We left off in the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. As we moved along we came across this image of the statue of liberty by Daniel Joseph Martinez. When I found the title - Who Killed Liberty, Can You Hear That, It's the Sound of Inevitability, The Sound of Your Death - it made sense. But I wondered about more politically conservative people. How might they react to this? Even though they rail against government, how their religious rights are violated by things like gay marriage, how they are economically less well off, etc., would they appreciate this symbol of all those things? Or would they see it as a desecration of a traditional monument to freedom? Or have they soured on the Statue of Liberty because it represents a pro-immigration stance?
click on image to enlarge and focus
Then we walked a little further and saw this work extended into the next room. This second picture was taken by Z, my four year old partner in crime. She has had no trouble picking up how to turn on the camera, how to press part way to focus, take the picture, then open the window and press the view button, then move from picture to picture. And her composition isn't bad either, though she did cut off the base of the statue. The base is a mirror and she got in trouble with the guard for touching it. My wife was closer to Z at the time, so she got written up, though the guard was apologetic and said there was clearly no damage and nothing would come of it.
The main exhibit was by an artist I'd never heard of - Anna Maria Maiolino - but who had a large body of work in many different media. There was a large room of pieces with torn paper, some of which was sewn up, or thread played a key role in the image. Here are a couple of examples of the torn paper without thread. (My camera had difficulty knowing what to do - I take that as a tribute to the artist who was tricking the camera's auto settings and chiding my slow progress in mastering the manual commands. The first two attempts came out almost white.)
Here's a close up of another one with torn paper. I think the original was much whiter, but I don't have it in front of me, so I'm not going to try to fiddle with the photo to replicate something I'm not sure of.
Here's something on the artist.
This one was called By A Thread and shows the artist in the center attached by threads to her mother and daughter.
And this one is The Hero.
But let's look at different media.
I was enjoying the shapes and positioning and textures and the imagination that created these pieces, I really wasn't of thinking about what it all meant, so I didn't take pictures of the descriptions, so I can't give these names.
Don't know what these are, but I do remember looking to see what they are made of - cement.
And finally, still Maiolino,
You can see a lot more images of her work at the MOCA website.
One of the downtown places I'd never been to, but had heard about and wanted to see was the Last Book Store. But first, this mural we passed as we walked to the bookstore. An exhibit on murals in LA we saw today at the Skirball says this is Eloy Torrez' "Pope of Broadway." The sun was brightly reflecting off the wall fading out the colors, and with a four year old in tow, it's harder to run back up the block to from where the colors were better.
Then finally to The Last Bookstore.
I'm afraid I was expecting the most incredible bookstore ever. It isn't. Powell's in Portland is much better. I like Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle better. This one is quirkier than those two.
This building was a bank before it became a bookstore (a transformation I highly approve of.) You can even go into the old safe to peruse books. Maybe I just needed more time to get the feel of this place, but I as I walked through aisles and aisles of books, books weren't calling out to me to stop and pick them up. And there are lots of signs saying, "No public restrooms." This was more a bookstore in a gritty downtown block that seemed to be trying to figure out how to discourage the homeless.
It wasn't warm and inviting. There were some places to sit and read, but not enough.
Z found a book she liked in the kids' section and her grandmother, of course, made sure it came home with us. We wandered down to the Metro station - Z never stopped looking around, never complained about anything, and when I asked if she wanted to stop at the rose garden on the way home enthusiastically said yes. So we got off at the Exposition Park station for a quick fragrance check on as many roses as we could before the next train came by.
This is a rose garden that I visited as a young child myself. The Natural History Museum is nearby as well as the coliseum,
"In 1986, plans to dig up the garden to build an underground parking garage led to protests in the media.[15][17] The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial opposing the plan: "There are times when the leaders of Los Angeles seem perversely intent on living up to the image that many outsiders have of them—insensitive and uncouth rabbits who would, say, dig up a garden to put in a parking lot."[18] The garden had also been threatened by an earlier proposal by the Los Angeles Raiders football team to convert the garden into a practice field for the team.[16] In order to protect the garden from such threats, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991."
I also read that the garden is closed from January 1 to March 1 for pruning, so this was likely the last chance to see these flowers this year for us.
And as I look at this last picture, I can't help but see similarities between this rose and the Disney Concert Hall that began Part 1 of these DTLA posts.
The flume trail itself is pretty short, I'd really like to go further up Basin Road. But today, before getting to the avalanche forecast site, I took HarpboyAK's suggested and ran out Glacier Highway and back. It was not in the woods, but it was a nice run.
There are eagles in Anchorage from time to time.
But today I saw about ten in my hour run. That
wouldn't happen in Anchorage.
Almost home now as I pass the Evergreen cemetery.
That's the name, not my description.
When I got home I was able to take a quick shower before Juneau friends arrived. We haven't seen them since Zoe was born in Anchorage (she was early). So we went down to Capitol Park. We saw this bumper sticker on the way.
Here's Sky, the older brother, moving much faster than
The New York Times has this new story about a European being detained by Customs when arriving in the US. This story brings to mind the Icelandic woman who was detained overnight in New York before being sent home because 12 years earlier she'd overstayed her visa by two weeks. It is also akin to the story of scholars who were denied entry into the US. A key problem is that
such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.
