bush ratchets up the rhetoric in the u.k.-hostages-in-iran situation. because *that* will improve things. who took the duct tape off his mouth?

up until now, i had lazily assumed that this scene would play out much along along the lines of the u.s.-hostages-in-china situation a few years back. lots of staunch posturing and a heated war of “he-said/she-said”, but sensible heads eventually prevailing. i’m quickly realising that there are, however, two big differences between that crisis and this one: a) the u.s. had a huge economic incentive to use diplomacy b) neither country really wanted to fight the other (the u.s. with a healthy fear of china’s military might, and china being thoroughly disinterested in swatting at the u.s.)

unfortunately, neither of those constraints are applicable to today’s showdown.

still, if the handling of this impasse had remained squarely in the hands of the u.k., i would have still had relatively strong hopes for a peaceful outcome. but bush just can’t keep his nose out of the u.k.’s business, and it’s become very clear just who will be leading this parade (sorry for the horrible clash of metaphors.) he’s just itching for an excuse to fight, and iran is taunting him – all the while blair under ever increasing pressure to *do something*.

i have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

but before we start blowing things to kingdom come, here’s some food for thought.

let’s hope we’ve learned something from our recent mistakes.

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several years ago, i was dating a guy who was doing his doctorate in history. his thesis paper was on historical agriculture and land ownership policies in africa (well, a bit more complex than that but i never really understood it properly, to be honest). in any case, because of his scholarly focus, he had more than a passing interest in the policies of robert mugabe’s government. i clearly remember having a discussion with him back in the beginning of 2001 – we were in a roadside diner in providence rhode island, eating french fries at 2am, and he was telling me about the impact of the land re-distribution policy occurring in zimbabwe, which at that point was beginning to show signs of real crisis. this was all news to me at the time, and i feigned attention mostly because it was so important to him. but i remember that he predicted that unless he could be forced into “retirement” in a prominent symbollic post (which would allow him to save face) by south africa’s government, that mugabe would continue to drive zimbabwe’s future into the ground through his egotism and delusions of grandeur, until he died or was assassinated.

since then, i’ve paid attention.

and here, six years later, how prophetic those words seem. south africa has not, and will not (cannot?) get involved without risking their own stability. should civil war break out in its neighbour, the flood of refugees swarming over the border would hit the tentative economy and delicate infrastructure hard. south africa provides zimbabwe with much of its electricity, and could have chosen earlier on to exert influence through sanctions on that vital resource – but at this point it would only further harm some of the most vulnerable people. and up until recently, there’s been little pressure from the west for south africa to get more involved. even when the world leaders decried the most recent elections as a massive fraud, south africa found very little critical to say.

a few years ago, shortly after i moved to london, i struck up a friendship with a work colleague from zimbabwe. we’d hang around outside the office building, smoking cigarettes and shooting the breeze. as i got to know her, she told me about life in zimbabwe. her mother still lived there, much to my friend’s dismay. over the two years i knew her, she told me stories from back home in her mother’s village. stories of raids and rapes and killings by police. stories of people being forced from their homes and farms. traumatic stories of loss and war. she called her mother and visited as often as she could. when we’d meet up outside i would ask her for the latest news from her mother, and listen to her worries about her safety, and sadness at the state of her country. eventually, she convinced her mother to move to portugal with her and leave her house behind. i remember breathing a vicarious sigh of relief.

so every time zimbabwe or mugabe is in the news, i think about my friend and her mother, and i think about what’s happened in the six years since i first started paying attention to what was happening. i think about the things my ex-boyfriend told me about mugabe’s rise to power and current regime. i remember reading about mugabe denying food aid to areas that didn’t support him. i remember hearing about the tyranny of the police and the fear that settled over villages at night. i remember seeing the pictures of the razed houses. i remember seeing the protesters outside the zimbabwean embassy with their weekly saturday vigil and their posters and their hope for their homeland.

