Stop press! Deborama finally comes down against political correctness!

You all know I am a liberal, except in those areas where I am left of liberal. You may not all know it, but my gay-friendly, practicing bisexual, friend of friends of Judy credentials are pretty well established. Nevertheless, when I readthis, my reaction was "Fer christsake, don't you people have better things to do with your time and energy?" I mean, really!

OK, look . . .

I am not going to blog about the Chuck and 'Milla Show. Not now, not ever, well, not unless they do something newsworthy. But I can still blog about the things that spring up because of them and their little drama, such as this wonderfully bitchy depiction, by Polly Toynbee, of what monarchy does to a nation, which I have had the misfortune to witness firsthand.

Ludicrous and grotesque for the wretched royal performers and their subjects alike, this is the least dignified of all state institutions. It always was, even in those relatively few reigns when the monarch did behave with due decorum.
The glittering emblem of the sovereign infantilises the nation into an unhealthy fascination with the doings of the royal household, children, servants, foibles and every banal saying and doing. It demeans the idea of citizenship and the meaning of the state. Why should these meaningless people be embedded in our national imagination? . . .
The tyranny of the monarchy is not in its puny temporal power but in its hold over the national imagination. Its spirit permeates politics, poisoning the appetite for reform and imbuing the nation with grandiose fantasies. It imparts an unsubtle taste for the thwack of "strong government" under the firm dictatorship of one party: Her Majesty's government. Proportional representation comes from another part of the brain, less hierarchical, less certain, more consensual - but somehow "not the British way". We have hierarchy hard-wired into us - tyrannical little kings and queens atop every pyramid of management.

That last paragraph particular struck a nerve. While all the "royal wedding" fuss was going on, my workplace in Nottingham was actually graced with a visit from a minor royal: Sophie, the Countess of Wessex. To my staunchly republican American gaze, this was an appalling show. First, they closed off to all of us peons the spanking new and happy-shiny atrium of our building, with its vital deli, shop and cafeteria, between 10:30 and 12:15. Then we were informed we were "welcome" (ha!) to stand respectfully around the balconies on the upper two floors and gawk at the lovely Countess and the beribboned mayor and those lucky few who actually got to press the royal(-ish) flesh. (No flash photos please.) Then the intranet the next day was adorned with pictures of the poor old wait staff in their crisp uniforms standing at attention behind the crystal coffee urn, the ultra-serious PR types and management types looking only a touch less ludicrous as they stood at ease in their poshest suits awaiting her arrival, and in some ways the unluckiest of all, the Countess herself, dwarfed by a huge bouquet that she was apparently obliged to carry around with her the entire two hours she took part in the Presenting of the Enormous 7-foot Cheque, the Song-singing of the Local Schoolchildren Who Would Benefit from the Aforesaid Cheque, the Making of the Speech, and the Listening to the Welcomes and Thank Yous of a Grateful Nottingham.
Meanwhile back at home (our castle!) DH thinks he (but not I, of course) and other British men and women, ought to have a referendum on the role that poor old Camilla will play in the nation. He just doesn't get it. Referenda are not guaranteed in any government, and certainly not a monarchy. I think he wants to have his cake and eat it too, because he is not in favour of abolition of the anachronistic institutions in Britain, but only of their reform, or to be more precise, picking and choosing the bits he likes. I say "You live in a monarchy, which means you are a 'subject' rather than a 'citizen'. If you're not prepared to change it, just deal with it."

Iraq to US: Where is our money?

George Monbiot, in Fraud and Corruption, delivers a scathing indictment of the Bush administration's fast-and-loose policy with money, in this case other people's money. (I would add, in this case, the money of a people they cynically subjugated under the flimsy guise of saving them from a worse dictator.) Most of this I pretty much either knew or suspected, but to see it all gathered together, carefully documented and laid out in one place is a sickening experience.

On my book reviews blog and my kitchen blog

Another great post idea stolen from the Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha : a wonderful article on Dashiell Hammett, which I linked to in Deborama's Book Reviews.
Speaking of books, I am very close to finishing The Confusion, book 2 of 3 massive books making up the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. I just can't say enough good things about these books. They are a stupendous achievement on so many levels.
Meanwhile, Deborama's Kitchen features a heartwarming story about tuna-noodle casserole.

The paradox of urban ecology

A posting by Dr. Menlo in American Samizdat links to this article by David Owen, reprinted from the New Yorker magazine, called Green Manhattan. The article points up the paradox that the most environmentally-responsible living takes place in the very environments that are considered ecologically catastrophic - densely populated cities like New York. Where over 80% of workers commute either by public transit, on foot or by bicycle, a rate that is 10 times the US national average. Where those great destroyers of the environment, the lawn, the highway and the second car, are virtually non-existent. And where energy usage per household is a fraction of that in the suburbs and the idyllic countryside.

Blogkeeping

See Holy Chocolate at Deborama's Kitchen.
And I still haven't done those darned book reviews! I am now plugging away at the Baroque cycle or trilogy or whatever it is by Neal Stephenson, even though books two and three are only available in hardback and I hate reading hardbacks with an irrational passion. Well, I guess it isn't that irrational - it hurts my neck and shoulders to hold up a heavy book, that's the problem. But the books are excellent. A hard slog to read, but eminently worth it.
On another topic, I have just discovered a photoblogger here in Leicestershire who has been linking to me, all unbeknownst to me. Thanks to Brodick Photo World and hey, some excellent photos there. I have added you to my Bloglines feed.