But even American citizens are in a no-rights zone when they come back into the US. An issue that opens anyone with a laptop to privacy violations, Customs is searching some people's laptops when returning to the US.
Today's story is about an Italian attorney who has been visiting his American girlfriend:
But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum...
Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.
“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”...
Though citizens of those nations [27 so-called visa waiver countries] do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.
While those turned away are generally sent home on the next flight, “there are occasional circumstances which require further detention to review their cases,” Ms. De Cima said. And because such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.
[Later: National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation has a show on right now about problems at the privately run detention centers for people detained by Customs.
The Washington Post began a series of investigative reports on Sunday revealing mistakes in medical treatment that may have contributed to 30 deaths in immigrant detention facilities in the U.S. Reporters Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein talk about their series, "Careless Detention."]
Last week I posted a copy of an email about a presentation in Chiang Mai entitled "Bio Fuel By Decree." Now I'm following that up with a little more substance. This is a report I got in an email from someone I met in Chiang Mai who works for EarthRights, a group that works to help Burmese Refugees in Thailand as well as Burmese still in Burma. I know a little about this organization and met various people who worked for them. They are dedicated and very competent. The people of Burma - including the last democratically elected President of Burma, Aung Sang Suu Kyi - have basically been imprisoned in their home by the SLORC for 20 years.
When people watched Schindler's List and other movies about the Holocaust, many asked, "How could people let this happen?" Well, variations of the Holocaust are happening now in various parts of the world, including Burma.
I'm posting here the EarthRights report. This report was done by people who have been working on these issues in and out of Burma for many years now. It is well documented. Certainly it does not tell everything because access to information in Burma and from Chevron is limited. But if you want to know what is happening in Burma, and how you support it when you buy Cheveron gasoline, read.
Below is most of the executive summary for those who don't have time to read the whole report. And for those thinking, "What can I do?" there is a recommendation highlighted in the executive summary below of recommendations "To the United States and the world community." [You can easily enlarge the pages of the document by clicking on the magnifying glass]
. . . EarthRights International (ERI) began documenting the human Residents and refugees from fourteen villages throughout the pipeline region, with whom ERI conducted over 70 formal interviews in the past five years as well as additional corroborative contacts, confirm that, for the people of Burma, “human energy” means human exploitation. Chevron and its consor- tium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army for pipeline security, and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers for forced labor, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses in the course of
Part 1 describes the background of the Yadana Project, which involves a pipeline constructed to carry gas from offshore fields, across Burma, and into Thailand. In 2005, Chevron became part of the Yadana Project through its acquisition of Unocal, one of the original developers of the project. The Burmese military junta, a brutal regime routinely condemned by the United Nations and the world community for its widespread violations of basic human rights, is one of Chevron’s partners in the project through its military-run oil company, Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise.
Part 2 explains how the Yadana Proj- ect finances oppression. The project is the single largest source of income for the Burmese military; it was instru- mental in bailing out the junta when it faced a severe financial crisis in the late 1990s, and it has enabled the regime to dramatically increase its military spending and continue its rule without popular support.
Part 3 describes how Chevron was fully aware of the human rights abuses associated with the Yadana Project when it acquired Unocal in 2005, but nonethe- less chose to stay involved with the project and the Burmese military. The Yadana pipeline is guarded by the Bur- mese army, and the human rights abuses committed by the army in the course of providing security have been widely re- ported and documented; victims of the project sued Unocal in U.S. courts in the landmark case Doe v. Unocal.
Part 4 documents the continuing seri- ous human rights abuses by the pipeline security forces, including torture, rape, murder, and forced labor. Seventeen years after abuses connected to the Yadana Project were first documented, and years after they were highlighted in Doe v. Unocal, these human rights abuses continue in the pipeline corri- dor. Residents and refugees fleeing the pipeline region report that they are still forced to work for the pipeline security forces, who continue to commit acts of violence and terrorize the local popula- tion. This forced labor occurs thousands of times each year.
Part 5 debunks the oil companies’ claims that life in the pipeline region has improved. While some villages have re- alized minimal benefits from the compa- nies’ socio-economic program, the ben- efits do not reach the entire population affected by the pipeline security forces. Even for the chosen “pipeline villages” life remains so difficult and dangerous that families continue to flee for the rela- tive safety of the Thai-Burma border.
Part 6 discusses Chevron’s response to the 2007 demonstrations in Burma against the military regime and the re- gime’s crackdown. Despite its threefold status as the largest U.S. investor in Burma, the military’s direct business partner, and a partner in the project that constitutes the largest source of income for the regime, Chevron has failed to take any noticeable steps to condemn the violent repression or to pressure the military to respect human rights.
Finally, Part 7 describes Chevron’s ongoing potential legal liability for its role in the Yadana Project. Although the Doe v. Unocal litigation resulted in a settlement in 2005, that settlement only covers the claims of the victims involved in that suit; Chevron remains responsible for compensating the thou- sands of other residents of the pipeline region who have suffered abuse by pipe- line security forces.
