The caravan moves on: from illegal immigration to the Rubaiyat
I’m not at all sure the Democrats are pleased about the timing of this:
More Honduran migrants tried to join a caravan of several thousand trekking through Guatemala on Wednesday, defying calls by authorities not to make the journey after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cut off regional aid in reprisal.
The caravan has been growing steadily since it left the violent Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Saturday. The migrants hope to reach Mexico and then cross its northern border with the United States, to seek refuge from endemic violence and poverty in Central America.
These are illegal immigrants, of course, and no doubt most if not all of them will ask for asylum status if they manage to cross the US border. The sad thing—and it is a sad thing—is that there are an awful lot of what someone or other once called “shithole countries” around the world, and many of the people in those countries would indeed dearly love to come here. Some of them would even make good citizens if they did; perhaps this woman is among them:
“We’ve lived in neighborhoods where our children have seen disaster after disaster,” said Daisy Turcios, resting briefly outside a school. “We have seen dead bodies thrown in front of us. So that’s my goal, in truth, to reach a country where life can change for my children.”
Or perhaps she wouldn’t be a good citizen. But whether she would or wouldn’t, she is subverting the lawful immigration process, and there is no doubt whatsoever that some of fellow caravaners would not make good citizens.
And it is a fact that every country on earth should have the right to make its own rules about who comes into it and who does not, and the US—as the most-desired nation on earth in which to live—cannot take all comers or even nearly all comers. The economic and social burdens would be too high.
More here about the politics of the caravan and what might await it:
“Hard to believe that with thousands of people from South of the Border, walking unimpeded toward our country in the form of large Caravans, that the Democrats won’t approve legislation that will allow laws for the protection of our country,” Trump said on Twitter on Wednesday.
The Honduran government has urged citizens not to join the caravan, calling it politically motivated. On Wednesday morning near the Guatemalan border, authorities could be seen stopping Hondurans still hoping to join, with police in riot gear at one checkpoint halting buses carrying at least a hundred people…
Mexico said anyone who enters the country with a Mexican visa can move freely, while those without proper documents would be subject to review and could be deported.
“This measure responds not only to compliance with national legislation, but particularly to the interest of the Mexican Government to avoid that such people become victims of human trafficking networks,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
NOTE: For me, the word “caravan” almost immediately conjures up the poem “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” a work I had to read in high school and very much loved. Here are the “caravan” references in the poem:
Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way…
One Moment in Annihilation’s Waste,
One moment, of the Well of Life to taste—
The Stars are setting, and the Caravan
Starts for the dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste!…
A Moment’s Halt—a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reach’d
The NOTHING it set out from—Oh, make haste!…
Do high school students read the Rubaiyat anymore? By the way, FitzGerald’s masterful translation of the poem apparently used the original Farsi merely as a springboard from which to work his own creative magic. Today it’s probably considered an act of cultural appropriation. But if it is, I say “bravo!”
There are many quatrains in the poem that are favorites, and so it’s hard for me to pick a favorite favorite. But perhaps this would be it:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
NOTE II: The title of this post comes from this Arabic saying.
“after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cut off regional aid in reprisal.”
Donald Trump wasn’t my first choice, but I am very much impressed by his pragmatic pursuit of our shared policy objectives.
“Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute.” G. Washington
I have long maintained that the illegal immigration spigot could have been turned off at the source by any US government branch willing to put money on the line.
We could then debate and implement rational immigration policies that would establish clear (and hopefully less expensive) ways to bring people into the US that benefit them and us. At the time, I believed that most Congressional reps and Presidents actually believed in doing good things for the country, not just in advancing their own personal and partisan interests. Now, not so much.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
* * *
Truer than ever before, in these days where anything you put on the Internet is there forever (even if TPTB delete your account).
Also my all-time favorite, for trenchant substance expressed in the perfection of the verse-form.
Once our laws are broken and meaningless, and our culture reduced to the culture of mordida, and conniving, and dictators spouting socialist platitudes, while the polity circles the drain, it won’t be the most desirable country on earth.
It is only desirable because of the rule of law, and because at least a plurality, if not majority of Americans are still God-fearing, law abiding, plain dealing men and women who have never been peasants.
Now, what obligation has the average American to sacrifice his liberty and his posterity’s future on the altar of a moral dysfunction that these people generate from within themselves?
If they want to be free of political dysfunction, then they should ask the United States government to invade their countries, kill off most of the political class, all the drug lords, and every socialist fake priest they can track down, and to appoint an Evangelical Christian retired general to run the place for a decade or so.
And I’m not an Evangelical.
Or, if they don’t like that plan, we should just send the effen bombers in without further ado. These “cultures” are enemy value systems which the law breakers carry with them as often, it seems, as not.
No … more … damned … peons. No … more … village idiots … no more socialist fodder.
“shithole countries”
As a student and if I may say advanced practitioner of the art of profanity I believe the correct quote was “shithouse countries.” But your version does have its merits.
why are they not coming from nicuragua? oh thats right they fought off the contra drug dealing mercenaries that the u.s. installed in el salvador (remember the marinol nuns murdered) guatamala and honduras.
Bob:
Well, there’s some disagreement over that.
