Dowsing

Grudge Match: NYTBR vs. WRB

I've gone on here and in other places about how badly the New York Times Book Review and the reviewing establishment in general ignores books by women and women's opinions on books. With book reviewing on the wane (hell, books are on the wane), it's hard to find a good source of book reviews that doesn't entail subscribing to a number of different journals and blogs. I'm terminally fed up with the Times, and yet I keep going back to it because there's so little else. In desperation, I subscribed to Book Forum, which I like, but which is also heavily skewed toward art and academics. Not that I've got anything against either art or academic books, but I'm a writer, among other things, and I want to read about fiction and history and poetry and biography and okay, yeah, some politics for general readers. There are still some of us, yanno, who actually read books.

Today, like the infamous dog returning to its vomit, I glanced over the Times list of the year's ten best books, which is a dubious proposition anyway. I mean, ten best book for whom? Never mind in whose opinion. How many women made the cut? Three. Four (see comments below). Oh so predictably, two in fiction, one in non-fiction: Toni Morrison for A Mercy and Jhumpa Lahiri for Unaccustomed Earth (excellent writers both); Jane Meyer for The Dark Side:The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. I'm a fan of both Morrison and Lahiri and happy to see them on the list. Would one more women author have killed them? Like, oh, Marilynne Robinson's Home? or Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves? Jane Meyer's investigative reporting on the Bush administration's adoption of horrific policies like sanctioned torture, suspension of habeas corpus, and extraordinary rendition is a great piece of work and belongs on the list. But instead of, say, honoring yet another book about the Civil War (it's OVER, people; quit fighting it), it would have been nice to showcase, for example, Joanna Bourke's Rape: Sex, Violence, History, given the continuing conditions in Darfur and the widespread use of rape as a tactic of war in Africa.

Proposition 8 and the discriminatory nature of marriage

There are protests nationwide today against California's passage of their Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. Instead of marching, I'm blogging (because it's pouring rain here). I am repeatedly boggled by the need of human beings to deny others their humanity, when those Others have done nothing to directly harm those who would classify them as subhuman. This was the cornerstone of slavery in this country (slaves counted as only 3/5 of a person); of denying both African Americans and women voting privileges; and now of denying gays the right to marry. In a word (or acronym): WTF?

The argument that two people of the same sex marrying somehow harms the "sanctity of marriage" between two people of the opposite sex is completely illogical, as Spock might say. I'd like to see a demonstration of what this harm is. Does it prevent opposite sex couples from obtaining marriage licenses? No. Does it prevent opposite sex couples from obtaining housing? No. Does it hinder them in exercising any of their already granted rights? No. It merely offends some of them. Too bad. I'm offended by bigoted people marrying and propagating their bigotry by teaching it to their children, but I'm not about to deny them the right to do so. Human rights don't work that way. Either we all get them, or none of us get them.

The idea that the marriage of two people of the same sex is somehow an aberration is also just patently false. Tufts University Historian Gary Leupp has a great capsulized refutation of this idea in an open letter he wrote to Governor Mitt Romney. Here's a little sample of it, with a bibliography:

watching the world wake up from history

The Wall Street Journal just called it. I'm a little giddy. Everybody in my neighborhood is too. Horns honking, shouting, music. Like New Year's. I suppose it is. At the very least, it is a new age. The unthinkable has happened. A liberal Black man is going to move into the White House. About damn time. Next, a woman. Then someone gay, until the only thing that matters is your qualifications and your vision.

History. Right here. Right now.

 

why I done it

So, I done it. Got up at 6 and headed downstairs and stood in line very briefly, had my spanking new voter registration verified, got in the booth and pulled the levers. I still have very little if any confidence in any of the politicians for whom I pulled those levers, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised. MUG Newsletter had a nice concise list of reasons to vote this morning called "Tro da Bums Out!" It's as good a set of reasons as any; here it is:

• Iraq
• The Economy
• Katrina
• Guantanamo
• Renditions and Torture
• Abandoning the Kyoto Treaty
• The Patriot Act
• Fighting the formation of the 9/11 Commission
• Veteran Care at Walter Reed
• U.S. Attorney Firings
• Valerie Plame Outing
• The National Debt
• Ignoring Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine
• Stem Cell Research
• Darfur

Day Late and Dollar Short

Did nobody get the irony of this? Did no one step back and say, "wait a minute: haven't I seen this somewhere before? Didn't we get in trouble the last time we did this?" And didn't somebody think it was a little odd to be praying for money? Unless you're Cindy Jacobs, I guess. I suspect her stock portfolio has tanked in a big way and her broker needs an intervention. But, you know, the site is just a tad off, what with its association with, say, golden calves, Mammon, and other gods implicated in idolatry. Isn't there a commandment about this?

