One Immigrant

From an immigrant's point of view.

(from the Live Journal of AnnaFDD.)

Apportioning Culpability

Who's responsible for the economic mess again?

Don't worry.  It's short.

In Memoriam

Dr. Alice Miller.

Alice Miller, a psychoanalyst who repositioned the family as a locus of dysfunction with her theory that parental power and punishment lay at the root of nearly all human problems, died at her home in Provence on April 14. She was 87.
[...]
All children, she wrote, suffer trauma and permanent psychic scarring at the hands of parents, who enforce codes of conduct through psychological pressure or corporal punishment: slaps, spankings or, in extreme cases, sustained physical abuse and even torture.

Unable to admit the rage they feel toward their tormenters, Dr. Miller contended, these damaged children limp along through life, weighed down by depression and insecurity, and pass the abuse along to the next generation, in an unending cycle.

At the Intersection

Deborah Teramis Christian joined the NAACP.  This is why.  Fascinating journey.

Cindy Sheehan reads Arthur Silber.  Why don't you?  (It is still an unnecessary war.)

Klaatu barada nikto

From Problem Chylde:  The Arizona Fear of Immigrants Bill.  Papers, please.

Again, I return to brownfemipower’s piece at Feministe, where many commenters point out to her the presence of nonimmigrant visas for women and children who face sexual assault and intimate partner violence. If they weren’t planning on calling law enforcement in Arizona before the passage of this law, they surely won’t be moving forward with that move now. Also, think of situations where non-citizens are family members — husbands, wives, children, cousins, parents and grandparents. The law is forcing people to choose to send them away or to keep them home. The law is driving a population of people who WANT to be citizens of this country further underground and out of the public eye, increasing the strain on public service organizations who attempt to reach these populations with assistance, and creating an impetus for other southern border states to follow its lead.
[...]
Genocide no longer describes the systematic extermination of groups of people; genocide is now a politically loaded term that hurts the perpetrators’ feelings.

I don’t want to do a first they came chant. They’ve never stopped coming. They come through half-cocked racist philosophies; they come through brutal murders and attacks; they come in board rooms and conference rooms; they reduce humanity and need to numbers and ledgers. They won’t stop coming until we the people as a humane, peacemaking force make them never want to come again. Constant vigilance precludes passivity. When they come, and they always do, let them come knowing every step they take closer to fascism is a hazard to their power, their money, and their sense of morality.

I suppose that I am not afraid of immigrants because a) my grandparents were, b) many of my friends' grandparents, if not actual parents, were, and c) the people I would have had to worry about taking my job were Canadian and bilingual.  The undocumented folks that I worry about drive and fear being arrested and deported and collide with one's car head-on in an attempt to escape.

Aliens (legal or illegal) don't scare me.  Wonder why.  Could it be the science fiction?  Or could it just be that I don't watch Fawkes News?

(In other news, I may get to my thousandth post before my actual blogiversary.  You may open the betting pool on which will happen first.)

Dr. Grumpy Tees off on a Candidate

Specifically, Sue Lowden of Nevada, running for a Senate seat, who appears to have suggested paying one's medical bills via barter.  Specifically, chickens.

Ms. Lowden, to verify the usefulness of your idea,why don't you try a simple experiment- go into any large casino in Las Vegas. With a chicken. And try to bet it on any game. Or stuff it in a slot machine. And then see what casino security thinks about being paid in something other than money. I suspect they'll be as fond of the idea as I am.

Dodged a Cannonball

Article on EFF's website on Facebook's further stripping of user's privacy.

Absolutely nothing I have heard about Facebook over the last, oh, year or so has redounded to Facebook's credit.  My guts spoke, and they were right.

Folks can stay if they want.  Not my problem.  But Facebook sounds less like social networking and more like a marketing scheme.  And in case it's not evident, I don't like marketing schemes.

Via a sidelight in Making Light.  ETA:  Satiric corroboration:

2011 - Facebook History Tracker makes your web surfing history publicly viewable on your feed (and to marketers). After a brief uproar, Facebook enables an "incognito mode" for when you want to look at porn, but it's buried deep within the settings and automatically shuts off after each session.

The Tocsin

Arthur Silber's thoughts on resisting the Death State:

So one principle involved is the withdrawal of support from a damnably evil system in all the ways you can accomplish that end. Two other very significant principles are non-violence (as already mentioned) and non-cooperation. Non-cooperation is a tactic that can be immensely powerful, and one that I've found over the years is not understood or appreciated nearly as fully as it should be. Yet episodes from history when this strategy was utilized show how effective it can be.
...
If you add to [wars and occupations], as you must, the genocide of Native Americans and the importation and incomprehensible brutalization of generations of slaves, you will see that the American exceptionalist myth necessarily depends on the systematic institutionalization of denial at its foundation. Tell the truth and focus on the incontrovertible facts, and the myth vanishes as mist in the morning.

