Sympathy for the visa applicants

webmaster@inthefray.org — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Visa requirements are set up with many valid reasons . . . but reason aside, I still find it exhausting.

Pick a reason for travel:

Going on holiday
Visiting friends
Business meetings
Conferences
Studying
Working abroad
Joining a partner/husband/wife
Other

THEN – give in your passport, your background, your family’s names and occupations, your travel history, your bank statements for the past three months, two passport-sized photos, your itinerary, proof of your itinerary, your sponsor letter from the people you’re visiting, your application (filled, signed, and dated), your fee (and that isn't small) . . .

And now wait.

Because there’s nothing else you can do.

Either they accept, reject or ask for more details. If accepted, great stuff. If you’re rejected, you may never learn why. If they need more information, then you start another scramble for collecting and submitting another part of your life once considered private.

I know about this because I had to help my partner submit an application back when Hungary was a visa-required country for visiting Canada. I also know this because now that I’m living in England, and my husband’s an EU citizen, I’m the one having to constantly justify our relationship and prove that I can live in the country.

It’s all right, mind you. I understand why the process exists.

But nevertheless, my sympathy extends to people navigating the visa system. It can be long, it can be revealing, and it can be – largely – a process that leaves you feeling helpless.

What happens next in your life suddenly relies upon the decision of another country, of the people working for their government, of the mood they’re in when they open your application.

That’s the price paid to visit, work, or live in another country (not all countries, but some). So while I know it’s necessary to reduce the amount of refugee claims at the Canadian border, I still feel a sympathetic sting for the legitimate travelers of Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Multitasked mayhem

webmaster@inthefray.org — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Multi-tasking – it’s what the job agencies want.

“Must be able to multitask,” they explain, as though it's an elusive ability. Any reasonably functioning person who manages to pick up their groceries, wash the sheets, go to work, check their emails, make phone calls, attend meetings, and have a social life in the evening must, they must, be able to multitask.

Or maybe offices need their employees to do it all at once? Record the mail, make the tea, pull a file, and answer the phone before it’s rung four times. If we had a few more arms then yes, that sort of multitasking may be possible. But we don’t.

The best I can figure is that "must be able to multitask" really means "must be able to account for several responsibilities and manage your time effectively."

I suppose they might add “must be willing to multitask” because, while many of us have the capability to run our lives on several paths at once, it is damn exhausting.

Multitasking stretches the brain thin and often results in work of lower quality.

Why do I know this? Well, ever tried reading a book while having a conversation? I have and it doesn’t work. Either the book or the conversation gets suppressed – and a deep absorption won’t be happening toward either. Essentially it’s a waste of your multitasked time. Others agree.

It’s a bee in my bonnet as I go through all these job applications. Everyone’s looking for a multitasker. A buzz-word gone wild.

Not that I’m going to argue because, hey, managing my time effectively while prioritizing work is only a few shades away from multitasking, and the results, I dare say, are even better.

They’ll never know the difference. Or they wouldn’t anyhow, if I were actually employed. Back to the applications!

Old friends

webmaster@inthefray.org — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Until, that is, I spot a familiar face on the street carrying a baby and realize that the little girl with wild hair and who always walked on her tip-toes, the one I used to ride bikes with and lived a few streets away from, is now a mother, has a husband, a house, and a career. She’s all grown up, or at least, she’s come a long way since we were ten.

It’s incredible stuff. I suppose it’s easy to get lost in the everyday momentum of life; enjoying each moment means that there isn’t always time to realize what’s changing. For me it’s about living in the present. I don't want regrets or excessive reminiscing holding me back from moving forward. The past is there inside me, but I try not to dwell on it too much.

So when someone asks, "What’s new?” I have trouble finding an answer. It’s all new, but being in the thick of things can make that hard to remember.

Old friends are a good reminder. It’s a taste of the past with a surprise of how things have changed. I'm amazed at what people achieve and how much they've grown. And when they ask me, "how are you doing?" I actually stop and realize that yeah, a lot has happened since we’ve last met.

Anyhow, that’s what’s on my mind. Old friends and the way life moves on. Things always change, and I have no regrets over that. But it’s nice to look back occasionally, catch up on a street corner while the light turns green to red, stay for a drink after saying hello at a bar, or whatever it is that brings people together. It’s good to realize how far we’ve all come.

Twitter gets political

webmaster@inthefray.org — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Accessibility is definitely an area where Twitter has Facebook beat, and in the case of Iran its consequences are powerful. News agents are looking to Twitter and other social networking sites like YouTube to find their reports. And while these sources may not be confirmed, it’s nevertheless a constant stream of opinions and experiences.

