Islamophobes Butt Out of NYC's Business

I actually feel like throwing up. I cannot add a comment about this pastor's opinions and hateful behavior as leader of a spiritual community, I'll just let his actions speak for him. I am so sad. That is my reaction on a personal level.

But let's look at this from a legal standpoint. After all, Law is what sets civilized countries apart from barbaric or totalitarian states, right?

I'm tired of the debate with regard to Park51 centering on the Constitution. Don't get me wrong, I love the Constitution. But people who do not live here have adopted this question of the Park51 community center and made it into a national issue to be scrutinized somehow in the light of Constituional Law.

Well let me help you all out with a *fact*. The Constitution has absolutely no governance over activities in a building in New York City. The only applicable laws would be New York City zoning code. And Park51 is not in violation of anything in New York City zoning code. Therefore ... THERE IS NO LEGAL BASIS FOR PROHIBITING THE PARK51 COMMUNITY CENTER FROM BEING DEVELOPED. Period! End of story! Shut up already!


What's really getting to me is that people who live hundreds or thousands of miles away from Ground Zero, people who have no idea of what works and does not work in New York City, people who would likely refuse to ride the subways here for fear of the density, diversity, creativity, and especially of the racial and ethnic composition of New Yorkers, people who actually couldn't give a flying fadoodle about New York City and think that it is an evil town full of sinners and criminals ... these same people are the ones opining loudly that "the Ground Zero Mosque" does not belong where it is planned and is "insensitive".

Islamophobes, Butt The Hell Out Of NYC's Business. Your opinion doesn't count for anything here. It might seem strange to you, but the closer the polled population lives to Ground Zero, the MORE people think the community center and mosque should just move forward as planned.

This is our home, 9/11 and the aftermath is something we went through first-hand while you watched your TV commentators, and you just have no clue that what makes NYC great and what keeps us all getting along here is that we live and shop and commute and work and pray-or-don't and send our kids to school right alongside of each other here. All types of us, all colors, all economic classes, all countries of origin, all races, all religions.

Hero for today: Cadet Katherine A. Miller

Katherine A. Miller is leaving West Point to attend Yale University because of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, a discriminatory policy affecting LGBT people. "I can't be closeted anymore. I need to be open with myself and open with others about who I am."

She was in the top 1% of her class at West Point. DADT has resulted in the discharge of 13,500 service members, and now the discriminatory policy is causing young people in whom the military has invested to leave before doing service.

Wake up, America.
(Facebook friends click through to the original to view the vid)

Obama Signs Act To Empower Native Americans to Fight Rape : Ms Magazine Blog

Obama Signs Act To Empower Native Americans to Fight Rape : Ms Magazine Blog

scribi liberati *

Author Ray Connolly explains how to "do the Dickens" in the age of electronic self-publication and syndication.

Why wait for a publisher in an era when an advance can only be obtained for a piece of work considered a "sure thing" by persons who fear taking any risk? Connolly's economic business model is to give away a whole bunch of chapters, published one at a time, for free. Then to read the ending one pays (less than the cost of a paperback) to download the whole book. Then the free chapters come down and the book moves to Amazon's product list.

I hope this works. It sure is a strong impetus to "just write" without worrying about the submission/rejection cycles, editors who might impose unwanted revisions, recouping an advance, and so on. Therefore authors are liberated to simply create and to bring their work directly to market, much as musicians (and not just indie bands anymore) can do by releasing free mp3's.

Publishing houses beware. Adapt or die.

* never did take Latin, is this correct?

Quote of the day: Against DADT discharges

Why and how the hell do we end up firing our best and brightest when we’re fighting in two wars? If Secretary Donley does not step in, this nation will lose a service member worth $25 million in training whose skill sets are desperately needed today.

-- Aubrey Sarvis (in washpost, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, commenting on the case of Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach who filed for a restraining order barring his discharge from the Air Force on DADT grounds.

Cases like this one, though, do have their value. To those who believe a gay man cannot be manly enough to serve with valor, Lt. Col Fehrenbach's 90 flight missions in three conflict zones defy that particular myth. And for those who believe that any gay person in a shower is obsessed with homosexual desires and will start playing games with soap, towels and strap-ons ... GUESS WHAT, you have been showering with gay comrades all along, you just didn't know it!

Journalist of the Day: Robert Barnes

Even before I have read the article, this award is for the first sentence of As Stevens retires from court, one final duel with Scalia:

It is fitting that the last duel between the old ink-slingers at the Marble Palace was over guns.

Interlude: Bjork and PJ Get It On

Thanks to FB friend Amy for turning me on to this... it instantly became my fave version of this tune, beating out the Stones, Devo, certainly trumping Britney, and even the love of my life Otis Redding. Sorry Otis, this version has your guts but adds The Tension Of Getting No Satisfaction.

Single-Payer was the only decent idea

With all due respect to my friends who have urged me to relax my objections to the upcoming changes in health insurance "because we need to change things, and this is a start," ... the new plan sucks.

