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Strangers And Pilgrims
For He hath prepared for them a city
By all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another. Nor is the interval between these two nights an unclouded day, for the more we are able to feel pleasure, the more we are vulnerable to pain - and, whether in background or foreground, the pain is always with us. We have been accustomed to make this existence worthwhile by the belief that there is more than the outward appearance - that we live for a future beyond this life here. For the outward appearance does not seem to make sense. If living is to end in pain, incompleteness, and nothingness, it seems a cruel and futile experience for beings who are born to reason, hope, create and love. Man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more than what he sees - unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death.
- Alan Watts, “The Wisdom of Insecurity”
A fat old white man wearing sun glasses, sweat pants and clutching what seemed like a thousand plastic bags walked up to me, ducking his head down like we were going to share a secret.
“I feel like an alien in my own city,” he said, gesturing to the gathered Latinos who streamed past now that the march was breaking up and we were all heading back to our lives.
He looked off and then started up again, thinking he’d found a sympathetic audience. “They should open the borders up - and send them all back!” He moved his body like it were a gate being opened, with people streaming through. He waited for a laugh. He didn’t get it.
“I don’t know, man. Maybe they should send you back,” I said laughing.
He spun around, exploded, raised his grocery bags up in the air. I’m sure his eyes smoldered red and hot behind his sunglasses and baseball cap. “But I’m from this fucking city!”
Everyone on the street corner stopped and he stormed off. Jake and I burst out laughing. A few minutes later I excitedly told Jeremy about my small stand against idiocy, only to have him trump me with a story which I’m sure he’d tell better if you asked him in person. The march in support of Latino workers and immigrants of all stripes had snarled traffic all through the city, arousing the wrath of stalled out commuters. A white man in a white car expressed his own powerlessness by flipping off the people who’d only gathered there to be treated with respect and dignity. His salute lasted some fifteen minutes before he’d had enough and decided to drive through the crowd of marchers. Bike cops tried to stop him. He rear-ended another car, was dragged out, cuffed and hauled away (all of which Jeremy caught on video, with the exception of the crash itself).
The march itself was remarkable. Seattle is a very very white city, and I honestly had no idea there were so many Latinos in the area. And I found it exhilirating that everybody was out together with pride and courage - no matter how it was or will be slanted in the media, or manipulated by politicians for their own gain. I’m still not sold on the idea that “Washington, D.C. is listening” or that marches and protests turn into legislation and improved lives. But I am convinced it’s important to see and experience and share with other people the things that concern all of us.
Because we’re all immigrants. And I don’t just mean that in the sense that all of our ancestors came from somewhere else to hear. I mean that we are all strangers and pilgrims in search of the Heavenly City. As that old gospel song says, “This world is not my home - I’m just passing through.” That’s all of us. We’re all in the same boat, and it’s called the planet Earth. And it’s hurtling through space. And we’re here just for a little while, journeying from someplace we don’t remember to someplace we can only dream of. And we face all the same struggles, all bathing in and emitting the same light of life, splintered into a billion identical fragments. Everything in this world is on loan, except for the raw experience of simply being human.
I don’t know what the political or social solutions are for any of this, and won’t flatter myself by pretending I do. But I know this city isn’t mine, isn’t their’s, isn’t anybody’s. We’re all just passing through. Death doesn’t discriminate. God calls us all home. When we sit beyond that final wall, there will be no more divisions left between us. So why waste time on them now?
[Special thanks to Jeremy for letting me us these awesome photos!]
- Pilgrims, Explorers, Voyageurs
- We Are All Aliens
- Knights Templar, Hawala & The Origins of Modern Banking
- Share the Monsters!
- The Demise of the White Race
- Prev: (Not) Lookin’ for a Leader
- Next: The Music in Your Head
May 2nd, 2006 at 6:27 pm
You don’t get it. That’s too bad, because you’re a decent writer.
In Nature, there is Order. In the concious life of humankind, there is Order. Where there is intelligence there is….???
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Hey Tim, GREAT quote man! I absolutely loved that book when I read it about ten years ago, and it’s kinda stuck with me all these years. . .probably because Alan Watts is such a brilliant and unique thinker.
Speaking of, isn’t it about time ~you~ wrote a book?