Looking at Twitter and clicking on a discussion titled #iranelection – there have been 219 new comments added since I logged in (5 minutes ago). That is incredible. People are discussing protests, closures, incidences, reactions, experiences, and more. One tweeter writes encouragement for others to contribute and keep Iran at the top of Twitter’s discussion list. They’re using this medium to ensure that their struggles are not forgotten, and it seems to be working.

I just checked again, and there are now 440 more comments since I began this blog post.

I can only imagine how the Internet may have impacted past protests and revolutions had it been available, but that’s speculating on something we can never know.

However, today it seems quite clear that sites like Twitter and YouTube are having an impact within Iran and internationally. They’re inspiring hope, discussion, strategy, and motivation. If the rapid addition of tweets to this single feed is any indication, Iranians have managed to involve people from all over the world in their fight. While the resolution is still unsettled, it’s clear that the people of Iran are making themselves heard. And that’s pretty incredible stuff.

One last check – there’s now 1,717 comments added since I first went to the page. Wow.

P.S. See the blog Iran protest resources if you want to read more on Iran.

Birds of a feather sipping together

webmaster@inthefray.org — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Our discussion roams from here to there but always comes back to our common interest: putting words on the page. She has her perspectives and I have mine; we can’t always agree yet we don’t often argue. It could be fun to argue – in that way that isn’t actually about aggression, just a sort of determination and challenge – but instead we analyze and compare and try to derive a theory, which gives a more quiet satisfaction.

A lot of it is forgettable, yet that’s not the point.

Those late nights are about the high of sharing your thoughts and ideas with someone who gets it, someone who empathizes. It’s like an injection to the system that says “yes, you can” and “yes, I will.” It’s the reasons why friends, clubs, meetings, groups, and classes that match your interest are fantastic for the creative juices.

Birds of a feather flock together. In fact, I think they feed off each other – whether it’s arms out and shouting about their passions or hunched over in a quiet discussion. Introverted or extroverted, there’s still an excitement that wants to be shared. In fact, it grows the more it’s expressed.

I’m not saying a different perspective isn’t a good thing; it’s a great thing and very grounding. However, it’s fun to take off with a bird of my own feather and just fly around. It’s worth the effort to find people who match you so well. Sharing interests with friends can lead to more than conversation: ideas get sparked and enthusiasm is nourished.

I love the all-night talk. Drown that tea till another pot needs making, and then make another. I suggest Earl Grey with a bit of milk, no sugar. A cookie on the side wouldn’t hurt either.

It's the money that moves us

webmaster@inthefray.org — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0100

We’ve moved through our education before a cold breeze hits us. Our transparent rainbow sphere breaks with a soapy "pop."

Next is the real adventure: move out, find a job, find a life, find a home, and keep chasing those dreams.

Keep chasing those aspirations – if you can afford it, if your student debt isn’t too heavy, if your parents are willing to support you, if you have any idea where to start, if you have the patience to continue – then keep chasing that ambition.

But I’m afraid it’s the money that really moves us. Sink, swim, or get a job at Wal-Mart. Just so long as you pay off that debt.

Example one: My friend (I’ll call him Bob for the sake of privacy) graduates with an English degree. Bob now wants to work in publishing. First, he moves back home because he can’t afford to live independently. Then Bob sends out resumes to almost every publisher in The Writer’s Handbook. Next, Bob realizes he’s more than broke, he’s seriously in debt. Eventually, he settles for a job outside of publishing and hopes the money hanging over his head like a blade will finally go away.

Example two: Me. I’ve graduated with an MA in creative writing and now want to write, write, write. I have no pressing student debt, thanks to my parents. Instead I have pressing rent, utilities, and taxes to pay. Every month there’s a slashing of bills into my bank account that bleeds it of the dollars I’ve saved.

I want to write, but I also need to live. Now that I’m married, my next step is to find part- or full-time work. Other authors have managed to build their careers while working other jobs, so why not me?

Why not me? Well it’s what I want, but deep inside I feel a sort of complacency that isn’t ambitious enough, isn’t desperate enough...and I’m not positive that my writing will make it.

I need to work and I’d like to enjoy my job. However, I’m afraid that, like Bob, I’ll throw me off track.

The money moves us...that’s scary to consider. It’s distracting, too.

Maybe I’ll go for a Ph.D. and stay in the bubble longer. But it’ll pop again eventually – you can’t hide forever, right?

I guess it’s time to step up to the challenge. Sink or swim.

Hopefully I’ll avoid the job at Wal-Mart.

Niagara for better or worse

webmaster@inthefray.org — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0100

How did a natural beauty like Niagara Falls become so tacky? And how is it that despite that tackiness it still holds a charm?

Driving our minivan down Clifton Hill, Canada’s first tourist trap after the American border, I’m cringing at the Louis Tussaud's Waxworks (a knock-off of the knock-off) and the giant Frankenstein holding a burger. What I see is carnival craziness. What I’d rather see is a national park with picnic tables, a few deer, and maybe a parking lot where families can pile out of their cars and take a photograph of the falls.

But – driving our minivan down Clifton Hill, Canada’s famous street in the Niagara region, I hear a chorus of "ohhs" and "ahhs" coming from my Hungarian in-laws who are stuffed into the passenger seats behind me. They’re saying things like "wow," and "beautiful" in Hungarian while the cameras are snapping and the DVD recorder rolling. It’s excitement compressed into a small family vehicle.

And it’s contagious. An hour later, my new husband and I are walking down Clifton Hill with his parents. Muscle cars are parading past, lights are blinking and spinning with color, and we’re laughing at the camera while posing beside the world’s tallest man...and even though I still think it’s one of the tackiest places on Earth, I also can feel the excitement and fun that thousands of couples may have felt on their honeymoon.

I suppose Niagara depends on the eye of the beholder. It isn’t my first choice (or my second, or my third, or even my twentieth) – but it has been fun to share in the excitement of others. It seems that despite myself, I might actually enjoy my honeymoon.

The wedding reason

webmaster@inthefray.org — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:00:00 +0100

In five days I’ll be married. My fiancé and I decided to keep the wedding small, but it’s still crashed a powerful wave through my routine of normal life.

The in-laws are meeting, deadlines approaching, and our relatives are traveling across the country. Meanwhile, money is flying out of my bank account faster than I can say “budget.”

It’s all in the name of love.

But not just love. Since we allow ourselves to become so invested in the idea of "the wedding" (eloping is easier, cheaper, and probably less stress), there must be something more that it represents, something justifying the mental, physical, emotional, and financial investment that is given to that one day.

Couples who’ve lived together for years and feel deeply in love don’t throw themselves a party to validate their relationship. So the wedding must be about something else, something really important that’s worth everyone’s attention. Right?

For me there are a few reasons for choosing the wedding over elopement. Here they are summed up: family, family politics, the chance to wear a big white dress, family expectations, and...family.

All the brides I’ve spoken with (three) say that family was a key aspect in their wedding. For better or worse, these people are the ones who raised you, the ones you can’t divorce, and the ones with whom you want to share your life-marking events.

Weddings bring out tensions, arguments, compromises, gossip, and stress for families on both sides of the wedding party. YET – grandmothers live for this sort of thing, mothers jump on the chance to plan the details, fathers take pride as they give away daughters, and little nieces dream of walking down the aisle while scattering petals. It is a special day because of these people’s involvement.

I look forward to my wedding because I’ll be committing to a man I love completely, but honestly, I’d be doing that whether we stayed non-married partners or ran off to Vegas for quickie nuptials.

Getting married – that’s for me and my partner. But the wedding, that’s for my family. Maybe it sounds crazy, but if you’re a bride you probably know what I mean.

Maybe non-married couples should throw themselves a party to celebrate their awesome lives. Why not? My bet: by the time they finish with the planning, they’ll have invited the second cousins, registered for flatware, and learned a little too much about everyone involved.

But that’s what it’s about: sharing something great with those who have marked your life in positive ways.

So yes, wedding chaos is endured in the name of love. Family love.

Twitter troubled

webmaster@inthefray.org — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:00:00 +0100

So — in the name of my yet-to-exist writing career — I’ve decided to set up a Twitter account: CatherineClaire (finally my middle name finds purpose). Apparently it’s like blogging but easier. You type in a quick blurb, let it sit a while, and then — BAM — conversation erupts and jobs roll in.

But, well...I hate to be the one swimming against the tide, but so far I feel completely lost in the "potential." It’s like staring at a large blank wall.

After the interaction I’ve had on Facebook, Twitter feels like a downgrade.

Facebook I get.

Facebook — with its streaming updates, links to school and work friends, tagged photos, comments, messages, games and targeted advertising — that I get.

Twitter offers its own type of immediacy. Britney Spears speaks to her fans, Oprah shares her favorite things. Intimacy is turned up a level by this open-access concept.

But celebrity stalking aside, Twitter makes me feel pressured. There’s an expectation to network, promote, and engage with intention. According to the many online articles floating through the Internet, Twitter’s about attracting people to your name and product.

Is Twitter more hype than substance? If not, I’d be happy to hear why because so far I'm not impressed. But for now I'm sticking it out. Besides, my mom suggests it’s a path to worldwide success, and while that sounds like a pipe dream, it also sounds cool.

Looking for enlightenment, I logged onto Twitter and clicked a link called #whyitweet. Here’s a slice of what I found Tweeters sharing, but there’s more if you want to go read for yourself:

“At first I was like, “this is dumb.” Then I was like, “Oh! People can know what I’m doing...ALL THE TIME! I like this.”

