What the hell is going on with escalation of violence in Russia? In just a few days, two airplanes downed, suicide bombing in a subway, and now this siege at a school. I guess the Chechen fighters decided the world wasn't paying enough attention to them.

And I suppose they are at least somewhat right about that--the world at large seems to care not a whit about the reported human rights abuses and ongoing war in Chechnya. Sure, it gets a blip on the BBC or NPR radars, but you don't really hear about it in the more popular outlets. They are too busy covering the mindnumbing, selfcongratulatory schmoozefests that are the Democrat and Republican Conventions. Putin proclaims normalization, lumps the Chechens in with the war on terror, and the international community seems all too eager to let Chechnya be the proverbial elephant in the room (and it's getting crowded in there).

Though Putin rushed to join the "war on terror" bandwagon and put the pro-independence Chechen thorn in his side in the terrorist category, he has turned down the feeble calls for a greater role for the UN in the area. There's been fighting in Chechnya for the last ten years.

Separatist or pro-independence groups are a sticky issue. On the one hand, in theory, it'd be nice if no group of people had to stay part of a country they don't want to be in. But it's not really practical--the world's existing countries have an interest in preserving the status quo and in not encouraging this sort of thing lest it happen to them. And I think if this were the case (that is, if chunks of any country could leave their parent country at any time), it'd be much too easy to quickly descend into chaos--a worldwide Balkanization. I suppose after some time, small nation states would start grouping together to form larger ones, until people started getting sick of it again, and dissolve into small groups again. I can only imagine what kind of havoc this cycle would wreak on world economy--trade, transportation, infrastructure, etc.

The existing nations of the world, of course, also have an interest in not letting countries invade each other--because (among many other reasons) of the precedent it sets for them.

I think it's easy to see where these two interests might come into conflict. What's the magic number to mark a country as being invaded recently enough to warrant help in ousting the invaders, at what point have the invaders been there long enough to consider the affair done with? What about conflicts that have the support of the majority of the native population and have been ongoing for a very long time? I don't have the answers.

At any rate, I was able to gather the following bits of history on Chechnya, mostly from the BBC (which I love dearly). Chechnya was first conquered by Russia in 1858. My own native Chile was only about 40 years old then, the war for independence from Spanish rule having only started in 1810. Similar pro-independence movements were going on throughout South America. In 1922, Chechnya was declared an autonomous region (and a Soviet Socialist Republic in 1934); in 1944, Stalin deported the entire Chechen and Ingush populations. Sixty years is not enough to forget that kind of sociopathic madness.

By 1991, with the collapse of the USSR, the local Communist leader was overthrown, and Chechnya was declared independent from Russia, and a year later, adopted a constitution that defined it as a secular state governed by a president and parliament. The Russians, none too happy with this, came in 1994. According to the BBC, up to 100,000 people were killed over the next 20 months. One. Hundred. Thousand. That's 5,000 a month. That's September 11 and then some every month.

It's hard for me to relate to carnage of such proportions; I know the numbers are large, but the casualties and the effect on individuals remain abstracts, blank cutouts in a shooting range. Maybe that's part of why the world doesn't do anything. The advances in technology haven't changed the fact that places like Chechnya are very far away--even though you may be able to get there in just a few days, you don't get to see what's going on there in a meaningful, everyday way any more than you did a hundred years ago. Sure, there's TV, but the images of TV resemble an action movie more than anything real--sanitized and dreamlike.

In 2000, Russia appointed Akhmat Kadyrov as the head of its administration in Chechnya. In 2003, Kadyrov was elected president in an election that was at least suspicious and troubled. Less than a year later, this May, he was killed in a bomb blast. In August, Kremlin-backed Alu Alkhanov was elected as president, though critics claim that, again, these elections were not free or fair.

But though I think there is plenty of blame to lay at Putin and Russia's feet, the Chechen fighters have been making things worse. The strategy of hostage-taking goes back to as far as 1995, when hundreds were taken at a hospital. I admit that my sympathies tend to go towards the people fighting for independence instead of the rulers in this type of thing, but spreading the conflict to civilians, resorting to hostages and suicide bombings of people who aren't directly involved in the conflict are simply not acceptable in my mind--that's where you cross the line and become simply a terrorist.

Russia captured Grozny in 2000, after attacks by Chechens (including a series of apartment block bombings that killed some 300 people). Some 200,000 civilians fled Chechnya.