i’m not really sure what i’m trying to say here except that i’ve been heartened recently to read about zimbabwe on the front pages, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. the media is paying attention when opposition leaders are arrested and beaten. protesters are storming the london embassy. the u.s. and e.u. are considering tougher sanctions. people’s stories are being heard. something has got to give. things can’t continue on this way.

i only hope it’s not too late.

johnny clegg & savuka – great heart

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The world is full of strange behaviour
Every man has to be his own saviour
I know I can make it on my own if I try
But I’m searching for a Great Heart to stand me by
Underneath the African sky
A Great Heart to stand me by

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at a work meeting on friday, we discussed the growing use of databases (in my job we maintain a voluntary database, but there will soon be a mandatory nationwide children’s database), and got off onto a side conversation about i.d. cards. i have a lot of conversations like this, and in this particular round-table it was one american to 5 brits. out of the brits, 4 of the 5 voiced having no concerns about i.d. cards, claiming they had “nothing to hide” and they would help crack down on terrorism. (for any new readers, my oft-opined views on privacy rights can be found here and here and here and least tactfully but most colourfully here.) hell, i was shocked even *one* brit agreed with me – usually in these scenarios i play the role of “lone paranoid american with the tin-foil hat”. the huge sacrifice of privacy in just living here is something i will never get accustomed to, but i *have* become accustomed to the prevailing attitude of most people around me.

so imagine my surprise reading this:

Experts have called for a halt in the spread of CCTV cameras.

Britain is now being watched by a staggering 4.2million – one for every 14 people and a fifth of the cameras in the entire world.

The Royal Academy of Engineering also warned that lives could be put at risk by the lurch towards a ‘big brother’ society in which the Government and even supermarkets hold huge amounts of personal information on us.

It said any system was vulnerable to abuse – including bribery of staff and computer hackers gaining access.

-snip-

Professor Gilbert added: “We have supermarkets collecting data on our shopping habits and also offering life insurance services.

“What will they be able to do in 20 years’ time, knowing how many doughnuts we have bought?”

and how apropos that this began playing on my itunes:

elvis presley – suspicious minds

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cctv, uk, privacy rights

I was watching your programme this morning, listening to the report on the resurgence of women’s roller derby, whilst enjoying my coffee – until I heard your reporter say something which made my jaw drop:

“*Should* women be involved in such a violent sport?”

I hate to be the one to have to break the news, but this is the year 2007. Women *should* be involved in whatever sport they damn well please – whether that be boxing, roller derby, rugby, or ballet.

Women *should* no longer be viewed as, or be implied to be delicate, dainty, helpless beings, too genteel for anything more vigorous than sitting around with a parasol. Women *should* be spoken about respectfully in the media, like the strong, passionate, and capable individuals they are.

If we can lead entire countries, raise families, run businesses, and serve in war, surely we *should* be able to survive a little weekend roller derby. Your reporter would do well to remember that.

Many thanks, yours sincerely, etc., etc…

(yes, i sent it!)

song of the day: josh ritter – girl in the war

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last year, on international women’s day, andy asked what happened to “international white guy day”. to which i pointed out *every day* was international white guy day.

this year, i was on my lunch hour walk with my friend bernie. and we went past the statue of emmeline pankhurst, in front of the houses of parliament. there were wreaths of flowers lain in front, and i asked bernie who she was (history was never my strong suit). turns out, she was the leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the u.k., the british equivalent of our susan b. anthony. she chained herself to the gates of parliament, bombed westminster abbey, went on hunger strikes, suffered imprisonment to achieve her goal. i found it touching that her statue was in such a prominent position, and that there were floral tributes in homage from all the major political parties.

flickr photo courtesy of tomroyal

the problem is that it remains tokenism. if you bother to check out the statistics, you soon find that women remain dramatically underrepresented in parliament. that the u.k., in fact, lags far behind not only many of the most progressive european countries (the scandanavian contingent are all in the top ten), but also more surprising countries such as rwanda, cuba, and mozambique.

With 19.5%, the UK is ranked 52nd out of 189 countries listed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in terms of the percentage of women holding office in the lower or single House of the national Parliamentary body.

for a westernised country that aspires to achieve real equality,that’s just not good enough. every day in modern history has been “international white guy” day. i’m lucky enough to live in one of the few countries in the world that has the opportunity to change that.

once a year flowers and a statue, not matter how well intentioned, are just not good enough.

ms. pankhurst would say the same.

song of the day: no doubt – just a girl

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emmeline pankhurst, women's suffrage, women's rights, international women's day

the metropolitan police’s newest counter-terrorism idea? turn neighbours into informants. the slogan: “You don’t have to be sure. If you suspect it, report it.”

If you think that you may have seen something suspicious or you are unsure about somebody’s activities or behaviour, however insignificant it may seem at the time, call the Anti-Terrorist hotline on xxxx xxx xxx. Calls are taken in confidence by specialist officers who will analyse your information. They’ll decide if and how to follow it up. Your call could be vital to us however unsure you may be.

-snip-

The terrorist threat remains real and there is no room for complacency. The public should remain alert and aware of their surrounding at all times. If something strikes you as suspicious and out of place then trust your instincts and call the police.

because apparently50% of all “terror” related arrests being completely and wholly unfounded, isn’t enough. 40 convictions in 1166 arrests is a record to be proud of, for sure.

song of the day: the shins – caring is creepy

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i find it disturbing, not that a raving lunatic like ann coulter called presidential candidate john edwards a “faggot” in front of a room full of press and cameras – but that out of all the vile slurs she could have possibly chosen to denigrate him, out of all the low blows she could have struck, she somehow judged that *that* would be simultaneously the most insulting and publicly palatable.

and for what it’s worth, it looks like she was on the money on that last count. four days later, and most news organisations are *just now* covering this. what does that tell you?

song of the day:Cake – Satan is my Motor

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ann coulter

new york city has voted to “symbolically” ban the use of the n-word.

i’m not black. i don’t pretend to understand for even one moment what it is like to live with black skin in america, and it would be sheer arrogance to imagine that i have any say-so in this. but something about this gesture deeply disturbs me, however well-intentioned it might be.

as i said, i’m not black. but i was married to a black man and we were together for nine years and we lived in new york city. so i’ve had some second-hand exposure to contemporary racism and the multitude of forms it can take in a city where minorities are the majority, yet viciously offensive speech is protected by the first amendment. and i currently live in a country where using the n-word (or any other racial slur) is considered a prosecutable hate crime – where lawmakers try to legislate civility, yet recent history demonstrates that bigotry still runs just below the surface.

and in my experience of both environments, i’ve found i’d rather let the bigots self-identify through their own ignorant admission, than have to try to guess at who harbours prejudice behind their public facade.

by all accounts, this act by the city council is simply a feel-good motion, with no legal teeth. it’s a chiding call to everyone to be on their best verbal behaviour, even those african-americans who legitimately argue they’re entitled to reclaim the n-word and it’s sole usage as an empowering act. once again, elected officials think they know what’s best.

but as the u.k. has proven, outlawing the words doesn’t work. you can make certain speech punishable by law, but that doesn’t force people more sensitive or tolerant. you can make calling someone a “paki” illegal, but that doesn’t cure the antipathy which exists towards the large southeast asian community. you can make “hate speech” illegal, but that doesn’t keep people from committing racially motivated murders. you can make it illegal to spout religious hatred, but you can’t ignore the strong anti-muslim sentiment which has penetrated much of the country since the tube bombings. in spite of all the strictest rules and regulations, hate crime, race riots and racially motivated killings continue to occur. the hot ember of latent hostility remains burning in the ashes, just waiting for oxygen to burst into violent flame.

new york officials should learn by british example. banning painful words doesn’t eliminate the painful reality of racism – it merely sends it underground. and to my mind, that’s much more dangerous.

