As I See It

Bottled Water

icklefickle — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:41:09 GMT

So I have always maintained that Aquafina tasted gross and was totally not worth the money. And Pepsi has now been forced to admit that the product is actually tap water. Hah! So much for the bottled mystique.

Update: So is Dasani. Which I have always thought tasted even worse. :)

Pathetic

icklefickle — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:37:57 GMT

I mean, it's not like much really surprises me anymore, and it's not like I wasn't aware of Bush's lack of foreign policy experience. But, um, still. This (from Democracy now 8-7-06) is pathetic if true (and I sort of don't doubt it).

Book: Bush Didn't Know Difference Between Shiites and Sunnis
And finally a new book by former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith has raised questions about President Bush's understanding of the Middle East. According to Galbraith, the president didn't understand as recently as 2002 that there were two major branches of Islam in Iraq -- Sunnis and Shiites. At a meeting with Iraqi Americans the president reportedly said, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims."

Another Post!

icklefickle — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 03:02:45 GMT

I reallly do go in spurts... but it's not really that I don't have post-able thoughts and refrain or anything... well, maybe sometimes Anyway, this is a quick one. www.goodsearch.com is a yahoo search engine that will donate a penny to a charity of your choice (their list, but they have pretty much anything you'd want) for every search you make. Now, if you're anti-yahoo, you'll have to weigh whether it's worth it, and a penny isn't much, but I figure for lame searches where engine doesn't matter and I'm not going to be looking at sponsored links, I might as well do some good. And I see no reason why the millions of yahoo searches people do day anyway shouldn't be through this site (not that advertising in my little blog is really going to make too much of a difference in that heap, but whatever). And if you do as many web searches as me, that's a small, but sizable amount over the course of a year.

Poems

icklefickle — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 02:21:17 GMT

In Praise of Self-Deprecation
by Wistawa Szymborska

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer-whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

"A Worker's Speech to a Doctor"
Bertolt Brecht

When we come to you
Our rags are torn off us
And you listen all over our naked body.
As to the cause of our illness
One glance at our rags would
Tell you more. It is the same cause that wears out
Our bodies and our clothes.

The pain in our shoulder comes
You say, from the damp; and this is also the reason
For the stain on the wall of our flat.
So tell us:
Where does the damp come from?

http://www.noutopia.com/poem_self_deprecation.html
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9875/9875.ch01.html

Guantanamo Policy

icklefickle — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 02:04:16 GMT

Wow. Another bit of my ignorance that I've thankfully lost. I'd been under the impression (as I'm sure pretty much everyone else in the U.S. was) that all this U.S. law not applying in Guantanamo, blah, blah, blah stuff was thanks to W. (or at least his advisers). Turns out, it actually came from Daddy who did almost the same thing the U.S. is doing now with Haitian refugees in the early '90s.

"In the eight months following the coup, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted thirty-four thousand Haitians on the high seas; the majority of these refugees were transported to Guantanamo. By all accounts, conditions in the camp were grim: the inmates lived in tents and other makeshift shelters on a landing strip, surrounded by barbed wire. These shelters, according to the Haitians, were infested with rats, scorpions, and snakes. The lodgings were permeable to rain, and sanitary facilities were unavailable. Yet, despite these deplorable conditions, the detainees' chief complaint was of mistreatment by their American Hosts.

Shortly after the arrival of the first refugees, rumors of mistreatment, including beatings and arbitrary detention, began to filter through the Haitian advocacy organizations based in the United States. It was difficult to verify the rumors because the U.S. military restricted access to the base. As uncritical stories based on military briefings continued to appear in the mainstream press, a group of journalists sued the U.S. government for access to the base. Ingrid Arnesen of The Nation filed one of the first stories of visiting Guantanamo. One of the detainees, who had been on the base for more than a year, spoke to Arnesen in no uncertain terms:

Since we left Haiti last December we've been treated like animals. When we protested about the camp back then, the military beat us up. I was beaten, handcuffed, and they spat in my face. I was chained, made to sleep on the ground. July, that was the worst time. We were treated like animals, like dogs, not like humans.

In short, the Haitians and their advocates failed to see the humane aspect of this "humanitarian mission." By the middle of 1992, events one the base were subject to the usual divergent readings. Stories in the mainstream U.S. media continue to portray Guantanamo as a haven for refugees. Haitians, including the Haitian American print and radio media, tended to refer to the base as a "concentration camp," a "prison," or, at best, "a detention facility."