Latest Criminal Scourge: Wal-Mart Openings

City Pages (of Minneapolis/St. Paul) reports on the way that Wal-Mart is using the police force to do its private security work. In this particular case, threatening and "warning" union members who might be thinking of protesting Wal-Mart's viciously anti-union tactics at one of their store openings. I don't know whether it's the union members (who ought to know better) or the reporter who is so naive as to think that this is something new, but it really isn't. It wasn't just the Pinkertons in the labour wars of the past who were providing the muscle for the corporate side; just as often, it was the local police or the national guard.

Better news from Portland

Grand-daughter Savannah seems to be on the mend. She was hospitalised two days to have a staph infection lanced (she had to be heavily sedated for this, which is mainly why they had to keep her in overnight). The staph is partly resistant to antibiotics, but she is taking some kind of antibiotic that hopefully will clear up the immediate infection. The family is on a strict hygiene regimen to try to "flush" this bug out of their systems, because they have all had infections at one time. (Staph will "colonise" your body asymptomatically and then flare up when your resistance is low.) But the danger is past, and I am calmed down a bit.
Thanks for all the friends here and on my mailing lists who offered prayers and vibes and kind wishes. And I'm sorry I haven't been blogging much. I do mean to do better.

Pray for us

I just heard via a brief and desperate-sounding e-mail that my baby grand-daughter is in the hospital with an MRSA infection. Can't blog anymore right now, but please, please, send prayers for health and recovery to 17-month old Savannah in Portland.

PressThink: Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over

Here is a nice thought-y piece about the shifting relationship between journalism and the internet, specifically that microcosm of the internet we know as "blogging". This was written as an address to a conference held last week in Cambridge MA called Blogging, Journalism and Credibility, and is by media critic Jay Rosen of NYU, who also runs a blog called PressThink.

My feminist hero has become a rancid bore

Julie Burchill on her (and my) former feminist hero, GG, on the occasion of GG leaving the CBB (Celebrity Big Brother) house in a huff. Wonderfully bitchy, as expected from the fabulous Julie. (I know this is way out of date, but I couldn't let it slip away.)

A young gay woman discovers her history

Sarah, blogger of 'not you, the other one,' was initially unimpressed to learn that February is GLBT history month. Born in 1981, she is younger than my son Carey (my youngest). Here's what she says:

I dunno, I thought, probably some old queen on Radio 4 is going on about how Shakespear was gay. Then, during my near-daily read of naked blog, I picked up the following from Mike of Troubled Diva in the comments:

She then goes on to quote a basic and yet gripping summing up of the state of homophobic policy and public behaviour in the early 1980s. "I had no idea that any of that happened," says Sarah. And she's a politically-savvy young woman and even a bit of red-diaper baby as we used to say in the states. But unless you have either a gay mentor, a gay(gay-aware or gay-friendly) parent or a really radical school system that is going to teach you this stuff, how would you know? So apparently lots of young gay people get "their" history from blogs. Another plus for us, then.

Seymour Hersh: "We have been taken over by a cult"

I got this from Pete (WWW of Fat Buddha). Seymour Hersh's article in Counterpunch, We've Been Taken Over By a Cult, is a transcript of a rambling, jittery and yet totally sincere speech he gave at a synagogue in New York. It is pretty chilling reading, as he harkens back to My Lai, fast-forwards to Abu Ghraib, and speculates on the amount of damage the President's cult can do to the US in the next four years.

Four British Guantanamo detainees released today

The story as covered in the Guardian. The four men have been taken into police custody, despite protests from their many supporters and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which believes they need treatment before interrogation. However, experts says thay can expect to be released within days.

Guilty pleasures

I have a confession to make. I started watching Desperate Housewives at its UK debut, and I am an open and practicing viewer of the show. In short, I am hooked. In Red Sluts, Blue Sluts, The Nation's Richard Goldstein deconstructs the show in an attempt to answer the question of why it appeals equally to bi-coastal gay and metrosexual men, married Christian conservative heartlanders and American feminists from states of every colour. (And, I would add, the Brits who love them.)

While the creators of this show understand the golden conservative rule of sinful pleasure--it must beget ruination--on TV this could take many seasons, and meanwhile everyone can focus on the hot means to that hellish end. For different reasons, secular humanists and fundamentalists alike can revel in the foibles of idle, affluent housewives. The right can view the show's sexual politics--women competing for men, men struggling for dominance over their wives--as fidelity to the patriarchal code, while lefties can see the same thing as camp. What's more, a babe is a babe, a hunk is a hunk, and the joys of watching their unseemly meeting cross party lines.

Post-'Roe' Postcard : Is Mississippi America's future?

Sharon Lerner's article in The Nation, Post-'Roe' Postcard, is about the current state of abortion services in Mississippi, a state that has all but outlawed abortion. And don't you know, it has the country's highest levels of child-poverty and an infant mortality rate that is double the national average.

Bluesblog: Hazy Shade Of Winter

Bluesblog is the work-related blog of the guy who does The Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha. In this post, he addresses homelessness in his part of Great Britain, and describes his visit to a dire and grim hostel.

It is a shame, it is a shame upon us as a nation that we will let people live like this. We take the most desperate, inadequate people we have and put them in grotty hovels, with no facilities, in the grottiest part of town and say, go on then, improve yourselves. You look at the dead, expressionless eyes of the young girls holding their babies and wonder what kind of life has led them to this, and you look at the babies, the faultless, innocent babies, and you envisage their future and it is enough to make you weep.

Compare and contrast

Baghdad Burning's Riverbend in "Bleak Eid" tells us how it really is in Iraq in the ugly, squalid run-up to the so-called election. Contrast this with the lavish celebrations in Washington and Bush's cynical depiction of "freedom" coming to Iraq. In Biblical language, water is always symbolic of freedom, justice, things going as they should. "As the waters cover the earth" is God's promise. So why does Baghdad have no water, along with no freedom of travel? And why are people being threatened with punishment if they don't vote? Something is very very rotten here.

