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I have thought long and hard over the years about what I believe will be the national American language by 2050. If I'm deeply cynical, I'd say Spanish.
But, if I want to be level-headed, it'll be a form of English that will have changed deeply from what we currently know, with a lot more Spanish influence. What happened to English when the Normans mass emigrated to England, settled and became the ruling class will happen to American English, only with Spanish tweaking the tongue instead of French. This might actually cause the much-predicted rift between American English and British or Commonwealth English spoken by the rest of the world.
The most popular language, in a time when Hispanic family names like Gomez, Gonzalez or Hernandez will have completely overtaken Anglo, Irish, Italian or other surnames in phonebooks everywhere, will be the interaction between Spanish and English known as Spanglish. That will be a major, unavoidable dialect that will form the basis of much talk—and slang—among the majority of under 50s in the United States thirty-five years from now (if not sooner).
I believe most first-generation Latinos, even the offspring of illegal aliens, will learn English. But the case in which most offspring of Spanish-speaking migrants once were encouraged to learn and accept English only, the current—and certainly future—generations will have fluency in Spanish in their lexical arsenals as well.
Spanish-language media, such as Univision and Telemundo, aren't going anywhere and the market for Spanish-language news and entertainment grows stronger every year.
Now, don't misunderstand me: I don't appreciate this shift in culture and if I had my way, English would be forced upon Hispanics, the same way past immigrants had to be immersed in English and learn the language because there was no other option open to them. And I also don't wish any American citizen to be told that they must learn Spanish as a foreign language. I don't want the response to any American student who would like to study French, German, Russian or Chinese be: "No, that's stupid. Spanish is the language you should be learning."
However, to be practical, no other immigrant group in American history was poised to completely overrun the country the way that Mexican, Central American, South American and Caribbean speakers of Spanish are.
There will always be an incentive to learn English in America. At least that's what I want to believe. There will even be a sizeable portion of the Hispanic community that will defend English, just as there is today.
But, to acknowledge reality, I think time will eventually come when the issue will be forced on us to go bilingual. Certainly the job market may dictate that.
Here's how I suggest we settle this matter once and for all:
The United States should establish Spanish as an auxiliary language. By doing that, we will not be declaring it equal to English. Español (or castiliano, if you will) will not be set up to be the majority or native tongue of Americans. It will simply exist as a recognized language of a particular community that speaks it, as it is in The Philippines. In order to bestow auxiliary status on Spanish, though, the country at some point soon will have to give English official status; English needs to be formally established as the primary language of the American nation.
This is an issue that has been forced on us by the sheer ineptitude of past administrations to admit to a burgeoning immigration and culture problem and effectively deal with it. There is no turning back, I fear. Let's just give Spanish its due with the auxiliary status fig-leaf and thusly prevent Canadian- or Belgian-style bilingualism that will polarize the country.
I assure you, the Nightdragon will continue to write in English, no matter what.
A bit of advice before we begin: If you've never had a wisdom tooth out, ladies and gents, let me warn you. It hurts. This is a pain that will be with you for over a week. After the first few days, when you stop spitting blood, it will be just a dull ache that aspirin or acetaminophen can take care of, but it will still be difficult to eat solid food. Or any food, for that matter.
OK? On with the show:
Here in the U.K., and in England especially, an excise tax called the Air Passenger Duty (APD) is charged to travelers flying out of a U.K. airport. It was arranged in bands labelled A, B, C and D. As of next month, travelers to the U.S. or Caribbean will be paying an extra £142 ($212), in band B, for the privilege. Do you understand now why I haven't been home for over three years?
The Government instituted the APD in 2007, citing the environmental impact of the airline industry, but the APD does not take into account the efficiency of a plane. Assuming I was to fly to Boston on an old 747-200 or a DC-10, the duty I would pay would be the same as if I was flying on a new plane using up-to-date, carbon-cutting technology like the 747-8, the 787 or the A350.
Besides which, George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has admitted, in a letter to the Airport Council International that was leaked to The Daily Mail in 2011, that the bogus duty is there just to finance the Treasury, meaning that any environmental concerns expressed to justify it are complete hokum.
So the Government admits that APD raises revenue, but expects us to believe that this is not simply a cash cow, and that money raised for them is good for us. When was the last time you trusted any Government tax to be fair and just and to have a reason for existing?