Curiously enough, the Bush administration seems to have adopted a reading close to the one popular among Haitians. They realized that refugees were being detained on the base for long periods of time--some would remain there almost two years--without a meaningful hearing. In response, the administration gathered some of the nations' leading legal talent the justify this practice. Since Guantanamo is not technically on U.S. soil, the Bush administration lawyers developed a torturous rationale:

While conceding that the Haitians are treated differently from other national groups who seek asylum in the U.S., the Government claimed that the U.S. Constitution and other sources of U.S. and international law do not apply to Guantanamo--this despite the fact that the U.S. military base at Guantanamo is under the exclusive jurisdiction and control of the U.S. Government

Guantanamo thus became a place where non-U.S. nationals could be stowed away in a sort of lawless limbo, out of reach of U.S. or international law. Officials charged with upholding U.S. law could intercept refugees, take them to a U.S. military base, and openly declare any actions taken there above the law. Neither the hypocrisy nor the irony was lost on the Haitians. (56-57)"

Sound familiar? Scarily (and probably not coincidentally) so if you ask me.

An Inconvenient Truth

icklefickle — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 04:34:03 GMT

So I finally got around to going to see An Inconvenient Truth. I've got to say, it's a damn good film. I mean, the science wasn't really new to me and it wasn't as detailed as what you'll get from Scientific American. But for a movie.... I think I might have to eat my words about movie theaters not being the place for serious political discourse. Unlike a certain Michael Moore, Gore doesn't spend his time trying to entertain us (although a number of good one-liners from his slide shows help keep views from getting utterly depressed). Instead, he gives the facts. He doens't shy away from scaring the crap out of the audience. And by telling the story as a sort of personal journey, he somehow manages to blend science and art, making quite a good documentary (good in the art sense, not just the scientific). The way he presents information, it's digestible, not overly dense. I highly recommend that you see the film, especially if you are not familiar with the likely effects of global warming (I'm talking about things like coral bleaching, a slowdown or stopping of the North Atlantic Conveyor, increased spread of vector-borne diseases, etc). Again, Gore doesn't give a ton of detail in these areas, but he does a good job of covering all bases. And if you are familiar with all this, it's still a good film. And it ends optimistically, so it's good if you're like me and despair about the state of the Earth frequently. But maybe you don't have time, money, willpower, whatever to see the film. At least go to the website at http://www.climatecrisis.net It contains a great collection of resources about reducing your impact on the climate, initiatives you can take part in, etc. I've known a lot of these things were out there, but now they're all in one (easily navigable) place. Go there.

AIDS

icklefickle — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:37:53 GMT

So there's a lot of AIDS-related stuff in the media right now, since it's the 25th anniversary of the disease. But what exactly does this mean? Well, here, in an excerpt from And the Band Played On... is a description of exactly what this anniversary is of:

On Friday, June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published what would be the first report on the epidemic, based on the Los Angeles cases of Pneumocystis that Drs. Michael Gottlieb and Joel Weisman had seen in the previous months. In the week before publications, skittish CDC staffers debated how to handle the gay aspect of the report. Some of the workers in the venereal disease division had long experience working with the gay community and worried about offending the sensitivities of a group with whom they would clearly be working closely in the coming months. Just as significantly, they also knew that gays were not the most beloved minority in or out of the medical world, and they feared that tagging the outbreak too prominently as a gay epidemic might fuel prejudice. As it was, the fact that the hepatitis vaccine project had been largely a homosexual effort was downplayed for both Congress and the administration for fear that it would squash the program.

The report, therefore, appeared not on page one of the MMWR but in a more inconspicuous slot on page two. Any reference to homosexuality was dropped from the title, and the headline simply read: Pneumocystis pneumonia--Los Angeles.

Don't offend the gays and don't inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of the epidemic. Inspired by the best intentions, such arguments paved the road toward the destination good intentions inevitably lead.

