona deals with it.

The criticism seems to have had an effect.  The original version of their infamous anti-immigration law seemed to endorse stopping people at random to ask for their citizenship papers.  The revised version says that when someone is stopped for a criminal offence, their citizenship will be checked as a matter of course.

 As long as the police do not start targetting Hispanics for every minor infraction, and if the citizenship question is asked of every arrestee,  I don’t see a problem.  The situation was ridiculous before, when a person could be arrested, tried, convicted, serve time and be released all without anyone checking whether the perpetrator was in the country legally.

 Meanwhile, we need to do what we can to make life below the border less harsh.  If people have fewer reasons to leave their homeland, then fewer of them will come here.

Runway Ruckus

A viral email was sent to me this week.  The first-person account was unsigned and left the impression that the forwarder was the author.  At first glance, it seemed like a real account of an airline flight cancelled as a result of extremists’ bad behavior.

 As someone who used to fly regularly, bad behavior on an airplane does not surprise me.  Before getting worked up over the offensive passengers, I read the story again.

 Now, the initial facts checked out.  AirTran has a flight 297 going from Atlanta to Houston.  Fox News is cited, but their online archives do not have the story of a flight cancelled on November 17, 2009.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  However, since the story in the email is much better than the one that Fox is purported to have broadcast—and knowing the kind of stories that Fox likes to run with--the first red flag is that the author did not tip Fox to the “real” story.

 The author says that he was flying first class.  AirTran does not offer first class seating.  The 717 that flies from Atlanta to Houston does have 12 business class seats in the front of the cabin. 

 Boarding appears to be from a door in the front.  He says that 11 Muslim men “in full attire” boarded the plane.  I wonder what that means.  The Muslim-Americans that I know dress like everybody else.  And since the Islamic world stretches from Indonesia and the Phillippines across Southern and Central Asia to the Middle East and half-way down Africa the dress varies widely.  Within all of these countries are non-Muslims who dress pretty much the same as the Muslims.  The use of a religious adjective to describe appearance instead of an ethnic one made me think that the writer had an agenda.

 The author in his business class seat claims that two of the eleven sat in his section.  Really, when you fly, do you count the people who board the plane in groups?  It takes all kinds. 

 Anyway, as the plane began to taxi, one of the “fully attired” people began talking on his cell phone in Arabic to another one of the group who was back in coach.  Can you distinguish Arabic from Farsi, or from Hebrew or Turkish or--  ?  Well, let’s give the author this one.  But, how did he know who the caller was talking to.  The author is belted into his seat.  He knows that his neighbor is talking, but how does he know what’s going on in coach?

 When the flight attendent told the cell phone caller to stop while the plane was taking off, she was ignored.  If these men were foreign visitors from the Middle East—possibly going to Houston to conduct oil business—that would explain the non-English conversation.  Although the attitude is not true of every Middle Eastern male, many do not recognize that women can be in a position of authority over them.  Such men typically ignore female police, Customs, and flight attendents.

 Apparently another female flight attendent in the rear of the cabin was also having trouble with a man on a cell phone.  And, two others from the “fully attired” group were viewing porn “they had taped the night before.”  In 2009, does anybody “tape” anything?  And, how chummy did our author get with these guys to find out when they recorded it?  Anyway, this behavior alarmed the author because he had “studied” and knew that Muslims are only allowed to look at porn or go to a strip club on the night befoe a jihad.  I only read the Koran once and must have missed that chapter.  However, I have traveled abroad quite a bit, and if the author is correct, there are Middle Eastern men all over Europe preparing for jihad several nights a week.

 The porn vieewers also ignored the flight attendent telling them to turn off their electronic device.  The whole group stood up to shout down these presumptuous women.  The author and a larger Texan pushed the first porn-viewer back toward his seat.  Then, the doors opened and the passengers were joined by 3 TSA agents and 4 police officers.  The 11 unruly passengers were taken from the plane.  So was their luggage.

 A few minutes later, the 11 were reboarded.  This appalled all who were involved in the fracas. 

 The failure to obey instructions by a flight crew is a federal crime.  If this account is true, then my first assumption is that they had diplomatic immunity.  There could be other reasons, but there's not enough information to know.

 The offended flight crew and passengers got off the plane, and the flight was cancelled.  The foreign visitors no doubt learned something about getting along in the U.S.

 The author sees the whole thing as a dry run for a terrorist attack.  It sounds to me more like a clash of cultures, and one that could have been handled better by the flight crew.

