Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?

By JAMES VLAHOS

Now, though, I find that in some ways, my personal is becoming political.  I’m bowing out of one life and starting another.  As I think about my future life, I realize that it’s not a new job or occupation I’m seeking, or a new/old place, but a community and a way of life that fit a philosophy.

Maybe this sounds simplistic, and yes, lots of people do it, but the kind of life I want is linked to other people, and to place.  Everything that is important to me now is related to having a community, friends, a family.  I wonder, after having spent so many years single and hopping around whenever I wanted, if the idea of being connected even seems stifling to some.  To me, it sounds heavenly.  I don’t want to be far away, I don’t want to be isolated, I don’t want to be “must be a self starter and able to work independently.”  I want friends, family, community, a team.

Not only that, but I want to step away from consumerism and capitalism.  I’ve posted here and there about this, perhaps not on this blog.  But it’s time to actually be a part of it now.  I want to live my life, rather than buying ways to be distracted from it.  I want to grow some of my own food and support a local food movement.  I want to see how long I can go without stepping into a mall (easy) and without buying something off Amazon.com (harder).

Before I took my current post, I was making some headway, but being posted overseas with access to a DPO means that although we feel that we don’t have shopping opportunities locally, our federal government ensures that we don’t stray too far from spending our dollars in the US and concentrating on the myriad things we can ship in to a country to feel like we don’t actually live there.

Now, I’d like to live where I’m living – or where I’m moving.

And I want to create.

I’ve been reading and thinking and mulling over these ideas and decisions for a long time, and I’ve talked with some friends in depth.  I wonder why I’m blogging about it now?  Maybe it’s a way to create accountability, record my intentions, by making a declaration.  So here it is, me declaring myself, declaring my emergence into something different, and better.

The time for languishing in front of a computer monitor is over.  I’m going to create.  I’m going to be a part of something.  I’m going to become who I am.

I’ve updated another blog, Facebook, Twitter, texted friends, etc. but had not made it over to WordPress yet.  So, congratulations America on our new president!

On Monday night, I attended a friend’s President to Resident party, in which we played, “Which unbelievable statement did Bush actually make?” and a game of Memory involving matching up cards with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Ann Coulter, Border Fences, Axis of Evil, and Guantanamo Bay on them.  We also played “Throw the Shoe at Bush” with some toddler sneakers and a paper image.

On Tuesday, I headed out just after 11am for celebratory Bloody Marys and watching the proceedings in a community atmosphere on the big screen.  My friend and I celebrated for about 12 hours straight.  I’m glad that I was out in a communal atmosphere, a small local bar that was packed for the event.

Last night I was catching up on my Daily Show and laughed at Jon Stewart’s White House Reporter saying, Why does cheese all over Italian food taste so good but if you were toput it on Chinese food, it would be disgusting?  This was his way of saying that although President Obama in his speech used quite a bit of the rhetoric that Bush had used in 2004, it tasted darn good!  The Daily Show roasted President Obama for being very negative (rather than inspiring) about the state of our country, but frankly – let’s call a spade a spade.  We’re in a mess, and the first step toward recovery is admitting that we have a problem.

I’m excited, on several levels. It is (unfortunately) a major achievement that Barack Obama has made it to the White House.  I say unfortunately because Rick Warren making such a big deal out of it really rubbed me the wrong way, and I realized that it’s pathetic that such an achievement is still a first.  It should have been possible and achieved a long time ago in the United States of America.  Nonetheless, I had my doubts before the election about whether it would come to fruition, so I am absolutely thrilled.

Many people are holding President Obama to incredibly high standards, which Bush was obviously not held to, which I find unfair but typical.  But I think that with his pragmatism, he will not commit to giving us the moon when he knows he can’t deliver.  Making moves to close Guantanamo Bay and rescind the gag rule, which I’m counting on to happen before the end of the week, will be a significant start.

I can’t wait to hear from J at Back to Digressing about her experiences in DC.

He talks about his book, Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, which was released this past May. In a nutshell, his opinion as expressed to Terry Gross is that although George W. Bush and Dick Cheney may not be investigated for war crimes including torture, those in the administration that were behind the development of the policies that allowed for torture in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, etc. may indeed be targets of investigation.

There was some talk about the idea of establishing a committee under the Obama administration, which may be a way of avoiding actual international trials. Sands discussed the possibility of Bush issuing preemptive pardons for some, possibly including Donald Rumsfeld, William Haynes, and James Abbington. Sands’ opinion is that if this is done, the United States will have missed an opportunity to prove that it is serious about righting the wrongs that it has perpetrated through its disregard of the international outlaw of use of torture.  Following that missed opportunity, the door would be open for another country to pursue these investigations, and another country, he feels, would in fact be obliged to pursue these investigations.