song of the day: the delgados – all you need is hate

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new york city, hate speech

an 8 year old boy is so obese, he is almost unable to walk. social services are trying to decide whether or not to remove him from his family.

advocates have argued that if a child were starved instead of overfed, there would be no question the child should be removed, for his own safety and health.

but think about it for more than a nanosecond and the difference becomes blindingly obvious.

parents everywhere make all kind of ill-informed dangerous decisions on their child’s behalf every day, some with all the best of intentions. refusing blood transfusions, omitting seat belts, smoking in the home, opting out of innoculations. these are all potentially just as lethal, but no one proposes to remove children from their parents’ care because they’re not immunized against chicken pox, or mum is a human chimney.

But all that aside, what it boils down to is this: Ignorance and unwillingness to change is fundamentally different to *actively attempting to inflict pain on a child*. Starving a child is an active attempt to harm. Beating a child is an active attempt to harm. Laziness is very BAD parenting – but it’s not abuse.

There are plenty of children who desperately need to be protected by the state from horrific parents who are trying to hurt and maim them. But this isn’t one of them. Send the ignorant parents to counselling – save precious resources for the kids who really need to be saved.

song of the day: the band -the weight

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obesity, child abuse

so as part of our anniversary celebration last night, j and i went to the cinema (yeah, we’re crazy like that!! just party, party, party. for the record, it was the first time in more than a year that i’ve seen a current movie in a theatre, since the “dias de furia” disaster doesn’t count.) we saw “the last king of scotland” which was great.

but at the same time it made me so furious, because it’s just another sad story about what happens to a country when the west meddles and muddies around, props up puppet politicians, then washes its hands of the whole messy affair. and because it’s only another poor country, state supported killing is ignored until long after the fact. cambodia, uganda, serbia, afghanistan, iraq.  lather, rinse, repeat.

when we were in cambodia, we went to the s21 genocide museum. disgusted by the complicity of the u.s. in supporting the sadistic regime of the khmer rouge, i wrote this:

and so i feel compelled to bear witness. to try to examine in my own way, the cruel cancerous biology of genocide that invades, multiplies quietly, ravages and destroys a people, and is always identified far too late. to pay my respects to those who died unnoticed by the rest of the world.

i feel compelled to see for myself, the worst of humanity on display – the stark, indisputable evidence of our most craven and cowardly need to deny the existence of evil and suffering in front of our faces… millions died because we failed them. we can’t keep looking away.

when the fuck will it all end? when will the governments of the west acknowledge their role in the bloodshed? and more importantly, when will they care enough to do something about it *before* millions more die?

song of the day: the juliana theory – if i told you this was killing me, would you stop?

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genocide, uganda, amin, the last king of scotland

i’ve always had an incredible affinity for elephants. i don’t know why, but it’s been a recurrent theme for me for many years. if ever there was a totem animal that reflects me, the elephant is it. and it was probably the highlight of my year when in thailand i finally got to experience some incredible close-up-and-personal time with the ellies, alongside people who love and respect them.

which is why i can’t stand to see people riding them like common donkeys, or hitting them with sticks, or parading them through the streets with chains around their legs. it just hurts my heart – i can’t look. (and if you want to know how elephants are tamed, google “phaajaan” or [if you have a strong stomach] see the sickening video here.) in the countries which purport to revere them most, they are cruelly manipulated to fill the demands of the ignorant tourist industry.

so a little part of me rejoices when they finally fight back, when they refuse to play polo and perform tricks like circus animals.

but sadly, i also know that it only reinforces the idea that they are dangerous creatures who must be beaten into submission. for every elephant that gets angry and breaks free, more are horribly abused.

and it kills me to feel so helpless to stop it.

song of the day: the be good tanyas – in spite of all the damage

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i wrote the other day about how rape is not taken seriously in the u.k.

this just underlines the point – the bbc, no less

The BBC has been accused of “trivialising rape” with its new show The Verdict, in which a jury of C-list celebrities decides the outcome of a mock trial.
…
The fictional rape case involves a 19-year-old waitress who claims she was subjected to a degrading sex attack by a footballer and his friend. All are played by actors.
…
Professor Liz Kelly, campaign chairwoman, said: “The Verdict is guilty of trivialising rape. This is reality television that misses much of the reality of rape – for example, the fact that most women are raped by someone they know.