Baghdad Burning - Girl Blog from Iraq

Left I on the News reports that Riverbend's blog, which I link to constantly because it is so good, is to be compiled into an eponymous book.

Dirty Old Town makes national news

Just as I was about to switch off the tv and go to bed, I heard the name of the little town where I live being mentioned, and it was not even the semi-local "East Midlands Today" programme, but the Nightly News itself on BBC2. It turns out that Robert Kilroy-Silk MEP (Ind) had chosen a rather posh-looking venue here in Hinckley to announce his official break with UKIP, the party under whose colours he was sailing when elected to the European Parliament. As I was wondering where in Hinckley this elegant assembly room was located, in which Mr. K-S was addressing about 60 former or disaffected UKIP members, they happened to mention it was the private golf club, which is only a few hundred yards from my front door! Across town at the Red Lion, the embittered husk of the UKIP local Bosworth branch was holding its official meeting, and holding forth to a national TV audience about what a sneaky old traitor Kilroy-Silk is. The whole story is far too tedious, convoluted and jejune to go into. It's always amused me that the more fringe and irrelevant a political organisation or movement is to begin with, the more likely it is to splinter into even tinier and more ridiculous factions, and this is just a banally unremarkable example of the phenomenon, featuring a main "personality" who is just embarrassing to watch.

Guantanamo Bay Britons

No, I did not miss the story that the remaining Britons held at Camp Delta were to be freed, announced rather quietly a little over a week ago. I just neglected to blog about it. To be fair, they aren't here yet, are they? And the whole deal is being done in a very opaque manner, the better to frighten the populace, I suppose. It's also not as if just releasing these men, after a long and brutal detention with no obvious crime having been committed, is going to make the wrong go away, or the political embarrassment to the UK government.
And it's not as if they are closing Camp Delta down; that would be the only just outcome, to end all of the illegal horrors that may or may not go on there.

Minnesota Eats Itself

Oh, dear. The excellent City Pages has an article on the continuing descent of once "decent" Minnesota into the appalling depths of laissez-faire, slash-and-burn state government.
Minnesota used to be a leading state in all kinds of indicators - infants' and children's health, education, the arts, employment rates and the rating of state bonds (AAA before the current administration got its hands on the budget.) Now the state has been through a severe recession and is still far behind where it was a few years ago. And the new biennial budget season is coming up, but instead of learning from its mistakes, the Pawlenty administration looks set to dish out more of the same.

Fry Chosen For Hitchhiker's Film

Stephen Fry is absolutely chuffed to have been chosen to do the voice of the guide in the new film of the cult classic, Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He described the experience of learning that he had got the role thusly: "It's like having your birthday on Christmas Day, discovering a winning lottery ticket in your stocking and having chocolate poured all over you."

Martin Luther King's warning to America

Tonight I watched a BBC special on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As is usual for me, I was in or near tears through much of the show, not simply because of the emotional power of the message of Dr. King, but also, I am ashamed to say, through a sort of self-indulgent nostalgia. The civil rights struggle dominated my childhood to such an extent that merely watching a documentary on it is like a visit back home. I was stunned by a segment that was shown of a speech given in 1967 against the Vietnam War. The documentary led one to believe that it was part of the historic Riverside Baptist Church "Beyond Vietnam" speech of April 1967. But when I googled that speech, the segment was not in it. So then I googled just King's name and a short segment of the excerpt, and found it listed as "attributed" on Wikipedia. Well, I think they can correct that "attributed" because I just saw and heard him saying it. To read the words here will not have one tenth the power of hearing him say it, so I urge you to see if either BBC Four in the UK or The American Experience in the US have a clip of it on a website somewhere. But here are the words:

Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be - a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I am God."

George W. Bush, you can have that one for free.

Alas, Babylon!

U.S.-led forces, using Iraq's ancient city of Babylon as a military base, have caused "substantial damage" to one of the world's most renowned archaeological treasures, a British Museum report says. A soldier from 101 Airborne Division is pictured overlooking the ruins of Babylon in this file photo. (Reuters, Peter Andrews)

In other news from Iraq:
Riverbend reacts to the "news" that the US has given up its search for WMD:

A question poses it self at this point- why don't they let the scientists go if the weapons don't exist? Why do they have Iraqi scientists like Huda Ammash, Rihab Taha and Amir Al Saadi still in prison? Perhaps they are waiting for those scientists to conveniently die in prison? That way- they won't be able to talk about the various torture techniques and interrogation tactics...

The author of "Iraq's Nuclear Mirage", Imad Khadduri, has started a blog called Free Iraq. It is in a mixture of English and Arabic. He has a recent post about the destruction of Babylon, too.
And finally, as Abu Ghraib fall-guy Spc. Charles Graner awaits sentencing, two firms whose employees faced abuse charges at the prison have been awarded valuable defence contracts to continue providing prison "services" in Iraq.

Three employees of CACI International and Titan - working at Abu Ghraib as civilian contractors - were separately accused of abusive behaviour. The report on the Abu Ghraib scandal implicated three civilian contractors in the abuses: Steven Stefanowicz from CACI International and John Israel and Adel Nakhla from Titan. Stefanowicz was charged with giving orders that 'equated to physical abuse', Israel of lying under oath and Naklha of raping an Iraqi boy. It was also alleged that CACI interrogators used dogs to scare prisoners, placed detainees in unauthorised 'stress positions' and encouraged soldiers to abuse prisoners. Titan employees, it has been alleged, hit detainees and stood by while soldiers physically abused prisoners. Investigators also discovered systemic problems of management and training - including the fact that a third of CACI International's staff at Abu Ghraib had never received formal military interrogation training.

