"I have friends who are black."

Yeah, but did you send them this email?

Racist Orange County Republican Email: President Obama and His Parents Are Apes

The Weekly has obtained a copy of an email sent to fellow conservatives this week by Marilyn Davenport, a Southern California Tea Party activist and member of the central committee of the Orange County Republican Party.

Under the words, "Now you know why no birth certificate," there's an Obama family portrait showing them as apes.

Marilyn Davenport sent an email to fellow Orange County Republican elected officials, apologizing if anyone was offended by her depicting President Barack Obama as an ape--while also blasting the "liberal media" for reporting the story.

"I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth," Davenport wrote. "In no way did I even consider the fact he's half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind....

"Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black."

After this story was published, she sent another email to fellow California conservative activists. It demanded to know the identity of "the coward" who supplied me with a copy of her offensive email.

Integration, of course, is a two way street

The world is getting smaller and the nation-state is slowly becoming a bit of an anachronism.

"Separate but equal" was only struck down as a legally sanctioned social form of ethnic balkanization in the US in the 1950's. Guambat grew up with the idea that perhaps the world might some how integrate, like the Star Trek crew, which had a decidedly Anglo-Saxon dominant trait.

It soon became obvious that a total blend of peoples rendered a mud-like, culture-less social norm that soon lost its appeal. So multi-culturism was born as an alternative.

It's an idea that is even more utopian, but still, to Guambat, offers the possibility, over time, of keeping remnants and strains of unique culture, moving at warp speed through the fabric of society.

For it to work, though, both the newly immigrated and the established incumbents must find some way of adapting their own histories to the new reality.

It ain't easy, and it seems to go against human nature, to some extent, even if fed by genuine and enthusiastic human zeal. It is a process that can only ebb and flow, since the social topography is not the same everywhere.

Germany is currently, it seems, feeling a need to ebb.

German multiculturalism 'utterly failed': Merkel

Angela Merkel said Saturday that the concept that different cultures can live happily side by side does not work.

She stressed that immigrants need to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German.
Immigration issues have become a hot topic, and a recent survey by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank indicated more than 30 per cent of Germans believe the country is "overrun by foreigners."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/16/germany-merkel-immigration-multiculturalism.html#ixzz12bsT827U

Merkel says German multicultural society has failed

Mrs Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday that at "the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country."

She added: "We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality."

"And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."

In her speech in Potsdam, however, the chancellor made clear that immigrants were welcome in Germany.

Mrs Merkel said: "We should not be a country either which gives the impression to the outside world that those who don't speak German immediately or who were not raised speaking German are not welcome here."

Earlier this month the chancellor held talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which the two leaders pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's estimated 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.

The debate first heated up in August when Thilo Sarrazin, a senior official at Germany's central bank, said that "no immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime". Mr Sarrazin has since resigned.

Such recent strong anti-immigration feelings from mainstream politicians come amid an anger in Germany about high unemployment, even if the economy is growing faster than those of its rivals, our correspondent says.

He adds that there also seems to be a new strident tone in the country, perhaps leading to less reticence about no-go-areas of the past.

Guambat sees the signs of economic distress in actions such as these. And, he must say, this disturbs him.

When times are good and there is plenty to go round, the social problems of human liquidity don't seem so paramount.

Sort of like the economic problems associated with financial liquidity.

Women and minorities will destroy the fnancial industry

"This will destroy the financial industry," warned Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was the Labor Department's chief economist under President George W. Bush.

What's she on about?

This: Financial reform bill calls for diversity

The recently enacted financial reform legislation tries in numerous ways to change how Wall Street companies and their federal regulators act, but a little-noticed provision aims for something potentially more difficult and controversial — altering how they look.

To promote diversity in the largely white, male world, the new law requires each of the 30 federal financial agencies and departments, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and all 12 Federal Reserve banks, to establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Industry groups, regulatory agencies and analysts are just starting to grapple with the potential ramifications of the provision, which takes effect in January. The effect is hard to gauge because the law gives the directors of each of the new offices the authority to develop their own standards for equal employment at their agencies as well as at the companies they regulate and contract with for services, such as asset management.

Can you imagine?? Replacing all those competent old white guys who caused the financial wreck with incompetent women and minorities?? Where will it end?

Guambat reckons it will end with more jobs for lawyers. According to the article,

In 2008, white males held 64% of senior positions in the financial services industry, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office.

Is this a call for equal but separate social preference quotas based solely on demographics?

Who shall be fleetest,
the fleetest and first
O'er the flower-smiling meadows
to chase?

Chorus for three Female Voices
-- by Joseph Barnby 1870

Konsensual sex may not be Kosher sex

Some things just ain't kosher.

Israeli Arab who 'raped' a woman says verdict 'racist'

Sabbar Kashur, 30, was found guilty of "rape by deception" by the Israeli court and sentenced to 18 months in jail.

According to the complaint filed by the woman, the two met in a Jerusalem street in 2008 and had sex that day.

When she discovered he was not Jewish, but an Arab, she went to the police.

But according to Kashur, he did not pretend to be Jewish.

He told reporters that he is known by friends and family by the nickname Dudu, which is more commonly used by Jews called David.

He has been under house arrest for two years, he said.

In the court's ruling the judge, Zvi Segal, wrote: "If she had not thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious relationship, she would not have co-operated.