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:40 am
Nice post - Seattle seems an odd city. I have only visited on two occassions but your description of the day’s events really took me right back there. There is an unusual feel to Seattle that stays with you.
A sleepy vague grayness ensconced in emerald?
I dunno.
In my mind’s eye Seattle always is seen as calm and remote.
At any rate, I felt like I was there watching the events you described unfold. The lure for Seattle is strong yet the remoteness makes me hesitate.
So when is your book a-coming? Even Maddox has a book out this June.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:15 am
I guess you fancy yourself a compassionate, open minded fellow by telling us this pithy story about your “small stand against idiocy”. These are not immigrants my friend they are ILLEGAL immigrants and they are breaking the law. There are 3 thousand of them streaming over the border every single day. This is not an issue about being compassionate and open minded - it will physically be impossible to support this kind of population explosion that is a result of the illegal immigration problem. Idiocy?
Would you like to move from your cushy middle class life down to South America? Would you? Have you been down to the border towns? To the towns that are just north of those border towns and the towns a bit farther north of those that are supposed to be AMERICAN cities but you cannot tell the difference between those towns and the Mexican towns just south of the border.
You don’t understand what you are talking about up in there in your “very very white” city of Seattle. Come down here to Texas and see the impact that these illegal immigrants are having on the economy. Check out California, and Colorado as well. Why do you think all those very very white people are leaving California in the droves?
Check out this link for a simple explanation of what illegal immigration REALLY means http://rense.com/general70/myth.htm
Which country would you like to live in? America as you have known it? How about a Mexi-American that is missing a very important ingrediant—the middle class. That’s you and me buddy. We are the endangered species. At their rallys in California illegal alien supporters got up and spoke about how us very very white people are a dying race, and that we dont make babies like the Latinos and that they (”the latinos”) will overtake us by sheer numbers. The talk about reclaiming half of the U.S. back for Mexico. That’s ok though cuz you are up in nice white Seattle so you are safe.
Forget about your pandering for the “oh Tim your such a humble man of principle who makes small stands against idiocy” vote and check the facts about illegal immigration . You and your very very white buddy Jake laughed your ass of at a fellow American who simply was expressing his frustration at what is happening to our country — and you and your elitist arrogance laughed at him and then told the world about it so as to make yourself look like such a progressive.
Give another 10 years my friend and you will wake up to the cold hard facts about what is happening right now. Our progeny will look at us and wonder why we were so damn stupid and smug with our comfy, happy, dont hurt anyones feelings ideology.
idiocy?
I dont care if your not man enough to actually post this as long as you read it at least once.
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:01 pm
why wait until god calls us home……..if such a thing happens…..the divisions we build are in our heart. otherwise they would be invisible. religion makes people conscious of divisions. it made one guy so angry he got arrested. for what? nothing changed. the sky was still brilliant blue, the birds went on flying and most people go on with things.
what we build in our hearts is what happens right now…………call it what you want and you are right. i feel sorry for the “idiots” who give themselves permission to react to this engineered type of event and get arrested. resist the urge to get politicised. let it go.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:11 pm
They aren’t immigrants. They aren’t illegal immigrants. They are people. They aren’t even “they.” We are people. Very simple. And yes, it is absolutely an issue of human compassion.
May 4th, 2006 at 1:39 am
Because we have the HIGHEST cost of living, perhaps? Or might be the low, low quality of our education system…
It certainly isn’t fleeing immigrants, for chrissakes.
May 4th, 2006 at 3:06 am
It does a great disservice to the human mind to believe that what is lawful is right or correct action, and actions that are not lawful are therefore necessarily wrong. It’s funny (albeit in a rather gloomy way) that people support giant governments going abroad inflicting mass destruction and violence, yet cannot allow for individuals of another class, color, religion, whatnot to cross into land they claim as theirs. The claim to property is made by those whom already have possessions. The desire for borders comes from the xenophobic or from those whom are not limited by said borders (”Anyone can pass freely into Mexico, but only those with “citizenship” can pass into the US”! [ http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/111313.shtml ]).
