Citizenship
Chimps and Humans… Close but No Cigar.
I ran into an interesting article a couple of days ago that kinda left me scratching my head:
Animal rights activists campaigning to get Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, legally declared a person vowed Thursday to take their challenge to Austria’s Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their latest appeal.
A provincial judge in the city of Wiener Neustadt dismissed the case earlier this week, ruling that the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories had no legal standing to argue on the chimp’s behalf.
OK am I missing something? Look I love animals, and I am all about protecting animals, but how did we get from protecting animals to giving them human rights? Chimpanzees are not people. They are Chimpanzees. No amount of legal wrangling will change that fact.
You can give the chimp a name and dress it up in a monkey suit and it will still be a chimp. Yes, they have needs and they have interests, but, by definition they are not human interests, and I’m quite certain that their legal status is not one of them. Neither is being human. Chimps just want to be chimps.
”It is astounding how all the courts try to evade the question of personhood of a chimp as much as they can,” Balluch said. – [Yahoo/AP]
Avoiding the issue of chimp personhood?!?! Issue? What issue? There is no issue dagnabbit, they are freakin’ CHIMPANZEES, not PEOPLE!! Sheesh!! This whole thing makes no sense to me. If these people want to help out these poor chimpanzees so bad, why not buy out the shelter? Or set up a new one just for the chimps? Or just buy the chimps outright?
If they are so darn worried that they may get sold to someone outside Australia, then someone needs to pony up the cash and buy them before that happens. These chimpanzees can’t exactly get a job. After all (in case I haven’t been clear enough on this), they are chimps, not humans. And someones got to pay for the food on the table…
Court won’t declare chimp a person – [Yahoo/AP]
Presidential ignorance is a curse…
You may remember many moons ago I posted about American citizenship, and whether or not a citizenship exam should include questions on things like sports, world events, and cultural awareness. Now in this bloggers humble opinion, these things are not a true measure of whether or not a person will be a good American.
I would rather have every aspiring American citizen take an ethics test and be done with it. In fact I’d like to see every young American, not just immigrants be required to take a federally mandated ethics test when they reach legal age, before they are allowed to be considered a legal adult. I think the country would benefit from this more than anything else. The rest of it is almost inconsequential by comparison.
Almost. There are many positions where I think a broader, more comprehensive test of ones knowledge, ethics, social awareness and general knowledge of world events and character should be a mandatory requirement. High ranking police and military are a couple that come to mind some of them. Even your average street cop should ideally have comprehensive periodic psych evals, as well as more ethics and social training. But most important of all, President of the United States of America should be one of those positions that requires all of the above.
Before you ever get to see elections, or even start running for president, I think you should, at the very least, be able to demonstrate significantly above average ability on an IQ test, as well as a comprehensive knowledge of social, political and world issues. This should be a requirement for the position.
Why? Because ignorance has absolutely no place in a presidential office. No self respecting IT department would hire a professional bricklayer for their server administration. Nor would a construction company hire a nerd for manual labor. Why does the same not apply for the oval office? People with that kind of power need to know how to use it intelligently. And when I read some of the (many) questionable things our outgoing president has to say, It is clear to me that he is lacking in that department:
In a speech defending his administration’s Iraq policy, Bush said former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s brutality had made it impossible for a unifying leader to emerge and stop the sectarian violence that has engulfed the Middle Eastern nation.
“I heard somebody say, Where’s Mandela?’ Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas,” – [Reuters]
Saddam killed all the Mandelas?!? You know, any country as great as this one really ought to be run by someone who has a modicum of awareness about important world leaders, events, issues, etc. I’m all for presidency being open to any American citizen, but shouldn’t there at least be some sort of IQ requirement? World knowledge? Social awareness? How about the basic ability to form coherent, meaningful and intelligent sentences?
The presidency should be open to everyone, but at the same time, becoming president should be a highly selective process. I don’t believe that it should be solely the domain of highly educated aristocrats though. Lord knows we don’t need more classism. But I think that maybe the presidency shouldn’t be an option for your common, average everyday ignoramus either…
Mandela still alive after embarrassing Bush remark – [Reuters]
China’s gentler, kinder side…
China has banned crude birth control advertising slogans for it’s national one child per family policy:
China has banned crude and insensitive slogans promoting the country’s ‘one-child’ family planning policy, such as “Raise fewer babies but more piggies,” which have stoked anger in rural areas, state media said Sunday.