He mentioned another potential out that South Africa used following the demise of institutionalized apartheid, which was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  The idea behind this process is that perpetrators giving testimony are granted amnesty, but their hearings are also based on the understanding that while they may have thought that what they did was best and justifiable at the time, they realize now that they were wrong and they regret their actions.

In the case of Dick Cheney, a truth and reconciliation process would be moot since he insists that his actions were right.

It will be interesting to follow this process.  What moves the USG makes will be crucial in the coming weeks.  Unfortunately Sands believes that the top men in the administration, Bush and Cheney, will be exempt from eventual prosecution, but believes that those lower down will be loathe to make any travel plans soon.  He cites the case of Pinochet, who, believing he was safe from Spain, sought medical care in England in the early 1990s and was subsequently extradited through an agreement between the two countries.

What remains clear is that some action on the part of either the USG or another country is crucial and inevitable, to demonstrate that the UN Convention Against Torture is not  to be taken lightly by its signatories, and that even in the context of international law, enforcement can be possible.

The US has set an example in spearheading the establishment of guidelines to outlaw torture; if those flaunting the rules are not investigated and possibly prosecuted, the message to the rest of the world will be one of permission.

ETA: There is a blog post on the ACLU Blog of Rights citing Sands in an excerpt from another book called Administration of Terror, authored by two ACLU attorneys.  I’m adding this to my reading list along with Torture Team.

NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday.

Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York’s JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.

“The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling,” said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU.

Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: “We will not be silent.”

He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like “wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,’” the ACLU said.

Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.

Last week, nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after passengers heard what they believed were suspicious remarks about security.

Although the passengers, eight of them US citizens, were cleared by the FBI, they were reportedly still barred from the AirTran flight.

Security has been at a high level in US airports since the September 11, 2001 hijacked airliner attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

However, rights groups and representatives of the Muslim community say the security measures have led to frequent discrimination and harassment.
source

For Privacy’s Sake, Taking Risks to End Pregnancy
By JENNIFER 8. LEE and CARA BUCKLEY, The New York Times, January 5, 2009

Amalia Dominguez was 18 and desperate and knew exactly what to ask for at the small, family-run pharmacy in the heart of Washington Heights, the thriving Dominican enclave in northern Manhattan. “I need to bring down my period,” she recalled saying in Spanish, using a euphemism that the pharmacist understood instantly.

It was 12 years ago, but the memory remains vivid: She was handed a packet of pills. They were small and white, $30 for 12. Ms. Dominguez, two or three months pregnant, went to a friend’s apartment and swallowed the pills one by one, washing them down with malta, a molasseslike extract sold in nearly every bodega in the neighborhood.

The cramps began several hours later, doubling Ms. Dominguez over, building and building until, eight and a half hours later, she locked herself in the bathroom and passed a lifeless fetus, which she flushed.

The pills were misoprostol, a prescription drug that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for reducing gastric ulcers and that researchers say is commonly, though illegally, used within the Dominican community to induce abortion. Two new studies by reproductive-health providers suggest that improper use of such drugs is one of myriad methods, including questionable homemade potions, frequently employed in attempts to end pregnancies by women from fervently anti-abortion cultures despite the widespread availability of safe, legal and inexpensive abortions in clinics and hospitals.

One study surveyed 1,200 women, mostly Latinas, in New York, Boston and San Francisco and is expected to be released in the spring; the other, by Planned Parenthood, involved a series of focus groups with 32 Dominican women in New York and Santo Domingo. Together, they found reports of women mixing malted beverages with aspirin, salt or nutmeg; throwing themselves down stairs or having people punch them in the stomach; and drinking teas of avocado leaf, pine wood, oak bark and mamon fruit peel.

Interviews with several community leaders and individual women in Washington Heights echoed the findings, and revealed even more unconventional methods like “juice de jeans,” a noxious brew made by boiling denim hems.

“Some women prefer to have a more private experience with their abortion, which is certainly understandable,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, an obstetrician with Ibis Reproductive Health in San Francisco, which joined Gynuity Health Projects in New York in conducting the larger study. “The things they mention are, ‘It is easier.’ It was recommended to them by a friend or a family member.”

Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, an obstetrician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, said the trend fits into a larger context of Dominicans seeking home remedies rather than the care of doctors or hospitals, partly because of a lack of insurance but mostly because of a lack of trust in the health care system. “This is not just a culture of self-inducted abortion,” she said. “This is a culture of going to the pharmacy and getting the medicine you need.”

Physicians say that women can obtain the pills either through pharmacies that are willing to bend the rules and provide the medicine without a prescription or by having the drugs shipped from overseas.

It is impossible to know how many women in New York or nationwide try to end their pregnancies themselves, but in the vibrant, socially conservative Dominican neighborhoods of Upper Manhattan, the various methods are passed like ancient cultural secrets. In a study of 610 women at three New York clinics in largely Dominican neighborhoods conducted eight years ago, 5 percent said they had taken misoprostol themselves, and 37 percent said they knew it was an abortion-inducing drug. Doctors and community leaders say they have not seen any signs of the phenomenon disappearing, which they find worrisome because of concerns about the drug’s effectiveness and potential side effects.

Sold under the brand name Cytotec, misoprostol is approved to induce abortion when taken with mifepristone, or RU-486; doctors also sometimes use it to induce labor, though it is not approved for that use. A spokesman for Pfizer, which manufacturers Cytotec, declined to comment beyond saying that the company does not support the off-label use of its products and noting that the label includes “F.D.A.’s strongest warning against use in women who are pregnant.”

That warning, in capital letters, also notes that the drug “can cause abortion.”

But it does not always do so, not least because notions of how best to use it vary from inserting several pills into the vagina to letting them dissolve under the tongue. The side effects can be serious, and include rupture of the uterus, severe bleeding and shock.

“We do worry because we don’t know where women are getting the instructions from,” said Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, which was also a partner on the Ibis study. “We imagine that there is misinformation on how to take it, which is why it could be hit or miss.”

In 2007 in Massachusetts, an 18-year-old Dominican immigrant named Amber Abreu took misoprostol in her 25th week of pregnancy and gave birth to a 1-pound baby girl who died four days later; a judge sentenced her in June to probation and ordered her into therapy. In South Carolina in February, a Mexican migrant farm worker, Gabriela Flores, pleaded guilty to illegally performing an abortion and was sentenced to 90 days in jail for taking misoprostol while four months pregnant in 2004. A Virginia man, Daniel Riase, is serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to slipping the pills into his pregnant girlfriend’s glass of milk.

Researchers studying the phenomenon cite several factors that lead Dominican and other immigrant women to experiment with abortifacients: mistrust of the health-care system, fear of surgery, worry about deportation, concern about clinic protesters, cost and shame.

“It turns an abortion into a natural process and makes it look like a miscarriage,” said Dr. Mark Rosing, an obstetrician at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx who led the 2000 study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association. “For people who don’t have access to abortion for social reasons, financial reasons or immigration reasons, it doesn’t seem like this horrible thing.”

Ms. Dominguez, for her part, said she had no insurance or money to pay for an abortion, and could not fathom getting one for fear her mother would find out. One of her friends had spent $1,200 on an abortion that left her with a uterine infection, and another friend endured the procedure without anesthesia, she said. In addition, Washington Heights is a tightknit community where abortion — as well as birth control — is shunned; if Ms. Dominguez were spotted entering a clinic, rumors could fly.

“There are scary moments, and you got to have a friend right next to you,” said Ms. Dominguez, now 30 and a mother of four. “It’s cheap but dangerous. Certain people are more delicate than others. But afterwards, I felt relief.”

A friend of Ms. Dominguez’s said her stepsister took the pills last year because she was in the country illegally, and worried that a doctor might turn her in. “She was just scared,” the woman said, speaking on the condition that her name not be published to protect the stepsister’s privacy. “She had no papers, no insurance, no nothing.”

The woman went to a free clinic afterward to make sure the pills had worked (they had). Health care workers and other community leaders say such visits are how they discovered widespread illicit use of the drug as well as homemade potions.

Dr. Rosing said he learned about Cytotec during his residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital in Washington Heights, where he saw a lot of Dominican immigrants with incomplete abortions in the emergency room. They spoke of taking the “star pill,” a nickname for the hexagonal shape of one form of misoprostol. He suspected “that has to be the tip of the iceberg,” he said, “and it was.”

The pills allow pregnant women a degree of denial over what is taking place. Like Ms. Dominguez, many women in the neighborhood talk about the need to bring on — or “down” — their periods, not abortion. Afterward, they might tell doctors or relatives they had lost the baby.