 Terrorists want to blend in, not stand out.  Confrontation is not a terrorist’s choice of strategy.  Even a suicide bomber tries to conform to those around him until the moment of detonation.  Arrousing his targets only makes the job harder.  Like the 9/11 hijackers, anyone who wants to be a terrorist in this country will wear typical American clothes and be clean shaven.  Do you remember the female suicide bomber in Israel a couple years ago who wore a skirt and makeup for the first time when she went on her mission?

 We are at war.  We need to think more and panic less.  

Detecting racism

Are attacks on the president’s health care proposal racist?  Of course, but that is not the whole story.  There are those who are legitimately concerned about features of the plan.  The way to tell the difference between the racists and those who are issue-driven is to measure the volume, the inflammatory words they use and whether they disseminate disinformation.

 For example, would Joe Wilson have heckled Bill Clinton addressing a joint session of Congress?  God—and everybody else--knows that Clinton was vilified by Republicans at a level beyond anything before seen in the modern era, but no-one shouted back at him when he addressed Congress.  Race may not have motivated Wilson’s opposition to health care reform, but it gave him that extra little push when Obama was speaking.

 Similarly, would Kanye West have taken the microphone away from Rihanna or Janet Jackson?  Of course not, but a white country singer did not deserve the same respect.  Racism is all around, and does not even have to be in the front of our minds. 

 I learned about the subtleties of discrimination in high school.  Ours was a consolidated school that drew students from three towns.  It was also all white until the school accepted a couple black students in my senior year.  My government class was all white.  This was the situation when my teacher asked me to select students from the class for parts in a role-playing exercise.  I studied the class roster and very carefully picked those individuals that I thought would do the best jobs.  When I handed in the list, my teacher glanced at it and asked me if I was aware that all of the people I had selected were from my town.  I had not realized that.  Where they were from had even entered my mind.  There had been no discrimination in my heart, but by picking those whose virtues I knew best, I had in fact discriminated.  So, I made up a new list, and was gratified at how good the people were whom I had inadvertently slighted before.  The moral is that discrimination is proven by the results of an action, not by the stated intent.

Racism has become a very nasty charge.  For instance, I continue to be confused by those who deny the holocaust.  Denial is not only an offence to those who perished, but also to those who worked so hard for their extermination.  I would think that those who hate the Jews, the Gypsies and the assorted other targets of the holocaust would claim that the millions who were murdered was a good start, a splendid effort that was stopped too soon.  But, look, the anti-Semites who speak out do not praise the Nazis for their efforts, they claim that the Third Reich is misunderstood and blamed for things that did not occur.  That is how ugly the charge has become, that even those who promote and plot the murder of other races and ethnicities today deny the achievements of the most successful pogromists of all time.

 The people who do not want illegal immigrants to be benefited by the health care bill aren’t really worried  about the expense.  Down deep, they do not want non-English-speaking, dark-skinned people to receive health care at all.  Shut them out of our hospitals and let them die on the sidewalks, or go back where they came from and starve there.  Even the most vocal of the health care opponents will deny that that is their intent, but it is the effect they seek.

 Not all conservatives are racist.  Neither are all liberals.  Not all whites and not all blacks.  But, look at the downstream effects of what people promote.  As I learned in art school, your work is what you intend it to be, and it must stand on its own without explanation or excuse.

UK not OK

It was a bad week for the image of British tourists.

 On the Greek island of Crete, Stuart Feltham, 23, from Swindon had spent the evening drinking.  [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8189296.stm]

Then, in a nightclub, he thought that that the local women would be impressed by the sight of his penis.   He reportedly waved it about and pursued a 26-year-old student named Maria Fanoudaki, fondling her breasts among other unwanted activities.  Ms Fanoudaki repeatedly asked him to leave her alone.  When he didn’t, she poured her drink of Sambouka on his rude display.  At that point, she claims to have fled the encounter.  The police say that before leaving, she also set fire to the licorice-flavored beverage.  Sambuca is 42% alcohol and should ignite easily.  Whatever the immediate cause, Feltham suffered a variety of burns on his chest and below.  While the trial still progresses, Ms Fanoudaki has already become a folk hero to the tourist-weary Greeks.