Whether or not immigrants crossing restrictive borders is harmful to the economy, it does not get to the root of the problem. One could delve deeper by asking “if these people are possibly risking their lives crossing this border, only to come into a land where they will not be welcomed and have racism invited onto them, then for what reason are they doing these activities which are ILLEGAL?” All I know is that colonialism had nothing to do with it. And neither did NAFTA, CAFTA, or any of the actions of our country in the past. No way.
May 4th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Dude the point is that we still have (as Americans - please do not read anything into this!) to pay taxes or this shithouse is going up in flames.
If I pulled up stakes and wandered into Mexico with no travel or work documents, or any other country for that matter, from what my research has revealed — and yes I have been looking for work outside the USA, not only in Central and South America, but Canada — I would expect immediate detention, a swift conviction and possible lengthy prison sentence, followed by immediate deportation upon completion thereof. This would not include driving without proper paperwork, insurance, or working for a contractor who pays no unemployment or worker’s comp insurance.
Yeah, they’re people, they’ve given up on their homeland and come here for something better. Great. What is the answer? I don’t know. Clearly the Bush regime has ulterior motives, and that is supplying a labor pool to corporations (or the “all the rage” LLC’s now-a-days) who violate federal laws, and fail to make tax payments to states and the federal government.
I don’t believe Marriott and Walmart, and every other restaurant out there is going to go out of business if they pay minimum wage to their workers. (God have mercy on your soul if you work in the hospitality industry for $2 an hour + tips in the first place - taxes or no)
And that is the frame, set, and setting from MSM on the issue now: “YOU MAY PAY” if illegals are sent home and so forth, like it’s our fuckin fault people are going to work in huge chains of illegal bullshit.
I don’t know I just get a vibe of the bottom corner of a building crumbling to dust at this time…
Fuckin polemicist bullshit that’s good for no one except those that can afford to lobby pols and finance their campaigns - “just don’t enforce the laws.”
Not convinced? Oh yeah, Mexico is going to legalize drugs, oh that’s right let it float a couple days, then announce with no shame at all the US has shot that idea to hell. This problem is born, bred, fueled, and financed right here.
It’s all noble to respect people and shit, but at the end of the day, what does anyone think of me?
Point is when these yahoos in Washington do something for me and mine I’ll be like hell yeah bring it on, hell maybe I will have a fuckin lawn to mow then even.
-tc
“seven screaming dizzbusters
who lurk behind the roads”
-BOC
May 4th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
the mayor of san fransisco think it is, a mexican person, has made it clear that he is pro mexican in the sense that he knows that they will breed themselves a majority in texas, california and new mexico in the next 15-20 years. how can anyone plan an economic structure in the face of such thinking. as much as we decry government they have done a substantial job of infrastructure, hydro and all the other stuff that allows us to focus on the trivial. it`s a consumer society for now. never before has there been such wealth and prosperity to argue over. interesting times.
politically we`re fucked, economically we are fucked. we had better have a strategy in place to adjust to the disappearance of the middle class. if we take our frustration out on individuals we lose. we can`t fight the momentum of a hundred years of modernisation and prosperity. society is evolving. it`s not just a mexican issue. there are other minorities coming here with thier agendas also. we built a nice place to live…….now the world wants to move in like some broke college buddy……and the wife ain`t happy.
May 4th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
alistair and thom I feel you. Tim, yes I know about compassion but there is also such a thing as discipline and the rule of law which is in fact the very thing that made this country so great that improverished people come here. The problem is that we are getting way too wishy washy in the name of “compassion”.
When you get on an airplane they tell you that you are with a child and the plane starts going down and the gas masks drop that you are to put YOUR mask on FIRST so that you can then help the child with theirs. At first glance you could say that it was not compassionate for the adult to take the air before the helpless little child but the adult needs to be able to maintain their well being first if they are to be of any help to the child.
The same principle applies when we as a 1st world nation allow millions of people from a third world culture to stream over our borders unchecked without their shots, without learning our national language, without learning our laws and our culture they end up bringing their 3rd world diseases, their language and their 3rd world culture with them. Because this happens in such sheer numbers the result is not assimilation but the creation of cultural enclaves that basically amount to importing chunks of a 3rd world nation into the middle of a 1st world nation. Now I am not downing any particular human being but their cultural belief systems are coming from a 3rd world mindset where corruption is normal and education is rare. So what ends up happening is that the country they came here for in the first place is being replaced with what they brought with them, with what they wanted to escape from.