According to CBN, "Cindy is calling for a Day  of Prayer for the World’s Economies on Wednesday, October 29, 2008. They are calling for prayer for the stock markets, banks, and financial institutions of the world on the date the stock market crashed in 1929. They are meeting at the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank, and its 12 principal branches around the US that day." Sez Ms. Jacobs:

“We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion’s Market,' or God’s control over the economic systems,” she said.  “While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.”

Sheesh, nobody reads the Hebrew Scriptures anymore.

Down to the Wire: Yes, We Can

"If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people."

This quotation is taken from former Labour MP and Cabinet Minister Tony Benn in Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko." It sums up the British rationale for creating a National Health Service after WWII. (See the clip below the cut.) I can't think of a better summation of the failures of the U.S. government over the past 20 years. If a society is judged by how it treats its weakest members, ours is failing.

Which is why, finally, I decided it's time to vote: Not because I actually trust politicians. Oh hell no. Or the political system either. But because I'm not afraid, not demoralized, not sick and I don't take orders very well. I am, however, very tired of the top 1% of this country calling the shots and crapping on the rest of us. When "trickle down" economics was first introduced, someone said "We all know what the only thing that trickles down is," and he was right. The poor and working class in this country have been steadily disenfranchised and stripped of their ability make a living, while the wealthy fail to pay their share of taxes and live off the backs of their workers and the spoils of deregulation, greed, and war. Do I sound like a Socialist? Get over it. We're actually allies of a number of socialists countries, and their systems work pretty well—actually better than ours in some cases. Socialism ≠ Communism. At least the socialist states aren't 29th in the infant mortality stats like we are.

Another Reason Why I Left the Midwest

Do I even need to explain? I can't stand the racism, the bigotry, the narrow-mindedness, the willful ignorance. It's so pervasive and so full of knee-jerk fear. [from Blogger Interrupted, via Shakesville.

(Sorry I've been such a bad blogger. Just had an unexpected guest for an unexpected amount of time, and I'm way behind on on my classwork. Can't let my students down. More next week, when I hope to be caught up again.)

Cuz, You Know, We're All Alike

'Nuff Said . . .

Word to my friend Peggie for passing this on. Anybody want to make these?  I'll be first in line. It'll go nicely with my "Who would Jesus bomb?" pin.

The Police State and the Embedded Media

History repeats itself, rather drearily. Four years ago, at the Republican National Convention in New York City, hundreds of protesters exercising their right to peaceful assembly, were rounded up and tossed into cages on one of the piers. Many of them were held there overnight in foul conditions, many of them were held for more than 24 hours without being charged. New York City is still digging itself out from under the reprehensible conduct of its police in this matter. And yet . . . did anybody learn anything from this? Apparently not.

Well, besides how to round up protesters exercising their right to free assembly and put them in cages. And how to keep those actions out of the public eye.

By arresting the media covering it.

Despite clear identification of themselves as authorized members of the Fourth Estate, Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke, and three members of the independent TV & radio show "Democracy Now!" were also busted for filming the protesters. Amy Goodman, host of the show had her credentials ripped from her neck and, on video, was roughed up merely for protesting their arrest. She was later charged with a misdemeanor of resisting arrest. Two of them, the show's producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, were charged with "suspicion of rioting," a felony. (Think their last names might have had anything to do with that?) In the following video of Salazar's arrest, you can clearly hear her identifying herself as press while the cops beat her down. I find the video terrifying and shameful.

Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild, is quoted as saying of this statute, "its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested." Handy to have that thing on the books though for those pesky dissenters, like vegans, and people from Food Not Bombs, whose slogan is "cook for peace." Now that's threatening.

You might have noticed the dearth of coverage about this in the mainstream media. I've looked in vain for New York Times or Washington Post coverage. You'd think this would be a national issue, the muzzling and arrest of reporters. It impinges directly on freedom of the press. And yet, the only groups to cover it have been the independent press like Salon, HuffPo and Alternet.