In the face of demands by US human rights groups that the two companies be barred from further contracts in Iraq, CACI International has been awarded a $16 million renewal of its contract and Titan has been awarded a new contract worth $164m.

Quotes from tribe.net

This may replace my blogging about subject lines of spam e-mails. I have been collecting quotes from conversation threads in the various tribe message boards that I follow. Here are two particularly lustrous gems:

• Yes you could, we need someone to wear out the cat so that she sleeps through the weekend.


• I can weld, but I can't teleport.

'Girl Culture' photos reveal social pressures

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune announces in the art section a powerful photography show by California photographer Lauren Greenfield. The Minneapolis Center for Photography in NE Mpls hosts the show, which was two years in the making and covers 20 venues around the world.
Greenfield's accompanying book, "Girl Culture" (Chronicle Books, $40), matches the photos with candid ruminations by fat girls, showgirls, anorexics, bulimics, self-mutilators, party girls, shopgirls, pre-teen vamps, a Chattanooga Christian, a Stanford swimmer, a New York model and 13-year-olds from Edina. They talk of "in groups" and "out groups," mockery and humiliation, peer pressure, food and exercise obsessions, having babies, getting "boob jobs" and -- in a rare instance -- the independence and self-esteem that come with athletic skill.

Getting personal - Tribe

I have been hanging out on Tribe a lot. Ideally, I would like it if all my online friends, and all my real-life friends who go online, would join Tribe. I have tried wikis, Friendster, LiveJournal, yahoo groups, Google groups and group blogs, and I have to say this is the first online "thing" I have encountered in the 21st century that really works more or less as it says on the label. It actually can be a form of online community.
Here is how it goes : you sign up, no need for an invite, although you can be invited, nor to pay, although you can pay and get merely the satisfaction of supporting it. You define a profile, as forthcoming or not as you like. You can upload a lot of photos, and you can choose one as your "main" which will appear in a little avatar by all your posts, listings, messages, etc. You can send a message to anyone. You join tribes (I have joined about a hundred so far.) The tribes work a lot like newsgroups or forums in that you post to create or reply to threads. You ask people to be friends, and unlike friendster you don't have to know them first. (They can always say no!) I currently have 20-something friends, only one person said no to a friend invite, and two or three just ignored it. Three of the people who are my friends I knew already - my two kids, and my daughter's good friend Ursula. One is someone I "know" from his blog, and he knows me the same way. I visit Tribe every day, sometimes several times. I love getting messages on tribe.
One of the really good things about Tribe, and like all its other qualities it is something it borrowed from another "product" and slightly improved upon, is that it is localised - you tell it where you live and it sets your location. (Of course you can set a location other than where you really live if you want to.) This is good mainly because of listings - you can list job openings or searches, places to rent or for sale, items for sale, services, upcoming events, both public and private, recommendations of things like restaurants, coffeeshops, bookstores. So Tribe can connect you in the real world, too, and not just in cyberspace.
If you want to enrich the quality of your online interactions and grow a bigger network of like-minded people, I strongly recommend Tribe.
I have posted here before about how I don't have many (well, any) friends (well, close friends) in the UK, and what a wrench that was after the vibrant, encompassing but not restricting, community I had in Minneapolis. I am trying to use Tribe in tandem with another great web-based idea, Meetup.com, to meet more people, and not just random people, but people I have something in common with, and can maybe have some social activities with. Last week, I went to my first meet-up, but it was not a blogger's meet-up, where I have been putting most of my attention, it was a Book Crosser's meet-up. There were only two people there, but they were Good Quality People, so it was worth the trip. (Well, it would have been, if not for damned Central Trains stranding me on a halted train 5 miles from home from 9:15 to 10:45 pm. But that's another story.)

Neoliberal vs. re-distributionist theories - a case study

George Monbiot's blog has an excellent article titled "Punitive - and it works" which attacks the received wisdom that neo-liberal economic policies work better than those old outmoded social democratic ideas with their "punitive taxes" and "grandiose projects of public spending". He does this in the simple, straightforward way of comparing various economic and social welfare indices for two fully developed "post-industrial" countries, one of which (the UK) follows neo-liberalism in an exemplary fashion and one of which (Sweden) is "one of the last outposts of distributionism". The results are telling: GDP is slightly higher in Sweden, and has been for all but seven of the years between 1960 and 2000. Sweden's national balance sheet shows a $10bn surplus, while the UK's shows a $26bn deficit.

Even by the neoliberals’ favourite measures, Sweden wins: it has a lower inflation rate than ours, higher “global competitiveness” and a higher ranking for “business creativity and research”.
In terms of human welfare, there is no competition. According to the quality of life measure published by the Economist (the “human development index”) Sweden ranks third in the world, the UK 11th. Sweden has the world’s third highest life expectancy, the UK the 29th. In Sweden, there are 74 telephone lines and 62 computers per hundred people; in the UK just 59 and 41.
The contrast between the averaged figures is stark enough, but it’s far greater for the people at the bottom of the social heap. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Economist does not publish this data, but the United Nations does. Its Human Development Report for 2004 shows that in Sweden 6.3% of the population lives below the absolute poverty line for developed nations ($11 a day). In the United Kingdom the figure is 15.7%. Seven and a half per cent of Swedish adults are functionally illiterate – just over one third of the UK’s figure of 21.8%. In the United Kingdom, according to a separate study, you are over three times as likely to stay in the economic class into which you were born than you are in Sweden. So much for the deregulated market creating opportunity.

