Mar 042024
 

Yesterday, Trinette came by for the usual tasks of helping me (BTW she says hi back.)

This is about last week’s border visits.  I really can’t be confident it will help (certainly not with crazy Reupublicans, but maybe with some voters.)

Heather Cox Richardson picked March 2, the anniversary of US Steel (founded 1901), to write about that and about the policy changes made by Teddy Roosevelt. She writes late, so I did not get it until the 3rd, and today is the 4th, so it’s 2 days late. But it really should never be forgotten.

Tennessee Brando made a video for Meidas Touch about what it’s like to be an addict, active and recovering. He made it in connection with Hunter Biden’s testimony. But I wish everyone could see it. I’m sharing the link to the DU article because you can always get from there to YouTube comments if you like, but you can’t go the other way.


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Feb 022024
 

Yesterday – well, actually all this week I have been sleeping later than usual. I’m pretty cool with that, except that I don’t want to do it Saturday – the radio opera will be Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. It premiered in 1986… so it’s about time it came to the Met. Two of his four other operas have been “The Central Park Five,” for which he won a Pulitzer (but which I have not heard) and “Amistad,” which I have heard, on the radio, from Chicago Lyric Opera, and which choked me up. That must be almost 20 years ago – or more – , since I attempted to capture it on cassette tape, and only partially succeeded. Do I need to say that this Anthony Davis does not play pro basketball? So if you wasnt to learn more, be sure to Google (or Duck Duck Go) “Anthony Davis composer.”

Robert Reich has posted an article which is, or ought to be, pretty scary. How do you even prepare for something like that?And we know there are a lot of people who would gladly go along with it. We need our best legal minds to start getting on it right now (yesterday would be even better.)

Joyce Vance explains the border “crisis” as well as possible. But it’s hard to explain why states like Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Ohio are so worried. We don’t actually have a problem with illegals from Canada – do we? (By the way the answer to that first question is “No.” If you secede, you lose your citizenship. It’s not like someone who moves to another country but retains US citizenship.


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Jan 282024
 

Yesterday, as I said, the radio opera was “Carmen” by Georges Bizet. Though Bizet was French (some of the most Spanish of Spanish music written in the 19th century was written by Frenchmen) evryone thinks “Spain” about Carmen, and it is set in Spain – but Carmen is a Roma. So are her two closest friends. So are pretty much all the smugglers Romani. That kind of hit me in the face when i realized that yesterday was Holocaust Remembreance Day – and theRomani were as much a target of the Nazis as the Jews. Trying to read up in the Roma quickly is a little like trying to collect syrup in your hand – a little sticks, but more slips out. They are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, but they also live all over the world. They have been called “gypsies,” but they are not from Egypt. They have been called “Bohemians,” but they are not from what is now Czechoslovakia. Neither are they from Romania, but originally from northwest India. They have endured slavery along with other forms of abuse. I’m linking to both Steve Schmidt’s Substack – it’s not new material, but a collection of links to his earlier writings on antisemitism – and to The Conversation, to an article which addresses some of the ways in which the Jews and the Roms were linked by the Nazis (I needed a hanky. But it’s all very well to mourn the lost – it doesn’t do too much to prevent it ever happening again.)

Heather Cox Richardson’s Friday night letter did quite a decent job of summarizing highlight from the week, including a couple I hadn’t heard. If you have time, I recommend it.

Over the weekend, someone on DU shared the information that under New York law, you can appeal a civil suit, but if you do, you must first deposit the full judgment plus a small percentage with the court. I don’t know whether the legislators were thinking of interest, or court costs, or justice delayed – possibly all three. But if Trump** is going to appeal the most recent judgment, he will have to deposit $99 million with the court.