And of course, there was the theater siege in 2002; sure, Russian response wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination--more people died when the soldiers stormed the place than at the hands of the Chechens, but goddammit, you can't just go in to a theater full of people and take them hostage and expect anything good to come out of it.

Which brings me to today. Whose bright idea was it to take a school hostage? I have to assume that the people who did this don't care about sliding from freedom fighters into terrorists; that they think hostage-taking is a valid way to get things done; that they don't care about involving the civilian population. OK. Not fine, but OK. Even taking that into account, didn't it occur to anyone planning this thing, that, if nothing else, it's really bad PR for your cause? It's a bunch of schoolchildren, parents, and teachers, for crying out loud. Just add some grandmothers and puppies, and you're set. It's not even like they had the excuse of saying they were acting suspicious, or allied with the Russian government, or causing trouble. These are just people starting their schoolyear.

Even discounting the adults, no one likes to see children harmed. And surely this played an important part in deciding to take them hostage--they must have figured that it would put the Russian government in an untennable position, that the families and community--the world--would be pushing for the hostages to go unharmed. And that's true. But on the other hand, people are probably also cheering that these terrorists rot in jail for the rest of their lives, and any shred of sympathy for them is gone. From a purely strategic point of view, it seems idiotic and shortsighted; the more gruesome the actions by a group like this, the more strongly the government will react, the more that common people will turn against it, the more the international community will clamor for harsh actions to be taken against them. The long-term harm an action like this would bring to any movement seems to me to far outweigh whatever demands might be met because of the shock of who the hostages are.

I find myself so tired and frustrated with the world news. I do hope those bastards get to spend their lives in jail, but they'll more likely end up dead. Which I guess is OK. Like everyone else, I hope the hostages come out of this fine, but honestly, I'm not optimistic.

Pop Vultures: Public Radio for Dummies

I am a total NPR junkie. I actually don't mind pledge week. I can recite the weekly lineup off the top of my head. I get annoyed when programming changes suddenly or a host is replaced (yes, I'm still cranky about Bob Edwards). I am, in short, a big nerdy NPR addict.

Our local station, KUOW, has one of the largest audiences in the country, so we sometimes get to listen to pilots of new shows before they are established and go national. One of them, Pop Vultures, had a nice enough premise: a group of friends who discuss pop music. The people sound fairly young, and they aren't professional critics. They're just people who really like pop music. I had hope for this show.

Unfortunately, the show collapses under the weight of its own meaningless drivel and self-indulgence. The host, Kate Sullivan, is in her thirties, but sounds much younger--partly because she seems unable to string together a coherent idea without using "like" or "you know" every fifth word or so, her speech is full of awkward pauses, and she ends every sentence with an upward lilt of her voice that's usually reserved for questions. In short, she sounds like the worst kind of insecure, giggling teenager.

The format is conversations between Kate and the rest of the Vultures, her friends. I can understand the awkward pauses in this format--they're going for a natural feel (though awkward pauses on NPR are too often used by writers and commentators to telegraph "I am saying something very important and emotionally touching right now"), so I can understand the decision to leave those in. But I can't help but think that any grown woman should be able to come up with something better than, "Four is like, an organic number. [...] You have four Beatles." To add to this, her delivery is stilted, punctuated by random giggling, and a lot of "Umm..." and "Uh..." (in addition to my above complaint of the constant use of "like" and "you know").

Ironically enough, Sullivan stumbles onto what I think is one of the major problems of the show on the first installment: "Coolness," she says, "is in the eye of the beholder." It's tough to critique music in a meaningful way--it's almost entirely a matter of taste. The show doesn't bother to acknowledge this at all; the Vultures' opinions are presented as fact, and anyone who disagrees is either a snob, ignorant, or just plain stupid. I don't expect reviews or critiques to agree with me, but I think it would be much more effective if the Vultures' actually bothered to explain why a particular band matters to them, why they think it has some historical importance to pop music as a whole, and what it is about a particular singer or song that touches them and stirs them. For example, on the first show, Sullivan talks about The White Stripes. She is a big fan, and at the start of this section of the show, she says, "When I talk about The White Stripes, I get really dumb. Because I love them, truly. And, I think that when you love a band, like deeply, you get really really stupid." This is actually a good start--who can't relate to the giddy, exhilarating feeling of passion for a singer/band, that feeling that takes your dignity and leaves you a drooling fangirl/boy? She goes on to talk about The White Stripes with another one of the Vultures, who says that they remind him of "really bad music. [...] It's like, somebody forgot to get a bass player, there's, you know--someone forgot to buy new cymbals." This is actually a nice change--for the remaining episodes, the other Vultures are mostly relegated to the role of yes-men. Sullivan's response to her friend's opinion of her beloved band though, is more typical of the tone of the show: "Who cares if they can't play. What-ever. But even if they couldn't, do I give a shit?"

