Dark Days Ahead...

we are all sad for flea

2006-05-05T00:24:00.000-04:00

when i woke up this morning
i was was confronted with the news that our record has been leaked to
the internet
it does not come out til may 9 but now it has leaked
and not that i know alot about this kind of thing
but i guess now it is possible to down load it for free if you want
well
that's not very nice
if you down load it now off one of these file sharing sites
you will be getting a pale imitation of the record
it will be of the poor sound quality of the technique they used to
get it on there
and that will break my heart
it will break john frusciante's heart
it will break anthony kiedis's heart
and it will break the heart of chad smith
yes, we worked for a year and a half to make the epic record of our
lives
and it is sad to me for the business reasons of course
i think we are selling something really cool and we put all we had
into it, 28 songs, 2 hours of the best that we can offer
and i think it is a fair deal for everyone
and for people to just steal a poor sound quality version of it for free
because some asshole stole it and put it on the internet
is sad to me
but, equitable business reasons aside
the thing that really bums me out is
we worked so hard, and so thoughtfully, all of us, for so long
to make this record sound as warm and full from top to bottom
as was possible
we spent day and night for a year making sure every little sound was
just right
that they were all put together in the most beautiful way we could
we did not leave a stone unturned in doing that work
i can not put in words how much this record, stadium arcadium, means
to us
how sacred the sound of it is to us
and how many sleepless nights and hardworking days we all had
thinking about how to make it be the best sounding thing we could
and now, for someone to take it and put it out there with this poor
sound quality
it is a painful pill for us to swallow
let me tell you
this bums all of us out
and i know that, as sensitive as john frusciante is about sound
the idea of anyone getting and hearing this thing that way
will devastate him
for people to not hear the work the way we meant it to be
will really hurt him deep inside
and all of us will hurt

yes, it is stealing from us, and that is lame
everyone has to live with their own conscience on that one
let it be your guide
but to take a version that has been defiled sound wise
a version in which some idiot has taken our year and a half of soul
baring work and pissed all over it
that will break our hearts

sincerely,

flea

This is a good argument against file sharing.

Should We Start Using The Word "Fascism" Now?

2006-05-04T12:59:00.000-04:00

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research...

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed. [Boston Globe via the portside list]

Look, I'm not saying that this is a fascist administration, let alone government. We still have all the trappings of liberal democracy (even if it's only for certain strata of people based on criminality, immigration status, etc.). What I am saying is that this is really scary, that if Bush were a little more like Nixon we would all be in a world of trouble right now instead of just people in Iraq, people in Guantanamo Bay, people along the Gulf Coast, the poor in the U.S. and around the world, immigrants, etc. Once you lay the precedents, all you need are the right (or, rather, wrong) people to come into power and destroy everything.

Back To The Stress Factory

2006-05-03T01:11:00.000-04:00

Okay, I never really left The Stress Factory--but it was geographically in a different place, at least.

In any case, here are the things I've learned, which I will share with you for your and my amusement alike:

1) The Motherf@cking Transportation Association of New York will pick the absolute worst time to have a train break down on you in the worst possible way and at the worst possible location. Think late for flight, broken brakes, line to get out of the train, massive line to get out of the station, shift change for taxis and therefore none available to take me to the airport. By the way, if you think they have a rapid response disaster plan, you're very wrong. Unless you were also thinking it consists of putting several hundred people in a subway station with completely clogged stairwells and platform and so little room to move that you actually look behind you to make sure a train isn't coming to hit you from the other direction.

2) The plane fare from Newark to Chicago (one way) was $2 more than the cab ride from Lower Manhattan to Newark. There's something really wrong with that.

3) Mexican people in Chicago really like speaking in Spanish. Except for one woman, who spoke to me in English. On the other hand, I like speaking in English and my Spanish is about as bad as their English. I think this is all my fault, but I'm too lame to take responsibility. In any case, I really like my exposure to Mexican culture (this dates back several years to when I actually went to Mexico).

4) Putting 700,000 people in a big park is a good way to make them look like less.

5) You should check what time your flight is leaving before you leave the house. I was off by 40 minutes and luckily did not miss the plane.

6) You can't sneak a laptop past the TSA, even when you're in a hurry. Trust me.

7) It costs $14 to get from Newark Airport to New York Penn Station. It costs about $4 or $5 more to get from Philadelphia to New York Penn Station by the same method. There's also something wrong with that.

Finally, 8) the Sears Tower looks really cool half shrouded in fog. I'll share a photo with you upon request and if I actually know you (or at least e-know you).

Happy May Day!

Ironic Quote of The Day

2006-04-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

“It’s intimidation when a million people march down main streets in our major cities under the Mexican flag,” said Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman volunteer border patrol group.

and now I'm really off! See you after May 1st!

Off to Chicago It Is!

2006-04-28T20:18:00.000-04:00

Verdict is in. See you suckas on Tuesday if I don't post before then!

Your Mom Is More Tech Savvy Than the FBI

2006-04-28T13:01:00.000-04:00

From the April 6th article, "February Bureau of Luddites," in Slate.

Two weeks ago, the FBI's chief information officer admitted that the bureau couldn't afford to provide e-mail addresses for 8,000 of its 30,000 employees. The e-mail shortfall is only the latest in a series of embarrassed confessions the FBI has made about its information technology. The most significant mea culpa came when an attempt to upgrade the bureau's case-management software had to be scrapped last year after $170 million had already been spent. A Justice Department report listed all kinds of excuses, from poor "enterprise architecture" planning to shifting design requirements. But behind the management analysis is a more implacable problem. Until very recently, being computer-savvy hasn't been considered much of an asset in the FBI, and clues were something you kept to yourself.

Somehow this is not surprising, mildly amusing, a source of concern, and, at this point, a source of relief as well.

You Should Go Read This

2006-04-28T00:39:00.000-04:00

To be real, most blogs are not very good. This one is. Just look at this exquisite writing:

...I read a lot of Saki, of Jane Austen, of literature that reflected a world that was quieter, and more witty, and more delicate. I spent hours listening to Chopin, lying on my stomach in the hayloft with the pale stripes of light filtered through the lace of leaves fluttering as the wind changed. I stopped talking because no one understood a word I said. And so I rejected everything I knew because it was dirty and ugly. There were places, I was convinced, where people had all their teeth and pigs escaping didn't make front page news in the paper. I wanted to go there and live with people who liked what I liked and thought what I thought. Places where people didn't shackle their minds to what God wanted and what everyone would say to their grandmama when they found out.

So I left and went to live among the Real People. And those Real People didn't understand a word I said, because they were from towns with sidewalks and their parents sent them to Europe for summer and the idea of having drank well water for eighteen years was outside of anything in their experience but Faulkner. I marvelled at people who could go to Europe as if it were the state fair. And I found that those Real People irritated me with their assumptions about the people I'd been raised with as much as the people I'd been raised with annoyed me. These were people who had never had to sit in a dim room with their dying grandmother and hear the argument in the next room about who would inherit her trailer. These were people who thought they understood hardship and they thought hardship was not having enough money to rent movies. The Real People were soft with indulgence and fancied themselves strong.

Read the whole thing.

Stupid Airline Tricks

2006-04-27T20:58:00.000-04:00

You know what's really fun? Clogging up Priceline with ridiculously low fare offers just to see exactly what the lowest fare you could have gotten would be. I mean, I suppose it's hypothetically possible that I could get a $5 flight to Los Angeles (btw, taxes and fees $45?!?!?). But it's more fun to do for the purpose of finding out what I'm be getting myself into, rather than relying on Priceline's Wizard of Oz routine :)

So the reason I look for airline tickets, aside from various other factors, is that May 1st (i.e. May Day, for some people) is supposed to be this big thing for immigrants rights...and hence my job--which is to write about such things. Well, people out West are saying it's going to be a big thing. People out East (i.e. New York) are saying rather lame things about employees and employers working together for joyous holding of hands across Queens. Meanwhile, people in Chicago are apparently largely unconsulted by the press, though they had the first major demonstration and were the ones who came up with the whole "use radio DJs" schtick (a year before these demos, actually).

I don't want to go to LA where I know there's going to be something that goes down (even if it's not 2 million people, though it really could be). I don't want to cover this lameass New York stuff and I know nothing better is gonna happen in DC. And Chicago, seems like it will be interesting as an organizer at that link tells Amy Goodman (aka The Best Firehouse Employee Ever) that the recent public-relations driven arrests of about a thousand undocumented workers by the government have mobilized people further.

So what say ye? Shall I book tickets to Chicago in the hopes that a 500,000 person demonstration that's actually interesting materializes, spending $184 I don't have? Or shall I rely on laziness and make phone calls from here? Or shall I try to play it both ways and belatedly rent a car or get a Greyhound or book an overly expensive last minute flight (yes, even more than last minute flight than this one).

I really can't handle any more demonstrations, to tell you the truth. But is this part of my job? So many questions...

Sometimes I wish I had a boss. Not often. Just sometimes. At least I'd have someone to be pissed off at then, while doing whatever it is I should have been anyway :)

Update So it seems that ~~the~~ a flyer for the May 1st thing in Chicago is being hosted at ICIRR, which is a board member of CCIR, the more moderate, DC-driven wing of this movement. So now I think Chicago might be both rather large and simultaneously a mixed bag. That actually makes is more interesting.

Operation Falcon II: The Empire Strikes Back (Again)

2006-04-27T16:25:00.000-04:00

So, over a week or so last week, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies engaged in a dragnet to arrest over 9,000 people. Here's an excerpt from the article I read about it:

"Ten years to the day after allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl, a California man was arrested in a roundup of fugitives that law enforcement officials say snared more than 1,100 sex offenders.

The concentrated search for people wanted for federal, state and local crimes "targeted the worst of the worst," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Thursday at a news conference announcing the results of "Operation Falcon II."

Authorities arrested 9,037 people April 17 to last Sunday in a 27-state dragnet led by the U.S. Marshals Service and timed to coincide with National Victims Rights Week. Among those apprehended were 1,102 people wanted for violent sex crimes or failure to register as sex offenders."

and now here's the U.S. Marshall's website:

Operation FALCON II - Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally - This massive fugitive dragnet took place the week of April 17-23, 2006 and covered the western half of the United States. As a prelude to National Crime Victim's Rights Week, this cooperative effort removed some of the country's most dangerous wanted criminals from the streets.

Deputy US marshals teamed up with their state, local, and federal colleagues in the largest fugitive sweep to ever primarily focus on violent sex offenders. FALCON II resulted in the arrest of 9,037 fugitives and the clearance of 10,419 warrants. Of those fugitives arrested, 462 were wanted for violent sex crimes, 311 for other sex crimes, and an additional 783 failed to register as Sex Offenders.

For the record, the "more than 1,100 sex offenders" made up 10.6% of the cleared warrants (I don't know what "cleared warrants" means, but I assume that's what the 1,100 figure comes out of). I wonder who the other 89.4% were and why they aren't profiled extensively in the article or the press release or the Marshall's department website.

Well, for Operation Falcon I--also done as a press spectacular during Crime Victim's Week, last year, about 40% were drug-related and about another 20% were for burglaries.

So my question is this--did the AP writer just cut and paste the FBI press release or what?

Coming Close To Rock Bottom :)

2006-04-27T11:59:00.000-04:00

I just put up a Craig's List ad to teach people intro Bangla :)

Freelance journalism, why hast thou forsaken me! (or my wallet, anyway :)

This Is The Last Straw

2006-04-25T18:54:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! sucks anyway, and now it's collaborating with the Chinese government to get people arrested (link courtesy Chapati Flapati).

Google may not be perfect, but they both try a little bit and don't collaborate this blatantly (at least as far as I know). And of course they're better :)

Anyway, I would shut down my Yahoo! e-mail account completely, but that would mean some kind of sacrifice.

Jane Jacobs Passes

2006-04-25T18:34:00.000-04:00

wiki bio and her foreword to her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities....

(news courtesy DOBS)

"Who's the moron who banned us?"

2006-04-23T07:23:00.000-04:00

and other witty sayings and Nepal news from samudaya.org.

I Exoticize You: Driving in India Videos From YouTube

2006-04-21T04:31:00.000-04:00

A bunch of people have posted videos on YouTube documenting what it's like to drive in India. I thought others might be interested, because some of these are kind of cool--especially, I imagine, if you've never been. If you click on the play button, you watch it here; if you click anywhere else on the images, you go to YouTube. More information about the respective places is available on the wikipedia links in the captions.

Generic "India" bird's eye view--this is the most viewed one.

Patna

Himachal Pradesh forest

Delhi at night

Agra

More here (including a man and a woman apparently having sex on the side of the road :).

Gotta Run

2006-04-17T20:27:00.000-04:00

But I just wanted to point out two online transactions I made:

1) I got conned by an IRS-affiliated payment center into thinking I was filing a New York state extension with them as well. It wasn't that they overtly stated that--but they help you file a federal extension and then "offer" to send you to the New York State one, where they don't clearly and prominently (at least if you're in a hurry) tell you that you will still need to file through the New York State tax department website and that New York State, unlike the federal government, hasn't yet privatized the business of sending money to the government. Above and beyond my queasiness and, well, outrage, at the federal privatization of payment of taxes, I think this is unscrupulous, to say the least.

The company is Pay1040.com and their official partner is H&R Block.

2) My bank has a program to send some portion of whatever you spend using the debit/credit program to a school. When I signed up for the program, it was directed to the NYC school near where I was living at the time. At some point, they decided it was okay to switch to the extremely well-funded school district that I grew up in because my billing address is as such. This was annoying.

I finally switched it, but New York has so many schools, that I had to basically pick one randomly that's in a fairly working-class / low-income neighborhood (Ozone Park, Queens). I was considering sending to some random-ass school in Mississippi or elsewhere where they really need the money, but given that I didn't have enough info for even the decision about New York, I figured I probably wouldn't about Mississippi either.

