Civil Rights? You must be thinking of some other country

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

And it pretty much deteriorates from there:

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

from The Agitator, courtesy of LGM

Immigrants

They really do seem to have the strangest attitude to immigration here, given that the whole country is essentially all quite recent immigrants*, voluntary or otherwise. Legal immigration, as I found, is onerous, time-consuming, expensive, and quite petty-minded: plus with all the changes and whimsy inflicted by what G W Bush was pleased to call an administration, also quite contradictory, badly-specified and confusing ... of course, in all fairness it might have been like that before him too, but the whole overreaction to Sep 11 seems to have laid several additional layers of confusion on top.

But with illegal immigration, things are just dreadful. These are people who invariably are here to work, and have jobs. What's more, in almost all the cases, they are doing dirty, unpleasant and often dangerous jobs, for terrible wages (being illegal, they don't have to be paid the legal minimum), and are often treated terribly on top of that.

Of course part of the disgusting part is that they put up with that because it's still better wages, and often better conditions, than they can get back home, wherever that may be: but that's a different topic, for another day (solve world poverty? sure thing, just after I've done the cure for cancer, and before I devise the end of all racism. World peace is still impossible even on that scale). But because they are being treated marginally less terribly than they are accustomed to, is no excuse to abuse or exploit them, either.

However, there seems to be a general rage, at least among the right wing, and much of what passes for the centre in this area, the so-called Independent voters, directed at illegal immigrants*** sneaking into the country, paying no taxes and using up all these valuable services, like health care at Emergency Rooms.

Which is ridiculous on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. First off, they may not be paying income taxes (although they might well be, & certainly their employers often withhold such taxes), but they are certainly paying sales taxes, car taxes, and so on, all the other taxes and pseudo-taxes that are imposed. Of course, if they did pay income taxes, the amount collected would be very modest at best, given their rate of pay.

Secondly, they're not free-loading - they are doing disgusting jobs that no American is willing to do, at least at anything like the rates of pay offered, and everyone else is benefiting from the fact that those jobs are getting done: either in cheaper goods & services, or in services that don't fail which otherwise would fail. How can this be a bad thing?

Frankly, I think it is the immigrants that are being ruthlessly exploited, and that American society at large is gaining enormously, and would be considerably less affluent, without them. The fact that there are an estimated 12 million**** of them in the country shows how essential they are.

One thing I find endlessly amusing is the right-wing idea that they should be rounded up and sent 'back home'. Aside of the total chaos of trying to enforce this and enact it - a nightmare of
malicious accusations, wrong identities, and shameful abuse - the impact on society, especially in the south-west, would be terrifying and disorienting. Worse, the same right-wing loons would then blow a gasket about the expense, and the terrifying expansion of government power, and how the new Immigration Police needed were Obama's new BrownShirts (again).

Occasionally, right wing politicians try to suggest some way of resolving this, like giving them all long-term visas or creating a guest-worker status. This inevitably leads to their being politically savaged, and either recanting hastily (cf John McCain) or being utterly politically destroyed.

I know many on the left would love to do this, but the whole anti-immigrant thing (conflated by deepseated racism) seems so widespread and deepseated, that they need political support from the right as well, and I can't see that happening: both for the reason above, and because at the moment the whole of the right seems bound and determined to refuse any slightest hint of cooperation, no matter how visibly beneficial it might be for the whole country. Or, to put it simply, they've gone crazy.

I'll end with this charming little anecdote:

When Miriam was 15, her parents trespassed into the United States from Mexico.

Now in her mid 20s, the Wilmington resident still doesn't have citizenship but has become familiar with the health care system.

In the spring, she and her husband -- who both work as custodians -- were admitted to St. Francis Hospital in Wilmington for two days with pneumonia.

When they were released, they faced bills amounting to more than $4,000 and were put on a payment plan that eats up about one-fourth of their combined paychecks.

"I'd rarely go to a hospital because I can't afford to pay for it again," said Miriam, who is not being identified due to her immigration status, through an interpreter. "If I get sick again, I won't go to the hospital unless it's really serious."