I am all for immigration but we need to do it according to a protocol that allows time for the assimilation of the immigrant into OUR culture which again is WHY they came here. A nation is nothing but an idea, people and some dirt. If the mass of the people support and maintain a cohesive idea about what kind of country they wish to live in(i.e. CULTURE) through language, work ethic, educational standards, agreed upon morals and laws to maintain order then the country stands a chance of being successful and being able to provide the material wealth and opportunity for the common good that defines a 1st world nation. If not you get corruption, chaos, ethnic wars, etc.
Teachers are quitting in droves in areas heavily populated with Mexican immigrants because of all the bi-lingual bullshit that has to be pandered to. Guess what we are nation of immigrants but we all speak a common language. Some of us are from Italian stock but we don’t go around speaking Italian, some of us are of Polish heritage but you don’t have to push 1 for English and 3 for Polish when you call an American business. Why do we make such exceptions for Hispanics? Look it’s really fucking easy — you want to come to American and become an American in order to get all the nice material comforts and opportunities that this country offers then you fucking learn the language, the laws and the customs and actually BECOME an American and not a Mexican living in America simply sucking our blood through welfare and demanding special rights and shit.
Dude, Tim seriously man look at this from a logical perspective for a moment. Just because we are all into magic doesnt mean we abandon our left brain reasoning. A nation cannot sustain the kind of massive unchecked influx of immigrants from a culture that is completely different from the host nation. We are going to loose this country. Our children deserve a better effort from us. What kind of shithole are we going to leave them? Do you even care?
May 4th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
History tells us that this has happened before in a place called Rome and a massive influx of immigrants called the Goths. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Why are we so fucking blind? Why don’t we learn the lessons?
May 4th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Tim, I gotta say that I think that your response to the whole situation seems rather naive and more than a little holier than thou. To be sure, the older guy sounded like a bit a of an ass… but the issue at hand is one of the most serious issues the U.S. is facing… and not for the obvious reasons.
I completely concur with you: we must not lose sight of the fact that these are PEOPLE we are taking about. The topic of illegal immigration is a complex one, as it involves real human beings… both the illegals as well as citizens. Both have legitimate concerns… the question is: how do we intelligently and compassionately address these very complex human issues given the rule of law. There is no easy answer.
The U.S will not be doing immigrants (legal or illegal) or its own citizens any favors by not addressing this issue in a grave and sober fashion. It is important…it is fundamental to the integrity and future of the country and the ideals that it has stood for.
Every citizen of the U.S. owes their good fortune to an immigrant ancestor… nobody but the Native Americans can claim otherwise.
I have rather strong opinions regarding this topic. My father defected from Czechoslovakia in ‘68. Once the Russian tanks rolled in during ‘Prague Spring’ of ‘68 he got the F out. He spent time in a Austrian internment camp waiting to immigrate to the U.S… some of his friends didn’t wish to wait and immigrated to countries with shorter wait times: Canada, South Africa, and others. But he held out fo rthe U.S… and finally immigrated here… legally.
My fiancée is Canadian and we have been going through the proper procedures to have her immigrate here on a fiancee visa. Four words: PAIN. IN. THE. ASS. And she’s just across the Fn Detroit River! But we’re doing it all legally… by the book.
OK, so YAY for me. Woo-hoo.
ILLEGAL immigrants piss in the face of those who work hard to enter legally. I have a lot of immigrant friends… from China, Poland, Colombia, Canada, and others… a veritable United Nations… and not a one of them has had anything postive to say about illegal immigration.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY: the problem of illegal immigrants… and the citizens who hire them… is that it errodes the standard of living fo EVERYONE in the U.S. The illegals become unwitting pawns in the crooked game of globalization… which in itself is the systematic dismantling of all that organized labor… the working man… achieved over the course of the 20th century. The problem is: illegals often don’t value their own labor… and because they are here illegally they can be exploited even further.
I read a quote recently from one of the immigrant protestors at a rally in southwest Detroit. She said something to the effect of: ‘Well if we aren’t here to do cheap labor who will?’ THAT’S PART OF THE PROBLEM! The work of farm laborers and house cleaners, garment workers and meat packers is hard, unforgiving stuff. IT DESERVES AN HONEST WAGE. These people deserve better, damnit! THEY ARE WORTH MORE! But becasue they are here illegally they are exploited and paid poorly. And this erodes our society from the bottom up. A house isn’t worth shit without a solid foundation.