There is no incentive whatsoever for the insurers to reduce premium costs by any means other than minimizing the bang for the buck. So unless you can afford the high deductible and co-payments that will be assessed if you leave your insurance network, the list of covered doctors and hospitals is very likely to be reduced. Meaning:

• you may have to leave a doctor you have been seeing for some time and whom you trust.
• you might be in trouble if you have a medical emergency in a location where there are no nearby hospitals in your network and you are admitted to a bed for more than ER care.
• the insurers have not been asked to absorb a single dollar's worth of impact in our attempt to create a more fair system.
• the Conservatives are right. This bill sucks and should be repealed. LET'S START OVER indeed.

 Of course, Conservatives would rather see a more free-market idea. I would rather see the health-insurance industry eviscerated and destroyed.

Let the Market Regulate Itself, Except When We Want To Impose Our Morals on The Rest of You?

Over the years we've all seen examples of Conservatives opposing industry regulation. The industry should be self-policing. The government should not be spending our money to inspect meat, or children's toys. If a company makes defective products, consumers will not purchase from them, so the problem will just take care of itself.

I would love to hear a Right-winger explain to me why the same market forces should not be allowed to regulate media content. Why moral standards of some of us must be imposed on all of us. Why it is OK to show someone getting shot to death, but not to show people making love, on television. These are the same people who whine about Government getting too deeply into our personal lives and choices. About "the nanny state."

I'm glad to see the FCC is finally reevaluating the arbitrary and unAmerican "decency" rules that control our media content. I hope they end up throwing all such imposed rules out the window for good.

If you don't like it, don't watch it. If you think it will corrupt your children, exercise your responsibility as a parent, use the parental controls available on your cable box and/or stay on top of what shows your kids are consuming.

Quote and Hero for Today: Rabbi Arik Ascherman

In the type of wonderful portrayal of people and places that Nick Kristoff knocks out "on the regular", he quotes Rabbi Ascherman who heads up the Israeli organization Rabbis for Human Rights:

In the long run, we’re going to live here together, he says, “or we’re going to die here together.

Ascherman himself has served as a human shield between West-bank settlers or Israeli soldiers and Palestinians.

This is the first combo Hero and Quote for Today post, Rabbi Ascherman is a real mensch. A deep bow to Kristoff as well for making his readers better people, not just better educated, by reporting to us so many great stories of human strength and spiritual beauty.

Today's Hero: Jim Keady, obscure goalie, real mensch

LA Times:

For years, the former professional goalie has waged a one-man campaign to highlight Nike's labor practices, complaining that the company pays Indonesian workers low wages to stitch together the uniforms that have made the company the world's most successful sports garment manufacturer.

Sitting at an outdoor coffeehouse here, Keady produced several Nike jerseys in Cup team colors. "These jerseys are real wealth you can touch," he said. "They're making Nike and the players rich while the workers who make them continue to grind out lives of abject poverty."

Keady's campaign goes back to 1997 when, as a soccer coach for St. John's University in New York, he questioned the school's plans to sign a $3.5-million endorsement deal with Nike.

The devout Catholic insisted that the contract would be hypocritical for a Christian university. "I was told to drop the issue or get out," he said. "So I resigned in protest."

...In 2000, the towering, redheaded Keady moved to Indonesia and lived on the same salary as a Nike worker, which at the time was about $1.25 a day, staying in a 9-by-9-foot home in a community where 10 families share bathroom and kitchen facilities.

Interlude: cinder blocks and slide guitar

Of all the world's music, and I love (almost) all of it, I love the South African I'm-gonna-act-happy-in-your-face defiant love, and the rhythmic mash-up of it, and the melodic lilt of it. This woman in her 5th-hand clothes and her hard-tack life, just made my Western day.

Today's Hero: Hamis Ngomera

News is spreading about recent murderous attacks on albinos in Tanzania because of the price fetched by their body parts:

According to the Albino Association of Tanzania, the price for a complete set of albino body parts – comprising limbs, genitals, ears, tongue, hair and blood – has gone up from 75,000 US dollars to 200,000 US dollars.

Hamis Ngomera is a chapter chairman of the Albino Association of Tanzania and a Red Cross volunteer.
He travels to and through communities helping albino victims of violence and hoping to quench the superstitious beliefs that fuel this awful trade.

Hamis is himself albino.

Every Time ... that you purchase body soap -- or toothpaste, or shampoo!!

Every time you choose a product for your shower or bath or aprés-bain, consider whether it contains petroleum-derived ingredients (such as "mineral" oil, paraffin, petrolatum), and whether it is contained in a plastic jar or tube (also a product of the oil industry). Consider that liquid products such as "body wash" cost much more in carbon fuel emissions to ship, because of the weight of the water that is included, than do solid or powdered dry products.

In my quest to consume as few plastics as possible, in (of all places) my local Rite Aid drug store, I recently made a very happy discovery in "South of France" French-milled bar soap. (They also make glycerine soaps, and I will try one soon.) The soap is packaged in unprinted recyclable cardboard, and is olive oil and plant-derived glycerin based. No animal testing involved. The brand was almost sold out (not surprising at four bucks and change for two bars) so between the two scents left on the shelves I chose Lavender.

