Sep 11 2008
Aug 17 2008
What I’ve noticed
The US government conducted a huge raid for illegal immigrants in Postville, Iowa. They haven’t explained why some are being deported and others are being jailed. Wives of the arrested men have been fitted with leg monitoring bracelets and basically been told “You can’t work, you can’t leave and can’t stay.” The local Roman Catholic church is now caring for the women. A priest responds to the situation:
He said he understands that the people arrested were illegal, but he said they were also desperate.
“This was their last option. They would not have chosen this as their first option. They wanted to feed their families. Scripture tells us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, give shelter to the shelterless. If you and your family were starving, what would you do?” [via holographicme]
Russia’s not playing nice with Georgia. [via 3QD]
Helen Boyd interviews Monica Canfield-Lenfest. Includes my new favorite word: queerspawn.
A moving post on teaching. I want to be a good teacher someday, but I’ve got a very long way to go.
When their high school refused to let them organize, the Okeechobee, FL Gay-Straight Alliance asked the ACLU for help. They’ve won the case. Notably, the decision requires the school board to “take into account the well-being of its non-heterosexual students.”
Jul 16 2008
What I’ve noticed (almost weekly edition)
Why is there so much anti-American sentiment in the world?
Rove is a criminal, on vacation.
Knowing about the economy is important if you’d like to be president, McCain.
No, I’m not a big Heinlein fan.
Rich people use drugs (poor, brown people go to jail for it).
Why having the legal protection of marriage is important for queer couples.
Jun 21 2008
What I’ve noticed (too busy to keep up with reading edition)
American wars are organized by how we remember them over at The Edge of the American West. When that makes you feel terrible, go calm down by looking at Emily’s fantastic fern pictures. They almost make me want to brave the poison ivy to find my own.
Jun 02 2008
War isn’t good for people
Since the military isn’t doing enough to care for the mental health of our soldiers, private counselors are offering free help to veterans. Suicide rates are way up in the military right now, which is probably indicative of how much help our veterans are going to need when they get back. It’s not really surprising considering war is generally horrifying and things like Standard Operating Procedure at Abu Ghraib and other prisons (via 3QD)
what happened at Abu Ghraib was not only tolerated but condoned and encouraged. Harsh treatment wasn’t punished; it was rewarded. When First Lt. Carolyn Wood of the Army was in charge of the interrogation center at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan in 2003, she established a policy that allowed prisoners to be held in solitary confinement for a month, to be stripped, shackled in painful positions, kept without sleep, bombarded with sound and light. Three prisoners were beaten to death on her watch. She was awarded a Bronze Star, one of the armed forces’ highest combat medals, promoted to captain and sent to Iraq.
Oct 16 2007
the heart of propaganda
The current Iraqi government, which we put in charge, is brutally murdering people and stealing money.
Radhi recounted how one staff member “was gunned down with his seven-month-pregnant wife,” his security chief’s father was found dead on a meat hook and how the body of the father of another staff member was riddled with holes from a power drill. [link]
And then we have the audacity to wonder why the Arab world isn’t too fond us of.
Aug 19 2007
How to starve a country
I’ve posted before about the damage farm subsidies can do to the economies of other countries. Corn is one of the most heavily subsidized crops and it’s being used to create ethanol, which is currently more profitable than selling the corn for food because ethanol is subsidized, too. This is causing some very serious problems in Mexico: the cost of corn, a staple of mexican food, has gone out the roof. People are hungry enough to protest.
Ethanol isn’t significantly better for the environment than oil, but the government needs to look like it’s trying to become more energy independent because of the mess we’ve made in the Middle East. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is linked to hunger in Mexico.
The high price of tortillas and other, crueler vagaries of the international order illustrate the interconnectedness of events, from the Middle East to the Middle West, and the urgency of establishing trade based on true democratic agreements among people, and not interests whose principal hunger is for profit for corporate interests protected and subsidised by the state they largely dominate, whatever the human cost. [link via LMB]
Jul 09 2007
articles worth reading
Yet emissions keep on rising. If greenhouse-gas concentrations are to be stabilised, then the carbon price or the support mechanisms for clean energy, or both, will have to rise or be adopted worldwide, or both. And if that happens, the returns on clean-energy investments will increase even further and the companies that have already invested in such businesses will have a head start over those that have not.
