This is the Tucson Citizen’s on an Arizona Republic piece, via Brenda Walker: Employer sanctions force some migrants to weigh leaving AZ, by Daniel Gonzalez, July 5, 2007. (Those are the new sanctions discussed by Patrick Cleburne here.)

I’m a headline writer myself, and here are my suggestions:Employer sanctions force some employers to raise wages, or
Employer sanctions force some employers to hire Americans, for a change. Ask the Tucson Citizen, not why they didn’t think of that, but why the headline says “Migrants” when they clearly mean “Illegals.”

Paul Verhoeven promoted his 1997 version of Robert A. Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” as satirizing Heinlein’s supposed Nazi views, but the reality is Verhoeven, who was born in 1938 in Holland, is the last working filmmaker to have been directly influenced by Nazi aesthetics during 1933-1945 (Ingmar Bergman now being retired). He has admitted that he got hooked on movies as a child watching Nazi propaganda films in Occupied Holland. Knowing that, it’s easy to see the Nazi obsessions with blondeness and brutality that run through his films.

For example, Verhoeven has competed with eugenicist Jodie Foster to film the life story of Hitler’s favorite directrix Leni Riefenstahl. Verhoeven boasted that Riefenstahl told him that Foster is “not beautiful enough” to player her, and “Leni’s ultimate idea of herself is Sharon Stone in ‘Basic Instinct,’” which is one of Verhoeven’s films.

Verhoeven then spends a lot of time telling the press that he is actually satirizing the Nazi obsessions of other people like Robert A. Heinlein, and a lot of credulous media-types believe him. For example, Verhoeven persuaded a lot of the critics that his casting an Ernst Roehm wet-dream- like Casper Van Dien as Juan Rico in Starship Troopers was a parody of Heinlein’s Nazi tendencies.

Yet, anybody who has finished the book (which doesn’t include Verhoeven, who said he read only a few chapters) knows that Heinlein played a brilliant trick by not revealing until the next to last page that his narrator-hero is a Tagalog-speaking Filipino.

Commentary prints 20 Letters-to-the-Editor in reply to Charles Murray’s “Jewish Genius,” with a response from Murray.

Raul Reyes, a Hispanic lawyer in New York, has an editorial on Scrippsnews.com suggesting that the GOP may be ignoring Hispanic leaders. He thinks it’s a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing.

GOP candidates ignore Latino leaders

By RAUL REYES
Hispanic Link
Friday, July 06, 2007

From Cesar Chavez’s 1960s boycotts to the immigrants rights movements of today, Si se puede has long been a stock phrase in Hispanic politics. While it translates as “Yes, we can,” the real message has always been greater. Si se puede means we’ll fight the good fight, we’ll persevere, we’ll never give up.

These three words are routinely invoked everywhere from high school assemblies to presidential campaigns. It’s the Latino call to action.

Yet lately I’m wondering if the GOP has decided on a strategy of No se puede –No, we can’t — when it comes to Hispanic voters.

At the June 28-30 convention of the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials, Republicans opted out of the forum for presidential candidates. All of the GOPers except for Rep. Duncan Hunter of California sent their regrets to the nonpartisan group, and the forum was canceled. In contrast, all of the major Democratic hopefuls appeared at a separate forum at the event.

The GOP no-shows are surprising considering Florida is home to the USA’s most conservative Hispanics. The state’s three Hispanic House members are Republican, as is Sen. Mel Martinez, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Some state leaders did not even try to put a positive spin on the lack of interest from their candidates.

“Republicans have blown off the state of Florida,” said Republican State Rep. Juan Zapata. “Turning their back on this event is kind of shameful.”

Coming in the wake of the harsh rhetoric from conservatives who contributed to the collapse of the Senate’s immigration proposal, does this mean that Republicans are giving up on Latinos?

If so, they have a lot to lose. Until recently, the GOP had been making inroads among the Hispanic electorate, which traditionally has leaned Democratic. George W. Bush made a concerted outreach to Latinos and in 2004 drew a record 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.

The Republicans have a lot to lose if they ignore their base. If the biggest panderer to the Hispanic vote in Republican history can’t get more than 40 percent of that minuscule vote, which in political terms is a landslide the other way, then further pandering is not likely to help.

Perhaps the GOP should concentrate on winning back the non-Hispanic voters who cost them the House and Senate. That would make a lot more demographic sense.

Pat Buchanan used to talk about “cultural war” in his presidential campaigns. When he used the phrase, it meant Conservative Christian vs. Liberal Secular elements in American culture. There have been some
major moves made in that respect, the rise of Fox News and CBN for example. The popularity of movies based on the Left
Behind series prompted distribution by Sony. Still, the mass media hasn’t really addressed the many issues important to Buchanan, especially immigration.