The distraction from the Death State:

For I learned from Miller and the despicable Congressman that the greatest threat to peace and liberty -- for U.S. citizens as well as for millions upon millions of innocent human beings around the world -- is not a government that commits an endless series of war crimes abroad as it increasingly brutalizes and oppresses its own citizens at home. Oh, my, no: the single greatest threat to peace and liberty -- a threat which is inconceivably monstrous in its scope and lethality, one which necessarily leads to destruction on an unimaginable scale -- is a comparatively inconsequential number of people who employ (allegedly) ill-advised and, much more significantly, disfavored rhetoric.

In Memoriam

George Scithers, sf editor and fan.

Via Maple Leaf Rag, whence I got the link (his Millenium Philcon bio).  For someone I don't think I ever met, he seemed to loom large on the periphery.

ETA:  File 770 obit.


(Crossposted--and I should have done this last night.)

The Octopus

Mills River Progressive on how well the banks are doing, with quotes and link to guest post at Alternet by Bill Moyers.  The fact is that the teabaggers seem to be avoiding the knowledge of what large financial corporations are doing to wreck the economy, but that would probably conflict with their worldview.

Woody Guthrie was Right

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a civil suit charging Goldman Sachs with fraud.

(They don't use fountain pens anymore.)

Elder Wisdom

Helen lays down a few home truths.

... You honestly want me to think that your biggest issue is the cost of healthcare reform? You sat idly by while Bush squandered billions on a failed war, but all children having health insurance is too much to handle? That’s your beef? You realize, of course, that some of those children are white, don’t you?

Four Tricyclists of the Apocalypse

OK, this is too nice a day, so:

1. Somali radio stations forced to stop playing music by hardline Islamists.
2. Avedon runs a bunch of links but I really am linking to the animated graphic (hee hee).  Having noted that, though, the links are choice, no filler at all.
3. One of her links goes to Harper's; a quote from Joseph Conrad and a meditation on revolutions by Scott Horton.  Another Harper's piece asserts that the Bush Administration, top to bottom, knew that the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo were actually innocent.
4. Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic on history, specifically American, specifically the Civil War and its century-and-a-half residue aftermath.

Pullet Surprise, 2010

This year's winners, which do not include the National Enquirer (phew!).

Hat tip to Herb Caen for the headline.

Cooperation

I mentioned a while back that this year was the 25th anniversary of "We Are The World" and promptly spaced the release date, and of course the remake for Haiti took up a lot of available sound space.  In that time the 9-part "Making of" feature has been taken down, although there are still pieces floating around on YouTube (most notably, one in which one of the parties identified with the segment says two words, tops, and the one in which Cyndi Lauper is informed of the rattling of her jewelry), but the Original is still up.  (Linked but not embedded to spare your ears, Daisy.)

And actually, one of the interesting things about the video and recording is who isn't there.  I don't recognize everyone, several people appeared without any credit other than the signature on the giant poster, and the video is fuzzy.  And I wouldn't expect Todd Rundgren.

The Usual Suspects

Anna van Z at Mills River Progressive showcases Les Leopold of Alternet concerning 25 hedge fund managers making out like bandits (literally) in a flat year for their funds and instead of teachers., further illustrating the point about capitalism's irrationality about worth and value.  (We need a different economic paradigm because Things Have Changed since Karl Marx and Adam Smith.)

Wake-Up Call

New Sara Robinson at Orcinus, and she's calling out sedition on the "right" and she's using the word!

It's time to confront the sobering fact that the entire right wing -- including the GOP establishment, which encourages, endorses, and echoes these sentiments almost every time its officials appear in public -- is now issuing nearly constant invitations to criminal sedition. They're creating a climate and using language that lowers their base's inhibitions around violence -- and irresponsibly eggs on the handful of sociopaths in their midst who are already primed to kill. They've given their newly-expanded corps of flying monkeys permission to brandish their guns in public, empowered their militias, promised them glory, and are now telling them explicitly which targets to hit.

We'd be idiots not to regard this as an overt threat.

Mrs. Robinson is not given to hyperbole.

ETA:  See also Anthony McCarthy at Echidne of the Snakes.

Defense Against the Dark Arts

Without having to be Spinal Tap's drummer du jour.

Also known as the Shield of Umor (Enchanted Duplicator reference).  Because Sady of Tiger Beatdown is awesome.  Because she includes sentences like "Because dudes like you make me understand ladies like Valerie Solanas, for real."


Heh.

In Memoriam

Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador.

(His name was always in the news, like Foreign Secretary Gromyko and whoever was running the Soviet Union at the time.  It's like the wallpaper of my life is slowly peeling from the wall.)