Public education is a basic service and, really, a basic right, to the extent that global society can afford it. I would like to be able to live in a world in which my bank and its customers are not making these choices about resource allocation--even if it's a small degree. I would also like to live in a world in which I could give to the school of my choice in Calcutta or Dakar or elsewhere, rather than only U.S.-based schools. But, such as it is, I pick to send the miniscule amounts of money that will accrue from this to a place in New York or Mississippie, and meanwhile the bank is the one that acrrues the real benefits-- public relations.

I should really get a credit union account or something. I would open an account at the UNITE-HERE-owned bank (yes, they own a bank), but I've heard it operates like East German institutions in its insanity and bureaucracy. And who cares about UNITE!

Random Ranting

2006-04-17T08:21:00.000-04:00

"We have indicted felons from other societies on the loose here," he said. "You see the exponential rise of drug-resistant T.B. and other things. That is not indicting an entire culture, but it is pointing out a problem."

[U.S. Representative] Hayworth recently published a book, "Whatever It Takes" (Regnery Publishing, 2006), in which he advocates enlisting agencies like the Internal Revenue Service to find illegal immigrants; arresting and deporting them all; deploying military troops on the southern border; and temporarily suspending legal immigration from Mexico.

Nice. The quote is taken from an article in the Times entitled "Demonstrations on Immigration Harden A Divide."

First of all, were this true, this might be scary. However, I don't think you're seeing a hardening of a divide as much as the exposition of a drama. And that's going to cause some tensions and some anger and some passions to unfold.

Second, it would be interesting if someone pointed out the real divide--between working people who are passionate on this issue (one one side or the other) and calm rich citizen businesspeople who are going to win one way or the other--either by posing as pro-immigrant and getting cheap labor or by getting more people elected that are broadly pro-business and pro-elite--though not in agreement on this issue. Trust me--if they don't pass an immigration bill this year, there are no U.S. businesses that are going to go out of business.

Third, what the fuck is the Times doing? This whole article irritates me because it's mostly speculation about the effects of immigration protests on the 2006 elections when there's an actual social change happening--i.e. Latino communities and especially Mexican communities are more organized than they have been in my lifetime. If that costs their (and my) interests a few seats in the 2006 midterm elections, that's not really as much of a story as the bigger shift they're heralding towards populism and social mass mobilization among the disenfranchised. In ten years, you're not going to care as much about who won the 8th district in Arizona as you are about the bigger picture. Not that the article is politically horrible--just annoying overall and detracts from the overall amount of substantive coverage that's eventually going to be written (and otherwise produced) about this so-called crisis.

Finally, if you're the U.S. citizen school teacher in Arizona who's quoted in the piece upset about undocumented people using up too many resources, I would suggest you go to this website and get some perspective. I understand that it's tax day, but that doesn't mean that teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs are out to get you.

OMG This Is So Funny

2006-04-17T05:58:00.000-04:00

...if you're a Mets fan who remembers 1986. If you are or were a Red Sox fan, not so much.

It's a video recreation of the bottom of the 10th inning with the actual sound from NBC Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola and the video from...RBI Baseball (remember that?). I think the people who did this may have recreated the whole game, but this is the only video we have from them :). They included every foul ball, wild pitch, trip to the mound by the manager, pitching change, and, of course, error from the bottom of the tenth. It's hilarious, and totally apropos, given how good the Mets are again this year and how annoying Red Sox fans are, particularly since they won the World Series.

I fell asleep during the actual event (in fact, in the very spot I'm in now, though on a different sofa) and woke up the next morning with my brother telling me that the Mets had won. I thought, being 7 at the time, that that was his way of rubbing in the pain, and therefore proceeded to yell at him until he convinced me he was telling the truth.

If you have any familiarity with this World Series, I strongly suggest you watch this--it'll be worth it.

Gotta Love Dem Colonizers!

2006-04-17T03:55:00.000-04:00

The condemned Hindus were publicly burned at the stake in the square outside the Sé Cathedral in batches during ceremonies known as auto da fé (Portuguese: act of faith).

Those who confessed to their accused heresy would be strangled prior to the burning.

Such charitable kindness!

From the Wikipedia article on the Goa Inquisition (1560-1812). Among those said to have been persecuted by the Portuguese were Hindus, Jews (including some who had fled the Inquisition in Iberia), and Christians. I can only assume that a few Muslims must have been as well, given the length of time it went on and that it happened in South Asia.

To learn more about Goa, click here.

Shakira!

2006-04-16T19:45:00.000-04:00

Did you know that Shakira has Lebanese blood? According to Wikipedia, her father is an American-born Lebanese person (like Ralph Nader) and her mother is half-Colombian and half-Italian.

The thing that set me off on trying to find this out was the IMDB entry. I wanted to know how old she was--someone had tried to convince me she was quite young, but she really is 29, only a bit older than me. Anyway, the listing says that she sometimes goes by "Shakira Mebarak." This struck me as a fairly atypical name for a Latina :)

The whole name turns out to be "Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll," says Wikipedia. And it turns out that Shakira is an Arabic word too.

I still can't figure out what faith tradition(s) she was raised in or adheres to now. That's what I was truly curious about--whether she's Muslim or was raised Muslim or not.

I Had My First Extremely Negative Interview Today

2006-04-13T23:23:00.000-04:00

Among the lowlights from him (from various points in the conversation):

-"Well, now you're just arguing with me."
-"I see what direction this is going"
-and him hanging up as I was saying "Thanks for your time."

Who says I'm not cut out to be a journalist!

Okay, so it wasn't that bad. But it left me feeling $hitty. Maybe I shouldn't confront people anymore :)

FBI Approach on Lynching: Wait 60 Years, Then Intimidate Old People

2006-04-13T17:27:00.000-04:00

Presumably, we can expect an investigation into former Attorney General John Ashcroft or President Bush sometime around 2063 because of the respective stains they left on "our history." In the meantime, here are the details on how racial justice sometimes does (not) work in the U.S.:

AP: FBI Reviews 1946 Public Lynching Case
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer

Nearly 60 years after a white mob lynched two black couples on a summer afternoon and got away with it, the FBI is taking another look at the case.

FBI agent Stephen Emmett said the case is being reviewed "to insure that any recent technology or techniques could be used to enhance the prior investigation." He would not elaborate and said a decision on whether to actually reopen the investigation has not yet been made.

The bureau refused to say why it had taken a renewed interest in the 1946 case.

Civil rights activists have pressed witnesses to come forward and break the silence, which they say is the nation's last unsolved public lynching.

"The African-American community in Walton County told me years ago if we're going to get justice it has to come from the federal government," said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials. "Our hope is that the federal government will take this case and move it to a federal jury."

The Associated Press learned about the renewed federal interest when the FBI recently denied a 13-month-old request by the news organization to see the bureau's 3,770-page case file on the lynching. The FBI rejected the request, saying the release of the file could interfere with a pending investigation.

"FBI headquarters and the Department of Justice asked us to take another look at the case," said Agent Steve Lazarus, a spokesman with the FBI's Atlanta office.

The agency has previously released only a 500-page summary of the case file, which names 55 suspects. However, no one has ever been charged in the lynchings and it is unclear how many of those suspects are still alive.

Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey were riding with a white farmer when they were killed on July 25, 1946, in Monroe, a few days after Roger Malcom got into a fight with a white man. The mob forced them out of the car, dragged them down a trail near a bridge over the Apalachee River and shot them, according to an FBI report. The farmer was spared.

What made the lynchings more horrific, said author Laura Wexler, was how public and brazen they were.

"This didn't happen under cover of darkness. It happened at 5 or 6 in the afternoon," said Wexler, whose book "Fire in a Canebrake" chronicles the killings. "There's no evidence that shows they were wearing any kind of mask."

The FBI was ordered to investigate the case in 1946 by President Truman but was thwarted by a lack of witnesses. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says it still pursues every lead it gets and has never closed the case.

Retired FBI agent Bill Fleming, who has volunteered to help investigate the murders in Monroe, said suspects or witnesses who may still be alive might want to clear their conscience.

"You've got these people that are old, and when you get older it's easier to frighten these people that wouldn't talk in the 1940s," said the 33-year FBI veteran.

Brooks said the FBI's involvement is one more step in ending the "conspiracy of silence" that has protected the perpetrators.

"It's a stain on our history and a burden on our souls," he said.

On The Flip Side...

2006-04-11T20:19:00.000-04:00

I'm really looking forward to the day that Michelle Malkin is irrelevant :) I think that's coming soon. How much longer is it going to be amusing or remotely acceptable for a Filipina apologist for Japanese internments and self-proclaimed "conservative" to be walking around spouting off about random $hit?

I can't imagine for very long--I think she's going to get iced out by her own people (conservatives, not filipinos) as they see the trendlines going in the other direction. And die a lonely and bitter old woman.

So sad. Conservative multiculturalism is running its day ;)

How Are Americans So Dumb?

2006-04-11T00:59:00.000-04:00

Okay, not all Americans. I've been cautioned against assuming by people more levelheaded than me. However, with that said, I've been reading some blog posts and small-outlet articles about the latest mass mobilizations in opposition to HR 4437 (the really, really hideous immigration bill--as opposed to the slightly less hideous one in the Senate).

I have no problem with ideological arguments against immigration because they're based in ideology--argument for argument's sake and all. However, a lot of the premises that people rely on (from many sides of this debate) are just plain stupid. Some of these include:

-It would be easy for undocumented people to "go home" if they "don't like it here."
-The U.S. business elite did nothing to create the current situation--it was all the immigrants who came here and created the jobs at Tyson Foods that they now work in.
-Jailing and deportations cost less and are more humane than legalization.
-People who have been f@#ked over by the immigration system in the past through massive delays or misprocessing have greater moral authority than someone who overstayed a visa and lives in the United States without papers.
-That if people just went back to their countries of origin and applied for visas and "waited in line like everyone else," they would have a chance in hell of doing so.
-Low-wage workers in the U.S. would benefit from deportations, rather than from a mass legalization that would secure workplace rights for undocumented people.
-Civil rights struggles have "an order" and Latino immigrants are jumping ahead of the line.

What world do these people live in? It's like there's never been any history, human beings don't have lives, there isn't any economics, poor people and rich people don't have different prospects. I mean, these are really basic things, here, not complicated geopolitics.

Which reminds me that apparently, no one has ever taught a lot of people about even the basics of the history of the U.S.'s relationship to Mexico (and many other parts of the world).

Anyway, I wish people were a little more well read. I'm really frustrated with the ways in which people talk about other people on blogs and in the media in general. It's really dispiriting :(

Amy Goodman Interviewing President Clinton in 2000

2006-04-07T00:52:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I never heard about this controversy before now. (I ran across it while doing vanity searches on Wikipedia :) Shows what I get for listening and watching the wrong coverage of Election 2000.

Here's an excerpt (or you can listen to the whole segment (sound):

AMY GOODMAN: Many people say that Ralph Nader is at the high percentage point he is in the polls because you have been responsible for taking the Democratic party to the right. What do you say to listeners who are listening around the area right now (Overlap)

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I'm glad you asked that.

AMY GOODMAN: ... those concerns.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I'm glad you asked that, and that's the last question I've got time for. I'll be happy to ... answer that. What is the measure of taking the Democratic Party to the right? That we cut the welfare rolls in half? That poverty is at a 20 year low? That child poverty has been cut by a third in our administration? That the incomes of average Americans have gone up 15 percent after inflation? That poverty among seniors has gone below 10 percent for the first time in American history? That we have the lowest African American, the lowest Latino unemployment rate in the history of the country? That we have a 500 percent increase in the number of minority kids taking advanced placement tests?

That the schools in this country, that the test scores among ... since we have required all the schools to have basic standard test scores, among African Americans and other minorities have gone up steadily? Now what (Overlap)

AMY GOODMAN: Can I say that some people ...

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, let me just finish.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me just say ...

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now let me ... now, wait a minute. You started this and every question you've asked has been hostile and combative. So you listen to my answer, will you do that?

AMY GOODMAN: They've been (Overlap)

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, you just listen to me. You ask the questions, and I'm going to answer. You have asked questions in a hostile, combative, and even disrespectful tone, but I ... and you have never been able to combat the facts I have given you. Now, you listen to this. The other thing Ralph Nader says is that, you know, he's pure as Caesar's wife on the environment.

Under this administration, 43 million more Americans are breathing cleaner air. We have safer drinking water, safer food, cleaner water. We have more land set aside than any administration in history since Theodore Roosevelt. We have cleaned up three times as many toxic waste sites as the previous administrations did in 12 years. And we passed a chemical right-to-know law that is a very tough law. It's the best environmental record in history.

Al Gore's opponent, and one of the two of them are going to be President ... Al Gore's opponent has promised to weaken the clean air standards, and repeal a lot of the land protections. Now, those are the facts. People can say whatever they want to. Those are the facts.

AMY GOODMAN: What people say is that you pushed through NAFTA, that we have the highest population of prisoners in the industrialized world, of over 2 million. That more people are on death penalty in this country than anywhere else. And that people are (Overlap)

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, all right. Okay, that's fine.

AMY GOODMAN: (Overlap/Inaudible) ... opposed on them.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's fine. But two thirds of the American people support that. I think there are too many people in prison, too. I have called for a total evaluation of the people in the Federal prison system, a review of the Federal sentencing guidelines. I did my best to persuade Congress to get rid of the discrepancy between crack cocai- ... crack and powdered cocaine and the sentencing guidelines.

You can read or listen to the rest here.

Answers, Answers

2006-04-06T22:22:00.000-04:00

Six months is too long to wait. Here are the complete answers to the iPod/Musicmatch game post.