We’ll call it a draw.
First, the rate of immigration should not exceed the rate of assimilation and integration before planned parenthood. Second, illegal immigration forces inconsistencies and corruption. Finally, the issue is emigration reform, not immigration reform, and a good neighbor policy that promotes conditions for the former.
why are they not coming from nicuragua? oh thats right they fought off the contra drug dealing mercenaries that the u.s. installed in el salvador (remember the marinol nuns murdered) guatamala and honduras.
You don’t know anything, and should shut up. El Salvador has had an elected government since 1982 and Guatemala since 1986. The Salvadoran civil war was settled with an armistice in 1992. The Guatemalan insurgency was suppressed by the end of 1984, then settled with a formal armistice in 1996.
Nicaragua had an elected government from 1990 to 2011, when the Sandinistas began deploying massive vote fraud to stay in power.
Well, the romantics prefer:
A book of verses underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou,
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness were paradise enow.
They’re from a country known for its shitshow — hat tip: Obama — which is a progressive condition under what are purportedly well-intentioned policies.
All the pictures I have seen has people carrying Honduran flags, which indicate to me that they are not willing to assimilate into our country, but will expect the benefits of what we have to offer.
Note – my mother was born in Latvia, married my dad (with the Army’s approval), had to go through medical checks, and came to the US where she became an American citizen. She did not teach her children her languages or customs. The only Latvian recipe that I remember is beet soup (her version had lean beef on bone for the beef broth and some meat, julienne beets, and sour cream as a topping). Knowing Latvian would have helped me since, in her last week, she reverted to speaking it.
Art Deco:
If you want to correct other commenters, that’s fine. And I value your comments here.
But telling someone that he or she should shut up isn’t really in line with the atmosphere I try to keep here. So although I realize that tempers sometimes flare, I’m asking that everyone desist from that sort of thing.
I also realize that I may seem very very quaint. But it’s one of those slippery slopes.
Neo: I guess I am also very very quaint…. besides I learned that you can change more minds by being nice than by insulting someone.
I hope you are keeping warm up north..
If you have read up on the Honduran caravan, you will know it was organized by known Leftists. The caravan’s caudillo has now been arrested.
Looks like the democrats are looking to ensure voter turn-out.
“And Having Writ” is the title of one of my favorite alternate-history novels, and was my introduction to the Rubaiyat. Which I was not required to read in high school 1978-82, and I strongly doubt is required anywhere anymore. Being “Orientalist” and all that.
In a recent development it was reported that ACT test scores declined. The hordes of immigrants will overwhelm the schools. In many states it has already happened.
What will these people do for a living?
By the way, cf. the caravanserai quatrains with the Venerable Bede, c. 730 CE:
— St. Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People
NOTE: For me, the word “caravan” almost immediately conjures up…
Caravan , Van Morrison , 1970 Vinyl – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYJJ55oD02A
&
Kitaro: Silk Road Suite (because the caravans traveled the silk road)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_eXTM_jHBI
Anyone want to know or care to figure out the different historical points they are repeating together? think 1920s (anti fascist league and that)… 1930s, exterminate those that cheated and are responsible for the ills (jews then, white guys now – https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=eRXJRx7ZxWY Micheal more talks to young Spanish people getting on their good side i guess – dont they know they were the ones that took Indian lands first, murdered, poisoned, tortured, and forced to work to dig gold? guess not). the caravans are the barbarians that migrated near the fall of rome…
its kind of like a historical pastiche in which the left has gathered up the worst working nasties like lint balls gathering to dust bunnies (vorpal bunnies in this case)…
and most of the victims are too ignorant of history to understand it let alone act
Bryan Lovely:
That St. Bede image, of the sparrow flying through the hall for a brief moment, was told to me in school, either in junior high or even in grade school. It immediately impressed me, and also rather frightened me.
I doubt any public school teachers are quoting that to their junior high students these days.
I only became aware of Bede’s parable of the sparrow a couple of years ago, from listening to “The British History Podcast” (recommended, and very comprehensive). I never heard it in college, even though I took a whole lot of medieval and Church history courses.
I note the articles–pictures of strapping young men handing out cash to people, especially women with small children–who were apparently being paid to join this march. **
Were I a cynical man, I might think that this whole march, which has suddenly sprung up out of nowhere was, in fact, a very carefully considered, planned, and ginned up piece of political theater and propaganda, timed precisely to coincide with the approaching mid-term elections here in the U.S.
Cynical old me would also have a suspicion that the source of this money being handed out may well be George Soros.
** https://rightedition.com/2018/10/18/video-shows-cash-being-handed-out-to-honduran-migrant-caravan-headed-for-u-s-rep-gaetz/
understand that its easier to make a small area in a third world country into a hell hole to displace people… to feed that and supply that, or add a few experts unknown… you make a war zone, you kill, and you can get a caravan going… you can get people to be your weapon and such a passive aggressive weapon the victims may not know that hegel is at the steering wheel and two things will be smashed together to make a new thing. it would NOT be the first time in history that people were displaced purposefully by other means
note that there is a reason why, in each of the countries the soviet union took over, that they removed about 1/3 of the population, and replaced that… this is another way to the same end… but you may sense the issues from it, but you wouldn’t know that this was a planned doctrine that the real people wanting this stuff and acting on it are fans enough to have read, know, and study and discuss it… and laugh that you dont…
Population transfer in the Soviet Union refers to forced transfer of various groups from the 1930s up to the 1950s ordered by Joseph Stalin and may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of “anti-Soviet” categories of population (often classified as “enemies of workers”), deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill the ethnically cleansed territories.
dont think they dont know what happens
and still, the reason that is now open is the democide of the current population its collapsed birth rate and the need to import people to “hide the decline”, hasten change (by not selecting), and create the historical situation.
