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?