Nicholas Stix

Bushbots for Dubai

By Nicholas Stix

In what may yet prove to be George W. Bush's Waterloo, our fearless leader has succeeded at uniting political enemies from both sides of the aisle in opposition to his plan to let a company owned by the United Arab Emirates take control of America’s largest ports.

The UAE, as President Bush has pointed out, is an important ally. On Thursday, he observed sarcastically that he finds it "interesting" that people who had no objection to port security being run by a British firm (as was until now the case), object to an Arab firm.

Let me explain it to you, Mr. President: The British are British, and the Arabs are ... ARAB!

(Truth be told, I think it is preferable to limit control of American port security to American firms, although I suppose we’ll have to congressionally codify controls by, say, passing a law that American firms may not subcontract port security to foreign firms or foreign subsidiaries, or bring in cheap, foreign H-1B or J-1 or L-1 – or whatever – workers to replace Americans. Don’t you just love those patriotic, American businessmen?)

Mr. Bush is trying to race-bait the American people. But there's a little problem with his strategy: Americans who might be intimidated by the same game when it is employed for insignificant maneuvers like hiring incompetent, mendacious blacks as police officers and firemen, won't play it, when it is used on behalf of Arabs who are a threat to our very existence. Recall that two of the 911 terrorists were from the UAE, UAE banks served as conduits to finance the 911 attacks, and the UAE is lousy with bin Laden supporters at the highest reaches of government. Not good.

Now, if the American people had, following 911, in a case of contemplation of collective suicide or of Stockholm syndrome said that "Islam is a religion of peace," President Bush might be able to accuse us of hypocrisy. (In which case I’d say, “So sue us.”)

But the American people never went along with that nonsense. It was wholly Mr. Bush's idea. Even most people who, like yours truly, supported him for other reasons (because he was our commander-in-chief and we were at war; because we thought, mistakenly, that he supported the U.S. Constitution, etc.), thought his support of Islam was ludicrous, and could only be justified, as I argued at the time, because we needed to avoid a direct confrontation with over one billion Moslems, and needed to get some Moslems to help us beat the other Moslems.

But don't try and humiliate the American people into going along with your lunacy, Mr. Bush. Where is that famous "common touch" of yours, when you most need it?

But George W. Bush is not utterly alone. He still enjoys the support of the sort of folks whom H.L. Mencken surely was thinking of, when he coined the term "the Stupid Party" to describe the GOP.

My inbox has been overflowing the last couple of days with e-mails from a Stupid Party mailing list, whose members are outraged that anyone would criticize the President over the Dubai Deal. The following missive arrived Thursday night.

"MSM [mainstream media] and FNC [Fox News Channel] is full of idiots. (Period)

"There is NO SALE OF PORTS!!! It's a lease of some shipping terminals and berths.

"Over and over the idiots in the media including FNC keep saying 'selling ports'. ????....

"The New Media needs to expose this BS!

"Rush has examined and detailed the facts since last Friday, over and over ...

"There is NO SALE OF PORTS!!! It's a lease of some shipping terminals and berths.
"There is NO SALE OF PORTS!!! It's a lease of some shipping terminals and berths.
"There is NO SALE OF PORTS!!! It's a lease of some shipping terminals and berths."

At least someone still loves you, Dubya.

The 14 Percent Solution to Globalization

By Nicholas Stix

Many Americans are unhappy about globalization, but globalization gurus are unequally unhappy with those Americans, whom the globalizers see as Luddites who are fighting the inevitable. Apparently, there are iron historical laws which decree that Americans (except for globalizers, natch) must spend, say, $200,000 on undergraduate and graduate education, as a requirement to get a job waiting tables. I never knew that waiting tables was such a complex job. Live and learn.

I feel both sides’ pain. Really, I do. I feel the pain of a global outsourcing entrepreneur who can’t get a table at The Four Seasons, just as I feel the pain of a guy with a master’s degree in engineering who can’t get a job installing garage door openers. Economic dislocations are hell on everyone.

As even public school teachers have for years told us, “We live in a global economy.” That means that folks here in the First World must compete for the same jobs with people in places like India and China. As Peter Bendor-Samuel, the CEO of Everest Group, which specializes in outsourcing has written, he can hire an Indian in India for one-seventh the wages that an American worker gets in the U.S. (Just imagine when Bendor-Samuel starts to tap into the Red Chinese workforce!)