Bad things in this world

Terrance at Republic of T has posted a new entry in his Poisonous Parenting series (and this one has the to-date list/links for the previous entries).

[TRIGGER WARNING]He starts with the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts (organizations that disapprove of him, his marriage, and his children)

Besides the Catholic church scandal, there’s the news of the Boy Scouts covering up abuse. I find it, if nothing else, noteworthy that two organizations that have gone to some lengrhs to defend their anit-gay policies and that have inveighed against families like mine have the same problems with child sex abuse, and the same penchant for covering it up — or, rather, keeping it in the closet.

and continues on to abusive parents and people, some descriptions of which are stomach-turning.  [TRIGGER WARNING]

This is going to be another day when I find several of my fellow human beings loathsome.

More Fafblog!

Because when Medium Lobster gets it, it's gotten good.

Our troops have a job to do, after all - defending our country from those countries who would defend their country from our country - and if we hounded and nit-picked them after every little massacre, gang rape or atrocity, they'd hardly get any killing done at all.

The Two Minute Relax

So I can find it again.  (Move along, nothing to see here.)

Also

Airline to charge for carry-on luggage.

Now.  I don't know about "normal" people.  My luggage is only checked under protest.  Seriously.  My bags go with me.  Never mind the ancient horror story about an airline that lost a friend's checked suitcase between Niagara Falls and New York City.  The simple incontrovertible fact of the matter is that lugging my baggage subtracts one hour from the flight; specifically, the wait at the carousel for one's grips, guitar, and other appliances.

(I recognize that in certain ways, this is a privilege thing; my mother transports a walker and a sizable suitcase.  I mostly dress down and unornamented; comfort trumps aesthetic every time.)

And I am let's say frugal; but I will not be flying on Spirit Airlines.  Ever.

ETA:  I got this article via John Scalzi's Whateverettes and forgot that was the source (I have MarketWatch, but I wasn't checking it that day).

For Those of You Who Missed S-2 and COINTELPRO

New Senate bill that has to be put down.

Circularity

Medium Lobster practices tautology.

In Memoriam

Mike Cuellar, pitcher.

(I had his baseball card.)

Why It Takes So Long to Get On Unemployment

Corporation helps employers fight jobless claims.

Glorious Easter, For Those Who Celebrate

The Easter story presented as a book review (there is, in fact, an underlying book).

If the power of Jesus — “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” as Peter called him — cannot survive a bit of biblical criticism, then the whole enterprise is rather more rickety than one might have supposed. Still, the objecting cleric’s remark illuminates one of the issues facing not only Christians but the broader world: To what extent should holy books be read and interpreted critically and with a sense of the context in which they were written, rather than taken literally? To later generations of the faithful, what was written in fluctuating circumstances has assumed the status of immutable truth. Otherwise perfectly rational people think of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven on the 40th day after Easter to be as historical an event as the sounding of the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. To suggest that such supernatural stories are allegorical can be considered a radical position in even the most liberal precincts of the Christian world. But the Bible was not FedExed from heaven, nor did the Lord God of Hosts send a PDF or a link to Scripture. Properly understood — and MacCulloch’s book is a landmark contribution to that understanding — Christianity cannot be seen as a force beyond history, for it was conceived and is practiced according to historical bounds and within human limitations.

Off now. Be back later.

ETA:  Gift of "Chocolate Jesus" by Tom Waits (with description and transcript of song) from Arrogant Worm at Opopanox.  Because Tom Waits is from a planet on which the sacrament is chocolate.  And that in turn set me thinking about why this planet doesn't.

Meditation on Reason (No, Not the Magazine!)

That Descartes guy.

A dogmatic adherence to falsehood of the sort frequently claimed by religions which claimed a special knowledge of ultimate questions was, in Descartes’s thinking, one of the greatest challenges to the human species. But for Descartes, the illogical adherence to uttered falsehoods is a human constant which the scientific mind must struggle to overcome. “Since the pressure of things to be done does not always allow us to stop and make such a meticulous check, it must be admitted that in this human life we are often liable to make mistakes about particular things, and we must acknowledge the weakness of our nature.”

Scott Horton generally pairs a [translated] quotation from a long-dead bloke with some nice music, usually composed by some long-dead bloke, with his own thoughts as sandwich filling. I enjoy this stuff, but I kinda wish he'd broaden the selection of dead blokes.

Also, I like Spock when he does Descartes.  Heh

Historic Document

Via The Root, from the NY Times:  Haiti's Declaration of Independence (.pdf, from the National Archives in the UK,  8 pages, in French).

"Liberté ou la mort."  Sound familiar?



(Crossposted to my Dreamwidth journal.)