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* Haven't got a clue what Native American** attitudes are, as they seem pretty scarce around here (not surprising what with all the depopulation, massacres, and relocations of course). Lots of people who claim to be 1/16th or 1/8th this or that - never something as scarey as a half which might carry, yanno, racial connotations). Not that that would ever happen in New Zealand, naturally :)

** And apparently American Indian is derogatory & been replaced (which I pretty much get, once told, after all what do they have to do with India?). I wonder how long it will be before they twig that America/American is also an imperialist label and they find a word in one of their languages to substitute for it? I would guess some activists have probably tried this already and had the idea kicked to death, as Americans do nationalism & chauvinism exceptionally well (almost to a French level, really).

*** Of couse this is usually meant as short-hand for Mexicans, whereas a lot of the actual immigration is from south america & the caribbean. But then, most Americans dont see any difference between the various Latino nationalities anyway.

**** Who makes these estimates and how, lord only knows, but I'm sure this estimate when made, was deliberately inflated to make more impact of one sort or another. I'm also fairly sure that reality has probably caught up with, and possibly overtaken, the estimate.

The bad guys, redux

It occurs to me I shouldn't deliver an indigestible lump of rant like that last bit, without also observing: you know what works? what does produce good, useable intelligence?

Kindness. Understanding. Sympathy.

Treat your prisoners kindly, with the understanding of what their culture deems important, let them carry out their religious obligations and observations, listen to their woes, their worries about their families, and talk to them like they were, oh I dunno, people: and they will unbend and open up. I'm not even talking about tricking them into accidentally blurting things out: with almost anyone, simple human kindnesses - especially when you know the brutal cruelty you'd hand out if the positions were reversed - are usually enough to shake any resolution, introduce doubts, and - in time - even convert their basic views.

Several segments of the intelligence community in Iraq for the last 7 years can testify, and have been trying to testify - eloquently and at length - to the success of this.

The bad guys

Well, I made myself severely sick last night, reading excerpts from the IG Report detailing the american abuse of prisoners in the soi disant War on Terror (a war lacking a protagonist, definitions, or means of winning or losing or indeed ever coming to a close).

It's pretty brutal, hideous stuff. And - idiot me - what upsets me most is the arrogant stupidity of it.

Torture is evil: in a world that's composed of almost nothing but shades of grey, torture is one of those few things you can point at, and go, that is wrong, that is evil, that should never be done. I mean, this is not subtle philosophizing here, this is simple evil that any child above the moral level of pulling wings off flies can identify.

Torturing your admittedly evil opponents is to give up the moral high ground, and to render yourselves no better than the torturers. It strengthens their hands, garners them more recruits, and makes you publicly odious and loathed - as indeed it did in the Bush Presidency, among those who would have been staunch supporters.

But beyond that - if you're such a moral simpleton as Vice President Cheney, who apparently believes that brutal cruel violence can only be met by equal or greater savagery*, and who seems to believe that America can only survive by abandoning all ideals and becoming more savage and vicious than the Mongol Empire at its worst** - torture doesn't work. It famously, absolutely does not work. It has an enormously long history of not working, from at least the later Assyrian monarchs onwards - the Romans could produce witnesses to fill Yankee stadium that torture does not work. The current Turkish state (and the Iranians for what it is worth) has been trying to crush Kurdish rebellion and quasi-terrorism with torture for at least 60 years, and it did not work.

It does not work because the truly hard men will die rather than giving up information, or will yield a melange of truth and lies impossible to untangle, the weak men will immediately break and tell you anything they think you want to hear, true or not, and the great majority will break after a shorter or longer time, and they will also tell you what they think you want to hear: that is what you're motivating them to do, after all. It does not - indeed, cannot - produce reliable, actionable intelligence, it's supposed purpose.

Or, rather, torture does not work to reduce terrorism. What torture does deliver, is a terrible reputation and an increasing polarisation amongst the oppressed: the meek become more terrified, the stubborn become more intransigent (and produce more terrorists). To some people's perceptions, sufficient torture will cow a population into semi-submission (terrorists aside), and allow them to portray this as a sort of peace.

I can only suppose this is what Vice President Cheney and the segments of the CIA and Pentagon that pushed this approach, actually intended - to try and cow Iraq into a temporary show of submission long enough to be able to declare a final victory, before fleeing the ship of state like plague-ridden, scabrous rats.