Two appendices offer additional detail on oil and gas investment in Burma. Appendix A details the Shwe Project, a new gas project which could dwarf Yadana both in revenues for the military and in the abusive impact on the local population. The project is being devel- oped by South Korea’s Daewoo Interna- tional along with other companies from Korea, India and China. Appendix B briefly outlines China’s growing involve- ment in Burma, especially in the oil and gas sector. The Yadana Project remains a serious problem both for the people of Burma and for Chevron itself.
In light of this, EarthRights International makes the following recommendations: To the Burmese military regime: » The SPDC should cease human rights abuses against the people of the pipe- line region and throughout Burma, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, torture, excessive force, ar- bitrary detentions and imprisonment, forced labor, and forced relocation, and abide by its obligations under in- ternational law to respect fundamen- tal human rights and environmental protection.
» The regime should begin a full transi- tion to a system of government that allows for all of Burma’s peoples to fully participate in development deci- sions and freely determine their own futures.
To Chevron Corporation and its partners: » Chevron, Total, PTTEP, and all other oil and gas companies in Burma should suspend ongoing projects, cease de- velopment of new projects, and refuse to sell gas that enriches the Burmese regime until the SPDC fully respects internationally-guaranteed human rights and environmental protections and allows for a full transition to a participatory system of government as described above.
» The Yadana consortium and other com- panies should terminate any contracts that require them to provide monetary support to the military regime or that contemplate or require the use of the Burmese military as security forces.
» The companies should publicly con- demn past human rights abuses and use their influence with the SPDC, their business partner, to press for respect for human rights in the future, not only in the pipeline region itself but throughout the country.
» The companies should immediately stop relying on the Burmese military for any security or other services. If alternate security measures are taken, Chevron and its partners must provide adequate human rights train- ing and supervision in order to ensure respect for fundamental human rights (in accordance with international law and Chevron’s stated commitment to respect human rights).
» The companies should allow indepen- dent third-parties with experience documenting human rights abuses in Burma access to the pipeline region, without military supervision, in order to monitor the situation. Such moni- toring should include a mechanism to allow local residents to bring com- plaints to an independent body on a confidential basis.
» The companies should provide ad- equate compensation to all individu- als and communities harmed by the Yadana Project.
» The companies should demonstrate a serious commitment to their socio- economic program by expanding it to include all of the villages that have suffered adverse impacts from the Yadana Project, and by inviting groups experienced in documenting condi- tions in Burma to participate in de- veloping, implementing, and regularly evaluating the effectiveness of, their programs.
» The companies should support efforts that promote transparency through disclosure of payments to all govern- ment and state-owned or state-con- trolled partners.
To Chevron’s shareholders: » The shareholders of Chevron should support shareholder resolutions that promote policies and practices de- signed to improve the promotion and protection of human rights, the envi- ronment, rule of law, transparency, and the rights of indigenous peoples and affected communities to informed consent before projects begin and dur- ing operation phases.
» The shareholders of Chevron should communicate their concern over the situation in Burma, the reputational and legal risks it poses to their com- pany, and their wish for Chevron to follow the recommendations outlined above, to Chevron’s CEO and Board of Directors.
To the Royal Thai government: » Thailand should immediately cease purchasing gas from the SPDC and cease payments for such gas until the Burmese regime respects fundamental human rights and environmental pro- tections and begins a full transition to a participatory system of government as described above. Alternatively, Thailand should place all such pay- ments in escrow for the benefit of the people of Burma under a future gov- ernment.
» Thailand should immediately require that its state-owned company PTTEP suspend its ongoing natural gas explo- ration in the Bay of Bengal until the company conducts environmental and human rights impact assessments, and until appropriate preconditions for responsible investment in Burma are in place, such as a full transition to a participatory system of govern- ment as described above.
» Thailand should allow safe refuge to all Burmese refugees fleeing the abuses there, in accordance with in- ternational law.
» Thailand should provide legal mecha- nisms that allow Thai companies, such as PTTEP, to be held accountable for their responsibility and complicity in human rights abuses in Burma. Civil society organizations and citizens of Thailand should advocate for legisla- tion to create such mechanisms.
To the United States and the world community: » The United States and the world com- munity should make immediate efforts to cut the flow of money to the Bur- mese regime, including stopping the Yadana Project payments and other gas payments through targeted finan- cial sanctions.
» The United States and the world com- munity should condemn the abuses committed in Burma on projects ben- efiting multinational corporations, including Chevron, and pressure the companies to end these abuses and adopt the recommendations outlined above.
» The United States should continue to pressure the Burmese regime to respect human rights and the environ- ment and begin a full transition to a participatory system of government as described above; the world communi- ty, especially China, India, Korea, and Thailand, should join in these efforts. for complicity in abuses abroad, and enable access to justice for survivors of abuses abroad. Civil society organi- zations and citizens of these countries should advocate for legislation to cre- ate such mechanisms.
