Archive for July 2009

My recent Brussels Journal “exhumation” of Robert B. Edgerton’s remarkable study of Sick Societies (1992) provoked a variety of responses, with a good many veering from Edgerton’s main topic (also mine) of “maladaptation” into discussions of colonialism and the relation of the West to the so-called Third World. The sliding from one topic to another is itself of interest, but I should first like to address a number of reader-comments that focus directly on the “maladaptation” thesis.

The reader dubbing himself “Kapitein Andre” calls attention to the contrast between Edgerton’s dispassionate discussion of “maladaptation” with Jared Diamond’s politically de rigueur praise for contemporary Austronesian society in the widely reviewed and much praised Guns, Germs, & Steel: “While Western European youth were playing video games and quaffing unhealthy food and beverages, the Austronesian youth were exploring the jungles, constructing shelters, hunting, etc. [Diamond] concluded that the latter were much more intelligent.” The commensurability of contemporary Austronesian and Western societies is a complicated one. In a way, Diamond is right: it is probably better to be a competent stone-age tribesman than a decadent modern person; but Diamond’s PC apology for the supposed practitioners of “Primitive Harmony” leaves open the question whether contemporary Papua-New Guineans are competent stone-age tribesman or something else less pretty just as it ignores the likelihood that Western civilization is a largely positive achievement despite the fact that overweight adolescents with twenty electronic entertainment devices and C-minus grade-point-averages have effectively abandoned that civilization.

A society that becomes obsessed with diversion, as modern Western society has, is a society in the grip of maladaptation. The real contrast is not the contrast distinguishing the Papua-New Guinean youth and his Western age-counterpart but rather the one distinguishing Western society prior to the 1950s and Papua-New Guinean society at any point in its millennial non-development. Ten thousand years ago, presumably, all societies stood at the same level of social complexity, technical proficiency, and ethical development, more or less. Today, some societies have hardly changed from what they were ten thousand years ago (this is Edgerton’s point about the Tasmanians), but some societies that did develop in objectively praiseworthy ways have become afflicted by maladaptive ideas and practices that seriously endanger their wellbeing. The value of Edgerton’s thesis is that it is universally applicable. Diamond’s PC anti-Western attitude, by contrast, works only in one direction and is itself a cognitive maladaptation.
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From: Bill Sarni (e-mail him)

Re: Saturday Forum: A California Refugee Mourns Her Native State’s Demise

Like letter writer Eloise Wilson, I’ve seen Los Angeles go from Paradise to hell in 30 years.

The elephant in the living room, of course, is illegal immigration.

My neighborhood has turned into a barrio, with bars on doors and windows, abandoned shopping carts, old sofas and junky cars strewn everywhere, graffiti, rude, surly people, chickens in yards, Mexican music blasting all night, tons of traffic, ridiculously long waits in emergency rooms full of illegals, overcrowded, dangerous and ineffective schools, auto accidents caused by unlicensed, uninsured and often drunk illegals, and on and on.

Despite the horrible conditions, apartments in my building rent for over $1,200 a month, just for a basic one-bedroom with no dishwasher, central heating or air, and no amenities in a dirty, noisy, unsafe barrio!

To live in any decent area is even more expensive. The illegals afford it by violating codes to crowd several people into a one-bedroom apartment. Since Americans don’t want to live that way, we have few options except to leave town.

On top of all the other injustices illegal immigration creates, we have to pay for things like medical and auto insurance which many illegals refuse to carry.

I’m completely fed up and looking to get out of this Los Angeles rathole. The toughest part is figuring out where to go, since many other states are also being invaded now.

Thanks a whole lot to the politicians who refuse to close the borders, deport illegals, or reduce legal immigration.

In their gated communities and ivory towers, they couldn’t care less about the rest of us. May they burn for what they have done to America and to their fellow Americans.

By Chris Wamalwa in Los Angeles, US

It is a hot and dry summer afternoon as The Standard team makes the one-hour drive from Los Angeles International Airport to the suburb of Rancho Cucamonga.

The team is going to seek out a Kenyan-born preacher who is making political ripples by vying for the seat of Governor of California.

Dr Mwangi with his family, from left, first-born daughter June, wife Dr AlyceJo and twins Marcus and Cynthia.

We enter a rich neighbourhood and a huge and lavish bungalow on the foothills of a sleepy mountain and into the world and life of Dr Bishop Joe Symmon Mwangi, the man who has captured the imagination of Kenyans in the US.

Cameraman Brian Juma and I exchange knowing glances thinking ‘If Dr Mwangi lives here, then he is worth running for governor’.