1. I've been working this graveshit, and I ain't made shit.
-Kanye West, Spaceship, credit to maisnon
2. It's still getting worse after everything I've tried.
-Nine Inch Nails, Sanctified
3. And we gotta do it somethin like it..thii thii ii - ii ii ii
-Ranjit Manni, Bheer off of Indestructible Asian Beats (sorry for the transcription error)
4. Chiiiiiiiilllldhood living....is easy to do.
-Rolling Stones, Wild Horses--brimful
5. There's a war going on outside no man is safe from.
-Mobb Deep, Survival of the Fittest
6. I ain't a killa but don't push me. Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin pussy.
-Tupac Shakur, Hail Mary
7. Bottle of white. Bottle of red. Perhaps a bottle of rose instead.
-Billy Joel, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant--rage
8. They said she had a heart attack. I think the creature's coming back.
-Fatboy Slim & Macy Gray, Demons
9. [1:20 of drums, horns, and some other stuff followed by] ninisaresareresa...
-Tabla Quintet, Na-Da [No Sleep Mix] also off of Indestructible Asian Beats.
10. Let me tell you the snakes, the fakes, the lies, the highs, at all of these industry shing-dings.
-Get it off your chest, say it: A Tribe Called Quest, Show Business
11. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa-
ahhhhhhhaaaaaahhhaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaahaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaahahahhahahha-
aaaaaaa Sahib ji sultan ji tum baro gareeb nawaj
-Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Mohe Apne Rang Main Rang Le Nijaam--ashvin (3/4 credit for getting Nusrat).
12. Y que voy a hacer con mi despiste selectivo y con mi sueno frustrado de aprender a cocinar
-Shakira, Que Vuelvas
13. Dear alex and marilyn, they're lovey and thurston howellin
-Beastie Boys, The Grasshopper Unit (Keep Movin')
14. What's wrong with the world, mama? People livin like they ain't got no mamas.
-Black Eyed Peas, Where Is The Love--ashvin
15. Don't worry. About a thing. Every little thing gonna be all right.
-Bob Marley, Three Little Birds--rage
16. Yeah yeah yeah ah. You see a man's face.
-Massive Attack, (Exchange)
17. bleib nicht wo du bist ganz egal wie es dort ist
-2raumwohnung, Da sind wir
18. Once a great place, now a prison, all i can say, all i can do.
-Sufjan Stevens, Detroit Lift Up Your Weary Head (Rebuild!, Restore!, Reconsider!)
19. I've been tryin to get to you...for a long time.
-Soul Survivors, Expressway To Your Heart
20. You do it for the joy it brings because you're a joy for a girl.
-Ani DiFranco, Joyful Girl, covered by Dave Matthews/Soulive--rage

Total Scores:

1. rage, 503 points
2. ashvin, 1.75 points
3. (tie) brimful and maisnon, 1 point

Honorable Mention: andrea

Please note that, as in life, these points have no meaning.

Music Is My Life...and Apparently I Don't Know My Taste In Either Very Well

2006-04-02T21:32:00.000-04:00

Gleefully stolen from Andrea who stole it from Brimful who stole it from somewhere else.

Rules for me *slight mods for humbuggery and lack of iPod*:
1. Go to MusicMatch, set to shuffle play
2. Write down the first line of each of the next twenty songs.
3. If they are embarrassing, you still have to write them down. Sorry.
4. Any song where the title is the first line of the song must be excluded.
5. Only one song per artist.
6. For hip hop songs with shout outs or other prefatory notes in the beginning, I started with the actual rhymes.

Rules for you, dear readers:
1. NO GOOGLING. This must come out of your own brain. It's on the honor code. Except I cheated. But it wouldn't work if I didn't!
2. Leave your guesses as to which songs are represented above. They'll be crossed out as people get them right.
3. There will not be prizes, because I am not generous.
4. I'm not tagging anyone, but if you decide to play this game in your own blog, please let me know!
5. You have up to 6 months (depending on my whimsy).

Here are the songs, from my Musicmatch Library:

1. ~~I've been working this graveshit, and I ain't made shit.~~Kanye West, Spaceship--credit to maisnon
2. It's still getting worse after everything I've tried.
3. And we gotta do it somethin like it..thii thii ii - ii ii ii
4. ~~Chiiiiiiiilllldhood living....is easy to do.~~Rolling Stones, Wild Horses--credit to brimful
5. There's a war going on outside no man is safe from.
6. I ain't a killa but don't push me. Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin pussy.
7. ~~Bottle of white. Bottle of red. Perhaps a bottle of rose instead.~~ Billy Joel, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant--credit to rage, 11:59 p.m. day of.
8. They said she had a heart attack. I think the creature's coming back.
9. [1:20 of drums, horns, and some other stuff followed by] ninisaresareresa...
10. Let me tell you the snakes, the fakes, the lies, the highs, at all of these industry shing-dings.
11. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa-
ahhhhhhhaaaaaahhhaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaahaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaahahahhahahha-
aaaaaaa Sahib ji sultan ji tum baro gareeb nawaj Nusrat--ashvin gets 3/4 credit for figuring out what the hell this was and getting Nusrat. If anyone wants a quarter point, feel free to try and come up with the name of the track :)
12. Y que voy a hacer con mi despiste selectivo y con mi sueno frustrado de aprender a cocinar
13. Dear alex and marilyn, they're lovey and thurston howellin
14. ~~What's wrong with the world, mama? People livin like they ain't got no mamas.~~Black Eyed Peas, Where Is The Love--credit to ashvin
15. ~~Don't worry. About a thing. Every little thing gonna be all right.~~ Bob Marley, Three Little Birds--credit to rage, 11:59 p.m., day of.
16. Yeah yeah yeah ah. You see a man's face.
17. bleib nicht wo du bist ganz egal wie es dort ist
18. Once a great place, now a prison, all i can say, all i can do.
19. I've been tryin to get to you...for a long time.
20. ~~You do it for the joy it brings because you're a joy for a girl. [if you can guess who's covering this song on my track, you get 500 points :)]~~ Ani DiFranco, Joyful Girl, covered by Dave Matthews/Soulive--credit + 500 points to rage, 11:59 p.m., day of. Please note that, as in life, these points have no meaning. Stop jumping through hoops!

Tell me the artist and the song! And by the way, I would get maybe 3, 4 of these on my own, so no bashfulness.

Update: Answers now posted!

"Is Pat Forde A Ho-mo-sec-su-al?" (said in the voice of Stewie Griffin)

2006-03-31T17:16:00.000-05:00

The abovenamed espn.com commentator describes Joakim Noah, the star sophomore basketball player at the University of Florida, as having a "cross-cultural combo platter of arresting features." He later says he's "habanero hot." (although here referring to his game, not his looks). Still later:

In Minneapolis, he was happy to talk about growing up in France, speaking French and being nicknamed "Frenchy," "French Fry" and "French Toast" by John Thompson Jr. at Georgetown's basketball camp.

Why do ~~ethnic minorities~~ non-Whites, who make up the vast majority of the world's population, always get compared to food products? I never hear White people being compared to peach cobbler. I guess they get called vanilla sometimes. Regardless, I think it happens to non-Whites a lot more, and it really bothers me. All the mango chutney kimchi oreo coconut chocolate stuff is just gross. It's like: "I want to eat you, f@#k you, and, oh, by the way, I dominate and oppress you."

A Very Intelligent Racist Friend Of Mine

2006-03-31T11:33:00.000-05:00

...once said to me when he was much younger that "rap is not music" because it doesn't have "tonality." As I was listening to "Lose Yourself" just now and playing along on the piano, I realized something. Rap turns the voice into a percussion instrument instead of a melodic instrument. Is this, then, the answer to that claim, that I've been searching for for years?

Your thoughts are welcome.

Want To See Schadenfreude At Work?

2006-03-31T10:55:00.000-05:00

I was going to post something here about how sepiamutiny got hijacked, but i've realized i've probably once again been caught by their april fool's joke.

fuckers :)

p.s.--it is quite amusing when you read the entries for "happy hippie" :)

Proselytizing Once More!

2006-03-28T15:07:00.000-05:00

I have applied for a job at the NewStandard. This is not because I love jobs, or because i am enamoured of the economy as a whole, but because, as I mentioned in the sidebar, I think it may be the only solid news source in the entire country. And I think they're daily!

Read it.

Protest In L.A. Didn't Begin or End Saturday

2006-03-28T14:57:00.000-05:00

You know what the third largest single-day protest was in the wave of immigrant rallies over the past two weeks? As far as I can tell, it was the walkout of 40,000 students in Los Angeles yesterday. Read more here.

I hope L.A. is headed for a revolution :)

Data For Immigrant Protests

2006-03-28T00:33:00.000-05:00

Important: Below is the largely unrevised original draft of this post followed by updates and corrections that add, but also correct.

So my wounded ego has been puzzling and trying to come up with an answer as to why there have been enormous protests not just in Los Angeles (500,000), but in Chicago (100,000), Milwaukee (10,000), Phoenix (15,000), Denver (40,000), and, relatively speaking, even Charlotte (7,000), Columbus (3,000), and Detroit (1,000), compared to protests in New York and San Francisco (i.e. nothing and nothing).

I used Census 2000 results this time, and looked at Latino, Mexican, and Total Populations (split by native born and foreign born) for the following cities: LA; Chicago; Denver; Phoenix; Milwaukee; Charlotte; Columbus; Detroit; Houston; New York; Philadelphia; Miami.

Here's what I found:

As the ratio of native-born Mexicans to foreign-born Mexicans decreases, protest size goes up (extremes in the pattern were 46% LA with 500,000 protesters and 58% Detroit with 1,000 protestors). The outlier among cities with demonstrations was Charlotte (only 27% native-born). The outlier among cities without a demonstration was New York (35% native-born Mexicans).

A major difference between the cities that had protest and three of the four that didn't (New York, Philadelphia, and Miami) was that Mexicans made up a much smaller percentage of Latinos. Compare 9% in New York to 70% in Chicago. Houston was at 72% and reportedly has a demonstration scheduled tomorrow--we'll see if it happens. Same pattern if you only look at foreign born and native born subsets of the cities.

Another trend is that the cities with the four largest protests had Mexican populations that were over 15% of the population (topping out at 30% for LA). In contrast, every other city had less than ten % with the exception of Houston.

This one's a little weaker, but for the cities that had protests, the ratio of the number of protesters (by police estimates) to the number of Mexicans was between (1:2--LA) and (1:5-Chicago). The major exception was Phoenix, where the ratio was 1:25.

Here's the data (excel) in case you want to look at it yourself. The one stupid thing I did was to fail to source the crowd estimates. Remember, Census 2000 can be extremely unreliable about particular things--especially in the hands of a novice like me--so take all this with several shakers of salt :) And the numbers are all outdated--they're from 1999.

You can find the same kind of stuff here on the Census Factfinder site.

Update: I added to the original data file numbers for SF, Oakland, and a combined number. If you take SF alone, it fits in well with the others. If you start trying to come up with some kind of composite for the Bay Area, it doesn't work as well--it's also sort of methodologically unsound since I didn't do that with any of the other cities. But anyway, who am I to say what's methodologically unsound when I'm fairly arbitrarily modifying protest figures--

I listed SF's protest at 4,000, taking 80% of a figure offered by organizers to the media--that sounds sort of reasonable for an estimate of a police estimate, right? :)

Update 2: I revised the SF protest numbers down to 1,000 after seeing a media report (although I saw another that said "thousands"). I've also included Boston and San Jose, which both also had demonstrations. San Jose fits with the pattern; Boston is sort of the anti-Houston--it resembles the other Northeastern cities more in terms of the demographics I looked at. This, however, makes sense, as the demonstration there was reported to be from "a broad array of backgrounds," making this pretty distinct from the other demonstrations.

And here's an article about the role of Spanish language media in mobilizing people in all of the cities with big demonstrations.

Update 3: I added Dallas by reader request. It, like Houston, Boston, and, possibly Charlotte, doesn't fit with the pattern. So there's something else going on.

Update 4: Hoy reportedly reports (it's in Spanish :) that there was, in fact, a demonstration of 1,000 people in Washington Heights in New York. The neighborhood is predominantly Dominican (and gentrifying--think Columbia Med School, among other forces). The spreadsheet upstairs for download has not yet been updated. Meanwhile, a source reports off-the-record that the New York media has been contacting him/her all atwitter with why New York didn't have a 500,000 person protest :)

Update 5: Well, Dallas fits the pattern now :) I haven't updated the spreadsheet, but it's now had what's likely the second largest protest in the country.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Lewis Black on Terry Schiavo, Abortion, and Terrorism

2006-03-26T17:42:00.000-05:00

The reason I'm posting this--aside from the fact that I didn't have any hot water with which to take a shower the last time I checked--is the second half of the video, where Black talks about his solution to nihilistic violence. It's hilarious.

Here's the YouTube video. Just skip to the part after he talks about abortion if you're impatient/ADD but still want to indulge me. It'll be worth it.

I Would Like It If You Read This Post

2006-03-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

This month, Harper's Magazine has a cover story on "the unthinkable" possibility of an American coup d'etat. Last month, their editor, Lewis Lapham, wrote a lengthy essay arguing for the impeachment of President Bush.

Quite clearly, we have been losing a lot of our freedoms here in the United States. Some of them are on hot-button issues related to particular constituencies--poor people, immigrants, women, etc. You can, however, consider these as part of the larger trends I described above and wonder if these are just examples of an overall restructuring of the relationship of states (or at least, the United States) to people--including its own citizens--shifting power to the former, and not the latter.

It's seems that since Watergate, the United States has headed for (re)acceptance of increasingly expanded Presidential power, Watergate notwithstanding. It has further made Congressional elections even more difficult to contest than they already were. We have had a sitting vice President (George Bush I) elected for the first time in about 150 years (Martin Van Buren was the last) and another one who almost (and some say, did) win. This development points to the the ability for individual politicians and the ideas they represent to continue in office for longer periods than they could earlier. For the first time in a long time, there was a Supreme Court intervention in a Presidential election, that, at best, is sketchy (when the people who decide a case say it should not be considered a precedent, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of their belief that it was made on any kind of principle). We also now have regular arguments (at varying levels of credibility ;) for the impeachment of sitting Presidents (Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II) without a popular consensus.

Finally, there's dynastic politics afoot--Hillary Clinton is the Democratic equivalent of George Bush II solely in terms of being candidates on the basis of recently elected related officials. This is, as I understand it, practically unprecedented. Even John Quincy Adams was elected more than 20 years after his father in a much less democratic period--George Bush II was elected 12 years later, and if Hillary Clinton were elected, it would be a mere 8 years after her husband.

With all this going on, is this a second gilded age, as it's been portrayed by a lot of people? Or taking a more ~~materialist~~ analytical point of view, are the specifics of vastly increased state power (both in the U.S. and in the kinds of states that are emerging as powers like India and China), the mutually reinforcing dynamic of capacities of individual violence increasing and state response to restrict civil liberties, increase militarism, and otherwise control people (whether domestically or internationally), and the immense power that's been ceded to corporations a harbinger of something worse to come?

As a test of some of my claims above about state power, consider this:
with paper communications, the U.S. government was severely restricted in what it is and is not allowed to do; when telephone communications emerged later, the government was able to monitor them to some extent and controls and regulates airwaves but is still limited by legal provisions; when television was introduced, the government owns the airwaves and controls content to a greater degree; now we see with the NSA datamining scandal and programs like Echelon that the most recent technologies like cell phones, e-mail, and the Internet are being snooped on with virtually no restrictions and being censored (at least the Internet) to a far greater degree.

Consider also that the United States, in Kosovo, perfected the art of warfare to the point where it was able to implement its desired changes in policy without actually engaging in the level of risk it formerly had to. Don't get me wrong--if you saw pictures of bridges and other bombing results in Yugoslavia at the time, it was still destructive and killed a a lot of people. And obviously the Iraq war demonstrates that if the policy desires are not in line with the realities of what's possible, then the realities are going to win.

However, I find it hard to believe that at some point, the several hundred year trend of increasing state power (through technology, but also other mechanisms) is going to disappear suddenly. Is it, then, the case that the two alternatives in the next economic era are going to be autocratic overcentralized regimes and benevolent overcentralized states?

If so, I'm not happy about this.

And if my description is accurate or at least highly plausible, does Russ Feingold represent the best fear-based alternative in 2008 for liberals and progressives (as opposed to radicals) for retaining some semblance of democratic rule of law in the United States? I say this because he's a rigid law and order guy, but for real, not as rhetoric, and with some decency and morals behind it.

Or, is the United States unsalvageable in the long run under the current system and we need to evolve something new, in which case it opens up the question of what the most appropriate goal is to pursue and what strategies need to be adopted to get there as smoothly as possible.

Your thoughts?

500,000 March in LA

2006-03-26T03:36:00.000-05:00

While we were busy being gloomy about the state of the world, 500,000 people marched in Los Angeles against xenophobia on Saturday. 100,000 people marched about a week or so earlier in Chicago. There have been similar demonstrations with tens of thousands of people in Milwaukee and Phoenix (hardly a hotbed of activism). There have also been actions in Denver, Atlanta, Reno, New York, and other places, apparently. Collectively, it's probably safe to say that almost a million people (if not more) have gathered against the Sensenbrenner bill in the House and more generally the nativists that are pushing it.

So, at this point, can we say that there's a movement? :) It's not every day that you see the largest demonstration in the history of second largest city in the United States--and, I'm guessing with the participation from people who could easily have been put into deportation proceedings if someone had gone slightly wrong.

Now if only the movement would take on big business too :)

Read some LA perspectives here and here.

Theocracies Of The World, Unite!

2006-03-23T17:03:00.000-05:00

You have nothing to lose but your moral credibility. Here's some old news:

United Nations: U.S. Aligned With Iran in Anti-Gay Vote
Rice Must Explain Repressive UN Ban on LGBT Rights Groups
(Washington, D.C., January 25, 2006) - In a reversal of policy, the
United States on Monday backed an Iranian initiative to deny United
Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the
rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. In
a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a coalition of 39
organizations, led by the Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Watch,
the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called for an explanation of
the vote which aligned the United States with governments that have
long repressed the rights of sexual minorities.

"This vote is an aggressive assault by the U.S. government on the
right of sexual minorities to be heard," said Scott Long, director
of the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch. "It is astonishing
that the Bush administration would align itself with Sudan, China,
Iran and Zimbabwe in a coalition of the homophobic."

In May 2005, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, which is
based in Brussels, and the Danish gay rights group Landsforeningen
for Bøsser og Lesbiske (LBL) applied for consultative status with
the UN Economic and Social Council. Consultative status is the only
official means by which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around
the world can influence and participate in discussions among member
states at the United Nations. Nearly 3,000 groups enjoy this
status.

At least there's something they agree on. Maybe the U.S. and Iran can join together to make sure that Iraq has extremely homophobic laws on the books. Read the full text from Human Rights Watch.

The Kids Are Squabbling

2006-03-23T02:05:00.000-05:00

This is amusing. Apparently, the way Supreme Court Justices express passive-agressiveness is through footnotes.

By the way, say goodbye to Roe v. Wade. It hasn't happened yet, and it's not that much more predictable that it will happen than it was when Magneto and Roberts were appointed, but this is something of a confirmation for those inclined to believe the worst.

Say goodbye to a whole bunch of other things too. For years.

If you know what's good for you, say hello to Canada. Or Luxembourg, the country with the highest per capita GDP in the world compensating for PPP--Find out why :)

You Want To See Some Great Advocacy Journalism?

2006-03-22T05:30:00.000-05:00

I don't know if what (s)he says is accurate or not, but Carne Ross does a masterful job in Slate of presenting the case of Western Sahara and the broader case that the present world system is profoundly unjust by any reasonable normative standard (i.e. mine :)

Here's an excerpt:

If any part of you wants to believe that the world is fundamentally just, that wrongs are eventually righted, and that those of us in the West are fair and righteous in the way we treat other countries and cultures, consider the story of the people of Western Sahara. Their history proves that you can have right wholly on your side, international law emphatically in support of your cause, be on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council for decades, and still be ignored...

The attention we give to blood and destruction also helps keep the story off the news agenda. Since the 1991 cease-fire, the Polisario have forsworn violence as a means to further their cause. The Polisario's leaders know that if they were to resume guerrilla action, the Moroccans would be quick to cry terrorism in order to turn their powerful allies against them. Eager for the simplicity of "us" against the "terrorists," the world's press would almost certainly play along. But the paradox of an ugly world is here very evident: Without bloodshed, no one pays any attention to the Polisario. For all the celebration of the nonviolence of Mandela or Gandhi or King, in the real world pacifism has brought the Polisario virtually nothing.

I should point out that the African National Congress was not always non-violent.

Free Hao Wu

2006-03-22T05:07:00.000-05:00

Intrepid Saheli brings out attention to the situation of Hao Wu, a documentarian and blogger in China who has been jailed for some work he was doing. There's now a link on the sidebar to this site, hosted by the founder of the global blog that Hao wrote for, where you can find out more. Their intro:

What happened to Hao?

Hao Wu (Chinese name: 吴皓), a Chinese documentary filmmaker who lived in the U.S. between 1992 and 2004, was detained by the Beijing division of China’s State Security Bureau on the afternoon of Wednesday, Febuary 22, 2006. On that afternoon, Hao had met in Beijing with a congregation of a Christian church not recognized by the Chinese government, as part of the filming of his next documentary.

They're asking people to spread the word, and if bloggers won't help out a fellow blogger, who will? Well, Reporters Without Borders is, but they're referring us to the website cited abovce :)

Finally, It Hits Me

2006-03-21T22:26:00.000-05:00

Bush is a jackass (video).

-se

Wanna Keep in Touch With Me?

2006-03-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

Get Google Talk. Now that my friends have actually started using it, it's the best.

Dark Humor

2006-03-21T05:05:00.000-05:00

So, when I read this post at Rhinocrisy entitled "Happy birthday!", I didn't know what the f@#k hedgehog was talking about. There's a picture of a very nice looking city with smoke coming out of it and another of a little boy blowing out birthday candles.

Curious like a cat, I went to the Wikipedia page for March 19 (yes, each of the 365 days of the year has its own page, but I still don't). I misread the listing relating to this entry and thought that March 19 was the day the Afghanistan War had started (it's hard to keep track these days, isn't it?)

"Funny, I didn't realize Kabul was so modern," I stupidly thought to myself.

Fastforward a day or two. I read Slate's daily roundup for newspapers for the 19th, entitled "Happy Anniversary," and I finally understand.

Sigh...how stupid I am. Sometimes I think I should watch more TV, not less.

Anwyay, a belated Happy Iraq War Anniversary Day to you! And now, on to the promised dark humor.

The first link in Google for a search on "Iraq" is the CIA World Factbook entry. It contains such priceless tidbits as (titles are theirs, words in itals are theirs, my comments in regular font):

History: A "republic" was proclaimed in 1958, but in actuality a series of military strongmen ruled the country, the latest was SADDAM Husayn...Continued Iraqi noncompliance with UNSC resolutions over a period of 12 years resulted in the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the ouster of the SADDAM Husayn regime. Coalition forces remain in Iraq, helping to restore degraded infrastructure and facilitating the establishment of a freely elected government, while simultaneously dealing with a robust insurgency.

Environmental Issues: Neither "war" nor "depleted uranium bombings," nor even "robust insurgency" made it here. Development of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers system contingent upon agreements with upstream riparian Turkey, however, is apparently a pressing issue on Iraq's environment.

Government Type: none; note - the Iraqi Transitional Government (ITG) was elected on 30 January 2005

Independence: 3 October 1932 (from League of Nations mandate under British administration); note - on 28 June 2004 the Coalition Provisional Authority transferred sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim Government

National Holiday: Revolution Day, 17 July (1968); note - this holiday was celebrated under the SADDAM Husayn regime but the Iraqi Interim Government has yet to declare a new national holiday

Economy: ...the military victory of the US-led coalition in March-April 2003 resulted in the shutdown of much of the central economic administrative structure. Although a comparatively small amount of capital plant was damaged during the hostilities, looting, insurgent attacks, and sabotage have undermined efforts to rebuild the economy. Attacks on key economic facilities - especially oil pipelines and infrastructure - have prevented Iraq from reaching projected export volumes, but total government revenues have been higher than anticipated due to high oil prices. Despite political uncertainty, Iraq has established the institutions needed to implement economic policy, has successfully concluded a three-stage debt reduction agreement with the Paris Club, and is working toward a Standby Arrangement with the IMF. The Standby Arrangement would clear the way for continued debt relief from the Paris Club.

Telephone System: general assessment: the 2003 war severely disrupted telecommunications throughout Iraq including international connections; USAID is overseeing the repair of switching capability and the construction of mobile and satellite communication facilities

Disputes-International: coalition forces assist Iraqis in monitoring boundary security...

...and so forth. Happy Anniversary, Iraq War! I don't know how we ever got by without you.

Homophobia in Iraq, Homophobia in America

2006-03-17T16:49:00.000-05:00

Hello friends,

I received the following e-mail recently. It details homophobia in Iraq--particularly among shi'ite leaders.

I feel extraordinarily conflicted about posting it, but at the same time I am quite angry and more sad about this. I don't want to feed into the U.S./British propaganda to (now) justify their war with democratic and human rights rhetoric, sectarian tensions, or whatever else is going on here, and, at the same time, I don't want to avoid posting information that makes me quite angry and is important if true.

I haven't doublechecked any of this, which I proably should, but it's from this website, which a surface level check seems like it shows a bias towards critiquing non-Western societies for homophobia (as many White, Western LGBT groups and individuals do), but not so much so that I would avoid posting this. Feel free to circulate to people who would similarly engage, but I request you don't to people who, broadly or narrowly, would use it to justify violence (that would, imo, in the end come back to bite lgbt people in the ass...in the bad way :).

An excerpt is below.

This has been your neurotic service announcement for the day.

-se

IRAQ: AYATOLLAH SISTANI SAYS DEATH TO GAYS

Sistani fatwa provokes terror against queers

Shia Badr Corps execute sodomites, Sunnis and others

UK fetes Sistani and hosts Badr, despite anti-gay murders

London – 15 March 2006

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq has issued a death fatwa against lesbian and gay people. On his website, he calls for the killing of homosexuals in the "worst, most severe way" (see his text below).

“Sistani's murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men,” says exiled gay Iraqi, Ali Hili, of the London-based gay human rights group OutRage.

Mr Hili also heads up the new Iraqi LGBT – UK Abu Nawas group, which has close links with clandestine gay activists inside Iraq.

“We hold Sistani personally responsible for the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Iraqis. He gives the killers theological sanction and encouragement,” said Mr Hili.
“Grand Ayatollah Sistani is the spiritual leader of all Shia Muslims in Iraq and around the world. He is also the spiritual leader of the main Islamic fundamentalist movement in Iraq, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

“The government in Iraq consults regularly with Sistani on political, social and moral issues. He wields huge influence over Iraqi government policy and the over Iraqi Shia public opinion.

“Sistani is not even Iraqi. He is an Iranian national who has set himself up as a religious leader in Iraq. He wants to impose an Iranian-style theocracy on the Iraqi people.