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Dec 272023
 

I’m afraid I really am not feeling good today.  I could use one of those ginger mints Ruby gave Shaye – I hear both ingredients are good for nausea.  But I just got an emal I had to pass on – Alexander Vindman’s twin is running for Congress in Virginia, and pairing up with Adam Schiff for fundraising.  I personally have not given anything to the California Senate race because I don’t want to diss Katie OR Adam OR Barbara – it’s not even that they are all the same, because they aren’t – they are all distinct and each would be a fantastic Senator in diferent ways.   But I’ll quote from the email from Alexander including the link.

I’m writing to ask you to split a $10 contribution today between my brother Eugene Vindman’s campaign for Virginia’s 7th congressional district and Adam Schiff’s campaign for Senate.

Please let me explain why:

In 2019, in my role on the National Security Council, I witnessed a telephone call between then-President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump pressured Zelensky to launch a political investigation of Joe Biden as a quid pro quo to continue receiving United States military aid. I was shocked.

I alerted my brother Eugene who served as the NSC’s ethics attorney. We immediately informed our superiors and I eventually testified before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee, on which Rep. Adam Schiff served as chair.

He led a thorough, honest investigation and eventually secured the first bipartisan vote in a Senate impeachment trial to convict a U.S. president in the history of our country. Each in our own ways, we exposed Trump’s abuse of power to the American public.

It was the right thing to do, Joanne — but we all paid the price.

Then-President Trump retaliated swiftly and fired Eugene and me from the White House, ultimately ending our decades of military service.

And Trump, the Republican Party, and the right-wing media have spent every day since seeking to take down Adam Schiff, censuring him on a partisan vote and even trying to remove him from Congress — simply for championing the rule of law.

That’s why it’s up to us to have Eugene and Adam’s backs. Because they will always have our backs in the fight for our democracy and stand up for the integrity of our Constitution like they have for years.

Just look at January 6th and the ongoing attacks on fair elections. Look at Republican attempts to strip the fundamental right to vote. Look at Trump’s plans to purge the government if he wins again.

It’s more important than ever that we have staunch voices in defense of democracy in the House and Senate. Those voices are Eugene Vindman and Adam Schiff.

So please, split a contribution of $10 or whatever you can afford today between Eugene’s campaign for Virginia’s 7th district and Adam’s campaign for Senate. Every dollar makes a difference as we approach the end-of-year FEC fundraising deadline.

Here’s one to show the anti-immigration people (not that they’ll understand it) –

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Oct 062023
 

Yesterday, Colorado Public Radio reported that it’s mating season for tarantulas in southeastern Colorado – way southeastern – a good hundred miles from where I live. In and around La Junta, which is holding a Tarantula Festival. Before they started moving Virgil around last year, I used to drive through La Junta to see him, but I never saw a tarantula. Don’t click the link if you don’t like spiders, but if you can tolerate them, it’s kind of cute. I wonder whether they feature tarantella bands. Nah, probably not. Also, I received a grocery order.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Lauren Wilson – The Immigration Situation – It’s Nuts!
Quote – Before September 21st, an asylum seeker could not get a work visa for 6 months. In my mind, that has to be the dumbest law imaginable. These people want to work. They want to find homes, become a part of society, take care of their families. They are not happy to live in tents and shelters in NYC when it is about to get cold. Although this is the law and only Congress can change it, Biden has circumvented the law to allow the Venezuelan asylum seekers to immediately apply for work visas. It is hoped that this will address the problem in New York City. But it does nothing for the Cubans, Nicaraguans, or Haitians. To say that immigration is going to be a major platform issue in the 2024 presidential election is an understatement. Republicans are already pressuring Biden to \”Close the Border\” and there are Democrats who agree. But those of us who are humanitarians want to find other solutions. Immigrants are people, not problems. If the policies are problems, let’s figure out how to fix them.
Click through for article. Lauren is a DU’er who is looking to expand her personal blog’s readership. With articles like this, she should be able to, if people just know where to look. It’s clear she is a competent researcher of both history and current events.

