Undocumented single mother, arrested while selling tamales, faces deportation

You can read all about the “tamale lady” who was arrested on June 28th, for trespassing, in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store in Sacramento, CA here.

I first learned of this tragic story when I read it in the Sacramento Bee newspaper. The woman has been on her own since she broke up with her “common law” husband four years ago, according the the Bee.

For two years, this undocumented immigrant has been eking out a living by selling her authentic Mexican “chicken, pork and chilli cheese” tamales.  On a “good day,” according to the Sacramento Bee, she was making $15 dollars profit on the sale of 50 tamales.  On this small income, she has been feeding her two children, paying her rent, and maintaining a 1996 vehicle.  Of course, she doesn’t pay taxes, but how in the world does she support herself and her children on $15 per day?

After she was arrested for trespassing, and kept in jail for 12 days because she had no money for bail, it was learned that she was undocumented.  Now she faces deportation as an “illegal alien.” Her two children are American citizens because they were born here.

I predict that this woman will not be deported.  No, she is now on her way to fame and fortune.  Obama himself will very likely step in and save her.

I have eaten a few tamales in my day.  A Mexican-American citizen in my neighborhood used to make them and hand them out as Christmas gifts every year.

First of all, the tamale lady is badly in need of some marketing advice, which I predict will soon be forth coming.  $1.00 for a tamale made by a Mexican from an authentic Mexican recipe?  No way, Jose!  She should be selling her tamales for at least $3.00. I would seriously suggest that she sell them for $5.00 each.

I would not buy a tamale for $1.00 from a make-shift stand in a parking lot, but I would buy a $5.00 tamale from a food van (aka a “roach coach”).  Food vans are popular, even in England, according to an article which you can read here.

America is a country of immigrants.  Everyone here is either an immigrant, or descended from an immigrant.  Many of the immigrants were sent here against their will.  For example, people from Africa were bought here against their will and sold as slaves.  People from Ireland were put on “coffin ships” by the British and brought to America against their will during the so-called “famine” in Ireland.  Men from the German state of Hesse were sold to the British who sent them to America against their will to fight as soldiers in the American Revolution.

There are many Americans who favor open borders in America.  Let anyone come here, at any time, no need for citizenship papers.  If America had had open borders between 1933 and 1945, all the Jews in Europe could have come to America and there would have been no Holocaust.

The tamale lady has been in America for 16 years, according to the Bee.  Yet, she still needed help from her children when the police arrived because she can’t speak English.  Why should she?  There are enough people who speak Spanish in California that there is no need to learn English.

Historic California governor’s mansion to remain open

I read this in the Sacramento Bee newspaper this morning:

“Sacramento’s lavish Victorian-style Governor’s Mansion will remain open as a state park…”

The mansion had been scheduled to close on July 1, 2012 due to state budget cuts.  It was saved as a state park by donations, totaling $100,000, from Raley’s grocery and the Church of Scientology.

Historic California Governor’s mansion is currently a state park. (Click on the photo for a larger size)

Old photo of the Governor’s mansion when the tree in the front yard was still small

The California Governor’s mansion is located at 1526 H Street in downtown Sacramento.  It was used as the home for 13 California governors during a period of 64 years.  The last governor to live there was Ronald Reagan, who stayed there for 3 months, before Nancy Reagan insisted on moving to the Fabulous Forties, which is Sacramento’s most beautiful downtown subdivision.

The donations will allow the mansion to remain open to visitors Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for at least one more year.

California Governor’s mansion in Sacramento, CA

The California Governor’s mansion

The large tree with the pink flowers is a magnolia tree; the large bush on the right side of the photo is a camellia bush.  The photo below shows a close-up of the pink flowers on the magnolia tree.

Close-up of flowers on a magnolia tree

Florida Holocaust survivors reject “tainted money” from SNCF

You can read the latest news on SNCF and the Holocaust survivors in Floria here. This quote is from the Sun Sentinel:

The state of Florida has canceled a controversial Holocaust education program for teachers.

