They Just Don't Care, Do They? (Updated and expanded, 7/13)

(See additional update below)

Correction, Please!

Mexican Anschluss in Arizona?

Item: 

In a June 29 essay burdened with the alarmist title "Eighty Mile Swath of Arizona Surrendered to Cartels," The New American addressed what it called "the menacing terror of drug traffickers and human smugglers that have all but taken adverse possession of the region."

"Eighty miles from the border with Mexico in Arizona, the federal government has posted signs warning Americans not to approach any closer to the border, as it is a region of `active drug and human smuggling' and that those that ignore the warning may “encounter armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed,'" wrote TNA contributor Joe Wolverton II.

Those warning signs, he insisted, are "white flags of surrender flying 80 miles within the border of the United States of America. Is [sic] such examples of federal contempt of the border crisis enough to convince those who scoff at cries of treason and invasion?"

Correction:

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any territory in Arizona has been surrendered to Mexico, or to narcotics gangs operating out of Mexico. A Border Patrol agent stationed in the supposedly surrendered territory responded to a question about this supposed cession by dismissing it as "false information." 

The claim that the Obama administration turned over the territory to Mexico originated with Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, a publicity-fixated Republican neo-con and ally of John McCain. Babeu's jurisdiction does not abut the border with Mexico. Clarence Dupnink, sheriff of neighboring Pima County, which does share a border with Mexico, insists that border violence has actually decreased in recent years. 

Drug smuggling and related violence -- which are unavoidable bi-products of the demented "war on drugs," an unconstitutional and counterproductive effort to regulate the bloodstream of Americans -- are a problem for Arizona (albeit a smaller one now that it was several years ago). The same is true for sections of Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, and elsewhere.

Many crime-ridden urban neighborhoods are controlled by drug-dealing ethnic gangs; for example, some neighborhoods in Philadelphia are run by the Dominican mafia. Does this mean that parts of Philadelphia have been surrendered to the Dominican Republic? Do the depredations of the Russian mob in Brighton Beach mean that Brooklyn's "Little Odessa" is now an island of Russian sovereignty?

Keep an eye peeled for an upcoming TNA piece retailing Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's latest bombshell disclosure -- the sudden surge in beheadings committed by illegal immigrants in the Arizona desert!

The Obama Administration Running Legal Interference for New Black Panthers? 

Item:

"The New Black Panther Party has been a controversial subject for a number of reasons," wrote GOP stenographer Raven Clabough a July 10 posting on the TNA website. "On Election Day 2008, Black Panther member King Samir Shabazz and national chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz were caught on video bearing billyclubs outside of a Philadelphia polling center. An investigation was launched and charges of voter intimidation were made, but the Department of Justice, under the leadership of Eric Holder, elected to dismiss the case."

Correction:

The New Black Panther Party -- a less-than-fearsome group that is equal parts comic opera and street theater -- is a pretty loathsome outfit, and neither they nor anybody else should be permitted to intimidate voters for any reason. The Justice Department examined the behavior of NBBP cadres and decided to drop the criminal probe.


That was the Bush-Mukasey Justice Department, not the Obama-Holder Justice Department. 

The decision was made three months before either Obama or Holder had anything to do with the matter. 


J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney-turned-GOP activist, claims that under Obama and Holder the voting rights section of the Justice Department repeatedly showed "hostility" toward prosecuting intimidation cases involving "black defendants and white victims," and said that its dismissal of the NBBP case illustrates this institutionalized bigotry. 




Thomas J. Perrelli, identified by Adams as the one who ordered the dismissal of the case against the NBPP, wasn't confirmed until three months after the Bush administration dropped the criminal complaint.

Deputy Assitant AG Julie Fernandes, who per Adams' version ordered subordinates not to prosecute minority voter intimidation cases, didn't start at her post until six months after the criminal case was dismissed.

Why wasn't Adams outraged when the Bush-Mukasey Justice Department dropped the criminal probe of the NBPP? Why is he trying to give the Obama-Holder Justice Department all of the blame for this, when, at most, they were simply building on the decisions of their predecessors?


The Obama administration won the civil case against the NBBP by default. It didn't pursue an injunction against the entire organization -- which was the department's original approach -- focusing instead on the one individual whose actions, captured on tape, were clearly illegal.

What Adams describes as "reverse discrimination" has been referred to by others involved in the decision as a disagreement over strategy and priorities among "career people" in the department. This seems entirely plausible, pending corroboration from Adams of his alarming accusations of official misconduct that, if true, would be grounds not only for impeachment but criminal prosecution.  

UPDATE --

While the people in charge of TNA are pandering to the Fox-aligned demographic by retailing breathless accounts of Afro-Militarism, an Arizona offshoot of the National Socialist Movement -- led by former JBS member, Hitler fanboy, and likely federal asset J.T. Ready -- are actually taking people hostage at gunpoint.

The New Black Panther Party's alleged "voter intimidation" involved one NBBP goofball -- roughly one-eighth of the group's entire membership -- making faces and saying offensive things. The NSM's "border patrols" are quite likely to get someone killed.



Obama's a foreign-born usurper -- we read it in the check-out line!

Item:

"Globe magazine has jumped into the citizenship controversy with a July 12 cover story that states, `Obama was not born in the U.S.,' writes Raven Clabough, who appears to be TNA's liaison to the Hannitized. "The supermarket tabloid may not have the best track record for accurate reporting among mainstream publications, but it does have a large circulation and its voice and what it has to say will undoubtedly bring the issue of Obama's citizenship to the attention of a lot more people and cause them to consider seriously if there is anything to it."