“I want to be hip, avant-garde and be able to laugh at people who are not.”

“My friends and family need to know when something cool happens, immediately.”

“I don't know anymore, I used to have a goal.”

Surrender monkeys

webmaster@inthefray.org — Sun, 06 May 2007 12:02:39 +0100

I don’t know, but like some spellbinder straight out of a Tolkien book, President Bush has worked his magic again.

Democrats were failing to muster the required votes in the House to override Bush’s veto of a war-spending bill last week, and given the sad state of anti-war assertiveness within Democratics on the Hill, it seems Bush’s desired no-strings-attached funding may not be beyond hope.

Despite polls vastly supporting the Democratic positions in the war-torn nation — polls like the April 26 Gallup questionnaire indicating 57 percent of Americans support setting a timetable for removing troops from Iraq, whereas only 39 percent supported Bush’s proposal to keep troops in as long as necessary to achieve victory — the Democratic leadership still appears weary to stake a stand against the administration policy of indefinite deployment.

As Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin told The New York Times, "There is virtually no one in our caucus who does not want to be associated with trying to get us out of this war. The only thing that is slowing some of them is the fear that somehow they will be accused of doing something that will put the troops at risk. The desire for political comfort is still overwhelming the best judgment even of some Democrats."

Translation: The Democrats are so afraid of making any politically exploitable misstep on Iraq or looking soft on national security that they are failing the American people and the troops.

Nothing “supports the troops,” to use the inane slogan the administration PR geniuses coined so effectively, more than getting them out of harm's way in an endless, goal-less conflict which has catastrophically increased instability in the region and continues to aid terrorist recruiters in finding new members.

I am with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. The Democrats should revoke the war powers granted to the president and send Bush a memo straight from the majority of Americans: The game is up. Add an end to this open-ended debacle and do what is truly best for the troops. Stop making their enlistments and tours of duty in Iraq longer.

The only thing Democrats would surrender by setting a withdrawal date from Iraq, after all, is another failed policy by what history will surely remember as one of our worst administrations.

In France, end of first-round presidential elections brings old with new

webmaster@inthefray.org — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:37:57 +0100

When far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen won a place in the second-round presidential elections in 2002, beating out the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, the French seemed startled. They had given themselves little to choose from: right or more right.

Capturing just fewer than 17 percent of the vote in 2002, Le Pen, leader of the controversial, anti-immigrant National Front, set the stage for Jacques Chirac’s landslide victory in a bizarre contest of two conservatives.

Now, with Chirac’s term coming to a close and another round of presidential posturing upon them, the French look forward to a much more traditional, balanced field — at least politically.

In the French version of what Americans might label a presidential primary Sunday, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal won pluralities to qualify for the second and final round of elections next month.

Speaking at a rally in Poitou-Charentes region, Royal promised a new future for the French people, troubled by immigration and a struggling protectionist economy.

Many French people “do not want a France ruled by the law of the strongest or the most brutal, sewn-up by financial interests, where all powers are concentrated in the same few hands,” the Times quoted her as saying. “I am a free woman, as you are a free people,” she added.

Those words carry an interesting subtext for American politicos gearing up for the 2008 presidential race. Like Hillary Clinton in the U.S., Royal seeks to become the first female president in her country.

Royal’s prospects look uncertain. Current public opinion polls in France show Sarkozy up eight points, but with record turnouts at the polls around France — more than 84 percent of France’s 44.5 million registered voters cast ballots — it looks like this election might be harder than usual to predict.

Whatever the outcome, it means a return to a new take on an old favorite in France: left verses right.

Fear quarantines Australia

webmaster@inthefray.org — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:43:29 +0100

“Quarantine,” as Dr. David F. Musto, a Yale University drug policy historian, noted in his 1986 article “Quarantine and the Problem of AIDS,” comes from the Italian word for “forty days.” That’s the arbitrary length of time ships coming from supposedly contagious areas used to be held at a distance from port to prevent disease from spreading to the city’s population. It’s an old idea, used back then to evoke a feeling of safety from diseases like leprosy, yellow fever, and cholera. On Friday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared it a fit idea for AIDS.

More specifically, he said on Friday that Australia should bar HIV-positive immigrants from entering the country, according to an AP report. Howard said Health Minister Tony Abbott was looking into means of tightening Australia’s HIV-exclusive immigration policy, the report adds. Currently, Australia’s health screening program unconditionally bars immigrants with active or untreated tuberculosis but evaluates HIV-positive applicants on a case-by-case basis.

While an Australian move towards a more HIV-exclusive immigration policy would hardly make it the first nation to bar all HIV-positive people entry — Russia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates all unconditionally ban HIV-positive people from entering their borders — the decision would put them among a small and dwindling group of nations maintaining absolute bans. France and Britain have admitted non-citizens infected with HIV, and Costa Rica, South Africa, and Thailand have all lifted HIV-exclusion policies, according to one 1998 report.