It's interesting that I read this today; this morning, on the radio, I heard a story about Sure Start, the eminently neo-liberal programme for lifting families and children out of poverty. A think tank had evaluated the results and found them almost too small to measure and had predicted that far better results could be attained by simply giving the parents the money. Sort of a no-brainer when you hear that the programme, with all its overheads and bureaucracy, costs £100K per year per child.

Too black for America

A City Pages article, The Baddest Man on the Planet tells the story of the immortal Jack Johnson, the most in-your-face black man in American history. The renewed interest in Jack Johnson is sparked by a new 4-hour documentary by Ken Burns which is being released this month in the US. (I have to see it!)
Johnson was many things in his life--a dandy, a braggart, a womanizer, a gambler, a drinker, a fugitive, a convict, a vaudevillian, even an inventor (he held the patent on a special wrench designed for working on racing cars, another of his passions). But he was never yellow. In the language of the day, Johnson was a "bad nigger," and he swaggered through Jim Crow America as if prejudice did not exist. In the ring, he reveled in humiliating white boxers, delaying or altogether forgoing the knockout to extend their suffering. Conversely, he often took it easy on fellow blacks.
At a time when other black men were lynched for looking at a white woman the wrong way, the Galveston-born Johnson flaunted his relationships with white women, often traveling from city to city with two or three of them in tow. Ultimately, his relationship with one "sporting woman"--as prostitutes were called--became the pretext for Johnson's arrest and conviction on a trumped-up Mann Act violation, which prohibited the transport of women across state lines for "immoral purposes."

The strait gate or the wide? A response to the Gonzalez appointment

A Southern Baptist ethicist is appalled at the proposed appointment of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. -- Beliefnet.com I got this link in an e-mail from my friend Lance in Minneapolis (thanks!) A good quote from the end of the piece:

Christians pride themselves in voting their values, but where is the righteous indignation over the sanctity of all life?
Jesus tells us what to do with a tree that bears bad fruit. And yet, some Christians support torture and injustices in the name of patriotism. They choose the easy road, and want this wide gate of power and privilege protected on the homefront as well as the world stage.
But we also know this wide gate leads to destruction. They will stand before the throne saying “Lord, Lord, did I not define my “moral values’ in you name?” But alas, for on that day, the prisoners of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo shall arise and bear witness against this perverse generation.
Who will instead take the road that is hard through the narrow gate that leads to life? So few who call themselves Christians traverse that road!

Blogkeeping - my core values

Who is Deborama? I wrote that tongue-in-cheek introduction almost two years ago. Looking back on it, I feel older now, but I find that that's true of anything "funny" that one writes. It probably seemed wise and clever at the time, and when you read it after any passage of time, it seems a little silly. Still, in the tradition of wise fools, there is probably a nugget of truth in it.
My blog has, in the way of blogs, grown up in the 22 months of its existence. It acquired post titles, several new templates, sister blogs, a blogroll, comments, trackbacks, statistics, blogshares value, a google rating, a google search box, and all the detritus and strange attractors that live in the left-hand margin. Amongst that LHM stuff, a fairly recent addition, are links to some of my starring posts. Ever since adding them, I have been thinking about tackling the question of what my blog "is about" which is somewhat related to the question of what I am about. I have decided today to stop procrastinating and do it.
In my blog description, my main areas of interest are prominently listed as politics, sex and religion. I think the fact that I listed "sex" there, just to be consistent, when it is actually a pretty minor part of my blogging interest, is responsible for about 50% of my page hits, and probably 90% of the "false positives" who come here once and never return. I have steadily moved up the ladder for yahoo searches (by far the most numerous on "sex") from three digits to less than 50. In addition to the big three, there are also history, philosophy, humour, literature, et. al. I occasionally also venture into the more macho areas of sport and hard science. Food and books are relegated to separate blogs.
So, without dithering around anymore, here is a segmented list of my major areas of bloggable interest. In some of these I am listing "my position" as a sort of shorthand to point to what interests me in particular. Although I do not strive for "journalistic objectivity" (and in fact don't believe it exists) I do try to present things fairly, and despite being a Scorpio, I have been known to change my mind, even.

• Politics:


• Democracy, how it works, how it mostly doesn't


• The war on terror, especially in Iraq (sort of why I started blogging, although I have never been a "war blog")


• Human rights, international law, freedom of conscience, anti-slavery, migration issues


• Guantanamo, anti-torture, Abu-Ghraib


• Anti-racism (see also History, infra)


• Anti-death penalty


• Religion in politics - anti-establishmentment, pro-choice, anti-theocracy


• British politics, especially New Labour


• Green Party, environmental issues, anarchism (see also History, infra)


• Economic issues, mainly fair trade, globalisation, poverty, homelessness


• Sex:


• Gender identity, sexual identity, GLBT issues


• Sexual/reproductive health, especially women's


• Erotica, pornography, censorship


• Sex and religion, e.g. gay issues in Christian church, female priesthood, Marian Christianity, Mary Magdalene, goddesses


• Religion:


• Gnostic Christianity


• Christian Socialism


• Islam


• Power of the "religious right" in America, arguing with Fundamentalists


• Religious wars and conflicts


• Eastern spirituality, especially Hindu philosophy, yoga and Taoism


• History:


• Labour history (US, British, international)


• British political history


• Civil rights, history of

There are also some things that I don't really blog about, mainly because they are not the sort of things that either make the news or intrude into my daily life, but I am very interested in these things and spend much of my solitary reading and studying on them. This will probably be reflected somewhat in my book choices. They include:

• Gnostic Judaism, Kabbalah, Sabbatianism, Lost Tribes


• The moon (I did blog about it at least once)


