GIP! Thank you Michael Crichton! And entrenous88! I needed the laugh.
*blinks*
Y HALLO THAR NU UPD473 1N73RF4C3!
I actually don't have strong feelings about the change one way or the other, which puts me in the quiet non-majority. My one big problem is that it looks just a leeeeeetle too much like the Vox update interface.
Dear 6Apart: This makes me unhappy and suspicious. At least on LJ we can do our own HTML, unlike Vox, which keeps us in rich text mode for everything.
[Note: I signed up for Vox mostly to make sure I got the liz_marcs name, and as an "archive" for my music reviews. You can upload MP3s and stream them through the site, which is a nice feature. Other than that, Vox has zero ability to customize, even in individual posts. Haaaaaate.]
Anyway, yesterday I was cruising around the Internet reading about the DHS round up (Note: Link will take you to TPMmuckraker).
Frankly, there are a lot of disturbing questions being raised by this raid. One being that that dark-skinned people were automatically assumed by the ICE agents to be illegals and subjected to tough questioning while light-skinned people were automatically given a pass. This seems to be holding true even when the dominant immigrant groups in the area are, say, Russian or Asian and the dominant illegal population is from those groups.
If any of you out there asked the rhetorical question: "Would they deport any of the Russian and Irish illegals as fast as they would the Mexican, Central American, and South American illegals?" I think we're getting an idea of the answer. Not that I, personally, had any doubts about what that answer was, mind you. Walking around while being olive-skinned in the wake of the 9-11 attacks was, shall we say, an eye-opening experience. Let's not get into the fun I had getting on planes two months after 9-11. Let's just not, 'kay?
A Christian Science Monitor article about a similar DHS raid that happened in October that turned one Georgia town into a ghost town pointed out a very similar pattern.
The bigger issue that troubles me is that no one seems to know what's happening to the "illegals" (some of the people being swept up are American citizens or people with green cards). They're put on a bus and then just gone. There seems to be some confusion on whether or not people know where the detainees are being taken. Some of the detention centers are known, but the no one is willing to officially confirm the detainees have been taken there. Other detainees appear to have dropped off the face of the earth after they get on the buses.
Yeah, guess we know what those Halliburton-built "detention centers" are being used for, don't we? (Note, link goes to AlterNet) If you don't wanna trust AlterNet, how about an small article on it from the NYT?
Let's not even get into the kids who've been "orphaned" by the raids. These are kids who, by virtue of being born in the U.S. are citizens (the so-called "anchor babies"). And dude, before you say they're not, the flipping Constitution, the highest law in the land, tells us that they are. You wanna change that? Then you better by-God pass an amendment. Considering the hoops you gotta go through, and the number of people in this country who actually have immigrant relatives, I foresee that one getting shot down faster than a snowball melts in hell.
At any rate, these kids just had their civil rights - the ones they are due as U.S. citizens - violated by the Feds (Note: Link goes to Latina Lista).
As for the human rights violations...well...I think it goes without saying that, oooooo yeah. Just ask the priest and nun who tried to find a breast-feeding mother who'd been swept up in the raids.
Some questions seriously need to be asked about these storm trooper-style raids.
In any case, the DHS raids pretty much had my attention yesterday, in large part because the way they were conducted was...worrisome on more than one level, especially given the legal and political atmosphere in the U.S. these days. There is, I think, an undercurrent of paranoia among people of all political stripes (although the cause of it is for different reasons). Usually, the more you know, the less likely you are to be paranoid. For the first time in my memory, this has been reversed. The more you know, the more paranoid you become.
I need a new layer for my tinfoil hat, I think.
In the course of my DHS raid-watching, I, of course, stumbled across the hilarious story of Michael Crichton fictionalizing a political reporter as a pencil-dicked child rapist. Apparently one Michael Crowley pissed off Crichton when Crowley wrote a less-than-complimentary article on Crichton's global warming denialism in The New Republic.
Even so, imagine my joy when entrenous88 posted a wonderful overview of the wank that has resulted from Crichton's act of asshole. Heeeee!
As a result of the wank, I now have an awesome icon (you have to read the wank to get the joke). More icons here.
MSNBC's Olbermann has even gotten in on the act, by naming Crichton Worst Person in the World.
Man, I needed that laugh, especially after reading about the DHS raids.
So, glasses up to entrenous88! Thanks for the laugh!
Y HALLO THAR NU UPD473 1N73RF4C3!
I actually don't have strong feelings about the change one way or the other, which puts me in the quiet non-majority. My one big problem is that it looks just a leeeeeetle too much like the Vox update interface.
Dear 6Apart: This makes me unhappy and suspicious. At least on LJ we can do our own HTML, unlike Vox, which keeps us in rich text mode for everything.
[Note: I signed up for Vox mostly to make sure I got the liz_marcs name, and as an "archive" for my music reviews. You can upload MP3s and stream them through the site, which is a nice feature. Other than that, Vox has zero ability to customize, even in individual posts. Haaaaaate.]
Anyway, yesterday I was cruising around the Internet reading about the DHS round up (Note: Link will take you to TPMmuckraker).
Frankly, there are a lot of disturbing questions being raised by this raid. One being that that dark-skinned people were automatically assumed by the ICE agents to be illegals and subjected to tough questioning while light-skinned people were automatically given a pass. This seems to be holding true even when the dominant immigrant groups in the area are, say, Russian or Asian and the dominant illegal population is from those groups.
If any of you out there asked the rhetorical question: "Would they deport any of the Russian and Irish illegals as fast as they would the Mexican, Central American, and South American illegals?" I think we're getting an idea of the answer. Not that I, personally, had any doubts about what that answer was, mind you. Walking around while being olive-skinned in the wake of the 9-11 attacks was, shall we say, an eye-opening experience. Let's not get into the fun I had getting on planes two months after 9-11. Let's just not, 'kay?
A Christian Science Monitor article about a similar DHS raid that happened in October that turned one Georgia town into a ghost town pointed out a very similar pattern.
The bigger issue that troubles me is that no one seems to know what's happening to the "illegals" (some of the people being swept up are American citizens or people with green cards). They're put on a bus and then just gone. There seems to be some confusion on whether or not people know where the detainees are being taken. Some of the detention centers are known, but the no one is willing to officially confirm the detainees have been taken there. Other detainees appear to have dropped off the face of the earth after they get on the buses.
Yeah, guess we know what those Halliburton-built "detention centers" are being used for, don't we? (Note, link goes to AlterNet) If you don't wanna trust AlterNet, how about an small article on it from the NYT?
Let's not even get into the kids who've been "orphaned" by the raids. These are kids who, by virtue of being born in the U.S. are citizens (the so-called "anchor babies"). And dude, before you say they're not, the flipping Constitution, the highest law in the land, tells us that they are. You wanna change that? Then you better by-God pass an amendment. Considering the hoops you gotta go through, and the number of people in this country who actually have immigrant relatives, I foresee that one getting shot down faster than a snowball melts in hell.
At any rate, these kids just had their civil rights - the ones they are due as U.S. citizens - violated by the Feds (Note: Link goes to Latina Lista).
As for the human rights violations...well...I think it goes without saying that, oooooo yeah. Just ask the priest and nun who tried to find a breast-feeding mother who'd been swept up in the raids.
Some questions seriously need to be asked about these storm trooper-style raids.
In any case, the DHS raids pretty much had my attention yesterday, in large part because the way they were conducted was...worrisome on more than one level, especially given the legal and political atmosphere in the U.S. these days. There is, I think, an undercurrent of paranoia among people of all political stripes (although the cause of it is for different reasons). Usually, the more you know, the less likely you are to be paranoid. For the first time in my memory, this has been reversed. The more you know, the more paranoid you become.
I need a new layer for my tinfoil hat, I think.
In the course of my DHS raid-watching, I, of course, stumbled across the hilarious story of Michael Crichton fictionalizing a political reporter as a pencil-dicked child rapist. Apparently one Michael Crowley pissed off Crichton when Crowley wrote a less-than-complimentary article on Crichton's global warming denialism in The New Republic.
Even so, imagine my joy when entrenous88 posted a wonderful overview of the wank that has resulted from Crichton's act of asshole. Heeeee!
As a result of the wank, I now have an awesome icon (you have to read the wank to get the joke). More icons here.
MSNBC's Olbermann has even gotten in on the act, by naming Crichton Worst Person in the World.
Man, I needed that laugh, especially after reading about the DHS raids.
So, glasses up to entrenous88! Thanks for the laugh!