To Daewoo and its partners in the Shwe Project, and other gas compa- nies in Burma: [See Complete Document for more]
Two stories that mark today's erosion of liberty. I'm starting to think that one of the purposes of all the different rules we have to obey getting onto airplanes is to accustom us to obeying more and more rules. They just keep adding one indignity after another until we simply accept anything they ask. Perhaps we need to start standing up to the TSA. If people decide not to fly because of the TSA hassles, they should contact the airlines they didn't fly on and their Congressional delegation. We have to start saying no to 4 inch baggies for our toothpaste and all the other nonsense. Ideally in a way that doesn't result in a felony. Send in your suggestions for clever ways to protest how we get treated getting onto planes.
In the first story, the seventeen states said "no" and now Bush is punishing the citizens of those states saying they can't board airplanes without the right kind of driver's license. Maybe this will be the last straw and people will stand up and say "No more."
The second story - the government is drugging people involuntarily? Is this America? And we just sit back and take it? At least the judge said, "No."
These were both short items in the Anchorage Daily News. I could only find the second one online in the ADN, the other was apparently taken from the LA Times. (Why doesn't the ADN credit the LA Times?)
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 12, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration hit the brakes Friday on a controversial law requiring Americans to carry tamper-proof driver's licenses, delaying its final implementation by five years, until 2017.
A number of states have balked at the law, objecting to it largely over cost and privacy concerns. But under the administration's new edict, states that continue to fight compliance with the law face a penalty: Their residents will be forbidden from using driver's licenses to board airplanes or enter federal buildings as of May 11 of this year.
U.S. immigration agents must not sedate deportees without a judge's permission, according to a policy change issued this week. Immigration officials have acknowledged that 56 deportees were given psychotropic drugs during a seven-month period in 2006 and 2007 even though most had no history of mental problems. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit over the practice in June.
Anonymous commented on a previous post that raised questions about the security of Diebold voting machines. Diebold changed the name of its voting machine division to Premier Election Solutions in August. Anon pointed to the State of Alaska website with information on the State's ongoing study of Alaska's voting machine security. The project has been contracted to the University of Alaska Anchorage (the Department of Engineering seems to be doing the work.) A key aspect of this study is the review of studies already done by other states. The whole Phase Ia report was contracted to cover:
Overview-level evaluation of recent studies relative to existing Alaska systems, technologies and procedures Inclusions: • A brief review of studies and tests that have been undertaken that might be relevant to Alaska’s situation. • A summary of the University of California’s and Florida State University’s tests and conclusions, analyzing the recommendations that were made and are applicable to Alaska’s optical scanning technology. • Research and assess improvements made by Premier (formerly Diebold) based on California and Florida studies and their applicability to our systems • Assessment of existing Alaska systems and equipment and ability to upgrade security functionality • Research other states that are conducting similar research. Determine potential points of collaboration, partnership and leverage • General evaluation of Alaska’s election policies, processes and procedures • Provide repository for public input via Division of Elections website. Use this input to guide suggested approach for interactive public input/response in Phase 2. Ensure that both UAA and Division of Elections have record of public input. ....
What did the California and Florida studies find? As part of Phase I, we reviewed a number of election-security studies done in other states. But our reviews of the California and Florida studies were the most detailed—and those states use the same or similar electronic equipment as Alaska. Generally speaking, the studies identified a number of worrisome vulnerabilities, including: • Vulnerability to the installation of malicious software that could allow incorrect recording or miscounts of votes. •Susceptibility to computer viruses that could spread from voting machine to voting machine and to election management systems. • Insufficient control of access to and management of machines, potentially making them accessible to unauthorized people. The manufacturer of the equipment—Premier Election Solutions [Diebold]—made improvements in its software and machines, based on these studies. Follow-up studies by Florida investigators found that newer versions of Premier software and hardware corrected some but not all the flaws identified. • Identify areas of risk in Alaska’s absentee and questioned ballot system. • Assess vulnerability of paper ballots to tampering, and contrast with risks in electronic system. • Determine points in the election system where there should be more redundancy in personnel or procedures.
I don't have time to get all the details at the moment. Above are the highlights from the summary. You can go to the full Phase 1a Report. The Overview of Studies begins on page 29 of the report (p. 36 on the PDF file). It looks at reports on
Maryland
Cuyohoga County, Ohio
University of Connecticut Voting Technology Research Center Report
State of California “Top-to-Bottom Review” (TTBR) Report (and Diebold's response)
Florida Software Review and Security Analysis Summary
I would guess these are among the more objective looks at voting machine technology in use. Perhaps we can get more into this later. A giant tip of the hat to Anonymous for the link.
Phil mentions the Bradley effect and the Tweety effect in his comment on the earlier post on the New Hampshire primary.
Bradley effect argues that white folks will tell a pollster that they will vote for a black candidate (former LA Mayor Tom Bradley) but in the secrecy of the voting booth, they don't.
Tweety effect argues that people get so angry at smug, mysogynist pundits that they change their vote to prove them wrong.
But as I raised in the earlier post today, I want to be sure that the discussions and investigations of the New Hampshire primary also consider seriously the Diebold Effect. This, as the name implies, is the effect of people tampering with the Diebold voting machines to tilt the vote to their advantage.
I don't know what happened. Here's what I do know.
1. Voting machines, like those made by Diebold, have serious flaws that potentially could allow unauthorized people to reprogram them and to change the outcome.