The cancellation by Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson was seen as a victory by Holocaust survivors who were angered by the department and it’s Task Force on Holocaust Education’s acceptance of a three-year teacher training program created by the Shoah Memorial in Paris and funded by an $80,000 grant from SNCF America, the U.S. subsidiary of the French National Railroad.

The [French] railroad transported more than 76,000 Jews to the German border where they were taken to death camps.

Note that the news article explains that SNCF America is a subsidiary of the French railroad which transported 76,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. SNCF apologized to the Jews last year for its connection to the French railroad; the company tried to make amends by making a $80,000 donation to the Jews in order to get in on the $2.6 billion high-speed rail plan in Florida, but the plan was canceled. SNCF honored the $80,000 donation anyway.

I previously blogged about the role of the French railway in the Holocaust here.

Holocaust survivors in Florida were upset with the deal between Florida and SNCF to fund a Holocaust education program because they regarded a $80,000 donation from SNDF as “tainted money.”   As reported by the South Florida Sun Sentinel on September 9, 2011,  the donation had been given by SNCF to develop a school curriculum focusing on the role of France in the Holocaust.  This quote is from the South Florida Sun Sentinel article in September 2011:

“We don’t need SNCF to whitewash its image here,” Rita G. Hofrichter, 84, a Florida woman who lost her parents and other relatives in the Holocaust, told the newspaper. “It’s really shameful that they think they can buy us with their blood money.”   

Daniel Libeskind building at 601 Capitol Mall in Sacramento, CA….when you get there, it’s not there

In 2005, famous architect Daniel Liebeskind designed a 38-story condo building called Aura, which was to be built at 601 Capitol Mall in Sacramento, CA.  The plan fell through when the developers of the project defaulted on a loan.  The photo below shows Libeskind’s design for the building, which was never built.

Architectural design by Daniel Libeskind for Sacramento

Why should anyone care if this building was built or not?  I’ll tell you why. When this project was first announced in the Sacramento Bee newspaper in 2005, I was horrified.  I had seen one of Daniel Libeskind’s buildings in Berlin, and I did not think that one of his designs would be suitable for Sacramento.  His architectural style has been called “deconstruction.”

the role of the French railway in the Holocaust

Yesterday, I blogged about the Holocaust exhibit called “The Courage to Remember” which I went to see on the campus of California State University Sacramento.  The money for this exhibit came from a grant from the French Railway company known as SNCF, the Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais, which Holocaust survivors hold responsible for reparations to the Jews because the French railway transported 76,000 Jews to the Nazi death camps.

Words on a poster at the start of the exhibit

Notice the line in the second paragraph which says “There was a time when SNCF sought to bid on the proposed high speed rail project in California.”  Sacramento is one of the cities that will have a station on the high speed rail system if and when the second phase of it is ever built. 

If you can’t get to a Holocaust Museum, the Museum will come to you…

Sacramento is one of the few large cities in the world that does not have its own Holocaust Museum, but not to worry: a traveling exhibit called “The Courage to Remember” will be at California State University Sacramento until November 4, 2011.  It is one of three identical exhibits, based on the exhibit with the same name in the Museum of Tolerance at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. These three exhibits will be traveling around California for a year, courtesy of the Foundation of California which received a grant from SNCF (French railway company). The exhibit, which has its own website, consists of 200 photos arranged on 42 panels.  The traveling exhibition was first made available to schools and libraries in California in 1991.

I went to see the exhibit at CSUS today.  Just as I expected, there were a few controversial photos in the exhibit.

The most controversial photo in The Courage to Remember exhibit is the famous photo shown below.  The photo shows a soldier shooting at something that is beyond the woman standing near him, holding a child.  Two rifles can be seen on the far left in the photo, which indicates that there were at least two other soldiers also shooting.