The Planned Parenthood study concluded that women in both nations “seemed to see inducing the termination of pregnancy, or abortions, as a part of the reality of their lives,” in a community where, as one interview subject put it, “we are all doctors.” The report noted that in a culture steeped in machismo, birth control is generally seen as the woman’s responsibility.

“If I introduce the condom into a relationship, I’m basically saying I’ve had somebody else, and I’ve not been faithful to you,” said Haydee Morales, a vice president at Planned Parenthood of New York.

Debralee Santos, program director at Casa Duarte, a community arts organization in Washington Heights, said that while she had never had reason to distrust medical professionals, she understood the apprehensions that kept other women from seeking them out. “I get it, I really do,” she said.

“It’s a community that, even as it comes of age, always relies on itself first,” explained Ms. Santos, who was born in the United States to immigrant parents. “Women, in particular, continue to help each other in ways that speak to tradition and solidarity.”

Ms. Dominguez, who volunteers at Casa Duarte and is known as Flaca, Spanish for skinny, did not want her name or photograph published at first. But after some thought, she decided to allow it so more people would learn about the trap many pregnant Dominican women feel they are in.

“It’s a health risk,” she said. “There’s a lot of girls in situations like that, and they’re overwhelmed.”

1. US needs oil.
2. Saudis have oil.
3. US needs to reduce oil.
4. Saudis say no need to reduce, they have plenty.
5. US orders Saudi shipment of oil.
6. SOMALI PIRATES STEAL THE TANKER!

I know that this is serious, I mean really serious.  Kidnapping by Somalis is no laughing matter.  A friend of mine has colleagues whose fate is still unknown after being kidnapped just recently.  

But seriously.  If the US cannot get oil because of Somali pirates, then God help us all!

But I am also afraid.  I’m afraid of what this really means if Obama does not win.  It is the same feeling that white women everywhere had when Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win the Democratic party nomination, I suspect.  This time it will be that much more real, though, much more complete.  Everything that we have been trying to accomplish in decades of civil rights history following the technical abolition of slavery is coming to some sort of fruition here, one way or the other.  

It is an amazing opportunity and if it does not go my way, it will be an amazing defeat.  

So I worry, and I hope, and I try to keep my expectations in check, and I hope some more, and I think, but what if we aren’t enough?  What if we haven’t done it?

I read a blog post today entitled The Joshua Moment? Race and the ’08 Election.   The writer talks about the fact that the story of race is the story of America, and I agree.  If you disagree, you probably live a life of enough privilege that you can afford to ignore it.  Don’t worry, I come from this background, too, and it took me a long time to learn.  

But the fact remains that it IS the story of our country.

First, race is the single most important and consequential issue in all of American history.

[snip]

 Race has been at the core of the American story since its beginning. Simply put, it’s been the dominant force of American history. For instance, even putting aside the colonial years, the first 70 or so years of the republic were consumed and shaped by slavery and racial politics. That conflict of course led to a terribly gruesome war that reshaped America, leaving permanent resentments, hopes, and even an ideological icon in Abraham Lincoln.

Race played an equally important role over the next 100 years. As any history book can illustrate, race continued to dominate politics and the political economy throughout Reconstruction and the ghastly “Redemption” period. Moving forward, what we have come to know as “The Sixties” – one of the most culturally and politically significant and innovative periods in American history – was also forged in racial conflict.

[snip]

But on a more abstract level, race is – and has always been – the great contradiction of “America” and the American experiment. Viewed abstractly, there’s a great deal of aesthetic beauty in the “idea” of America: We were the first country organized on purely rationalist, non-divine principles. The motivating ideal of our revolution was the equality of all men. We also remain free from the oppressive legacies of caste and class that burden even our more socially democratic allies in Europe. Freedom, equality, and opportunity – these are the American ideals.

Race, however, has contradicted these ideals throughout history, even mocked them. In the American Revolution, calls for liberty came from slaveowners. Indeed, the man who penned, “all men are created equal,” himself owned slaves. During the World Wars, we claimed to fight for freedom and self-determination, while treating Southern blacks as a separate caste. During the Cold War, we trumpeted the superiority of our own values, while opponents pointed to Mississippi lynchings. Even in recent years, we preached democracy promotion as images of the Superdome mocked our words.

And finally:

The fact that a majority of America (and hopefully a majority of white people too) is willing to cast a ballot for a black candidate is more than progress – it’s one of the greatest milestones in American racial history. And it shows that there are rational foundations for hope in the future.