Current U.S. immigration policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, excludes HIV-positive people from entering the country. The U.S. first categorized HIV as a “dangerous contagious disease,” added it to its exclusion list, and began requiring mandatory testing of all applicants for the virus in 1987 under President Reagan.

Unlike President Reagan, AIDS isn’t a subject I would normally discuss. Outside of a few debate rounds in high school when the other side chose to debate U.S. HIV-exclusion policy, I knew little about the topic before I set out writing this post. I’m not an activist on the issue and certainly not an expert. I don’t even know anyone who is HIV positive. Still, I think the issue prompts a more thoughtful, hard look at how we react to incurable, mysterious diseases like leprosy and cholera. Australians are (at least somewhat understandably) scared of AIDS, but in this case, perceived security should not trump the individual value of immigrants in Australia or elsewhere. Australians, give out condoms and research cures. Don’t throw up a wall and pretend the black-plague-at-the-gates will disappear if you hide in your own quarantine.

This Easter, bittersweet chocolate is best

webmaster@inthefray.org — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 12:33:17 +0100

This Easter, among overflowing baskets of mashmellow chickens, chocolate bunnies and Jelly Bellys, lay the bittersweet lamentations of the Pope.

Speaking Sunday to tens of thousands of faithful at St. Peter’s Square, he cracked the eggshell of Easter’s sugary coating to discuss “how many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world.”

I am happy to say that, for a change, the Pope and I are on the same page. While Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas often seem divorced from their principled roots and pious traditions — Easter marks the second biggest holiday for candy sales in the United States — the Pope kept the spirit of Christ’s resurrection central to his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” Easter address. He spoke about terrorism, about kidnapping, and about the parts of the world that need political, economic, and social resurrection the most.

From Darfur to Afghanistan, Congo, and Somalia, the Pope’s call for reconciliation and peace, though idealistic, echoes the sense of hope growing in Northern Ireland. On a holiday known for it’s pastel bunnies, egg hunts, and baskets of candy, I welcome his social conscience. I only wish he had a few less conflicts to lament.

Read more about the Pope’s address here.

A bucketful of hope

webmaster@inthefray.org — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 22:01:03 +0100

With conflict in the Middle East burning as hot as a California wildfire in spring and strife in Chechnya hardly close to a conclusion, a bucketful of hope seems ready to put out the coals of one long-painful blaze for good.

The devastating conflict between Protestants and Catholics over control of Northern Ireland looks close to peace. On March 26, prominent Protestant politician Ian Paisley sat down with Gerry Adams, a Catholic and leader of Sinn Fein, a political party originally formed as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, in an unprecedented display of compromise and hope.

With so many reasons to lose hope for peace around the world, the meeting stands as a beacon of promise for a better future in Northern Ireland and countries like Chechnya and Israel, where historical territorial conflicts and irredentism have long blocked cease-fires and reconciliations.

As Paisley put it in remarks given at the meeting, “We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future.”

I agree. I only wish more world leaders came to recognize that constantly using the past to justify present atrocities and violence only perpetuates hatred and misunderstanding among races, religions, nations, and states.

We don’t have to forget the past to bring a happier future; we need to be willing to move past it. Otherwise the fires will keep on raging.

Terrorism in a suit

webmaster@inthefray.org — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:25:31 +0100

Gritty desert sand blowing, tan brick fading in the harsh sun, Arabic letters sprawling across signs and banners, women winding through streets wearing the hijab. Old cars honking as they make their way through traffic, long beards waving in a breeze, what do you see? Improvised explosive devices buried by roads? AK-47s with half-empty magazines? Terrorists?

You are in Iraq, but you probably guessed that before I told you. Imagery commands strong associations, and sometimes those associations help us make sense of the world and predict events. But make no mistake, those associations can just as easily lead us to misguided conclusions. You might think of terrorism when you see a Muslim, or when images show up in the paper of a far-off Arab land, even if you don't think that individual is a terorist. I want you to challenge those assumptions and look inward. Even the American government, under an objective definition, can be a terrorist.

Joshua S. Goldstein, professor of political science at American University in Washington, D.C., and Jon C. Pevehouse, with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, define terrorism in their 2006 edition of International Relations as “political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately.” By that definition, America commits terrorism, too.

For an example, look no further than the United States’s bombing of Afghanistan in ironic retaliation for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As Noam Chomsky, prolific political author and professor of linguistics at MIT, explained in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, George W. Bush on Oct. 12, 2001, “announced to the Afghan people that we will continue to bomb you, unless your leadership turns over to us the people whom we suspect of carrying out crimes.” He didn't show a shred of evidence about crimes they might have committed. Then the U.S. bombs started dropping.