Almost the entire Soviet population of ethnic Koreans (171,781 persons) were forcefully moved from the Russian Far East to unpopulated areas of the Kazakh SSR and the Uzbek SSR in October 1937
Looking at the entire period of Stalin’s rule, one can list: Poles (1939–1941 and 1944–1945), Romanians (1941 and 1944–1953), Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1941 and 1945–1949), Volga Germans (1941–1945), Ingrian Finns (1929–1931 and 1935–1939), Finnish people in Karelia (1940–1941, 1944), Crimean Tatars, Crimean Greeks (1944) and Caucasus Greeks (1949–50), Kalmyks, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Karapapaks, Far East Koreans (1937), Chechens and Ingushs (1944).
The story of Ruta U covers this action during the war period!
(its about people left behind to suffer and sold out at yalta, without anyone to care or rescue… while one group celebrated their liberation, the left behinds were sold at Yalta).
and these too:
When the war ended in May 1945, millions of Soviet citizens were forcefully repatriated (against their will) into the USSR. British and U.S. civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union millions of former residents of the USSR (some of whom collaborated with the Germans), including numerous persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship many years before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945–1947
and of course my family history we were “displaced persons”
At the end of World War II, more than 5 million “displaced persons” from the Soviet Union survived in German captivity. About 3 million had been forced laborers (Ostarbeiter) in Germany and occupied territories
a segway to: Forced displacement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_displacement
something to think about… how confused are the people in understanding what is going on?
are these immigrants?
displaced people?
forced immigrant (by circumstances – real or created and exacerbated)
refugees?
the last part is interesting… “as an attempt at ethnic cleansing”
could that be possible if a uneducated mass has enough power to change the state and demand what? you have Mr Fahrenheit talking it.. you have a woman at a prestigious math society, a scholar in Florida… and down the line they are all suggesting or saying certain things… much of it repeats of the ideas from last century… and no one wants to believe or take them seriously, which really lets them act without head winds.
there is a lot of decent background at the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_displacement
Cicero at 5:24,
Soros has been arrested? About time. Now they can handle him over to the Hungarians. 😉
Caravanserai – could be Loreena McKennitt’s best composition.
DNW on October 18, 2018 at 3:55 pm at 3:55 pm said:
Once our laws are broken and meaningless, and our culture reduced to the culture of mordida, and conniving, and dictators spouting socialist platitudes, while the polity circles the drain, it won’t be the most desirable country on earth.
* * *
Kind of like all the people who move to Tucson because the desert environment is good for their asthma, then import the plants that need extreme watering and duplicate the environment they just left.
Or Californians moving to Colorado and Texas and voting for the same things that drove them out of California.
neo on October 18, 2018 at 8:06 pm at 8:06 pm said:
Bryan Lovely:
That St. Bede image, of the sparrow flying through the hall for a brief moment, was told to me in school, either in junior high or even in grade school. It immediately impressed me, and also rather frightened me.
I doubt any public school teachers are quoting that to their junior high students these days.
* * *
Also in reply to Liz — I was helping my 6th grade grandson with a social studies assignment today: they were supposed to interview parents and grandparents and answer questions about their family and community. Aside from being a very badly structured set of questions (no explanations or consistency or continuity), they were clearly designed to be answered by students of the first or second generation of immigrants, whose family still practiced the cultural norms of their homeland.
Since our last immigrant ancestors came to the US in the mid-19th century, from various places, and the earliest were native American (I meet the Warren Test) and very early Spanish, he was having a difficult time trying to figure out what native clothing his family wore, what the gender roles of his community were, and how his family differed from others — among other questions that simply did not apply to long-assimilated (or even short-assimilated) families.
I don’t have any problem with having kids explore their ethnic heritage; it was the blatant assumption that everyone in that classstill practices their grandad’s culture that blew me up.
Snow on Pine on October 18, 2018 at 8:18 pm at 8:18 pm said:
I note the articles–pictures of strapping young men handing out cash to people, especially women with small children–who were apparently being paid to join this march. **
* * *
I think this pay-to-play scenario was mentioned about the prior March as well.
Kind of like the paid protestors at rallies and US marches (who we find out about when they get stiffed).
https://shadowproof.com/2017/02/25/professional-anarchist-soros-trump/
(language warning, but what do you expect from a pro-anarchist?)
“Weeks into the presidency of a buffoonish but vicious tyrant, I feel compelled to take off my black bandana, hooded sweatshirt, and kick off my steel-toed boots to reveal myself to the people. This is especially for those who believe the United States is faced with an uprising led by professional anarchists and paid protesters.