"The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price

Jurists say Arab's rape conviction sets dangerous precedent

In 2008, the High Court of Justice set a precedent on rape by deception, rejecting an appeal of the rape conviction by Zvi Sleiman, who impersonated a senior official in the Housing Ministry whose wife worked in the National Insurance Institute. Sleiman told women he would get them an apartment and increased NII payments if they would sleep with him.

High Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein said a conviction of rape should be imposed any time a "person does not tell the truth regarding critical matters to a reasonable woman, and as a result of misrepresentation she has sexual relations with him."

Rubinstein said the question was also whether an ordinary person would expect such a woman to have sex with a man without the false identity he created.

Guambat presumes the rule would apply equally the other way round. Perhaps a defense to statutory rape?

We're not talkin' Kiwis or sheep here, but ...

Neanderthals and humans interbred, fossils indicate

Humans and Neanderthals likely interbred 50,000 to 80,000 years ago in the Near East, concludes the international genetics team's pair of studies in the new issue of the journal Science.

It turns out, based on a new fossil analysis out Thursday, that people of European and Asian descent inherited a small amount, an average 1% to 4% of their genes, from the extinct species. The finding splits the difference in a long-running scholarly debate over whether people are solely African in origin, or spring from "multiregional" interbreeding of early human species.

Stocky, thick-browed and heavy-boned, the Neanderthals last shared a common ancestor with the African precursors to modern humans about 500,000 years ago. The Neanderthals populated the Near East and Europe until they vanished from the fossil record about 30,000 years ago. The gene maps produced by the DNA analysis of the bones found Neanderthal genes scattered randomly among non-Africans, Paabo says, indicating they don't account for any racial differences between modern-day Africans and anyone else. Also, the study finds no sign of human genes intruding into the Neanderthal lineage.

The studies also revealed a few dozen genes altered in humans since they genetically diverged from Neanderthals; some related to skull and brain development. But overall, "they were not very genetically distinct from us," Paabo says.

Shaking up Malaysia's race-based economic and political system

Malaysia's Najib Outlines Affirmative Action Overhaul

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak Tuesday outlined his plans to modernize the country's economy, including proposals to overhaul one of the world's most entrenched systems of race-based preferences and quotas, which many economists say has held back this Southeast Asian nation's growth potential.

Mr. Najib said the country's decades-old affirmative action policies will be recalibrated to help disadvantaged members of all ethnic groups and not just the country's majority ethnic Malay population, which comprises about 54% of Malaysia's 28 million people.

Malaysia introduced race-based preferences and quotas for ethnic Malays in the early 1970s to help them catch up with their generally better-off ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Indian compatriots. Supporters of the program say it has helped provided stability in this racially and religiously diverse nation, which was rocked by race riots in the late 1960s.

Many critics say the affirmative action program, known as the New Economic Policy, has hindered Malaysia's competitiveness in recent years. The U.S. and European Union have singled out Malaysia's insistence on maintaining preferences for ethnic-Malay owned businesses in government procurement contracts for stalling the development of free-trade pacts.

Mr. Najib said, "But for the long-term strength of our nation, we cannot afford to duck these issues any longer. If we are to truly tackle inequality and become a beacon of progress in our region, we must bring a sense of urgency to reform."

Old Black Joe

Most of you will have heard that old US ante-bellum song of the "romantic" South written by white Northerner Stephen Foster. The chorus line is,

"I hear the gentle voices calling, Old Black Joe."

Those gentle voices sprang immediately to mind when I read the editorial in today's SMH about Frank Sartor's "inelegant" gaff.

The background. Frank Sartor, former Sydney mayor now State Planning Minister, wants to "redevelop" one of Sydney's inner city "boroughs", in the way of the growing trendy districts, known as Redfern. Redfern is inhabited primarily by Aboriginals and poor whites, most on some kind of public assistance or other, or so the reputation goes. It would not be too unkind to think of it, for context to this story, as a ghetto along the lines of, say, Watts in L.A.

Mick Mundine is an Aboriginal leader in Redfern. Sartor was on Koori Radio, an Aboriginal radio program, talking up his plans to revitalise Redfern and Aboriginal housing in particular and seeking community involvement in the process when he made the comment. "Get off your backside Mick and bring your black arse in here to talk to me about it." (Australian media has been rather precious about actually printing that quote, so I found it here: http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1127204284764B223&set_id=.)

The apologies and apologists sprang immediately to battle stations, as you might well expect. Amongst the latter is this from the SMH editorial, entitled "Mr Sartor's inelegance" (http://www.smh.com.au/editorial/index.html):

"But Mr Sartor's words, which look so damning set out in print, were spoken without malice. To listeners they seemed to have been intended almost fondly."

And that's when the tune began to play in my head: "I hear the gently voices calling, Old Black Joe."

I jotted off a letter to the editor, but I doubt they'll print it. Here it is:

"When the Southern Master fondly said "Boy, come here" to the elderly Black hand, it was not "mere" racism; it was the object-oriented, paternalistic demand of the proprietor speaking, and utterly devoid of malice. I heard Mr Sartor's radio remarks. I did not interpret his summons of Mr Mundine to be "intended almost fondly", as you have editorialised. I heard "Massah" calling. Mr Brogden's remarks were racist and sexist, but not the attitude of a slave owner. You cannot unring that bell. Malice is not the issue."

Inelegant??

That's almost as strong a slap as Sartor's flippery.

File that editorial under "they still don't get it".

The 52nd State

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007076


Happy-hoales?
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/A294DE38BC83F75B88257051005488B8/$file/0415044.pdf?openelement