“With rape rarely dealt with at any length by broadcasters, The Verdict is a missed opportunity to show the facts on rape. The bleak truth about rape is that little support or justice exists for women in this country.”

because rape is always a surefire ratings winner.

sickening.

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rape statistics, uk

the fact that there’s now an effective vaccine for hpv, the virus which causes most cases of cervical cancer, should be unambiguously good news for women and girls everywhere. and yet it’s surrounded by controversy in america, simply because state governments are intent on forcing it down people’s throat.

hpv is primarily a sexually transmitted disease, and many children haven’t even had the most basic sexual education by age 11. yet in spite of this the governor of texas has already ordered it a mandatory vaccine for his state and florida, indiana, illinois, and virginia have all considered making it one of the required vaccines necessary for 11-12 year old girls to attend public school. state legislators are all lining up as pro- or anti- mandatory vaccination, while much of their constituent conservative christian community has been in a uproar over such plans, claiming it will lead to increased promiscuity amongst young teens, by condoning premarital sex.

proponents of widespread mandatory vaccination argue that this is an anti-cancer vaccine, rather than an STD vaccine. but the fact remains that HPV is most commonly spread sexually. this makes it substantially different to all other mandatory vaccines, because the legal rationale behind other required innoculations is that the general public are at risk of contracting diseases from non-vaccinated people *through casual contact*. chicken pox, whooping cough, polio – these are all things you can easily transmit, and it’s not fair to other members of the public to put them at risk. HPV is a very different category, in that it’s unlikely to be caught through non-intimate contact – which therefore means the same public health arguments for schools/workplaces/etc. simply do not apply.

and that’s where lawmakers have got themself into a muddle – because while it’s a great thing to do voluntarily, making it mandatory somehow seems far too intrusive. the difficulty is, most people don’t think the gov’t should have anything to do with somone’s sex life, even in a preventative way. many parents don’t want the government involved in their child’s sexual development and education, and unfortunately it’s impossible to separate the virus from the way in which it’s transmitted. in a country which is becoming more and more conservative, and more and more christian, insinuating that their precious daughters will someday soon become sexually active is a message many voters just don’t want to hear. add to that the recent spate of scepticism over mandatory vaccines, pharmaceutical companies’ capitalistic conflicts of interest, and a recent rash of unintended devastating side effects from products rushed to market, and you are left with a sharply divided public opinion – which then becomes a gaping hole of missed opportunity.

the ability to potentially prevent cancer in thousands of young women a year is an incredible golden opportunity, and this vaccine could save innumerable lives. it’s just too bad lawmakers may have shot themselves in the foot with overzealous intrusion into the private lives of teenage girls.

song of the day: Amy Winehouse – Rehab

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there’s still a lot about the u.k. that is inherently sexist. some of it is more overt (the topless photos inside the “newspapers”) and some of it is more subtle (the use of the endearment “love” in a pejorative and belittling way). margaret thatcher notwithstanding, there are still a lot of obvious inequalities and insidious patriarchal attitudes that pervade the culture. i was quite struck by it when i first arrived, and i am sad to say, it has since faded into background noise. because, well, i live here – and you just can’t spend all day every day in a black cloud of righteous indignation.

one thing that never fails to raise my hackles, however, is the topic of rape. rape is an appalling topic no matter what the circumstances, but rape in the u.k. is truly horrific because only 5% of reported rape cases end in a conviction. that’s a number which has, in fact, been falling since 1977. of the cases that go to trial, one of every two ends in acquittal. in other words, a victim who manages to make it to trial has only a 50/50 crapshoot of getting to see her attacker put behind bars.