They are right. In this communique, I will unmask myself, and thus, in doing so, there will be truth.
I can say they are correct because I was hired by New York Hedge Fund manager and elite liberal sugar daddy George Soros to personally chair an anarcho-commission of agitators. We were asked to treat our work like that of a corporation. The more franchises we could start in cities across America, the more likely we would be able to tear down Donald Trump.
But the only problem is Soros is a (bleep).
That (bleep) promised to pay me $2,000/week and give me health insurance. He promised to set up a retirement account. He even promised to give me a sizable bonus at the end of the year. But after the inauguration, when it was time to be paid, no check came in the mail.”
* * *
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paid-protesters-kavanaugh-hearings/
“False accusations alleging protesters at confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh were paid as part of a nefarious liberal conspiracy to block his confirmation resulted in intense harassment for two people whose images were posted online along with misleading information.
Internet trolls widely shared a photograph of demonstrator Vickie Lampron being handed cash by an organizer while she waited to enter the U.S. Capitol, where she would be one of the first persons to be arrested protesting at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Kavanaugh on 4 September 2018. Although she was merely given a small amount of cash so she could pay post and forfeit fines, conspiracy theorists falsely claimed a photograph of her was evidence that protesters were paid for personal gain in exchange for disrupting the hearings.
…
While it’s true the photograph indeed shows Lampron being given money, she wasn’t being paid a fee in exchange for protesting. The man wearing a backpack in the photograph is Vinay Krishnan, a consultant who helps organize legal support for the progressive activist organization Center for Popular Democracy (an organization that has been heavily involved in organizing protests against Kavanaugh’s confirmation).
Krishnan told us the money was raised via small donations from around the country, and protesters were given about $35 to pay related fees in the event they were arrested; if they weren’t arrested, the money was to be returned.”
(a) we only have this guy’s word to Snopes about the amount and purpose of the payments.
(b) technically, they were being paid to protest; otherwise they would be liable for any fees out of their own pocket.
So, it’s a semantic disagreement on what the meaning of “paid” is.
y81 on October 18, 2018 at 4:56 pm at 4:56 pm said:
Well, the romantics prefer:
A book of verses underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou,
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness were paradise enow.
* * *
Well, that’s my second favorite (I inherited a bread platter from my parents that they had since getting married, inscribed with the second line).
The spelling of enow (for the rhyme) reminds me of this classic Lucy & Desi skit.
http://www.brookslanguage.com/2014/11/pronunciation-and-spelling-with-i-love.html
wammo:
why are they not coming from nicuragua [sic]?
Because they’ve already left Nicaragua.Wikipedia: Nicaraguan Diaspora.
…(remember the marinol [sic] nuns murdered)
But not a peep about the Ortega regime killing protesters, THIS YEAR, I notice.
Rights group updates death toll in Nicaragua unrest to 448. (July 26,2018)
Just so you might learn, so you might remember.
wammo:
why are they not coming from nicuragua [sic]?
Just to point out that from 2008-2014, the Chavista regime in Venezuela gave Nicaragua over $4 billion, which averaged 6% of Nicaragua’s GDP during that time. Courtesy of Nicaragua’s Central Bank, here is what the Chavista regime in Venezuela gave Nicaragua from 2008-2017. Informe de Cooperación Oficial Externa 2017_Mayo 2018. Interesting that Nicaragua calls foreign aid “cooperation.” From page 15:
Venezuelan Foreign Aid via ALBA-TCP, millions of dollars
2008 $457
2009 $490.6
2010 $532.8
2011 $577.2
2012 $729.3
2013 $654.3
2014 $686
2015 $368.1
2016 $248.6
2017 $102.4
The reduction in Venezuelan “cooperation” resulted in the Ortega regime initiating Social Security cuts this year, which sparked the unrest.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=NI&view=chart
wammo
…(remember the marinol [sic] nuns murdered)
If you are interested in actually learning something about Central America, as opposed to merely snarking, I would suggest that you investigate the deaths of the Salvadorean guerrilla leaders Mélida Anaya Montes a.k.a. Ana María, Cayetano Carpio, and Roque Dalton. They died not at the hands of the government, but as a result of conflicts among guerrillas. Murder was embedded in the culture, in both government and guerrillas. Dissent magazine had a good article back on the day on this. BTW, Roque Dalton was related to a famous American pop singer.
As the caravan moves on and on and on…one wonders:
Why singers just can’t just stick to singing:
https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/10/bono-wants-africa-and-the-eu-to-join-forces-against-trump-and-the-us-and-take-over-the-world/
Or why Spain’s Socialist guvmint is angling to turn that country into the next Venezuela….:
https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/10/budget-proposal-of-spains-socialist-government-is-economically-illiterate-and-fiscally-suicidal/
Indeed, the jackals are howling….