What about the American crimes? Professor Marc W. Herold from the Whittemore School of Business & Economics estimates that the U.S. air war on Afghanistan killed more than 3,000 Afghani civilians and psychologically traumatized many more. His explanation? “The apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan.”

Understandably incensed by the atrocious terrorism in New York only a month prior, it seems the American public turned a blind eye to what Noam cites as a “textbook illustration of international terrorism by the U.S.’s official definition.” However, I will be the first to recognize that one argument does not the debate make. For brevity’s sake let me direct the reader to further examples. I simply suggest the American public pull the American-flag-colored wool off their eyes and recognize the hypocrisy before them. Read more of the evidence and debate me. I welcome it.

Senseless fear does no good. As Chomsky once famously said, “Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.” I ask that each of us stop lying complicity by while the powers you vote for perpetrate terrorist violence. Challenge assumptions and examine the facts because sometimes terrorists wear a suit.

Dirty secrets? Like, whatever!

webmaster@inthefray.org — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 08:48:38 +0100

When I asked one of my classmates how he felt about the classification of government information, his response was as terse as it was disappointing. "I don't," he said.

Ask a student you see walking to a class at any college campus in America. The responses rarely vary.

The iPod Generation, with its sleek camera phones and on-demand online news, has all too often simply forgotten about the dirty little secrets that those we empower to run our lives and spend our money hide from us on a daily basis.

We skate across the surface of today's 24-hour news cycle, across the icy layer of the superficial and the celebrity that dominates today’s programming.

So how can anyone blame us?

We are, as the cliché goes, what we eat. As the news becomes increasingly soft and profit-oriented, healthy choices become more and more scarce.

Can I or any other transparency advocate blame a generation choosing from the journalistic equivalent of McDonald's for their unhealthy diet? Logic tells me I must answer no.

Had I never broken through that ice and into the debate room during high school, I, too, might never have discovered the cold waters that lie beneath the surface.

Once I did, the truth was as shocking as any plunge into a wintry lake.

Hundreds of detainees held without charge or due process in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; torture in secret prisons from North Africa to the Middle East to Eastern Europe; illegal wiretapping of American citizens. Every story read like the topic of a high-adrenaline bestseller ready to fall off bookshelves at a Borders or Barnes & Noble near me.

But the stories were true. And the deeper I dove, as I arrived at college and began volunteering at the Freedom of Information Center, the more unbelievable, shocking truths I discovered.

A U.S. government report saying the Iraq war has significantly increased the threat of terrorism, not quelled it; Iraqi insurgents who not only were financially self-sufficient but even earned enough money to fund other terrorists around the world: These kinds of truths made me stare dumbly at my flat new laptop’s screen.

They underscore the necessity of a national dialogue about open government and transparency like Sunshine Week.

Now that I have seen the shadowy world beneath that layer of ice, I wonder how anyone could simply ignore the injustices our votes enable and tax dollars bankroll.

But I don’t wonder long.

I remember the words of the late President Reagan, who famously classified his grades after taking the oath of office: "All you knew is what I told you."

I remembered what I learned in history class: how he had neglected to mention his decision to sell arms to Iran and send the profits to anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua.

I remembered my generation, entirely too young to remember the lesson of the famous Iran-Contra Affair and, like every generation, probably could have paid closer attention during American History.

When I think about how little my generation knows about the indignities of our times, I have to forgive them.

Instead of learning from a young age not to trust our politicians' power to create secrets, we went ice-skating.

This week is Sunshine Week, a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast, and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools, and others interested in the public's right to know.

MAILBAG: There’s no place like home

webmaster@inthefray.org — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:20:50 +0100

Maybe it’s part of our modern, anti-depressant popping, workaholic, Starbucks-addled condition, but it seems as though every other film is about dissatisfaction. Documentary filmmaker Doug Block in his film 51 Birch Street presents his own family as an object lesson: malcontent and our collective inability to pursue our own happiness is an integral part of our culture.

The film begins 50 years after Block’s parents Mike and Mina said “I do.” The scene is familiar: children playing; grill on the patio; old folks and relations wheezing on the lawn; and, congratulations for making their marriage “work.” But the filmmaker is quick to comment that, given his father’s distant nature and his mother’s gregarious personality, the secrets of his parents’ successful marriage are just that: secrets.

We’re told that shortly after the anniversary party, Mina became ill and died. Before this news can have any real effect, we learn that Mike, now a widower, has re-connected with his old secretary and will be married only three months after his first wife’s death. The rage felt by his children is palpable, but Mike is ambivalent: he and his new wife, Cathy, display their affection openly, and his children wonder how a man who remained coolly distant toward them and their mother is able to lavish his new wife with kisses so freely.