 Well, you say, that’s just one case.  I refer you to news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8185159.stm which tells how the mayor of Riga, Latvia has said that UK tourists are no longer welcome in his city.  Low cost airfares and accomodations have apparently made the Latvian capitol a destination for stag parties, which according to British tradition involve raising attendees blood alcohol level as high as possible and then behaving as boorishly as imagination permits.  In Riga, this mean urinating on the Freedom Monument in the city center. Mayor Nils Usakovs cited this practice by UK tourists to Latvian magazine Rigas Laiks, "Let's not be politically correct - unfortunately, this is their speciality." 

I wish that I could add an anecdote from my own travels about British tourists, but the closest I can recall is a planeload of Irish football (soccer) fans who arrived in Tallinn when I was there.  A bunch of them stayed in my hotel, where they were loud and inconsiderate at all hours, and generally spoiled whatever good feelings I previously had toward the Irish.

 

What I do remember about the Brits that I met was that their jokes were often made at the expense of other nationalities to a degree that I did not hear from other groups.

 When various people in Eastern Europe told me about good experiences they had had with U.S. tourists.  I kept thinking that it was because they hadn’t met enough of us yet.  However, with more thought, I have realized that in the U.S. we have had more than a generation of emphasis on respecting other ethnicities.  In addition, with our own large land mass and oceans on two sides, the jackasses in our society are less likely to travel abroad than those of the British Isles.  Our chauvinists compensate by giving immigrants and minorities a hard time.

 In any event, I see a disturbing trend.  Transportation technology makes the mixing of nationalities easier than at any previous time. This should lead to more respect as groups previously kept apart can now get to know each other.  However, increasing population puts us all in competition with other groups for diminishing resources.  Global rivalry may not in the forefront of hard drinking, stag-party thinking, but it underlies our current reality, and leads to envy by those with little or contempt by those with plenty. 

 Most people can manage to be obnoxious without publicly exposing their private parts.  However it is expressed, I anticipate more low level and high level conflicts in the future.

American Values

This past week, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health issued a press release about their recent survey of health care workers [http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2009/barnett_survey.html]. 

 The headline was that in the event of a pandemic, one in six health care workers would refuse to come to work.  That was the good news.   A 2005 study reported that fully 40% of health care workers would refuse to come to work during a pandemic.  So, we're improving.

The really interesting part came much farther down in the article:  “According to the survey, public health workers who were both 'concerned' about the threat posed by a pandemic, and who were 'confident' that they could fulfill their response roles and that their roles would have a meaningful impact on the situation, were 31 times more likely to respond to work in an emergency than those who perceived the threat low and had low levels of confidence.”

 Note that perception of a low threat level was not enough to pursuade these folks to come to work   The mere risk of contagion would be enough to keep them at home.  But, to be in the most-likely-to-be-truant group, the workers had to see their jobs as not meaningful.

 Where do they get that idea?  Health care is more than doctors and nurses.  Someone has to draw the blood for tests.  Someone has to perform the lab tests.  Someone has to wash and transport the patients.  Someone has to maintain the equipment.  Someone has to take the x-rays.  Someone has to feed hospital patients.  And most important, someone has to mop, scrub and keep the whole place sterile.  The greatest cause of patient death in hospitals is hospital acquired infection. The best surgeons in the world can be undone by sloppy floor mopping.  Everyone is important.

 My own work in medical facilities taught me that some—not all—doctors really look down on all of the other workers, and denigrate their contributions to patient outcomes.  Those who take doctor abuse to heart will be less likely to show up when they are needed the most.

Don't misunderstand and think that I am writing about doctors and medicine and pandemics.  I am writing about workers.  

What makes the United States great (or did) is not that a few people get to be billionaires.  Every totalitarian regime on the planet has wealthy people.  Neither is this country great because we have natural wonders.  Those things are scattered all over.  Our monuments and landmark buildings don’t do it either.  From the time of the pilgrims, ordinary people have been able to make a decent living and achieve respect for doing so.  That is why people still immigrate here.  That is why after more than a century of slavery, the newly freed men and women did not emigrate to other shores.  Those who moved at all, moved within the United States.  However difficult, the opportunity for a better life was here.

 Now we hear those who wave the biggest flags and shout the most about freedom oppose a higher minimum wage.  They oppose insuring workers and their families against the catastrophic expense of illness. It’s okay that 14,000 people a day lose health insurance, which translates to a loss of children, husbands, wives, etc.  And a loss of homes as those without insurance struggle to pay medical bills. The über-patriots also oppose labor unions’ ability to offset the abuses of management. 

