And Republicans wonder why they lose the non-white vote...

Somehow I don't think the Republican outreach program to non-white Americans is working...

Watch the head of the Republicans in Maine claim that African-American voters were shipped into the state to fraudently vote for Obama: 

In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day. Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in town knows anyone who’s black. How did that happen? I don’t know. We’re going to find out….

Watch a Colorado Republican poll watcher suspect election fraud as African-Americans turn out to vote:

Yeah, a very high concentration of people of color. It’s not a problem, but, you know, when I go to the mall I see, you know this amount. Well I’m seeing at least double or triple that amount here. So what I’m saying is, it looks to me like this voting location was selected as the place they told everyone to come.

Watch Fox News discuss the Hispanic vote while showing stock film of illegal border crossings:

Race and the American election

Have the 2008 and 2012 election wins ushered in a new era for American race relations? After all, this is a "post-racial America", where a black man was voted President twice by a clear majority of citizens. Right?

No. Barack Obama won both elections for one reason only - demographic change. If it wasn't for demographic change, both McCain and Romney would have won landslides equal to that of Ronald Regan. Consider this - Obama lost the white vote by 20 points (60% Romney, 40% Obama). In 1980 this was the margin of loss by which Carter lost the white vote to Regan. The difference is just that in 1980 the white vote was 88% of the electorate, now it is only 72%. Obama badly lost the white vote (39%), but he overwhelmingly won the black (93%), hispanic (71%) and Asian (73%) votes. If you give Romney his 2012 results by race, but use the 1980 demographics, Romney would have won the election 53% to 45% - almost the same spread as Regan beat Carter (8 points vs 9 points). This is not to say there hasn't been enormous improvements in race relations in America, but the election of Barack Obama does not mean that race doesn't matter.

The Republicans need to be really, really scared. The white vote is just going to decrease in every election from now on. In 2011 white babies were a slight minority in America - using the demographics of the 2011 birth cohort, Obama would have won 59% of the vote. This is going to be a slow process, but unless the Republicans stop their race hatred they are simply doomed. Actually, I'll go a little bit further: they need to stop their race hatred, their homophobia, their Christian supremacy ideas and their misogyny. Among people who identified as LGBT, 90% voted for Obama. Among the non-religious, Obama won 70% of the vote. Among women, Obama won 55% of the vote (although he lost white women). Every growing demographic is being alienated by the Republicans - whether they are Black, Hispanic, Asian, LGBT or atheist. The only groups that the Republicans can really rely on are white men (62% voted Romney) and the highly religious (59% of weekly Church-goers voted Romney). That is a dying demographic, and the Republicans need to wake up and realise that from now on, America is a pluristic society.

Finally, the election result that may have the most profound, long-lasting impact on politics in America: Puerto Rico just voted for Statehood (61%). Now a petition for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state of America will go before Congress, and once it is accepted (I assume the Republicans try to block it for awhile), Puerto Rico will become a proper State. This will be huge. For the first time, ~4 million American citizens will get to vote in Federal elections, having 2 Senators, 5 Representatives and 7 Presidential Electors. For the first time ever, a new state will be accepted into the Union that is non-white (all other states were not accepted until they were majority white, even if now a few have become minority-majority). For the first time ever, there will be an officially bilingual state in the US (Spanish/English). The new America is evolving, and it is going to look more diverse, more multicultural and more mutually respectful.

Despair of the asylum seeker

This story is a rare glimpse into the life of an asylum seeker living in Belgium. With much of the world war-torn and desolate, a rare few brave families risk the unknown in search of a better life, and a fraction of a fraction arrive in Belgium. Once in Belgium the families are safe from immediate persecution, and a few are granted refugee status, premitting them to stay indefinately and integrate into society. Far more, however are sans papiers - those waiting for judgement or those without what is considered adequate written proof of persecution but who come from a region unstable enough that they cannot be forced to leave. 

Legally, the Belgium government is to provide at least housing for asylum seekers, in practice the government has not built any where near enough places. Over and over again, homeless asylum seekers will take a case to the courts and judges will levy fines on the government for not meeting its legal obligations - and the government will just pay the fines rather than increase housing. Without "papers" the refugees cannot find a job and support themselves, they legally have no choice but to be sleeping on the street, begging and eating in soup kitchens. Even for those few who are granted papers life is no picnic, I remember waiting behind an Afghan man, probably in his late 40s, at the Leuven Town Hall, who was seeking permission to work. Over and over again he was denied permission, because his asylum papers said he was born 1/1/2000. He tried to explain that this was the default date because he didn't have a birth certificate (being born in a small Afghan village), they simply shut him down and said that they could not give a work permit to an 11 year old, and if he wanted to change it he would need to provide a valid birth certificate.