Once Mike reveals that he and Kathy will be relocating to Florida to live out their golden years, the filmmaker begins to question his parents’ relationship: “Were they ever happy? What happened to this marriage that it could be forgotten so easily?”

The film begs for a villain, but its genius is in presenting Mike and Mina as casualties of middle-class life. Through interviews with his father and his mother (posthumously, of course), we learn that as the world changed around them, Mike and Mina became more distant: she lost herself in psychoanalysis, affairs, and her interior life; Mike buried himself in his work. When they both came up for air, three decades into their marriage, the two realized that, outside of their children, they were strangers.

The filmmaker allows us to see his parents as he sees them: Mike Block, now in his twilight years, makes half-hearted attempts to connect with his son by offering tools and badly-drawn 70s kitsch; Mina, though dead, acknowledges the failure of her marriage and her husband’s ignorance in volume after volume of her wire-bound diaries.

I found it hard to think of 51 Birch Street as a film. It’s more like being dropped into a family and watching it move around you. The camera work is comfortably low key, even off at certain times, and it appears that any real direction is eschewed for a more organic feel. 51 Birch Street is not one of those documentaries where you walk away thinking that you know the characters, but it’s not necessary that you do. All that’s required is for you to feel the length and breadth of their dissatisfaction and realize that that, too, is okay.

—Carl Mitchell

MAILBAG: Massage therapy?

webmaster@inthefray.org — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 08:07:38 +0100

To the editor:

Kai Ma’s article on the prostitution debate was interesting, but has massive gaps in its research. I’ve dedicated most of my life to this issue for over 13 months, often feeling frozen in time. But having
been a massage therapist since I was 19 years old, in 1989, it’s a small price to pay. I wonder where this all leads? Kudos to your publication and to the article’s author, Kai Ma, for writing about prostitution.

I might add, I didn’t even know this until last night, that while San Francisco’s tweaking of it’s massage laws in order to legalize prostitution has been totally shunned by so many, the opposition to Mayor Gavin Newsom quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle in terms of gay marriage is the Traditional Values Coalition. “No protesters attended the event, but, when contacted by the Chronicle, Benjamin Lopez, a lobbyist for the conservative group Traditional Values Coalition, slammed it from afar,” says article author Rona Marech.

The Traditional Values Coalition published a paper on San Francisco’s massage laws legalizing prositution in July 2004. Most media, such as the San Francisco Chronicle have pretended this wasn’t an issue for over thirteen months now, despite having had email exchanges with both Andy Ross and Henry Lee of the Chronicle about it.

Offhand, it’s gossip I wouldn’t put up on my website, but you have to wonder if this is one of the issues relating to Newsom’s recent divorce. Newsom is a Roman Catholic. When Executive Director of Treasure Island Tony Hall did an interview with San Francisco Catholic newspaper in October, Newsom announced his divorce within eight weeks. This is a real newspaper, sometimes read in the California State Capitol and quoted by other newspapers, such as the Sacramento Bee.

Kai Ma’s article fails to mention that San Francisco legalized indoor prostitution and pimping in massage parlors, creating multiple loopholes for sex traffickers in 2003 and 2004.

Meanwhile, last week, Oakland passed an ordinance calling for a moratorium on massage parlors.

Robyn Few, Carol Leigh, Ron Weitzer, and Janice Raymond all know about San Francisco’s massage law. Leigh was on the San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution, which published it’s recommendations to legalize prostitution by using massage parlors as fronts, on City stationary, under the leadership of then-Supervisor Terence Hallinan in 1996.

The article fails to mention that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gave $750 to Hallinan on July 17, 2004, while Hallinan was fundraising for Proposition Q. So while Pelosi did not give directly to the Proposition Q campaign, and instead funneled through Hallinan, I think it’s obvious she adores Hallinan and everything for which he stands.

The article also fails to mention that former California State Senate President John Burton also supported Proposition Q when he was in office.

Newsom, Daly, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-California, Woolsey, and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, have all refused to honestly comment on San Francisco’s massage law, or any related issues.

All this is even more complicated when one observes that Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Gloria Molina has posted in her biography that she opposes the use of massage clinics as fronts for prostitution.

—Brian Goodwin
San Rafael, California
(Home of Boxer and also home to at least seven brothels posing as massage therapy clinics)
www.massagewell.com

MAILBAG: Social Security shows Bush’s Nazism and nationalization

webmaster@inthefray.org — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:19:01 +0100

Social security reform should be opposed in favor of the libertarian
solution: End the scam and its Nazi numbering.

The biggest threat is ignored: Reforms will nationalize everything. If all SS taxes had been invested in stocks, then the government would own the entire economy today.  Everyone is lucky that his stolen money was squandered.