And so, if the multicultural educators and tenured libertarian economists both promoting the global economy mean what they say, they’ll be willing to accept an 85.7 percent pay cut, as will all unions, TV news anchors, Congress and the President, heck, all the way up to George Clooney and Howard Stern. If Clooney balks, we can simply replace him with actor-screenwriter-director-agitators from Bollywood; we can replace Stern with a Red Chinese (English fluency not required), and we can outsource George W. Bush’s job to someone -- anyone -- in the United Arab Emirates.

I can just see some benighted reader saying, “But I can’t survive on 1/7th of my income!”

Fear not. You need merely tell your landlord or mortgage bank, utility company, grocer, doctor, lawyer, union, etc., that from now on, you’ll be paying one-seventh of what you used to pay. After all, globalization cuts both ways, no?

Bill Gates, who keeps telling young people to study engineering, surely has our best interests at heart. Gates wants America to have the world’s best-educated waitresses and installers of garage-door openers. And to show his good faith, I’m sure Gates won’t mind cutting the price of his software to First World consumers to one-seventh of its current price, which Michael Dell will surely also wish to do with his computers. And of course, America’s Overpriced, Private Universities will want to jump on the bandwagon, by cutting their tuition and fees by six-sevenths, and pledging to cut their charges each year from now on.

Let us all now praise the globally competitive, brave new economy.

Brokeback Mohammed

Thursday, February 09, 2006
Latest Update: 2:32 a.m., Monday, February 13, 2006

In the news:

The National Endowment for the Arts has granted $100,000 to artist
Andres Serrano to create an art work to be called "Piss Mohammed."

* * *

The Brooklyn Museum will sponsor an exhibit by British artist Chris Ofili, in which the Prophet Mohammed is covered in dung and magazine cut-outs of male genitalia.

* * *

Playwright Terence McNally’s new show will soon appear on Broadway. In Brokeback Mohammed, Mohammed and his early followers are depicted as homosexuals whose idea of prayer was to form “daisy chains” facing Mecca. The play could not have been produced without the support of fellow playwright Tony Kushner. McNally and Kushner have both said that they will brave fatwas against them, if necessary, in the fight against religious intolerance and on behalf of freedom of expression.

* * *

New York Times columnist Frank Rich has celebrated the Brooklyn Museum exhibit and the coming McNally play, and the Times editorial page has published the Danish editorial cartoons mocking the Prophet. Moreover, the newspaper has announced that, for the rest of the year, it will give a gift of a copy of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, to every new subscriber.

* * *

In the ACLU’s newest campaign, it demands that the federal government revoke the tax-exempt status of all mosques that criticize the government or attack America. The organization has also threatened to sue any and all public schools promoting Islam, and demands that any school board and/or administrator guilty of continuing such propagation, be arrested.

* * *

Members of the Jewish Brotherhood have been firebombing the embassies and consulates of Moslem nations, calling for the death of Moslem editors, in protest against the blaspheming of Judaism and the anti-Semitic cartoons routinely published in Moslem newspapers, and brandishing signs with messages like “Massacre those who insult Judaism.”

* * *

Jews around the world are demanding that Moslem nations change their laws to respect Judaism, and apologize for blaspheming Judaism.

* * *

Steven Spielberg has apologized for Munich, and says he will redo the movie to make it more realistic, without the present phony moral equivalence between the Mossad operatives and the terrorists, or the guilt that his fictional operative presently feels about exacting vengeance for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

* * *

Meanwhile, Spain has announced that it will be dynamiting the new, Great Mosque of Granada, and forcing all Moslems to leave the nation for the second time since 1492.

* * *

And out of Israel today, came the third videotape this week of Jewish activists beheading a kidnapped Hamas leader. Israel has said that the kidnappings and beheadings will continue, until all Moslems leave Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza. The Jewish state also leveled the Dome of the Rock, and said that all remaining mosques in Israel will be converted for use as latrines.

* * *

Last, but not least, George W. Bush has announced his Crusade to invade all Moslem nations, and forcibly convert their inhabitants to Christianity. He calls it "The Ann Coulter Plan." Jonah Goldberg wrote a syndicated column praising the plan.

* * *

None of the above "news flashes" is true. But why should individuals, agencies, propaganda organs and governments not work to make them true? Islam is the world's most intolerant, bellicose religion; for Moslems, “tolerance” is but a euphemism for submission to Islam. And so, why should non-Moslems not give Moslems a dose of their own medicine, or at the very least apply their usual practices to Islam?

