Last week’s 58,000 gallon oil spill by a Chinese (Cosco) owned container ship in the San Francisco Bay, which has migrated out of the Bay to nearby Pacific coast beaches and inlets, has various links to open borders related issues, foreign access to our shores, and China’s most favored nation (free trade) status. Local media note the spill may have resulted from a “language barrier,” ergo the crew possibly could not understand basic English instructions to safely guide the ship that foggy day. (The entire navigating crew was Chinese, but they’re “required to speak English.” Wanna bet?) [Human error blamed in Bay Area oil spill ,Los Angeles Times, November 11, 2007]

The American bar pilot required by law to board and navigate the ship out the Golden Gate, Capt. John Cota, today said that the foreign ship’s radar “conked out” at various times, calling to mind that unsafe Mexican trucks are set to roll across America, no problema.

Angry letters to local newspapers express disgust that the Chinese container ship had probably delivered lead-painted toys, poopy seafood, and other shoddy, poisonous Chinese products threatening the health, safety and welfare of American consumers thanks to our own government’s failure to screen imports. The oil’s toxicity has resulted in emergency fishing bans that, ironically, could raise demand for tainted Chinese seafood.

Volunteers who rushed to local shores to help contain the oil spill, save ailing birds and protect pristine waters, reported being threatened with arrest, taser guns and criminal charges (some citizens were arrested and charged with misdemeanors in response to their well meaning efforts). Law enforcement officers–including National and State Park rangers–insisted that only the government could do that job. Create the problem, get paid to solve it. Hmmmm. Serious questions about the Coast Guard’s failure to properly assess the size of the spill until hours after it happened, followed by a lengthy delay in their reporting and initiating emergency clean-up measures, remain unanswered.

Joe Guzzardi will be a guest on Afternoon Edition hosted by Jeffrey Warren at 4 PM PST, 7PM EST. The show broadcasts live from California’s Napa Valley. Joe will be discussing the ramifications of Eliot Spitzer’s about face on driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, how his decision will impact the Democratic presidential race and much more. Listen here.

Eliot Spitzer’s decision to bag his effort to give illegal aliens driver’s licenses says a lot–about a lot of things.

• First, the Spitzer case proves that on immigration issues the will of the people will no longer be ignored. Our voices are many and loud. We will not be trampled on.
• Second, Spitzer–like his fellow Democrats Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama–get only bad counsel and complicate their careers by listening to it. Spitzer’s camp claims to be surprised by the public outcry. But I’m not–and neither are you. In fact, I predicted it. Spitzer, et al needs to wider his sphere of influence to include people who disagree with him.
• Third, the reaction to Spitzer’s ill-conceived plan guarantees that no governor in the near future will venture into the murky water of licenses for aliens. That battle, for the time being, has been fought and won–by us.
• Fourth, Spitzer’s withdrawal from the illegal alien license fray does not let either Clinton or Obama off the hook. Obama is on the record as in favor. Clinton, waffling aside, also supports the idea.

Either could take advantage of Spitzer’s choice to pull the idea and say:

“I see now that the public opposes…and if elected president, I will do what the public calls for so I have changed my mind.”

I’m not expecting that to happen. But if I were a Clinton or Obama adviser, that’s what I would tell them to do.

And since they’ve been getting the same bad information as Spitzer, they should listen.

The Seattle Public Schools have issued an anti-Thanksgiving fatwa, with no thought for the fact that most of their students might actually give thanks to God for America and its many blessings. They’re more concerned with the descendants of the people who lost the Indian Wars. They write

We recognize the amount of work that educators and staff have to do in order to fulfill our mission to successfully educate all students. It’s never as simple as preparing and delivering a lesson. Students bring with them a host of complexities including cultural, linguistic and social economic diversity. In addition they can also bring challenges related to their social, emotional and physical well being. One of our departments’ goals is to support you by suggesting ways to assist you in removing barriers to learning by promoting respect and honoring the diversity of our students, staff and families.