China’s 28-year-old family planning policy limits most urban couples to just one child and allows some families in the countryside to have a second child if their first is a girl.
Critics say that has led to forced abortions and sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio due to the traditional preference for male heirs, which has prompted countless families to abort female fetuses in hopes of getting boys. – [Yahoo/AP]
Now the real reason I posted this was not because of the slogans, but because of the interesting detail that it seems that many Chinese families are aborting female fetuses in order to get boys.
It seems to me that, after a few generations of aborting female fetuses, your overall population production ability would drop dramatically. Which could be a good thing to begin with, but could turn bad really, really, quickly.
And it would suck to try and find a wife if you are a guy, because your selection would be slim to none. I really hope the Chinese what they are doing…
China bans crude birth control slogans – [Yahoo/AP]
Intelligent Illegal Immigration Reform…
New Haven, CT, has taken what I personally consider one of the smartest next steps in dealing with the illegal immigration problem. Bringing illegal immigrants out of hiding:
Dozens of people lined up at City Hall on Tuesday for municipal identification cards, the first city-issued ID cards specifically designed to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows and give them access to community services. …
… “The simple straightforward purpose here is to build a stronger community,” Mayor John DeStefano said. “You can’t police a community of people who won’t talk to our cops.”
The mayor said the federal government had failed to address immigration-related issues, forcing cities to find ways to manage them. New Haven is simply acknowledging the people who already live there, he said.
“I think New Haven is doing something that makes sense for New Haven,” DeStefano said. “Service to one another in community, more than waving an American flag, defines the spirit of our soul.” – [Yahoo/AP]
I think this action on the part of Mayor DeStefano and the city of New Haven indicates a much better understanding of the true nature of the illegal immigrant problem, as opposed to the pseudo-patriotic exclusivist rhetoric I keep hearing people spew over and over. The true issue is how to build a strong community. In fact it is about how to build a strong America.
America was built, and has grown very strong I might add, on the principle of “Strength in diversity”. I think the city of New Haven has admirably demonstrated that they understand this concept. And the added benefit is that now, these folks will actually be able to actively participate in the strengthening that community, as opposed to being invisible, passive, and even detrimental elements of it.
Conn. city offers illegal immigrants IDs – [Yahoo/AP]
How Many Americans Would Pass American Citizenry 101?
I read an interesting article this morning about how a majority of Canadians would fail the Citizenship test required for immigrants to become Canadian citizens:
The Ipsos-Reid survey showed that 60 percent of Canadians would fail the test. A similar poll done in 1997 showed a failure rate of 45 percent.
“Canadians appear to be losing knowledge when it comes to the most basic questions about Canadian history, politics, culture and geography … (they) performed abysmally on some questions,” the firm said in a statement. – [Reuters]
In the midst of all of the hullabaloo about illegal immigration, I can’t help but ask myself how many American citizens would pass the test required for American Citizenry. Many Americans are very quick to point fingers and cry foul at immigrants, both legal and illegal. We complain about them taking our jobs, benefits, cultural differences, language issues, and so on, ad nauseam. And yet there are many “American Citizens” whom I believe, have less of a right to the resources and opportunities that our great nation provides than a good number of the immigrants that they decry on a daily basis.
What we should really asking ourselves is, what makes someone a true American citizen? Being born in the good old U.S. of A.? I dunno. Most of us so called “Americans” are actually immigrants. Yeah, yeah, I know some of you are thinking, “OK, now he’s going to start babbling about Native Americans and so on. Why does he have to bring up old stuff?”. I know. It’s a clichéd and corny reference. But there is a point. I think everyone knows that although being born here automatically makes you an American citizen, it doesn’t automatically make you a good or even a worthy citizen. So I think it’s hypocritical for us to sit here and talk about making it harder for other people to become citizens, when we ourselves did exactly naught to do so.
I’m not saying that we should allow random immigrants to cross our borders and gain citizenship in a free and unrestricted manner, but considering the size and productivity of the immigrant workforce we currently employ, illegally I might add, (which says a lot about us), and somehow manage to give benefits to, we may as well let them become legal citizens, start paying taxes, bearing civic responsibility, and contributing to the pool they have been benefiting from. After all, they aren’t going to suddenly all vanish just because they are illegal now are they? As I see it, It’s either have them stay in hiding and deplete our resources from the inside, or let them into the fold and let the system work the way it’s supposed to. Just a crazy thought…
Most Canadians would fail own citizenship test – [Reuters]
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