Where the press has responded, as the hometown Star Tribune did, it was with nonsensical, xenophobic vitriol:

It’s worth scrolling through the list of Monday bookings from the Ramsey County jail now posted on the Star Tribune’s online InfoCenter (startribune.com/infocenter). Many of those arrested in St. Paul weren’t carrying IDs or wouldn’t give their names. Those who were identified came from Lexington, Ky.; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Portland, Ore., and dozens of other U.S. cities. These weren’t the sons and daughters of Highland Park and south Minneapolis.

Those fucking New Yorkers. How dare they come out here and report our news! And you know, this wasn't a local convention. This was the National Republican Convention. Where did they think everyone else was coming from?

To be fair, the Dems had their share of pre-emptive arrests too, but nothing so egregious as these were. The local cops had been recruiting informants for months against groups that were known to be peaceful.

One of the most frightening responses to this episode was of St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington, when asked by Amy Goodman "how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere": “By embedding reporters in our mobile field force.”

Sound familiar? That's right. Just like reporters are embedded with military units in Iraq, where their reporting is carefully censored, supposedly to protect the lives of soldiers. The reason for that tactic was the lesson learned with the Vietnam War, which was openly reported by the press, live from the battlefields, on television, with nightly body counts. That made it an extremely unpopular war for Lyndon Johnson and when the US went to war again, the Pentagon cited issues of national security to restrict the press's access and ability to report.

Regardless of whether you think there's some reason for restricting press access (and I don't), last I looked, the Twin Cities were not a war zone, there were no issues of national security at stake, and the police are not the army.

Maybe that's changing. If so, be afraid.

Rites of Citizenship

Now that I've decided I'm no longer bound by the strictures of my religion, there are some new choices presenting themselves. One of these is whether I should register to vote.

Needless to say, many of my attitudes toward citizenship have been shaped not only by my former religion's doctrine, but by the household I grew up in, where Dad was die-hard Democrat and my mother, though ostensibly neutral, enjoyed a good political argument as much as anybody who actually voted. We were an ultra-liberal household in many ways, if a morally conservative one. But only Dad voted. Even so, nobody in my house trusted a politician of any stripe farther than they could be thrown, and even Dad was more radical libertarian than left-wing liberal.

The religion I left prides itself on being neutral to political issues, though I've come to realize it isn't entirely so. They don't vote, they won't join the military. They do pay their taxes, scrupulously, and it's left up to the individual as to whether to serve on a jury or not, whether to join a union or cross a picket line. I have cousins who worked as hospital orderlies stateside as conscientious objectors during the Vietnam war rather than join the military and I know people who went to jail rather than fight in WWII. They're happy to use the courts, to appeal to Caesar when they feel their rights have been violated. I've written a number of letters to government officials all over the world asking them to stop persecuting and imprisoning my brothers and sisters because of their religion and their political neutrality. I think that's one of the things that got me interested in human rights issues to begin with.

Belonging to an apocalyptic religion fosters a deep sense of pessimism in its followers, as well as a kind of political paralysis. If it's all going to hell in a hand basket anyway, why get involved? You're powerless to change anything and God will sort it out eventually. But even as a kid, I itched to get involved in protests against things I felt were wrong, for ideals I felt were right: against the Vietnam War, against nuclear arms, for the Civil Rights movement. As I got older, it seem less and less tenable that I should be writing letters only to free people of my own faith. Why not everyone who was being persecuted, discriminated against, jailed for things they said? Why not, say, Nelson Mandela, too? Racial discrimination hurts everyone as much as religious persecution does. It was feminism that finally got me fired up enough, if not to vote, then to speak out, to talk back, to identify with something more than just my religion, with the radical notion that women are people.

And there I was, suddenly: on the slippery slope, sliding.