Now try to get your head around this - they are trying to cow the Iraqis, who have just emerged from 30 years under one of the more spectacularly brutal and careless dictators of the post-war era, with their own ideas of cruelty. Offhand it's hard to think of a more fruitless and pointless effort. Their predecessor in this, Saddam Hussein, killed over two million*** of his own people, and used poison gas on civilian populations. It's hard to top that level of brutality, and I can't see how they could have, short of recruiting a whole separate army to inflict random violence on the population.

(Except, oops, they did that too: check out the private mercenary company Blackwater. However, as all they got were the usual bunch of diletanttes, tired ex-squaddies, and megalomanic ex-officers drunk on their own testosterone, they didn't even oppress the population efficiently, just indulged their own tastes for murder, rapine and theft in a fairly random manner).

I cannot comprehend these actions, except perhaps in some sort of pseudo-Freudian psychobabble about manhood, ego satisfaction and proving themselves. I mean, these are passably-intelligent, more-or-less educated**** people: and the facts about torture aren't exactly secrets. There is in fact reams and reams of information about the uselessness of all forms of torture, endless studies of Russian & Chinese brainwashing & other approaches from the Cold War era, all pointing to the futility of torture in achieving anything beyond scare tactics and show-trials for public propaganda.

I have to say, I can only applaud the Attorney General's move to prosecute at least a few of the thugs responsible for the most egregious excesses. I would - dearly - wish that this would reach much much higher up the hierarchy of callous evil that approved this, and prosecute (at least) the lawyers who provided a feeble figleaf of legalism on completely spurious grounds, and the inhuman and intolerable cabinet members who approved and urged this action, not excluding the last Vice President.

I have to recognise, tho, that the price of these prosecutions would be a calamitous political war of proportions unknown since the Brothers Gracchi, and would mean the only thing the current President would achieve, even if re-elected, would be these prosecutions. Political deadlock would be a complete understatement - there would be a flurry of lawsuits, protests, threats of violence, angry menaces and a blizzard of resistance, interruption and discord such as to make the current protests about health reform look like afternoon tea at the Ritz.

Lord knows, there are too many pressing problems that need to be dealt with, to let that happen. If political war is the price, better to deal with the improving the future, and let the memory of these callous fools fester and rot in the history books, where their memories will stink worse with the passage of the years.

In some ways, the worst of it is that this is America. If this was the Brits, I'd just shrug and go, well, what can you expect, they've been practising the cruelest and most foolish realpolitik for at least the last hundred and fifty years. America has always held itself to a higher standard, and I think we all expect it from them, the knowledge that they are actually capable of some morality beyond blind self-interest, even if only intermittently.

I'll close with the words of one of the better wordsmiths of the last century, Randy Newman:
Political Science
Noone likes us
I dont know why
we may not be perfect
but heaven knows we try
But all around even our friends put us down
Lets drop the Big One and see what happens

We give them money but are they grateful?
No they're spiteful, and they're hateful
They dont respect us so lets surprise them
We'll drop the Big One and pulverise them!

Now Asia's too crowded, and Europe's too old
Africa's far too hot and Canada's too cold
and South America stole our name
Let's drop the Big One, there'll be noone left to blame us

Well, boom goes London, and boom Paree!
More room for you and more room for me
and every city the whole world round
will just be another american town
Oh how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll have Japanese kimonos, baby
There'll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
so lets drop the Big One now



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* though not in person, goodness no - the closest he's come to personally risking his precious skin would be when he shot his lawyer in the face with a shotgun, while hunting.

** And in passing I'd have to say that the Mongols have a worse reputation than they deserve - as conquerors they were unlimitedly cruel, but as rulers they were on the whole more benevolent than any of the Chinese dynasties or the British Empire, and at least the equal of the Romans.

*** estimates from the Economist, circa 2002 (I cba looking them up sorry, just recall reading them before the 2nd Iraq war).

**** Insert jokes about the american education system here

Welcome to 1951, hold onto your temper

This is the sort of story that doesn't usually make it into foreign papers or TV, but we see a spasmodic drumbeat of this sort of stuff. This one is particularly rancid and left me gagging. I'll quote Pam Spaulding (who has a more complete version):

The staff at the Valley Swim Club in NE Philly must have stepped into the DeLorean and took a spin back into the days of segregation, as 60 kids were turned away from the pool there and apparently the people at the Swim Club didn't mind their inner bigot surface for all to see.