 During the American Revolution, fewer than two-thirds of the colonists supported the rebellion.  There have, ever since, been those who seek to return to an authoritarian society with privileges for a few, redistributing the wealth of labor upwards to those who do not labor.  The assertion that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights has never been fully accepted.  Look around at those today who shout against social progress, the new tories.

 The great American experiment of empowering the masses and trusting the judgement of the majority has been under assault for the last few decades.  And now, with the results of tory influence planting foreclosure signs in every neighborhood, destroying jobs, and downgrading the American dream, it is time to point out that the United States is not about flags, it is about people.

And, people who are valued will show up when they’re needed.

A foreign affairs agenda for the new administration

At the top of the Obama’s foreign affairs to-do list should be 1) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; 2) Israel and the Palestinians; 3) the rise of totalitarianism in Russia; 4) corruption and the Mexican drug wars. 

From Iraq to a hard place 

Iraq is or should be winding down. The Iraqi military is attaining adequacy. I don’t have a great deal of faith in the Baghdad government’s prospects for long term survival, but they may hold it together long enough for us to draw down our forces. 

Afghanistan, on the other hand, has defeated the best armies in the world, from Alexander the Great, to the British at the height of their powers, to the Soviet Union. It is true that we are there in support of the Karzai government, but there are Afghans (especially the Taliban), who do not recognize that regime. To date, the technology of modern warfare has not tipped the scales in our favor. I was impressed by a program that teamed a U.S. Marine Corps officer with a State Department official to provide cows to widows in Fallujah [NPR January 4, 2009]. Programs like that in Afghanistan, properly funded, may accomplish something that guns and bombs cannot. There are some projects there already, such as a soap factory in Kandahar that buys materials from local farmers, but more of these need visible military partners to improve the image of our forces. We also need to stop bombing weddings, etc. 

Another initiative would be to buy up opium from farmers and pay more than the Taliban-linked traffickers do. This would choke off a major source of Taliban and al-Qaeda income as well as give the Afghan farmers a more favorable view of the U.S. Once we have achieved our objectives in Afghanistan, we could offer alternatives to the farmers and wean them away from opium poppies. Meanwhile, we will have reduced the amount of heroin in the world more than any destination-country enforcement has done. 

Lessons from the ghetto 

Meanwhile, we have to tell the Israelis that they are behaving like Nazis. Of course, since they equate Nazism with extermination camps, they would object. However, they have seized property from Palestinians with no compensation, relegated Palestinians to perptual limbo in refugee camps, denied them the right of free travel and commerce, and periodically raided and terrorized Palestinians in their homes actions similar to what were once called “pogroms.” The totality resembles Nazi Germany in the years before their “final solution” was initiated. 

On CNN a week or so ago, an anchorperson asked a Palestinian spokeswoman for her take on the recent Gaza incursion. Among her charges was one that I regard as key. The Israelis did not support moderate Palestinians by allowing them to achieve anything in negotiations, thereby pushing Palestinian public opinion in favor of radicals like Hamas. When the anchorperson turned to an Israeli diplomat for his response, he said that Israel allowed protests over the incursion which made them a more moral regime than Hamas. He did not address the underlying problem of denying concessions in peaceful negotiations. 

The Israeli government has never seriously addressed the return of Palestinians to their ancestral homes or compensation to them for their property as Germany finally did for the Jews who were expelled by the Nazis. Although the settlements in Gaza were dismantled—unilaterally, not in response to negotiations—the settlements in the West Bank have increased. I propose that Israel simply tell the West Bank settlers that Israel is withdrawing all support in two weeks. The settlers can remain by pledging allegiance to the Palestinian state or they can come back to Israel. Of course Israel is going to do no such thing, because the ultimate goal is to insert so many settlers into the West Bank that becomes a de facto Israeli province. Since the state of Israel is the premiere example of successful illegal immigration, hard line planners see the ultimate ejection of Palestinians as do-able. 

Meanwhile, if negotiation and moderate Palestinians are able to show results, then Hamas and other extremists will lose support, and ultimately be reduced to a nuisance status. Indeed the rise of a moderate Palestinian government supported by free trade will transform the extremists into a Palestinian police problem. 

