National Week of Actions Everywhere against SB1070

I had a hard time finding much in the MSM, or even the bigger liberal or progressive media sources about the week of actions in Arizona and across the United States against SB1070 and for immigrant rights.

So much went down! So here is an assemblage of news:

Timeline of protests across Arizona on July 29.

Great info page on Indymedia.org.

Dozens Arrested in Protests of AZ Immigration Law on CommonDreams.org

AZ immigration-law protests lead to arrests, street closures from the Arizona Daily Star

SB 1070 Rage: Salvador Reza, Alfredo Gutierrez, Scores of Others Arrested in Phoenix from the Phoenix News

Photos gracias a Puente Arizona

And interestingly, the judge who placed on injunction on part of SB1070 is receiving threats.

Photo by Anita Sarkeesian

Please add anything I missed in the comments.

Gender-tastic!

Meeting a beautiful woman can be bad for your health, scientists have found.

IT’S SCIENCE!(tm)

Oh yeah? Whose health? All people? Bad for other beautiful women? Bad for whom?

Oh, right. Bad for men. Who are the only ones who read the news, and therefore addressing all news readers as though they are men is totally appropriate. Also, these male readers must all be straight, since it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to assume gay men may not have the same feelings about women as straight men.

But remember people, IT’S SCIENCE!

Is it the existence of an attractive woman that is bad for men’s health, or is it society’s and men’s unhealthy attitudes about women that trigger men’s supposedly negative health reactions?

Obviously, this is something that women are deliberately doing to men, to harm them. We women are deliberately attractive to men as a gigantic plot to destroy them. The University of Valencia in Spain, where this study was conducted, has finally outed our massive, world-encompassing secret! Women are nefarious by nature and can never be trusted.

Bonus info: Apparently in Germany, this news was an even bigger hit, and the headlines are even worse. For example:

Schöne Frauen sind schlecht fürs Herz (Beautiful Women Are Bad for Your Heart)

Nachrichten : Schaden Schöne Frauen Der Gesundheit? (Do Beautiful Women Harm Your Health?)

Schöne Frau, gestresster Mann (Beautiful Woman, Stressed Out Man)

Schöne Frauen stressen (Beautiful Women Are Stressful)

Anti-Defamation League Against Islamic Community Center

The ADL has come out against building an Islamic Community Center in New York’s Financial District, near to Ground Zero. Absolutely shameful.

They even use one of my favorite anti-equality sentence constructions… “We believe in religious freedom, but….”

But not for Muslims. We get it.

Are You Unemployed? Would You Like to Feel Worse About Yourself?

Ben Stein is always available to help you understand your worthlessness.

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job.

I mean, he understands your recession troubles, because his rich friends “in the very tony neighborhoods where I hang out, like Beverly Hills and Rancho Mirage and Malibu” are having hardships too. It’s just that he needs you to comprehend the fact that you have no value as a human being.

Financial Security and Social Justice

As a person who holds her values dear, I often run into difficulty trying to sustain my lifestyle in an unequal and capitalistic society. It has been extremely hard to establish financial security for myself while living my values fully. I believe that basic human needs are human rights. I believe that any government or society should not prevent access to any person’s basic needs, i.e. should not abuse the human rights of it’s population. Shorter version: First, do no harm. I also believe that all governments and societies have a positive imperative to ensure that the human needs and human rights of each member are met. Shorter version: Second, do good.

I have similar values regarding individual conduct. First, do no harm. Second, do good. If you cannot meet the first imperative, there is almost no point to the second. You are simply exerting effort in two opposite directions, in the end negating yourself.

I want to focus this discussion on individual conduct, and how to do no harm within the reality of the American context. The reality is that only a tiny minority of people in America can secure their future without money. The vast majority of people cannot lead a stable, safe and secure life without financial security, and so money must be discussed. But how do you achieve financial security for yourself without harming that of others, or more commonly, helping a large institution perpetuate human rights abuses against others?

For the principled person, this question is extremely difficult to answer honestly. As a matter of fact, I have no answer myself.