and reading the reports, it’s not hard to understand why. in news item after news item, there’s just no sense that anyone in the justice system takes rape seriously. there’s a lot of talk about the number of false accusations, the difficulties of determining consent if someone’s been binge drinking, and passing the buck blame-gaming. all we hear is how hard it is to determine what happened when the two parties know each other. attempts at judicial reforms have been dismissed by judges, police incorrectly record allegations as “no crimes”, and more than a third of dropped cases have should have been pursued. but perhaps the most telling indicator of how rape is viewed and prosecuted in the u.k. is that women are still often questioned about their sexual history as part of the trial.

all of those elements combine to form a pretty clear picture: rape just doesn’t matter much. and given that most rape victims are women, it implies that women just don’t matter much. which is why it is estimated 9 of 10 cases are never reported. the response to the most recent reports are feeble at best. there is no outrage, no shock – instead people say there shouldn’t be artificial targets for conviction. they trot out the old stereotype of a woman who only cries “rape” the morning after in a haze of regret. they say that a trial ending in a verdict of “innocent” is just as successful as a trial ending in a verdict of “guilty”.

what it boils down to is more of the same old shit. when rapists are free to walk the streets, they are free to rape again, creating more victims who don’t come forward or have ineffectual trial cases, further solidifying the wall of silence and making even more women vulnerable. and in a culture where victims of rape are blamed and disbelieved, why should any woman want to put herself through even more trauma when the chances of justice are so low, and the chances of humiliation so high? for victims of sexual assault, there truly is no justice. and while i can tune out the page 3 titties staring out at me from the papers every morning and i can tune out the men with a disparaging sneer in their voice, i simply cannot tune out the horror of living in a country where rapists get away with it – over and over again.

(while i have referred only to female victims of rape here, that’s not in any way to dismiss the plight of male victims of rape – simply that the overwhelming numbers are women)

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fringe benefit of being an expat? i don’t even have to *pretend* to care about the bloody “state of the union” address. in fact, i didn’t even know it was tonight until it was mentioned on this evening’s news.

ho hum – how friggen predictable. but wait! he’s going to mention global warming again!! yeah, because he was sooooo convincing about it last year. ::heavy sarcasm:: let’s just continue to alarm people without ever encouraging any actual change in our consumption lifestyles. that’ll save the planet.

at least in the u.s., he won’t have people telling him he shouldn’t fly anywhere on holidays anymore, like poor tony blair! apparently the second most powerful man in the world is supposed to just drive down to brighton beach, or summer in blackpool. george, on the other hand, could easily drive to his vacation ranch in texas – in his luxury armored SUV, of course.

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global warming, state of the union

i have often blogged about being pro-choice. but today, the anniversary of roe v. wade, i am asked to quantify *why* i am pro-choice.

it’s very simple for me, really. i am pro-choice, because I am pro-women.

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blog for choice

(thanks for the heads up, stacey!)

originally posted in salon, but so powerful, i’ll reprint the whole thing here…

Why I defend “terrorists”

An open letter to Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, from a lawyer representing five men at Guantánamo.

By Anant Raut

Jan. 17, 2007

Cully Stimson
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Detainee Affairs

Department of Defense

Washington , D.C.

Dear Mr. Stimson,

I am an associate in the Washington office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, a New York-based, international firm with 1,100 lawyers. I practice general corporate litigation. I also represent, on a pro bono basis, five men who are being held as “enemy combatants” at the U.S. detention center in Guantánamo Bay , Cuba . “How can you defend terrorists?” is a question I’m sometimes asked when people learn about my pro bono work. On Jan. 11, in your capacity as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, you asked the same question of every lawyer representing detainees in Guantánamo.