Neo-Stalinism 

Did you see where Russian television held a poll to name the most popular historic figures? Josef Stalin came in third. That was after they redrew the rules and urged voters to consider literary and scientific luminaries. Did you happen to note in December that the Dumas passed new legislation that makes any demonstration against the government treason? Passing any information of any sort to any non-governmental orgainzation that has offices outside of Russia is also treason. Charges of treason no longer qualify for a jury trial either. Add to that the use of gas supplies to bludgeon Russia’s neighbors, plus the invasion of Georgia in order to seize the enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the rise of a new totalitarianism is hard to escape. 

We need to help both Western and Eastern Europe find alternatives to Russian gas, or we will be sucked into a greater confrontation in the near future. 

Mexican refugees 

During 2008, the casualties of the drug wars in Mexico exceeded U. S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cities just below our border have the highest murder rates in the world. The Mexican government has not demonstrated an ability to control the criminality and corruption. If the U.S. does not provide real help, we will see a flood of refugees on top of the current illegal immigration flow. And we will be stuck with people who legitimately fear for their lives if they are returned home. 

Some people say that we should slam the door in the faces of Mexican refugees and insist that they manage their own affairs. The United States has not taken that position with any other nation on earth and we cannot do it with one of our two nearest neighbors. Besides that, the violence has already spilled over into cities on this side of the border. 

One move that could improve the situation would be to examine all exports and visitors to Mexico with the intensity that we examine imports and incoming visitors. Why? Where do you think Mexican gangs get their guns? Most are purchased here and then smuggled into Mexico. The Mexican government can’t control the influx of illegal weapons, and it is in our best interests to see it controlled. 

Let’s see how the new administration deals with these four hot points. The ones that Obama misses are sure to come round and bite him on the ass.

E Pluribus Unum

This afternoon I went to a natualization swearing in ceremony.  The last one I attended was seven years ago, and there were changes. 

 Back when the Immigration and Naturalization Service was part of  Department of Justice, the ceremony took place several days after the final interview and citizenship test.  The ceremony was in a solemn hall and the regional director of the agency was there with several underlings.  He gave an inspirational speech to nearly two hundred new citizens and their families.  The new Americans took the oath, swore allegiance to the flag, sang the national anthem and were presented with little American flags as they received their citizenship certificates.

Today, U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is under Department of Homeland Security.  The final interview was in the morning and the swearing in was that very same afternoon.  Had the interview and exam been in the afternoon, the ceremony would have been the following morning.  An office director officiated, and the venue was in a large multi-purpose room with a projection screen at one end.  The applicants were put in numbered plastic chairs in the front and their families sat in the back of the room.  The office is cranking out five ceremonies per day in this fashion, no doubt to catch up on their backlog.  There was no time for singing and no flags, although every customer received a booklet that contained the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 

 Fifty-seven people were sworn in during the shift that I attended.  Getting to that point was an ordeal, just like before.  CIS must give lessons to the DMV.  The assembly point was in a large room with a long counter of tellers-window positions, a light-number board and a recorded announcer who called the next applicant number to which window.  That didn’t concern us.  Our group was squeezed into one end of this hall and called to line up according to the last three numbers on their green cards, but individuals were called from the line, out of order, by name.  Then, some were taken in turn from the line and the rest were told to sit back down.  An hour later, the process was repeated.

During the two and half hour wait, I had time to look over the crowd.  We had the entire human rainbow represented.  Old and young, speaking in languages I recognized and some that I didn’t, wearing designer jeans and saris, one man wore a powder blue turban and a little girl had cornrows.  Always on the lookout for an element of drama, I noticed a young, honey-blonde, the hottie in the crowd, wearing a black, scoop-neck top and white pants with candy-apple red toenails poking through open-toe high heel shoes.  It’s worth noting that she was attractively, yet modestly dressed—no cleavage and nothing skin-tight.  Why is this important?  Because everyone was dressed appropriately, and respectfully—except the blonde’s husband.  He was not an immigrant.   He was also the only one in the room wearing a T-shirt, the only one wearing a baseball cap, the only one wearing shorts (khaki, cargo-type), and the only one wearing flip-flops. 

 He was also the one most visibly irritated at the long wait.  The seat next to me became vacant and the blonde sat down.  When her husband complained to her, she replied with a Spanish accent.  He hissed that he had had enough.  “Let’s go,” he said.  “We can do this another time.” 

The woman was cool.  “We’re already here.”  Then they whispered back and forth and he walked away for a awhile.