So for all the media talks about AIDS and how it's 25 years old, they seem to rarely point out that, hey, people were dying in Africa long before we'd ever heard of the disease. They don't mention how this important article was pushed from the front page and ignored. They don't talk about how the disease wasn't even named officially until more than a year later. I mean, I'm glad to see the disease in the media, but this whole anniversary idea seems a bit off to me. Because that article, unfortunately, wasn't that big of a deal. And anyway, how do you pinpoint the start of an infectious disease? Is it the first time it's passed from one human to another? The day of infection or diagnosis? And how will we ever know these things anyway. The June 5th date seems so arbitrary. There were many important events before that.

Another good book

icklefickle — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 20:32:36 GMT

I just finished James Yee's book For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire. Yee was the Muslim champlain at Guantanamo and tells what it was like working at Gitmo and the story of his arrest and time in solitary confinement for basically no reason aside from the fact that he was Muslim. In short, I knew these things had to be going on. But I didn't realize how bad or outrageous they were until I read this. The book is also very well-written and does a good job showing the personal side of what is happening. I highly recommend it. If you're interested, Yee was on Democracy Now! to talk about the book a while ago: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/06/1316240&mode=thread&tid=25

icklefickle — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 08:45:17 GMT

James Howard Junstler on Wal Mart, "In effect, Americans threw away thier communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying."

From The Long Emergency

World Health and International Aid

icklefickle — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 13:14:38 GMT

The doubled-standard so many in America apply to human life continues to baffle me. Think of the huge response to September 11th, of the outpouring of support. Think of the money the government has spent to prevent another such attack. And my heart goes out to those who lost loved ones in the attacks. But my heart also goes out to those who lose loved ones to the number of September 11ths that happen every day. Less than 3,000 people were killed in those attacks. Far more die every day from preventable illness, malnutrition, and poverty. And what's so tragic is how little it would cost to save them. Americans and Europeans might as well be classified as baby-killers in their own right for failing to provide aid.

According to a 2001 World Health Organization report, $27 billion in development aid could provide basic healthcare to everyone on this planet. A $50 billion increase in aid would allow us to nearly eliminate basic, but deadly conditions (think diarrhea, malnutrition, malaria, night blindness, etc). Maybe that sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money. But this country has already spent over $200 billion on the Iraq war. And not only does that money not go to saving lives, it's going to killing people. How sick is that. And based on the death rates, this would be sick if it was a genuine response to the 9/11 attacks, but of course it wasn't. No, we could save millions of people and instead we kill thousands of Iraqis because we need the oil. How egregious!

It's not like the cost of war is anything new. We're all tired of hearing about it. Money spent on war and defense would be better spent just about anywhere else. But it's health that proves, hands down, the money should not be spent on war. If we did not have this double-standard in America, we would realize that the lives of the thousands that die each day are worth just as much as the lives of those who perished in the trade towers. You can argue all you want about whether education is more important than the military, and on and on, but the unique thing about health spending is that you can save lives. You get a head count. We'd save more lives by giving a billion dollars in aid that in spending the same billion to prevent another 9/11. But evidently we're not interested in saving anyone else. It's just sick.

For every $100 it has, the U.S. government spends over $20 on defense while only $13 go to personal health. And what about the health of those outside America. Only sixteen cents go to international aid.

So some will argue, that's all true, but if we didn't spend all this money on the military to keep things under control, there would be meany more deaths. Well the research shows that as the health in a country improves, it's economy grows, and unrest is reduced. It would be beneficial to our national security to save lives. One of the best ways to protect America would be to spend money elsewhere. After all, people don't hate this country for saving lives, they hate if for killing and looking the other way. I'm not saying I want to see another 9/11. That was a terrible day. But we forget in this country that other people are suffering even greater losses.

And in case you care, al of the statistics mentioned above come from Philip Hilts's Rx for Survival: Why We Must Rise to the Global Health Challenge except for the Iraq war one which comes from the National Priorities Project.

the justice system

icklefickle — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 19:00:40 GMT

From Democracy Now! "I happened to catch on CNN an interview with a man who had been released from death row in Illinois based on DNA evidence, and he told a CNN reporter that he believes that Tookie Williams should be executed, because there was no actual innocence, there was no factual evidence of his innocence."

Okay, in this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. It's not the other way around. You are not supposed to be convicted unless you are guilty beyond reasonable doubt. It's not the other way around. Did you ever have a civics class? The sad thing is that there are undoubtably many Americans who would agree.

