May 2008 archive

Please don’t ask me why this stupid song was going through my head….

Went kayaking ( that is a pretty loose description ) last weekend on a much under utilized lake nearby. Got my first sunburn of the year and yes I was wearing sunblock.

Taking pictures while kayaking. Not so easy…. try sticking your camera ( my crummy back up camera I might add ) in a waterproof pouch and snapping…

View from the boat…..

Unflattering look at me…..

Turtle and snake action. I freaked out thinking I was accidentally banging into a water moccasin. The turtles were less than pleased about being disturbed.

Thanks for looking at my crummy pictures. Tell me what cool things you are doing for the holiday weekend. Hang out, chit chat and then go read some of the excellent offering on our recent and rec’d list.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The New York Times reports that 270 undocumented workers who were arrested at a meat plant in Iowa in March, instead of being swiftly deported back to Guatemala, have instead been convicted of federal misdemeanors, sentenced to 5 months incarceration, and then will be immediately deported.  This marks a lamentable, new, harsher policy toward punishing defenseless undocumented workers who are selected for this special treatment.  And, let me say it, it’s a show designed to frighten and threaten and disrupt the other almost 15 million undocumented workers now in the US.

In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.

The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in nearby Postville in a raid that federal officials called the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.

Isn’t that efficient and fast.  The poultry workers were arrested on March 12, they pleaded guilty in record time, and they were sentenced in short order.  How, you might inquire, did this happen so swiftly?  Where was their relentless, publicly funded defense?  Where were their trials, their juries, their appeals, the recognition by the defense that these kinds of proceedings need to be fought and fought hard?  Answer: none of that happened because the government used threats to cow the accused into pleading guilty.

I slept in! It was a bad week at work.

Here is your dose of art.

And a bit of poetry….

Poetry by Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy – I Bless You, Forests

I bless you, forests, valleys, fields, mountains, waters,

I bless freedom and blue skies.

I bless my staff and my humble rags.

And the steppe from beginning to end,

And the sun’s light, and night’s darkness,

And the path I walk, pauper that I am,

And, in the field every blade of grass,

and every star in the sky!

O! if only I could encompass all life,

And join my soul with yours.

O! if only I could embrace you all,

Enemies, friends and brothers, and all nature,

And enfold all nature in my arms

Hope y’all are going to have a lovely holiday weekend. Hang out, chit chat and then go read some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.

I Didn’t Mean  To Say That

Until I said It

But It Wasn’t Really Me Who Said It

Saturday’s Headlines:   270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push   Obama would take California in November, Times/KTLA poll finds   Ban praises China quake response   Tibet could be ‘swamped’ by mass Chinese settlement after Olympics, says Dalai Lama  French trawlers blockade straits of Dover in fuel protest   Rubbish threatens Tuvixeddu necropolis   Opposition leader returning to Zimbabwe  ANALYSIS-Poverty a recipe for wider South Africa unrest    Sign of change? Israeli, Palestinian officers meet  Marines Won’t Charge 2 Officers Whose Men Killed Afghans After Car Bombing   Cuban sting shows US diplomat handing over cash to dissidents  

Hillary Clinton forced to apologise for staying in race ‘in case of an assassination’

From The Times

May 24, 2008

Hillary Clinton rushed out an apology last night after citing the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as a reason for her to remain in the race against Barack Obama – an extraordinary admission which caught her campaign aides off guard.

Mrs Clinton, dismissing the idea of abandoning her increasingly longshot attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination, said in South Dakota: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”

She added that she did not understand why, given this history, some Democrats were calling for her to quit. The former First Lady had been responding to a question from a newspaper editorial board.

Mark Anthony Rolo: Recalling the Trail of Tears

“The Trail of Tears began 170 years ago this week. We should recall it not as an aberration but as a logical outgrowth of an inhumane policy. And we should insist, in its memory, that Indian treaties and Indian sovereignty be honored.

When President Andrew Jackson ordered the Cherokee Nation off its Georgia homelands, the U.S. government signed a treaty with the Cherokees, promising them a $5 million payment upon successful removal west of the Mississippi.

It’s Nightprowlkitty’s fault.  For years I have been repressing my second love.  My first love is books and reading: that, I can do anywhere.  But my second love is my adopted city: New York.  

Sublimated, and how, as I live in this stupid cow town in stupid PA where the (Dem) governor is selling the f*cking turnpike.  Where people are more likely to vote their religion than their conscience (if they even have a conscience–they all claim to be Xtian but seem to have no clue about what Christ–assuming he may have existed–taught in that book they keep lauding); anyway, I had managed to repress my love of NYC until this evening.  When NPK posted a YouTube of “42nd Street” and I watched it.

Consider this my tribute to the second greatest love of my life.

Crash and burn

Giving new meaning to the term “drive-thru,” a van crashed into a McDonald’s fast-food joint in Miyazaki, injuring six kids and three adults inside.

That’s entertainment!

Who were those masked men? Two robbers worked over a 70-year-old employee and stole about ¥150,000 in cash from Puroresu Mania Kan, a pro wrestling merchandise store near Suidobashi Station, before fleeing on foot.

STATS

¥4 billion

Amount of money lost each year by 14 major bookstore chains due to shoplifting, according to a survey by the Japan Publishing Organization for Information Infrastructure Development

1,200

People who have contracted whooping cough so far this year, the fastest spread of the disease in Japan since the National Institute of Infectious Diseases started keeping stats

49

Percentage of respondents to a 2007 Asahi Shimbun survey who said that Article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war and bans Japan from maintaining military forces, should not be revised

66

Percentage who said so this year

67

Percentage of American respondents to a Gallup Organization survey who said they view Japan as a “dependable country,” down 7 percentage points from a similar survey last year