If you are interested in actually learning something about Central America, as opposed to merely snarking,
He might also learn to spell “Maryknoll”; or learn that the contras were Nicaraguan, not Salvadorean or Guatemalan; or that the contras were recruited from a variety of disaffected elements in Nicaraguan society, among the quondam Sandinistas and Misquito Indians; or that calling them ‘mercenaries’ was a rhetorical strategy of red-haze types and sundry knuckleheads like Michael Harrington. About 70,000 people died during the Salvadorean civil war from battles between political factions (over and above daily mayhem). The country’s court system and police forces were only minimally effective prior to the war (no murder prosecutions were initiated between 1977 and 1984) and remain ineffective as we speak. The country has a tremendous culture of violence and quelling it will require a national mobilization the country’s political class is uninterested or unable to effect. That’s the mode in Latin America, though few places are as disorderly as El Salvador.
Just to point out that from 2008-2014, the Chavista regime in Venezuela gave Nicaragua over $4 billion, which averaged 6% of Nicaragua’s GDP during that time.
My recollection is that about 20% of the country’s national income between 1979 and 1985 consisted of foreign transfers. The Sandinistas have always been international mendicants able to find people to indulge them.
The sad business is that Nicaragua remains one of the poorest countries in Latin America, in a class with Honduras and Bolivia but no one else. They’ve had a considerable loss of relative position in the last 50 years, which hasn’t been true of Bolivia (nor Honduras, unless I’m mistaken). Most Latin American countries are 2d tier economically; Nicaragua is 4th tier.
I love reading all your comments. I learn some things. Thank you. That said, I have been going to Honduras for 20 years. I volunteer at a children’s home (could be called an orphanage but most are street children or abused by parents not capable of caring for them). We started a vocational and university scholarship fund for them btw. Always looking for donors. : }
I have been following this closely, as I talk to my Honduran friends. Interestingly the groups sponsoring the walk are of the “without borders” ilk. They talk about the 2009 coup that wasn’t. There was a left/right divide on how that should have been handled. The military removed Zelaya because he was scheming to go the Ortega route. Things calmed down after his removal, but the left/right schism remained much like the US (universities, etc.). Blue collar and middle-class (all poor by our standards) were happy with the way things resolved. Then a year or so again elections sparked protests.
I do know that gang violence is terrible (not sure if it is worse than some of our neighborhoods, which I point out to Honduran friends thinking of migrating is probably where they will end up). Police and government officials are complicit in taking bribes, etc. One of the young people from our home was shot in the streets of Tegucigalpa–he was an alumnus of the home.
The Honduran folks I interact with love their country, feel frustrated, sure. We are having discussions about the legality of what is going on here. If they cross the border illegally–they remain illegal status. They would have to turn themselves over at the border–before crossing to apply for refugee status. I remember when (2014) I believe the waves of Honduran UAMs came–Unaccompanied Minors. Yes, they were mostly teens, few traveling in family units. I visited a detention center. I write sometimes about immigration and refugee issues.
That wave overwhelmed border authorities and magnified the ugliness of detention centers and separating children. I think 14,000 came in the first wave and onward until it tapered to 30,000. What could they do with them? And in light of the Flores Settlement? Spotlight on catch and release. (I btw at one time was illegal in Honduras. : } )
Then came the scandals that some of the minors under the protection of HHS and the Office of Refugee Resettlement were being used in forced underpaid labor. Ohio and an egg factory come to memory. I believe there were sex trafficking allegations–and grooming boys for gangs. All of this has gotten the dander up in our left and right tribes, but most do not stop and educate themselves on the situation, so we don’t react rationally. I said to my Honduran friends that if I leave for a country (India for example), I must have my visa or I cannot get on the plane in the USA. We respect the sovereignty–as the governments of Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico are required to do. Withholding aid doesn’t seem cruel in that respect. Besides, aid is not an entitlement, I have told them. Sadly, I believe these people are being manipulated by the ideologues who have sponsored the march. And folks in Honduras are watching what is going on, posting the videos put out by the advocacy groups. They don’t understand any better than we do here in the United States.
How the heck does this caravan expect to cross a minimum of 1200 miles of Mexico? That’s a minimum 2-month slog. So they’re getting support from the Mexican government? If that’s the case, we ought to consider annexing a chunk of Mexico for them to live in. I imagine that would stiffen the Mexican government’s spine regarding “caravans”.
Think of this as siege warfare, and each one of these immigrant marches as a battering ram, a propaganda weapon designed to slam into and weaken our border enforcement, with the hope that, one day, our government will give up on enforcement, it will collapse entirely, and it will be open borders.
Then, as the Leftist marchers chant, “no borders, no Wall, no U.S.A. at all.”
Not Cultural Appropriation. Cultural Emulation. We learn from the accomplishments of others, and praise them thereby. Only in a wicked and envious worldview can the notion of “appropriation” of wisdom seem to make sense.
Mr Frank said: “What will these people do for a living?”
Do? why, sign up for benefits. that’s what they’ll “do”.
Neo isn’t the only “quaint” one around here!
Roberta: ” Sadly, I believe these people are being manipulated by the ideologues who have sponsored the march. And folks in Honduras are watching what is going on, posting the videos put out by the advocacy groups. They don’t understand any better than we do here in the United States.”
What a sad mess. Trump will need the wisdom of Solomon to find a solution.
As the saying goes, “Charity begins at home.”
These marchers are people who—because they have been told and believe that they are entitled to—demand that we let them into our national house, who refuse to let us determine who does come into our house, and who are determined to break down our doors, plunk themselves in our favorite chair and, then, in effect, demand the we take care of them and their children and, eventually, let their more distant relatives move in on us as well.