Less than a year since Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father became President of the US in historic elections that saw a black man occupy the White House for the first time, another Kenyan-born US citizen is gunning for the governor of a leading US State.

Mixed reactions

The Kenyan-American preacher has declared interest in running for governor of California on a Democratic Party ticket. Reactions to Mwangi’s declaration have been mixed, especially from Kenyans living abroad who know little about him. While some hail the move as courageous and worth supporting, there are those who have received it with outright scepticism and cynicism.

This is understandable because first, Mwangi is not a well-known person beyond his close circle of friends, relatives and business associates in California.

Second, the money issue. To excel in politics in America on a level such a state governor requires one to have ‘big money’ to finance expensive electioneering. In a country where majority of Kenyans are struggling to get through each day, the existence of a millionaire among them is an intriguing prospect.

Mwangi’s campaign portrait

Third, California is not just a typical state in the Union. With a gross state product of nearly 1.7 trillion dollars, California is not only the most populous, but also the most prosperous, responsible for 13 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product.

According to The World Factbook published by the CIA, if California were an independent state, it would have had the tenth largest economy in the world in 2007. This is the most conservative estimate.

Many put it at seventh and eighth, depending on the year. Its GDP compared to other countries is in the same range as that of Spain, Italy and China.

But times are tough all over and now with a budget deficit of more than $26 billion, California is in dire straights.

Against this background, the battle for the governor’s job takes a different dimension. Many people wonder whether Mwangi, a preacher and philanthropist with no name recognition in State politics, ‘can hack it’. Does he possess the necessary gravitas to give renown and likely competitors for the Democratic Party primaries in June such as California’s Attorney-General Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom a run for their money? And with issues such as gay rights and immigration ranking high on the minds of the party’s support base, does the preacher have any hope?

Big mansion

We enter the contender’s big mansion to find a rather typical Kenyan setting for a politician’s home. Scores of Kenyan visitors are enjoying sumptuous servings of various dishes like githeri, ugali, nyama choma, irio, and chapati.

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Marc Faber the Swiss fund manager and Gloom Boom & Doom editor said the US Federal Reserve managed, through stimulus, to do something that had never before been done – create a worldwide bubble in just about everything – stocks, bonds , housing and art.

The only thing that didn’t go up was the dollar, according to Faber.

Speaking to the 10th Annual Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver this week, Faber said: “You cannot create prosperity through money printing and debt growth.”

Faber preached an idea that became the theme of the event: Government fiscal and monetary intervention, “can postpone, but not prevent crisis.

“I believe next year’s economy will face even larger deficits. Their deficit is attempting to stimulate credit growth. Unless real credit growth returns, they will have to put more and more money into the system to maintain the status quo. All polices target consumption. That is a mistake,” Faber said.

So what’s this mean for the market? “The S&P 500 will not recover to 2007 highs. At the peak, 44% of the S&P was the financial sector. That is gone… not coming back.”

“In the period, 2001–2007, the Fed managed to do something that had never before been done – create a worldwide bubble in just about everything. Stocks, bonds, art, oil, housing – you name it; it went up. The only thing that didn’t go up was the dollar,” Faber said.
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The Pachuca family says an image on their pickup truck is a miracle. The image, that came in an unlikely form of a bird dropping, appeared Sunday July 12. That was the first time Salvador Pachuca had been back to the home since having an accident there four months ago.

“I told my brothers come over here and see what this is and they say this is the Virgin,” says Salvador Pachuca.

Family members made their way outside to see the image on the truck’s side mirror. Cristal Pachuca says she took pictures and began making calls to invite others to see, what she describes as, a miracle.

“We just all feel protected. It’s a blessing to our family and to everybody that comes to see it,” says Cristal Pachuca.

Cristal says the truck doesn’t get much use, but last weekend her husband decided to take it out of their garage and wash it. A few moments later the image appeared. Since Sunday, a steady stream of family, friends, neighbors and strangers have stopped by to pray and take pictures of the image.

The Pachuca’s say the image is more than a coincidence especially since it happened on the 12. The family says in Mexico, December 12 is celebrated as the day of The Virgin Guadalupe. Onlookers say the image is a miracle because the distinct colors and outline of the image on the truck match the image of Virgin Guadalupe.
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In 2003, after the Supreme Court limited race to one of many factors that could be considered in school admissions, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor predicted that affirmative action, born with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had at most 25 more years to live. She was too optimistic.