• Philosophy, both ancient and modern (and post-modern)


• India, history of


• American civil war


• Soviet Union, history of


• Spanish Civil War


• Military history and theory, especially of WWII


• History of Celtic peoples


• Genealogy


• Codebreaking, secret writing, artificial languages


• Conspiracy theories, occult organisations


• Crime, law enforcement, detective work

I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire

How do you preserve a precious e-mail? What happened to all the priceless chat from pre-internet days on bulletin boards? When all of us who remember an old, old song have died, will that song be around, and if not, will anybody care? Do you know what tunes went through your grandmother's head? Did your great-grandmother go to the cinema and if so, what did she see? what did she like?
While a lot of bloggers have the latest hits running through their heads ("earworms", love that neologism) I occasionally find myself in thrall to "Mairzy Dotes and Dozy Dotes" or "I Don't Want To Set the World on Fire", which is (hard to believe) not in the Rudy Vallee official hits CD. I think, and I should check on this while there is still time, that this was my father's all time favourite song. My mother used to sing Mairzy Dotes to me when I was a toddler, along with late-40s and early-50s country songs or hit songs. Mom was not a big Elvis fan. She was more Bill Anderson, the "whispering cowboy".
So, what runs through your head?

British schoolgirl responsible for nearly halving British tsunami death toll

Reuter's news agency has this story about a 10-yr-old UK girl who, while on holiday in Thailand with her parents, recognised the warning signs of a tsunami and raised an alarm. The girl's mother in turn notified the hotel staff and about 100 British tourists evacuated the private beach, and watched from a safe distance as the tsunami hit the beach moments later. It was the only Thai beach in use by humans with no fatalities. The warning signs of a tsunami (oh, so now you think it's worth knowing!) are that the sea bubbles and gurgles and then the tide rushes out. Judging from this beach crowds experience, you do have time to take cover if you see this phenomenon. (All the adults were, like most of the other humans in the region, gawking in amazement at the retreating tide.) Animals are apparently "wired" instinctively to survive tsunamis because the wild ones had mostly left of their own accord.

Back to Iraq 3.0, more on the election

Christopher of Back to Iraq 3.0 also covers the Iraqi elections in a recent post:

Over at Daily Kos, one item caught my eye: Iraqi Candidate Names Not Released for ‘Security Reasons’.
This is currently absolutely true. I say, “currently” because every political figure I’ve spoken with, both on the Sistani list or running their own, promises me the lists will be published “some day soon.” We’ll see.
But the question that seemed to spark the most comments was this: “Who has the final authority on whether to hold the Iraqi elections on time, or to delay them? Is it [Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi? Or is it some other person or government body?”
Well, here’s the answer: no one has the authority.

Baghdad Burning on New Year and upcoming election

Riverbend has fired up the generator and at the cost of precious fuel sent another despatch from Baghdad:

There are several problems. The first is the fact that, technically, we don't know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we don't know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren't making the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated.

Another problem is the selling of ballots. . .

Yet another issue is the fact that on all the voting cards, the gender of the voter, regardless of sex, is labeled "male". Now, call me insane, but I found this slightly disturbing. Why was that done? Was it some sort of a mistake? Why is the sex on the card anyway? What difference does it make? There are some theories about this. Some are saying that many of the more religiously inclined families won't want their womenfolk voting so it might be permissible for the head of the family to take the women's ID and her ballot and do the voting for her. Another theory is that this 'mistake' will make things easier for people making fake IDs to vote in place of females.
All of this has given the coming elections a sort of sinister cloak. There is too much mystery involved and too little transparency. It is more than a little bit worrisome.
American politicians seem to be very confident that Iraq is going to come out of these elections with a secular government. How is that going to happen when many Shia Iraqis are being driven to vote with various fatwas from Sistani and gang? Sistani and some others of Iranian inclination came out with fatwas claiming that non-voters will burn in the hottest fires of the underworld for an eternity if they don't vote (I'm wondering- was this a fatwa borrowed from right-wing Bushies during the American elections?). So someone fuelled with a scorching fatwa like that one- how will they vote? Secular? Yeah, right.

City Pages: Artists of the Year

This is the only end-of-2004 retrospective I will blog, because it's the only one you need. A little Minnesota-centric, but you say that like it's a bad thing.

Worldwide labour solidarity response to tsunami

LabourStart has a compendium of things being done to assist tsunami sufferers and survivors through trade union and labour organisations. The article also links to stories of some of the economic fallout from the disaster. In the immediate aftermath, you would think that 10,000 people losing jobs because the hotels they worked in were swept away or damaged beyond repair is not a big thing, in the context. But if someone is left homeless immediately by the tsunami, or becomes homeless a month later because they have no income or near-term possibility of getting any, they are still homeless. And economic hardships on such a massive scale will only contribute to the long-term toll from poverty, malnutrition and disease. Another example of the collateral damages - the Norwegian trade union and agency's mine clearance programme had 650 mine clearance workers in Sri Lanka, who are missing, fate unknown.

Tsunami stories

The American Street has a big digest of tsunami stories and aid donation sites. Some of the stories are from bloggers who live in Southeast Asia.

Words fail me

The tsunami. Possibly 50,000 dead in a few days time. A disaster that cuts across nations, continents even. When things happen on this scale, you wonder why we humans bothered to tote water uphill, plant seeds, invent language, make art. This would probably have happened anyway, and then there would have been fewer people in the affected areas to die, and none of us in the rest of the world would have known about it. It almost makes you want to be an innocent pre-verbal being. Because what can you say or think, with this great big brain of yours? You can't even rage against man's inhumanity, because this is apparently God's inhumanity. I shall read Job, and try once again to understand. Speaking of words, that word "disaster" is interesting. The "dis" is obvious, the "aster" is like in asteroid or astronomy. Well, more like in astrology. The stars are not working, or not working the way we think they ought to. They have thousands of astrologers in India and consult them for marriages, trips, career choices. Indonesia is full of superstitions that govern thought the way TV governs our thoughts here in the developed world. But no one saw this one coming, did they?