Despite what these marchers might think—if they think or care at all—our funds here in the U.S. are not unlimited, and if they don’t provide for themselves—which many don’t, and some never do—paying for their housing, education, medical care, child care, law enforcement and the associated costs means that, in what is essentially a “zero sum game,” money must the taken from the limited sum of money that should rightly go for the needs of our actual citizens.
The estimate for the total cost, just last year alone, to provide for illegals in this country was around $135 billion dollars. **
That is $135 billion dollars that won’t go for a host of things that that money should be spent on, in order to provide for the needs our legitimate citizens and taxpayers; won’t go for things like more and improved hospitals and medical care, won’t go for infrastructure—roads, bridges, and airports—improvements, won’t go for more and better schools, won’t go for more libraries, won’t go for more senior centers, won’t be spent for scientific and medical research, won’t be there for more police and firemen, or to improve our military, won’t go to increase social security payments to citizens, and on and on.
This is money and resources their countries of origin should be spending on their citizens, not us, and if their countries aren’t spending that money on their citizen’s needs, then, these illegal aliens should stay in their countries of origin and try to fix them, not come here, demand to be let in, and, then, expect that we should take care of their every need.
** I note, in passing, that Mexicans here in the U.S., most of them illegal aliens, currently send an estimated $30 billion dollars each year–sucked right out of our economy–back to Mexico, where it forms Mexico’s largest single annual source of revenue.
We are being played for suckers, and this needs to stop.
NYPD: Man’s Eye Socket Cracked in Possible Hate-Crime Punch at Bronx Pizzeria
Remember, kavenaugh was guilty till proven innocent, and now, you have innocent till proven guilty again… i guess this will be the justice for the new WORLDSTORM IN WHICH THESE HIDEBOUND PEOPLE WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE EARTH – Engels, Magyar Struggle the first in the “struggle” series, with the middle book being “My struggle” by an austrian author written in prison… what will the THIRD installment bring? what will its title be? “Unser Kampf”
here is what is a possible hate crime:
Get Out The Way
and this is HUMOR
White Man Hopes to Land Job Without Background Check
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/white-man-hopes-to-land-job-without-background-check
funny… ha ha
recently in the spanish press Michael Moore talks to a large group of young people getting them all up that like the jews in germany, the whites of the west (including jews) have ruined the world, and that these young revolutionaries will set it straight (so maybe the caravan is an ARMY of visgoths, and so on?)
here is what amounts to a bad psych introduction (?) and lots of his talking points cut together
Michael Moore Hates White People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3YPzd5-nVw
join: #antiwhite hashtag on Twitter
and the ECONOMIST:
Can white people experience racism?
Accusations of “reverse racism” haunt an American professor
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/18/can-white-people-experience-racism
i bet in 1933, you could talk about jews that way
and in 1840, you could talk about who that way
till WHAT happened?
NOW you know why STALIN replaced the population
to make a permanent underclass in which he could regain control, if lost
ie. he positioned an army of people who could be affected, ill advised, and mobilized
just like everyone knows antifa is presumed against fascism
did any one ask them on behalf of who are they fighting FOR?
capitalism? freedom? communism? anarcho commmunism?
and the politicians are helping, as in what country?
and the news is helping as in what country? [this despite video that would exhonerate]
Their biggest HERO is a EUGENICIST who had connetions to ERNST RUDIN, the KKK, and whose autobiography talks about the same things engels brought up in the magyar struggle, and two socialisms teamed up to implement!!!!!!! and that same idea source is behind what now? the caravan? the hate of one class?
So a FEMINIST doctrine from 2nd wave is a one way device? because THATS the source of thiis substitution test? if you want i can give you the name… not that anyone cared to research the other names i put up!!!!
thats ok.. Valery Solanas who shot andy warhole, and created the (now joke?) S.C.U.M Manifesto
where SCUM stans for Society for Cutting Up Men… and says how the world will be best if we exterminate them.. she has been writing for women for AGES… so why fire a sister?
as an Asian-American woman, she was incapable of racism altogether.
How can a Nazi be an anti-semite? they are not hateful of jews, but only what jews do!! its not the NAzis fault that the jew is who he or she is? does any of that horrid rhetoric sound familiar? it does to my family… we lived that horror… the devil was always in those details
it was really the critics who had excavated Ms Jeong’s public statements who were racists
Ms Jeong labelled her extreme statements as “counter-trolling” the deluge of sexist, racist and homophobic slurs directed at her [of which we ask, how did they even know she existed?]
She expressed her regret and said she understood “how hurtful these posts are out of context”
hey, thats the same excuse for using social justice a nazi concept of father coughlin
thats the same excuse for margaret sanger. you just dont know her in context
franz boas? Kinsey? Meade? Goldstein (Friedan)? Commins? Rote Zora?
i will leave you with this from the same article
this pretends that no one moved, no displaced persons, no caravans from socialisms destruction of europe… it also ignores the spaniards horrid actions to the indians that made them enemies of the white settlers… or do we not remember hispaniola? and slaves? spain and portugal were the core of that trade.. they murdred the people south of the border who speak a dialect of a european romantic langauge..
read it quick
the ends get cut off by neo.. no way to know… capricious.. sometimes it stays, sometimes it doesnt
usually another thread starts the same day… so everyone leaves the event before the last stuff gets read… after a decade the statistical times that happen are not evenly distributed… not that anyone but the subject cares much..
have a great weekend..