STOCKS & FINANCIAL PRODUCTS
Immediately, we can eliminate the option of buying stocks or other such traded financial commodities. Some would argue that we can invest in “green” stocks or “social justice” funds. No. Such ideas work in one of two ways, and both are grossly insufficient to meet the standard of “do no harm”. The first way these financial products work is by only including companies which meet certain basic issue-oriented criteria. For example, a green fund might only include investments in companies that have met certain emission or environmental standards. Or an LGBT fund might only include companies that have LGBT-friendly policies. But the flaws become clear immediately. First, the minimum standards may be very basic and insufficient to preclude all harmful activities. Additionally, it is extremely hard to ascertain whether companies are really even following these standards. Third, each fund can only focus on so many issues. It would be impossible to create a fund for investment that included only companies that exhibited absolutely zero harmful practices. Any firm competing on the national or international level, large enough to sell stocks, must ipso facto create harm. Where does surplus profit, necessary to sell and trade stocks, come from, if not from harm: to the environment, to the government, to the worker, or to the consumer?

The second type of “social justice” fund operates on almost the opposite principle. Instead of singling out the “least bad” companies for inclusion, it targets the worst. The theory is that if enough principled people invest in the worst offenders, some of the good guys can attend board meetings and advocate for change. This theory is a bit quixotic considering that large companies are strong and powerful, and efforts to create change from within by a handful of non-rich, non-powerful people do not have a great effect. Real change would mean an end to the kind of profits that allow the selling and trading of financial products, because such profits are based on abuses, and the majority of people who purchase financial products do so specifically to make a profit, and so would be incredibly adverse to any change that decreases profit. Also, as you are trying to “effect change”, your money is still being used to perpetrate abuses. There is a reason that the stock exchange has long been characterized as “a wild den where the treasure of the state and the fortune of families are stolen with impunity”. (La Ruche populaire, November 1842)

BANKING
More common than investments is simpler banking. This includes everything from trust funds to CDs to savings accounts and loans. The idealized purpose of a bank is to supply community members with financial management tools that allow families to save for large and important purchases, or to lend money so that a purchase can be made now and slowly paid off according to the family’s ability.

I find nothing wrong with this ideal. My problem is with the reality.

Freedom Rides for Fetuses

The anti-choice organization Priests for Life chose the site of the black Baptist church bombing, a historical civil rights landmark in Birmingham, AL, to start their “Freedom Bus for the Unborn” campaign.

That’s right, they chose the spot where four black children were killed by the KKK to underline how abortion is the same as racially-motivated murder, and therefore black women should not have reproductive rights. Stellar logic.

Sez the Priests for Life website:

The Civil Rights movement and the Pro-Life movement have the same heart and soul: a longing for equal justice for everyone, based on the inherent dignity of every human life.

Hmmm…. puzzling. I always thought the pro-life movement was about restricting women’s reproductive choices. Could you explain a little more clearly?

The pro-life movement is all about freedom. That’s why Priests for Life, with the leadership of our Pastoral Associate Dr. Alveda King, is launching “Freedom Rides” for the unborn to galvanize pro-life activity across the country.

Also,

[The] “Pro-life Freedom Ride” [is] a peaceful, visible expression of the commitment of people around the country to work for freedom for the unborn.

I have to admit, I’m still confused. “Freedom for the unborn”? The “unborn” aren’t free because they are trapped in a womb. A womb belonging to an independent, living, breathing human being with rights. A human being who should be free to make decisions about her own life. So what does freedom for a fetus look like? Immediate release from the womb? I don’t get it. What about women’s freedom? What does this have to do with the rights of black people or the Civil Rights Movement?

From a press release by the reproductive justice org SisterSong:

Atlanta-based women of color organizations say an anti-abortion billboard campaign in Atlanta, along with so-called “Freedom Rides” scheduled this summer are no more than a ploy to turn back the clock on Black women’s right to reproductive freedom. In response to the billboard campaign, three reproductive justice groups plan a nonviolent resistance at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center on July 24, at 2:30 pm.

“We are offended by their cynicism, opportunism, and outright distortions of historical facts. Both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King firmly supported reproductive justice for women. Lies by anti-abortionists, no matter how often repeated, cannot change those historical facts,” said Loretta Ross, National Coordinator of SisterSong.