I find it ironic that the push for (illegal) immigrant rights coincides with the collapse of the U.S.’s labor movement? Does anyone seriously think that is a coincidence? Don’t you get it??? Their are people in this world that think we are sheep… that we exist for THEIR good, to serve them. They have no respect for the mass of humanity. Sure, they mouth words like ‘compassion’ and ‘democracy’… but in reality it is Orwell’s Animal Farm: all animals are equal… but some animals are more equal than others.
There is more to this whole situation than what appears on the surface, and it is quite simply the erosion of the middle class in America… and I am NOT talking about the consumer society that many people have bought into; that deserves to die… in fact, needs to. I refer to the concept that a working man or woman could expect to earn a decent wage and provide a good life for their family. The U.S. needs to grow up. It is exiting its adolecense as a nation… now the question is: will we grow up to be a responsible, respectable adult? Unfortuantely, under the leadership of the Baby Boomer generation, our nation refelcts many of that generation’s extremes: idealism… sullied by hubris and hypocrisy.
Whether intentionally (which I suspect) or accidentally… the USA is being put on a path in which its society is being structured to reflect that of Europe and much of the rest of the world: a society composed of the wealthy and the poor: the working (poor) class, the poor, and the dirt-fucking shanty-town poor. The illegal immigrants want a better life… but the ironic thing is…. if things are allowed to continue to go on as they are now… if immigration policies are not reformed… if globalization is allowed to run rampant… then the U.S. will no longer be a place that future immigrants can hope to go to in order to have a better life. They’ll come to a U.S. that exists ONLY to exploit them. The media, by insisiting on calling this an ‘immigration’ debate as opposed to an issue of ‘illegal’ immigration reveal themselves as the corporate lapdogs they are.
Tim, you are right to emphasize the humanity of this issue. And it for this reason that I cannot agree with your overly idealistic take on it.
The fact is that people are being exploited and we are ALL being set up for a nasty fall. REAL, MATURE compassion dictates that we act like adults and do the hard work to make the system right… and not just ‘comfortable’ and huggy-touchy feely. This shit is serious.
I could give a flying fuck if, as a white male I am a minority in 30 years… but I damn well hope that all the legal Latino… or Chinese… or Indian… immigrants that settle here in the U.S. take their role as citizens of the USA SERIOUSLY and continue to live by the ideals that made this country great. The world will be better for it.
We have to fight for what is right for the good of all the parties involved.
May 5th, 2006 at 7:12 am
it`s a matter of respect. my best friend in school was a czech. his dad was in the airforce and got out in 67…..he worked with my dad as scientists in montreal. karel and i played soccer together. education. community, respect. simple.
the may 1st thingy looked too staged for my liking. trade unionism sort of a feel to it.
could you imagine going to say, saudi arabi and behaving like these people?
the humanitarian position is to preserve society so that people can add thier bit………not come here and squat.
having said that, it would take tanks to stem the tide at this point in the proceedings and who has the stomach for that.
a little bit about values.
we arrange values in a priority in our minds. there are those who hold one value higher than another and that makes them see the world differently from the next person. this is pretty straightforward. the problem arises when a person`s values come to a situation where thier values are at odds with the solution.
humanitarianism works locally, between brothers and other likeminded types. those relationships don`t need much in the way of rules and laws. brothers swim together. as communities get larger the brother tie weakens and so people swim in different directions. so then laws are needed, otherwise chaos ensues.
the mass of immingrants are taking advantage of the decent nature of well kept and intentioned people here who have laws in place and abide by them. this emerging situation will destroy the life we hold dear. it can`t work out any other way. these people have different values and are being organised by an unseen agent.
time bomb.
May 5th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Great points alistair.
It IS about respect… about the value of human life.
That is precisely why this is such an explosive issue: if illegal immigration - itself closely related to the topic of globalization - is allowed to continue without some reform… without equitable restructuring and enforcement… it will directly contribute to the erosion of the value of humanity. (Read ‘value’ to mean inherent worth; a spiritual, ethical thing… not as an accounting variable to be treated like a commodity.)
