Could California become the next Kosovo?
From the February 28. 2008 edition of the Las Vegas Penny Press
Sunday's media was all ablaze about the declaration of independence coming out of Kosovo.
The now-national parliament passed a declaration of independence from Serbia. The US was denounced by Serbia for our part in the revolt which they claim creates a "false state".
The prime minister of Kosovo says theirs will be a democracy that will respect the rights of all ethnic communities.
Perhaps that is the most difficult part of any democracy -- treating all people equally while all people assimilate to a new culture and a common language.
For their part, Russia claims the declaration contraveins UN resolutions. But the UN in general and seven nations in particular (include the US) believe that this is the only solution.
It makes me wonder about another situation simmering under the radar.
As readers of this column are aware, there is an ongoing movement in this nation's Latino community to "take back" the land acquired by the United States in it's dealings with nations in the past. Specifically, they want California to become an adjunct of Mexico.
This movement continues to gain momentum quietly underground amongst activists in or associated with the La Raza movement. This movement could continue making portions of the Southwest uninhabitable by any except their "own kind".
As UNR political science professor Maria Hsia Chang wrote in her 1999 paper entitled Multiculturalism, Immigration and Aztlan:
So much for peace.
COMING SOON: Is an element of the regulators that control Nevada's casinos in the pocket of a prominent Nevada media group? Details to come....
It's like closing the barn door after the cattle have gotten out...
The USDA recall over the weekend of 143 million pounds of frozen beef from the Chino California based Westland/Hallmark Meat Company dates back to 2006, and much of that meat has already been consumed or discarded. Some 37 million pounds of it went into the school lunch program.
The problem is that the plant slaughtered and put into the food chain so-called "downer cattle", animals not able to stand and walk into the slaughterhouse. Humane Society video released on Friday showed animals being shoved with forklifts and having water hoses shoved up their noses to make the animals think they were drowning.
There is a good reason for the regulations against so-called "downer cattle" being allowed into the food supply. Those cattle may already be ill or contaminated, bringing the possibility of "mad cow" disease, e coli, or salmonella into the food supply.
This once again shows the priorities of our government. Building bridges to nowhere and funding community recreation centers is more important to the "pork barrel" congressmen on Capital Hill rather than ensuring that our food supply is adequately inspected.
Oh, there are a number of job openings currently posted for inspectors and trainees at the usajobs.gov website. Nowhere near enough to cover the shortfall in current inspections, though.
Speaking of inspection problems, did you see Lou Dobbs CNN show on Monday where he ripped Consumer Product Safety Commission head Nancy Nord for her inability to handle the problems caused by these junky sickening Chinese goods. It was in conjunction with a “feel good” story from the annual toy trade show where all the problems with lead, small parts, and chemicals inappropriate for youngsters.
From the CNN transcript:
NORD: Safety is not a trade issue. We will be vigilant in making sure that imports that come into this country are safe. Again, safety is not a trade issue.
ROMANS: But in testimony before a congressional panel last year she admitted her agency could not keep up with the explosion of imports.
NORD: There are just thousands and thousands of containers of consumer products coming into this country from overseas.
Dobbs couldn't stand the nicey-nice....
DOBBS: This -- Nord, is she as imbecilic as she appears to be as absolutely insensitive to American consumers, as absolutely lacking the judgment to run a federal agency designed and created to protect the American consumer? I mean this woman is beyond belief.
ROMANS: She says that she relates to -- she's a mother, she relates to mothers and consumers, but Lou, she says that all those recalls show that the system is working. That ironically...
DOBBS: That it's working?
ROMANS: ... it shows that the system is working.
DOBBS: How many of these recalls did her agency initiate? I wonder if she would like to answer that question. I wonder if she would like to explain how in the world she could say this is not a trade issue when she is sitting there testifying before Congress saying that this country is simply swamped with those giant containers filled with all sorts of things, but in this case, toys that are not being inspected.
ROMANS: Yes, she does insist that trade policies and safety are two separate matters. That they are not linked which a lot of Senate Democrats, House Democrat, parent's groups and consumer advocates disagree with. They say that our trade policies have fostered this off shoring of our manufacturing...
DOBBS: Well, where the heck are the Republicans? Only an idiot would think otherwise. When the woman is sitting there saying that it's because we are overwhelmed with imports and we can't inspect them, how could it be anything but a trade issue as well? I mean unbelievable.
ROMANS: I think you have a significant philosophical difference with the chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission...
DOBBS: Well I think anyone with a triple-digit IQ would have a philosophical difference with her. Thank you very much, Christine Romans. And anybody who cares about what the heck they are doing in that job. Christine Romans, thank you, if I didn't say thank you, I want to say thank you again -- another failure by our government regulators to protect the consuming public in this country.
Lou Dobbs. You never question where he stands....
Got a question for Wyatt Cox? He's standing by the cigar store on the corner at wyattcox.net
Sunday's media was all ablaze about the declaration of independence coming out of Kosovo.
The now-national parliament passed a declaration of independence from Serbia. The US was denounced by Serbia for our part in the revolt which they claim creates a "false state".
The prime minister of Kosovo says theirs will be a democracy that will respect the rights of all ethnic communities.
Perhaps that is the most difficult part of any democracy -- treating all people equally while all people assimilate to a new culture and a common language.
For their part, Russia claims the declaration contraveins UN resolutions. But the UN in general and seven nations in particular (include the US) believe that this is the only solution.