When I unwrapped the soap I remembered a hint about soap products that was taught to me by a facialist many years ago. Soaps have an alkline pH factor -- some stronger and some more neutral. To test whether the alkalinity of a soap is tolerable to your skin, give it a little lick -- if it "bites" it is too alkaline.

My South of France lavendar soap has NO bite. It is a lovely, gentle cleanser. So I decided to try it as toothpaste. And shampoo. It works great as a tooth and hair cleanser as well as a body and face wash. Just rub your toothbrush on the bar, or rub the bar itself on your wet hair (then splash on a little more water and lather up).

"South of France" soap is made not in France but in Greensboro, North Carolina. Check out their product line, but Every Time consider whether you really need to buy any of the stuff that comes in plastic bottles made from evil oil.

Follow-up on December 8, 2011:

Another great brand, though twice as expensive, is Dr. Bronner's bar soaps in great natural scents. The "plus" of Dr. Bronner's is that it is (1) organic and (2) most ingredients are Fair Trade.

Cornell Quotes Code and Cuts Clits

If you visit Cornell University Law School's web site today you can read U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 7,  § 116 which says:

(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), whoever knowingly circumcises, excises, or infibulates the whole or any part of the labia majora or labia minora or clitoris of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both

 The exclusions in subsection (b) number only two: necessary to the health of that other person, or for medical purposes in connection with labor or birth.

If you now cruise over to The Bioethics Forum, you will learn that pediatric urologist Dix Poppas is operating on little girls, and I mean little girls, whose clitorises are deemed to be too large -- by surgically removing a portion of the shaft and reattaching the glans. Then to prove that the young beneficiaries of his "medical care" still have normal nerve response, in follow-up exams a vibrator is applied to the clitoris of patients as young as six years old while they are conscious. Where is this taking place? Cornell!

In my time I have met two or three men whose penises were too large. I mean, really too large. Would anyone contemplate treating little boys by removing a section of their penile shaft at age 6 or 8 or 10? Especially since a large clit hardly interferes with a female's enjoyment, whereas a too-large penis, as explained to me by the bearers of these members, does interfere with a guy's?

Kudos to Profs. Dreger and Feder for bringing this to light, not just on this Hastings Center-hosted blog but Dreger mainstreamed it as well and it's already all over the b'sphere.

Quote of the Day: Emman Mbong, Nigerian Official, re the Gulf Gusher

"We’re sorry for them, but it’s what’s been happening to us for 50 years."

I Guess She Is Not Happy About Being Raped and Plundered

Tears of Mother Earth Illusion | Mighty Optical Illusions

The Fury of Jilted Citizens

Philosophy professor J.M. Bernstein breaks down for us what he identifies as being the root cause of virulent Tea Party anger. He explores the underlying belief -- a prevalent myth in our culture of minimized, granular social units -- in the notion that the Individual is autonomous and owes nothing to our collective existence.

Tea Party anger is, at bottom, metaphysical, not political: what has been undone by the economic crisis is the belief that each individual is metaphysically self-sufficient, that one’s very standing and being as a rational agent owes nothing to other individuals or institutions. The opposing metaphysical claim, the one I take to be true, is that the very idea of the autonomous subject is an institution, an artifact created by the practices of modern life: the intimate family, the market economy, the liberal state. Each of these social arrangements articulate and express the value and the authority of the individual; they give to the individual a standing she would not have without them.

Bernstein makes a strong analogy between Tea Party anger and that of jilted lovers, drawing on Hegel's philosophy that:

... all social life is structurally akin to the conditions of love and friendship; we are all bound to one another as firmly as lovers are, with the terrible reminder that the ways of love are harsh, unpredictable and changeable. And here is the source of the great anger: because you are the source of my being, when our love goes bad I am suddenly, absolutely dependent on someone for whom I no longer count and who I no longer know how to count; I am exposed, vulnerable, needy, unanchored and without resource. In fury, I lash out, I deny that you are my end and my satisfaction, in rage I claim that I can manage without you, that I can be a full person, free and self-moving, without you. I am everything and you are nothing.

This is the first piece I've come across that seems paint a valid Big Picture. The angry jilted lovers are denying the interconnectedness that actually defines us and validates us as a society. It's worth a good, slow read.

Interlude: Playing. Life. Change. Ah, AfReeCahhh

"The Playing For Change Foundation is building a new music school in the Village of Kirina, Mali. Kirina is a village of musicians, some of whom can trace their musical ancestry back over 75 generations! In this very special episode West African music legend Baaba Maal and friends perform for the village elders in honor of the new "Playing For Life" music school that is just beginning construction."

Comment of the Day: assessment of the nationalism of our species

It's sad that today there are still people running their lives (and ruining others) according to primitive fairy tales.

As a species we are dumber than dirt.

by "Dom" re the concept of a "Greater Israel" that incorporates the "God-given" Samaria and Judea.