End Affirmative Action! Sign NPI’s Petition Today

The court’s recent 5 to 4 decision in Ricci v. DeStefano — concluding that the city of New Haven, Conn., violated the rights of white firefighters when it threw out a promotions test because no blacks had passed it — cut the last legal underpinnings for affirmative action. Without protection from reverse-discrimination lawsuits, virtually every instance of affirmative action can now be forever tied in a legal tangle that chokes the life out of it.

It is a death that has come too early, as even the nation’s latest unemployment numbers show. African Americans have close to double the joblessness of whites, while the unemployment rate among Latinos is a third higher than that of whites. In a nation that is rapidly becoming more racially diverse, these are destabilizing disparities in power and class. In the professional world, blacks and Hispanics make up a mere 4 percent to 6 percent of the nation’s lawyers, doctors and engineers. These gaps are exacerbated by differences in education and income and, more important, by the history of government-enforced segregation that long denied African Americans entry into schools and the business world.

So, why now? More often than not, it is the American left that gets lost in absurd fantasies about race in this country. They pretend there has been no progress in recent decades, even when they see the rise of a black middle class and witness the election of a mixed-race president and the likely confirmation of a Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court. But today, it is the right wing and its supporters on the high court who are making stuff up. They pretend that the nation is already so transformed that a colorblind America is a reality and that affirmative action is superfluous, so much so that white employees in a city fire department — an arena long dominated by Irish and Italian Americans — need help from the Supreme Court to get a promotion.
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All-American Tradition at Risk

Gregory Shamus, Levi Strauss Signature / Getty Images

10 photos

What was once one of the most popular sporting events in the country now struggles just to keep the wheels turning year after year. The All-American Soap Box Derby holds its 72nd annual event in Akron, Ohio, on Saturday, but debts and a lack of a major corporate sponsor leave it on shaky ground. Here, young racers compete at the 69th All-American Soap Box Derby in 2006.

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Bumpy Ride for the Derby

What was once one of the most popular sporting events in the country now struggles just to keep the wheels turning year after year. The All-American Soap Box Derby holds its 72nd annual event in Akron, Ohio, on Saturday, but debts and a lack of a national sponsor leave it on shaky ground, leading some question whether there will be a next year. Here, competitors race in homemade cars in the 11th annual Soap Box Derby in August 1948.

Keystone / Getty Images

Keystone / Getty Images

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“We have decided not to fire a bullet more against Mexicans, our brothers, and to prepare and organize ourselves to attack the Americans in their dens.”

Villa was a man of his word and within weeks he and his men were active again — this time assaulting trains carrying Americans. On January 10, 1916 Villa and his men attacked a Mexican train carrying 15 Americans who were on their way to work at a mining town. The Americans were dragged from the train and forced to kneel in the dirt. Each received a bullet in the back of the head while Villa’s men screamed “Viva Villa!”

Each of the bodies was then stripped of valuables — including wedding rings — and some bodies were then horribly mutilated. All were left to rot in the desert.

In the spring of 1916, US Army troops encamped along our southwest frontier were alerted to rumors of raiders coming out of the arid wastes of northern Mexico. There were few roads in that part of Mexico and columns of bandits on horseback were easy to spot.

Columbus, New Mexico Pancho Villa

In the early hours of March 9th, 1916, Mexican bandits under the command of this Great Mexican Hero — Senior Doroteo Aranga — better known as Francisco “Pancho” Villa — came across the border near Columbus, NM, pillaged the town and wantonly killed American men, women and unborn children. They then burned the town to the ground.

With only 350 inhabitants, the Columbus, NM of 1916, lay like a ripe fruit — ready for the taking. Villa had sent Cipriano Vargas and another bandit to scout the town. Villa had planned to wipe the town off the map.

The U.S. Army’s 13th Cavalry maintained a small detachment just to the west of town but it was totally unprepared for what was to come. The thunder of horsemen could be heard for miles as the raiders charged the town. Mexican bullets whistled wildly. The town’s train depot clock was stopped by a Mexican bullet at 4:11 am.
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MEXICO CITY — Mexican federal police say they have detained four men suspected of involvement in the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas.

Elias Alvarez Hernandez, the coordinator of federal police in Baja California state, says the men were allegedly part of an immigrant smuggling ring. Twenty-one immigrants were found with them when the men were detained near Tecate on Saturday.

Hernandez says the suspects are two brothers and two taxi drivers who allegedly worked for them. Police seized four guns during the detentions.

Hernandez told a news conference that one of the suspects told police another man detained Friday with a 9 mm pistol in his possession was the one who shot agent Rosas.

History of the U.S. Border Patrol
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