You'll notice that these links don't go to traditional media and they aren't that new. That raises other questions about why others aren't working on this now. Maybe Google pushes the traditional media back behind the blogs, but that doesn't hold up for other issues. But I trust my son's judgment on these things and he's strongly opposed to voting machines because they have too many problems.
3. Obama was leading by around 8-10% in the polls before yesterday's election in New Hampshire.
4. He was several percentage points behind Clinton after the election.
Polling of Democrats just before Tuesday's vote gave little warning of the New York senator's comeback, with most underestimating her strength. A USA Today-Gallup Poll gave Obama a 13-percentage point lead, putting her at just 28 percent. Another by CNN, local television station WMUR and the University of New Hampshire had Obama up 39 percent to 30 percent.
It wasn't just the pollsters. Journalists covering the candidates on their final full day of campaigning described larger, more energized crowds attending Obama's events than Clinton's. And from the Clinton camp came word of campaign shake-ups, as well as a moist-eyed candidate vowing to struggle on regardless — an appearance some analysts said helped humanize her and win supporters.
Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks offered no obvious clues. Interviews with voters in the Democratic primary showed those who said they'd made their choice within the last three days — including those who said they'd decided on the final day — split about evenly between Clinton and Obama. (From Associated Press)
Reputable polls have a margin of error of 5% or less. This change is beyond that margin of error. Other candidates were predicted accurately. Though the Ron Paul camp is also grumbling apparently.
I've heard, on mainstream media, tended to blame the polls:
It's hard to predict black candidates in biracial elections because people lie to pollsters about how they will vote.
But it is only on the blogs that I'm hearing people raise the issue of voter fraud. I'm not saying it was voter fraud. I don't have omniscience. But, given what we know about the machines, and given the difference between the polls and the outcome, certainly one of the possible explanations people should be looking at is that someone tampered with the machines.
Now, it gives me some small comfort to think that the Clinton folks might have tampered with the machines, simply because it would mean when things get really dirty heading for the November election, that the Clinton camp might be the only Democratic opponent who could fight back against the Republicans in the dirty tricks department. Of course that is a pretty cynical perspective and it would be better to prevent the dirty tricks, but these, by their nature tend not be revealed until after the victor is comfortably in office. We should have laws that invalidate the election if it is proven the victor won by deceit and deception out of his campaign. Of course, that would lead to the other candidate trying to sabotage his own candidacy in the name of his opponent.
But another explanation would be that someone else messed with the machines. I still am not sure who the Republicans want to run against. Whatever they say is calculated. Truth is a strategic choice, not a moral choice. You can listen to Allen Raymond here talk about the book he wrote now that he's out of prison for tampering with the 2002 New Hampshire election. It's all so matter of fact. There's nothing wrong. He happened to get caught and paid his dues. It's not about morality, he says, it's only about winning.
Rove's advice to Obama on how to beat Clinton for instance. Is that because they hate her so much? Or because they are afraid of Clinton and want Obama to take her out? Or they want to give that impression because they really want to run against Clinton? Is it easier to defeat a black man than a white woman? Is this particular woman encumbered by enough negatives that they think it would be easier to defeat her? If they want her as the candidate, then they could have been behind tampering with the machines, if that happened.
I guess what irks me, is that when I google New Hampshire primary voter fraud all I get is blogs. Why do I have to go to a New Zealand site to get this story?
Given the huge discrepancy between the polling data and the vote, why isn't voter fraud one of the possibly explanations in the mainstream press? It isn't like they don't jump on other undocumented blog reports.
Orange Revolution has particular relevance for paranoid leftist Americans. Are the powers that lie behind the Bush administration going to accept defeat in the 2008 presidential election [I'm not predicting defeat necessarily, just a scenario] and allow for a peaceful transition to a Democratic president? They didn't in 2000, and there's been suggestion that they election manipulation in Ohio gave them the election in 2004. So, if you believe that they are capable of anything from tampering with votes, voters, voting machines, etc. or even declaring a national security emergency and postponing the elections indefinitely, this is a movie you need to watch.
The ruling party, despite dictating to the media what they can say about the election and the candidates, is still losing to opposition candidate Yushchenko going into the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. Yushchenko even survives a poisoning that knocks him out of the campaign for a month and leaves his face disfigured. It's clear the government is manipulating the elections and the polling. According to the DVD blurb when Yushchenko is delcared the loser:
They come into the streets by the hundreds of thousands, from every part of the country. Their election has been stolen, and they have come to defend their votes. They march in protest, set up tent cities, and form human barricades around government buildings, paralyzing all state functions.
But this documentary, which has interviews with many people in Yushchenko's campaign, also shows that the campaign had been expecting this result and planning for these mass demonstrations well in advance. They had gotten the tents, had set up procedures for food, bathrooms, music and all the sound and video equipment with it, and on and on, including donations to pay for everything. So when the election results were rigged, the Orange party were ready for the hundreds of thousands who showed up, in a snow storm. And they had contacts in the government to find out what was happening and how to counter.