The program does occasionally show some flash of insight. Some of its best moments come in conversations between the guys (Sullivan's conversations with her friend Hillary tend to degenerate into giggling and just agreeing with each other over and over). They will actually occasionally explain why they like something, or, even better, explain the context that a certain song came into being in, and explain why they think it's important to music as a whole. These moments are few and far between, and the conversations between the men feature a lot of Beavis-and-Butthead-style laughing and drooling over female performers' "hotness".

In between these glimmers of insight, we are subjected to statments like "The teen pop phenomenon, I think, started with the Spice Girls. I would contend that the Spice Girls were the big bang of teen pop." Because there were no teen idols before the Spice Girls, right. Or, when calling her friend to talk about the "Britney-Christina debate": "Everything Britney touches turns to fairy dust." "And everything Christina touches," her friend adds, "is just...normal."

In fact, some of the lowest points of the show come in conversations between Kate and her friend Hillary. In show three, they go on at length about Weezer's Say It Ain't So. Sullivan actually seems to have a good grasp of what the song is about (alcoholism and repeating the destructive patterns of, in this case, a father). But then, there's this:

"And like, when you see them live, that's, I mean, I think that's their most popular song, like, that's certainly the one where all the kids are singing along impassioned and, punching their fists in the air, with like, the passion of someone who lived through it, and that's when you really go like, 'alcoholism is the epidemic."

Call me cynical, but I'd be willing to bet that most kids at a Weezer concert are just pumping their fists in the air to a really rocking song.

Sometimes, Kate and Hillary's conversations descend into the downright catty. Also in show three, they spend almost half the show bashing Sheryl Crow. I am personally not a big Sheryl Crow fan, especially not recent songs (I do like The Globe Sessions, though), but the tone of this conversation is beyond petty. They offer no reason as to why they do this. I can only guess that Crow has failed to meet some unstated standard of coolness.

"Hillary, I don't wanna drag you down, or tie you down, but I want you to talk a little bit right now about Sheryl Crow."

"Puh-leeease. She's like, the richest person in the world, sitting in the front row of Versace shows, and singing about how she's so poor..."

"Nooo!" gasps Kate.

"There's a line that says, 'I don't have diddly squat,' I think."

Hillary continues, to more astounded gasps from Kate. "It's true. It's in the song."

"Aww, nuts," gasps Kate.

"She's singing like, 'I can't afford anything but everything's gonna be ok.' Uh..."

"Oh, it's so brave of her!" Kate adds in a condescending tone.

Apparently the idea of a song not being a biographical documentary has never occurred to them.

Sullivan starts trying to explain what her problem with Crow is, and it degenerates into an extended rant:

"It's that, like, you know, there are so few women in rock music, in rock and roll, pop, whatever you wanna call it, so few, and there's so many vacuous, just, idiots, women in pop, that like, if a woman actually, like, gets to a certain level of notoriety within rock, you, you kind of, hope that she's gonna kick some ass, that she's gonna, she's gonna stand for something, she's gonna mix it up a little bit. You know, like maybe even like Madonna, like just, just mix it up and freak people out and get controversial, just cause it's fun, for no other reason, you know, she's [Crow] done nothing like that, and she even had like, potential, like, she seemed like she was kind of a liberal, you know, sort of, pro-choice, and sort of, vaguely hippie-esque, and now she's just like, really rich, and gross, and she never does anything controversial, you know, her big political statement is like, having dinner with Bill Clinton. Hel-lo?"

I guess everything Sheryl touches does not turn to fairy dust.

Kate and Hillary laugh, and continue on:

"I feel the same way about Liz Phair," adds Hillary.

"Oh, totally! Total rich housewife. Rich Chicago housewife."

(Are rich Chicago housewives more evil than regular non-Chicago housewives?)

"Yeah!"

"The first time I saw her," Hillary adds, "she was so scared to go on stage that she was throwing up before, and like, was absolutely terrified to be on stage. And then you and I went to see her at the University, and she was kind of doing that, she was like, tan, remember, she was tan?"