Stanley Willaims

icklefickle — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:30:02 GMT

So Schwarzenegger has denied Stanley Willaims's petiton for clemency. I am so mad. The sick thing is, it's such a political move. I doubt the govenor really looked at whether Tookie deserved to live. He just looked at his political situation. Hmmmmmmm, he looks pretty much like an idiot right now with the ballot initiatives failing and all. Better not be a softy by granting life. Wouldn't want to look like a girly man after all. So let the guy die.

It pisses me off. Majorly. I mean, Schwarzenegger wasn't being asked to pardon him. He didn't have to say he was innocent. He just had to agree to not kill the man. Is it really that hard? And in his official denial, he says "but the continued pervasiveness of gang violence leads one to question the efficacy of Williams' message." Yep, there's still gang violence, so obviously he's not doing enough. If he'll save just one more life, its worth it to let him live. And the guy's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times. That's really help the country's image abroad. Here in the U.S. we execute Noblel Prize nominees. It's just sick. If granted clemency, he'd still spend his life behind bars. He'd be no threat to society. But there is a great potential for him to be a benefit. Why kill him? Because it bodes well politically. And because execution probably appeals to Arnold's tough guy sensibilities.

F U Scharzenegger.

Eleanor, sorry you're getting such a shitty birthday present.

Words

icklefickle — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 14:28:31 GMT

I finally got around to reading John Perkins's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. It's a fantastic book. After all of the media, Michael Moore movies and statements, and arguments from both sides of the political spectrum about what exactly the connection between the Bushes, the Saudis, and 9/11 was, Perkins gives the inside story. But the Saudi story is the least of it. In a surprisingly personal account, he tells his life story, that of how he exploited the poor of the world, and then came to face his guilt over doing so. I had feared the book would be dry and boring, interesting, but hard to make it through. But John Perkins knows how to write. His book is a great piece of literature as well as a fantastic expose. While the story, based on content alone, could certainly be called an expose, it reads like a story, the story of one man trying to come to gripes with what he has done. He also does the reader the favor of dividing the book into small sections, each just a few pages long, making it easy for a busy person (like myself) to read the book a few minutes at a time.

I could go on about the book. But really, what it comes down to is that America needs to read it. So instead of going on about the details, I will focus on my thoughts pertaining to the final section, entitled "Piercing the Veneer."

In this section, Perkins talks about the role of language, especially its role in inspiring a people to rise up against oppression and empire that they may not have recognized before. He brings up the American Revolution as an example, wondering what the catalyst was.

.... Revere had risked his life to spread the word, and loyal Americans responded. They stopped the empire, back then.

I wondered what had motivated them, why those colonial Americans were willing to step out of line. Many of the ringleaders had been prosperous. What had inspired them to risk their businesses, to bite the hand that fed them, to risk their lives? Each of them undoubtedly had personal reasons, and yet there must have been some unifying force, some energy or catalyst, a spark that ignited all those individual fires....

And then it came to me: words.

The telling of the real story about the British Empire and its selfish and ultimately self-destructive mercantile system had provided that spark. The exposure of the underlying meaning, through the words of men like Thom Paine and Thomas Jefferson, fired the imagination of their countrymen, opened hearts and minds. The colonists began to question, and when they did, they discovered a new reality that cut away at the deceits. They discerned the truth behind the patina, understood he way the British Empire had manipulated, deceived, and enslaved them....

But today in America, people have no tolerance for words. They sit around and watch their televisions, play video games, and go about their busy lives. T.V. simply does not have the same power to move as the written, or spoken, word. I cannot imagine this country watching a stunning 3-minute segment on CNN and being moved to do something. It's true, the technology of television does allow the broadcast of words. Mechanically, it can bring a speech, a recitation of a beautifully written work like the Declaration of Independence to millions of viewers. But it won't. Every year, the major channels broadcast the President's State of the Union. But the head of empire is not going to be the one to inspire revolution. And, in any case, most Americans don't care to watch. Yes, C-Span exists, but how many people watch it? And isn't that just more of the same?

Thomas Jefferson would have a much harder time spreading his message in today's society. As someone opposed to the mainstream, he'd have a very difficult time getting himself on television. And even if he made it their, he'd have a few minutes at most to make a point. Sadly, gone our the days when Americans, the majority of them, had the patience to listen to ideas for hours, to consider them, to think. Neil Postman is right. We are amusing ourselves to death, and shortening our attention span in the process. Thinking for ourselves is becoming a lost art. Instead, we want to be spoon-fed information, always in small bits.