PricewaterhouseCoopers, inasmuch as they may have encouraged corporate tax cheats, helping to set up tax shelters in Luxembourg for them, and may have been exposed as the largest donor to "Red" Ed Miliband and his Labour campaign, have some credibility for number-crunching. Their 2013 study of the APD determined that tourism revenue would go up with the abolishment of the APD, sparking a rise in economic output, investment and exports.
The Treasury would get more in its coffers by abolishing the APD. So why is the Chancellor clinging to it like Aesop's dog with the bone? Why is David Cameron letting him continue with this tax which is setting the U.K. apart from the rest of Europe?
In fact, in 2011, Continental Airlines threatened to cease its Belfast to Newark flight if Northern Ireland did not scrap its APD—which, golly gee, it soon did.
Why should a North American come to London? Far better to fly to Paris, base yourself there, and take the Eurostar to London for a day or two. You might still pay the equivalent of the APD or more in train and hotel costs, but at least you'll get more bang for your bucks. The French won't slap you with a three-figure duty just for flying out of their country.
Last year, Osborne announced the removal of bands C and D from the APD, effective next month, so that the highest charge now will be the £142 of band B. That is not enough. It is still an unfair charge at a time when flying is expensive enough. Why, suddenly, are people being punished for flying up to 4,000 miles but not beyond that? I cannot imagine on what grounds anyone can defend this cynical ruse. (Bonus points if you can do it with a straight face.)
Please sign this petition (just click on the purple words "this petition") and be counted, dear reader, as one who is fed up with punitive, nonsensical government taxes.
I think there could be nothing more indicative of rip-off Britain, and which serves perfectly as the embodiment of the disappointment with which so many people live on this murky island, than the recent solar eclipse.
We'd heard about it for weeks. Solar eclipse on March 20. Then, solar eclipse this Friday. Don't miss it, folks. It'll be decades till you may or may not see another one. Be there or be square. The solar eclipse is coming. Solar eclipse! SOLAR ECLIPSE! Holy squishy squirrel shit, SOLAR ECLIPSE EVERYONE!
There's me thinking, when this week began, that since I usually stay up Friday mornings after work to get a little pre-weekend housecleaning done, then I can step outdoors at 9:36 a.m. to view the 85 percent eclipse and observe how dark it would get. Even though there have been other solar eclipses that occurred during the course my current 45-year lifespan, I had no chance to see them. This one I would not, could not, miss.
Ah, but yes. Leave it to nature.
I left work Friday morning at 6:35 a.m. Looked at the sheet of impenetrable steel-grey mylar covering the entire sky and thought, "This is not good." Fast forward three hours. It got a bit darker. But it was not possible to tell if that was due to the eclipse taking place behind the cloud cover or if it was darker storm clouds arriving. It looked like it does during the tense minute just before a thunderstorm.
Then I went to bed. Boo-yah!
At least I wasn't alone in my frustration and seething resentment of nimbostratus. Forty million others across the country could not see it either. As The Daily Telegraph's Sarah Knapton writes, "It was a very British eclipse". And how!
The real kick in the ass? It had been sunny for mornings on end. It has been the sunniest British winter since Methuselah was a young boy performing cartwheels in the desert sand. The morning when we really needed the sky to be clear? That would be a no-go, ladies and gentlemen.
Just goes to show, as every resident of this land knows, the necessity in taking any news that could indicate genuine excitement with a liberal dose of salt. That way, at least the bitter taste in your mouth that you will be left with will not come as a surprise.
On February 10, U.S. authorities confirmed that Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old American aid worker who was serving with Doctors Without Borders in Aleppo, Syria, had been killed by ISIS, who had captured her in August 2013. It is not known how Mueller died, just that her death has been confirmed.
Accounts paint Mueller as a humanitarian with strong Christian beliefs. She had a boyfriend in Syria, who was released by ISIS but attempted to rescue her. Mueller wrote in a letter to her family dated November 2, 2014 that she had faith in God to put things right, admitted that she caused her family suffering by having gone to a war zone, that she didn't seek forgiveness from them and that she absolutely did not want to burden her family with the negotations for her release as it was not their duty.