 To be sans papiers is to be left in limbo, to have no means to better yourself and no way to regain the dignity of self-sufficiency. It benefits nobody to leave people sitting unemployed in a cramped flat, sleeping out in an abandoned building intermittently raided by police, or freezing at night in an underpass. It certainly harms the most vulnerable members of our society. So who is to blame for this callus disregard for human dignity? Sure, you could blame the bureaucrats who make decisions, but they are only operating under the law. You could blame the politicians who make the laws, but with a thousand pressures on the political class the one issue they can safely ignore is the one which harms non-voters. You could blame the media, for ignoring the issue, but the media panders to populism and knows a dead issue when it sees one. No, ultimately we need to blame the voters, the people who could easily apply pressure for change, but who simply do not care enough about the plight of others to demand a minimum level of human dignity be granted to those who need it the most. 

Still, it could be worse. Mahboub and Rama and their two young children could have landed in Australia. They would have then been thrown straight into a prison (what other name can you call a "detention centre" set in the middle of the desert and surrounded by barbed wire?) and left to rot indefinately. Vilified by the Australian people as "boat people" and "que jumpers", asylum seekers have been condemned to life behind bars for up to seven years, before being deported or given papers. Australian governments of the right and left cite "processing requirements", but the real cause is clear - the racism of the Australian voter. While the idea of being stranded without rights on the streets of Brussels fills me with despair, living behind bars for the best part of a decade due to the "crime" of fleeing persecution is beyond my imagination.

The effect of the temperance movement on modern Australian drinking culture

Although far less famous than Prohibition in America, Australia had its own temperance movement which was successful in creating a partial prohibition for 50 years. After nearly 100 years of trying, conservative Christians in Australia finally managed a partial ban on alcohol in 1915 (see: Wowser;  an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder). Australia already had a long history of drug use and abuse, so it wasn't until the Christians managed to tie temperance to patriotism and war propaganda that they succeeded: "well-ordered, self-disciplined and morally upright home front was a precondition for the successful prosecution of the war."

The main success of the Australian temperance movement was a ban in bars serving alcohol after 6pm, which was in place across much of Australia from 1915-1967. The intent was to reduce drunkeness and enforce Christian "family values". The effect was the six o'clock swill, where men knocked off of work at 5 o'clock, rushed to a bar and then tried to drink as much as possible in the next hour. Between 5pm and 6pm, barmen stopped cleaning glasses and just walked around tables with a hose linked to the bar tap - spraying beer into empty glasses as fast as the men could drink them. They even redecorated the bars in response to the six o'clock swill, putting tiles on the walls and floors so they would be easy to clean afterwards. Then at 6pm the men staggered home drunk, to a surge of car crashes and domestic violence between 6:30 and 8pm.

Just as American prohibition left alcohol with the aura of sin and crime, so has Australian temperance left an impact on our relationship with alcohol. Not until living in Europe did I realise just how uniquely Australian the phenomenon of heading straight from work to a bar with colleagues for some heavy drinking was. 40 years after temperance was repealed, and we still drink in the style of our grandfathers.

An example of temperance propaganda in America

Alcohol laws have left another, darker, effect on Australia. Australian Aborigines were not recognised as full citizens across Australia until 1965 (Federal voting rights were granted in 1962, but Queensland held out until 1965 in State's rights). Even then, the Australian Constitution provided a unique racist loophole, which said that the States had the right to pass and enforce legislation that only affected the local Aboriginal population. This was the Constitutional basis of a whole raft of racist laws, which allowed the State to outlaw inter-racial socialisation and block the rights of Aboriginal Australians to free movement, free choice in marriage and parental rights. These racist laws were not invalidated until the 1967 referendum, which finally removed the States' powers to create race-specific laws.