According to their own website, the Freedom for Fetuses group was “taunted” by women saying awful things, like: “civil rights are women’s rights.” How they stayed strong in the face of the terrible suggestion that women are human, only the Lord knows. They had also planned a vigil near MLK’s tomb for some bizarre, sick purpose, but were turned away for unstated reasons.

I have to admit, after visiting the Priests for Life website, I am a little queasy. The disgusting co-option of the Civil Rights Movement, and rights for blacks in general, in service of reducing rights for women, and black women seem specifically targeted here, is beyond the pale.

Shelter for the Homeless Is Controversial in Dallas

This is what passes as a controversy in Dallas: providing homes to people transitioning out of homelessness. That’s right: fulfilling the basic human rights of struggling community members is problematic for more affluent Dallasites. NIMBYism at its best.

Finally, Police Focus on the Real Criminals: Purveyors of Locally Produced Food

In a raid coordinated by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, armed investigators raided a Venice, CA health food shop.

The dangerous criminals inside were harboring illegal substances: raw food, including milk, honey and cheese.

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid’s target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.

Incensed that small, local organic farmers are able to produce food that is healthier and tastier than their own, BigAg has been pushing for a crack-down on the availability of sustainable, local products. Everyone from the feds to local-level politicians are listening.

Demand for all manner of raw foods — including honey, nuts and meat — has been growing, spurred by heightened interest in the way food is produced. But raw milk in particular has drawn a lot of regulatory scrutiny, largely because the politically powerful dairy industry has pressed the government to act.

I sincerely hope that these people with a criminal interest in supporting health and sustainable agriculture spend the rest of their life behind bars for treason against Capitalism.

An Actual Muslim Woman Writes About Burqas

In response to the recent French burqa ban, Nesrine Malik, a Real Live Muslim Woman, discusses her relationship with the burqa and why she disagrees with the ban.

The Man at the Center of Anti-Immigrant Hate Orgs

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls him “The Puppeteer”. Michigan doctor John Tanton is behind more of America’s anti-immigration organizations than you would think. It is really creeping me out how the animus of one person could spawn such a powerful hate movement. The more I read and see of the current anti-immigrant movement, the clearer it becomes that it is simply where old-school racists have come to shelter in a society that is hostile (well, more than previously at least) to open statements of racial animosity. Their race-based fears are given the cover of a supposedly race-neutral patriotic intent, and a professed concern for the “law” hides a concern for racial purity and cultural hegemony.

Then you have John Tanton. According to the SPLC, he founded, funded, or provided leadership to a who’s who list of nationalistic hate groups: American Immigration Control Foundation, American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, Californians for Population Stabilization, Center for Immigration Studies, Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, Population-Environment Balance, Pro English, ProjectUSA, The Social Contract Press, U.S. English, U.S. Inc.

Along with a small handful of wealthy donors and sympathetic politicians (Tom Tancredo!), he has crafted a movement which if not massive in membership is at least massive in influence.

Read this article about Mr. Tanton to learn more than you ever wanted to know about the inner workings of the anti-immigration movement in America.

Female Czech MPs LOVE to Be Objectified

In the Czech Republic’s last general election, it elected a record number of women to parliament, 44. To celebrate that fact, a new-ish party, the Public Affairs Party, created a calendar featuring pictures of their winning candidates in sexual poses.

Karolina Peake, recently elected to the Czech Parliament.

That’s right: to celebrate the gains women are making in Czech politics, the Public Affairs Party decided to promote sexual objectification of their candidates. Some “gain”.

“Women’s political influence is growing. Why not show we are women who aren’t afraid of being sexy?” said Marketa Reedova, Public Affair’s 42-year-old candidate for the Prague mayor’s office.

Indeed. I too was having trouble accepting these women’s elections because I assumed they were afraid of being sexy, so I can see where Ms. Reedova is coming from. So let us now address the obvious question: are male Czech MPs afraid of being sexy? If not, why is there no calendar of male MPs in sexual poses and revealing clothing?

I like how the Telegraph, where I discovered this article, uses the word “glamour” as a euphemism for sexual objectification. To wit:

Public Affairs has previously used glamour to highlight its strong female presence. During the election campaign four of the women who appear in the calendar posed for a billboard poster wearing black swim suits.

Yeah… “glamour”.

