meta-roj

that is, unless you’re one of the 18, 000 or so dead civilians or one of the 1696 dead soldiers.

doctor christopher g. hudson has explored the association between poverty and mental illness.

Socioeconomic Status and Mental Illness: Tests of the Social Causation and Selection Hypotheses [pdf – american journal of orthopsychiatry, 2005, v.75, n.1, 3–18]

This study tests several hypotheses about the underlying causal structure of the inverse correlation between socioeconomic status (SES) and mental illness. It does this through the analysis of a longitudinal statewide database on acute psychiatric hospitalization in Massachusetts for the fiscal years 1994–2000 as well as supplemental census data. The modeling strategy used techniques of structural equation modeling and found that SES impacted directly on rates of mental illness as well as indirectly through the impact of economic hardship on low and middle income groups.

i’m going to take it to the next level, with the well-known phenomenon of “starving artists” as a subset of persons with “low socioeconomic status.” now, i don’t want to draw any conclusions about which comes first, but i want to get this out there so someone else can.

a) everyone knows artists are starving
b) starving is evidence of low socioeconomic status
c) socioeconomic status is inversely correlated with mental illness
d) artists are mentally ill.

it’s circular reasoning. all you have to do is figure out where in this vicious cycle you want to jump in…

rfid isn’t just for princes and kids anymore. maybe it’s good for cadavers too.

UC Considers Using Barcodes for Cadavers [ap via abc news, feb 4, 2005]

Officials are also considering putting barcodes or radio frequency devices in cadavers that could be read by someone walking past the body with a handheld device. Radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags already are used by cars passing through automated toll plazas. UC officials said that they are still working out the details but that any body parts that became separated from the corpse would probably be tagged, too.

someone (laurence britt) took some time to look at the fascist regimes of hitler, mussolini, franco, suharto, and pinochet and try to find a pattern

today, for your secure homeland bemusement, i link you to someone else who has taken that pattern and matched it to current events.

in case you had any concerns about exposed breasts in the post-ashcroft regime, fear not, my fellow americans. jailtime awaits for the corruptors of our moral high ground. it’s the signage laws that will protect us.

Muralist’s vision has jail staring him in face [detroit free press, feb 18, 2005]

He painted Eve as God created her: nude.

And when he finished including the bare-bosomed Biblical first woman, he inscribed the word “love” on the mural that covers the outside wall of his Roseville art studio.

…

[39A District Judge Marco] Santia ordered Stross, 43, to serve 30 days in jail, do two years’ probation and pay a $500 fine for violating a city sign ordinance. Roseville officials said letters were prohibited on the mural and Eve’s exposed chest is indecent.

Besides jail time and the fee, Stross is to tastefully cover Eve’s breasts before reporting to the Macomb County Jail on Monday morning, and to paint over “love” by May 1.

“Removing the work is the ultimate punishment. The jail time is nothing compared to removing what I painted,” Stross said Thursday.

follow-up from the free press is here

back in february there was a bit of a tempest about postcards from buster. i’m going to revive it just a little today.

it seems that buster, in his travels, stumbled into a couple lesbians.

i’m an old man by now, and i think too much and ask stupid questions.

normally, of course, i’d make some general statement about how stupid this is, and probably dig up a link or two to the reason pbs was created back in 1969, and maybe the department of education mandate to promote diversity that came with funding the postcards from buster series, and how lesbians really do exist in the world and our children may actually run into one (or two) some day, but sometimes, it’s better to let someone else do the talking. and in this case, that someone else is a 12-year old muslim girl who got it.

A Child Learns a Harsh Lesson in Politics [new york times, feb 5, 2005]

Farah Siddique also knows what it means to feel marginalized, and she is grateful to “Postcards From Buster” for helping her feel less so. Farah, 12, lives in a Chicago suburb with Pakistani and Filipino parents who are Muslim. In a telephone interview, she explained why she was happy to appear on “Postcards From Buster,” wearing her hijab (a head covering) and studying the Koran.

“It was important to tell people about my religion and everything,” she said. “Some people think we’re bad because of 9/11 or something, and I’m telling them we are not bad, we’re not trying to hurt anyone or do anything wrong.”

Asked what she thought about PBS’s decision not to distribute the “Buster” episode about the children with two mothers, she said: “We don’t believe in that stuff. My opinion is that it is bad or wrong. My sister is 7, and she watches PBS Kids shows. I wouldn’t want her to watch that kind of thing.”

What if people said they wouldn’t want to watch the episode about her because they don’t like Muslims?

Without hesitation Farah replied: “Wow, I hadn’t thought about it like that. Can I change what I said? If people were judging me because of my religion I would get really sad. Now I think maybe they should show it.”

mrs. margaret spellings, are you ready to change your answer?

once upon a time, four brothers came to america from iran seeking asylum. in 1999, they were arrested for lying on their applications for asylum, and released in 2000. then came 9/11, and they were rounded up as security threats in october 2001.