National Public Radio – The growing racial gap in U.S. census results is raising an expert panel’s concerns
Quote – “There’s always going to be error in a census,” says Teresa Sullivan, a sociology professor and former president of the University of Virginia, who chaired the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine panel that was commissioned by the Census Bureau. Still, the panel’s report, released Tuesday, urged the bureau to take steps to learn from the shortfalls of the 2020 census and improve on the next constitutionally required count. Those statistics are set to be used to determine each state’s share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes, as well as redraw voting districts for every level of government and guide more than $2.8 trillion a year in federal money for public services across the country.
Click through for details. Yes, there is always going to be honest error in the census. But, though it may be possible to avoid some dishonest error, some of thet is also going to creep in. I do beieve we can cut down on it, but not without having some kind of ethics qualification for Census workers – specifically the ones who only work as temps for one Census. Don’t get me started on my own experience as one.

Food For Thought

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Jul 232023
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Wozzeck,” by Alban Berg. Its plot is so bleak that it makes the operas in the verismo school look like RomComs. Wozzeck is in the army, and a Captain and an army doctor are conducting psychological experiments on him without informed consent (for small sums of money), and laughing at him behind his back. He gets no respect from any other men either, and his partner, Marie (with whom he has a son almost old enough to start talking), is flirting (and eventually cheating) with a drum major who offers Marie earrings that Wozzeck could never afford. By the end of the opera the Captain and doctor have him so messed up that he brutally kills Marie, and then himself, and the opera ends with their son rocking back and forth on a rocking horse while the other children taunt him for being an orphan. No, it isn’t pretty – but if art were restricted to pretty, no one would ever learn anything from it. (In fact, it’s quite a stroke of Karma that this is being aired now, at a time when multiple strikes are going on. It definitely calls attention to the strikers’ plights.) The music is also not pretty – Berg, with Schönberg and Webern, comprised the second Viennese school, which developed and worked in the twelve-tone method of composition (in which there’s no such thing as a key – no major, no minor, no nothing – just notes and chords made up artificially.  There is a system to it, nd it’s actually not hard to learn how to compose in it,but for the listener, it’s not that easy to make sense of it.). But it certainly makes a statement, and though the Captain and he doctor aren’t entrepreneurs, I’d still say that statement could well be about capitalism as well as the obvious class structure. The performance was recorded live at the Royal Opera House in London by the Royal Opera Company. I didn’t recognize any of the performers’ names, but I’ve gone through periods before when there were a lot of names around I didn’t recognize and few that I did. I think it means there’s a generation of singers heading for retirement and another just coming up and not yet widely known. Between that and the openness to new operas and the Met audience getting younger (average age ten years ago was in the sixties but is now in the fifties), I think the future of opera will turn out to be exciting.  Also, today is Virgil’s birthday.  He is 80.  I’ll celebrate wih him next week which is between his birthday and mine.

Cartoon – 23 0723Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

Wonkette – Feds ‘Assess’ Alleged Texas Orders To Push Children, Nursing Babies Back Into Rio Grande. Assess Faster, Guys.
Quote – Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said in a press call with other Texas Democrats that Gov. Greg Abbott “placed death traps in the Rio Grande and has now issued barbaric orders to state troopers that endanger people’s lives.” The Dallas Morning News notes that podcaster and occasional Republican Senator Ted Cruz has not returned calls for comment, while fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn explained last week, before the allegations surfaced, that Abbott had no choice but to treat the border like a war zone because Joe Biden Open Borders Irresponsible. The story broke after a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) trooper who was working as a medic reported his concerns to supervisors about a number of things he witnessed, including a June 25 incident in which he and other troopers came across a group of 120 migrants, including children and women with nursing babies.
Click through for story (and it looks like the popup with “Continue reading” is in place.) Speaking of bleak – I don’t know which scares me most – that a governor would issue these orders, that the state troopers have leadership that would enforce them, or that the state troopers have minions who would follow and obey them. Naziism much?