The Muellers, Carl and Marsha, have criticized President Obama for waiting too long and preventing them from doing more to save her. Special forces had informed Obama of a window that had opened in the spring of 2014 in which to get her back, but the President waited too long and didn't give the rescue order until July, by which time, the militants—with Kayla in tow—had disappeared. Carl Mueller also said that the administration's policy of swapping prisoners for captured Americans, as it did with the deserter, traitor, Muslim convert and best buddy with the Taliban, Bowe Bergdahl, allowed ISIS to up the ante. They were not allowed to pay ransom, even if they could have gotten the $6.2 million that ISIS demanded for her release.
What you probably have not been told, at least not by the so-called mainstream media, is that Kayla Mueller was quite the anti-Semite. Just like Rachel Corrie before her, Mueller was not just pro-Muslim, but stood avidly against the Israeli state and people.
You remember Rachel Corrie, right? She was an American protestor, active with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group founded by Palestinian activist Ghassan Andoni. In 2003, she was attempting to stop a bulldozer from destroying a Palestinian neighborhood in the Gaza town of Rafah and was run over by said bulldozer. (Cue comic laugh track.)
The driver of the bulldozer, an Israeli of Russian extraction, said that it is difficult to see or hear very well when operating those vehicles and that all he saw was some earth being scooped up. He claimed to have no idea that Corrie was on the pile of rubble that the bulldozer was heading toward. Even the Left-wing Mother Jones opined that the driver's account of not being able to see Corrie was credible. Two weeks ago, Israel rejected an appeal of their 2012 ruling that upheld the findings of the 2003 investigation.
Back to Mueller. She too was a supporter of ISM. She wrote in one of her letters that she did not hate her captors. Was she being a good Christian by claiming that, or was it because she sympathized with them? It is known that she spent time in Palestine itself and was vocal in her support for Hamas. She was involved in protests concerning the Israeli West Bank barrier, a high-tech electronic border fence that has kept almost to zero the number of Palestinian suicide bombers that have gotten into the country since its construction. A charity that has been set up in the wake of Mueller's death, Kayla's Hands, includes a link to a page that describes her work for ISM and the radical Palestinian campaign.
So, dear reader, wish the Mueller family well in getting over their grief, but do not mourn the loss of Kayla. Who knows how she acquired her anti-Semitic convictions, but she could have been exposed to anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish sentiment in college, which would not be surprising. All I can do is mirror blogger Debbie Schlussel: "Buh-bye, Kayla. Have fun with your 72 Yasser Arafats."
The lesson here, dear reader, is this: Do not trust any MSF or other assorted "aid workers" who are in Palestine or Syria or Iraq. They are almost always exposed as pawns in ISM's terror-abetting game. I don't want to hear any more about any Americans captured by ISIS or al-Qaeda. I'm done with that. They are on their own and if they get captured, so be it.
Kayla Mueller wrote that even in the darkest places, God's light shines through. So let these "humanitarians" be satisfied with that when they're being led around on a leash by Islamic militants.
In case you may have missed it, ladies and gents, further proof that liberals are hell-bent on tossing the First Amendment into the refuse bin, along with the Second, came earlier this month.
A few weeks ago, Oregon administrative law judge Alan McCullough said in an interim order that the owners of the suburban Portland-located Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery, Aaron and Melissa Klein, discriminated against a lesbian couple by refusing to make a wedding cake for them. There will be a hearing on March 10, but the judge could have dismissed the case and awarded the Kleins compensation for court costs and attorney fees.
However, because Mr. and Mrs. Klein are Christian, there was no way that was going to happen.
When the gay couple Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman entered the bakery over two years ago, in January 2013, seeking a wedding cake for their nupitals, they were not surprised that Sweet Cakes essentially said, "sorry, but no." There are tons of liberal-minded bakeries—it's Portland, for Pete's sake—that they could have gone to for their cake.
In other words, Cryer and Bowman engaged in a sting operation. They simply wanted to bully a Christian couple out of their livelihood and they likely will succed since there seems to be a belief in the U.S.A. these days that discrimination based on sexual preference trumps an American citizen's Constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of religion.
While the lawyer for the lesbians cited the right of all people to be treated equally in a privately owned business, persuant to Oregon state law, the Kleins's attorney Anna Harmon called the judge's ruling a "wrong and dangerous result for religious liberty and rights of conscience in Oregon," and added that "Americans should not have to choose between adhering to their faith or closing their business, but that is what this decision means."