The biggest outrage is ignored: that Americans are numbered as infants for lifetime surveillance.

National numbering was imposed in 1935, as the USA followed the path of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis). The federal government was growing massively and attempting to nationalize the economy in many ways. The pledge of allegiance to the USA’s flag had its original straight-arm salute created by Francis Bellamy (an advocate of nationalization and a self-proclaimed national socialist in the USA), and it was the origin of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Government was taking over schools, imposing segregation by law, and teaching racism as official policy. Laws required daily robotic chanting of the pledge upon the ring of a government bell, like Pavlov’s lapdogs of the state.

After German Nazism fell, the USA’s government schools continued segregation and racism, stopping in the 1960s.  The USA also continued its Nazi numbering, with no stopping.

Today, the USA numbers babies, and government schools demand the numbers for enrollment, and the numbers track homes, workplaces, incomes, finances, and more, for life.  School laws still tout the daily pledge, a bizarre ritual shunned by every other country.

The pledge of allegiance and the SS scam were both touted by the pledge’s author, who advocated “military socialism” and a government takeover of schools in order to produce an “industrial army” to nationalize everything (including people via national numbering). It is now the cornerstone of the USA’s police state.

As an attorney, I am asked if it is wise (or constitutional) for the
U.S. government to number all youngsters and then steal their savings away for others via the so-called “social security program.”  The program  would have been struck down as unconstitutional but for the guile of the U.S.’s worst president, the socialist F.D.R., and a craven Supreme Court justice.

Is there only one judge in the USA who has the courage to publicly say that social security is unconstitutional?  Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court (and nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) said, “Today’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract...”

At this time, I am the only person warning of the danger of nationalization and totalitarianism in the SS reform proposal.

As the first person and the only person to organize a public burning of social security cards, I am proud to continue the libertarian fight.  The only place with a photo of the historic event is http://rexcurry.net/ssnburn.html.

Even the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, has been duped by
propaganda. What is it about the phrase “the government will manage the investment of the funds” that some libertarians don't understand?  It is not privatization, it is nationalization. It will destroy liberty quicker than school vouchers.

The “Burn Party” for socialist slave cards was inspired by the burning of draft cards in the 1960s. Socialist slave cards are the modern draft cards, and they are much worse. That only one public burning of SS cards has ever occurred is more proof of the capitulation of Amercians to socialism, to the police-state and to the surrender of liberty.

If the antidisestablishmentarianism does not end, then the U.S.A.’s police state will worsen.

The most widespread example of the police state in the U.S.A. is the
impoverishing social security system and its socialist slavery.

That is why social security numbers are known as Nazi numbers.

It was the same path that led to the socialist “Wholecaust” (of which the Holocaust was a part) with the socialist trio of horrid atrocities: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with 62 million killed; the People’s Republic of China, 35 million; the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 21 million.

After the National Socialist German Workers’ Party slaughter, the same genocidal socialist policies continued under the U.S.S.R. and the P.R.C.

Instead of being a beacon of freedom, the U.S.A. is still showing Nazism to the world.

The world is owed an apology for the horrid influence that government had (and still has in many ways) inside the U.S. and out in promoting socialized schools, military socialism within government schools, the creation of industrial armies, Nazi numbering, and daily robotic pledges of allegiance in military formation (that spread the infamous straight-arm salute).

—Rex Curry
Attorney At Law
lawyer@rexcurry.net

MAILBAG: Forcing makeup off women and on men

webmaster@inthefray.org — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:15:24 +0100

Makeup is used to enhance a person’s natural look. Every person has a perspective on their own look. That perspective determines if that individual will choose to wear makeup

American corporations are choosing to force women to wear makeup and are being supported by the American Court system. The issue here is the power of American corporations in the American courts. The human rights issue has been totally ignored. The purpose of makeup is not truly what the court reviewed.

The Court, except for one court justice, considered no more than the sexual discrimination issue and not very thoughtfully. The court allowed corporate interests to guide its decisions rather than considering the further ramifications of controlling the use of cosmetics by individuals.

How much farther can corporate control of individual attire go? Can corporations go so far as to control the jewerly that employees wear? Will it soon be acceptable for employers to tell employees that wedding rings cannot be worn on the job?

The unfortunate aspect of the case was that it was based upon sexual discrimination, but the real issue is when do corporations cross the line of human rights? This case should have been about the human rights violation committed against every working man or woman.

The company in this case decided to use personal preferences to the company’s believed advantage without considering the human beings that are forced to conform to those preferences.

The Men’s Fashion Freedom Movement is struggling for men to have total fashion freedom. The human rights violation committed by forcing makeup on women was equally abusive to men in the reverse. The movement is pushing for men to be free to use makeup as they choose. You can read more about the movement at Men’s Fashion Freedom.

—Anonymous