Today my son has delivered an English essay to his class as a junior in high school. It is titled The Truth About Vaccines and you can read it on the blog of that name. It is well-researched and includes personal interviews with several leaders in the vaccine-safety field: world-reknowned autism expert Bernard Rimland, PhD and Washington-based vaccine issue leader, Barbara Loe Fisher.
All of the irony of the racists claiming that immigrants wreck our country and ruin our economy, despite the statistics that show exactly the opposite, is only part of the whole incredible picture:
LOS ANGELES - They surprised the police, and maybe themselves, their T-shirts turning block after block of downtown Los Angeles streets white in a demonstration so massive that few causes in recent U.S. history have matched it.
Police said more than 500,000 people marched Saturday to protest a proposed federal crackdown on illegal immigration. Wearing white as a sign of peace, and waving flags from the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala and other countries, they came to show that illegal immigrants already are part of the American fabric, and want the chance to be legal, law-abiding citizens.—AP 3/25/06
The huge number of marchers is, again ironically, only a drop in the bucket compared to the 12 million estimated undocumented immigrants in the US (also called “illegal” by the legal citizens who don’t want them around.) The anti-immigration hounds are racist simply because they have no facts on which to base their annoyance of the influx of all of these foreigners. The immigrants are mostly Latino and mostly want to work in the US because they get paid the equivalent of nothing back home in their native countries where they generally live in squalor, and they heard there was a land of promise north of the Mexican/US border. So the racist citizens just don’t want anyone “strange” in their midst, and make up any of a number of excuses to prove they have a legitimate point.
The 12 million undocumented aliens will never be rounded up and sent home. There is not enough law enforcement and, frankly, zeal, to get that job done. The minority of aliens who are trouble-makers—criminals, drug runners, opportunists without scruples—probably runs the same percentage as in the general citizenship population, and that’s where the government and legislation needs to focus. There are many democrats, and some republicans, who are working along these lines to engineer laws to make the borders safer, for both those of us who live here, and those who are trying to get here from abroad. These congress people and senators are the unsung heroes, not the wild-eyed wolf-pack who would lead the ignorant sheep in their xenophobic rush to oppression and tyranny.
What were the marches around the country about?
The demonstrators oppose legislation passed by the U.S. House that would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally. It also would impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, require churches to check the legal status of parishioners before helping them and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border.-- AP 3/25/06
The Civil Rights Movement brought about riots due to a group of people whose recent ancestors had been taken against their will from their homeland, Africa, and brought to this country as slaves. Those rioters were the downtrodden, persecuted by white racist Americans because of the color of their skin. Are riots going to re-emerge because a huge plurality of people, Latinos, living in this country feels threatened after they came here on their own to make a better life and are persecuted by racists because of their national origin? Is this the beginning of a new violent revolution? Will republicans in congress give up their fearful notion of constructing an actual barrier to a perceived “Trojan Horse,” as Jim Gilchrist, leader of the inappropriately-named “minuteman” vigilante group, has called the influx of immigrants?
These questions have suddenly and realistically come to the forefront of American politics and society, and cooler heads better not just prevail, but they better also set an obvious example and proclaim to their fellow hot-headed racist citizens that there is not a place for a modern-day Nazi mentality in these United States of ours.
Those of us who see the melting pot of this country as the land of immigrants it always was better let all of our family and friends know how we view the future of the greatest society in the world—as one of mutual benefit and prosperity for any and all who want to make a positive contribution, excluding none.
And in case you harbor a doubt that there is "enough to go around" for everyone, I haven’t got the time or patience to explain why, but you need to know you’re wrong and not to worry. As soon as people stop fearing and start planning, everyone will benefit.
Immigration Petition PFAW
Common Sense on Immigration (From this blog Nov 2005)
I’ll make this perfectly clear: I’m not a draft dodger, I was never called to military service, and I view serving in the US military as an honorable and heroic duty. If I had been drafted during the Vietnam War, I would have become a draft-dodger, but I wasn’t drafted. I see no contradiction in these declarations since refusal to follow immoral orders is acceptable since the Nuremburg trials, and the Vietnam War was immoral.
When I see ribbons on cars that say “support our troops,” I wonder who doesn’t, or who wouldn’t, support our troops. The ribbons should declare “I support our troops,” because the command asking for support assumes that someone doesn’t, or wouldn’t. The further assumption is that if you don’t support the Bush administration policies with regards to the occupation of Iraq, then you don’t support our troops in that country. In fact, I support our troops, I send a little money to various charity groups now and then which in turn send the troops supplies or send their families left behind some food or clothing. Yet I am dead set against US presence in Iraq, and favor a pullout along the lines of Congressman John Murtha, as soon as possible.
My late father-in-law was stuffing bodies into bags at age 17 as a Marine in Korea. My stepfather spent 6 months in the infantry in the Battle of the Bulge when he was 18. Both mens’ experience in war shaped the rest of their lives, for better or, more probably, for worse. I respected and admired their military background, and based on the war stories I was told, I was glad I never had to take part in any of it. So far, with the volunteer army set-up, neither will my son.