Is this what they meant by teaching the world to sing?

The armed forces of Coca-cola strike again, from CorporateWatch News.com. Protest Coca-cola's violence in India. Send a Free Fax: http://www.indiaresource.org/action/faxcoke.php

The Minister, the Mistress, the Husband and the Pregnancy or Peyton Place, London W1

While I was in temporary retirement, as I said below, strange things were in the news. This, of course, is the other big story in the UK for the past couple of weeks. In fact, much bigger than the fall from grace of the Sikhs, one of Britain's most respected minority communities. For those who live in outer space, or the US, the story thus far:

• Home Secretary David Blunkett is exposed as having had an affair with a married woman, Kimberley Quinn, just as it falls, very messily, apart.


• Blunkett initiates a paternity suit to prove that Quinn's two year old son and unborn child are both his.


• When the simple fact of adultery is not proving salacious enough to end a brilliant career, allegations of special favours through his office for the Quinn's nanny begin to surface . . .


• . . . and allegations of Mrs. Quinn being transported by rail at government expense under the guise of being Home Secretary's spouse(-to-be, according to him).


• PM stands by Blunkett. (No link necessary; he always does that.)


• Oh, did I mention that the lover was pregnant when all this started to unravel?


• With exquisitely poor timing, Blunkett's biography is published, in which he rips holes out of almost every one of his cabinet colleagues, thus leaving himself more friendless, precisely when he most needs support.


• Government starts investigation of Nanny-gate and train ticket scandals


• Multi-millionaire husband of Quinn defends her as she is taken into hospital suffering from stress.


• Blunkett resigns, claiming he is willing to sacrifice all "for the sake of that little lad".


• Blunkett's defenders say he is a working-class victim of a cabal of rich people.
  
• Oh, did I mention that Kimberley Quinn is the publisher of prominent Conservative magazine? Yes, that's the opposition party, e.g., "sleeping with the enemy" with bells on.


• By a few days ago, many could not decide whose behaviour was most disgusting, Mr. Blunkett's or Mrs. Quinn's.


• Political columnist and radio host is revealed to be also a lover of Mrs. Quinn, along with possibly a mysterious "fourth man".


• Mrs. Quinn has apparently kept a detailed diary of the whole affair.

Do you think I am capable of making stuff like this up?

The play, the protest, the censorship and the backlash

All kinds of weird things are happening in the news here in Britain and I have not been blogging. I am very bad, and I deserve to have my page hits and my Google rating decline. (And so I have.) Darling Hubby wants me to blog about this. So I am. This is a convoluted story. The easy take on it is that it is the "Sikh version of Satanic Verses". The Sikh community, tellingly, protests that they did not ask for the play to be closed. Fair point - but! They asked for a rewrite, which, no matter how "sensitively" one tries to frame the request, is still censorship, and just as much an anathema to a free-speech advocate or an artist as dishonouring a temple is to the religious. The Sikhs complain they were not being heard, but fact is, they were not listening either. There is a lot of that going around, not just in political and artistic circles. Britons generally, whether they are Anglo-Saxon, Celtic or Asian sub-continentals, tend to think in cliches and reason through their spleens. If you don't believe me, just read the letters column in any "intellectual" daily newspaper. I just shake my head in disgust and wonder if I can live out the rest of my life in this country, many of whose so-called values I refuse to ever accept. There is still much good here, I suppose. But, to paraphrase dear old Prof. Higgins, why can't the British learn to speak? (And to listen and to use their own rules of grammar.)

My latest excuse to neglect blogging

I am wearing my long-unused amateur cryptanalyst hat and trying to solve this. I have all but three pairs solved, and the connection between the pairs. I have left to go - the remaining six individuals and their connections, the overall connection between the two lists (apart from the obvious one) and of course, and I expect if anything will stop me it will be this, the hidden quotation. Still, I have only been working on it for two days, so that's pretty good.
Update, 22:30 - I have cracked it and sent my solution to GCHQ. Wonder what the prize is?

High Speed Internet to the People

Large telecommunications companies are threatened by the spectre of community networks, and in at least one case, have fought them and won. So no surprise there, really. This story came from Sojourners online magazine and e-mail newsletter.

More British humour at our expense

This from the BBC Four Tribe on tribe.net.
December 08, 2004 - 06:19 AM

The Americans Ball. Later Arrivals:
We welcome
Cybil Rights & her Irish cousin, Bill O'Rights
Closely followed by
Mr & Mrs Ho, & their daughter, Ida

December 08, 2004 - 06:55 AM

Re: The Americans Ball. Later Arrivals:
Looking replendant we have
Mr & Mrs Vanation & their daughter, Bertha

December 08, 2004 - 07:42 AM

Re: The Americans Ball. Later Arrivals:
Ah! Who's this? Is it not Mr and Mrs Bennet-I-Can't-Believe Theyve-Elected-that-Monkey-Again? Yes it is! And with them is their son, Gordon Bennet-I-Can't-Believe Theyve-Elected-that-Monkey-Again!