I couldn't agree more.
Aaron Klein told Fox News's Todd Starnes, who has been following the Kleins's case, that not only did he receive threats, but so did any suppliers or vendors to the bakery or any place that used Sweet Cakes for catering services:
"The LGBT activists inundated them with phone calls and threatened them [the suppliers]. They would tell our vendors, 'If you don't stop doing business with Sweet Cakes By Melissa, we will shut you down.' It's a sad day for Christian business owners and it's a sad day for the First Amendment. The LGBT attacks are the reason we are shutting down the shop. They have killed our business through mob tactics."
The great majority of Christians, 99.9 percent of them, would not say that stoning is an acceptable punishment to mete out on homosexuals. Another religion is notorious for advocating or actually carrying out such draconian responses to gays in their midst. Yet, are we going to witness the deliberate goading of a halal establishment by the LGBT community anytime soon?
The case against the Kleins and Sweet Cakes is, alas, not an isolated incident. In 2014, in the U.K., in the first ever case in this country in which an organization has been told that it must participate in a gay rights campaign, Ashers Bakers of Belfast came under fire from the Equality Commission for not producing a cake emblazoned with the slogan of a local gay campaign group, Queerspace. The bakery has now predictably had to face court action against it, which will begin next month.
The incoming Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Rev. Ian McNie, said, "They should have the right to determine what they do as a bakery and they should be tolerated", while the Christian Institute's Northern Ireland Officer Callum Webster said that "This is not what the equality laws are meant to do. We cannot sleepwalk into becoming a nation where coërced speech is acceptable."
Ashers Bakers employs 62 people. I would reason that in an age of insecurity over jobs, it would not be wise to put people out of work for frivolous reasons should the business collapse upon a possible losing judgment. But that's just me.
To give credit where credit is due, veteran gay campaigner Jeffrey Dudgeon, who worked to help decriminalize homosexuality in Northern Ireland, said the Equality Commission case against Ashers has gone too far. "I am nervous of gay zealotry, or any type of zealotry against Christians," Dudgeon said. "I am concerned that the Equality Commission have now added political discrimination to the discrimination on sexual orientation as a ground on running their case against Ashers."
Dudgeon's voice, however, is one that is lost in the wilderness. I hope the gay community at large is proud of these actions, whether it be here or across the pond. They crow all the time about the need for anti-bullying measures for gay people, but they have amongst them the most vicious, close-minded thugs when it comes to respecting other's peoples beliefs and lifestyles.
Don't hold your breath waiting for any denouncements of this behavior from the larger community that shelters these nogoodniks. As is always the case in groups where militancy is rife, it's "see no evil, hear no evil."
Today's the day, dear reader. I don't know if you'll require a government license to read me or if you'll simply have to put up with 100 pop-ups that you can't block that will ask you if you'd rather read the The Huffington (Puffington) Post, Salon.com, or—God help us—Rumblelizard blogs. (Yes, I know you haven't heard of the last one. There's a reason for that.)
The Federal Communications Commission has voted to impose net neutrality in the U.S. Your formerly free-market internet will now be treated as a public utility.
As of last spring, we have net neutrality over on these shores. But there's a difference. All ISP data is treated equally with no price controls. According to David Meyer of the tech site Gigaom, in a very competitive market such as the U.K.'s, it would be "very difficult for providers to jack up their prices without losing customers."
This, in theory, is what net neutrality should mean for the U.S. It would stipulate that cable firms behind data-intensive services such as video-on-demand and cloud storage would not have to pay fees to internet service providers so that this particular type of internet traffic would not be slowed down. This is why Netflix has said it supports net neutrality, but it has instead offered to pay the Comcast fee for enhanced access.
Just as with the (Un)Affordable Health Care Act, the so-called Obama-net will mean less choice. Obama-care was meant to provide coverage to the uninsured, but it has forced many Americans into paying higher premiums with limited choice of doctors or hospitals while still rewarding insurance companies and discouraging full-time employment. Many Americans enrolled in Obamacare have had to take two or three part-time jobs to take the place of their previous full-time employment.
The Obama-net is being touted as a way to enshrine fair treatment of all Web content. But the Obama administration seeks to impose "fairness" through the net neutrality regulation, which means that government permission is now required for those who wish to set up a website. Be prepared to wait five years for that. Also, price controls written into the regulation dictate that the cost of a service over the web that doesn't qualify as "just and fair" can either be increased to discourage consumers from using it or reduced to the point where the the website is devalued, preventing it from making a profit.