Institutional racism has had enormous detrimental effects on the Aboriginal people, and unfortunately it has not stopped even today. But how does this relate to temperance? Well, one of the common racist laws imposed by the states was a prohibition on Australian Aborigines from drinking alcohol. Bans on voting and other major violations were severe but infrequent, the inability to walk into a bar and order a drink was a racist slight encountered each and every day. So, of course, when these laws were repealed drinking alcohol became a symbol of equality. While the extent of alcohol abuse among Australian Aborigines is often exaggerated, and the problem stems more from poverty and disempowerment, the historic effect of imposed prohibition lingers even today.

Tony Abbott discusses economic strategy

The legacy of war

From an Australian perspective, the wealth of modern Europe has been built up over centuries of development. Any tourist visit will only accentuate that impression, with grand buildings a thousand years old and art and technology dating back from before the "discovery" of Australia.

In one way, of course, this impression is absolutely true - regions like Flanders and northern Italy were economic powerhouses 600 years ago, and the slow accumulation of wealth over decades and centuries gives nations (and individuals) an unassailable advantage. This is why Black Americans have less wealth than white Americans after normalising for current income - even modern equality (if it were ever to exist) would not, by itself, wipe out the legacy of historical inequality.

In another way, however, this impression is quite misleading. Sure, you can walk around Brussels and see the 600 year-old city hall, and the Royal family has certainly built up its collection of palaces over the past 200 years. But these legacies of the past are the exception more than the rule. Modern Belgium has been built almost entirely over the past 60 years, on the rubble of the past. A very rich rubble, to be sure, but rubble nevertheless. Over 1% of the population of Belgium died in each of the two world wars (not unusual in western Europe, in central and eastern Europe figures over 10% are common), and the destruction of houses and infrastructure was much greater. Over 30,000 million tonnes of explosives fell upon Belgium during the wars, equivalent to more than a tonne of munitions per square metre of Belgian territory. Around a quarter did not explode, so even today ~200 tonnes of munitions are uncovered yearly by farmers and disposed of by the Belgian army.

This is the legacy of war, not only does it destroy what may have taken centuries to build, but it has the capacity to keep up the killing, long after the initiators have died. Even today Cambodia has 5 million unexploded landmines and hundreds of deaths every year. Anyone who advocates a war should first meet just a few of the 40 000 childhood amputees in Cambodia, who live today with the consequences of past decisions.

Today a new violation of civil liberties begins - in France

As of today, wearing the burqa on the streets of France will land you a fine of €150 and "re-education classes" or a jail term.

Sarkozy has played the race baiting for purely political ends. It is clear that there is no gain to security (there are exceptions for every single face covering that is not Islamic) and that it is a farce to pass this off as feminist. I wonder how the people of France will respond to this disgraceful law when they start seeing French women being dragged into prison for their choice of clothing?

From Le Temps

"Do you really want to go from 'heroes' to 'dirty immigrants'?"

Double-down on that racism

The Dutch department store that fired a shop assistent from its Belgian store because she wore a headscarf has decided to double-down on its racist behaviour. The woman was hired wearing a headscarf and worked in the store for months wearing a headscarf until some racist patrons complained. The company caved and fired her, now under pressure from protestors and the Belgian anti-racism centre they have offered to re-hire. Have they learnt the error of their ways? No, they specified that they wanted to rehire her in a position where she would not be visible to customers. The racist bastards.

Want to understand why the Muslim population of Belgium has vastly higher unemployment and poverty rates? You can't look past the vicious cycle of racism. For every case like this with Hema, thousands of companies simply don't hire Islamic women so they won't have to deal with racist customers complaining. And the government, rather than focusing on rectifying this massive injustice affecting thousands of Belgian women, focuses on penalising the half-dozen women in Belgium who wear a burqa. The thing that makes me angriest is that the bastards who push these women into a ghetto are the same ones who attack them for "not integrating".

Burqa ban a reflection of simple racism

I have previously spent a lot of time writing about the attack on women's rights, where progressive language is used to conceal deeply conservative motivations. All the arguments put forward against the burqa, as tenuous as they are, completely fall flat against a headscarf - and yet the same people frequently object against both. Here is a clear example of a woman being fired from her job for wearing a headscarf due to complaints from customers.

I just wish people would be honest about their motivations, so that people could see through the coded and pseudo-reasonable language to the irrational xenophobia that is often the true motivation. Like when people rant and rave against Islam, the Roma and homosexuality - when the same person espouts violent opinions on three such different groups the motivation is almost certainly pure and unadulterated xenophobia. A lot fewer people would listen to the main anti-Muslim demagogues if they also knew the position of the speaker on other (less politically correct) targets.