What if something akin to the Declaration of Independence was published now? Who would care? How many people could stand to read it? How many would see that it was written beyond a second-grade reading level, and toss it to the side? How many would glance at it, decide it was too hard to follow, and discard the work? How many would be willing to imagine that a simple written or typed page would be moving enough to cause a real change in their lives? How many would allow writing to take them on a journey? Far more Americans today have the ability to read than back in the eighteen century. But how many really know what words mean? How man truly understand that there is more in writing than a bunch of black shapes. How many can see the art, the passion, the meaning? How many can hear the voices behind the page?

Can words still move America? I fear they cannot. I hope they still hold that power. But does a nation with an eight minute attention span (the average length between commercials on t.v.) have the ability to hear, to see the truth if it takes more than eight minutes to explain? I hope that if the right writer comes along, his or her words will be profound enough to let America see what we are doing to the world. I hope. Because John is right. Words did empower the colonists. Words are the key. But what if that key will no longer fit into the lock?

Standardized Test Directions

icklefickle — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:43:22 GMT

My standardized test directions:

Children, we will now be taking part two of the scientific trivia test.* This will include both multiple choice and short answer questions. Multiple choice questions require you to choose one answer from multiple choices. In case you were wondering, this is where the name comes from. You are only supposed to fill in one circle. If you have not yet figured out that you need to use a #2 pencil, make your marks heavy and dark, and erase changed answers completely, you fully deserver whatever miserable score you will receive. In fact, you really deserve a negative score. You've been given the same directions several times a year since fourth grade, including three times today. Therefore, I will not repeat them.

Now students, since you've only had short answer instructions since the sixth grade, I'll give them again. "Short answer" means that you will write your own answer to the question. This answer is to be short. If it is not short enough to fit within the given space, you will fail miserably. If you have large handwriting, too bad. You too deserve to flunk.

Remember, you are writing your own answers. Do not waste time looking for a bubble to fill in. Or do so if you wish. Your score will be an accurate reflection of your intellect. But you'll be looking in vain. So honestly, you might as well just put your head down and go to sleep.

So everyone sit down and shut up. And take the test. And don't forget to sit down and shut up when you're done. It's good practice, especially for citizenship. There's a reason why George Bush was such a proponent of No Child Left Behind.

So children... you have 50 minutes to complete the test. If you suffer a repetitive stress injury, I can send you to the nurse--but not until the 50 minutes are up. Otherwise, sit down and shut up.

*Please note that few of the questions will have much of anything to do with what you've learned in school. If they do, it's probably because they're related to some fact you learned in seventh grade and have since forgotten. In fact, these tests are probably a really good indicator or your parents' educational level and what you learn at home. But don't worry. Results will only be used to see how well the high school is doing at closing the achievement gap.

Katrina

icklefickle — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 21:10:45 GMT

Well, it looks like the shit will soon be hitting many fans--literally--all over New Orleans if this thing hits... I'm going to bed, and by the time I get up... I just don't want to know how bad this is going to be. Don't fuck with Mother Nature, people!

Alberto Gonzales

icklefickle — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:00:30 GMT

I'm such a good girl, I've educated myself! I read Erik Saar's Inside the Wire (good book, by the way), and then actually read the appendix with the famous memorandum for Bush in which Gonzales supposedly called the Geneva Gonventions "quaint." In actually reading the thing, I found that the "quaint" sentence was probably one of the least desturbing in the document. All he wrote was that the new kind of war on terror, "renders quaint some of [the Geneva] provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as comissary privileges, scrip (i.ie., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments." So he's essentially saying that he doesn't really like this part of the Conventions and figures it needn't apply to terrorists. But, of all the things he could (and does say), in my mind, this isn't the world's biggest problem. Yes, he should be telling the president that stupid as he may find the rules, they need to be followed, but really. He didn't write something along the lines of, "just ignore the Geneva Conventions, they whole thing is quaint anyway!" (although this seems to be what some want to tell us. Really, we aren't stupid. You could tell us the facts. And, as often is true, the full story is actually worse than the innacurate summary anyway.