To me, this election is more than the issues, more than the status of my health insurance or which tax bracket I fall in.  It is more than how long it will take us to retreat from Iraq or whether anyone is thinking that critically about the role of Africom.  (And no, that’s not the name of a tech company.)

To me, this election is about faith in humanity. Do we have faith that people are created equal and deserve to be treated equally? Or, do we believe that some are created more equal than others, and therefore that segment of the *cough* corporate elite *cough* will line their pockets while the rest of us suffer?  Do we believe, not that Obama is the messiah, but that this act is symbolic and significant in defining our future as a country?  Or, will most of us think as individuals, throw the greater good to the wind, and worry about that moment at which we might become a small business owner with the relevant income and how we might impose our personal religious beliefs on the largest number of people?  I want to believe that we have it, something altruistic, something greater on our minds than whether our children might do community service in exchange for tuition.

Do we have that kind of faith?

One of these concerns was hammered home by a reactionary litany typed by a right wing ‘libertarian,’ sprinkled with American flags, kittens and crosses, not to mention a Harley Davidson, and circulated amongst those that consider themselves “real” Americans and consider the rest of us to be unworthy of the rights accorded to us in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Specifically, that concern is the idea that a person can function as an individual, or perhaps as a nuclear family unit, without any participation in a community and the notion that one does not require any communal services or government support to get by in life.  I have heard of these people: they live in the middle of nowhere and have no access to education and healthcare.  The man that wrote this email will be fine with that until his children can’t get jobs and he develops cancer and nobody is around to support him.

[Emphasis mine. Please read the whole article, it's worth it.]

…Obama in Ohio spoke the language of American democracy, which has always included a perception that wealth is a form of power, and that stupendous inequalities of wealth produce an undemocratic inequality of power. His questioner, angry in anticipation that he could not hold onto all of the $300,000 he might hypothetically earn in a year, spoke the language of righteous self-interest; and he cited as his irrefutable authority “the American dream.” If I follow that dream, said the Joe of today, hoarding the wealth of the Joe of tomorrow, why should I ever pay a higher tax?

Obama’s answer was simple and Christian. Once you have been helped by a tax break to prosper and to grow relatively rich, it seems fair to give others lower down the ladder the same chance that once helped you.

[snip]

That the prosperous employer should assist the beginner was a natural corollary, for Lincoln, of his understanding of non-slave labor. Selfishness or, as he called it, “self-interest” was a symptom of a slavish mind, and incompatible with the high morale of democracy.

If this attitude makes Obama a socialist, then so am I, and so was Abraham Lincoln.  Although we live in the so-called land of opportunity, to me, opportunity means the chance to live a good life, for all of us, not just some of us.  I think our government should make that goal its focus, rather than encouraging every individual to hoard the cash that it gets its hands on.  I’m not necessarily saying that we should “spread the wealth” or institutionalize hand-outs, but I am saying that part of our civic duty should be to ensure that the inequality between rich and poor in this country does not continue to grow.

Last week, in the October 12, 2008 issue of the New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan’s letter titled Farmer in Chief was published.  I haven’t read the whole article yet, but during the episode of Fresh Air, they covered many of his recommendations and suggestions for the President-elect regarding agricultural and food policy.  Here are my notes.

• How do we define food?  Food subsidies are given to a portion of the population, and although it seems sanctimonious to define how it can be spent there is already a restriction on buying alcohol, but red wine is arguably more nutritious than soda.  Why don’t we redefine food to restrict empty calories, too, including those based on corn and soy?
• Forgive culinary school federal loans if graduates spend 2 years making food and teaching in schools.
• White House garden!! Set an example!  Carbon footprint of pesticides and fertilizers used on White House lawn create a large carbon footprint.  We need a farmer in chief!  Use ~5 out of the 17 acres.  Harvest should go toward local food banks.
• Redefine animal lots as factories or cities rather than farms. Farms are subject to lax restrictions, unlike treatment of factory or city waste.
• Agricultural policy must change by making produce and healthy calories more competitive than the currently subsidized empty calories (e.g. high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil).
• Agribusiness has seized the populous high ground = subsidy, brutalizing of workers and animals; good healthy produce, produced through hard labor, is viewed as elitist; this needs to change.
• There are evangelicals interested in a new food movement, working to own dinner again. It’s not just a leftist issue.
• We are producing sustainable salmon in Alaska, shipping to China to be fileed, then shipped back to the US. Same with chicken from California.  Shipping by boat is cheap, and labor so much cheaper in China than California, that financially it’s been worth it to use up the fossil fuels. But not for much longer.