"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor.

The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers' first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

..."There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.

Excuse me, what year is this? Am I watching a rerun of a scene in Far From Heaven (2002)? There was a scene in the Todd Haynes film, set in the 1950s, where a black boy, the son of service worker at a Miami hotel, dares to step into the hotel pool. His father rushes and pulls him out, but it’s too late—the white people in the pool race to get out of the “contaminated” water. Apparently that’s the kind of “change they can believe in” at The Valley Swim Club.

Contact information for the club is here. This is so outrageous that I’m almost unable to type.

I don’t see anything on the membership app asking about race, so when do they determine you can’t join—when you show up?
-------------------

Of course, by now the club has taken down its contact page, and in fact it appears any online vestiges of itself have been scoured. I can't imagine why.

However, to give a better taste in the mouth, there's an addenda:
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After the treatment the kids attending Creative Steps Day Camp received from The Valley Swim Club, a private school has welcomed the children to swim in its pool. (NBC):

[T]he staff at Girard College, a private Philadelphia boarding school for children who live in low-income and single parent homes, stepped in and offered their pool.

“We had to help,” said Girard College director of Admissions Tamara Leclair. “Every child deserves an incredible summer camp experience.”

The school already serves 500 campers of its own, but felt they could squeeze in 65 more – especially since the pool is vacant on the day the Creative Steps had originally planned to swim at Valley Swim Club.

“I’m so excited,” camp director Alethea Wright exclaimed. There are still a few logistical nuisances—like insurance—the organizations have to work out, but it seems the campers will not stay dry for long.

And to sweeten the deal, the owners of Gumdrops & Sprinkles treated the kids to a free day of candy and ice cream making.

Terrorism & martyrdom

After the killing of the heroic Dr George Tiller last week, I've been pondering abortion (again).

Mostly, I've always just been grateful not to have to make a personal decision about it, but I've always been basically pro-choice: as a man, it's not something I will ever have to confront viscerally (so to speak), and what right do I have to make a moral choice for another person? Is a damp squib of cells a person with rights? at what point does it become one? Unless you buy into some ridiculous religion, there's no definitive answer to those questions, that I can see: so let any woman who needs to, make her own decision.

Plus, on top of that, there are the (realpolitik) social effects of abortion or its' suppression: the real-world effects of the legal position, either driving abortion underground (as it's not something that has ever been successfully suppressed, just somewhat reduced), so that nice middle-class girls get safe, illegal abortions, and poor working-class girls mostly get dangerous, homemade abortions, or things that supposedly produce abortions but fail.

Whereas permitting abortion, judging over the last 40-odd years, seems to have led to a lower population, fewer unwanted & tormented children, and a lower overall crime rate - and I don't mean just because abortion isn't classed as a crime.

I might have more sympathy for the anti-abortion side of the argument if I saw any evidence that they were seriously concerned with the welfare of babies, rather than being totally committed to the control of women and the destruction of feminism (or rather, the feeble shards of feminism that are all that seem to exist in the USA). But as they oppose sex education and readily-available birth control, their rank, indigestible hypocrisy is evident. And as for more expansive and generous ideas, from something as simple as Plunket Nurses, to financial support & subsidies for pregnant or nursing women, well, those aren't even thought about (by either side, alas - and I will admit that politically they are so far out of reach that you may as well suggest giving each newborn a piece of Mooncheese).

* * * * *

And once I started reading about Dr Tiller, it brought home something else to me. I hadn't really read about late-term abortions at all, and I guess had passively accepted the lunatic anti-abortionist assertions, that late-term abortions are of viable babies and it's just lazy women who didn't get an abortion soon enough that seek them out.

Then I started thinking about it, and the implausibility of that stuck: how many women are willing to go through 20 or 25 or 30 weeks of increasing discomfort and unpleasantness, only to terminate 'on a whim'?

Then I read about what the law actually requires: namely, that a late-term abortion will only be granted for medical necessity: now, that is a term that could be subject to abuse and manipulation, and I guess a few times it has been: but the doctors who have the steel and determination to perform this procedure, despite the horrific warfare of terrorism being waged against them, are not likely to be easily swayed, duped, or induced into that.