Soldier shown in World War II photo

Did the exhibit really show the photo above?  No, of course not.  The photo in the exhibit was the cropped version shown below.  In this version of the photo, it appears that the soldier is aiming at a woman holding a child, ready to blow her head off.  What is the purpose of cropping this photo to make it appear that soldiers were shooting women and children?  There oughta be a law against this!

Same photo, but cropped to show soldier shooting at a woman holding a child

Controversial photo in Courage to Remember exhibit

Another controversial photo that is shown in the exhibit is the famous photo of the little boy with his hands up. This caption in the exhibit is “Women and children surrender after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is suppressed in May 1943.”

The photo above is from the photo album of Jürgen Stroop, the Commander of the SS troops who put down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. In spite of the fact that the photo above is included in the Stroop Report, which was compiled during April and May, 1943, it was identified by Holocaust survivor Tsvi C. Nussbaum as a photo taken on July 13, 1943 in front of the Hotel Polski on the Aryan side of the Warsaw ghetto, where some Jews had been living as Gentiles. Nussbaum claims that he is the seven-year-old boy in the photo and that the woman on his left is his aunt.

One of the exhibit panels, with the title “Systematic Mass Murder 1942 – 1945,” has a photo of some Dachau prisoners shoving a corpse into one of the ovens in the Dachau crematorium.  This is a posed photo, taken by the American military at Dachau, after the camp was liberated.  The corpse in the photo is a dummy which was used to illustrate how the bodies were put into the ovens.  It is implied in the exhibit that burning the corpses proves “systematic mass murder” at Dachau.

Photo similar to the one shown in the exhibit

An exhibit panel with the title “Liberation, Unmasking unspeakable horrors” has the famous photo, shown below, of  a British soldier driving a bulldozer which is shoving naked bodies into mass graves.

British soldier driving a bulldozer at Bergen-Belsen

On the same exhibit panel is a photo with the caption: “SS guards and Kapos captured at Bergen-Belsen, April 1945.”  What is not explained is that these SS guards had volunteered to stay at the camp to help the British after the Bergen-Belsen camp was voluntarily turned over them by Heinrich Himmler on April 15, 1945.  They were “captured” after the British broke their agreement with the Germans; the SS men had not volunteered to help the British with the understanding that they would be “captured” and put on trial as war criminals.

You can read about the SS guards who were “captured” on my website here.

Famous photo of woman and children walking to the gas chamber at Auschwitz

The photo above, which is probably the most famous photograph of the Holocaust, shows a woman and children walking down a road inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

This photo is shown in The Courage to Remember exhibit with a caption which says that the woman and children are “on the way to the gas chambers.”  The photo is on a panel which has the title “Auschwitz-Birkenau, Half Hell and Half Lunatic Asylum.”  I don’t understand this title, but maybe it means that anyone, who thinks this photo proves that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, belongs in a lunatic asylum.

On an exhibit panel with the title Theresienstadt, the “Model Ghetto” there is a black and white close-up photo of a sign that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” with the caption: “Work makes Freedom” the cynical sign at Theresienstadt, 1943.  The problem is that this sign was not on the Theresienstadt Ghetto where the Jews were sent.  The sign was on the gate into the Little Fortress, a prison for political prisoners that was near the Ghetto.  My photo below shows the gate into the Little Fortress.

Arbeit macht Frei sign was on the gate into the Little Fortress, not the gate into the Theresienstadt Ghetto

Another panel in the exhibit has the title “The Deadly Philosophy, Racial Purity.”  Correct me if I am wrong, but haven’t the Jews tried to keep their race pure for 5,000 years?  On this exhibit panel is a photo taken at Auschwitz, which is shown below.

Photo of a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz

Dr. Josef Mengele was doing research at Auschwitz-Birkenau to determine the heredity involved in producing a race with deformities, so as to keep the German ethnic group free of deformities. Was that so wrong?

The photo below is shown in the exhibit on a panel with the title “The Reich Expands 1938.”  The subtitle is “Jews forced to clean the streets of Vienna 1938.”  The caption of the photo reads “Jewish men and women were forced to scrub the streets on their knees while many Viennese cheered.”