We are being played for suckers, and this needs to stop.
Interesting. As with Neo, I was introduced to Bede in “English” in high school; though in a background/historical context with one or two translated excerpts; one, almost certainly being your famous scene from the conversion deliberation featuring King Edwin and the pagan priest Coifi.
If if unlike yourself, anyone here does not have a book copy of the text, it can be downloaded for free in older translations.
My own favorite passages – apart from the fascinating death to life vision of Dryhthelm, householder of Cunningham (which contains numerous key features of modern NDE reports, such as the counter-intuitive hyper reality of the “spirit world”)- are found in the beginning and the end of the book.
As he recounts the fall of Roman Britain after the withdrawal of the legions, Bede describes an enervated and timorous populace which can hardly be brought to defend itself; and whose trembling watchmen are pulled down from their walls (presumably Hadrian’s, not the Antonine, wall) by barbarians armed with hooks.
Toward the end of the History he remarks that many of the Northumbrian nobility have given up the practice of arms for a less grueling and hardy “monastic” life; and that only time will tell how this trend plays out. I place “monastic” in quotes because it just recently came to my attention that there is a letter by Bede which comments further on these “institutions”, which if I understand the allusion correctly, implies they were not of Benedictine strictness. Perhaps they were more like the famous Irish monastery of Clonmacnoise. Not to be too flippant, but more on the order a coed arts and market community, than a collection of men who have renounced the world and its attractions .
Art Deco:
The sad business is that Nicaragua remains one of the poorest countries in Latin America, in a class with Honduras and Bolivia but no one else. They’ve had a considerable loss of relative position in the last 50 years, which hasn’t been true of Bolivia (nor Honduras, unless I’m mistaken).
You are not mistaken. From 1960 to 1977, Nicaragua’s GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$) as a percentage of Latin America’s GDP per capita hovered in the lower 40s- at least for the years I have checked. Nicaragua’s economy has since 1977 has declined considerably in relative position, with respect to Bolivia, Honduras, and Latin America.
GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$), 1977
Latin America & Caribbean 6,215
Bolivia 1,745
Honduras 1,549
Nicaragua 2,565
After 1977, Nicaragua ‘s economy declined relative to the rest of Latin America. While the Sandinistas had been operating for years, the insurrection went into overdrive in January 1978 with the assassination of newspaper editor Pedro Chamorro- whose widow later became President- and a massive strike that month. So yes, the decline of the economy began with the insurrection.
GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$), 2017
Latin America & Caribbean 9,356
Bolivia 2,523
Honduras 2,211
Nicaragua 2,016
This puts into numbers Nicaragua’s relative loss of position.
GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$) as a percentage of Latin America’s. 1977 and 2017
Bolivia 28% 27%
Honduras 25% 24%
Nicaragua 41% 22%
The big drop for Nicaragua came with the Sandinista insurrection. The Marxist economics the Sandinista comandantes imposed on Nicaragua didn’t enable economic recovery after they took power, even with all the foreign aid Nicaragua got. The contra war and loss of the US market circa 1985 didn’t help, but most of the damage can be placed at the hands of the Sandinistas.
Nicaragua’s GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$)
1977 2,565
1978 2,294
1979 1,637
1980 1,664
1981 1,704
1982 1,645
1983 1,676
1984 1,608
1985 1,505
1986 1,455
1987 1,413
1988 1,210
1989 1,164
For those who feel sorry for the Sandinistas because of the Contra war, my reply is that well before Reagan became President, Sandinista leaders made it clear they were ardent supporters of Soviet imperialism. Reagan didn’t push the Sandinistas into the lap of the Soviets- they were already there. If you like, I can document.
Since the Sandinistas lost the 1990 election, there has been a moderate recovery in Nicaragua’s economy, which continued after Ortega and company took power again about a decade ago. That indicates Ortega learned that Marxist economics didn’t help- though Chavista dosh probably did help Nicaragua’s economy some.
Nicaragua’s GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$)
1993 1,063
1997 1,190
2007 1,519
2017 2,016
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD
DNW:
As with Neo, I was introduced to Bede in “English” in high school
As was I my junior year in English literature, though I don’t remember any of his passages. A classmate, who considered himself quite the wit, changed “the Venerable Bede” to “the Venereal Bede.”
As the wit was a rather obnoxious sort, it didn’t go over as well as he thought it would. “There he goes again” was one response. I concluded that if that particular classmate mocked the Venerable Bede, Bede was truly Venerable.
Speaking of the enervated and timorous late classical populations to which Bede refers, there are some really interesting images from the period to be found in the Vergilius Romanus, which is hypothesized to have been produced in Britain.
Despite the decay in the ability of an artist to properly represent the human figure by this period according to art historians, my own opinion is that: a, If this were produced in Britain, and b, if the artist were not completely incompetent, incapable and insensible to the impression he was conveying, and c, if he was using late antique models from life as inspiration for the figures he presented, Then: The population of living figures he referenced were likely, sleek, unmuscular, overfed, and under exercised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergilius_Romanus#/media/File:Vergilius_romanus_234v.jpg
Even taking into account a deliberate emphasis.
That is a lot of “ifs”.
But I don’t think that I, as an ordinary Joe, can recall seeing much if any of this kind of physical representation in illuminated manuscripts. And the only illustrative parallel that occurs to me at the moment are mosaics or wall paintings of Bacchus or old men.
Liz— some of us are old enough to remember Leo Rosten’s “The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N,” which was popular all through the 1950s, about a night school English class of recent immigrants who were working as hard as they could to assimilate.
I have a World War I poster directed to immigrant parents, urging them to learn English so that they could “Write Your Soldier Boy a Letter in the Language of the United States.”
Try that today!
To clarify:
I was introduced to the image in grade school or junior high, not high school. But the person’s name was never mentioned, nor did we read his works. It was just a description of what he said, and it was so dramatic that I never forgot the image itself.
Lurch— No, they won’t sign up for benefits. That would give them away to ICE. What they will do is work completely off-book for cash, or work “grey,” that is, under a phony name and Social Security number. (There is a good side to that, however: all the Miguel Rodriguezes, SSAN 123-45-6789,and Maria Hernandezes, SSAN 9876-54-321 are keeping Social Security afloat by paying in and never taking out.)
They will of course, take any benefits they can get without signing up, free healthcare in clinics and emergency rooms, free schooling for their kids, etc. California, natch, wants to expand that!
I take it then, that the purpose was not to toss another consideration on the balance in favor of adopting the Christian world view, as in the original recounting; but rather to try and reproduce in the student mind what schoolmarms of the era saw as a kind of poetic, natural, precursor of an existentialism in which only the community in, or despite of, all its blind “thrownness” … provides the comforting warmth and that holds the lonely terrors of the frost world at bay … for a time. LOL … those schoolmarms …
Apropos of this, I remember a few years ago when some neo-pagan or militant atheist type began talking about the slaughter of gentle Woden loving folk, as a prelude to working up an indictment against the coercive persecutory missionary work of the Church. I cited Ciofi’s famous speech concerning the emptiness at the core of his pagan religion and how it was he himself who threw the spear into the temple of the idol in order to profane it.
“Yeah, but the Saxons of Germany … blah blah blah ….”
DNW:
It was introduced as an interesting image and idea. There was really no philosophical discussion one way or the other.
However, at the time I went to school—public school in NY—Christianity was hardly absent. For example, in my grade school, every year at Christmas the principal read to the entire assembly, aloud, excerpts from the New Testament telling the Christmas story. And we sang all the carols in their traditional forms, which were heavy on Christianity.
So no, I don’t think the “schoolmarms” were trying to say anything one way or the other about Christianity. In fact, I’m not at all sure the particular “schoolmarm” involved (who may even have been a man; I don’t remember) was aware of the source of the image.
Well, I don’t think that they were trying to say anything about Christianity per se, either.
As for the image representing an interesting idea? I guess one would ask: “Just what exactly is that idea?”
And as existentialism was a big deal when I was in high school … all those late 50’s and 1960’s teaching school graduates, the idea as they understood, or chose to present it, was pretty clear.
That said, as you recall, a similar theme is found and remarked upon in much Old English literature, including “The Wanderer”, and “The Seafarer” … and to a lesser and more particular degree, in “The Battle of Maldon”.
Do NOT link to Facebook.
Facebook is evil.
Get your Arabic sayings somewhere else.
Re: the “Venereal” Bede — I first heard that one from my Medieval History prof, who first heard it back in his British high school circa 1945. I suspect Eton boys were probably snickering about it back in 1645.
DNW:
The idea was: the brevity of our earthly existence, and that (as Andrew Marvell wrote) “yonder all before us lie/Deserts of vast eternity.”
wammo:
Art Deco
Neo:
There followed a number of fairly well-informed comments on Central America and other topics. Having already contributed snarky, misspelled, ignorant talking points of the left on Central America, wammo had nothing more to add. In effect , wammo shut up: not because Art Deco told him/her to, but because wammo had nothing but ignorant snark to add to the conversation. Which wammo had already done.
Perhaps wammo was humiliated into silence. OTOH, as wammo’s M.O. appears to be not exchange of ideas but one comment hit-and-run snark, wammo may not have even returned to the comment thread.
The whole brevity of life thing makes a lot more sense to me at age 48 than it did at 8 years old. As a kid in church , James 4:14, which compares man’s life to a vapor, made absolutely no sense to me. Now I have come to realize that even a hundred or even five hundred years is not so very long.
My parents gave me a copy of the Rubaiyat in high school. I don’t know why they did so, but I enjoyed reading it and still have that copy.
My favorite quatrain, which I used to get my children up in the morning, was:
“Awake, for morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.
And the hunter of the dawn has caught
The sultan’s turret in a noose of light.”
pboylan:
Wow! My mother just used to say “Rise and shine!”
I like your method better. And it would give me a longer time to stay in bed.