Boning Up: Better Late Than Never

So you're not the only one with a summer reading list. The FBI has one too. Seems a number of the are attending summer school and boning up on their Arabic Studies. I shouldn't make fun of this, but I'm a little cranky from waking up from a dream this morning that I was on the FBI watch list just for wearing a Question Authority button on my jacket. Don't know what they'd think about my "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" button. And aren't they supposed to hire experts in these areas? I mean, I know about professional development and all that, but this reading list makes me a little nervous about general competence.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation requires the following items, Exact Match Only, to the following: 
GHOST WARS , 150, EA;
TERROR IN THE NAME OF GOD, 180, EA;
LOOMING TOWER, 370, EA;
HEZBOLLAH, 150, EA;
UNDERSTANDING TERROR NETWORKS, 150, EA;
2008 FEDERAL CRIMINAL CODE RULES BOOK, 100, EA;
HOLY WAR INC, 30, EA;
SOLDIERS OF GOD; WITH ISLAMIC WARRIORS, 30, EA;
INSIDE ALQUAEDA; GLOBAL NETWORK, 30, EA;
UNDERSTANDING ARABS : A GUIDE, 30, EA;
FRANKLIN COREY STYLE GUIDE, 4, EA;
AMERICAN JIHAD : THE TERRORIST, 30, EA;
MAKERS OF CONTEMPORARY ISLAM, 20, EA;
LINE BY LINE : HOW TO EDIT YOUR WRITING, 4, EA;
THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, 4, EA;
THE TRUE BELIEVER, 385, EA;
A FURY FOR GOD: THE ISLAMIST ATTACK, 30, EA;
ISLAMIA : A SHORT STORY, 30, EA;
WHAT WENT WRING [sic]: THE CLASH OF BET ISLAM, 30, EA; [which I suspect is really "The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East"]
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003 FOR DUMMIES, 4, EA;
EXCEL 2003 BIBLE BY JOHN WALKENBACH, 2, EA;
POWERPOINT 2003 FOR DUMMIES, 3, EA;
MICROSOFT OFFICE POWERPOINT 2003 STEP BY STEP, 3, EA;
MICROSOFT OFFICE PROJECT STEP BY STEP, 1, EA;
THE KORAN (PENGUIN CLASSICS), 130, EA;

Apparently there's some computer training on the curriculum and a writing class or two. Nice to see a little literature thrown in there, too. And that refresher course on the Criminal Code and Federal rules. I hope all these are just for the Newbies.

[Tip o the hat to Book Patrol and Resource Shelf]

Your Call May be Monitored . . .

What else could you call this post? What else would you title a protest against the newly passed right to spy on its citizens that Bush's cronies and the chickenshit Dems in the Senate just handed the Imperial arm of the government?  What else could you title a post about the sudden dismissal of more than 40 pending lawsuits against the telecom companies for aiding and abetting said then-illegal spying by our own government? Nothing like breaking the law first, then rewriting it to retroactively cover your ass, which is exactly what this is.

Not only may your call be monitored, but your Internet transactions as well, though these are more difficult to trace. And if you think the Government won't actually misuse this new power, then you need to take a look at why the original law requiring search warrants for wiretapping was put in place in the late 1970s. As Julian Sanchez points out in his recent Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times,

The original FISA law was passed in 1978 after a thorough congressional investigation headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that for decades, intelligence analysts -- and the presidents they served -- had spied on the letters and phone conversations of union chiefs, civil rights leaders, journalists, antiwar activists, lobbyists, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices -- even Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Church Committee reports painstakingly documented how the information obtained was often "collected and disseminated in order to serve the purely political interests of an intelligence agency or the administration, and to influence social policy and political action."

I don't know about you, but I would consider myself, if not an activist, at least anti-war and pro-civil rights. If blogging counts as activism, then yeah, I guess I am one. The revision of FISA leaves the likes of me, ordinary, innocent if sometimes rabble rousing citizens vulnerable to the abuses of an overly nosy government. Prior to FISA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies, including the New York City Police Department were spying on an ex-president's wife and duly appointed Supreme Court justices, as well as civil rights activists. They've gone right back to it under this regime. Now they can do it legally.

Worried yet? You should be.

Why did Obama vote in support of this? (Sen. Clinton voted against it.) More importantly, if he's elected, will he urge Congress to revisit it and reinstate the already workable guidelines previously in place to protect citizens' right to privacy? McCain sure won't.

It's That Simple

It's only grown-ups who complicate things so much that they can't see the forest for the trees.  Share. Play nice. Don't hit. Care for each other. It's not that hard. We just make it complicated with our theories of economics, our artificial borders and insistence on national identity, our short-sightedness, our greed. The simple truth is that we create our own suffering. And here's the child telling emperors they have no clothes. Be ashamed.