"She was really tan, and that was really disturbing," agrees Kate.

"I know, she's tanned, and she had like, some flowy pants on her, or something, didn't she? And like, nice tennis shoes, and she looked like a housewife, and then she was kind of doing that awful skippy dance across the stage, and she had all these backup singers, and stuff, that were like, beaming at her."

Tans and flowy pants, the unmistakable signs of bad music.

"And the show was really really short, cause she just got..."

"And boring," interrupts Hillary.

"...tired, or didn't feel like it," continues Kate, "and it was boring as hell, and you just really got the feeling that, underneath it all her goal had been just to be pretty, and rich, and well-known..."

"And well-liked."

"And well-liked, exactly." Agrees Kate. "And when she had achieved that, then it was time to have a baby. And um, and Sheryl Crow, I kind of feel like the same thing, like now that she's you know, famous, and pretty, and she gets to wear Versace, and go to Versace shows, and eat Versaces, and..." (Versace pronounced "Versa-ce" each time.)

"And she can wear really high-heeled shoes because she doesn't have to walk anywhere anymore," adds Hillary (though a couple of shows later she praises Mary J. Blige for being able to hop around the stage in really high heels).

"Right, and she can talk about how, how bad it is that teen pop queens get, get half naked in magazines, and the she can pose on the cover of "Stuff" magazine, in shorts going up her butt."

"Yeah, it's fine..."

"It's fine..."

"Whatever..."

"Yeah, it's all good..."

"That's not even good controversy," concludes Hillary.

"We hate her, let's not talk about her."

I could only wish they had decided that before spending half the show on this.

"She's not interesting."

"No, she's boring."

And so is this conversation. And that may be its biggest fault; I like snark as much as the next jaded bastard (see TWOP for some great, witty snark). I can appreciate a good rant. But this is just self-indulgent rambling--which is fine to do with your friends, but it's not worth building a Public Radio show around.

The rest of this particular show is spent bashing Sting, whose sin is, apparently, that he's "so completely unaware of his own complete whackness."

On another occasion, Kate talks to Hillary about her experience watching Snoop Dogg. They get right down to the important musical issues: Kate wants to know what he was wearing. After they sort that out, the rest of the conversation revolves around how hostile Dogg was towards the audience, and how, according to Hillary, that was "just so hot" and "sexy." It made my head hurt.

To close, I'll just leave you with some choice quotes from Sullivan:

"One of the things I liked about ["American Idol"] was like, I felt that, in a sad way, it united America." (maybe Bush should use that as a campaign slogan: "Uniting people through, like, you know, 'American Idol,' and stuff.")

"Anybody who actually says the Backstreet Boys are bad, either they're not listening or don't know good music."

About current teen fashion: "I don't know how it happened, I mean, I suppose it's the eighties revival, whatever, but it's one of those revivals that is so completely not annoying." Almost the entirety of show twelve is built around how the eighties revival is, after all, pretty annoying.

"I mean, I guess what I, I guess what I like about Pink most of all is that, uh, I don't know, like she smokes a lot. I like that about her, like, she smokes menthols, and to me, that's like, keeping it real."

"Well, Outkast make me feel like I fit in this world, like I have a place in this world. And maybe I have a place in other worlds too. Um, Outkast make me proud to be an American. Outkast make me proud to be a black man."

Rock on, brother Sullivan.

Rigor

One day when I was 20, I woke up achy all over. I thought I'd slept funny--I had kind of an uncomfortable bed at the time--, and didn't give it much attention. The next day, the pain was still there, but again, it happens, some times muscle pain lasts a few days. This didn't quite feel like any muscle pain I'd had before, but I couldn't think of anything else it might be, and it was mild enough to not seem to warrant any additional attention.