“The British government paid for Sistani to have medical treatment in the UK in 2004, and fetes him as a revered Muslim leader.

Read the rest

I'm A Baseball Fan

2006-03-15T05:18:00.000-05:00

Call me crass, but it's about f@#king time that I got to read a baseball article where all the names are Latino. They're some of the best baseball players in the game and Major League Baseball (and its profits and its owners profits) are largely dependent on the support of players that come from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba, and other Latin American countries.

The conversation was with a nationally syndicated sports columnist.

I said: "Did you know that at the end of the 1999 season, nine out of the top ten hitters in the American League were Latino or had Latino roots?"

Silence...."I didn't know that."

This ignorance came as no surprise to me after having spent most of 1999 promoting my book Away Games: The Life and Times of a Latin Ballplayer, along with my collaborator José Luis Villegas. Despite an explosion of exciting new Latinos stars, the story of Latino baseball players in the major leagues is still grossly underreported.

Even more troubling is the invisibility of the realities behind this story.

Almost all the Latino stars in baseball today--now 25 percent of major league rosters and growing--come from overwhelming poverty, a reality that Major League Baseball (MLB) avidly exploits. For example: The focal point of my book--Miguel Tejada, shortstop of the Oakland Athletics--came from a destitute barrio in the Dominican Republic with no running water and little electricity.

Read the rest of the Colorlines article "Field of Broken Dreams: Latinos and Baseball," which you can check out here.

Is This Emotional Exhibitionism?

2006-03-10T03:12:00.000-05:00

I think not.

1. Listen to some incongruous music.

2. Marvel at the world of nature.

3. Learn about lichens.

I am doing good!

Corporate "Fun"

2006-03-07T22:37:00.000-05:00

Apparently, tomorrow is corporate rebellion day in New York, brought to you by Mountain Dew and corporate friends. I just got this e-mail forwarded to me:

Just wanted to remind you that Mt. Dew Day is tomorrow! You can get your free diet Mt. Dew samples at locations around the city (including Grand Central, Time Square, Union Square, Harlem 125th, Wash Heights and a ton of other places... Pretty much all the major locations in the city.)

I'm going to be in Union Square from 6:30am to 9:15am - if you want to come by I'll give you a 6 pack or a case if you like it! You can take it to work and share. Hot 97 will also be broadcasting from Union Square in the morning. Give me a call if you come by. :) Then I'm going to be at Time Square from 10 - 11 for the snowboarding stuff (see below).

The big event that might be interesting to you is going to be from 10 - 11 right in the middle of Time Square (across from ESPNZone). They are setting up a huge Snowboard ramp and Shaun White (aka the flying tomato) and Hannah Teeter are going to have a snow-board trick demo. If that's too early for you, I believe there is another demo and POD concert from 2 - 5. Here's what we got as info:

Rail Jam Event: We're building a 100 foot Snow covered ramp in Times Square! Athlete exhibition,
Shaun White & Hannah Teter appearances, Live DJ/Emcees, ESPN Cold Pizza, ESPN Classic NOW, Good Morning America, MTV, Z100 Live Broadcast/Dodge Caliber Giveaway, Live appearance by hot rock band P.O.D.

Should be a pretty cool site to see, as nobody has ever "taken over" time square like this before. (Although, I should add that Pepsi was the first to "take over" the National Mall in DC for a concert, and we ruined it for everyone, b/c they made a law after the event saying that you can't have concerts or "commercial events" there anymore.... )

Anyway... No pressure obviously, just thought you might find the Time Square stuff interesting and may want to take a break from work!

I want to throw up. I guess it makes sense in a city whose mayor shares the name of a major corporation. Not by coincidence.

Please Don't Blow Stuff Up

2006-03-07T13:29:00.000-05:00

"Explosions rocked a packed railway station and crowded Hindu temple Tuesday in Hinduism's holiest city, and at least 12 people were killed and dozens injured, officials said.

Authorities were scrambling to determine what caused the blasts, but political leaders suggested they were bombings. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the explosions, but appealed for calm."

-AP, via CBC

The news reports also indicated that this follows what is being called Hindu-Muslim violence in Lucknow last week, and that government officials are worried about this spreading to other cities.

I would have preferred to link to an article that was both context-laden and accurate--in the sense that they chose a better word for the Gujarat massacres than "riots," given that the Hindu-right state government helped orchestrate it. Alas, I couldn't find one.

I scold: Bad journalists!

Click here for a graphic, heart-breaking picture of a wounded child.

Surreality Based Community

2006-03-02T12:06:00.000-05:00

You know what the smartest thing to do is, from a political perspective, when you're getting attacked for selling your ports to Arabs on significantly racist grounds? Make a deal with brown people to sell them nuclear technology.

This will also help curry favor with the Muslim world, I'm sure. Why not just send a couple of paramilitary divisions to Israel to help seal off Gaza while you're at it?

Jesus Christ. How did this guy get to be President? It's like he's suffering from politician's block or something. Haven't these people ever heard of something called "timing"?

Does Gross Incompetence and Apathy Count as "High Crimes and Misdemeanors"?

2006-03-02T01:16:00.000-05:00

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

From the article, "Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina."

Read more articles that have the words "incompetence" and "Bush" in them!

Update! Now you can watch the video too! Just like the President! I don't think anyone could have anticipated this.

Science Fiction Question

2006-02-28T18:24:00.000-05:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq Feb 28, 2006 (AP)— A series of suicide attacks, car bombs and mortar barrages rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 66 people and wounding scores as Iraq teetered on the brink of sectarian civil war. President Bush decried the violence and said Iraqis must choose between "chaos or unity."

Hypothetically speaking, if President Bush were a true leader, do you think it would be appropriate for him to go to Iraq right now? Or would it just incite more problems?

Again, here's Google News on Iraq. I strongly suggest you read up before the troop withdrawal and subsequent failure to pay attention to Iraq.

2008: "Isn't there a war going on there or something?"

News You Should Know

2006-02-24T12:42:00.000-05:00

If you, like me, have avoided Iraq news with a passion only matched by your inability to deal with it, I think you should start paying attention now:

Things have gone from bad to nearly irredeemable in the past few days (although the latest latest news is a slight uptick). A series of back and forth bombings had triggered sectarian violence to the point of "the brink of civil war" according to the latest news.

It's calmed down a bit now, thanks to the sealing off of the city of Baghdad and a daytime curfew in several provinces. Some politicians have taken some steps to quell the Sunni-Shiite violence--

"In a statement read over national television, top Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said those who carried out the bombing in Samarra 'do not represent the Sunnis in Iraq.'

Al-Hakim instead blamed Saddam Hussein loyalists and followers of al-Qaida in Iraq boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

'We all have to unite in order to eliminate them,' al-Hakim said in a statement. 'This is what al-Zarqawi is working for, that is, to ignite sectarian strife in the country,' he added. 'We call for self-restraint and not to be dragged down by the plots of the enemy of Iraq.'"

The U.S. Ambassador, at least in his media statements, seems to have his head up his...and his talk is reminisicent of, oh, I don't know, the last 6 years of Bush Administration media strategy on everything:

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad acknowledged the danger facing Iraq — and the U.S. strategy for disengaging from this country. But he also said this was a 'moment of opportunity' for Iraq.

'This tragedy can be used to bring people together,' Khalilzad told reporters.

He was confident Sunni politicians would return to the negotiating table, saying: 'Iraqis do not have a better alternative than to form a government of national unity.'

Right. Nothing brings people together like sectarian bombings. With one or two more "moments of opportunity" like this, there will be a full-blown civil war and a lot of people will be dead.

If you're American, I would advise you to write a letter to someone or another, but the only thing I can think of saying to anyone involved in U.S. efforts in Iraq is "Stop being so thickheaded." or "You should be fired."

Here's Google News on Iraq.

God Says Kill The 90-Year-Old!

2006-02-24T00:19:00.000-05:00

I offer you two versions:

Millions Offered to Murder Leading Indian Artist

A militant Muslim activist organization has offered $11.5 million for the murder of India's best-known artist, Maqbool Fida Husain, 90, Agence France-Presse reported."

And the other:

Millions Offered to Murder Leading Indian Artist

A militant Hindu activist organization has offered $11.5 million for the murder of India's best-known artist, Maqbool Fida Husain, 90, Agence France-Presse reported.

The second one is real. Think the difference will have any impact on the amount of coverage in rightwing media sources? ;)

Here's the rest of the story:

Objecting to what it called "obscene paintings" of goddesses, the organization, the Hindu Personal Law Board, said the amount would be doubled if the slaying was done by Yaqoob Qureshi, a Muslim politician who announced an identical reward for the beheading of the 12 artists responsible for cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. "We do not distinguish between Islam and Hinduism," said Ashok Pandey, the president of the board. Earlier this month, protests by militant Hindus prompted Mr. Husain to withdraw a depiction of Bharat Mata (Mother India) as a nude woman from sale at a charity auction. Similar paintings by Mr. Husain have prompted protests in the past.

Objecting to what it called "obscene paintings" of goddesses, the organization, the Hindu Personal Law Board, said the amount would be doubled if the slaying was done by Yaqoob Qureshi, a Muslim politician who announced an identical reward for the beheading of the 12 artists responsible for cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. "We do not distinguish between Islam and Hinduism," said Ashok Pandey, the president of the board. Earlier this month, protests by militant Hindus prompted Mr. Husain to withdraw a depiction of Bharat Mata (Mother India) as a nude woman from sale at a charity auction. Similar paintings by Mr. Husain have prompted protests in the past.

I wonder if anyone will start calling for me and other "moderate" Hindus to take a stand.

Candy Canes and Sugar Plum Fairies For Everyone!

2006-02-21T00:48:00.000-05:00

February 2006: Bush says, "Our nation is on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people."

October 2004: "Most of the tax cuts went to low and middle-income Americans."

October 2002: "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."

June 2002: "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

May 2001: "We will stand up for our friends in the world."

And, oh yeah, May 2003: "Mission Accomplished."

At this point, I think this is the most appropriate response. Hat tip to Brainyquotes for most of the quotes.

Go Forth and Learn!

2006-02-19T19:23:00.000-05:00

According to the SAJA stylebook, "The following English words have roots in various Subcontinental languages (with the majority derived from Sanskrit)."

anaconda, aryan, atoll, avatar, bandana, bangle, banyan, bazaar, brahmin, bungalow, calico, cashmere, catamaran, chai, cot, chintz, cheetah, cheroot, chutney, coolie, cummerbund, curry, cushy, dinghy, dungaree, fakir, ghat, ginger, grieve, guru, indigo, jodhpurs, juggernaut, jungle, jute, karma, khaki, loot, mandarin, mango, mantra, mogul, mongoose, mughal, mullah, musk, mulligatawny, mynah, nabob/nawab, nirvana, orange, pajamas, pariah, paisley, pepper, punch (the drink), pundit, seersucker, serendipity, shampoo, sugar, swami, swastika, teak, thug, verandah, -ware (the suffix), yoga.

Visit the stylebook and you can click on links on some of the members of the list to find out the etymology.

Who knew that cummerbund, that word and idea and object that made me feel foreign and alienated before my prom, was from Hindi? Although, in hindsight, it's obvious, even solely from Bangla: komor-e-baandhaa = tied at the waist.

Say word.

If you're not interested, for God knows what reason, in the medieval roots of words, the stylebook has items not related to etymology for you--like how "Air-India" apparently always has to carry a hyphen and Afghanistan is not "officially" part of South Asia.

The Trouble With Law Professors

2006-02-19T16:07:00.000-05:00

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, writes the following in The New York Review of Books:

No one concerned with American security disputes that it is necessary to prevent terror attacks or that coercion and military action can be justified. Both NATO and the UN Security Council recognized the acts of September 11 as an armed attack that justified self-defense. The Afghanistan offensive succeeded in capturing or killing many al-Qaeda leaders, closing their training camps, and seizing records and computers from their headquarters that helped to locate still other al-Qaeda operatives. By contrast, the US decision to halt UN inspections in Iraq and invade the country, against the wishes of the inspectors, the Security Council, and most of the world, has helped to inspire, recruit, and train a terrorist network. It is precisely when the state uses coercive measures such as war or detention that it must show it has convincing evidence and is using fair procedures. Solid evidence of wrongdoing and fair process are not technicalities to be cast aside whenever national security is threatened; without them, the use of force is likely to increase violence against Americans, not reduce it.

The article is worth a glance, but where I stopped is the first sentence of the paragraph above. There are other problems with it too--for example, the fairly conservative estimate of 20,000 plus Iraqi deaths after May 1, 2003 that he throws out there offhandedly. However, I want to focus on how troublesome it is that Cole concedes so readily that "coercion" and "military action" by the U.S. government can "be justified" with just the right amount of evidence.

I have seen Cole referenced as an "expert" on post 9-11 abuses in innumerable sources, including an Anthony Lewis piece also in the New York Review of Books. In the process, written out of the debate are people with stronger views on pacifism and more radical objections to state violence.

In a small-circulation, idea-based publication with a friendly readership like the New York Review of Books, Cole should recognize that the American government is and has been running an imperialist project whose understanding of "national security" is tied to global domination. If he's unwilling to do so, then he needs to not be the (self-)appointed spokesperson for what's brazenly called "the left" on these issues.

If the American political dialetic is going to work on this issue, the voices of people more honest and true need to be heard, regardless of whether they make me, Cole, and others uncomfortable. I think we need a more informed cultural elite on this side of the political spectrum.

Goddamn!

2006-02-18T18:58:00.000-05:00

It's amazing that it took this many years for the first Black person to win a gold medal at an individual winter olympic sport. I did a doubletake when I first saw the story.