Four Iranian Brothers Reject U.S. Release [ap, via abc news, feb 6, 2005]

They were charged with lying on applications for political asylum after an earlier FBI investigation of a Los Angeles-based cell of Moujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, which opposes Iran’s regime. An immigration appeals board has ruled that the brothers did not have ties to terrorism, but upheld their deportations.

first, there’s this sticky issue of deportation – the trick with deportating something is that someone else has to import it. apparently, no countries were willing to accept these guys, because the department of homeland security had tagged them as terrorists, and who wants to import terrorists? so, with nowhere to go, they sat in jail for more than 1200 days.

call me generous, but 1200 days is a long time to spend in jail for “lying on an application for political asylum” – no matter what the lie. i can only imagine what the penalty is for something really serious – like cheating on one of those no-child-left-behind tests.

but back to the story. the courts imposed a feb 20 (2005) deadline for the government to justify their continued detention or release them. because we have a creative government, these brothers were offered conditional release. and that’s what i’m here to type about today.

apparently (and i have so far been unable to find the original list of conditions), my government offered to release these gentlemen, with 13 conditions. things like they could not possess weapons, and had to check in with government-appointed babysitters on a regular basis, and they couldn’t travel more than 35 miles from their homes, or change addresses without government approval, or “talk to anyone with a criminal or terrorist background” [U.S. Releases Four Iranian Brothers, washington post, march 18, 2005].

i, for one, am glad someone read the fine print on this. because that suggests to me that the government has a list of everyone with a “criminal or terrorist background” and that they would provide it to these gentlemen so they could comply with the terms of their release. of course, i haven’t actually seen the fine print here, but you have to wonder just how much of a criminal you have to be to count. i’m certainly a criminal. back in high school, i used to jaywalk almost daily (but i was never convicted). in fact, the president of the united states has a criminal background (he was).

these brothers refused to accept the conditions, and, i think, rightfully so. would you be willing to live under the condition that you never talk to anyone with a criminal background? under penalty of re-incarceration and/or deportation?

ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the conditions were amended to keep them in a three-county area and bar them from political acts, espionage or terrorism as well as from knowingly associating with anyone involved in those acts.

not quite on the february 20 deadline, but the brothers mirmehdi are now out of “detention.” i hope this story doesn’t fade quickly.

[portions of this post from feb 6, 2005, updated and published with the news of their release]

but wait! there’s more. a formal investigation into a jailhouse scuffle involving one of the brothers.

U.S. investigating fight between 9/11 detainee and guard [san diego union-tribune, march 10, 2005]

Mirmehdi’s brothers said the incident Saturday began because guards delayed assistance to an ailing detainee who was begging to be taken to the bathroom. The detainee, Abdel Jabbar Hamdan, said in an interview that he has several medical conditions, including diabetes and kidney stones, and that Lopez taunted and mocked him.

“I said, ‘Please let me go to the bathroom,’ I was crying,” Hamdan said. “I was holding my stomach in extreme pain. Everyone see me crying. He was laughing at me. He said if you need to do it so badly why don’t you do it on the floor. Then you have to clean it. I said, ‘Please, I’m an old man, let me go, please.’ ”

He was eventually taken to the bathroom, Hamdan said.

Mostafa Mirmehdi had been troubled by Hamdan’s cries for help and asked Lopez about it, and asked his name, presumably to report his conduct. Lopez became irate, said Mostafa, Mohsen and Mojtaba Mirmehdi and Hamdan in separate telephone interviews. The brothers said Mohammad Mirmehdi asked Lopez why he was yelling at his brother. Lopez then attacked, beating and choking Mohammad, the brothers said.

“Mohammad was saying, ‘You are killing me, you are killing me! ” said Mohsen Mirmehdi. “I banged on the door, ‘You are killing my brother! Let him go! (Lopez) closed the door with his other foot. And I couldn’t see anything else. I could still hear Mohammad.”

One of Mirmehdi’s lawyers, Ahilan Arulanantham of the American Civil Liberties Union, met with him and Hamdan on Monday. He said Mirmehdi had bruises on his throat, under his ears, cuts on his face and welts on his arms.

“I think that clearly the account that was given by [Department of Homeland Security spokesperson] Virginia Kice is impossible to reconcile with the pattern of the injuries on his body,” Arulanantham said.

“formal investigations” don’t seem to change things very much.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

welcome to america.

wapava

tonight i’ve reached my limit.

virginia sucks.

it started with such a nice evening – people in shops even unlocking their doors 5 minutes after closing to help a guy out… but once i made it to virginia, as seems to be the pattern this year, just one little tweak, one little preturbation after another.

so, virginia is on restriction until it apologizes. i’ve got too many other places to spend my money.

containment