With so many holidays approaching we want to again remind you that Thanksgiving can be a particularly difficult time for many of our Native students. This website http://www.oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html offers suggestions on ways to be sensitive of diverse experiences and perspectives and still make the holiday meaningful for all students. Here you will discover ways to help you and your students think critically, and find resources where you can learn about Thanksgiving from a Native American perspective. Eleven myths are identified about Thanksgiving, take a look at #11 and begin your own deconstruction.

This is their favorite myth:

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.Deconstructing the Myths of “The First Thanksgiving” by Judy Dow (Abenaki) and Beverly Slapin Revised 06/12/06

The site they’re linking to is an irredentist Native American site that has, among other features, a list of book they want you to not read. I’ll recommend one they disrecommend : The Matchlock Gun, by Walter Edmonds. Written in 1941, set in 1756, it’s about a boy who saves his family from an Indian attack during the French and Indian War.

Yes, the Indians would have preferred to win the wars, and wipe out the settlers to the last man, woman, and child, but why should the rest of us care? And shouldn’t the rest of us, the vast majority,( including recent immigrants, of course,) be Thankful that civilization prevailed?

Is the Seattle Public School system not aware that Thanksgiving was intended to give thanks to God, after the fashion of the religion professed by most Americans–including almost all North American Indians? Surely that means it deserves as much respect as Ramadan? I’m waiting for a Ramadan letter from the Seattle School Board that reminds us of the many victims of Islam. I may have to wait a while.

This fatwa was brought to you by the Seattle Schools Department of Equity, Race and Learning Support
[Contact them]

Their motto:

“We learn to be racist, therefore we can learn not to be racist. Racism is not genetical. [sic]It has everything to do with power.”
-Jane Elliot

It was signed by the following people:

Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D. Director of Equity, Race & Learning Support [Send her mail]

Willard Bill, Jr., Program Manager Huchoosedah Office of Native American Educ [Send him mail]

Janine Tillotson, Consulting Teacher Huchoosedah Office of Native American Educ. [Send her mail]

Cultural historian Jacques Barzun will turn 100 on November 30, 2007 at his home in San Antonio, Texas. His parents ran a salon in pre-War (that’s pre-Great War) Paris where, according to Arthur Krystal’s New Yorker essay

many of Europe’s leading avant-garde artists and writers gathered: Varèse played the piano, Ozenfant and Delaunay debated, Cocteau told lies, and Apollinaire declaimed. Brancusi often stopped by, as did Léger, Kandinsky, Jules Romains, Duchamp, and Pound.

Artistically, Barzun feels, it’s been pretty much all downhill since the Archduke was assassinated, back when precocious little Jacques was six, and who am I to say he is wrong?

In his 2000 bestseller From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present,published when he was 92, Barzun suddenly stopped on p. 654-656 to briefly discuss what he’s learned from a lifetime of learning:

“… history cannot be a science; it is the very opposite, in that its interest resides in the particulars.”

Still, he goes on to list a dozen “generalities” to show “how scanning the last five centuries in the West impresses on the mind certain types of order.” Here are five of them (I’ll leave it to you to fill in examples):

• An age (a shorter span within an era) is unified by one or to pressing needs, not by the proposed remedies, which are many and thus divide.
• A movement in thought or art produces its best work during the uphill fight to oust the enemy; that is, the previous thought or art. Victory brings on imitation and ultimately Boredom.
• “An Age of –” (fill in: Reason, Faith, Science, Absolutism, Democracy, Anxiety, Communication) is always a misnomer because insufficient, except perhaps “An Age of Troubles,” which fits every age in varying degrees.
• The historian does not isolate causes, which defy sorting out even in the natural world; he describes conditions that he judges relevant, adding occasionally an estimate of their relevant strength.
• The potent writings that helped to reshape minds and institutions in the West have done so through a formula or two, not always consistent with the text. Partisans and scholars start to read the book with care after it has done its work.