February 14, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE CHANGING DEFINITION OF SPACE

For the first time in human history more people live in cities than live in rural areas. Tokyo has 31 million people and Seoul has 23 million residents. The author points out that there are places now where people are "stacked on top" of each other. You have one level with middle class people and another level with the poor. It's sobering to think about humans crowded into such small spaces. The article by Andrew Lan is at www.thenation.com:

For the first time in human history there are more people living in urban areas than rural, and cities have grown like amoeba into megacities--so crowded that they have become virtual countries with complex ecosystems unto themselves. Tokyo leads the pack with 31 million residents. Seoul has 23 million, followed by New York and Bombay.

Living space, unless one belongs to that tiny percentage called the upper class, is shrinking as the human population continues to grow. While the rural poor leave open sky and rolling plains to flock to the edge of the metropolis--they crowd into ramshackle slums in the third world, or one-room units in the first--the middle class is clinging to its precious status by contending with far smaller living spaces than those of previous generations.

I remember when a middle-class family could own a Victorian home in San Francisco. Now such a home would be divided into three or four units, each remodeled and sold to an upper middle-class couple.

COLONIAS

It's difficult to talk about illegal immigration without sounding racist. But there are major consequences to population growth in countries like Mexico. There is also the wrenching reality of human misery being created by people living in communities without even basic sanitation. This article talks about the so-called "colonias," Third-world like communities that are sprouting up around the edges of American cities due to illegal immigration. The article by Frosty Wooldridge is at www.opednews.com:

Educational experts estimate over 30 million people in American suffer functional illiteracy. They can't read, write or perform simple math. They offer no skills other than the labor of their hands.



Twenty million illegal aliens residing in America make up the largest high school drop out population in the history of the nation.



Over half of all black and Hispanic babies originate from unmarried mothers that lack high school diplomas. Fifty to 70 percent of blacks and Hispanics do not graduate from high school. Thirty percent of whites do not graduate from high school.



In the last century, Mexico grew from 50 to 104 million people. Current demographic figures show Mexico growing to 300 million in the 21st century. Since 85 percent of all immigration into the United States originates from Mexico, we face a striking dilemma.