Americans have a lot to learn from Ukrainians about how to win back a stolen election. In 2000 perhaps Americans were too lulled into the belief that we have fair democratic elections. In 2004 we have less of an excuse. But if the election is stolen in 2008 there will be no turning back and we'll have no excuse for not being prepared. If the Democrats are not watching this film and talking with the participants in preparation for November 2008, then they aren't doing their job.
I would note that at the end of the film it says on the screen that Yushchenko's party fought amongst themselves and things weren't terrific. But it seems to me the point is that the party in power, who were using that power for their own ends rather than for the people's, were not allowed to steal the election and keep in power. Whatever problems Yushchenko had in ruling, were less serious than had the old regime stayed in power.
Sanaz has missed the last couple of the literary meetings of Azar Nafisi and seven of her best female students. They meet in her apartment to read Western literature. Sanaz comes late into the meeting. Nafisi writes in Chapter 21:
Her story was a familiar one.
I was stunned, after reading her story, to realize that it is a familiar one. I just posted about Eva Ósk Arnardóttir [I've learned it's Erla, not Eva] early Tuesday morning. But first listen to Sanaz' edited story.
A fortnight earlier, Sanaz and five of her girlfriends had gone for a two-day vacation by the Caspian Sea. On their first day, they had decided to visit her friend's fiancé in an adjoining villa. Sanaz kept emphasizing that they were all properly dressed, with their scarves and long robes. They were all sitting outside, in the garden: six girls and one boy. There were no alocoholic beverages in the house, no undesirable tapes or CDs..
And then "they" came with their guns, the morality squads, surprising them by jumping over the low walls. They claimed to have received a report of illegal activities, and wanted to search the premises. Unable to find fault with their appearance, one of the guards sarcastically said that looking at them, with their Western attitudes...What is a Western attitude? Nassrin interrupted. Sanaz looked at her and smiled. I'll ask him next time I run into him... The guards took all of them to a special jail for infractions in matters of morality. There, despite their protests, the girls were kept in a small, dark room, which they shared the first night with several prostitutes and a drug addict. Their jail wardens came into their room two or three times in the middle of the night to wake up those who might have dozed off, and hurled insults at them.
They were held in that room for forty-eight hours. Despite their repeated requests, they were denied the right to call their parents. Apart from brief excursions to the rest room at appointed times, they left the room twice - the first time to be led to a hospital, where they were given virginity tests by a woman gynecologist, who had her students observe the examinations. Not satisfied with her verdict, the guards took them to a private clinic for a second check...
Erla Ósk Arnardóttir, an Icelandic national, purportedly was searched, ask about her last period, not allowed to contact anyone, paraded through JFK airport chained and handcuffed, treated rudely, and eventually held overnight in a jail cell for the minor infraction of having overstayed a visa by 3 weeks, more than ten years earlier.
I had just written that I was reading this book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, but while it was interesting, I was having trouble getting through it. I think I figured out my problems with the book.
1. Each chapter is almost an independent vignette. There is a connection, but one isn't compelled to read the next chapter. Reading it in bed before sleep, I found myself hoping the short chapter would end and I could sleep. This is unlike some books where I had to find out what happened next.
2. The book doesn't challenge what I know. A student once gave me a one-page article and said it helped him understand why he was having trouble in my class. The article said there were two kinds of learning - happy and unhappy learning. Happy learning is when you learn something that reinforces what you already know. Unhappy learning is when you learn something that challenges what you already know. Reading Lolita's author is Iranian, but her perspective is a Western one, and her issues are the ones a Western professor might have teaching under the Ayatollah. They confirm our stereotypes about Iran. That is not to say that I want to read something that says Iran is really a wonderful place to live, but rather I would like to read something that would help me understand the mindset of those who support the regime. How do they think? Are they similar to Americans who blindly support the Bush regime? Or is it a totally different reasoning?
But last night's story gave me a new reason for why Americans should read this book. It illustrates stories of repression, large and small, which we see going on in the US today. That George W. would bring democracy to Iran, let alone Iraq, is ludicrous given that he's already introduced a police state in the no-man's land of airport security - particularly before one gets out of customs - where people have no rights, cannot contact friends or relatives or attorneys, can be held indefinitely without apparent reason. Erla Ósk Arnardóttir's story as well as those mentioned by Naomi Wolf and our own experiences with TSA tell us this. The story was also told in the short film Security that was part of the Anchorage International Film Festival.
A least Nafisi and her students could read Lolita, albeit getting copies was not easy, but it was not illegal as it was in the US not all that long ago. And among some circles in the US the book is still condemned.
Reading Lolita in Tehran is a reminder about those who zealously protest their loyalty to America and condemn as traitors those who would criticize the US government. How are they different from the 'morality squads' or the guards who dealt with Arnardóttir?
I would make it very clear, though, that most of the TSA I have dealt with have not slipped over into the dark side. They've tried to do their task with humor and understanding. They've not been thoughtless automatons. Even Erla writes,
another jail guard took pity on me and removed the leg chains.
And they are restrained by their instructions and the lack of resources and by facing irritable people late for their planes. But for the most part I see this as a terribly expensive - in time, money, and degradation of freedom - facade to make us feel like our government is protecting us from the enemy, an enemy that I believe is a lot less formidable than the current administration would have us believe.
Note: I did try to find more on the Icelandic tourist.
The site I initially found the information on mispelled her name. It should be Erla, not Eva.
There isn't a lot on this in mainstream new media. I guess for most surly and inappropriate treatment by TSA is not news. However the International Herald Tribune
has an AP story:
REYKJAVIK, Iceland: Iceland's government has asked the U.S. ambassador to explain the treatment of an Icelandic tourist who says she was held in shackles before being deported from the United States.
The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, 33, was arrested Sunday when she arrived at JFK airport in New York because she had overstayed a U.S. visa more than 10 years earlier...
She was deported Tuesday, she told reporters and wrote on her Internet blog.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir told U.S. Ambassador Carol van Voorst that the treatment of Lillendahl was unacceptable.
"In a case such as this, there can be no reason to use shackles" Gisladottir said. "If a government makes a mistake, I think it is reasonable for it to apologize, like anyone else."
Van Voorst has contacted the officials at JFK airport and asked them to provide a report on Lillendahl's case, Gisladottir said.
US Authorities Regret Treatment of Icelandic Tourist
Iceland’s Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir received a letter from Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy for the US Ministry of Homeland Security, yesterday, saying he regretted the treatment of an Icelandic tourist earlier this month.
The letter states that the incident gives the US Ministry of Homeland Security a reason to review work procedures regarding how foreign tourists are being received in the US, Morgunbladid reports.
Here's the beginning of the story of an Icelandic visitor who was chained and handcuffed at JFK held without sleep or food and very delayed phone contact, then taken to a jail in New Jersey. I found a number of other sites carrying the same story, but not futher corroboration of the story. It appears from the story that her crime was having overstayed a visit by three weeks in 1995. So let's withhold judgment at the moment, but put it into our Liberty Watch file as we watch Naomi Wolf's ten steps to dismantling democracy take place. This seems to fit 5. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens. Although this is not a US citizen, would American citizens expect this sort of treatment when visiting other nations? The whole story is at this site.
[Note: Later stories say it is Erla, not Eva]
The story of Eva, [Erla] Ósk Arnardóttir:
During the last twenty-four hours I have probably experienced the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected. During these last twenty-four hours I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned. Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible.
Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York. We were going to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. We made ourselves comfortable on first class, drank white wine and looked forward to go shopping, eat good food and enjoy life. When we landed at JFK airport the traditional clearance process began.
We were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security. There I was told that according to their records I had overstayed my visa by 3 weeks in 1995. For this reason I would not be admitted to the country and would be sent home on the next flight. I looked at the official in disbelief and told him that I had in fact visited New York after the trip in 1995 without encountering any difficulties. A detailed interrogation session ensued.
I was photographed and fingerprinted. I was asked questions which I felt had nothing to do with the issue at hand. I was forbidden to contact anyone to advise of my predicament and although I was invited at the outset to contact the Icelandic consul or embassy, that invitation was later withdrawn. I don't know why.
When you buy a certain type of car, suddenly you see them everywhere. When you are pregnant, suddenly you notice all the other pregnant women around. When you get a new model of things, you suddenly start noticing things that you didn't see before. Naomi Wolf's ten steps to dismantling a democracy is helping me organize different incidents in my head and fit them into a coherent model of what's going on. So I've started a new tag - Liberty Watch - to point out actions that fit into those ten steps. This one is more about non citizens but it relates to keeping track of people, restricting their movement, and preventing key individuals from presenting their views publicly. So it would seem to partially fit the following steps in Wolf's list:
4. Create a surveillance apparatus for its ordinary citizens. 5. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens, 7. Target key individuals 8. Restrict the press
Below is a mass email I got from the president of the American Association of University Professors, probably the major institution that represents American university faculty, about foreign professors having trouble attending conferences or taking visiting professorships in the United States.
In spring 1983, just over two years into Ronald Reagan's first term as president, I was in the midst of a complex ballet with the U.S. State Department. My institution, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had invited the distinguished cultural studies and Marxist scholar Stuart Hall to teach a course and keynote a conference. He had just been told by the U.S. visa office in London that they had no record of his application?an application he had submitted three times. I scheduled a tentative interview with National Public Radio, then presented the State Department with a choice: issue the visa or listen to me discuss the situation on NPR. It issued the visa. Those, apparently, were the innocent Reagan-era days when the State Department could actually be embarrassed by bad publicity.
A quarter of a century later, in 2007, we are living in a very different world. Our State Department is no longer subject to embarrassment on this issue. The atmosphere today is reminiscent of the Cold War, when the U.S. government regularly barred from the country visitors whose views it rejected. But Congress repeatedly restricted this power, first limiting exclusion to those presenting a genuine national security risk in 1977, then explicitly applying standards for constitutionally protected speech to foreign visitors a decade later, finally shifting the focus for deportation and exclusion from beliefs to conduct in 1990.
As a result, for many years foreign scholars have given papers at conferences and taught at our colleges and universities. These interactions have advanced knowledge across a whole spectrum of fields and strengthened our ties with other nations.