You may or may not have heard this, but one of the bullet points on the positives of determiniting that GPW (the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War) is that doing so, "Substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441)." He then points out that a "war crime" as defined includes "outrages against personal dignity." Now, unless he thought there might be such outrageous, why would Mr. Gonzales care so much? I, for one, do not like the idea of our government being involved in any outrages against personal dignity (although we all know there have been plenty). But really, with language like this, the administration looks pretty stupid going around pretending there was no higher connection to the torture scandals. The same goes for, "inhuman treatment." His reason that this is a concern is that these phrases are vague and it's not clear what falls under those headings. But if you're honestly going to try to treat the prisoners humanely, it wouln'dt be an issue.

Gonzales goes on to argue that terrorists are not going to follow Geneva whether or not we do, so the arguement that if we do not grant protections to the terrorists, they won't grant them to us doesn't apply. Personlaly, I would hope that this country would like to take the high road and not stoop down to the low of terrorists. Is this the arguement now? They don't treat us well, so we won't treat them well. I sure hope not. It would be (and is, I suppose) a sad day for America when we determine policy not because of our values as a nation, but because of the values of those we are fighting.

Finally the former White House counsel mentions that the U.S. will still honor its committment to treat detainees humanely. He seems to feel that this should be enough to make other countrie sshut up. But there is a reason we have laws. History has shown that people need to be held accountable. Anyone can say they are treating prisoners well. The U.S. can, Sweden can, Al Qaeda can, whoever. And that doesn't mean a thing (especially when inspectors have such a hard time getting access to detention facilities and they don't report to the public). Now, if you agree to a law, which you will be breaking if people are not treated properly, that's a whole different level of committment. Given the administrations track record with the accuracy of what comes out of their mouths, just saying something doens't make it so.

Books

icklefickle — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:07:08 GMT

Here is my short list of books that everyone in this country (and maybe the world) should read:

The spirit catches you and you fall down : a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures Anne Fadiman
Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in America Barbara Ehrenreich
And the band played on : politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic Randy Shilts

And here are a few that I'm on the edge about as far as whether they should be on the list:

Arundhati Roy's work (everyone should read at least one of her books)
Train go sorry : inside a deaf world Leah Hager Cohen

icklefickle — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 19:24:54 GMT

The pro-lifers that think banning/restricting contraception is the way to get what they want are idiots. You can prevent the unwanted pregnancies, or you can allow them to happen. Which will lead to more abortions? Hmmmmmmm You know, if you are a religious zealot who is totally against birth control, I get that. But most of these people aren't. They just listen to too many of the religious nut-sos because they can't think logically. They're just anti-abortion. And they don't seem to have a clue as to how to get what they want.

And the other thing: you know that these people will go around saying that hormonal birth controls, IUD, etc could prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and that zygote is a life and blah, blah, blah. But you know that most of them won't go out of their way to promote other methods of birth control. It's one thing to be like, "don't use the pill, use a condom which we'll supply free and spermicide" or whatever, but that is not how these people act. They just go around like, "contraception is bad and inhumane and stuff, therefore we should make it really hard to get and give it a stigma." That kind of attitude is not going to reduce the number of abortions.

And I'm sure there are plenty of smart people out there that are against abortion and not this utterly stupid. I know I'm being quite insensitive here. But this bugs me. It really bugs me when people decide that they should limit my access to birth control because they don't like it. As they say, focus on your own damn family!

icklefickle — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:35:52 GMT

So velonews reports Lance Armstrong said he might run for Texas governor in 2006. I hope he was joking like he was last time. The guy is an inspiration to so many people, such a special person who has done so much and given so much hope... if he got in to politics, well, it would suck.

In addition, one of my pet peeves is famous people (and/or their followers) thinking they are better at something that others have been doing much longer just because they're famous. For example, Schwarzenegger in California. So he's an actor. Great, but he has no experience in politics. The idea that he would be a better governor than those that have been in politics for a lifetime serving the public is revolting and insulting to those who work so hard. It's the same with Lance. It's the same with Carly Patterson wanting to sing. You're a great gymnast, but that does not affect your voice and you should have to go through the same channels anyone would and if your voice is as good as others at the top of the industry, fine. If you sound like any old teen doing karaoke, whether or not you can do a double arabian off the beam, you shouldn't get a recording contract. You see, famous people do not exist on some higher level than the rest of us. This is why I am not an autograph seeker. I'll appreciate the talent of whoever, but why would I want their signature? We exist on the same plane? I'll sign my own name. They're well known because they excel in what they do. This does not, however, say anything about their skill in other areas and they should be treated like any other novice when entering a new field. Imagine if someone with zero, yes zero political experience tried to run for governor. A nice, good, sweet person. One of your nice neighbors from down the street. You probably wouldn't vote for them, and if you did (the trust thing and all) it is highly unlikely that enough of the state would.