It makes me wonder about another situation simmering under the radar.
As readers of this column are aware, there is an ongoing movement in this nation's Latino community to "take back" the land acquired by the United States in it's dealings with nations in the past. Specifically, they want California to become an adjunct of Mexico.
This movement continues to gain momentum quietly underground amongst activists in or associated with the La Raza movement. This movement could continue making portions of the Southwest uninhabitable by any except their "own kind".
As UNR political science professor Maria Hsia Chang wrote in her 1999 paper entitled Multiculturalism, Immigration and Aztlan:
According to legend, Aztlan was the ancestral homeland of the Aztecs which they left in journeying southward to found Tenochtitlan, the center of their new civilization, which is today's Mexico City. Today, the "Nation of Aztlan" refers to the American southwestern states of California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, portions of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, which Chicano nationalists claim were stolen by the United States and must be reconquered (Reconquista) and reclaimed for Mexico.5 The myth of Aztlan was revived by Chicano political activists in the 1960s as a central symbol of Chicano nationalist ideology. In 1969, at the Chicano National Liberation Youth Conference in Denver, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales put forth a political document entitled El Plan de Aztlan (Spiritual Plan of Aztlan).6 The Plan is a clarion call to Mexican-Americans to form a separate Chicano nation:
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historial heritage, but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the nothern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers ...declare that the call of our blood is...our inevitable destiny.... Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent.... Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come .... With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan.
I'm not saying that this will happen tomorrow. After all, the paper the above excerpt was taken from was presented at the Second Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population Action Conference, Breckenridge, CO, August 6, 1999. This information is not totally new, but it is truly valid! In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historial heritage, but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the nothern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers ...declare that the call of our blood is...our inevitable destiny.... Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent.... Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come .... With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan.
So much for peace.
COMING SOON: Is an element of the regulators that control Nevada's casinos in the pocket of a prominent Nevada media group? Details to come....
It's like closing the barn door after the cattle have gotten out...
The USDA recall over the weekend of 143 million pounds of frozen beef from the Chino California based Westland/Hallmark Meat Company dates back to 2006, and much of that meat has already been consumed or discarded. Some 37 million pounds of it went into the school lunch program.
The problem is that the plant slaughtered and put into the food chain so-called "downer cattle", animals not able to stand and walk into the slaughterhouse. Humane Society video released on Friday showed animals being shoved with forklifts and having water hoses shoved up their noses to make the animals think they were drowning.
There is a good reason for the regulations against so-called "downer cattle" being allowed into the food supply. Those cattle may already be ill or contaminated, bringing the possibility of "mad cow" disease, e coli, or salmonella into the food supply.
This once again shows the priorities of our government. Building bridges to nowhere and funding community recreation centers is more important to the "pork barrel" congressmen on Capital Hill rather than ensuring that our food supply is adequately inspected.
Oh, there are a number of job openings currently posted for inspectors and trainees at the usajobs.gov website. Nowhere near enough to cover the shortfall in current inspections, though.
Speaking of inspection problems, did you see Lou Dobbs CNN show on Monday where he ripped Consumer Product Safety Commission head Nancy Nord for her inability to handle the problems caused by these junky sickening Chinese goods. It was in conjunction with a “feel good” story from the annual toy trade show where all the problems with lead, small parts, and chemicals inappropriate for youngsters.
From the CNN transcript:
NORD: Safety is not a trade issue. We will be vigilant in making sure that imports that come into this country are safe. Again, safety is not a trade issue.
ROMANS: But in testimony before a congressional panel last year she admitted her agency could not keep up with the explosion of imports.
NORD: There are just thousands and thousands of containers of consumer products coming into this country from overseas.
Dobbs couldn't stand the nicey-nice....
DOBBS: This -- Nord, is she as imbecilic as she appears to be as absolutely insensitive to American consumers, as absolutely lacking the judgment to run a federal agency designed and created to protect the American consumer? I mean this woman is beyond belief.
ROMANS: She says that she relates to -- she's a mother, she relates to mothers and consumers, but Lou, she says that all those recalls show that the system is working. That ironically...
DOBBS: That it's working?
ROMANS: ... it shows that the system is working.
DOBBS: How many of these recalls did her agency initiate? I wonder if she would like to answer that question. I wonder if she would like to explain how in the world she could say this is not a trade issue when she is sitting there testifying before Congress saying that this country is simply swamped with those giant containers filled with all sorts of things, but in this case, toys that are not being inspected.
ROMANS: Yes, she does insist that trade policies and safety are two separate matters. That they are not linked which a lot of Senate Democrats, House Democrat, parent's groups and consumer advocates disagree with. They say that our trade policies have fostered this off shoring of our manufacturing...
DOBBS: Well, where the heck are the Republicans? Only an idiot would think otherwise. When the woman is sitting there saying that it's because we are overwhelmed with imports and we can't inspect them, how could it be anything but a trade issue as well? I mean unbelievable.
ROMANS: I think you have a significant philosophical difference with the chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission...
DOBBS: Well I think anyone with a triple-digit IQ would have a philosophical difference with her. Thank you very much, Christine Romans. And anybody who cares about what the heck they are doing in that job. Christine Romans, thank you, if I didn't say thank you, I want to say thank you again -- another failure by our government regulators to protect the consuming public in this country.
Lou Dobbs. You never question where he stands....
Got a question for Wyatt Cox? He's standing by the cigar store on the corner at wyattcox.net
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