Study Finds U.S. Immigration at Record Level
The New York Times
Immigration over the past seven years was the highest for any seven-year period in U.S. history, bringing 10.3 million new immigrants, more than half of them without legal status, according to an analysis of census data released by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. One in eight people living in the United States is an immigrant, the survey found, for a total of 37.9 million people, the highest level since the 1920s. The survey released Wednesday was conducted by Steven Camarota, director of research at the center, which advocates reduced immigration. Camarota has been active in the national immigration debate.
Los Angeles Becoming a `Third World City'
The Telegraph (Britain)
Los Angeles is becoming a "Third World city" with immigrants making up half its workforce, says a new study. A third of immigrants have not graduated from high school and 60 per cent do not speak English fluently, the Migration Policy Institute found. It said this left immigrants ill-equipped to fill California's fastest-growing occupations, such as computer software engineering and nursing. The organisation added that as the so-called baby boomers reach retirement age, a similar pattern will spread across the US.
The Americans' Secessionist Streak: More Want Out of the USA
Christopher Ketcham -- Los Angeles Times
... As many as 44% of those polled agreed that "the United States' system is broken and cannot be fixed by traditional two-party politics and elections." Put this in stark terms: In a scientific, random sample poll of all Americans, almost half considered the current political system to be in terminal disorder. One-fifth would countenance a dissolution of the bond. This is not a hiccup of opinion. In an October 2006 poll conducted by the Opinion Research Corp. and broadcast on CNN, 71% of Americans agreed that "our system of government is broken and cannot be fixed."
Want to Know What's in Your FBI File?
Exhibit A (Baltimore)
Wonder what that background check said? Need to remember all the civil rights meetings you attended in the 1960s? The FBI might know. And you can ask. In fact, about 13,000 people do just that every year - they ask to see their FBI files. Since 9/11, federal agencies have more power to watch and listen, and the vast repository of files the FBI keeps has grown. The bureau now has more than 560 million files - almost twice the number of U.S. citizens.
Nothing New
Charley Reese
... Americans had better get shut of their imperial delusions and fast, because we are following the path of every empire that has ever existed toward bankruptcy ... What kind of standard of living do you think we can maintain with a collapsed education system, a broken infrastructure, a debilitated manufacturing sector and a debt-imploded failed economy? ... For a republic to survive, it needs a well-educated people with self-discipline and high morals, healthy agricultural and manufacturing bases, sound money and a frugal but wise government. I don't see much of that around these days.
US Minority Groups Don't Trust Each Other, Survey Finds
Agence France Presse
The three main minorities in the United States - blacks, Hispanics and Asians - have little trust for each other and hold prejudiced views about Americans of different ethnic origins to their own, a poll showed Wednesday.
Paradise Lost: Crowdifornia
Brenda Walker
Not so long ago - before the Immigration Profligacy Act of 1965 took hold, and before Washington decided to stop enforcing the law against illegal aliens -- California was Eden, even for average folks ... The speed at which postwar California has been paved over for dubious progress and substantial profit has been breathtaking. California is full and getting fuller, but They Keep Coming - everyone on earth, or so it appears ... Unpleasant crowdiness is becoming normal as quality of life drops off the chart in the place that was once close to paradise on earth. It seems every day brings another report about worsening everything, and how much more it will cost.
Will Secret Clubs Pick the Next President?
World Net Daily
Nearly every person elected as president of the United States since then - and nearly every opponent - has belonged to a secretive, globalism-oriented organization known as the Council on Foreign Relations. Some presidents and their challengers have belonged to additional clubs of internationalists - the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission ... That the groups exert enormous influence on public policy is indisputable. What is disputed is whether such groups are, as adherents and members argue, just discussion forums for movers and shakers, or, as critics have long alleged, secret societies shaping a new world order from behind the scenes.
How To Do The Impossible: De-Zionizing Christian Churches
Rev. Ted Pike
In 1988, 15,000 pastors ordered and received a free copy of my book Israel: Our Duty...Our Dilemma. I keenly anticipated a mass awakening to the threat of Zionist supremacism. Obviously, it never happened. Many pastors expressed appreciation and agreement with my book, but it seemed I was asking the impossible. Pastors indicated that the level of Zionist brainwashing of their congregants was simply too extensive. Even a loved, respected pastor couldn't challenge it. Criticizing Israel meant disruption, even destruction, of churches as angry, offended parishioners took their families--and their wallets -- elsewhere.
JFK Was Enraged at 'Zionist Control' in Politics
Philip Weiss
During the 1960 presidential election campaign, John F. Kennedy was "outraged" by the Jewish-Zionist role in American politics. This is reported by investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, in his 1991 book, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. "As an American citizen he was outraged," Bartlett recalled, 'to have a Zionist group come to him and say: `We know your campaign is in trouble. We're willing to pay your bills if you'll let us have control of your Middle East policy'." Kennedy also "resented the crudity with which he'd been approached. 'They wanted control,' he angrily told Bartlett."
Not a Dime's Worth of Difference on Foreign Policy
Jacob G. Hornberger
An op-ed in yesterday's conservative Wall Street Journal provides another example of how there isn't a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats, especially when it comes to foreign policy. The op-ed, entitled "Don't Expect a Big Change in U.S. Foreign Policy" by Timothy J. Lynch and Robert S. Singh, argues that no matter who is elected president - McCain, Obama, or Clinton - foreign interventionism will continue to be the order of the day. We all know where John McCain and Hillary Clinton stand, especially with respect to the war of aggression against Iraq, a type of war that was punished as a war crime at Nuremberg.
'Millions Missing' From Iraq Fund
BBC News
A $5.2 billion fund used to train and equip Iraqi security forces cannot be shown to have been used properly, US military auditors say in a new report. Sloppy accounting by the US army command meant there was no paper trail for much of the spending, they say. The report, based on a visit from March to May this year, said high levels of violence made it hard to oversee management of the fund ... In July, the head of the US agency overseeing reconstruction in Iraq, Stuart Bowen, told the BBC that economic mismanagement and corruption were equivalent to a second insurgency.
The 545 People Responsible For All Of America's Woes
Charley Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes? ... One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 235 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country ... Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power.
U.S. Hispanic Population Now 15 Percent of Total
Kansas City InfoZine
The nation's Hispanic population increased 1.4 million to reach 45.5 million on July 1, 2007, or 15.1 percent of the estimated total U.S. population of 301.6 million. National and state estimates by race, Hispanic origin, sex and age released by the U.S. Census Bureau also show that the Hispanic population exceeded 500,000 in 16 states. Hispanics remained the largest minority group, with blacks (single race or multiracial) second at 40.7 million in 2007.
Turning the Tables on the Israel-Firsters
Michael Scheuer
... Neutralizing the Israel-first fifth column must be done, but it must be accomplished using legitimate democratic tools: voting, lobbying, free speech, and support for candidates pledged to keep America out of other peoples' religious wars. The invocation of the anti-Semite epithet by the Israel-firsters should be ignored. To be silenced by the slurs of the Israel-firsters is to ignominiously invite the end of American independence by subordinating U.S. interests to those of a foreign nation, as well as to forget the warning of the greatest American ... As long as the Israel-firsters can define the limits of acceptable public discourse, Americans are on their way to the slaughter.
A Straight Look at the Jewish Lobby
Mark Weber
... For decades the US has provided Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid. Why is the US such a staunch bastion of support for Israel? ... Although Jews make up only two or three percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence - much more than any other ethnic or religious group ... The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict.
US Ranks Lower in Global Rating of Peaceful Countries
The Associated Press
The United States is ranked as a little less peaceful than it was last year and a lot more violent than Kuwait, Nicaragua and Libya, according to the Global Peace Index released Tuesday by Britain's Economist Intelligence Unit. The index, now in its second year, ranks 140 countries according to their relative states of peace, based on factors such as military expenditure and respect for human rights. The latest index released Tuesday ranked the United States at 97th, one place lower than last year and way below countries such as Costa Rica, Madagascar and Chile. This year, Iceland is voted the most peaceful place ...