Relatedly, in "White Snow, Brown Rage," Reihan Salam at Slate says that "like a latter-day Marcus Garvey, [he recommends] that brown men abandon the white man's 'winter games.'"

Somehow, I think Garvey's activism was about more than just luge :)

Global Warming, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

2006-02-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

This is unbelievable.

Last Sunday, it snowed 27 inches. The Weather Channel website tells me that Friday, the high ended up being 59 where i was (and 57 here, where i am now). Today, Saturday, I see this:

"Wind chill values will range from near zero to 5 below zero tonight...

By late this evening temperatures will be in the upper teens...wind chill values will be 5 above zero to near zero.

Temperatures will continue to fall overnight...reaching 10 to 15 degrees by morning...producing wind chill values between zero to 5 below zero.

If you venture outdoors tonight...make sure you dress in layers and wear the appropriate clothing to protect exposed skin from the cold."

What is this world coming to?

Ain't Going Out Like That

2006-02-17T11:23:00.000-05:00

There's an old saying around here, and probably elsewhere, about March: comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Well, it's mid-February here in New York with a high of 65 degrees today. I have thus revised the saying for the calendar by year and month.

1986

January: Goddamn it's cold! And blizzardy! Sing it with me! "Heeere...cooomes...the snooooowwww king."
February: F#$k--it's still cold! And blizzardy!
March: What this about lions and lambs--it's still snowing!
April: Winter is finally leaving. April showers bring May flowers...and rainouts.
May: Awww...look at those flowers. It's still a little cold once in a while, though.
June: Well, this is kind of nice. It's starting to get hot though.
July: Wow, it's really getting hot. I'm glad I have AC.
August: I'm not going outside anymore.
September: The beginning of the month was bad, but this is getting nice now.
October: Stop! Puja time!
November: Well, I guess I can deal.
December: How can they possibly make us wait at a bus stop in this kind of cold?

2006

January: Well, it is getting a little colder. But some of these days are still absurdly nice.
February: Okay, this is just ridiculous. Well, at least it snowed for real once. In the whole winter.
March: Hmmm. Maybe I should get an air conditioner.
April: I wonder why it doesn't rain anymore.
May: Goddamn it's hot!
June: I can't believe it got hotter!
July: Okay, that's it--I'm going to Alaska!!
August: F@#k!!! It was even hot in Alaska!!!
September: When will this torment end? I did not ASK to be in a Sartre play.
October: Well, it does seem to be subsiding a bit. It's only 75 degrees outside. In October!
November: Dear God, please make it end. I like warm weather and all, but I can't deal with 5 different seasons per month.
December: Didn't it used to get cold this time of year? Like sometimes?

2026

January: F#ck it--no one does work in the summer time. I'm going to the beach! Close than ever!
February: Wow...it's getting a little uncomfortable. I heard it's nice this time of year in Nova Scotia.
March: Goddamn, it's hot! I should have stayed in Canada!
April: Maybe I should put some sunscreen on.
May: Well, I guess I should find a way to deal with this skin cancer.
June: I think I'll stay inside for the next four months.
July: Hmmm...I don't remember it used to be 120 degrees in this month. Oh well--those short rides in SUVs to the mall sure were worth it!
August: I sure miss Staten Island. I mean, it voted Republican and all, but I wasn't serious when I said it should sink into the sea.
September: Go to hell, combustion engine. No one should have to bear this heat.
October: F#ck. Another horrible hurricane season. Well at least those f@#kers in Europe are cold.
November: Yay Thanksgiving! I give thanks for the 20th century, for making November so toasty!
December: When did we start getting palm trees in New York?

2046:

Someone please kill me.

Here Is A Sign That You Need A Job

2006-02-14T18:19:00.000-05:00

If you have ever worked on "The Colbert Report recurring elements" wikipedia page, you need to find something better to do with your time. (from Saheli)

And, yes, before you get fresh with me, I note the irony of a blog post whose sole point is to argue that something else is a waste of time. I contend that making fun of the ridiculous is more appropriate than actually contributing to it.

snark. snark. snark.

The Most Short-Lived Controversy In History!

2006-02-14T18:06:00.000-05:00

The National Council of Hindu Temples (UK) reports "Blasphemous Durga Posters Removed." You can read their full statement on their site.

I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed. I thought that in offensive cartoons and posters, we had finally stumbled on something that could bring together hundreds of millions of South Asians for the first time since before 1947.

Well, maybe they'll start lining NGO fundraising envelopes for the Pakistan earthquake refugees with both pork and beef fat. That seemed to work to rile people up last time.

And of course, if all else fails, there's always gay marriage to bring people together!

snark. snark. snark.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2006-02-14T17:51:00.000-05:00

Picture courtesy CNN/IBN

From the Hindu Times article,"Durga pushes whisky in disco" (I kid you not...that's what they called it):

As worldwide protests against the cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed show no signs of subsiding, Hindus in the UK are gearing up to protest the use of an image of Durga carrying bottles of Southern Comfort Whisky to attract customers to a disco bar in Athens.

The posters, put up inside and outside the Balon Oriental Disco Bar, are an attempt to show that even gods can't stay away from liquor.

"The Indian community in Athens have been trying for the last three months to have the posters removed but they have totally ignored us," said Paramjit Singh, originally from Jalandhar, now settled in Greece.

Now, the National Council of Hindu Temples (UK) has decided to use its resources to get the posters removed. "Letters have been sent to the manufacturers of Southern Comfort whisky in the US to withdraw the offending posters," Bimal Krishna Das, the organisation's general secretary, told HT. "This poster is not only deeply offensive, it is blasphemous," said Das. "It has hurt the religious feelings of both Hindus and Sikhs." "To portray the Deity in any context other than the most reverential is totally unacceptable. I expect we will see organised, but peaceful protests, including a march in London" he added. The protests will definitely be massive because the National Council of Hindu Temples (UK) is a well-connected body, which links various temples in the UK.

I remember reading somewhere recently the question, "How do we end orientalism?" Seems like it's sort of, a little bit, not quite ending of its own accord.

Here's more on Durga. It will shed some light on why Bongs are the way they are. I trust you to do your own research on Southern Comfort.

Bad Ideas From Science Fiction!!!

2006-02-13T23:43:00.000-05:00

"Tiny silicon chips were embedded into two workers who volunteered to help test the tagging technology at a surveillance equipment company, an official said Monday...'It's a passive chip. It emits no signal whatsoever' [CEO] Darks said. 'It's the same thing as a keycard.'"

Yes, it's exactly like a keycard...except it's in your skin! And presumably the records for the chips can be subpoenaed by the government if/when it wants to or decides to pass a law that would allow it to.

And to think just yesterday I was feeling a little less ludditic b/c of the wonders of modern technology (i.e. the snowblower).

God. How stupid are we?

Did Anyone Else's Blog Traffic Go Up Because Of The Snow?

2006-02-12T22:02:00.000-05:00

Just curious.

(yes, the snow thing an unsupported assumption, but if everyone else can make them, I want to also!...as you can see from many of my posts :)

-se

Reader Request

2006-02-12T20:21:00.001-05:00

I got an e-mail from loyal reader T asking "Want to hear your input re: the VP's inadvertent shooting of his hunting comrade. Also, what's currently on your reading list?" I'm gratified enough that someone asked to answer:

1. My immediate response to the news of Cheney shooting another person by accident was to experience some horror at the thought of this disgusting man doing disgusting things like shooting birds, some puzzlement as to why they were using bbs instead of bullets (which is what I was told), fear that the man he shot may have been killed, and a few other emotions. I expressed all this in confused, disjointed laughter.

Upon hearing this, my codiscussant (and mother) said "Why are you laughing?" I said "I don't know."

She later expressed asked, with some concern, why he goes bird hunting. I said that he'll probably spend the rest of his life trying to kill as many things as possible.

2. My current reading list is as follows:

Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (I'm about halfway through).
On Beauty by Zadie Smith (just restarted it, finally--thank God)
I'm also frequently carrying Nationalism, Democracy, and Development, eds. Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal with me, but not actually reading it.

Finally, I recently (read: yesterday) abandoned efforts to read The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru. I didn't like the first turn of events and subsequently became disgusted. More a commentary on the plot than the writing or the novel--which I didn't give a fair chance, but what can you do? I'm only going to live so long.

So there you have it. And of course the census stuff I keep mentioning.

Computer Mishaps

2006-02-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

You know what's great? When you finally start working on something that you were waiting a long time to work on and a page and a half into it, MS Word decides to crash. For no reason.

I'm pretty sure my computer can handle three open word files, an open firefox window with some streaming music, and some not-enormous excel spreadsheets.

So why, computer, why?

-se

The Mr. Rogers Meme

2006-02-11T13:35:00.000-05:00

To be honest, I thought of this because, as I mentioned, I'm doing some census work and, more to the point, I'm all stressed out about an application I'm submitting. In any case, I thought this might be a fun way to reduce a little stress.

One of the beauties of the Internet is that we get to meet people from all over. However, a downside is that we never get to go visit their homes, see their neighborhoods, and learn about what kind of place they live in. This is a small step towards remedying that. Your task is to do the following:

Go to American FactFinder on the Census Bureau website.
Type in your zip code to get a fact sheet on it.
Identify at least 5 interesting facts about your zip code.
If you don't live in the U.S., then use whatever comparable data you can find. And if there isn't any, just describe your neighborhood to us to give us a sense.

Here's mine:

There are 63,774 people that live in my zip code (as of the 2000 census). It's 56.0% female and the median age is 33.0. It's 84.7% Black. 70.8% of the population over 25 have a high school diploma, but only 15.5% have a bachelor's degree. 46.7% of the population is foreign born and 27.9% speak a language other than English at home (this is much higher than what I would have expected based on my daily experience). The median family income was $33,775, almost $17,000 less than the median for the U.S. 23.5% of the families are below the poverty line (almost twice the national average).

Got it? I tag rage and saheli.

Continuing To Process Brokeback Mountain

2006-02-11T04:32:00.000-05:00

Spoiler Warning! This post has a few details of the plot of the movie.

One of the things that I find particularly interesting in all the hubbub about Brokeback Mountain is that very few commentators mention that while the events of the story were going on, there was a revolution happening among LGBT people in the United States. Witness this statement by Dan Savage, famous sex columnist and a gay man:

"Brokeback Mountain" makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together.

That world didn't exist when Jack and Ennis were pitching tents together, but it does now — even in the American West. Today, the tiny and stable percentage of men who are gay are free to live openly, and those who want to settle down and start families can do so without having to deceive some poor, unsuspecting woman.

For anyone who knows his or her or his/her or their LGBT history, the great unspoken parallel set of events to the plotof Brokeback Mountain are the enormous developments in the LGBT movement in the United States during the exact two decades during which the movie takes place. While Jack and Ennis were attempting to navigate their circumstances and their lives the best (or not the best) they could, many, many others with different circumstances and lives were not content to closet. Take a look at this LGBT Rights timeline for the United States alone (courtesy Wikipedia):

* 1966 in gay rights - The National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations is established. (It became NACHO (North American Conference of Homophile Organizations) in 1967
* 1969 in gay rights - Stonewall riots
* 1970 in gay rights - First U.S. gay pride parade held in New York City
* 1971 in gay rights - Colorado, Oregon repeal sodomy laws; The U.S. Libertarian Party is founded and calls the repeal of all victimless crime laws, including the sodomy laws.
* 1972 in gay rights - Ann Arbor, Michigan becomes first city in United States to pass gay rights ordinance.
* 1973 in gay rights - The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its DSM-IIDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
* 1974 in gay rights - Kathy Kozachenko becomes the first openly gay or lesbian American elected to public office, when she wins a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan city council. Ohio repeals sodomy laws. Robert Grant founds American Christian Cause to oppose the "gay agenda," the beginning of the modern Christian Right in America
* 1975 in gay rights - Elaine Noble becomes the second openly gay or lesbian American elected to public office, when she wins a seat in the Massachusetts State House
* 1976 in gay rights - Robert Grant founds Christian Voice to take his anti-gay-rights crusade national
* 1977 in gay rights - Harvey Milk is elected city-county supervisor in San Francisco, becoming the third openly gay or lesbian American and first man elected to public office. Dade County, Florida enacts a Human Rights Ordinance. It is repealed the same year after a militant anti-gay-rights campaign led by Anita Bryant.
* 1978 in gay rights - San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone are assassinated by former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White.
* 1979 in gay rights - first U.S. gay rights march on Washington, DC
* 1980 in gay rights - The Democratic National Convention becomes the first major political party in America to endorse a gay rights platform plank.
* 1981 in gay rights - Moral Majority starts anti-gay crusade.
* 1982 in gay rights - Gay Games I. The Ten Percent Society becomes the first gay rights organization in North Dakota. Wisconsin becomes the first US state to ban anti-gay discrimination.
* 1983 in gay rights - Massachusetts Representative Gerry Studds reveals he is a homosexual on the floor of the House, becoming the first openly Gay member of Congress.

This point is not presented as a political indictment of the characters in the movie or the filmmakers, but to make clear that the fact that Ennis's and Jack's lives were , imo, quite consciously presented as occurring in a societal vacuum. To me, this makes the film even more poignant from an LGBT rights perspective. In addition to the psychological closet of Ennis and the lived closet of Jack, the entire movie presents a social closet, in which a space and a community live in total absence of knowledge of all that's going on around them.

If you assume the filmmakers were acting in good faith, which I do, then the conslusion is that this silent ongoing story running parallel to the events of the movie was consciously quiteted. I see this because Brokeback Mountain does illustrate a lot of social and personal change going on around them--the move from cowboyhood to salesman, the changing music, the liberation of other individual souls (like some of the women in the movie). But there's no mention of Stonewall or any of the other LGBT or non-LGBT related social change that was happening at the time.