The pain never went away, and it got worse as time went by. My joints would swell up in the morning--my fingers and toes felt like sausages. I started walking slower. I was having trouble getting to the second floor at school and having to take the elevator. I had piano class first thing in the morning, and it was torture. I still didn't go to the doctor, not sure why. I'm sure the fact that I was really depressed played some part, but I wonder if I didn't think that I was just lazy or something. Who knows. About a year later, I finally mentioned it to my doctor, who referred me to a rheumatologist, who ran a bunch of tests on me, and declared it rheumatoid arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a fun condition where, basically, for reasons unkown, your immune system decides to start attacking your joints. This was kind of baffling to me; all I really knew about arthritis was that it was a disease affecting the joints, and that it affected older people (and getting enough calcium, etc., throughout your life helped so you would be less likely to suffer from it). That's of course an entirely different type of arthritis, but I think this is what most people think of when someone mentions arthritis. It now seems a bit odd to me, but I accepted the diagnosis without any denial or anger or anything. Might have been the depression--when I'm really depressed, I have three moods: numb, sad, and suicidal--, might have been just the way I am--my general attitude towards life could be summed up as "kind of amused." My parents, however, were an entirely different story. How could their 21 year-old daughter have an old person's disease? How was it that, living in the US, people didn't know what caused it? Surely there must be some cure, this is not some third-world country. My own feelings at the time were just a mildly curious "huh, arthritis, chronic disease. Huh."

I didn't go back for treatment though. I don't remember why, probably put it off as part of my strict regimen of Not Doing Things Because of Depression. I didn't realize at the time that I was depressed--not in the clinical sense, anyway--and this was the year that it all came to a head. But that's another entry--for now, all that matters is that depression had seeped into every part of my life, paralyzing and stripping me of even the most basic of impulses. The RA got worse. I dropped out of school, and had no insurance. I didn't see a doctor for over another year.

I got married just before turning 22, and then got insurance coverage through my husband. By this time, doing anything was a very painful ordeal. Walking was this odd slow-motion activity with tiny tiny steps. Getting in the car meant walking my pathetic walk to the door; opening the door; aiming my back towards the seat; throwing myself in, stifling a scream of pain, and dragging my feet inside.

I found a great rheumatologist. She put me on antiinflammatories (steroids) right away, and it was an incredible rush. But of course you can't--or rather, you shouldn't--stay on on those for very long. You have to find some medication to actually control the disease and maybe reverse or stop the damage. We tried medication after medication. Nothing worked. And arthritis medications have nasty side effects--because it's an autoimmune disease, the medications weaken your immune system, which means you're more prone to catch all kinds of other things. At one point, I was taking an arthritis medication, something else to prevent possibly getting tuberculosis, and then something else to counteract a peripheral neuropathy (damage to the nerves on my legs, in this case) caused by the TB medications.

We finally found something that worked. It involved going to the hospital once a month and getting an IV infusion, and it was amazing. It was almost like I didn't have this insidious disease at all. And then, of course, I started having an allergic reaction to it, and had to stop. It almost seems like a dream now.

We tried a bunch more things, nothing worked. In November of last year, I caught a cold that lasted through the start of the year, and went into my nastiest bout with depression since being diagnosed at 21. My arthritis flared up to the point that often I couldn't get out of bed and had to miss work. I also developed fibromyalgia--my body's threshold for pain plummeted and my muscles went to hell from lack of use, meaning I was in constant pain not only in my joints, but also on every bit of flesh in between joints. I'd fall asleep through the day, because at night I'd wake up every two or three minutes because of the pain.

There was basically one more medication to try out, and then we'd, as silly as it sounds, just run out. This one involved injecting myself once every two weeks. It seemed to do nothing. I was feeling desperate at last. My doctor decided to add another medication that I had tried before, but that I'd had nasty side effects from, and luckily I tolerated it fine this time. It was very slow going though--it took a long time before I actually started feeling a difference. Not feeling "normal" by a long shot, mind you, but only mildly stiff and swollen on my best days, and able to move around, for the most part.

I have been on prednisone (the antiinflammatory) for about three years now, on relatively high doses. This has done all kinds of nasty things to my body. Even on good days, I'm usually not able to bend down, or do simple things like put on my own shoes and socks. On medium days, I can't stand for any length of time or take a shower. On bad days, I can't stand at all, can't get out of bed, and am confined to laying there and listening to the radio, because I can't even hold a book to read.

I often feel like I have no meaningful frame of reference. When my doctor asks me how I'm doing, I stare blankly and try to figure it out. Luckily she understands. I've lost all sense of what being a healthy person feels like.

My Saturdays start now with 12 pills of various arthritis medications and a shot (not to mention the myriad daily pills for depression, etc.).

But I'm at work.

On good days, I can chase my dog (walking fast) halfway across the living room.

just so you know...

I'm still around. I have been busy being sick, etc. I'm feeling a little better. I don't really answer personal email because I don't want to talk to people. But I'm still around.