So, it appears that a "free and open internet" will work out, as you might expect, as expeditiously as "free" healthcare. The regulations now classify broadband service as a public utility persuant to the Communications Act of 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign wire and radio communication. In other words, the U.S. is now basing internet connection on an 81-year-old regulation. What does that tell you?
I invite everyone to check out a paper entitled "Towards a just and fair Internet: Applying Rawls’ principles of justice to Internet regulation". John Rawls was a Ph.D in moral philosophy and former Princeton professor who wrote A Theory of Justice in which he argued for the "socially just" distribution of goods in a society. Read that, then tell me that this this sort of proposal in favor of distributive justice didn't influence Obama with respect to net neutrality regulation.
There is always something sinister behind this man's works. Tell me true, do you trust a man who seeks to wreck the country with an amnesty that defies the Constitution to regulate not just your health care but now your internet? I thought not.
The internet in America used to be the envy of the rest of the world that had net neutrality. It was the last vestige of American life that encouraged competition and operated entirely from the free market. Now, there's yet another thing America has lost.
I hope all the Obama voters enjoy their regulated internet. Unregulated weed is apparently the only thing these people care about.
Here we go. The racially charged fun just never ends.
Earlier last week, fans of the English Premier League soccer team Chelsea FC went to Paris to watch their team take on a continental rival, Paris Saint-Germain. After the game, a group of seven Chelsea fans, whom the French authorities have since identified, pushed a black man named Souleymane S. off the Metro (subway) train and prevented him from boarding. They were chanting "We're racist and that's the way we like it."
No-one's arguing that this isn't despicable behavior, that it's completely unacceptable and that these fans shouldn't be banned forever by Chelsea. If they want to act stupid like that, then it's entirely in line that they should never be able to attend another one of their beloved team's games.
Yet, here's the thing: The whole of Paris, the whole of France, the whole of Britain, the whole of the world has got Souleymane S.'s back as if he had gotten a water cannon turned on him. French President Francois Hollande has spoken with the man while Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has invited him to the second match between the two teams at their Stamford Bridge home turf.
Is it just me, or is everyone over-reacting? The man ran into a group of assholes. End of. It could have been any PSG fan. Do you honestly think that if a white fan of the French side had got shoved off the train, it would have made the news? Do you think that it would have made the media rounds if these Chelsea fans had pushed a white Frenchman off the train, hurling "froggy" and "cheese-eating surrender monkey" at him and proudly claiming racism for their actions?
The answer: It might have made the news in France. It would not have come close to being mentioned in the British or American papers. In America, no-one knows where France is anyway. It may as well be on the Moon as far as most Americans' grasp of geography is concerned. But I digress ...
Firstly, the fact of the matter is that Chelsea has a reputation for insensitivity. They have been known for their anti-Semitic chants whenever they play Tottenham Hotspur, a team whose fans have maintained a Jewish identity (even if many of them are not Jewish).
Secondly, black people hurl other black people off subway trains all the time. At least in New York City they do. I've seen YouTube videos.
I don't blame Mr. S. for being annoyed and frustrated. However, I don't think he deserves to be a cause célèbre. This is not exactly Dreyfus Affair redux. In the minds of our Leftie-dominated society and culture, what happened to Souleymane S. was a far worse humiliation—he was a victim, you see. Dreyfus only had Émile Zola on his side. This guy has got the entire denizens of hashtag universe, souls who think we ought to constantly be on our hands and knees in front of anyone who isn't Caucasian. Do we now have a duty to mollycoddle this person for the rest of his life?
Souleymane S. has spoken of his horror at the incident and that he cannot bring himself to take the Metro anymore. My advice to Mssr. S.? Grow a pair. You got bullied. It happens. A lot of other people have had the unfortunate experience of running into types like those fans. They hate every single thing that isn't exactly like them, including other white people. You're not alone. They were chanting about being racist to further annoy you. Stop being a crybaby, and stop milking your experience, and get on with your life.
I do have to wonder though: Obama could not be bothered with attending the biggest rally in Paris's history in favor of people's rights to free speech, thought and expression. Maybe this will finally get him out to Paris?