Finally, this analysis puts the missing piece in Dan Savage's contrast between the "world" of Jack and Ennis and the world that Dan Savage lives in: efforts for social change and the circumstances that allowed them to happen. In fairness to Savage, he says he hasn't seen the film and his comments do slightly acknowledge the need for change mechanisms simply by positing the gap.

However, I have yet to see any other critics comment on the invisible story that goes alongside the plot without intruding. To ignore the unspoken timeline--the world that's (self-consciously?) invisible to Jack and Ennis but a newspaper or television show away--is to do a disservice to both the film and the lgbt communities around whom the film revolves. It's to lose sight of the true depth of the tragedy of the movie and additionally to pretend that important things are accommplished without any effort or resistance or fortuitous circumstances.

Let's not do that.

Important Things That Everyone Should Know

2006-02-10T05:50:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

Investigators have found evidence that federal officials at the White House and elsewhere learned of the levee break in New Orleans earlier than was first suggested.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

Rest of the Times story "White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm."...

And if you're interested, where I ripped off the title of my post from :)

A Discovery!

2006-02-10T05:05:00.000-05:00

Intrepid Saheli of SSRD points out that the professor "Jagadis Bose" from the 1901 British census may have been "the Jagadish Chandra Bose." Though the name sounded familiar, I, embarassingly enough, had to go look up "the Jagadish Chandra Bose."

You can slap my hand later.

---

Wikipedia says he was important in physics: Bose’s place in history has now been re-evaluated, and he is credited with the invention of the first wireless detection device and the discovery of millimetre length electromagnetic waves and considered a pioneer in the field of biophysics.

Many of his instruments are still on display and remain largely usable now, over 100 years later. They include various antennas, polarizers, and waveguides, all of which remain in use in modern forms today.

They also tell us that he wrote works with such captivating titles as "The Ascent of Sap." (In his defense, he also wrote a paper called "The Secret Life of Plants.")

---

But back to the question at hand. Was it him that I found?

The 1901 census "Jagadis Bose" was listed as 42 years of age and a "university professor. " Jagadish Chandra Bose was born in 1858 (making him 42 in 1900/1901) and was a professor. So that's pretty strong evidence. Additionally, although the rather broadbrush wiki chronology of his life doesn't support it being the same guy, I found another source with more detailed chronology to back this up: "Later in 1899 Bose announced his invention of the 'iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector' in a paper presented at Royal Society, London."

That's the year the bio leaves off. I don't know what an iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector is, but I do know that 1901-1899 = 2.

The Sun Never Sets on Census Data

2006-02-09T09:57:00.000-05:00

Yes, wading through census data for fun is the kind of thing I do.

As part of a project that I'm working on on the demographics of South Asians in the United States, I've been pouring through a lot of excel spreadsheets with census data. In the course of doing a foogley-googley search related to the above, I came across this UK National Archives site, which allows you to search British censuses from 1901 on back for a few decades. Bizarrely, they've privatized the service, so the link I gave you actually just contains links to commercial genealogy sites. However, you can still find some interesting stuff for free--particularly on the 1901 census, which is really easy to use.

Being the good West Bengali Bong that I am, I started with the last names that were familiar to me (Hindu Bong ones). I found that, in 1901:

· Sisir Basu, 22, who was born in "Bengall Hazaribug", lived in the county of Cambridgeshire, in the civil parish of Great Shelford Entire and spent his time as a Student.

· There are 130 people with the the other spelling of the same last name--"Bose". The vast majority of whom had first names like "Florence" and were born in the UK. I'm not sure whether some were mixed race or Bose (and some other names) are an infrequent but occasional surname among bonafide White Britons or Germans (some were listed as from Germany). For example, there were a few such people--Enid Ghosh, Augustine Ghosh, Elizabeth Sen--who had birthplaces listed in India.

But back to the Boses: Batis Bose was born in India and his occupation was listed as "Army Surgeon On Probation." Jagadis Bose was a University Professor (!). Sudhansee Bose, 22, was born in Calcutta and enrolled as a student in the ICS.

· In relative terms, many, many students in their 20s. In addition to the ones already listed, Surja Sircar, Brosants Sen, and, hilariously Normal Sen. There were others.

· Found a lawyer: Atal Sen, "Barrister at Law." Only 29. Pretty impressive--on a sheerly personal level--for a colonial subject.

I eventually tired of the Hindu Bongs and so went to the more broadly desi:

· There were 60 Singhs! Everyone from Bishen, who was a "Bugler" for the "45th Bengal Infantry" to Fanny and Margaret, who both had no occupation listed. I'm not sure who "Prince" and "Princess" Singh were, but they are both listed as "living on own means."

· Found many people named Ali. People from all over--Egypt, Persia, Turkey, Yemen, the UK (as with the other names), but three from Calcutta: John; Juffar; and Waris Ali. John was 69 years old and a domestic gardener. Juffar was 30 and a "stoker on steamship seas." Waris was only 14.

This was interesting to me because I don't meet many Muslim Bongs from Calcutta anymore (although there definitely are a sizable number). Wonder if the partition has anything to do with that ;) This census is before not just the final partition, but even the first partition in 1905 (which applied to Bengal only). Found one person listed as from Bombay: Mir Ali. Also a few people just generically from "India."

· I would suspect that one testament to how few desis there were (at least Muslim desis) is how few Mohamed Alis there are--only 2.

· 56 Khans. Mostly from India and "Persia." Said Khan, 24, is listed as from "India Naturalized British." Interesting, no?

· Found 4 Gandhis, including a Parsee, a doctor, and one aged 11 named "Mohan." Not the same guy though--he was reportedly in South Africa in 1901 :) No Nehrus or Jinnahs unfortunately.

Finally, the original person I was looking for--Aurobindo Ghose--was nowhere to be found in the 1901 census. I checked my Wikipedia and he was supposed to have been in England between 1879 and 1893 or so. Nothing in the 1891 census, but lo and behold, there he is, in the 1880 census listed as a "boarder" along with his brother Benoy and his other brother, who's listed as "Mononeshan" but who Wikipedia names as Manmohan. On a re-search of the 1891 census, I then found Benoy (though he now has a different middle initial :) and the other brother, who is known as "Mahimohan."

Oh those British census takers!!! What hilarity!!! Why didn't they just call him Michael like I'm sure they would have done on Ellis Island?

Anyway, the postscript to the story is that after successfully acquiring the British education his father so desperately wanted for him and his brothers, Aurobindo eventually returned to India to lead protests against the imperial masters :) And not in any namby-pamby way either--he and his friends advocating blowing shit up and outright independence (more info and nuance here and here). Then he wigged out, visions of Kali dancing in his head, and became a sadhu (albeit a highly thoughtful and philosophical one).

Don't tell my mom I said that last part.

Cosmic Glue

2006-02-09T06:07:00.000-05:00

A group of 85 evangelical Christian leaders on Wednesday backed legislation opposed by the White House to cut carbon dioxide emissions, kicking off a campaign to mobilize religious conservatives to combat global warming.

The group, which included mega-church pastors, Christian college presidents, religious broadcasters and writers, also unveiled a full-page advertisement to run in Thursday's New York Times and a television ad it hopes to screen nationally.

"With God's help, we can stop global warming for our kids, our world and our Lord," the television spot declared...

The Christian leaders said they were impelled by their faith to launch the campaign out of a growing realization that the threat of global warming was real and that the world's poor would suffer the most.

Paul de Vries, president of New York Divinity School, said, "However we treat the world, that's how we are treating Jesus because he is the cosmic glue."

The leaders said a poll they commissioned of 1,000 evangelical Protestants showed that two-thirds were convinced global warming was taking place. Additionally, 63 percent said the United States must start to address the issue immediately, and half said it must act even if there was a high economic cost.

Hurrah!!!

Now if only they had acted sooner...

Seen Henry and June?

2006-02-09T04:44:00.000-05:00

I highly recommend this movie at 2 a.m. My interest was prurient and intellectual at the same time--something very few movies manage to effectively cultivate in me.

There's unfortunately no good summary of the movie on the Internet. The DVD cover I keep seeing everywhere is horrible--as is the lingerie company that decided to be number one in google hits for the search "henry and june." It thus falls upon me to give you this brief yet vague plot synopsis:

· Writer-woman is stilted.
· Writer-woman has sex.
· Writer-woman loves life.

More information on Anais Nin, writer-woman in question.

From The New York Review of Books

2006-02-06T03:03:00.000-05:00

The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they're not really homosexual—that they're more like the heart of America than like "gay people"—you're pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed.

So on point. Read the whole article.

Signs of the Apocalypse

2006-02-05T21:14:00.000-05:00

I have a desi friend whose grandmother says "We take all of the bad things and none of the good things from the West." In that light:

Maxim India is now in its second issue.
Time Out Mumbai is now in its second volume!

Meanwhile, my mother reports that, on her flight back, the airport workers in Calcutta, Delhi, and Bombay were on strike. She said it made the process much quicker in the airport.

East Coast Snobbery

2006-02-05T21:13:00.000-05:00

I watched the 2nd quarter of the Super Bowl. It was boring and it made me want pizza, which I've been eating too much. Even Puppy Bowl couldn't sustain my attention. Let it all go...

Ohm....Ohm....

Step Up, Step, Step Up, Step Up

2006-02-02T05:34:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've heard by now that Google has made a deal with the government of China to provide a censored version of its search engine, presumably in exchange for glorious market share.

If you're interested in protesting Google's decision to Be Evil, I found a fun way:

Google has a little link for if you're dissatisfied with your search results. Here is the link to let them know what you think when you use Google.cn to search for "human rights." This is what I assume it says in Chinese, based on the English language version of Google.com:

"You searched for 'human rights'.

Please tell us what specific information you were seeking. Also tell us why you were dissatisfied with the search results."

Interestingly, clever people in China can apparently find a way around the problem without our help as long we continue to spell badly when we post our pictures of tanks.

I'm Not Watching The State Of The Union

2006-01-31T17:30:00.000-05:00

Yes, I realize this isn't such a radical step. However, I've found in my past experience that the only result that comes out of watching these things is getting brainwashed. Even when he doesn't make sense. It's like my critical thinking skills just get shut off and all I'm left with is fear and sarcasm.

So here's my State of The Union Day Resolution: I will not watch any of the George W. Bush speech. In fact, I will make an effort not to watch any speeches by any powerful, dishonest and manipulative people. It's just not worth it.

I mean, what am I going to learn? What the President thinks about Health Savings Accounts? What the President thinks about how things are going in Iraq? There's no connection to reality most of the time, so is this one going to be any different?

Having him as President makes me wonder if there shouldn't just be a ban on public speaking by the President and his officials on principle. They clearly never say anything useful to us or anyone who cares. And the poor people are still starving to death, so whatever.

Been Watching Ocean's Twelve A Lot Lately

2006-01-31T03:57:00.000-05:00

Not least because of the music. It's a great movie, if you haven't seen it.

In any case, one of the characters, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, is named Isabel Lahiri. She is seemingly not bangali despite her last name. Anyone know the backstory? Is she supposed to be someone who was married to a bangali guy at some point in the past? I won't give away the plot, but suffice it to say that nothing remotely brown finds its way into the movie. The closest thing is Don Cheadle.

Although I doubt that's the answer, the film has so many little details worth paying attention to that I wouldn't be surprised if there were something I missed that reveals the answer.

This is the only other relevant item that I could find on the web, and it's just another blog post by a puzzled viewer. The articles that mention the discrepancy don't really go into too much detail.

40 Year Wait

2006-01-30T22:07:00.000-05:00

omg just finished watching 40 Year Old Virgin.

1. Steve Carrell is surprisingly tender given what I remember of him from the Daily Show.
2. Catherine Keener continues to be My Favorite Goddess (even though the aging was showing).
3. The supporting cast is hilarious. And the movie is totally off the wall!

This has been your first sarcasm free post of 2006.

This War Needs To End

2006-01-30T19:03:00.000-05:00

Jill Carroll, the hostage and Christian Science monitor reporter (who is the same age as me), was on a tape shown on Al Jazeera, crying. I'm not sure if this is supposed to get us riled up to "hate those Arabs" or something, but all it does to me is make me feel really, really sad.

I hate everyone who's responsible for this heinousness.

The List That Dare Not Speak Its Name

2006-01-29T15:51:00.000-05:00

On one of the many (eyes roll) e-mail lists I'm on, a kind soul sent out a link to a list of the top lgbt fiction and nonfiction put together by Publishing Triangle. It's got some political issues (e.g. Eurocentrism and using "gay and lesbian" as the name for it instead of something more inclusive), but it's still nice for me to see.

Here's a preview from their top novels list:

The Triangle's 100 Best

1. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
2. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
3. Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
4. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
5. The Immoralist by Andre Gide
6. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
7. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
8. Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
9. The Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
10. Zami by Audre Lorde

"100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels" by Publishing Triangle and as voted by their readers (two separate lists).

"100 Best Gay and Lesbian Nonfiction Books" by Publishing Triangle only (one list).

Darling India

2006-01-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

Below is an afterthought from an article entitled "India is Darling of World Economic Forum." The World Economic Forum is like a family reunion for capitalists.

"A record 3.9 million tourists visited India last year, an increase of about 25 percent, and some went to Kashmir despite the conflict.

'But if peace returns, obviously the number of tourists will multiply, Chidambaram said."

Yeah.

Homophobic?

2006-01-27T16:37:00.000-05:00

A friend and I had a dispute about this satirical poster. I felt it was homophobic. She felt it was not. Your thoughts?

CIA Homepage For Kiddies

2006-01-21T23:52:00.000-05:00

Check it out: creepiest thing ever.

This is Disturbing, if Sensationalistic

2006-01-21T13:31:00.000-05:00

Members of LAPD may have helped off Biggie on behalf of Death Row Records? And then hid evidence? I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Mofos.