Phenomenal Woman

Here's a nice poem by Maya Angelou to end the year on an upbeat note. This was given to me by Erna, a coworker who does stuff with Women in Black.

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to sho them,
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care. 'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

An excuse

This is my heritage, my legacy--what I bring to the world rattling behind me, ghosts of a whispered past that I was not a part of, chains and blood and mangled corpses. Books and a presidential palace burning. The world turned upside down and inside out.

Father, it's been thirty years since my last confession.

Both El Mercurio and the BBC have the story and pictures of what happened thirty years ago in Chile, free to anyone who seeks to know. Thirty years ago, Augusto Pinochet (may he die in fear), led a coup that ended--started?--with the death of the democratically elected President of the country, Salvador Allende ("the President of Chile does not flee in a plane," he said when offered safe passage) and then, seventeen years of dictatorship. Seventeen years and thousands vanished, murdered by Pinochet and his ilk who turned "to disappear" into something done to your enemies. Thousands "disappearead" and yet more live on to demand some sort of justice, though probably in vain. Well-mannered people, you see, do not speak of maimings and rapes and electrodes and beatings and bludgeonings with lengths of metal chains.

So thirty years ago, Pinochet and friends burned the Presidential Palace and set tanks out to mingle with the few who dared step outside. People were detained, lined up, laid on the floor like leaves in autumn, herded into the Estadio Nacional, which was turned into a center of torture and murder. Books and posters were dragged out into the streets and set on fire. There was martial law and curfews.

My parents--people who have never publicly been involved in politics, and who lean more to the right than the left--my parents lowered their voices whenever September 11 or Allende or the DINA (the Chilean intelligence agency responsible for what was, until September 11 2001, the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil) for years after this happened. Whispering and not talking of these unpleasant things has seeped into the blood of much of the people of Chile. My mother, not long ago, told me that perhaps I shouldn't rant against the US government in public, or on the web. The unspoken consequences left a chill in my spine for days.

So we come to September 11, 2001. More death and fire and firefighters carrying whatever bodies they could find. More people detained with no recourse. More ominous warnings to "watch what [you] say." And then, this: the hijacking of those events to clear the way for war and profits. War on places that had nothing to do with it. Questions of whether the Bush administration could have stopped the attacks from happening silenced. Anyone who doesn't fall in line with this "patriotism" considered almost a terrorist. September 11, 1973 was used in Chile as an excuse for seventeen years to silence its people under a traitor that ruled and destroyed ruthlessly. September 11, 2001, is, I fear, being used in the same way by Bush & Co.


In El Mercurio's site, I found this picture taken on September 11,
1973. The caption read simply, "workers surrender."

No blood for __________

I said before that, try as I might, I can't seem to find another main reason for the war than oil. But it occurred to me a couple of nights ago--what if the main drive behind the war isn't oil, but reelection? Everyone, regular wisdom goes, loves a wartime president. And those who don't can easily be labeled America-hating, freedom-scorning, Hussein-loving communists. Err, I mean terrorists.

Sure, it seems like a risky path to take in a push for reelection, but I truly don't think that Bush and those who have his ear thought the risks to be meaningful in any way. In fact, the White House & Co. seemed taken aback that there was some Iraqi resistance instead of open arms and parties (note to Fleischer, Rumsfeld, et al.: people tend to get grumpy when they see foreign tanks rolling into their country, no matter what the stated aims are).

Support for the war was tenuous at best before the war. Most Americans wanted the US to go through the UN. Bush's solution? Present the country with fait accompli. Once the war was under way, people would rally around the President, they guessed, and the gamble paid off. Bush can now call himself a wartime president (he did manufacture the war, but people don't seem to mind anymore) and run basically unopposed. What about, you say, the Democrats? Opposition Democrats--opposition anythings these days are about as common as the tooth fairy.

Things I Want For My Birthday

Not to be confused with Anesly's All-Occasion, Ever-Growing Wishlist O'Fun! (please note that the exclamation mark is an integral part of the name).

1. A more or less permanent job
2. Season 3 of Buffy and/or Season 1 of Angel (which features the goofy Angel dance)
3. Money (see #1)

I will be holding my birthday around April 12 this year. We now return you to your regularly scheduled political and world event hand-wringing.

Exhuming McCarthy

listen

REM
from Document (1987)

You're beautiful more beautiful than me
You're honorable more honorable than me
Loyal to the Bank of America

It's a sign of the times
It's a sign of the times

You're sharpening stones, walking on coals
To improve your business acumen.
Sharpening stones, walking on coals,
To improve your business acumen.