Sundariah Ramrakha (1930-2006)

By Nicholas Stix

On Saturday, Sundariah Ramrakha died of renal failure at the age of 75 in Princes Town, Trinidad. Mrs. Ramrakha is survived by her husband of 55 years, Ramrakha Ramrakha, by one son, six daughters, twelve grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Although Mrs. Ramrakha’s husband and children traveled halfway around the world in variously seeking work and visiting relatives, she only left the island of Trinidad once, as a young woman, to visit the sister island, Tobago, of the two-island nation. (When three of their daughters moved variously to New York and London in search of fortune and husbands during the early 1990s, Mr. Ramrakha, who is at home in both cities, periodically traveled to them to look after his girls.)

During Mrs. Ramrakha’s life, Trinidadian culture and politics utterly changed. At the time of her birth, some East Indians had only recently been freed from indentured servitude by a 1917 British decree. The majority of East Indians (as opposed to black West Indians, who spoke English) still spoke only Hindi; that began to change, thanks to Presbyterian missionaries, who in the 1920s taught East Indians English … and converted more than a few to Christianity.

Mrs. Ramrakha and her husband wed in an arranged, Hindu marriage; conversely, only two of her seven daughters was wed by arrangement. When Mr. and Mrs. Ramrakha wed in 1950, Trinidad was still a colony of Great Britain; in 1962, the nation gained its independence from the Crown, and was renamed the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, which remains its name to this day. (Note that the Ramrakhas were devoted to each other, proof that an arranged marriage can be a most felicitous union.)

Amidst such social upheavals, the Ramrakhas managed, through backbreaking work, to rise from poverty to a relatively prosperous life. They had no luxuries, but were able to meet all of their needs, and to purchase and extend one house, and then sell that home and move into a second house that they had had built new. Mr. Ramrakha planted fruit and vegetable trees, bushes, and vines on their property, so that their children grew up with a cornucopia of mangoes, avocados, coconuts, oranges, tangerines ("pottigoll"), chestnuts, sugar cane, bananas ("figs"), cocoa, cherries, corn, peas, cassava, tomatoes and eggplant.

In a traditional East Indian household, in addition to having a house built for his family, it was the father’s job to arrange marriages for his daughters. Mr. Ramrakha, however, found himself caught betwixt and between changing customs, and failed to arrange marriages for his girls. (Two of his daughters ended up in arranged marriages, anyway.) Thus, some fifteen years ago, when he referred to one of his daughters as an “old maid,” Mrs. Ramrakha retorted, “And who she should marry -- woman?!” (In today’s Trinidad, that retort would still be understood as a joke, and not as a real possibility.)

Princes Town recently gained its first “hospital” (really a clinic). By contrast, when Mrs. Ramrakha gave birth to her first two children in the mid-1950s, she had not so much as a doctor or even a midwife to rely on. All alone, while her husband was off working in oil fields or driving a gravel delivery truck as a subcontractor, she delivered the babies herself.

But some things have not changed. In the rural, predominantly East Indian South, running water is still a sometime thing, and Mrs. Ramrakha and her family had to work their water use around the practice of the authorities often having it “locked off” during the day. Thus, she would have to fill (or have one of her children or grandchildren fill) buckets and bottles with cold water from her shower in the morning, for use for bathing and washing hands. And hot running water is still unheard of in Princes Town. But then, Princes Town is a model of progress compared to villages farther south, where there is no running water, and people get their water from government trucks that fill huge plastic water barrels.

And yet, apparent backwardness can have its virtues. The land that Trinidadian Nobel Laureate V.S. (or “Vidia,” as he is known to “educated” Trinidadians) Naipaul repudiated, is home to a substantial proportion of self-reliant people who can fix almost anything. (Naipaul is most famous for his Trinidad-set novel, A House for Mr. Biswas, which won him his Nobel Prize.) A proportion of those self-reliant “Trinis” are East Indians such as Mr. Ramrakha who are ardent, self-taught students of history and politics, who snort at the pretensions and misrepresentations of the black nationalist academics who hold court at the Trinidadian campus of the University of the West Indies (pronounced “you-wee”) and on TV. (Unlike pretentious East Indian school teachers, who are in awe of Mr. Naipaul, such “primitive” East Indians are unimpressed with him.) Trinidad, unlike the “progressive,” more socially stratified U.S., is also a land where one might grow up down the road from a future prime minister, as Mr. Ramrakha grew up near, and knew future Prime Minister (and current head of the United National Congress party) Basdeo Panday, and the rest of the Panday family.

