NPI Blog: News and Commentary

The idea for citizen patrols has gained support during the week-long spate of arson in the German capital, which have left dozens of cars, mostly expensive models, burned out.

More than 300 vehicles have now been set alight since the beginning of the year, including five overnight Sunday.

Police have struggled to deal with the crisis, but the city actually assigns more people to give out traffic tickets than track down the car arsonists, according to the daily newspaper Die Welt.

Many people told the newspaper they were ready to join citizens’ groups to combat the attacks, because the government isn’t doing enough.

Some have suggested that neighbours begin carrying weapons and go on the hunt for perpetrators. Others have suggested a less vigilante-style response with simple unarmed neighbourhood patrols.

“The critical educator cannot wait for the dominant group or the American structure to correct itself. The critical educator must understand that the oppressors cannot see the nature of their ways. Given this understanding, it is my belief that the dominant group is incapable of critical reflection or redemptive remembering….” Culture as a resource: Critically Compassionate intellectualism and its struggle against racism, fascism, and intellectual apartheid in Arizona, Augustine F. Romero, and Sean Martin Arce

Testimony was presented by a Tucson Unified School District teacher whose child took a Mexican American Studies department American History class this past school year. She testified in the second day of hearings in the district’s appeal of Superintendent of Public Instruction Huppenthal’s finding that the TUSD Mexican American Studies classes violate state law.

The witness is currently employed in the district and her daughter took an MAS American Government class at Rincon High School with Jose Gonzales. Like other parents who have expressed concerns about their children’s experiences in the classes, she did not come forward earlier because she did not want her child to experience retaliation.

Fear of retaliation, and instances of retaliation have kept students, parents, and educators silent for a number of years. Reports of retaliation have been ignored or dismissed at the school level, at the district level, and even by the Superintendent. As a matter of fact, immediately prior to the teacher’s testimony, Dr Pedicone admitted that he only met with students who favored the classes. He admitted that he did not set up similar meetings with students who were opposed to the classes as he had with students in favor of the classes.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law passed under historic circumstances as part of an effort to combat institutionalized discrimination against racial minorities.

The lawsuit challenges the law on the grounds that the federal government did not have the authority to require certain states to obtain U.S. Justice Department approval before changing their electoral laws.

As ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser notes, the lawsuit comes two years after the Supreme Court ruled that the municipalities whose voting laws need to be “precleared” under Section 5 of the Act would have the option to “bail out” of the law by demonstrating that they had stopped racially discriminating and would not do so again in the future.

Nevertheless, Horne said in a statement at the time of filing the lawsuit that the provisions of the Act requiring preclearance “are either archaic, not based in fact, or subject to completely subjective enforcement based on the whim of federal authorities.”

Horne argued that Arizona’s burden under the law is arbitrary, based partly on the fact that Arizona was only included in the list of states requiring preclearance because of a 1975 amendment to the Act protecting “language minorities.” Arizona, with its large Hispanic population, did not have bilingual ballots until 1974, and so was considered at risk of violating the new requirement.

An illegal alien dump site two miles northeast of Lyle Robinson’s ranch house.

Lyle Robinson’s Tres Bellotas Ranch sits in a cradle of hills right on the Mexican border. It’s a pretty place. Sprawling Mulberry trees shade the brick house and oak trees–bellotas in Spanish–decorate the surrounding landscape. This time of year, during the monsoon season, the oaks drop acorns that cowboys and others working this land, 13 miles southwest of Arivaca, have prized as summer snacks for centuries.

It hardly seems possible that such a peaceful-looking spot could be the scene of anything momentous. But it is.

Everyone in America has a stake in what’s happening on the Tres Bellotas. Everyone in America should know about the events that play out daily on this remote ground, and on neighboring ranches, because they explain our present and foretell our future.

This is a place where all the rhetoric from the president and his government about homeland security crumbles to pieces on the hot ground. The Tres Bellotas is a battleground in the relentless, ugly, nonstop invasion of drugs and illegals across our southern border.

It will happen again tonight. Robinson knows this, because two invaders showed themselves earlier on this beautiful July morning, shortly after breakfast. Walking openly, without fear of harassment, the two men walked from Mexican soil into the United States through the wide-open international border gate 200 yards below Robinson’s home.

A couple of weeks ago, the historian David Starkey made a comment on the riots. He has been widely denounced for what he said, not least because he referred approvingly to Enoch Powell.