Then there is the money issues. It's bad enough as it is. We don't need novices with a gazillion dollars spending money on big campaigns just because they can. It's totally unfair. Maybe people could just bid for office. That way, only the winner would have to fork over the cash. Others could give the amount of their highest bid to charity or something.

Anyway, as you can see, this is a pet peeve of mine. I'm not trying to take it all out on Lance, he's a great cyclist (although he really better not be serious) but more of a rant on an issue that this little detail reminded me of.

And the Band Played On

icklefickle — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 13:24:55 GMT

So I recently finished And the Band Played On. It's definitely going on my list of books that everyone should read (along with The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and Nickel and Dimed).

What the book brought home for me is, once again, the idea that so many people seem to have difficulty with: the idea that we are all equal as people, that one person's blood is worth the same as any other. That the value of all human lives is the same. The book winds tales of AIDS patients in with the stories of research and the politics. The subtitle, Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic describes it quite well, really. The book does get long and boring in the middle. I was getting fed up when I realized that the people involved had to suffer in the same way, hearing the same thing over and over, except that the time they waited stretch on far longer and they had to watch people die with their own eyes.

Gaetan Dugas had some darn flawed logic. He continued having sex even after he knew he was being considered as "patient zero," maintaining that there was no proof that AIDS could be transmitted sexually. At the same time, he was sure someone had given it to him and desperately wanted to find this person. Hello: if you can get the disease from someone, you can give it to someone else. You can't have it both ways. As for some of his behavior, I think there must have been a weird combination of denial, mental health problems, and possibly aids affecting his brain. It's crazy to think how many lives could have been saved if he would have been a compliant patient.

Thank God for the French! Their presence in this book was one of the few things at times that kept me from throwing it at the wall. They actually had common sense and saw that most Americans were completely off their rocker scientifically. Viruses don't think, they do not choose their victims consciously, and they sure as heck do not know or care about the sexual orientation of the person they infect. They just need some nice host cells. In addition, the idea that AIDS really was a gay plague and other people were just immune or something is equally stupid. Last time I checked, people drawn to the opposite sex had the same antibodies and such in their blood as those drawn to their own gender. I can't even fathom seriously thinking a the epidemic spread that I was safe because I was straight. Perhaps I can see figuring I had no contact with infected gays and was thus at a low risk of getting the virus, but I don't think that was exactly the reasoning people were going through. They weren't reasoning, period. People weren't being reasonable and that lead to way too many deaths.

And finally, there is the greed. Bathhouse owners and blood bank officials refusing to see what was happening right under their noses. In my mind, you can't put a price on human life, but evidently for them, it was worth next to nothing. They wanted proof, proof, proof. They wouldn't listen to what they were given and wouldn't help researchers get any either. They should have been taking precautions, being overly careful if it would save lives, but they weren't. It's sick, sick sick.

And then their is the gay community. As some pointed out, gay rights were important, but gay lives should take priority. It impresses me how long some of the strong liberationists held on, even as so many around them were dying. Didn't it make them want to change their minds. As Bill Kraus thought, "What good were gay rights if they were all dead?" (236).

And then there are the international disputes between the French and the Americans and the turf battles and on and on. This makes me so mad I won't say more other than that the idea of wasting time while people are dying so that you can get credit for something is just terrible. Again, sick, sick, sick.

I'd also like to share some quotes that I think pretty sum up what went wrong.

"But this is an emergency.... You don't just run business as usual in an emergency," (63).

"Common sense dictated that the bathhouses be closed down. Common sense, however, rarely carried much weight in regard to AIDS policy," (306).