If humanity’s value is permitted to degrade, then those ideals America has represented will be nothing more than a distant historical footnote: an abberation, a curiosity, along the timeline of humanity. The next hundred years… perhaps the next thirty… will prove whether the American experiment will succeed or fail.
If one says he or she is against ‘globalization,’ it sounds like you are an isolationist. If one says you are against illegal immigration, politically correct types look agast and label you as an anti-immigrant ogre. Bullshit. Those are at worst fluffy, uninformed responses, at best child-like and naïve. It merely underscores the insidious nature of the debate… and illustrates how corporate media and its industry pimps have co-opted the language of ideals, of multi-cultural values… and twisted it to support their plan to reduce the mass of humanity to a vast labor pool of indentured servants… to reduce the species to a raw material.
The ‘problem’ such as it is… is that the USA is too nice. Its people are too nice. Of course, I am being somewhat facetious. We are well-intentioned, and forgiving… but often naïve and perhaps a overly ignorant as a result of our good fortune. However, no other nation in the history of the world had every taken upon itself to rebuild its former enemies with something like the Marshall Plan after World War II. Now, if only we could remember this and come up with modern Marshall-plan like initiatives instead of going the way of pre-emptive wars…
Consider the difference in attitude toward immigration between the USA and Canada, for example. The U.S. has been likened to ‘the melting pot’: immigrants come here and they are (ideally) assimilated into the American identity. The beauty of such a system is that it (again, ideally) encourages a sort of amnesia in which immigrants leave the woes and age -old hatreds of the old world behind and begin anew. That is why we do not see many of the old-world tribal or ethnic hatreds take root here to the degree and with the tenacity that they do elsewhere in the world. Canada, on the other hand, uses the term ‘the cultural mosaic’ to describe its attitudee toward assimilating immigrants. Simply put, it encourages immigrants to hold their individual original cultural identity as pure as possible and ‘weave’ it into the existing fabric of Canadian society. The problem with this approach, however, is that new immigrants never really take up th emantle of their new, common citizenship… they often still identify themselves with their country of origin first and foremost, and Canada second.
alistair., your point that nowhere else in the world would these protests be allowed to occur cuts to the heart of the matter and exposes the weakness of the globalist corporate agenda.
If there was a crackdown on ILLEGAL immigration… if we did not allow our military to be used as the strong arm of corporate interests… if we did not support evil, corrupt regimes that shit on their own peoples…. then maybe real reform… real revolution would be allowed to take root where it is needed.
The USA was born from a revolution. It felt the need to break away from the old corrupt system of Europe. Is it not ironic that we are now the primary agent AGAINST change in the world? That we are the primary force that keeps people from rising up against their oppressors?
I guarnan-god-damn-tee you that if Mexico were forced to deal with all its people, particularly those that come across as illegals to the U.S. it would be forced to reform… or burst apart in revolution. More people would join groups such as the Zapatistas and the ages-old euro-style corrupt government would finally go down in flames.
Do you think the House of Saud would be able to maintain its grip on its people without the strong arm of the U.S. standing behind them, ready to mete out a right good beating? I think not.
May 5th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
i think we are in for a real surprise on a profound and fundimental basis. our very values as american/canadians is about to be ripped apart. the demonstration of mexican workers was a staged event that had the trappings of trade-unionism, which is socialism at it`s best. we have exposed our soft underbelly for too long here and , though i`m not sending out any sort of rallying cry, what are we supposed to while our stuff is divided up amongst people who we haven`t been formally introduced to?
May 5th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Simple question: why are borders allowed to be porous for capital (”globalization”) but not for labor?
May 5th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
well, i think that`s changing here. we saw it in places like germany recently where turkish illegals poured in to claim high paying jobs and we are going to see more of that here. and labour is a major part of capital.
May 5th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
It seems to me, that the world had always been uneccesarily beligerent about these imaginary lines we call borders. I know that if I lived in an impoverished nation where I was either politically/socially oppressed or unable to have the kind of opputunities that should be gauranteed to mankind, I would see it as an unalienable duty to myself and my kin to rectify the situation. If that meant violating isolationist laws and crossing an imaginary line, I would do it in an instant.