(May)Day Without Immigrants

Here at the Situation Room at MoB, so much data and flotsam arrives in a microsecond-by-microsecond torrent, that our crack staff of analysts, archivists, researchers, fact-checkers, gardeners, dog-and-cat wranglers, writers, and chefs can't keep up in real time. MoB is currently at work implementing the introduction of the new Shalmaneser Micryogenic computer, with SCANALYZER, but still a few bugs in the system, and all is not yet on-line.

Which explains why it was only about noon CDT today, when your Executive Director of MoB read, in yesterday's (Sunday's) The New York Times Magazine, the feature "Questions For", with esteemed Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes Macias. The following quote has a direct bearing on "Day Without Immigrants."

"U.S. foreign policy is Manichaean. It's like a Hollywood movie. You have to know who has the white hat and who has the black hat and then go against the black hat. It's Moby-Dick. The genius of Melville is that he saw that this is a country that needs a monster. The delusion of one madman, Captain Ahab, meant that the white whale had to go. But as Katrina showed, there are great, great problems within the U.S. without it constantly having to create crusades against the rest of the world."

Let's drop the dreck about "those illegals are overloading our social benefit systems." For more than a century, the United States Empire, through various corporations, etc., has robbed the people of Latin America blind of their natural resources, resulting in hyper-profits. ("Can you say Anaconda Copper in Chile? United Fruit wherever banana republicans rule? I knew you could.")

Immigrants from the neo-colonies south of the Rio Grande have had their way pre-paid, thanks to exploitation of their preceding generations by the USE.

This "we're being over-run by THEM" Nazi-style falsehood ain't new. Beginning about 1840, it was the Irish who were shiftless, promiscuous, and drunk. Next, it was African-Americans and Jews. Now it's "The Great Brown Whale."

It's time to deep-six this "New World" dreck. New World, same as the Old World. One empire is just like the other.

All empires export their misery and oppression to their colonies. All empires import the prosperity and freedom of their colonies.

USE: Get over it and get with the program. USE is the Whale. USE is monsters from the id. (Fantastic Planet) "We have met the enemy, and it is US." (Pogo)

My esteemed high school teacher of Ancient and Medieval History, Mr. ODB, had a parable.

"Imagine a long, narrow room. At one end, the developed nations sit at a table groaning under the weight of too much food. By their sides, nuclear bombs.

At the other end of the room, the majority of people in the world: some barely making it, some malnourished, some starving.

For a time, the dispossesed will be deterred by the nuclear bombs. But, at a certain point, if the developed nations don't give up part of their wealth, make a fair share ... ... ... well, someday, maybe the dispossesed will reach such a moment of desperation that they say, "Better die today at once, than tomorrow by inches.""

And it's not as if the USE population shared equally in the spoils of empire. Given the rate at which the USE is hoovering the world's natural resources (5% of the world's population consumes 25% of world oil production, e.g.), shouldn't the USE toiling masses expect, not suicidal SUVs, steroid-screen TVs, the next gen of Playstations, etc., but, e.g.:

* free state-of-the-art universal healthcare

* free world-class education from K to Dr.

* every adult employed full-time guaranteed an income sufficient to support
(for a benchmark) themselves, a spouse, and two offspring?

The MoB believes that these are necessary and practical goals. Society must not be a mechanism for concentrating the majority of prosperity in the laps of the few, but an engine for universal compassion. And the MoB means universal: The MoB believes that nationalist membership is nothing compared to our common humanity.

Solidarity forever!