Well, the ones behind the Absolut Vodka boycott anyway. Slog has their press release (they added the emphasis too).
100 American Organizations Launch Boycott of Absolut Vodka!
April 8, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Over 100 American organizations dedicated to border security and the enforcement of existing immigration laws launched a nationwide boycott of Absolut Vodka today in response to their ad that ran in Mexico, which panders to a rising separatist movement inside the US, that is being fueled by illegal immigration.
The National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition (NIIBC) is known nationally for prior sustained boycotts against Miller Brewing and Bank of America for their support for illegal aliens in the US.
The NIIBC has launched a new website at www.boycottabsolut.com/ to inform American consumers and provide resources for citizens to engage in the boycott.
“Absolut vodka is trying to sell liquor to Mexicans that aspire to control the Southwest United States,” says William Gheen of ALIPAC. “The warning signs are everywhere. Illegal immigration is creating a rising threat to our existing border lines and the very existence of the United States. The separatist sentiments and animus towards America are prevalent in the Mexican population and the ranks of illegal aliens inside the US creating a clear and present danger to our nation. Everywhere we look, Global corporations have a hand in this brewing disaster and Absolut just made the list.”
The 100 organizations supporting the boycott will be informing their collective hundreds of thousands of supporters using websites, e-mails, and talk radio shows.
The offensive Absolut ad was created by the Mexican advertising agency Teran/TBWA. The boycott website will also feature video, audio, and text evidence of the growing separatist movement in America to warn the public.
“Zogby polls tell us that most Mexicans feel they do not need American permission to enter the US and consider this land rightfully theirs. This invasion has leaders, groups, thousands of supporters on the streets, and global corporate support. It is time for Americans to fight back by boycotting businesses that support the separatist movement.” said William Gheen.
For more information, please visit www.boycottabsolut.com , www.illegalimmigrationboycott.com or www.alipac.us
###
Paid for by AMERICANS FOR LEGAL IMMIGRATION PAC
Post Office Box 30966, Raleigh, NC 27622-0966
Tel: (919) 787-6009 Toll Free: (866) 703-0864
This is in response to this ad:
So, I thought illegal immigrants were merely a strain on our economy and government resources. But a separatist movement seeking to reunite the American southwest with Mexico?
Anyone who believes this for a second is a moron and a loon. Discuss.
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Throw in some national healthcare paid for with our oil revenues and I’ll say Viva Mexico
do I buy “this” bullshit are you talking about the idiot right wing “the aliens have landed” talking points, or Absolut Vodka, because Yes I buy the vodka.
Shoulda been more clear…
Does this mean that they want a world where Simon Bolivar was crushed beneath a giant bottle of Vodka just as he set out to create a separate Venezuela?
If the giant Absolut bottle crushed Venezuela, would Hugo Chavez now have a lock on my addiction to both Oil and Booze?
Oh, this is about immigration?…
Well, as far as immigration goes I thought they had really jumped the shark when Chertoff claimed that Bush needed a record number of waivers to ignore laws and rush to build a fence, because…
“I would say that whatever happens eventually with immigration reform, there’s no excuse for not complying with the law as it’s been set forth.”
If you don’t think that there isn’t a full press reconquista movement, you need to get out more.
Maybe not reclaim the territories lost back to Mexico City, but at least culturally.
“Not only did they steal our land, they took the parts with the roads and schools!”
Google Aztlan and reconquista, at the least.
The official national symbol of MEChA is an eagle holding a machete-like weapon and a stick of dynamite.The myth of Aztlan can best be explained by California’s Santa Barbara School District’s Chicano Studies textbook, “The Mexican American Heritage” by East Los Angeles high school teacher Carlos Jimenez. On page 84 there is a redrawn map of Mexico and the United States, showing Mexico with a full one-third more territory, all of it taken back from the United States. On page 107, it says “Latinos are now realizing that the power to control Aztlan may once again be in their hands.”
Shown are the “repatriated” eight or nine states including Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington. According to the school text, Mexico is supposed to regain these territories as they rightly belong to the “mythical” homeland of Aztlan. On page 86, it says “…a free-trade agreement…promises…if Mexico is to allow the U.S. to invest in Mexico…then Mexico should…be allowed to freely export…Mexican labor. Obviously this would mean a re-evaluation of the border between the two countries as we know it today.” Jimenez’s Aztlan myth is further amplified at MEChA club meetings held at Santa Barbara Public Schools..
The book, paid for by American tax payers, cites no references or footnotes, leaving school children totally dependent on their teacher to separate fact from opinion and political propaganda. The book teaches separatism, victimization, nationalism, completely lacks patriotism towards the United States, and promotes an open border policy. The book is 100 percent editorial — the opinions of the author.
Apparently, these “Raza” cults are composed of people who unabashedly hate the United States and often support other groups and leaders who also hate America. Raza’s hatred of America is so intense, that most make bedfellows to anyone else who also hates America, like dictator Fidel Castro; murderer of his own people Sadam Hussain; and the women hating Taliban — and of course they sympathize with all Islamic Terrorists over the Israel/Palestine issue. Raza cults are the loudest and most insistent element of the immigration lobby in California. Inebriated with a sense of righteous victimhood, and entranced by myths of a heroic racial past, devotees of the Aztlan cults are rapidly extending their influence within California’s Hispanic population, particularly among students in the university system.
No one has legitimate gripes with the US – they all just HATE the US because they’re HATERS!
Well, maybe a few of them, but boy, that’s such a tired refrain from the right. Time to find another tune to sing.
Was this post copied and pasted? It doesn’t sound like your usual rant, newsie.
first started talking about taking back the Sudetenland either…..
But seriously, if you are saying that this is not a popular movement in the overall population, I concur.
But if you think this is not a serious movement with a militant minority, you’ve never lived in CA. I have. And this has been going on since the early seventies.
Now its in the public school textbooks.
ABsolut will not lose my business over this, cause they can’t loose what they don’t have. (I don’t drink). But IMHO they made a tactical error when they chose to tap into a popular feeling with their clever Mexican ads, not considering what the NorteAmericanos would think of it. (Or maybe they did and just wanted the controversy for attention.)
My question is, when will we (Americans of all backgrounds and ethnic origins) wake up and realize that diversity is not what makes America great, its Unity. We need the melting pot, not the salad bowl. We need to once again be Americans first, and (fill in the blank with our origin)second.
Being multilingual is a nice personal accomplishment, but a nation with a common language, customs and norms has an advantage over a balkinized model.
with this statement:
But many other immigrants in the past came to America and achieved this in a generation or two. And those first wavers by and large did not learn English. Why, they even had newspapers and (later) radio programs in their own language. Why is there doubt that Mexicans will assimilate too?
But it’s not just Mexicans, visit the Chinese community, or Haitian and on and on.
Remember this was said in the context of the vodka ad highlighting a racist LA RAZA minority of Mexicans that want to secede from the traditional USA, and be joined to Mexico, a foreign power.
That sentiment by the way at the extremes is the very definition of treason.
I have no quarrel with lawful immigration, it is unlawful immigration, and treasonous immigrants, or the treasonous offspring thereof that I have the issue with.
I stand by my original statment:
First, 80 years ago you could have visited entire neighborhoods, even cities, where everyone spoke Italian and no one spoke English. That’s not the case today.
I would wager that if you cut off immigration from Latin America then Spanish would eventually fade from those neighborhoods too. Only the influx continues to keep it alive.
What that means is that you haven’t refuted my point. What would refute it would be second and third generation kids speaking Spanish only. But that doesn’t happen. The immigrants’ kids learn English, and assimilate to the extent that it’s possible for poor Hispanics to do so.
Now, I already highlighted that this ad was for Mexican publication, according to the Slog link at the top. So that deflates any charges of treason (a word you use so speciously that it means nothing when you say it). As far as racism is concerned, that might be fairly applied to the reconquistas but we were talking about Absolut.
Sorry if it doesn’t fit your template.
Your statment is not only insulting, it is wrong.
Read again what I actually said.
Your
is simply, Back up your statements with proof or at least logic.
You fail to do this when you claim that immigrants are refusing to assimilate when history shows that they’re following the same pattern previous generations of immigrants did. Show me how they’re deviating from that pattern or concede the point.
Ya know, Newsman, you deserve a better answer about why I said your use of the term “treason” is specious. I think you’ll find that it was, in fact, correct which would also make it not insulting (no in and of itself anyway).
Here’s what’s wrong with you using the term treason: It has a very specific definition in the Constitution of the United States.
So let’s go back to what you said (and not cut anything out like you did on your recapitulation):
First, as I pointed out, the ad was produced for publication in Mexico. That’s according to the article I linked. So those Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the USA, the ones you speak of in your rant, would not have seen it UNTIL this was blown up by the loons who started the boycott (and probably assuring that lost sales will be more than made up in the process). As the 10 year old me once said, Smooth move, Ex-Lax. Anyway,the ad can’t “highlight a racist LA RAZA minority of Mexicans that want to secede from the traditional USA” if it wasn’t directed at them.
Second, even if these “racist LA RAZA minority of Mexicans that want to secede from the traditional USA, and be joined to Mexico” exist outside of your imagination, you should note that Mexico herself lays no claim to these territories. So Mexico is not an enemy.
Finally, if these “racist LA RAZA minority of Mexicans” still want to secede, they have to do more than write or talk about it. Otherwise it’s protected free speech.
You’re probably confused about the proper application of the charge of Treason since your hero, Joseph McCarthy, used to throw it around too. (He called the FDR/Truman years “20 years of treason” once. Yeah, Joe, that’s what it was. How’s hell treating you?)
Case closed.
The ad was intended to run in Mexico. Despite the big English phrase, note the Spanish fine print. NorteAmericanos were not likely to see this until the hysterics started spreading it across the internet.
Are the “reconquistas” armed and organized like a paramilitary? If not, they’re just chumps full of hot air. Keep an eye on ’em but don’t give them credibility by taking them seriously (not til they deserve it).
California schools are messed up on many levels. This textbook is hardly worth the alarm IMO, but if it is being used it’s a worthy issue for discussion if it is indeed substandard on an academic level (lack of documentation is pretty bad). But I haven’t reviewed the book and, knowing how right wing pundits love blowing things out of proportion (“paid for by American taxpayers?” Or just those who live in that district? Or are we alleging that Dept of Ed funds were used? We need proof of that), I will reserve judgment and wait for better info.
Shorthand: People coming to the United States to work for the lowest wages picking the crops or butchering the cattle in order to support their families, are akin to Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Fidel Castro. I suppose we know this because they are speaking Spanish with an Arabic accent? I suppose the Mexican War of 1848 was launched to bring democracy to the northern half of Mexico, albeit at the point of a gun? Maybe Los Americanos erred in sending people over 70 to populate Arizona and thereby combat this menace… possibly because younger Americans were busy in Iraq, to say nothing of Germany, Japan, Korea, Britain, and countless other countries where American soldiers are based?
There may be a campaign to boycott Absolut vodka, but obviously that campaign doesn’t extend to boycotting mind-altering substances in general!
If there is, “at least culturally” as you say, I don’t give a shit. It’s a reflection of where we are as a society – one that is increasingly Hispanic. I know all about it. My kids’ TV programs are full of bilingual characters, and they’re often the focus of the show. Hell, there’s even a new one that has a Chinese/English bilingual focus.
But I know full well there’s no groundswell of support for an AnschlГјss of the Southwest, even among Mexicans (to say nothing of Mexican Americans, especially those who became US citizens when we changed the borders). A few romantic nitwits might dream of it but it’s as popular as returning to Africa is among blacks.
No, it’s FAR more popular and part of the Hispanic culture here. Newsman pointed out textbooks actually stating the cause of reconquista, I don’t recall any neo-Liberian movement.
It is a real political movement with people who think about it every day, some probably all day. It includes college professors, able to disseminate their poison.
The ironies are many. We never stole it. We whipped them in a war, pretty common stuff in those days. We paid for the land. To a greater (and sometimes lesser) degree, we honored the Spanish land grants and many of their legal customs. The Mexican government had virtually no ouposts in “Aztlan” besides the coast of California and Santa Fe. I think the estimate of Mexican population in all that territory was in the several tens of thousands. Not much. The Comanche, Apache, and Pawnees were a great irritant to their expansionist plans. So much so, that in the treaty we agreed to control those pesky Indians and keep them on this side of the border.
Re-conquoring what? Something they never had, mostly.
And an intellectual movement isn’t a political one.
It’s funny. I have several Hispanic friends, including a girl whose parents are migrants and who grew up in California. She’s getting a Masters in Chicano Studies from San Diego State, and neither she nor her husband (my best friend, a Mexican American whose family became American when the Southwest did) ever breathe a word about any “reconquista.”
I don’t buy it as a threat to anything.
Now, would you or Newsman care to address the points I made above?
You want to argue Semantics now?
Well your wrong again. There is more than one textbook in that school district that is passed student to student. I am sure school uniformity in class curriculum being what it is, all of the TEXTBOOKS (plural) in the school are the same.
Paul is grammatically correct.
You’re long on allegations but short of proof. If you can’t give me links to back up what you say, then I say that your statements are false. That’s a fair conclusion since you’re one of the guys propagating the myth that illegal aliens are voting in American elections.
So, you said book, singular, in your first post about it. Go on, take a second to scroll up the page and re-read your own post. It’s the one titled ” But it must be true, it’s in a public school textbook..” [my emphasis.]
Okay, now re-read parsing’s comment. He’s referencing your post when he says, “Newsman pointed out textbooks [my emphasis] actually stating the cause of reconquista…”
So, my logic challenged friend, what would you like to do – explain how I’m suddenly playing semantics when I pointed out that you were talking about one book, or apologize to me for misrepresenting my own statements?
Your insulting arrogance does not serve you well. Your persuasion diminishes just a bit with each insult. Try opening your mind a little, and lets talk.
Paul is and was grammatically correct. I suggest you stop reading things into other peoples answers that you want to see. I see what your trying to say. But demanding people follow your narrow rules and ignore what you think is not important, and hyper-concentrate on what you think is, doesn’t advance the discussion. It makes people want to move on to another forum with more interesting conversationalists.
Translation: Your boring. That’s why I don’t bother to answer your tirades and demands for proof, its not that I can’t, I just choose to spend my time elsewhere.
Also, I often simply reject your contrived premise, and refuse to engage it.
For example, I never said this group is an imminent threat to the Republic. I did say in effect, this movement and idea is widespread among Chicano activists, and a few major Hispanic/Chicano political figures in Southwestern States.
Now on this issue, the level of what you don’t know about this subject seams to be limitless. So listen to your fellow polsters and you might learn something you didn’t know on this subject. (I am by no means an expert on this subject, but I have encountered and confronted people who are its ardent proponents)
Democrat Cruz Bustamante lost the election for Governor of Democrat dominated California to Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger on several issues. For one, he lost moderate Hispanic and white Democrat votes over his refusal to repudiate this same group of which he is a MEMBER. (MEChA) Now don’t go hyper ballistic on me just yet. I never said this was the major issue, but it Damn sure didn’t help him with moderates, and he lost big. There were other reasons, like Arnold won. Point being, this group, and idea is not just a few closet radicals in some isolated barrio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…
http://www.nationalmecha.org/a…
If you don’t like my style, don’t engage with me. But know this: I don’t ask for proof of your allegations to annoy you – I do it to challenge you to show me that there are facts underlying your views and opinions. I do it with others, and I expect it of myself too. If you challenge me to prove the facts I’m stating, I’ll give it to you.
If I do it with you a lot, it’s because I find you to be one who seems to like quoting articles or making statements that I find incredible, and I read the news a lot. If I haven’t heard of it, I want to know that there’s a credible source. And if the source isn’t credible, I go after the person who says it. I have a low tolerance for bullshit, and an even lower tolerance for those who spread it. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.
Have you been sufficiently satisfied that Paul and I were accurately relating the story on this movement, and does that help to explain why the vodka ad was ill advised at best?
The ad ran in Mexico. I’d agree to that statement ONLY if it ran in the USA.
I have a feeling that we’ve reached an impasse and should just agree to disagree. I’ve been looking into Reconquista more – actually, I’ve been doing it for a while, since well before I posted this diary – and I stand by my conclusions that it poses no threat to America in any meaningful way. Things can change, of course, but that’s my judgment now.
So, does this mean we can keep engaging, or do you still wish for me to “give it up?” Serious question.
The give it up refers to your use of insults, (arrogance is admittedly often in the eye of the reader. I can be guilty of it too on occasion.) I believe the “let’s talk” could reasonably be interpreted as an invitation to continue the dialogue.
If you swear the insults off too (I’m thinking of the “legend in your own mind” crack specifically) then so do I.
justified and measured response to your belligerent and unprovoked attack, or some such other cold war rhetoric meant in a humorous vein, but in truth, You are correct on that one.
Many people would just wisely pass your diary by, since your closed mindedness seams to be on display in the opening salvo. It reads like an invitation to a fight, instead of a discussion. You get what you ask for sometimes.
Now look at the wording of your poll question. If you really wanted anyone else’s opinion, you would have worded it differently. It appears to me you used it as more commentary from Ari , rather than for its generally accepted purpose. I suspect that was your intention. Am I wrong?
Like you did with the “give it up” comment. maybe I can’t catch your humor vibe…
I’ve given you all the acknowledgment that I believe your position merits, and I’m sure you feel mutually.
If you want to go on, then let this be water under the bridge. If not, we can keep
flogging this dead horseflaying this mass of flesh and bone. I’ll respond to this and other comments if you want to keep it up; but if you want to have dialog beyond this, take the high ground with me and stop posting on this thread.the ad ran in Mexico.
If this were the Nineteenth century, I could agree with your assessment to a degree. But it is not. We are in a worldwide digital age. (I read Pravda on occasion from my laptop.)
Any advertiser that sells products in the North American Free trade zone had better be sensitive to the entire market, or suffer the consequences. (Which will be negative, minor, and short lived) if they play the PR game correctly. Ignoring it is not the wise course IMHO.
Some random blog comments provided below to show the negative impact.
And finally, My favorite.
I don’t recoil at being challenged on questionable things. (Your use of personal insults excepted.)
My annoyance with being challenged incessantly by you is, If I say the sky was blue green last night, that is both a factual and an opinion statement.
The sky I saw was most likely not the sky you saw. But it is not BS because we saw different things my friend.
Forgot to add… Your use of the word “semantics” is either extremely disingenuous, or simply ignorant of what I was talking about.. When speaking of textbooks in the fashion of your first post, you meant “title.” Well, teachers, students, and school districts would mean it in that sense, and I’m sticking with that.
There is one TITLE being used by one school district in California. There need to be a lot more of both before I’ll buy that this is a serious movement.
Must be another one of those textbooks written under the influence. “We whipped them in a war”–a war that we started, amid a good deal of controversy at the time (see H. D. Thoreau, inter alia) with the express purpose of taking over the territory, following on the heels of the Lone Star Republic. Common stuff in those days? Well, the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War come to mind. The conquest of indigenous Americans–was that a war? Does that make it “common stuff in those days”?
Among Absolut-induced fantasies, I gather, is the notion that military conquest lasts. China thought that about Tibet, no doubt. Germany and Japan imagined it to be so in the 1930s. England imagined it in Ireland and India. France thought that about Algeria. Spain about the Basques. The list, and the fantasy, goes on. And on, and on, and on.
..you choose to get into the reason the war started. Not saying that we didn’t have a lot to do with fomenting it, but the fact as I stated it remains.
BTW, not only were we the superior force militarily, but Santa Ana was hated by his men. They had ancient equipment (due to corruption, just like today) and didn’t bother to help the wounded or recover the dead. They saw that we did (and do.) Not much of a morale builder.
Stick to the facts, don’t wander.
http://article.nationalreview….
And my opinion is this: Malkin is a raving loon. This article proves that by treating Mexican bitterness at losing an aggressive war waged to take land they claimed as some serious threat (is Mexico pressing for a return of the land? Thought not).
I guess this just falls into the other 2%. I suggest you poke around a bit and you might just find that reconquista is not just airy idea that a few Mexicans hold. Your friends mentioned earlier are anecdotal. I’m sure most illegals don’t have any take on it, either. But in the halls of academia and with many others, it is a real sentiment.
Yes, Michelle Malkin is a loon. But just like the stopped clock being correct twice a day, sometimes she is correct.
If Mexico conquers Aztlan, where would the illegals work? Ha ha. They would mostly be back in Mexico. Now there’s an irony.
All I’m saying is that movements in academia might as well be movements on the dark side of the moon for all their impact on politics and real life. Maybe something more will develop, but to conflate it with illegal immigration now is beyond the available evidence.
As an aside, Malkin is more like a broken digital clock IMO…
I hope that, given that the Absolut boycotters do (check out that press release), you can forgive me thinking that you did too.
Illegal immigration is a legitimate concern. But the people most opposed to it plainly revealed their xenophobia when they attacked an ad campaign by claiming that it fuels a separatist movement that’s so small and ineffectual that only a xenophobe can take it seriously.
As always, I’m prepared to eat my words if someone can demonstrate who I’m either factually or logically in error. No one has done that on this thread.
Anti illegal immigration activists aren’t xenophobes simply by opposing illegal immigration. But the people behind the boycott who made the highlighted statements in their press release are, and so is anyone who believes what they say at face value.
When facts fail you, go to name calling.