Here’s another nice euphemistic tidbit from the Telegraph:

As further evidence that few in the Czech Republic have qualms over spicing the world of politics with touch of glamour and sex appeal, in the days after the election the glossy women’s magazine “Ona” (She in English) encouraged readers to vote for “Miss Parliament”, asking them to choose their favourite female MP.

“Spice”, “touch of glamour”, “sex appeal”. By what miscarriage of thought power have the Czechs been convinced that conceptions of powerful women must be gift-wrapped in male-gaze-oriented sexuality?

My point with this critique is not that these female Czech MPs are “too sexy”. It is this seemingly reflexive need to package female politicians as sexually-desirable for men, with no commensurate impulse to similarly sexualize male politicians.

Now, why would this difference exist? Oh right—sexism. And to make it okay, the Telegraph couches it as something these women want to do. Raunch-feminist empowerment! Yet they fail to make mention of the different standards to which male politicians are held, which seems to be the bigger picture issue here. Basically, the Telegraph is using Czech sexual double standards as a vehicle to sexually titillate its readers under the cover of a political news story. Again, it is not the existence of sexuality which I am critiquing, but the starkly different treatment male and female politicans’ sexuality receives.

The reflexive need by patriarchal societies to sexualize any and all women who enter the public sphere is an old and well-discussed issue. But thanks to the Czechs, we have to have all the same conversations about it over again.

Boring, but necessary.

US Unemployment Rate Could Be More Like 22%

The government claims it’s only 9.5%.

FYI during the Great Depression it reached a peak of 25%.

Read more.

Utah Group Sends 1,300 Latino Names, Personal Info to Press

Vomit. Our White Supremacy is just fine, thanks for asking.

Utah state officials are investigating how a list of 1,300 largely Latino names and sensitive personal information got sent to media outlets and ICE officials this week. The list, which an anonymous group claims is a roll of the state’s undocumented immigrants, includes information like Social Security numbers, birth dates, workplaces, addresses and phone numbers. And in case it couldn’t get more frightening, it’s also got the names of children and due dates for the list’s pregnant women.

In an accompanying letter, the anonymous group demanded that those on the list be deported immediately. The list to news outlets also came with a letter, dated April 4, from “Concerned Citizens of America.”

[...]At least some of the people named on the list have already been proven to be documented residents.

Niiiice work vigilante racist assholes. You really need to go to the link and read their letters. No joke I can make could be better than what they actually wrote.

DoD to “Scientifically” Prove that Gays Are Icky

IT’S SCIENCE!

The Pentagon wants to know if service members would attend military social functions with same-sex couples, whether they would be uncomfortable sharing a tent or shower with gay co-workers, and how their families would feel if they served in units that included gay men and lesbians.

Those are just some of the questions in a confidential survey sent to 400,000 active-duty and reserve troops this week as part of an effort to gauge reactions in the ranks if the military lifts its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that has kept gay and lesbian troops in the closet for the last 17 years.

Does that sound creepy and simply intended to justify DADT by “proving” that our troops are so bigoted that homos can’t serve openly?

Well, you’re wrong.

[Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell] said charges by gay rights advocates that the survey is biased are “nonsense” and said it is “the only mechanism to to get a scientific gauge” of attitudes and potential challenges to repealing the law.

It’s not obvious bigotry, it’s Science people. You don’t hate science, do you?

Fox News Never Passes on a Chance to Report about Lesbian Gangs

Thanks to the vigilant reporting of Fox News, the American public has not been deprived of stories like this one:

Lesbian Prison Gangs Waiting to Get Hands on Lindsay Lohan, Inmate Says

Here are some highlights:

Inmates told The Sun of the brutal conditions inside the prison, where Lohan’s A-list neighbors reportedly will be replaced with tough guards and fearsome lesbian gangs desperate to get their hands on her.

[...] [A current inmate] said: “The gay inmates wear their shirts inside out to let others know they are available. So if Lindsay doesn’t want someone to grab her ass she’d better keep her shirt on straight. Women grab each other like animals when the guards aren’t looking. It’s disgusting.”

Lesbians! Gross! Yet fearsome!