I watched my tall, husky, handsome 17 year old high-schooler walk out the door this morning. It actually crossed my mind how lucky we are that he is not in the military in Iraq, as are so many thousands of young Americans his age. Then I read a piece from an old friend, Gerald Rellick, who writes opinions on line, in which he made this statement:
Our servicemen are no longer there to fight, but simply to survive.
Rellick quotes an infantryman’s typical day:
“Mostly we drive around Iraq, often we walk and always we wait. Waiting to blow up.... Everywhere you look, there’s a possibility of being blown up. Bombs are hidden in dead dogs and dead donkeys, trash piles, fruit stands and cars. Any place is a good place to hide a bomb... I may still have a young man’s body, but now I have an old man’s heart, and I know when I’m back home it will quiver from loud noises and strain in the night, while I sleep and I dream.”
Rellick’s intelligent commentary goes on to bash several politicians, the Bush people, and most importantly, us—yes, we the people—in our gross negligence failing to make it totally clear that we’ve had enough. Polls, anti-war marches, and complaining aside, there are constitutional remedies for abuse of power in these United States, and it is time by now that they are put into effect. With some patience and some prodding, in a few months the ballot should ring in the cure.
[Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the aerospace industry for 22 years. He now teaches in the California Community College system. He can be reached at grellick@hotmail.com]
Cluster ACO 3341 at 300 million light years
Hard to believe but Fox News Judge Andrew P. Napolitano today said that the renewal of the Patriot Act brought the United States justice system back to "square one," meaning prior to the Bill of Rights. There is no transcript available yet, and you can check for yourself on Fox News Shepard Smith today, March 8, 2004, when the good judge was asked about the meaning of the controversy over renewing the Patriot Act particulars, and why would anyone object if it meant an increase of each individual's safety due to national security issues?
Napolitano simply explained that the same usurpation of rights under the "Patriot Act" provisos was what the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution was created for--to protect against the exact infractions that the British were doing against the American citizens of the 18th century.
4th Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The argument is that if you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry. That same imbecillic argument is what law-abiding citizens have told their neighbors throughout history--including the Jews in Berlin in the 1930's and any innumerable writers, actors, directors and producers in Hollywood in the late forties, "It can't happen here--it can't happen to us, we've done nothing wrong!"
My nephew wrote an award-winning essay in high school four years ago about the gestation and rationale for the Patriot Act following the events of 9/11. It's worth reading if just to find out how frightening it is, what is happening to our rights in these United States of ours.
http://patriotactessay.blogspot.com/
Good Night and indeed, Good Luck!
In a perverse way, I'm hoping that "Crash" sweeps the field at the Academy Awards ceremony. Not because it's good — quite the contrary. But I figure that turning up the spotlight on the movie's vision of Los Angeles as a simmering, racist hellbroth might finally stem the flood of Canadians and New Yorkers who keep driving up local real estate prices.—LA Times OP-Ed 2/26/06 Matt Welch
The section of a multi-segmented op-ed piece, of several movies nominated for the Academy Award this year, which points out the discrepancies between reality and Hollywood’s take, was way off the mark, if not entirely annoying in tone. Welch is L.A. Times assistant editorial page editor, which used to include in its op-ed section such a luminary as Robert Scheer, until he was fired, so maybe that says something for the angle.
But really, as a proponent of tolerance and trying to appeal to our “higher selves,” I was appalled at this particular reaction to the movie, Crash, a multi-leveled story of peoples’ foibles, prejudices, and their ultimate potential for redemption.
Instead, Welch panders to the “Bill O’Reilly” knee jerk tendencies of our base natures by swinging with flailing left-and-right punditry jabs:
Haggis wrote "Crash" after his Porsche was carjacked. A rich Hollywood progressive, he wanted to understand his attackers (in a similar act of condescension, he cast rapper Chris "Ludacris" Bridges as one of the movie's articulate black thugs because Bridges brought "authenticity, the street").
It's hard to observe street-level race relations from an opulent perch (Haggis' house was used as the district attorney's mansion in the film).
Oh come on, Welch, are you 12 years old? In this vein we would assume that Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee would have no identification with the shepherding gay men of Wisconsin in Brokeback Mountain, despite the possibility that Lee may have seen the same kind of repression and prejudice growing up in his culture in Nationalist China. Not to mention the more obvious reference of mega-multi-millionaire Steven Spielberg and his depiction of the Holocaust of Schindler’s List.
But my goal is not to tear apart Welch’s attempt at some vague humor just to fulfill his assignment as one of five elements of an op-ed Academy Award piece. Rather, I aim to shine the light on the prescience of a fine young man, a teenager with a vision of the world in its reality, and of his view of a moment of cinema as an example of high art.
That high-schooler is my son. As he and an actor-friend of ours were both enthusing about the greatness of Crash several months ago, our friend said it was too bad it won’t win the award for best picture. My son simply said, “You’ll be surprised, it will win.” And so it did.
That’s how sure he was about the meaning behind this film, because he has learned the lesson of appealing to our best natures, and of tolerance, and of not needing to be cynical to be cool.
My son’s favorite car is not a Porsche, either—it’s a Lamborghini.
Kids Die and people lie,
and vaccines'll really hurt'cha
