U.N. racism investigator to visit U.S. from Monday, reports Reuter’s Stephanie Nebehay (May 16, 2008):

The United Nations said [special rapporteur] Doudou Diene [a Senagalese lawyer] would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.

“The special rapporteur will…gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” a U.N. statement said on Friday.

This is of course an insult to Americans and a particular threat to white Americans, who will bear the brunt of the further government intervention that the U.N. will certainly advocate.

But look at this:

His three-week visit, at U.S. government invitation [VDARE.COM emphasis], will cover eight cities — Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Bush actually invited this U.N. gauleiter in?

Reuters says sadly: “However, the United Nations has almost no clout when it comes to U.S. domestic affairs and is widely perceived by many as interfering.”

That “many”, apparently, does not include Bush. Further evidence of the peculiar post-Americanism that has caused us to speculate that he’s a Mexichurian candidate who aims to make America safe for a Bush dynasty modelled on the Mexican oligarchs.

Roll on, January 2009.

Some of the labor problems farmers face, which make them claim that they need illegal cheap labor to continue to farm, are self inflicted: they’ve made a decision to produce crops that have to be picked by hand, unlike wheat, for example. There are also mechanical solutions, but farmers aren’t interested in those as long as cheap labor is available.

George Washington was serious farmer–he once wrote to a friend that

I think that the life of a Husbandman is of all others the most delectable. It is honourable. It is amusing. And with Judicious management it is profitable. To see plants rise from the Earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the labourer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy to be conceived than expressed. The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs the better I am pleased with them. I can nowhere find so great satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits.

Of course, if you learn anything about George Washington, you learn that he was slave owner. In fact, it may be the only thing you learn about him in a modern school. Slavery is, of course, the ultimate form of cheap labor. Washington didn’t approve. Paul Johnson writes:

He regarded tidewater farming in Virginia as inefficient and degrading, with no future. It involved slavery. He always owned slaves, and at one time had more than three hundred (mainly belonging to his wife), but he regarded the institution as wrong and incurably wasteful. In the 1760s he farmed over 20,000 acres. Many rich English earls and dukes had no more. Whence the difference in their incomes and his? Because the best English farming was a judicious mixture of arable, pasture and stock raising, all for the market. By contrast Virginia tobacco was bought by London agents, who did the marketing themselves, got the profits and usually had the American planters in their debt. It was a formula for laziness and improvidence. So Washington spent his life switching from planting to scientific farming. He raised wheat, less labor intensive-a skilled plowman could do the work of forty slow-hoeing slaves–but it demanded large numbers of draft animals and they in turn needed large quantities of hay. So he planted corn fodder alongside wheat, raised root crops, forage crops like clover and alfalfa and put out fields to cattle and hogs. They, in turn, and his plow horses, produced manure which he used as fertilizer. He grew peas and potatoes, planted vines and set up fruit and vegetable gardens on all his farms.[Heroes by Paul Johnson.]

Of course, most of today’s complaining farmers are not George Washington. One way you can tell them from George Washington. that they can tell a lie–usually about crops rotting in the fields.

I’m speaking at the next John Randolph Club meeting, theme “A Republic, If You Can Keep It”, in Philadelphia September 12-13, details here.

Here’s a clever account (with video!) of the last Randolph Club meeting, by George Ajjan, who wrote for us last year about technology vs. assimilation. I spoke on immigration and also, departing from the studious neutrality I mantain in editing VDARE.COM, participated in a debate on Iraq.

The nickname of the great state of Missouri is the “Show Me State”, the connotation being “a certain self-deprecating stubbornness and devotion to simple common sense”.

These are good qualities in the fight against today’s illegal invasion and the voter fraud that accompanies it.

The New York Times ran an interesting article entitled Voter ID Battle Shifts to Proof of Citizenship [by Ian Urbina, May 12th, 2008] about the current attempt in the Show Me State to actually make people show they are citizens in order to register to vote!

In a sane country, this would not even be an issue, but given today’s environment, it’s a contentious one.

The Federal government doesn’t seem to be too concerned about illegal voting:

From October 2002 to September 2005, the Justice Department indicted 40 voters for registration fraud or illegal voting, 21 of whom were noncitizens, according to department records.

That’s all? What a joke!

But the states are taking up the slack. In the state of Missouri (where I resided for several years) there’s a proposed constitutional amendment “to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.” That sounds eminently reasonable to me, and should be to anyone without some kind of subversive agenda.

The Times explains that:

The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card. Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process.

The article reports that other states are mulling similar measures, but the Missouri proposal could possibly be enacted before this year’s election.

Currently, you only have to prove you are a citizen to register in one state!

In Arizona, the only state that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, more than 38,000 voter registration applications have been thrown out since the state adopted its measure in 2004. That number was included in election data obtained through a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates and provided to The New York Times. More than 70 percent of those registrations came from people who stated under oath that they were born in the United States, the data showed.

What ? You mean non-citizens breaking the law actually lied about it? Horrors!

As for actually proving identity when voting, half of the states require that:

Already, 25 states, including Missouri, require some form of identification at the polls. Seven of those states require or can request photo ID. More states may soon decide to require photo ID now that the Supreme Court has upheld the practice. Democrats have already criticized these requirements as implicitly intended to keep lower-income voters from the polls, and are likely to fight even more fiercely now that the requirements are expanding to include immigration status.

As I reported in a VDARE.COM article several years ago, here in Mexico they have a free government-issued voter ID card. When the voter shows up at the polls, his ID card photo is checked against that of a book that contains the photo of every voter in the precinct.

Meanwhile, back in Missouri:

The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.

Well, if they really are citizens, there ought to be a way to prove it.

And here’s somebody who doesn’t think it’s a hardship:

Thor Hearne, a lawyer from Missouri who has been a strong advocate for voter ID laws, cited a California congressional race in 1996 in which a Republican, Bob Dornan, was narrowly defeated. Mr. Dornan contested the results, claiming that illegal immigrants had voted.

After a 14-month investigation by state, county and federal officials, a panel concluded that up to 624 noncitizens may have registered to vote. The report came to no firm determination of whether any of those people had actually voted.

Mr. Hearne said the requirement would not pose a significant hardship on voters.

“There were a lot of the same alarmist charges regarding Indiana voter ID law and how it would disenfranchise so many people,” Mr. Hearne said, “and those allegations were not accepted by the Supreme Court.”

And I like this part:

(Hearne) added that if states actively provided a free form of identification proving citizenship, the number of people who would be disenfranchised would be very low.

Right on! And, that’s exactly what they do in Mexico ! Why can’t they do it in the United States?