Limbaugh Mocks Impoverished Children

I am mostly speechless, so please listen to this recording of Rush Limbaugh’s mocking tirade against impoverished children, which will not imbed on my site for some reason.

Part of the rant:

[W]e’re going to start a feature on this program: “Where to find food.”
…
[T]he first will be: “Try your house.”
…
If that doesn’t work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. You know where McDonald’s is.
…
There’s another place if none of these options work to find food; there’s always the neighborhood dumpster.
…
Can you imagine the benefit we would provide people?

Creditors Try to Snatch Private Contact List of Gay Youths

I just learned that:

A now-defunct Web site that catered to gay youth is now ensnared in a federal bankruptcy proceeding that the founder says could result in as many as 1 million profiles being sold to creditors, putting its former subscribers’ privacy at risk.

[XY was] a magazine and Web site that targeted gay youth between 13 and 17 years old who were in the process of grappling with their sexual identity.

[...] XY’s creditors have hired a lawyer to obtain the personal information held by the magazine and Web site.

Huh, bankers and lawyers engaging in something utterly unethical.

Not White Enough? There’s an App for That!

From Colorlines:

Vaseline is offering a Facebook app in India that allows users to whiten their profile pictures on the site.

[...]Now please don’t think Vaseline is doing this to promote white supremacy in India on purely ideological grounds. There’s profit to be made from a racial hierarchy that places white at the top. The Facebook app is part of Vaseline’s summer campaign to promote their new skin-lightening cream…for men.

Bollywood actor Shahid Kapur has lent his face to this white supremacy campaign.

It Is So Hard to Be Rich

As the New York Times frequently lets us know, it is totally hard to be rich. To learn the woes of our country’s most wealthy citizens, cast your eyes upon two recent articles: ‘Daddy, Are We Rich?’ and Other Tough Questions and American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation.

The first article gives tips on how to answer your children’s questions about your wealth. There is special advice for dealing with children who experience revulsion at their parents’ level of conspicuous consumption.

Doug Garr, who lives in Manhattan, said that once his son was old enough to understand that the family had two homes, his son suggested giving one to a homeless person. “His logic was sound,” Mr. Garr recalled. “Why should we live in two homes when so many live in none? I had no answer for that one.”

[...] And what if your child gets an idea like that? If you’re not ready to uproot, encourage them to think of other things they can give. “…everyone has more than enough of something.”

Yeah…

In the second, we learn the troubles of a certain Scott Nicholson, a 24-year-old college graduate who has not worked since graduation in 2008. We are told this is because he can’t find a job, yet are also informed he turned down a $40k/year job because he didn’t want to “waste early years in dead-end work”. He is forced to live in destitution at his affluent parents’ large suburban home, while receiving free rent, food, and transportation from them. Fortunately, he has no college debt to pay off, because his grandparents paid for his education.

Scott Nicholson, unemployed and living in poverty.

“[I]t is because I have no debt that I have any sort of flexibility to look for work,” reflects Scott. “Otherwise, I would have to have a job, some kind of full-time job.” Can you imagine?

He adds later: “If you talk to 20 people, you’ll find only one in manufacturing and everyone else in finance or something else.” (BTW, who are these 20 people? I think about 0 in 20 people in my community are in finance.)

Thank you, New York Times, for letting me know the sufferings of the top 10%. I will stop whining about the poverty in my neighborhood and refocus my attention on that most marginalized section of society: the rich.

Jan Brewer Gives Her Top 3 Imaginary Reasons for Hating Undocumented Immigrants

Jan Brewer, AWESOME governor of Arizona, recently explained on TV some little-known and untrue reasons to hate and fear immigrants:

1. They’ve been beheading people in Arizona.

2. A whopping 87% of illegal border crossers have prior criminal records.

3. The majority of ALL undocumented workers who come to America work as drug couriers for Mexican drug cartels.

She forgot to mention that 96% of “illegal border crossers” are also terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda forming sleeper-cells of Latino crypto-Muslims ready to strike our heartland at any moment, but I’ll forgive her that omission because she is very busy saving real Americans from the brown menace in so many other ways.

The Arizona Guardian did some fact-checking and wasn’t able to verify any of these claims, and since they are part of the liberal media, that only makes me all the more certain that what Brewer says is true.