Although Mrs. Ramrakha received a minimal education, she and her husband encouraged all of their children to gain an education. In a nation where few students went beyond primary school, all but one of the Ramrakhas’ children finished high school (“O” levels, which at the time in Trinidad, where less than ten percent of people attended college, had a status equivalent to at least two years of college in the States), with most of them entering various allied health professions, and one running her own business. The Ramrakhas’ son, Nanram, followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a subcontractor delivering truckloads of gravel to builders.

Mrs. Ramrakha outlived two of her children – a second son who was born the last of her nine children, and who died at six months of age of an undetermined illness; and a daughter, Tauti, who died of a brain tumor in 1998, at the age of 28. Although she only occasionally spoke of them, Mrs. Ramrakha mourned her dead children 'til her dying day.

Although Mrs. Ramrakha's mother lived to be 103 years old, and her maternal grandmother reached the age of 106, the 4'11" woman was less hardy than her forebears. Having so many children surely exhausted her body, and may explain why her last child was born so sickly. And yet, aside from the lack of availability of medical procedures such as tubal ligation, which might have extended Mrs. Ramrakha’s life through her having fewer children, she wanted and loved all of her children unconditionally. Having fewer children was never a consideration for her.

In recent years, Mrs. Ramrakha suffered from diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis, yet until recently, no matter how painful it was for her to walk, she got up every morning to do her house work.

Israel's Sharon Finished as PM, Gravely Ill

By Nicholas Stix

Israeli Prime Mininster Ariel Sharon yesterday suffered a massive stroke and a cerebral hemorrhage (bleeding inside or on the brain). He will no longer be able to function as prime minister, and even if the 77-year-old survives, according to one health professional familiar with such conditions, he may not even be able to speak or otherwise enjoy major brain functions. Deputy prime minister Ehud Ohlmert has been named acting prime minister.

Sharon's condition adds uncertainty to Israeli politics’ extent chaos. In November, Sharon had announced that he was leaving the Likud Party, formed his own party, "Kadima," with many of his old Likud loyalists, and called for elections on March 28. Now, the new elections are off, and Kadima is dead in the sand. And the Sharon Era, which began with the retired general's landslide election victory over Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak on February 6, 2001, is over.

Like many early Israeli leaders, Sharon got his start fighting the British, before there was an Israel, let alone an Israeli Defense Force. Unlike all other early Israeli leaders, who were Ashkenazi Jews (from Europe outside of Spain and Portugal, from where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled all Jews in 1492), Sharon alone was born in what would become Israel.

In battles beginning with the British and through four wars fighting against attempts by Israel’s Arab neighbors to destroy her, Sharon, who rose to the rank of general, earned a reputation as a fearless commander. That reputation served him well in putting down Arab terrorism in the territories, and in negotiating with Arab terrorist leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas.

Breaking News: NYC Cop Saved by Civilians

by Nicholas Stix

UPI has just reported that a New York City police officer who was being beaten by a man in the subway was saved by two men who happened to be in the vicinity. There was no word yet on the sex or ethnicity of the officer-victim, or on the ethnicities of the attacker and the heroes, respectively.

AOL's Feminists Strike Again

by Nicholas Stix

Who can turn a porn queen into a “ditzy ingenue”? AOL, that’s who!

And no, I’m not writing a hackneyed send-up of “Mame.”

Anyone who is an AOL customer gets the company's "news" inserts and pop-up ads whenever he tries to read his e-mail. Thus, he lives in a world in which “ditzy ingenue” is a euphemism for “porn star,” as in the following passage about actress Heather Graham and her new, midseason replacement TV show.

“How You Know Her: She became a star by playing a ditzy ingenue in the movie 'Boogie Nights,' and guest-starred on 'Scrubs' last season.”

Graham played a ditzy porn “actress” in Boogie Nights, which was a touching movie (it really was!) about the 1970s' pornographic movie industry. No ingenues anywhere in the picture. Do any of AOL’s feminists know English?

Much of the "content" AOL provides consists of what journalism legend George S. Schuyler would have called "moron fodder" -- worthless instruction by “experts” telling one that one is obliged to over-tip, tips on how to deal with an impossible boss, etc. Of course, the boss is a man, and the beleaguered employee -- or rather, in pc speak, "co-worker" -- is a female.

(If the politically correct had any logic skills, they'd see that the violence they do to language solves many of their problems. If the man in question is a "co-worker," then he can't fire you. Only bosses can fire people. But since feminists and the other leftists dominating journalism have banished clear language about hierarchies -- boss/subordinate; employer/employee -- in favor of egalitarian euphemisms like "co-worker," while at the same time obsessing endlessly about problems that are central to hierarchical relationships, their writing is schizophrenic at best. If they've already neutered white male authority, how can they be having all these problems with authoritarian white males?)