The reason is simple. Voters are divided on the issue of immigration along class lines. The folks that run the major media are either wealthy themselves or dependent on advertising revenue from corporate interests. American media is also largely controlled by de facto cartels. Both major print publications and broadcasting depend on corporate advertising. Cable and film are tightly controlled media outlets that also have major elements of advertising revenue. The big exception is books. People chose what they buy. Major outlets like Barnes and Nobel and Borders share the book market with internet outlets like Amazon.com.

We at VDARE.com have prominent, best selling non-fiction writers among our ranks. Still, for most folks, books mean fiction. Novels that address immigration are often a bit on the “cheesy” side and aimed at niche audiences like frustrated young males. Snooker Glen is a serious novel that addresses immigration issues and is aiming for an enduring literary market.

I reviewed Snooker Glen at Amazon.com where the sales department compared Snooker Glen to the writings of Dostoevsky and other Russian writers. Under Czarist Russia, much of the news press was fairly controlled(although one of my University of Chicago professors that lived during the Czarist period said that writing of any major political position was easily available in the major cities). Writers wanting to make a major point about the social order could most easily do so via works of fiction.

The point of Snooker Glen is that the current conditions of immigration policy are for many Americans horribly oppressive. Its message is highly populist and sidesteps a lot of the ideological divisions we see among supporters of immigration restriction.

This is a book FAIR reviewed positively that you could order in bulk for your local libraries and schools-and the typical librarian simply couldn’t peg as “hate speech”. You could give it as an obligatory Christmas or birthday gift to pro-immigration relatives whether Democrat, Republican or Independent without getting an eyebrow raised. Snooker Glen raises questions and issues that are taboo in Corporate Media’s news outlets. It does so much more directly than books like Fast Food Nation have done. In the battle for ideas, corporate media relies on drowning out thought. Once the questions are publicly raised, half the battle is won.

I’d like to see this side of the popular culture develop to the point that VDARE.com really could have a credible literary section–and a film and music section as well. We are a long way from that point. In the meantime, we have Snooker Glen.

As VDARE.com readers know, there’s no satisfying the ever hungry maw of illegal aliens for free goods and services, ever. Like little black holes, illegal aliens are veritable magnets for any items of value that can be gotten from the host organism.

It’s not enough that the kiddies get a free K-12 education on the backs of American taxpayers (now costing more than $8,000 per student annually in California). They insist upon getting a subsidized college education as well.

Curiously, many attend college even though they cannot legally work in the U.S. upon graduation. But maybe Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is hiring…

The recently euthanized Senate amnesty bill contained the illegal DREAM act (actually a nightmare for citizen kids, since it dispenses tuition subsidies not available to homegrown Americans). As a result, a contingent from the permanent gimme choir was offended that new handouts were not forthcoming, and several are camped out in San Francisco, enacting a fast. (There are apparently no snack police on duty, so purity cannot be verified.)

The sympathetic San Francisco Chronicle presents a heart-tugging sob story of young hopes dashed by angry citizens who have a different idea about spending.

An estimated 65,000 illegal immigrant students graduate from high school every year and would benefit from such a bill. At present, they are unable to work legally and, in many states, can’t enroll in college.

“The DREAM Act would give me a sense that I was valued as a person,” said Miriam, who is one of seven students holding a weeklong fast in San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza in a push for passage of the bill. In San Jose, students are fasting outside the district office of Rep. Zoe Lofgren. “I was raised here; I went to school here; I see my future here. … Let us be part of this society, let us do it the right way.”
[Students fasting for green card provision, San Francisco Chronicle 7/5/07]

A June article by Kris Kobach noted that the DREAM act would shred 1996 legislation which was supposed to prevent foreigners from receiving greater benefits than citizens in this one instance.

The DREAM Act is a nightmare. It repeals a 1996 federal law that prohibits any state from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens, unless the state also offers in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens. On top of that, the DREAM Act offers a fast track to U.S. citizenship for illegal aliens who attend college.

On its own, the DREAM Act never stood a chance of passing — even in the Senate. Every scientific opinion poll on the subject has shown over 70 percent opposition to giving in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens.
[A college education for illegal aliens, Washington Times 6/22/07]

Besides, what would be wrong with attending a university in Mexico? Hispanic students wouldn’t have to bother with a special ethnic graduation and they would have plenty of opportunity to get in touch with that all-important raza about which we hear so much.