 At last, our number was called and we went up the fire escape stairs to the second floor and split up to take our respective plastic chairs.  I wondered if the blonde would join our group or if Flip-flop Man would succeed in whisking her away.  We were to sit for another 45 minutes.  The young children who had been so good when they arrived, began to get cranky.  One had to be taken into the hall by his father, who was not taking the oath and would miss his wife taking hers.  Finally, in one of the later chosen sub-groups, the blonde entered and took her seat.  About fifteen minutes later, Flip-flop showed up.  They spoke briefly and I could see by her gestures that she was giving him directions.  Go this way, go around that, turn there.  She sent him on an errand, and settled down to appreciate the ceremony.

Posters on the wall displayed quotes by various presidents.  Ronald Reagan reminded us that a person could move to France and never be a Frenchman, or Italy and never be an Italian.  It was true of so many other countries where nationality is based on blood.  But, here anyone can come and become an American.  More than any other, this is a country not founded on ethnicity, but on a set of principles.  If someone wants to join us, they can. 

The office director swore in the group, and then told them that they were now each as much an American as anyone whose ancestors came on the Mayflower.  She pointed out that on the Great Seal and on every dollar bill and coin are the words “E Pluribus Unum”—“Out of Many, One.”

 It was a stirring few minutes, and citizenship probably meant different things to each one present.  Voting.  Security.  A better job.  The chance to sponsor a relative and reunite the family.  Maybe to the blonde, it meant that she could dump her jerk of a husband.  I just sat there--proud of them, proud of my country--hoping that they all got what they wanted.  

A follow up to the destruction of Ruslana Korshunova

The people who responded to my previous blog seem to be Russian, and I would like to address their concerns.  First, I apologize if I offended anyone, but I am in the United States writing mainly for an American audience.  Most people in the United States couldn’t find Russia on a map and don’t know the difference between Kazakhstan and Estonia.  This should not offend you because most Americans could not find Chicago on a map either.  (Although I expect my readers to be smarter than average.)  So, when I use the term “Russian mafia” I use it very broadly to mean a Russian-speaking organized crime group.  Such groups exist within the United States and in Russia and the other CIS countries.  I have been to Kazakhstan several times and met with Kazakhstani law enforcement officials both high and low—at least one of whom I know to be corrupt.  I have also seen members of organized crime in Kazakhstan and other CIS countries with their tattoos, athletic suits and guns.  Do they still wear athletic suits?  I have seen several in business suits, also.  That is a much better disguise.

 I will not try to tell you about your own country, but I will tell you something about this one.

 Professional criminals are only a very tiny percentage of any population.  In the U.S. we have criminal organizations of every major immigrant group:  Mexican, Colombian, Salvadoran, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Nigerian, Israeli, and Russian are probably the best known.  (If I overlooked anyone, I apologize—there were once German, Irish and Jewish gangs but I haven’t heard anything about them in years).  We also have both white and black American criminal gangs.  One of the key features common to all of these groups is that they prey mainly on their own.  If an immigrant is killed, the most likely suspects are from his or her native country or region.

 To get back to Ms Korshunova, if she had been killed in a crime of passion or in an argument there would have been signs of a struggle.  The New York City police are some of the most competent in the world, and if there had been a fight they would have found evidence.  The detectives would also question all of her associates and uncovered any jealousies, rivalries or enemies.

 My conclusion is that the killers were professionals and the motive was not in New York.  Possibly someone in Kazakhstan tried to get money from her family, and then contracted the murder through a New York connection.  If the crime had been committed by local criminals, they would have used a weapon—a gun, knife, club or garrote--and left the body in the apartment.  Or the body would have disappeared entirely, possibly to be found in the river weeks or months from now.

 When I lived in New York, I was on the scene of a few deaths caused by falling or being pushed from a tall building.  The bodies never landed very far from the buildings.  This young model flew into the middle of the street.  How far can you jump without a running start?  She probably did not weigh much over 100 pounds (45 kilos) and could easily have been thrown by one strong man or two ordinary men.

 When I lived in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, there was a case when an organized crime “soldier” threw another man from the roof of an apartment building, but both killer and victim were Italian-American, and this was a singular incident.  The other three mob-related murders in my neighborhood that year were shootings.

People most often use the techniques that are familiar to them.  As I said before, I have heard several stories of Russian (or Russian-speaking) gangs throwing people from buildings.

 Finally, I am not on the scene and I only know what is in the news.  I could be wrong, but with the facts at hand and my own experience, I stand by my analysis.

 Елена,

Спасибо за ваши комментарии. Когда молодые люди умирают это всегда трагедия. За большой красотой она удвоится.