And then I read about some of Dr Tillers' actual cases. Fox News, and that terrorist pig Bill O'Reilly, trying to make it sound like he was aborting healthy, viable babies all the time. That's not what I read - When you're carrying a fetus with a tumor bigger than its head, or its brain formed on the outside of its head, or it has no face, no chance of ever taking a breath, or it died and is in your body right now putrifying, Tiller was the only guy within hundreds, or thousands, of miles who could help you.

And this is the man that got viciously assassinated. I don't know where he found the guts to carry on, after being harassed for so many years, bombed, shot, but he clearly had a determination to help women who needed it, that I could only class as saintly.

Big Things

While

well that was all I got to write before the inundation of work: I hope there was no deathless wisdom about to be recorded, because it's pretty much gone.

Oh, yes, the economy: we can certainly see plenty of signs of pain all around here - and Little Rock supposedly is suffering much less than the big cities are, as it didn't get the same growth as they, in the last 20 years. Big things, like stores closing or shortening hours, huge discounts on offer (especially on cars, but lots of other big tickets too), and small things - our local favorite cafes are noticeably emptier, and are overstaffed.

Because the staff are paid so pitifully & have to rely on tips, several of our favourites are quitting their jobs, & looking for something else - Carol, one of the supervisors, has had her weekend takehome pay shrink by 50% due to the decrease in tips (both fewer customers, and they're tipping smaller, apparently).

Oh, yeah, poor pay? The minimum wage here is something like $5.70 per hour, except if you work as a waiter/waitress, in which case it is $2.17 (plus tips are untaxed). This is enshrined in the minimum-wage laws, and strikes me as utterly ridiculous (plus makes me wonder, how did the restaurant-owners get at the legislators that effectively?) ... and then some places (at least some of the chain restaurants) are so venal that they insist the tips get pooled, and divided with the local managers as well. Feh.

Mind you, it hasn't really touched us yet: well, the company did announce in January that noone would get annual increases in salary this year, but comparatively speaking, that's nothing: and with the company doing essentially all its' business with the Pentagon, big utilities (Power companies), and big hospitals, there isn't a lot of serious threats to employment at the moment, or really, likely to be for a fair while: even in a bad recession, everyone needs power, everyone needs medical, and of course the Pentagon never actually shrinks, despite political claims.

So while I would probably have difficulty changing jobs at the moment, it seems fairly secure for me to stick here, more or less indefinitely. In fact, as I am working remotely to the site where the computers I work on are situated (i.e. Albuquerque in this case), I may be able to move to a different SAIC office & carry on the same job - assuming they have a spare desk for me to park myself on. I haven't discussed this with my supervisor yet, but it might be quite a nice way for us to move to a different part of the country, without having to be concerned about finding a new job (assuming she goes for this: there may be contractual reasons I'm unaware of, to keep me in Little Rock.

More on that later, when I've had a chance to sound her out: but the prospect of moving to Virginia (near DC), or Oregon (amongst other places they have bases), is quite tempting.

Otherwise, we have a long weekend coming up (Memorial Day on Monday), not sure what we'll do with it but the weather is good, we may go exploring (well, driving around in our car) up in the Ozarks, north of us.... or not. Doubtful if I'll get to post over the weekend, but should be back to it next Tuesday.

Some crap never ends

Well, we heard from NZ the result of the case against Ashley, at last - after half a dozen deferrals, the sentencing was held yesterday, and he was awarded one year, non-custodial sentence. Not sure what this means, I think it's probation, but it might mean one of those stupid leg-tag things.

This is what you get for repeated sexual abuse of your 3 daughters, your step-daughter, and several of their subteen friends? This is justice? Stinking bloody fish, I'm afraid. I'm feeling pretty outraged about it, but that is as nothing to how Cat feels - degraded, disregarded, and dejected.

Not surprisingly, she has crashed into severe depression as a result: she feels this is saying, there is no penalty, it was nothing serious, all her hurt and suffering is just a trivial thing. I don't know what to say to try and help her out of it: it is a gratuitous slap in the face to her, her sisters, and to Ruth, for their 12 years of perseverance in trying to get some justice, in the face of repeated police incompetence, idleness and indifference.

Oh well, all I can do is treat her tenderly, try and distract her from her thoughts, and make her feel loved. Meh.