Photo in The Courage to Remember exhibit

In the exhibit, the photo is cropped so as NOT to show the soldiers in the background.  This photograph also hangs in the USHMM; it shows Jews being forced to scrub Schuschnigg’s Fatherland Front slogans off the sidewalks of Vienna after the Anschluss.  Would it have killed the organizers of the exhibit to explain what is really going on in this photo?

Was there anything in the exhibit that met with my approval?  Yes, there was a photo taken in the courtyard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria which had this caption:  “Mass delousing of Mauthausen inmates during a typhus epidemic in 1941.”  The usual story told about Mauthausen is that the prisoners were forced to stand naked in the courtyard in order to kill them by freezing them to death.  The photo is shown below.

Prisoners in the courtyard at Mauthausen

Photos of the exhibit at CSUS are shown below.

The Courage to Remember exhibit

One of the 42 panels in the Courage to Remember exhibit

Poster at the entrance to the exhibit

Sacramento Empty Shoe memorial for 9/11

There were 100 cities across America which had their own local memorial ceremony for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday, September 11, 2011.  The 9/11 Memorial day in Sacramento, CA featured a field of Empty Shoes precisely arranged on the grounds of the State Fair Grounds. The empty shoes were in honor of the 2,977 people who died ten years ago on 9/11, including 2,349 civilians.  The field of empty shoes consisted of  new shoes, of all kinds, which were donated by people in the Sacramento area. The shoes were given to the Salvation Army when the Memorial was taken down.

Empty Shoe memorial at Cal Expo in Sacramento, CA

Young girl walks through the field of shoes in Sacramento

“the Gemlich letter” …. it sounds better in the original German

This morning I was astounded to read this news headline here:

The Seeds of Hitler’s Hatred: Infamous 1919 Genocide Letter Unveiled to the Public

This quote from the article contains the most important part of the story:

Few have questioned the importance of the Gemlich letter in understanding Hitler and the Holocaust. It not only provides a look into his beliefs, but reveals early ideas of how he would attempt the systematic extermination of the Jews. “Anti-Semitism — born of purely emotional grounds — will find an expression in the form of pogroms,” Hitler wrote, according to a translation provided by the (Simon) Wiesenthal Center. “The final goal must be the removal of the Jews. To accomplish these goals, only a government of national power is capable and never a government of national weakness.”

According to this article, “the Gemlich letter,” which has recently been acquired by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in California, is the first and only time that Hitler wrote something which clearly indicated his plans to “attempt the systematic extermination of the Jews.”  

How does Mark Zuckerberg kill a chicken?

I’ve been reading here about Mark Zuckerberg’s new challenge, which is not to eat any meat, except the meat from animals that he has personally killed.  His first kill was a lobster, which he plunged into a pot of boiling water.  Now he’s killing chickens, but there is no mention in the news about how he kills his chickens.  First of all, where does he get live chickens?  Does he raise chickens in his back yard?

When I was a child, my family had a “hen house” and a “chicken pen” in the back yard.  Now most cities have laws against raising chickens in a residential neighborhood.

When my mother ran out of pullets, and didn’t want to kill and eat the laying hens, she would go uptown to a store that sold live chickens.  (A pullet is a young female chicken.) Then she would bring the chicken home and keep it in our chicken pen until Sunday morning when it was time to kill it for our Sunday dinner.   

Rancho Seco nuclear power plant is now nothing but two empty towers

Empty towers at former Rancho Seco nuclear power plant

Update, May 10, 2011:  Japan has announced that they are not going to build any more nuclear power plants; you can read it here.

With all the news about the nuclear power plants in Japan being damaged by an earthquake, I am very glad that the Rancho Seco power plant in Herald, California is now nothing but two empty towers; the power plant was closed on June 7, 1989.  The Rancho Seco power plant was in operation between April 1975 and June 1989.  The Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 caused protests in California about Rancho Seco, which finally resulted in it’s closure.