Clueless in America
The New York Times
... An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That's more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters ... and for the country as a whole ... Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it's widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.
US Prison Population Dwarfs That of Other Nations
The New York Times
The United States has less than five percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. Indeed, the US leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes -- from writing bad checks to using drugs -- that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Shortage of Skilled Workers Looms in US
Los Angeles Times
... Immigrants - legal and illegal - already constitute almost half the workers in Los Angeles County and are expected to account for nearly all the growth in the nation's working-age population by 2025 because native-born Americans are having fewer children. But the study, based largely on U.S. Census data, noted that 60 percent of the county's immigrant workers struggle with English and one-third lack high school diplomas ... "Right now we're headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that."
Street Gang Violence Spreading to US Suburbs
BBC News
The suburbs of the US are no longer the same as those immortalised in 1950s movies, with white families living in big houses and the father driving off to work in his Buick, past manicured lawns. These days, it is more likely that English will not even be the first language you hear on the streets ... Vicious street gangs, committed to violence, have spread throughout the Americas and are now a significant threat in the US.
America in the Time of Empire
Chris Hedges
All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible. Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions.
Card Debt a $915 Billion Disaster-in-Waiting
Newsmax
Think the estimated subprime debt load carried by the big international banks is big, at $1 trillion? How about this: Americans now owe nearly as much - a record $915 billion - on their credit cards alone. And defaults and delinquencies in the credit card sector are piling up - which means big banks are on the hook, again. More sand in the gears for the global economy. Credit card companies wrote off 4.58 percent in payments between January and May, almost a third more than in the same period in 2006, according to Moody's Investors Service.
Sinking Currency, Sinking Country
Patrick J. Buchanan
... The dollar is plunging because America has been living beyond her means, borrowing $2 billion a day from foreign nations to maintain her standard of living and to sustain the American Imperium. The prime suspect in the death of the dollar is the massive trade deficits America has run up, some $5 trillion in total since the passage of NAFTA and the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994 ... A sinking dollar means a poorer nation, and a sinking currency has historically been the mark of a sinking country. And a superpower with a sinking currency is a contradiction in terms ... The chickens of free trade are coming home to roost.
Blue-Collar Jobs Are Disappearing
The New York Times
... Middle-aged men moving in with parents, wives taking two jobs, veteran workers taking overnight shifts at half their former pay, families moving West - these are signs of the turmoil and stresses emerging in the little towns and backwoods mobile homes of southeast Ohio, where dozens of factories and several coal mines have closed over the last decade, and small businesses are giving way to big-box retailers and fast-food outlets. Here, where the northern swells of the Appalachians lap the southern fringe of the Rust Belt, thousands of people who long had tough but sustainable lives are being wrenched into the working poor.
The Bilderberg Group: Rulers of the World
Audio of interview with investigator and author Daniel Estulin, on his book, "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group," which describes the secretive annual gatherings of the European and American political elite, including the world's wealthiest CEOs, who discuss and plan the economic and political future of humanity. Estulin also speaks about the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Runtime: one hour.
Entangling Alliances
Rep. Ron Paul
... When we look at global situations today, the words of our founding fathers are becoming more relevant daily. We need to understand that a simple, humble foreign policy makes us less vulnerable and less targeted on the world stage. Pakistan should not be getting an "allowance" from us and we should not be propping up military dictators that oppress people. We should mind our own business and stop the oppressive taxation of Americans that makes this meddling possible.
Can Diversity Destroy Us?
Patrick J. Buchanan
... And so our rulers, marinated in the myths that we "are a nation of immigrants" and "our diversity is our strength," continue to embrace mass immigration, the more the better. But are the myths true? ... How can we say diversity is a strength, when the most diverse nations of Europe, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, shattered into 22 nations as soon as they became free, and Slovaks and Czechs divorced? ... This generation is witnessing the Deconstruction of America. Out of one, many.