The 19th – In some states, gender dysphoria is a protected disability — and momentum could be growing
Quote – The Supreme Court’s denial to take up Williams’ case could mean that it agrees with the 4th Circuit, or simply that it is not interested in taking up the issue of whether trans people are covered under disability law right now, according to legal experts. Notably, there has not been a split in opinion on this issue among two or more circuit courts, which is a typical incentive for the Supreme Court to get involved. In the last few years, the high court has declined to take up challenges to several cases that reinforced protections for transgender people facing discrimination. This trend followed the 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Supreme Court found gender identity to be a protected class of sex. This is possibly because they are abiding by Bostock’s findings that trans people are protected by existing federal laws, said Ezra Ishmael Young, a civil rights lawyer and scholar.
Click through for details. There is always a gap between legislated law and case law, though it’s not always this obvious – nor does it always affect people so deeply as it does here. And this is why the Supreme Court’s makeup is so critical to a free society.

Food For Thought

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Everyday Erinyes #379

 Posted by at 5:05 pm  Politics
Jul 162023
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I apologize for picking a topic which is presented in a podcast – but with MTG (and other) beginning to call for “deadly force” to “defend out borders,” darn it, it’s important. Let me quickly go over the material here which is being presented. First the podcast itself, which runs 38:37 including credits. then there is the accompanying column, which summarizes the three interviews with the three experts, but does not include all details.

The above is if you listen to the podcast on this page (or at all really.) But I tracked down the precise YouTube link to this particular podcast, and discovered, as I hoped, that it has CC. That means you can watch the captions as you listen, or alternatively you can click the three dots to the right of the “Save” button, select “show transcript” from the short dropdown menu, and quickly load the full transcript. It isn’t perfect – the name “Mend Mariwany” gets transcribed as “ment marijuani,” for instance, and I have no idea what he means by “and Medellin” except that it has to be French to be pronounced that way – but it is more detailed than the summary, by all means. I know, it’s annoying, but there really is a way to get the information, regardless of one’s abilities or preferences.

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Debunking migration myths: the real reasons people move, and why most migration happens in the global south – podcast

People in motion in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Alf Ribeiro/Shutterstock

Avery Anapol and Mend Mariwany

Around the world, borders between countries are getting tougher. Governments are making it more difficult to move, especially for certain groups of vulnerable people. This comes with a message, subtle or not: that people are moving to higher-income countries to take advantage of the welfare system, or the jobs of people already living there.

But evidence shows that much of what we think about migration – particularly those of us in Europe, North America and Australia – is wrong. Political narratives, often replicated in the media, shape the conversation and public attitudes toward migration.

As the researchers we speak to in this episode of The Conversation Weekly tell us, these narratives are not the full picture. Our interviewees explain what migration really looks like around the world, what drives people to uproot their lives and move, and how some countries in Africa are welcoming refugees.

Challenging the narrative

Heaven Crawley, a researcher at UN University Centre for Policy Research based in New York, has been interested in migration since the late 1980s. Then, the breakup of the former Yugoslavia caused what was often referred to as a refugee “crisis” in Europe.

Language like “crisis” has been a part of the discourse on migration for years. But Crawley thinks of this in a particular way: “It’s absolutely fair to say that there is a crisis associated with migration. It’s normally for the people who are actually moving, because they’re often in situations where there are huge inequalities in the right to move.”

Crawley shared that migration, while “intrinsic to our economies and the way we function”, is not actually the norm. Most people don’t migrate, and those who do mostly move within their country of origin.

She explained how, in Europe especially, perceptions of those who do migrate are often clouded by a narrative that people who move, legally, for work are “good” migrants. Conversely, people who move without visa permission or through clandestine means are viewed as “bad” migrants.

In reality, people moving for any reason is usually a force for good for the country they move to and the people they encounter, Crawley suggested. “People are coming to realise that actually, migration can be very positive in terms of their day-to-day lives, who they mix with, who their family are married to.”

When people decide to migrate, whether seeking economic opportunities or to escape violence or persecution, there are a number of factors influencing where they go. Valentina Di Iasio, a research fellow at the University of Southampton in the UK, has researched what makes people choose one country over another.