Minnesota case fits the pattern in flap over firing of U.S. attorneys
At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger’s office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.
Scientists in the last couple of years have been trying to create novel forms of life from scratch. They’ve forged chemicals into synthetic DNA, the DNA into genes, genes into genomes, and built the molecular machinery of completely new organisms in the lab—organisms that are nothing like anything nature has produced.
If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural
when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Fear-Mongering and Fiction: Cheney Addresses West Point Grads
As Cheney told the graduates of the enemies they may soon face — terrorists “who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character” — there were moments when it seemed that he had simply recycled an old speech from 2002. Indeed, long after most members of the Bush administration have distanced themselves from some of the more insidious claims that propelled the U.S. into war with Iraq, the vice president continues to repeat them as fact. At one point today he cited the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which has been thoroughly debunked) as the reason why the U.S. invaded Iraq. “America is fighting this enemy in Iraq because that is where they have gathered,” he told the West Point graduates. “We are there because, after 9/11, we decided to deny terrorists any safe haven.”
Jul 08 2007
complaints about ER
I found a post at The Blarg complaining about ER a few days ago. I started commenting on it, but there’s a lot to say, so I’m moving here. Now, I’ve only seen ER a few times, and like all TV shows it’s unrealistic, but the parts he labels “liberal nonsense” are not especially fantastic.
1) Huge numbers of people are gay, and they don’t act anything like gay people do in real life. Gaydar need not apply, because you could never guess, because the show wants you to think gay people are just like straight people, but gay. Oh wait, that’s not all, gay people are actually more with it than the straight people. The gay relationships are always great, and the straight people are screwed up.
There are a lot of GLBT people in the real world. And being queer does not mean you act a certain way. Otherwise, you wouldn’t need to come out. Everyone would already know. Sure, a lot of queer people have rejected gender norms, but a lot haven’t and that isn’t necessarily visible. And straight people reject gender normas too.
There doesn’t need to be a breakdown between straight and queer relationships. Relationships are the same pretty much everywhere. And after being accused of rape, pedophilia, bestiality, mental disorders, etc., it’s really nice that ER does portray good queer relationships.
2) Everyone is dying in Iraq. Last year a main character got killed in Iraq, and this year there was a family whose father had died in Iraq. They wouldn’t want to have a character that came back from Iraq alive and emphasize the good they were doing. No, Iraq is the devil and everyone is dying.
I’m sure some people do come back from Iraq and feel they’ve done something good. Most of the people I know either died or came back wishing they’d never had to kill anyone. Veterans of other wars are the same. My grandfather was proud that he helped in WWII. But he had a lot of terrible memories he didn’t want. People forget that no matter how good the cause of the war people die horrible deaths and see horrible things. Being reminded of that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe we’ll try harder diplomatically.
3) National healthcare mumbo jumbo! The ER is always full and nobody has health insurance on the show. The characters are always screaming about how we need a national healthcare plan. What BS. Where are the illegal aliens in the ER? Oh that’s right, they never show any.
National healthcare isn’t mumbo jumbo. In a rich country like ours, it’s ridiculous that so many people who work so hard can’t afford decent healthcare. And yes, illegal immigrants do show up in the ER.
When I suggested that treating them was the right thing to do the author pulled out the teach a man to fish analogy. But many illegal immigrants do know how to take care of themselves. They’re doctors, teachers, farmers. As I mentioned a few days ago, our agricultural subsidies have done terrible things to the Mexican economy. These people come to the US looking for work so their families could eat. They are not looking for a handout.
They are accused of taking American jobs. But the only reason employers hire them is because they don’t get in trouble for paying them far far below minimum wage and the workers don’t complain about poor working conditions for fear of being deported. Illegal immigrants are rarely paid enough to eat well, let alone get a decent place to live or buy health insurance.
People say that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes, so why should they get health care? How can they pay taxes? Despite the long long hours they work, they usually don’t make enough to have to pay taxes.
Fixing this system should be a priority. But until then, taking care of these exploited people who pick our food and clean our businesses cannot be compared to giving away something for free. We should be ashamed of how we’ve treated illegal immigrants.
Jun 29 2007
andrea gibson
1 third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
and we have the nerve to “Support Our Troops”
with pretty yellow ribbons
while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands
