Link Roundup – 03/11/09

Here’s a buttload of links of things I’ve been perusing this week, and haven’t bee able to actually post about.

First US Official Resigns Over Afghanistan – “Not worth the effort.”

Stephen Fry’s Twitter Spat is News?!? The world is a sad place.

Parliament to Host first Gay Wedding! Yay!

US Terrorizing Aid to Somalia – aaaah the War on Terror

Thank Bolivia for you Lithium Batteries -let’s hope they can manage the industry wisely

Random nature links on Seahorse Sex and Humpback Whale Fights (I attribute these links to a recent bout of insomnia. That’s when I gravitate towards nature videos.)

Children Who Get Life in Prison Without Parole – the sad sad state of the US correctional system.

Camorra Boss Arrested in Naples – for those who don’t know about the situation, read Roberto Saviano’s Gomorra (one of the best books of 2007) and then go see the Cannes Grand Prix winning film made from the book. (trailer)

Karzai’s Opponent drops out and Robert Fisk says what I was thinking (but so so much better than I could)

The Case For Modesty in an Age of Arrogance – if Barack is so humble, shouldn’t he have refused the Nobel Prize?

One Reason You Shouldn’t Go To Afghanistan With Beard – interesting quick read

 

Afghanistan – someone finally resigns over the futility of it all

(via CrooksandLiars.com)

Dissent gets interesting!

From the Washington Post:

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, [former Marina Corps Captain Matthew]Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”

The reaction to Hoh’s letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay….

…”I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love,” Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the “second-best job I’ve ever had,” his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.

“There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed,” he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. “I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys.”

But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there — a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

When the guy who talks about how much he loves “whacking” “dudes” says we’re out of line, let’s hope people start listening.

 

If You Don’t Have Enough to Read…

…you can always count on me for suggestions. I have too much to read!

Latest link list I want to get through is Project Censored’s list of the 25 most censored news stories of the past year.  You can buy it in book form here. I actually came across it in a little anarchist-y newspaper here in Madrid called Diagonal. I have checked it out in previous years, and its always good for some eye-opening.

And here they are:

• 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
• 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
• 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
• 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
• 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
• 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
• 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
• 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
• 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
• 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
• 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
• 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
• 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
• 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
• 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
• 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
• 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
• 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
• 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
• 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
• 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
• 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
• 23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
• 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
• 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

 

Sooo, blogging eh? I think I remember that….

In case there’s anyone out there, here’s the nutshell explanation why nothing has appeared on this blog in aaaages.

I ended up in the hospital for gall stones. Got out of the habit of blogging what with the hospital stays, visiting mom,  preoccupations with losing work hours and lots of money, and then just decided to forget the blog for a while. I just didn’t want to think about it. It felt like this big guilt trip “I should be blogging this, I should be blogging this”. Bleh.  Had to sort out what was going to come next in life, since my papers had recently been denied, all my money was gone and I was not looking forward to teaching English (which I am doing once again).

So that’s that. Gonna try to ease back into this. Just posting whatever I come across, and talking about my plans – which are almost certainly to leave Spain in the fairly near future.

In the mean time, I want to encourage anyone who wants to to find me on facebook, where I tend to post a lot more links than I ever managed to put up here. Just include a message as to how you came to find me (ie- via the blog) so i know what list to add you to!

Thanks!

 

Whoohoo! I can blog again!

Nice. For the past week or so, I haven’t been able to access my blog! Nothing would load, I’d get repeated error messages after long attempts. Not even the support page for WordPress would load (though their homepage yes) so I couldn’t email anyone about it.

Anywho, had other things to be worried about but glad its back up, was getting worried, having nightmare thoughts about the entire blog being mysteriously lost to cyberspace. Gulp. Made me think about backing up!

 

Video – Slightly Delayed Announcement – España No Me Quiere, Oficialmente.

So, as explained on Vimeo I meant to post this on Thursday before I left for Barcelona – just an informative thing – but logistics were against me, I was running late for the bus, so I didn’t get around to it till today. It’s not purty – wasn’t really supposed to be – just some news. (with of course, my own, obligatory literary digression)

[Sorry, BTW, to anyone who got to this and the video's not up yet - Vimeo tells me I've got another 100-something minutes to wait and I'm exhausted and its way past my bed time- so if it's not through the queue yet, come back in a bit - thanks]

 

Haha – for a lighter take on the previous rant – Stuff White People Like

...and some humor to balance it out...

I came across this after finishing that last rant. The blog is called “Stuff White People Like” and #105 is, oh you guessed it, Unpaid Internships. Have a chuckle:

In most of the world when a person works long hours without pay, it is referred to as “slavery” or “forced labor.” For white people this process is referred to as an internship and is considered an essential stage in white development.

The concept of working for little or no money underneath a superior has been around for centuries in the form of apprenticeship programs. Young people eager to learn a trade would spend time working under a master craftsman to learn a skill that would eventually lead to an increase in material wealth.

Using this logic you would assume that the most sought after internships would be in areas that lead to the greatest financial reward. Young White people, however, prefer internships that put them on the path for careers that will generally result in a DECREASE of the material wealth accumulated by their parents…

…White people view the internship as their foot into the door to such high-profile low-paying career fields as journalism, film, politics, art, non-profits, and anything associated with a museum. Any white person who takes an internship outside of these industries is either the wrong type of white person or a law student. There are no exceptions.

If all goes according to plan, an internship will end with an offer of a job that pays $24,000 per year and will consist entirely of the same tasks they were recently doing for free. In fact, the transition to full time status results in the addition of only one new responsibility: feeling superior to the new interns.

 

Rant: Thoughts on Unpaid Labor (no not slavery – internships)!

Oooh, I've got my angry face on for this one!

Unpaid internship. The term sends shudders of anxiety through many of the world’s ambitious 20-somethings. How much should you have to sacrifice, how much poverty should you have to endure, how much debt should you have to incur to get the work experience without which no employer takes you seriously? And how does it skew the job market to favor the rich? These questions have been on my mind recently because of a couple of articles I’ve run across, and a couple of heated conversations I’ve had. So I thought I’d try to sit down and sort out my thoughts on the subject.

Naomi Klein, in No Logo, first clued me into the shady scam that is the current world of internships many years before I would truly understand how demoralizing the underlying concept of that world is (mainly through experiences of friends of mine). To be honest, I did not have any sort of nightmare experience myself, it was quite positive. The fact was that, due to my legal status, I could not even be hired by the place I had my internship even if they had wanted to. So given my already shit shit shit situation (being frickin’ illegal), it was a pretty good opportunity. But yes, I also spent all my savings in the process and had to start from zero. (Also to be mentioned – if I had been legal, they wouldn’t have paid me anyways).

To begin, Ms. Klein sums up the problem in No Logo

One thing you can say about the retail and service industries: at least they pay their workers a little something for their trouble. Not so for some other industries that have liberated themselves from the chains of social security forms with such free market gusto that many young workers receive no pay at all. Perhaps predictably, the culture industry has led the way in the blossoming of unpaid work, blithely turning a blind eye to the unglamorous fact that many people under thirty are saddled with the mundane responsibility of actually having to support themselves. [emphasis mine]

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? That, even if it is to gain essential experience, it’s work, and you need to live off your labor.

So, my first point of contention is the fairness point: Is this type of system morally justified?

 

Awwww – Weird Cute Reptile Loooove News

I can’t resist the occasional cuteness of not inherently cute animals – like Henry the Tuatara, who at 111 years old, had his crotchety grumpy old man reptile heart melted by one Mildred, and became a daddy. All together now – “Awwwwwwww!”

A rare reptile has become a father at the age of 111 for the first time. Henry, a New Zealand tuatara, confounded experts who believed he was past it when he succumbed to the charms of Mildred last year.

The female, who is estimated to be in her seventies, laid 12 eggs and yesterday, after 223 days of incubation, 11 baby tuatara successfully hatched.

Henry, a long-time resident of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, on South Island, had previously ignored female tuatara, or even attacked them. As well as finally proving Henry’s virility, the hatchlings will give a much-needed boost to the genetic diversity of an endangered species.

Also interesting, cuz wtf’s a tuatara? From the Independent:

Tuatara, which resemble lizards and can claim a lineage dating back 220 million years, are estimated to number 50,000, with most living in predator-free sanctuaries or on New Zealand’s offshore islands.

Hmm, ok, interesting. But still not gonna beat out the bonobos in my list of faves.

 

California Schools to Shut In Order To Save Money

Looks like my home state is having school funding problems. No news there – when I was 11 my school district (in which my mother was a teacher) went bankrupt and almost closed a month early. I was thrilled at the prospect, didn’t really understand why my mom couldn’t share my joy. In the end, they didn’t close, but looks like the situation is worse right now though, and the Governator’s got a plan:

Schwarzenegger Proposes 5 Fewer School Days

From the LA Times article:

A proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to shorten the school year by five days is creating panic among educators across California, who say they barely have enough time to fit the state’s academic standards into the existing 180-day calendar.

The idea to cut funding equivalent to five school days would save $1.1 billion at a time when California faces a massive budget deficit. But state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell called the proposal “devastating.”

Critics scream, as they always do, that we must THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! ahhhhh!!! claiming that 5 days less school will be a blow to students. Anyone who’s ever had a cold for a week as a child knows that that really isn’t the case. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a week, dude.

More valid is the criticism that lower income parents will struggle with the extra week of child care costs.