Di Iasio and her colleague Jackie Wahba wanted to investigate the theory of the “welfare magnet”, that people choose to migrate to countries where the welfare state is more generous.

But looking specifically at asylum seekers, they found that the strongest “pull factor” attracting people to particular countries is social networks. In other words, it’s not about the economy or welfare state, it’s about “having the possibility to rely on a community that is already there and already established”.

Di Iasio also noted that many countries have policies preventing asylum seekers from working when they first arrive. But she said these policies often backfire, both for people arriving, and the host country’s overall economy: “If you ban asylum seekers from employment, this leads people … to become more dependent on public spending in the short term, and this is not good for anyone.”

Migration in the global south

It’s impossible to understand the global picture of migration if we only look at specific routes – for example, from India to the UK, or from Mexico to the US. According to Crawley, about one third of global migration happens within the global north (Europe, North America, Australia and parts of Asia), one third happens within the global south (South America, Africa and parts of Asia), and the remaining third is between the two.

With that in mind, we spoke to Christopher Changwe Nshimbi, a researcher at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, about a region with frequent movement across borders. He studies the relationship between migration, development and regional integration (countries forming economic and trade relationships with each other) in Africa.

Nshimbi said that more open borders are beneficial to regional integration in Africa. They allow people to move where their skills are needed, and to send remittances (money) back home to family, often within the same region.

And yet, some countries are tightening their migration policies. Part of this, Nshimbi explained, is even influenced by attitudes in the global north. For example, development funding from the European Union is often tied to efforts to curb migration from Africa to the EU. Nshimbi said that when migrants are seen as a threat to high-income European countries: “The tendency seems to be to try and influence the movement … of Africans within the African continent.”

But he said this approach is misguided, and that funding development in low-income countries “doesn’t necessarily translate into people stopping migrating”. In some cases, this funding to stop migration has been used in a way that causes instability and violence – and ultimately, more migration.

Looking toward the future

Nshimbi is now researching how the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather patterns, are leading people to migrate. While this will present challenges for governments, Nshimbi said the history of migration on the continent gives him reason to be optimistic.

He said he wonders why European countries talk about refugee “crises” when countries in Africa regularly host many more refugees. Citing the example of Uganda, he said: “There are shining examples on the continent of countries that, though poor, host large numbers of refugees.”

Again referencing Uganda, Nshimbi said that some countries are used to hosting refugees, providing them with land and resources so they can participate in local economies until they move elsewhere: “A poor country, but they take care of them.”

Listen to the full episode of The Conversation Weekly to learn more about migration around the world, what factors drive people to move, and what some countries in Africa are doing to welcome refugees.


This episode was written and produced by Avery Anapol and Mend Mariwany, who is also the executive producer of The Conversation Weekly. Eloise Stevens does our sound design, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s free daily email here.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.The Conversation

Avery Anapol, Commissioning Editor, Politics + Society and Mend Mariwany, Producer, The Conversation Weekly

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it’s sad but not really surprising to learn that virtually no one, anywhere in the world, has a government which unanimously grasps the value which migration provides to society – any society. And it is much easier to piggy-back on people’s perfectly normal fear of the unknown and turn that into bigotry than it is to actually research, learn, and turn that learning into education which produces welcoming attitudes and thereby helps everyone. Helping everyone attracts neither big donor money not votes.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Jul 012023
 

Glenn Kirschner – Rudy Giuliani meets w/federal prosecutors; likely trying to get the best plea deal to flip on Trump

The Lincoln Project – Presidents on American Immigrants

Robert Reich – The GOP’s Assault on LGBTQ Existence

Liberal Redneck – Why the Obsession with Trans People?

This Cat Was Left Behind When His Owner Moved Away (In defense of California, San Bernardino is in a red district – not Kevin’s, but adjacent to Kevin’s.)

Beau – Let’s talk about Rudy and interviews….

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