-se

LOS ANGELES - A federal judge has ordered the city to pay $1.1 million in legal costs to the family of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. as sanctions for intentionally withholding evidence during the family's civil lawsuit trial.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper's ruling Friday didn't give the family the $2 million originally sought, but she left open the possibility of an additional $300,000.

"It's pretty clear from the ruling that the judge understands this is a significant and difficult case," said Perry Sanders, an attorney for the rapper's family.

Christopher Wallace, or Notorious B.I.G., was shot and killed March 9, 1997, after a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The killing has not been solved.

Cooper declared a mistrial last summer in the family's civil lawsuit after finding that a police detective hid statements linking the killing to former LAPD Officers David Mack and Rafael Perez. She also ordered the city to pay the slain rapper's family's legal costs.

The plaintiffs had been trying to show that Mack, a convicted bank robber, orchestrated Wallace's killing with the help of college friend on behalf of Death Row Records chief Marion "Suge" Knight. All three have denied involvement.

Attorneys for the family received an anonymous tip from a former officer that a department informant had tied Perez and Mack to the killing. Detective Steven Katz claimed he had overlooked a transcript of the remarks in his desk.

But Cooper ruled that Katz and perhaps others concealed the information, which could have bolstered the family's contention that Mack was involved in the killing. A retrial is set to begin later this year.

"We were disappointed with the order," said Jonathan Diamond, spokesman for City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, whose office defended the city. "We believe the officer's conduct was inadvertent, and we will prevail at trial on the merits of the case."

I Found A Blog Solely Devoted To Why Publicly Financed Stadiums Are A Swindle

2006-01-19T03:33:00.000-05:00

Field of Schemes put a twinkle in my eye and a small ripple through my heart. What good work! And I like stadiums!

Music For The Masses (N+1)

2006-01-17T11:03:00.000-05:00

I recently, joyously came into possession of one of my favorite cds again. It had been lost during the inevitable music mishaps that happen during a move. An incomplete tally shows I'd been down this Poe cd but up an Anoushka Shankar cd. I'm still missing my Rift cd from my Phish poser-phan days :)

In any case, the attached track is Trigger Happy Jack off of Hello (1995). Poe is, well, Poe. Angry but not strident womyn music.

Just go listen to it. Only 25 downloads or a week--it's yousendit.

And say thank you (this link courtesy the werefish).

Bush Keeps Boot To Neck of Environment, Science, World

2006-01-12T09:05:00.000-05:00

According to Wikipedia, the "Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate" is having its first big hoohah in Australia this month. This entity's name ranks up there with the State Law and Order Restoration Committee, or SLORC, for most abysmal Asia-related title in the past fifty years.

The APPCDC supports "Clean Development and Climate" like addicts support moderation. Except with less good intentions. Unlike the allegedly half-ass Kyoto Treaty, the APPCDC is actually worse than just being a quasi-solution. If anything, this non-treaty will accelerate global warming by allowing countries--okay a country--okay the United States--not to do anything substantive about it.

The U.S. and Australia, who haven't ratified the Kyoto Treaty and don't intend to, came up with this gem, which according to wikipedia has no mandatory emissions restrictions on any of the participants or an enforcement mechanism. As a result, the United States can look like it's doing something while not doing anything. And when someone asks why they're not doing anything, the government will respond, "Why of course we are. We're a member of the Asia-Pacific blah blah blah."

I've seen this fake solution thing before. It's not pretty in that it's the best way to prevent people from actually dealing with a problem.

Meanwhile, every individual country that actually suffers economically from the Kyoto Treaty or thinks they might will have an incentive to drop out. India and China are also members of both, so when they get their pollution really going, they'll have a nice failsafe in case they want to drop out of the Kyoto Treaty. Of course, maybe it will be politically infeasible for them to do so--like if some more major cities are flooded or destroyed and the Gulf Stream stops existing.

On the bright side, the high today (January 12) is supposed to be 59 degrees. This is compared to 20 years ago when we would feel lucky to hit 35 or 40 in January in New York.

At least I can take solace in the fact that the death of our civilization must have been intelligently designed: highway systems, SUVs, and steroidal capitalism are way too complicated to have naturally evolved!

For God's Sake, Let's All Go To The Gym!

2006-01-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

Finally, anorexia's bizarro twin has a name: diabetes. Apparently, everyone in my city is on a lifetime Supersized diet and now New York has a diabetes epidemic that I had never heard of before ten minutes go. If you're interested in public health and/or not having your limbs amputated (if you're a slacker like me), this New York Times article is a must read.

An excerpt:

Yet a close look at its surge in New York offers a disturbing glimpse of where the city, and the rest of the world, may be headed if diabetes remains unchecked.

The percentage of diabetics in the city is nearly a third higher than in the nation. New cases have been cropping up close to twice as fast as cases nationally. And of adults believed to have the illness, health officials estimate, nearly one-third do not know it.

One in three children born in the United States five years ago are expected to become diabetic in their lifetimes, according to a projection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The forecast is even bleaker for Latinos: one in every two.

They want us to adhere to unhelpful standards of thinness but no mental health access or public health information, provide really limited health insurance and care, offer lots of helpful ads encouraging us to eat processed sugar, and then they wonder why we're all fat and have diabetes or are insecure, psycho gym nuts. Thanks, consumer capitalism!

This is a hard city.

BLEEP You, New York Times

2006-01-03T00:46:00.000-05:00

Tired of not reading New York Times columns because you think it's ridiculous that they're asking you to pay for a bunch of opinions from people whose major source of credibility is that they get paid to write opinions for the New York Times?

Syndication!

Haha. Take that, New York Times. Why don't you require your columnists to stop syndicating now? Maybe you can then have them communicate exclusively to the five people who are willing to pay for your editorial product.

(link is Maureen Dowd's article on Dick Cheney)

I Just Saw...

2006-01-02T15:20:00.000-05:00

a headline that said "Bush starts 2006 with familiar focus," and I thought, "What a sad waste of 8 years this has been and continues to be." Think of all the possibilities that could have been.

Here's to better days ahead--at least in terms of hope and optimism. Happy New Year.

By Request

2006-01-02T12:40:00.000-05:00

A1, a friend of mine, asked me about my thoughts on helping progressive folks who are going through funks/burnout. My off-the-cuff response was as such--she said I should put it here, so I am :)

i think the way to preempt it is to live a balanced life. the way to recover is probably to detox and then construct a balanced life.

as to how all that is done after the fact--well you're asking the wrong cat :) i've been trying for two years. here's what i would NOT recommend for someone:

1) applying to grad schools willy nilly
2) not recognizing the problem (seriously--not just on an intellectual or a "this is what's happening level")
3) not letting yourself feel what you need to feel regardless of whether it's "correct" in activist circles or not--this might mean removing yourself from those circles for a time except in small social settings because you also can't really conciously do things to give yourself license to be fucked up and hurt other people
4) generally doing things that one does when one does not recognize whatever is causing or has caused the burnout (e.g. binge drinking)
5) not trying to get better because you don't have the energy to try--hence a circular hell.

i think what you can do as a friend is be supportive, be warm, listen, don't predetermine what the right answer is (they may not be ready to hear it even if you're right), try to encourage them to do something slightly better than what they're doing (e.g. if they're deadset on law school even though it's a horrible idea (which it may not be), at least get them to consider the other options or why they're going or whatnot--just being pushed to answer questions can be self-revealing) and just offer love.

and of course you can be like A2 and do all those things plus financial support too :)

-s

Suck In Peace

2005-12-31T14:39:00.000-05:00

Suck was one of the first web content providers I ever used. I learned about it at an internship with a dot com that may or may not still exist in NY's compughetto, Silicon Alley and started to read it regularly to abuse my naive and idealistic sensibilities with their caustic wit. They even deigned to mock me publicly in a chart when I was just an pretentious Yale undergrad schmuck--a chart which is unfortunately gone, since it was a graphic. Here's the other example of how they made fun of me.

Now that I'm an pretentious schmuck in my own right, I have the security to think back sadly on the demise of the institution (meaning Suck, not Yale, which still sucks and has not yet demised). David sent me an article on the development of Suck. If you're interested in Suck, the article's a good read. If you're interested in early (meaning 1994-) web content development and how it worked, it's a must read.

Unfortunately, you can no longer still see what Suck was. For a long time, even after they had stopped publishing, they had archives; now all there is is a porn site. Google cache has some of their letter pages archived but no content. I guess we'll just have to go back to TPM (*rolls eyes*).

Update: Thanks, Ananthan.

Hey Look, We Are About To Complete The Greatest Geopolitical Mistake in Recent Times!

2005-12-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

I read today that South Korea is drawing down its troops in the next year while maintaining overall presence. I also read recent quotes that the United States will be reducing troops (although given the sources, I should probably be more skeptical). I've heard similar notes from other countries.

So here was the purported plan in 2002/3:

Invade Iraq with the United States and to some extent Britain offering most of the troops. Enjoy widespread support from the people. Remove Saddam Hussein from power, and establish a "democracy" really quickly. Have elections and a government up and running, get the oil revenues flowing, and have everything almost pay for itself. Leave a stable and liberal democratic and vassal Iraq behind to be a bulwark of the White and/or Rich West for the upcoming generation or so. Win elections.

And here is the de facto reality:

Invade Iraq with not enough troops to actually implement it successfully and without the support of the populations that are providing the troops. Generate a low level insurgency that does not die. In the atmosphere of insecurity and violence, watch (inevitable) ethnic separatism play out in worse and worse ways, leave the population without really, really basic services (like electricty or water or the ability to walk down the street withouht getting shot or blown up), see a complete failure to develop a democratic society and not just formal liberal democratic apparatuses, and witness the "oh well" choice of foreign powers who tried to half-ass this effort in the first place to prioritize their elections over actually implementing this policy right.

Projected future: some form of civil war or dictatorship in Iraq; possible spread of national instabiltiy to regional instability; importation of weapons of mass destruction by somebody; complete failure of the United States government for what it did and for losers like me for what we allowed it to do; service and other cuts in U.S. budget justified by expense of war; further discrediting of Tony Blair; obvious comparisons to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan not made; western populations (i.e. me) move on with life; others do the same where possible and continuable.

Happy New Year!

Time To Make The Eulogies

2005-12-28T01:57:00.000-05:00

See one here.

It's My Birthday!

2005-12-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

I only get so many chances to give speeches, so I'm going to take this opportunity to give the "if I won an Oscar" one:

I'd like to thank my brother for being there and for the fine-ass digital camera he got me.
I'd like to thank my mother for, um, giving birth to me and all. And for the fine-ass contribution towards a winter coat.
I'd like to thank my aunt and uncle for all their kind love over the years as they recede towards elderliness. And for the fine-ass shirt from Rajasthan.
Also, my nieces and cousins for the shirt on my back right now and for continuing the se name (and other) legacies forward into the next generations. Ruby, don't break your sister's arm.
Who am I forgetting? There are so many people--chotopisi, barapisi, my kakas--especially sejokaka for showing me that there are other ways to live your life than the conventional, the academy, my extended family, my friends--especially A who has been like a sister/mother/overly beneficent landlord/friend for the past three months, A's sister A who also occupies some of those roles, S for always being there and making an effort, B for just kind of hanging around and making sure that I'm okay, P for being my intellectual penpal buddy, N for writing me wonderful letters from India, D for both loving and prodding me and for his honest struggle, A and A for being great IM buddies suggesting therapy and listening to drunken warbling, M for teaching me the business side of writing, R for showing me the decent side of labor, H for being forgiving, K for being wonderful AND forgiving, L for bearing with me while i try to find the letter you wrote, D for being a great client/boss/friend/work partner, P for just being fun (and helping a lot in numerous ways), and, well, everyone else.

Who can enumerate it all? It's a life!

Anyway, thanks to everyone--all the people I haven't met yet, all the people I've only met on the Internet, all the people I will never meet but have written things or said things or just done things that have made a contribution to my life, and all the people I haven't remembered to thank.

Oh, and my grandma! She's sized like Yoda and similarly can get you to do what she wants.

God bless us everyone :)

On To More Hilarious Topics:

2005-12-26T02:01:00.000-05:00

Apparently, I'm liveblogging my Internet binge. razib just sent me this HILARIOUS Saturday Night Live clip--

Weed references + Beastie Boyz knock off rap + Narnia = Fun

"You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons."

Apparently,

2005-12-26T01:49:00.000-05:00

my 8-year-old niece still believes that Santa is real. Should I direct her to this?

Ha ha ha ha. Evil thoughts, snicker, snicker.

My Heart Grew Four Sizes Larger...

2005-12-25T00:40:00.000-05:00

Because I found an $X for $X deal on cashmere scarves :)

Merry Christmas,
from your favorite Grinch.

Race and Economics

2005-12-23T03:29:00.000-05:00

Want to see how race and economics matter to each other? See NYC opinions on the transit strike by race from the WNBC/Marist poll (429 people, +/- 5%, more error for the cross tabs), released Wednesday.

Among the more interesting results:

"Who is more to blame for the transit strike the transit workers union or the MTA?"

	Transit Workers Union	MTA	Unsure
NYC residents	40%	39%	21%
White	53%	27%	20%
African American	23%	58%	19%
Latino	34%	49%	17%

A sidenote of annoyance: No Asian category, despite that at least 10% of the city's population was Asian in Census 2000, using a broad understanding of Asian. So were Asians and other minority groups not included or just not reported in the race-based questions? There should be about 43 of them in the overall results, given the numbers.

I hope they release the raw data. I know people don't do that most of the time, but it's only 429 people with like 10 questions--how big could the spreadsheet be, and who do they think is going to misuse it?

Public domain it, goddamn it!