But for six years foreign scholars have frequently been denied entrance to the United States. Often they have been turned back after their planes have landed. Most had already visited here without incident. Some had done so after the 9/11 attacks; a number are graduates of U.S. institutions. Their stated reasons for visiting have been both clear and legitimate.
Earlier this year, as AAUP president, I signed an extensive legal declaration outlining the AAUP's consistently strong stand against the exclusion of foreign scholars for ideological reasons. For about two years we have been involved in litigation seeking to compel the government to admit Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan to the country. His visa was revoked in 2004 as he prepared to take up a tenured appointment at the University of Notre Dame. Then he was denied a visa to address the AAUP annual meeting. The declaration I signed lists Michael Chertoff and Condoleezza Rice, respectively Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary of State, as defendants.
Usually no reasons are given for denying a visa. In Ramadan's case, as a result of our lawsuit, the government was compelled by a court to give an official explanation. It said Ramadan had provided "material support" to terrorists. The support? Donations that Ramadan had made to European Palestinian-relief organizations which later gave money to Hamas. The idea that Ramadan could have anticipated later donations defies reason. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union was once again pressing our case in federal court. On October 25, an assistant U.S. attorney suggested that potential donors write to organizations specifying that no donations go to support terrorism. Suffice it to say I am not convinced that would prove effective.
Another suit involves South African scholar Adam Habib, who in 2006 was intercepted at the airport and denied entry to the United States, where he was scheduled to meet with officers of the Social Science Research Council, Columbia University, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Bank. The State Department subsequently revoked the visas of his wife and their two young children?an extraordinary step for which no explanation was given. Contending that censorship at the border prevents U.S. citizens and residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First Amendment, the lawsuit challenges his exclusion and contends that his exclusion violates the First Amendment.
On many other occasions the AAUP has written letters on behalf of excluded scholars. Sometimes our efforts and those of other academic organizations have succeeded in having travel restrictions against particular scholars lifted, but the list of distinguished visitors prevented from entering the country continues to grow.
Obviously we must bar entry to those presenting genuine threats to national security. But the government should not act as if we fear ideas almost as much as we fear bombs. As the ACLU put it, it sometimes seems we are fighting not so much a war of ideas as a war against ideas.
We urge all of you to write to your representatives in Washington to reverse this practice and let foreign scholars visit the United States. (If you are not sure how to reach them, use the AAUP's lobbying tools.)
You may not agree with Tariq Ramadan or all of the other excluded scholars, but we hope you'll agree that the University of Notre Dame had a right to offer him a job, and the AAUP had a right to invite him to address our annual meeting. Academic freedom embodies principles behind which all of us can unite.
In this report, an ATT engineer reports that the NSA collects internet traffic with the cooperation of ATT. While they say they use computers to sift it and only read a tiny fraction of what goes through, the capacity to read anyone's email is now, seemingly in place. Who needs to go to court to get wire taps if they can read your email? I'd say this would be part of Step 4 of Naomi Wolf's ten steps for dismantling a democracy.
4. Create a surveillance apparatus for its ordinary citizens.
In a comment on the previous post, Phil linked to this piece by Naomi Wolf on another blog. These stories sound so unreal that I'm sure many will say, "It can't be true" or "She must have done something suspicious" but that's what they said as the Nazi's took over. We have the advantage of knowing about Nazi Germany, something those living in Germany in the 30s didn't have. Here are a couple of excerpts from her post:
Here in Australia I hear from the nation’s best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer’, she told TSA agents. `Ma’am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,’ they replied. `You have not entered the United States.’
Apparently a section of LAX just beyond the security line is asserted to be `not in the United States’ — though it is squarely inside the airport — so the laws of the US do not apply. (This assertion, by the way, should alarm any US citizen who is aware of how the White House argued that Guantanamo is not `in the United States’ - is a legal no-man’s land — so the laws of the US do not apply.) Toward the end of her second five-hour detention she asked, `Why am I being detained?’ `Lady, this is not detention,’ the TSA agent told her. `Detention is when I take you to the cells out back and lock you up.’
Last week in Boston, while attending Bioneers by the Bay, I heard that one of the speakers for our event, an environmentalist named Gunter Pauli, was going to miss the time of his scheduled speech; he had been physically taken OFF THE PLANE by TSA agents and had to take a much later flight. More chillingly, the camerawoman doing my interview said that another well-known environmental writer found that his girlfriend was effectively `disappeared’ for three days as she sought to enter the US from Canada. Lisa Fithian, an anti-globalization activist, was denied entry across the Canadian border in 2001 and was offered the choice of turning back or being arrested.
– Is building a US Embassy in Baghdad the size of eighty football fields and at a cost of well more than half a BILLION dollars evidence of short- or long-term thinking?
In a June post, I created a vision of a military coup in the US to set up a scenario to imagine the choices that Iraqis must face daily. If Wolf is correct, Bush and company have been using the presidency and the power of the US government to set up the base for taking over the country - with Blackwater as their private military.
Many Jews perished in Germany because they didn't leave when they could. If you read this report seriously, you can get a sense of how it must have felt. Can you give up your home, your job, whatever savings you have because some people are saying this is going to happen? I don't know that Wolf isn't seeing things that aren't there, but I don't know that she is wrong either.