Colour-conscious but White-blind

Thanks, yet again. to tribe.net, i have discovered LiP Magazine and this excellent article about the racialisation of crime reporting and the hypocritical colour-blindness to crimes committed by an overwhelming majority of white perpetrators. This relates to something I have noticed since I was a little girl in the American South in the 1960s, although it sure didn't stop there: in everyday discourse, not just news reporting, white people are "people", white Americans have opinions that are called "American opinions" about black people and their problems, white girls are just girls but black girls are blacks who happen to be young and female. It goes on and on. Read this, it's really good, and whatever your colour it may open your eyes.

How to blog, from someone on Tribe

OK, so the link doesn't work unless you are a member of Tribe. I sort of figured that. So I will have to post al of what he said. Meanwhile, you could join Tribe, becasue it's a good way to connect with people online:

December 10, 2004 - 08:07 PM
how to blog, tips, whatever
tony pierce said:
1. write every day.
2. if you think youre a good writer, write twice a day.
3. dont be afraid to do anything. infact if youre afraid of something, do it. then do it again. and again.
4. cuss like a sailor.
5. dont tell your mom, your work, your friends, the people you want to date, or the people you want to work for about your blog. if they find out and you'd rather they didnt read it, ask them nicely to grant you your privacy.
6. have comments. dont be upset if no one writes in your comments for a long time. eventually they'll write in there. if people start acting mean in your comments, ask them to stop, they probably will.
7. have an email address clearly displayed on your blog. sometimes people want to tell you that you rock in private.
8. dont worry very much about the design of your blog. image is a fakeout.
9. use Blogger. it's easy, it's free; and because they are owned by Google, your blog will get spidered better, you will show up in more search results, and more people will end up at your blog. besides, all the other blogging software & alternatives pretty much suck.
10. use spellcheck unless youre completely totally keeping it real. but even then you might want to use it if you think you wrote something really good.
11. say exactly what you want to say no matter what it looks like on the screen. then say something else. then keep going. and when youre done, re-read it, and edit it and hit publish and forget about it.
12. link like crazy. link anyone who links you, link your favorites, link your friends. dont be a prude. linking is what seperates bloggers from apes. and especially link if you're trying to prove a point and someone else said it first. it lends credibility even if youre full of shit.
13. if you havent written about sex, religion, and politics in a week youre probably playing it too safe, which means you probably fucked up on #5, in which case start a second blog and keep your big mouth shut about it this time.
14. remember: nobody cares which N*Sync member you are, what State you are, which Party of Five kid you are, or which Weezer song you are. the second you put one of those things on your blog you need to delete your blog and try out for the marching band. similarilly, nobody gives a shit what the weather is like in your town, nobody wants you to change their cursor into a butterfly, nobody wants to vote on whether your blog is hot or not, and nobody gives a rat ass what song youre listening to. write something Real for you, about you, every day.
15. dont be afraid if you think something has been said before. it has. and better. big whoop. say it anyway using your own words as honestly as you can. just let it out.
16. get Site Meter and make it available for everyone to see. if you're embarrassed that not a lot of people are clicking over to your page, dont be embarrassed by the number, be embarrassed that you actually give a crap about hits to your gay blog. it really is just a blog. and hits really dont mean anything. you want Site Meter, though, to see who is linking you so you can thank them and so you can link them back. similarilly, use Technorati, but dont obsess. write.
17. people like pictures. use them. save them to your own server. or use Blogger's free service. if you dont know how to do it, learn. also get a Buzznet account. several things will happen once you start blogging, one of them is you will learn new things. thats a good thing.
18. before you hit Save as Draft or Publish Post, select all and copy your masterpiece. you are using a computer and the internet, shit can happen. no need to lose a good post.
19. push the envelope in what youre writing about and how youre saying it. be more and more honest. get to the root of things. start at the root of things and get deeper. dig. think out loud. keep typing. keep going. eventually you'll find a little treasure chest. every time you blog this can happen if you let it.
20. change your style. mimic people. write beautiful lies. dream in public. kiss and tell. finger and tell. cry scream fight sing fuck and dont be afraid to be funny. the easiest thing to do is whine when you write. dont be lazy. audblog at least once a week.
21. write open letters. make lists. call people out on their bullshit. lead by example. invent and reinvent yourself. start by writing about what happened to you today. for example today i told a hot girl how wonderfully hot she is.
22. when in doubt review something. theres not enough reviews on blogs. review a movie you just saw, a tv show, a cd, a kiss you just got, a restaurant, a hike you just took, anything.
23. constantly write about the town that you live in.
24. out yourself. tell your secrets. you can always delete them later.
25. dont use your real name. dont write about your work unless you dont care about getting fired.
26. dont be afraid to come across as an asswipe. own your asswipeness.
27. nobody likes poems. dont put your poems on your blog. not even if theyre incredible. especially if theyre incredible. odds are theyre not incredible. bad poems are funny sometimes though, so fine, put youd dumb poems on there. whatever.
28. tell us about your friends.
29. dont apologize about not blogging. nobody cares. just start blogging again.
30. read tons of blogs and leave nice comments.

I'm not sure if this link will work for everyone (if it doesn't let me know.) What this guy says is a little bit bossy, but basically true and heartfelt. I have to say, I have violated almost every one of his prescriptions, but I would never delete my blog. Not this one, anyway. I should probably delete some of my neglected minor blogs, but I just can't bring myself to. I think I just basically love to listen to myself talk, and yes, I have had therapy about that.

More great spam titles

"You must transmute to the champion individual for her"
and even better . . .
"Improve your spermatazoon measure & character".

The sharp end of globalisation

"Behind the Brand Names" is a fact-rich report on conditions in the "export processing zones" in such countries as Haiti, El Salvador and China. The report is sponsored by the ICFTU (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions), an organisation which is responding to globalisation by trying to revive the old idea of truly international unions. (You need Acrobat Reader to access the PDF file.)