Professor Starkey is able to defend himself. What concerns the Libertarian Alliance is how our increasingly totalitarian ruling class regards Enoch Powell as some kind of Emanuel Goldstein. Even if nothing controversial in itself is said, to speak of him without visible and ritualistic loathing will bring you under suspicion of thought crime.

We therefore say this with regard to Enoch Powell. He was a classical scholar of great brilliance and distinction. His Lexicon to Herodotus (1938) is one of the most valuable works ever produced on the ancient historian. As well as in Latin and Greek, he was fluent in every main European language, and in Welsh. He was also at least competent in several ancient and modern oriental languages. In addition, he wrote a fine biography of Joseph Chamberlain, and was an expert on the mediaeval House of Lords.

During his long political career, he was notable for his defence of the British Constitution and of the traditional liberties that it embodied. He was an anti-socialist and an anti-corporatist. He resigned from one Conservative Government that was soft on spending and inflation. He helped bring down another that was a national disaster. He played an important part in stopping further “reforms” to the House of Lords until the year of his death.

He opposed British membership of what became the European Union, and he regarded the American alliance as barely less undesirable. He opposed the Cold War and the First Gulf War. He believed in a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He was easily the best political speaker of his age.

Tuesday, September 14th is primary day here in Maryland. Campaign signs litter roadways and volunteers greet commuters as they idle at traffic lights in Prince George’s County. One hot button issue that should be on the mind of Maryland voters is immigration. As the number of illegal immigrants continue to rise in Maryland and the economy further spirals downward, voters in Maryland face tough decisions.

Adding to the immigration debate is an organization that has caused outrage and controversy over its mission and programs. CASA de Maryland, also know as the Central American Solidarity Association deserves national attention for it’s programs that target day laborers in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The Background

From Wikipedia (emphasis in bold):

“CASA was founded in 1985 in the basement of the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church by concerned U.S. citizens and Central American immigrants. It has since expanded its scope. It is affiliate organization of the National Council of La Raza. It has received funding from a variety of sources, including a two-year grant funding operations in Baltimore from George Soros‘ Open Society Institute. CASA of Maryland is also a founding member of the National Capital Immigration Coalition (“NCIC”) which promotes “comprehensive immigration reform”.[5] Other funding sources include the Annie E. Casey Foundation and United Way. They are a member of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. CASA also has received $1.5 million from CITGO, the state-owned Venezuelan petroleum products corporation.

CASA operates five day labor centers throughout the state, with public and private funding, three in Montgomery County, where its efforts have been the center of controversy. There is both significant support, and significant opposition, to their efforts to provide central sites where contractors can pick up day-laborers….”

Huge population can be an advantage but if not well controlled and planned for, it becomes a time bomb waiting to explode. No doubt, Nigeria is one such huge population that is increasing astronomically and is neither being controlled, nor from all indications, planned for.

As at 2006, Nigeria’s population was put at 150 million, but a recent report estimates that at the end of this year, the country’s population will be 162 million. By 2025, according to the report, Nigeria would have hit 237 million, a figure that will almost double by 2050 to 433 million, if the trend in the nation’s population growth continues.

Currently, Nigeria is the world’s most populous black nation and by the projection of the Washington DC based-Population Reference Bureau (PRB), which put out the recent world population data sheet, Nigeria will by 2050 be the third largest country in the world, behind India and China, bigger even than the United States of America (USA) and with only 10 per cent of the land mass.

No doubt, Nigeria’s massive population is an attraction to investors who seek large markets, but the near zero infrastructure base, the high poverty level, with 84 per cent of the people living on less than US$2 per day, the huge percentage of unemployed, the pervasive slum conditions in urban centres and the high crime rate are conditions which make this vast population the time bomb that it is.

Two dozen gunmen burst into a casino in northern Mexico on Thursday, doused it with gasoline and started a fire that trapped gamblers inside, killing at least 45 people and injuring a dozen more, authorities said.

The fire at the Casino Royale in Monterrey, a city that has seen a surge in drug cartel-related violence, represented one of the deadliest attacks on an entertainment center in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006.

“This is a night of sadness for Mexico,” federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire said in a televised address. “These unspeakable acts of terror will not go unpunished.”

Calderon tweeted that the attack was “an abhorrent act of terror and barbarism” that requires “all of us to persevere in the fight against these unscrupulous criminal bands.”

Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said the number late Thursday had risen to at least 45.