During the course of an interview on Federal News Radio, you named my law firm and 13 others whose attorneys have clients in Guantánamo and urged our corporate clients to take their business elsewhere. “You know what, it’s shocking,” you told your audience. “I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.” You then said our efforts might be funded by “monies from who knows where.”

Mr. Stimson, I don’t defend “terrorists.” I’m representing five guys who were held or are being held in Guantánamo without ever being charged with a crime, some of them for nearly five years. Two have been quietly sent home to Saudi Arabia without an explanation or an admission of error. The only justification the U.S. government has provided for keeping the other three is the moniker “enemy combatant,” a term that has been made up solely for the purpose of denying them prisoner-of-war protection and civilian protection under the Geneva Conventions. It’s a term that was attached to them in a tribunal proceeding so inherently bogus that even the tribunal president is compelled to state on the record, in hundreds of these proceedings, that a combatant status review tribunal “is NOT a court of law, but a non-judicial administrative hearing.”

And, lest there be any doubt, Mr. Stimson, we are not receiving any money for this. My firm’s work is pro bono. At the end of the year, the partners set aside a substantial portion of the firm’s profits to pay for my trips to Guantánamo and my translation costs, just as they pay for my colleagues’ fight for clean drinking water in the lower-income neighborhoods of D.C., as well as hundreds of other projects I would be happy to discuss with you directly.

I also get asked other questions about my pro bono work, Mr. Stimson. “How can you defend terrorists?” is only the third most common. The second most common question is, “Why do you do it?” In law school, I would feel outrage whenever I read about a case in which our courts had the opportunity to take a stand — against slavery, against the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II — and didn’t. But I would also feel self-doubt. It’s easy to feel righteous anger now. But, I wondered, would I have felt it then? Or, in the name of security, of easing the anxiety of the public, would I have been able to swallow these affronts to the freedoms I see as the cornerstone of our national identity? The people I’m defending were caught up in the adrenaline and paranoia of our nation’s darkest hour. All we’re asking for is a fair hearing. Why does this frighten you so?

Mr. Stimson, you should also know that I am frequently mistaken as being Middle Eastern or Latino (no and no; the correct answer is “Indian”). In November 2001, I was walking to dinner in the trendy Dupont Circle area of Washington , D.C. Just as the sun was going down, I heard a car slow to a halt behind me. “Hey, you, dumb blonde,” yelled the driver to my date, “can’t you see he’s a terrorist?” He then sped off.

Dehumanizing people makes it easy to believe the worst about them. When they look different from you, when they sound different, it becomes easier, and when you dress them in identical uniforms and lock them in cages, it becomes easier still. All I’ve been trying to do for the past two years is give my clients a chance to challenge the assumptions that have been made about them.

And finally, Mr. Stimson, the question I get asked more than any other is, “How can a place like Guantánamo continue to exist?” I think it is because we as a nation are afraid to admit we’ve done something wrong.

There is a widespread belief, as well as a need to believe, that the men we’re holding in Guantánamo must be bad people. They must have done something to end up there. They couldn’t just be, in large part, victims of circumstance, or of the fact the U.S. government was paying large bounties in poor countries for the identification and capture of people with alleged ties to terror. If the bulk of the detainees are guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, if there’s no evidence that some of them did the things of which the government has accused them, then it would mean that we locked innocent people in a hole for five years. It would mean not only that our government wrongfully imprisoned these men but that the rest of us stood idly by as they did it. It would mean that we have learned nothing from Korematsu v. United States, that we have learned nothing from the McCarthy-era witch hunts, and that when we wake up from this national nightmare, once again we will marvel at the extremism we tolerated in defense of liberty. It would mean that even as we extol the virtues of fairness and due process abroad, we take away those very rights from people on our own soil.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It is my belief that the true test of a nation’s commitment to liberty occurs not when it is most readily given, but rather when it is most easily taken away.

Mr. Stimson, that is why I do what I do.