Correction:

Actually, there's nothing to correct here, because there's no story -- at least none that The New American would have bothered with back when those producing it aspired to provide credible news and thought-provoking commentary. 

To the extent that there is "news" here, the substance of it would appear to be this: Whether or not Obama's an illegitimate president owing to foreign birth, a large-circulation tabloid has lent its support to that theory, and this will have an impact on the opinions of its readers (make that "browsers"). 

This isn't reporting. It's not even blogging. It is pure, undisguised pandering of the worst and most transparent variety. And it is an all-sufficient indictment of the abysmal standards that prevail at what was once an exceptional publication. 

Oh, If Only We Had a Military Dictator....

Item:


In a paean to "Operation Wetback," the paramilitary Border Patrol operation that rounded up and deported millions of Mexican laborers, Dr. Roger McGrath extols the "bold, decisive, and forceful leader" who presided over it: General Dwight Eisenhower (who was president at the time), and Lt. General Joe Swing, Director of the INS. 

"It took a military man, who thought that national borders should mean something" in order to defeat the "unholy alliance of agribusinessmen and other employers," in concert with perfidious Mexicans, to subvert the border and undermine the labor market in the southwest, writes McGrath. 

The problem began during World War II, when, "with so many Americans in the service — and fighting and dying overseas — Mexicans illegally entered the United States to take advantage of employment opportunities, especially as agricultural laborers."

Fortunately, Eisenhower and Swing were willing to employ military means to beat back this invasion, offering an example we would be wise to follow, concludes Dr. McGrath.


Correction:


First of all, it's notable to see Eisenhower -- not Robert Welch's favorite public figure -- being extolled as not only a hero, but as something akin to the savior of the republic, in the pages of The New American. Perhaps the TNA editorial staff decided it was acceptable -- in this one instance -- to traffic in "nuances" that differ from Mr. Welch's views. (Of course, publicly differing in "nuance" from the incumbent JBS management is a firing offense, or at least it was in one specific instance.)


Of greater significance is the omission from Dr. McGrath's essay of any mention of the 1942 "Bracero" treaty between the U.S. and Mexico. 

McGrath depicts Mexican laborers as "taking advantage" of dislocations in the labor market caused by the war socialist economy of WWII. In fact, it was the FDR regime that invited those laborers into the country through the 1942 Bracero Treaty, which didn't expire until 1963. Through that agreement, the U.S. government imported millions of Mexicans to labor as "guest workers" in fields, factories, and other productive roles left vacant because of mobilization for the war. 

Mexico at the time was in the midst of its own depression, which was even deeper and more tragic than ours. So it's not surprising that millions of Mexicans -- in some cases, literally entire villages -- migrated northward in search of the promised wage of 30 cents an hour (which was specified in the treaty). Nor is it surprising that the northward migration didn't flow tidily in government-established channels. 

"Operation Wetback" was not the first time Mexican laborers who had come north to fill jobs left vacant in wartime were rounded up and expelled. During Woodrow Wilson's War, as well, fan informal Bracero-style agreement was reached with Mexico that permitted laborers to come north with their families. Many English-speaking American citizens born in this country pursuant to that agreement were among those eventually rounded up and summarily expelled at gunpoint.

None of this is mentioned or even alluded to in Dr. McGrath's homily regarding the supposed virtues iron-handed military rule.

By omitting "Bracero" from this discussion, McGrath produces a caricature: The villains are insidious Mexicans "stealing" jobs from American draftees, and conniving businessmen bereft of civic virtue. 

The "heroes," by way of contrast, are "decisive, forceful" military leaders in positions of political authority -- guys like Lt. Gen. Swing, whom McGrath describes as "[h]andsome and square-jawed with sparkling blue eyes, white hair, and a bearing that suggested strength and decisiveness...." Yes, someone like that is just the hero to beat back the Brown Peril, isn't he?

Mini-clarification, July 18: In the photo caption on page 37 in the print edition of TNA's July 19 issue, there is a fleeting reference to the "Bracero Agreement" as providing to Mexican laborers "a legal way to enter the United States and work." This truncated, inadequate description is the only mention of Bracero in the entire article.

Observations:

The TNA stories examined above display the superficiality, selective credulity, and opportunism that have come to characterize the publication since -- oh, let's pick a date purely at random; how about October 2006? Dr. McGrath's story, produced by a capable writer and long-established academic figure, represents something worse: Deliberate omission in an effort to promote an ideological agenda.

There was a time, not long ago, when TNA would take the time and invest the effort to examine and report on issues responsibly, rather than simply retailing whatever resonates with the Republican-wedded, Fox "News" and Talk Radio-obsessed sub-population. 

They're too busy riding the wave in Appleton to take the time and care to find out if part of Arizona really is under the rule of throat-slitting Mexican narcotics lords, or if the Holder-era Justice Department really is a festering pit of Afro-racist corruption. 

But this would require actual reporting, and it might complicate the effort to pander to the lowest common denominator -- and in the cases discussed above, that denominator runs right along one of the fault-lines Robert Welch warned about.

 

        "The Cressbeckler Stance": JBS-TV's New Star Attraction?

Why bother watching Art Thompson stumble through the latest installment of "cranky old reactionary reads the newspaper"? Joad Cressbeckler offers pretty much the same content in a much more entertaining way: