Yesterday, “shock jock” radio host Michael Savage went into a nonsensical rant about how his father used to take him to the “filthy dirty” lower East Side so that he would develop an immunity to “microbes.” Somehow, his childhood story led him to conclude that undocumented immigrants are like invading snails, and Americans are the local clams and oysters that must contend with an “invading organism“:

“Why do you think that an invading snail can be dropped in the bay from off a back of a ship. It comes — let’s say from China — in a back of a freighter and it swims off in a bay in America. And it wipes out all the local clams. It wipes out the oysters because it’s hardier and the local oysters don’t have an immunity to it. It’s the same with invading cultures. Put your moronic heads together. The illegal aliens, whether you love them or you don’t love them, are an invading organism in a certain way. On a biological level you know I’m right.”

Listen:

While Savage worries about invading snails, the British government is more concerned with keeping out people who foster extremism and hatred. That’s why Savage’s name was added to a list of people who would be detained and refused entry by British immigration authorities if he attempted to visit the country.

Today, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) held an event to discuss the “environmental impact of immigration-driven population growth.” The panel discussion revolved around a paper authored by philosophy professor Philip Cafaro of Colorado State University entitled “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the United States.” Cafaro identifies stopping immigration-driven population growth as a requisite to becoming “good global environmental citizens.” CIS’ Steven Camarota took the claim a step farther and argued that immigration reform would be a lot easier to pass than climate change legislation, so therefore the US should focus less on emissions caps and more on immigration caps.

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and George Mason University professor Andrew Light challenged the very premise of the argument and warned against understanding climate change in terms of overpopulation and immigration. Light first wondered out loud about why the topic of immigration was being dragged into a conversation about population and argued that more focus should be placed on reducing the carbon footprint of those who are in the US — regardless of how they entered the country. He also pointed out that even if he were to accept CIS’ premise that people should live in parts of the world where they would do less harm, it would make more sense to actually encourage migration away from regions of high biological diversity along the equator to places of less bio mass, like the US. Light also highlighted the fact that Mexico has proposed one of the most progressive climate change policies, and the diplomatic fallout that could result from shutting down the borders and cutting off immigration could prove much more environmentally devastating than the CO2 emissions of immigrants. He encourages panelists to “talk about carrots before we talk about sticks” and avoid resorting to draconian policy recommendations. Watch it:

During the question and answer session, a representative from the League of United Latin American Citizens questioned the intellectual credibility of CIS’ argument considering the fact that it has been labeled a “hate anti-immigrant group.” Camarota called the claim “absurd on its base,” and while he’s right that no progressive group has labeled CIS a hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center has described CIS as “the nativist lobby’s supposedly ‘independent’ think tank” which “has never found any aspect of immigration it likes.” Several groups which are designated hate groups such as the American Immigration Control Foundation and the Federation for American Immigration Reform have also made the same environmental argument against immigration that was presented by CIS. The question that immediately followed the confrontation illustrated the type of nativist supporters CIS has picked up:

“Being this the Center for Immigration Studies, there are several factors you consider. But I have not heard a very important factor that has not been mentioned here. See it Europe, see it Denmark, see it France, see it England, see Holland — they have had enormous problems because of the immigration they took. Not because of ecological consequences, no, because they brought new values. And this is extremely dangerous for a society. And this is what we must consider in this country — the values that the people that come in bring with them. Because this is the main cause of the fall of the Roman Empire: the immigration.”

Watch it:

A key factor in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s electoral success in January’s Iraqi provincial elections was the perception among a good number of Iraqis that he had made Iraq safer. The massive attacks last week shattered that perception. Among other things, Maliki is taking criticism for having prematurely removed many of the concrete blast walls that had been placed throughout Baghdad by U.S. forces to frustrate the movements of insurgents and sectarian militias.

David Ignatius asks “Who’s to blame for the carnage?”

In today’s Iraq, that’s open to sectarian conspiracy theories. Maliki’s Shiite-led government last weekend broadcast the alleged confession of a Sunni Baathist named Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim, who said the truck-bombing plot had been hatched in Syria and that he had paid security guards $10,000 to pass through checkpoints.

But forensic evidence points to a possible Iranian role, according to an Iraqi intelligence source who is close to Shahwani. He said that signatures of the C-4 explosive residues that have been found at the bomb sites are similar to those of Iranian-made explosives that have been captured in Kut, Nasiriyah, Basra and other Iraqi cities since 2006.

Earlier today, the Islamic State of Iraq, Al Qaeda’s Iraq franchise, claimed credit for last week’s attack. This doesn’t necessarily preclude an Iranian role, but basing blame for attacks upon the provenance of particular weapons and explosives has always seemed to me to be a tricky business, because of the simple fact that Iraq is a country awash in weapons and explosives. (According to the pro-gun lobby, this should make it one of the safest places in the world, but interestingly this is not the case.)

Ignatius:

As security unravels in Iraq, U.S. forces there are mostly bystanders. Even in the areas where al-Qaeda operatives remain potent, such as Mosul, the Americans have little control. Sunni terrorists who are arrested are quickly released by the Iraqis in exchange for bribes of up to $100,000, according to an Iraqi source.

Should the Americans try to restore order? The top Iraqi intelligence source answered sadly that it was probably wiser to “stay out of it and be safe.” When pressed about what his country would look like in five years, absent American help, he answered bluntly: “Iraq will be a colony of Iran.”

I think that’s probably an overstatement — there’s a strong strain of anti-Iranian sentiment in Iraq that, much like the strain of anti-Americanism, will probably prevent Iraq from becoming a vassal of either — but the inescapable (and entirely predictable) reality is that when you remove an Iraqi Sunni regime deeply opposed to Iran and replace it with an Iraqi Shia regime with longstanding ties to Iran, you’re going to end up with an Iraq in which Iran exercises significant influence.

Meanwhile, Reidar Visser looks at the newly reconstituted United Iraqi Alliance, formed without Maliki, who wanted assurances that he would not face any challenge for the job of prime minister:

Agreement on the new alliance seems to have been arrived at in Tehran, and it is basically a case of Shiite Islamists with long-standing Iranian sympathies like Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim and Abd al-Karim al-Anizi reaching an understanding with other Shiite Islamists whose turn to Iran is of far more recent date (and probably is still disputed by many of their adherents in Iraq), as in the case of Muqtada al-Sadr. [...]

As for the reasons for the sudden haste in declaring the alliance -– with the apparent use of a deadline to put pressure on a Maliki -– we can only speculate. But at least two factors stand out. Firstly, in Tehran, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim’s health once more seems to be deteriorating, with reports that he has been transferred to a more intensive form of hospital care. Secondly, from Qum, there are rumours that Muqtada al-Sadr may be about to return to Iraq, possibly even with enhanced scholarly credentials. Both these factors might unleash destabilising forces within the Shiite community that Iran may wish to avoid… To Iran, then, it may have seemed prudent to try to put in place some kind of integrative mechanism that could guarantee Shiite sectarian unity in the 2010 parliamentary elections.

All of this cuts pretty seriously against the overly optimistic narrative of declining violence and increasing state consolidation under Maliki. What we need to watch out for though, are the inevitable attempts by conservatives to blame future destabilizing violence on “Obama’s withdrawal,” and suggestions that Iraq’s being far from perfect argues for American forces to stay and stay.