AOL's moron fodder stories are often written by females who I am sure think they are better than the work they do … but they're not. I don't know what is more important to AOL's Web editors: Showcasing moron fodder written by ditzy female "journalists," or showcasing the photos of female models that invariably accompany the stories. Unless it is a model posing as an evil boss, you won't see many pictures of white males in AOL's features.

While white male bosses are portrayed as ogres in AOL's features, a female boss who really is an incompetent ogre will get powder-puff treatment. And so it was, last February when the headline "Shocking Ouster" accompanied some AOL “content” on Carly Fiorina, who had been fired by Hewlett-Packard, after serving almost six years as its Chairman and CEO.

Carly Fiorina has the dubious honor of having destroying the collegial corporate culture carefully nurtured by firm co-founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard, in favor of a ruthless, bottom-line orientation that resulted in layoffs to over 10,000 workers; and of having rammed through one of the most misbegotten mergers in American corporate history with computer rival Compaq, costing HP and its stockholders billions of dollars. The only shock was that HP’s board of directors waited so long to can her.

But Fiorina was a woman and a feminist, to boot, and so, feminists immediately pulled out their violins, and played, “If she were a man, they’d say she’s hero.” And AOL played the same song.

In mid-December, AOL also ran a feature on Irish immigrant success story Lesley Wootton by a Dayana Yochim, “An Extreme Retirement Makeover.” The story has the teaser,

“What does it take to go from $83 in savings to having more than $150,000 in the retirement kitty in less than two years? The financial equivalent to stomach-stapling and tag-team liposuction? Nope. It's a retirement regimen we can all follow….”

“For more than 20 years, this Irish immigrant, her American husband, and their five kids scrambled to avoid financial disaster. At one point their family income was just $5,200 a year -- that's less than $15,000 in today's dollars. Lesley worked odd jobs, factory night shifts, waitressing -- anything she could do to bring in extra money while avoiding having to pay for day care.

“Then, two years ago, it looked like it was game over. Lesley was 53 and recovering from a divorce. She had a negative net worth and just $83 officially earmarked for retirement.

“The end? Not so fast. Today she is debt-free and sitting on a nest egg of more than $150,000. If Lesley sticks to her plan, she'll be a millionaire by age 67.”

I read on, hoping to find out how Lesley Wootton had beaten the odds. I never did find out.

Alleged journalist Dayana Yochim begins with clichéd dieting analogies (“Step on the Scale,” “Lighten Your Load,” “Purge the Hidden Carbs,” “Make sure you're getting all the right nutrients”) before dumping them for generic self-help/money clichés (“Elevate Your Game” and “Become a Lean, Mean Money Machine”). After all the mixed clichés, you still have no idea how Wootton made her money.

But the folks at AOL, in connivance with The Motley Fool, are willing to sell you a subscription to their Get-Rich-Quick newsletter.

The article links to a long second article, excerpt from the Get-Rich-Quick newsletter, with Lesley Wootten’s ten tips on how to get rich in two years.

1. Improve your job prospects.
2. Read great books about money.
3. Track spending.
4. Wean your kids off the gravy train.
5. Consider selling your house.
6. Telecommute.
7. Max out your savings accounts.
8. Save your marriage.
9. Reward yourself.
10. Slow down, but don't retire.

Along the way, we learn that this woman, who had an income of $5,200, was able to improve her job prospects by going to college, where she was a Phi Beta Kappa. Later, she sold her house.

Hello? The premise of both articles was that Wootton was broke, with five children to support. If the premise was honest, Wootton could not possibly have gone to college, much less bought a house, even if it was a “farmhouse.” And we don't want to go into the "gravy train."

The anonymous writer is insulting the reader’s intelligence, but that’s the m.o. of moron fodder.

Similarly, we know that Wootton’s success came only after her divorce, and that she had no savings. (My hunch is that she got the house in the divorce settlement, sold it, and turned it into her present bankroll. Which would mean that she didn’t do it alone, but rather with her ex-husband’s help. In any event, the writer is being dishonest, by setting up a scenario that would preclude the result she depicts.)

So much for feminists respecting women’s intelligence.

If you believe the sort of, um, stuff that AOL pushes on its customers, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Miss Ingénue. She goes for $500 an hour.