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leave the house at 8:00 for a conference in birmingham. first train – cancelled. second takes 3+ hours and i finally arrive at the leisurely hour of 12:30 – just in time for the lunch break. conference ends at 3:30 and i race to the station only to find all trains to london have been cancelled. i spot a train for stanstead airport and jump on that. except it terminates in leicester. to my good fortune i discover a train headed to st. pancras and just make that by the skin of my teeth. get into london at 7:30. only to find massive delays on the northern line. the tube pulls in packed by the doors, and no one makes an effort to move in. in complete and utter exasperation i hop on the tiniest bit of ledge (y’know, wher you have to suck in your stomach as they close the doors?) and politely but loudly say “would everyone please move down into the carriage? everyone over here (i gesture to an empty space) could just step down a bit?” no one moves a muscle.

“or, y’know, *not*!!”

some guy pipes up, “actually there’s a baby in here, so no, we can’t”.

i can’t actually see much, so i assume he means a pram is taking up space.

i settle in, grumbling, and as the crowd thins out, realise there are a bunch of people with giant backpacks on (not having had the common courtesy to take them down from their shoulders to make more space) and the baby is a tiny newborn strapped to the front of it’s dad in a carrier.

fuckin’ idjits.

i make it home at 8:30 pm.

and in case anyone was counting, that’s more than nine full hours of travel hell.

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rail service, wind storm, u.k.

as a british visitor to the u.s., jonno has had to voluntarily surrender his right to privacy at the border for several years now – smile at the camera, press your two index fingers on the pad, bend over… well, maybe not that last one. yet.

but now, by doing so, he will also voluntarily be providing that same information (the sort of info usually only kept on criminals) to the home office in his country of citizenship. because the u.s. will helpfully make that database available to international intelligence agencies – aren’t they just the sweetest?

but the americans aren’t the only ones doing all the gift-giving:

Britons already have their credit card details and email accounts inspected by the American authorities following a deal between the EU and the Department of Homeland Security. Now passengers face having all their credit card transactions traced when using one to book a flight. And travellers giving an email address to an airline will be open to having all messages they send and receive from that address scrutinised.

so never mind that jonno didn’t have to get fingerprinted to even *get* his citizenship *or* his passport in the first place. and never mind that if he never, ever visited the u.s., and never got arrested at home, the police would probably also never have his digits. nope – now, simply by virtue of visiting his in-laws, he will be surrendering his right almost all his personal privacy, both home and away.

two for the price of one, folks! what a deal!

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privacy rights, war on terror

I swear, I sometimes just do not for the life of me understand how a country which is trying to arrest suspects *before* they commit a crime (obviously *someone* in the home office was watching “minority report“), collect baby’s dna just in case they grow up to be criminals, and i.d. every innocent citizen to prove they’re *not* criminals… how on earth they can let *real criminals* (including murderers!) just roam free completely undocumented?!?!

but that’s okay – i feel much safer since I can get my terrorism alerts via email.

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open jails, i.d. cards, baby dna, escaped prisoners

yes, yes, yes: this article articulates *exactly* what I was trying to say before about the ashley case:

I understand the parents’ logic. And I can even understand how a medical team might come to agree that a person who cannot move will have a better life small than big. But I think the Peter Pan option is morally wrong.

I believe it is true that it is easier to move Ashley about if she is the size of a 6-year-old. But I also believe that a decent society should be able to provide appropriately sized wheelchairs and bathtubs and home-health assistance to families like this one. Keeping Ashley small is a pharmacological solution for a social failure — the fact that American society does not do what it should to help severely disabled children and their families.

True, it may be better if Ashley does not become sexually developed in terms of protecting her from attack. But that can be said of any woman. To surgically remove her breasts is simply to maim her in a way that ought not be done. She needs a safe environment at home and if the day comes, a safe environment in an institution. Lopping off her breasts to keep her safe cannot be the right or the only answer.

(emphasis mine)

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ashley, disabilities, stunted growth