In 1982, the "domestic partners' ordinance" was vetoed by San Francisco mayor Diane Feinstein. As the author says, "In December 1982, at a time when gay people morethan ever needed to be encouraged into relationships, they were told their partnerships were valueless by institutions that later scratched their head s and wondered why gays didn't settle into couples when it was so clear their lives were at stake," (206). It really is amazing how blind politics, prejudice and hate can make people. This stuff is not that hard to figure out, but at the time people really were puzzled.

Oh, I could go on and on. There were (and are) so many intertwining issues, that it is hard to see where one starts and another ends and to really see everything that contributed to th disaster Randy Shilts, however, comes darn close. Nothing I could write (or the movie) does the work justice.

Anyway, we had better never do this again. Humans are better than this, and we need to pull together because something like this will come up again. Hopefully, we will not make the same mistakes again. After all as George Santayana said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

And sorry this is so long and disjointed. I really should have done ongoing entries as I read the book and my thoughts were still fresh in mind. If you haven't READ THE BOOK!

Supreme Court nomintion

icklefickle — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:48:26 GMT

George Bush would like you to understand why Roberts is such a good nominee. Therefore, you better understand that he was the captain of his highschool football team. After all, we wouldn't want someone who wasn't a sports star on the court...

Source: Democracy Now!

icklefickle — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:33:58 GMT

Just listening to DN!... Roberts is 50. SHIT!

Harry Potter and the real world

icklefickle — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:54:44 GMT

This is about Harry Potter and I will cut it because I may give the plot of some of HBP away, but these are my random thoughts an not specifically geared toward book six only.

Well I have a lot of randomness in my head and I'm not going to try to organize it much or write a nice little introductary paragraph.

Harry Potter and politics... never thought I'd make the connection. But actually, what's going on in the magical world reminds me quite a bit of the war on terror and I think perhaps Rowling (consciously or not) was trying to make the connection. It's all there. There's the hysteria, the fear, the entrepreneurs capitalizing on people's feelings. There are the pointless arrests, the government more worried about looking good than doing something and the pure terror of course. The difference I do see is that I don't see Voldemort as being like terrorists. Ih the magical world, there is Voldemort and his death eaters; in real life there are many various terrorist organizations, all with different motives. Also, I see Voldemort as being more of a pure evil, power hungry individual than terrorists. There's no question that people that are willing to kill for political reasons (whether we label them "terrorists" or not) have sick minds. But that's the point. No matter how messed up their logic may be, I think they have a motive, a reason more than Voldemort. Incidentally, the question of Voldemorts true motives arises. Does he just want power? What exactly is up with him?

I also saw the parallels with the AIDS epidemic. I've been reading And the Band Played On (which I will be writing about soon) and I kept thinking about the similarities. People are dying terrible deaths. The government doesn't really seem to care until it is too late. People are in denial. Death spreads. Soon nearly everyone in the community has been touched. People don't know exactly what they are fighting, they find out only a bit at a time. A few feel truly compelled to stop what is happening, but are finding it difficult to act on their own. And slowly, many are beginning to succumb. Of course, with AIDS it was the one-two punch of the virus and the attitudes toward it, slightly different than the more human-like, thinking Voldemort. But that thick red book kept entering my mind.

icklefickle — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:53:27 GMT

"We are very strict about ethics within our own company where we have, you know, direct hands, because we really think our company, you know, must have the highest, you know, the highest reputation and standards possible."

Beth Keck, a Wal-Mart spokesperson on Democracy Now!

Unfortunately, I found this extemely funny which is a sad statement about Wal-Mart.

political thank you notes

icklefickle — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 18:05:22 GMT

Maybe some of you already do this, but I got thinking...

I get e-mails all the time from various organizations urging me to write to (my) representatives in Washington and encourage them to vote this way or that on some bill or to let them know that some issue is important to me. After the vote, I may get an e-mail declaring "Victory!" or defeat, but it usually doens't say a whole lot more. What it should do is encourage us to write to those that voted the way we wanted them to and thank them for their vote. For example, take the CPB case. There were a lot of Republicans that ended up voting against the cuts. If your congressman or woman voted against them, write them or call to say thank you for doing the right thing. These people get begged all the time. They hear from upset voters. But how often do you think people take the time to write a nice note to these people? I think probably a lot less often. People are more likely to act when they're angry.

So... think about writing a political thank you note today.

X-posted... sorry