Vested interest united ties, landed gentry rationalize
Look who bought the myth, by jingo, buy America

It's a sign of the times
it's a sign of the times

You're sharpening stones, walking on coals
To improve your business acumen.
Sharpening stones, walking on coals,
To improve your business acumen.

Enemy sighted, enemy met, I'm addressing the realpolitik
Look who bought the myth, by jingo, buy America

"Let us not assassinate this man further Senator,
you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir?
At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

You're sharpening stones, walking on coals
To improve your business acumen.

Sharpening stones, walking on coals,
To improve your business acumen.

Enemy sighted, enemy met, I'm addressing the realpolitik
You've seen start and you've seen quit
(I'm addressing the table of content)
I always thought of you as quick
Exhuming McCarthy
(Meet me at the book burning)
Exhuming McCarthy
(Meet me at the book burning)

France ate my homework.

I am, as always, torn and arguing with myself. Call it the INTP disease. With that said, here are a couple of things my brain's managed to settle on for a few minutes before changing its mind.

George Bush will have his war. The fact that this Administration has been pushing to invade Iraq since it was installed by the Supreme Court makes me incredibly skeptical of any claims of imminent danger by a regime that by all accounts is only interested in keeping itself afloat. I keep searching for reasons for us going to war—because I'd like to think that it's about more than just oil or a personal grudge, but I fail to find them. I am bewildered, frustrated, and incredibly saddened. I am specially saddened—and anguished—by those who proclaim that sending their children to war and cheering the government on in squandering their lives is the only way to support them [the troops].

I am still astonished at the fact that the US failed to muster the necessary votes for another UN Security Council resolution on the issue. Sure, now Bush and the couple of countries he managed to have on his side—Britain, predictably, and Spain, and later Portugal (not a exactly a who's who of world power)—point the finger to the French-threatened veto, but one only has to look at the extremely short list of countries doing the pointing in the first place to see that, even if the French had folded (and an argument can be made that, had the rest of the Council shown support for the US and British proposed course of action, France would indeed have folded) to see that the support just wasn't there. The US has effectively squandered whatever good will the attacks of September 11 had fostered abroad—and there was an incredible outporing of sympathy and good will then—with its clumsy-at-best diplomatic maneuvering. Colin Powell, perhaps the sole voice of reason of the lot, has been steamrolled by the Bush-Rumsfeld machine, where sledgehammers and anvils pass for subtlety and diplomacy. And, sad as it is, compared to Rumsfeld, Bush is positively suave—a veritable James Bond.

When I'm in charge, and right after I've made sure that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks never come close to making another romantic comedy (because first thing's first), the second order of business will be a muzzle for Rumsfeld and a speech therapist for Bush.

Definitions

An accident: you are driving along, someone steps off the curb without looking, and you hit the brakes, but the car doesn't stop in time. You hit them.

Not an accident: you are destroying civilian homes in illegally occupied territories; an international civilian stands on a mound of dirt in front of your bulldozer, wearing a bright reflective vest and holding a bullhorn, waving her arms and yelling at you to stop. You keep going. You dump a great big pile of dirt over her. Then, you drive forward, running her over. Then, you drive backwards, running her over again.

---

An email from Jed to the Israeli Embassy. He puts it better than I can right now, since I am still bubbling over with frustration and anger:


Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:23:31 -0800
From: Jed
To: ask@israelemb.org
Subject: The Bulldozing Of An American Youth

I am an American born, raised, living and working in Seattle, WA, just north of Olympia, the home of Rachel Corrie, the unfortunate young protester who died in Gaza.

I will say first and foremost that terrorism is despicable and no nation should have to suffer from its threat. I firmly believe that Israel should exist as a secure sovereign nation. However, I also firmly believe that Palestine has an equal right to exist as a secure sovereign nation free from blatantly illegal and indefensible settlement and extremely oppressive never-ending military occupation.

I will forgo a discussion of collective punishment and get to the heart of the matter, that being the fact that a young woman in a brightly colored jacket was standing in front of a bulldozer waving her arms and yelling, yet was knocked over by it, buried by it, run over by it and then run over by it yet again. The Israeli statement declaring this as a "very regrettable incident" isn't merely an understatement, it's a slap in the face. On top of that, trying to lay the blame on the protesters is simply disgusting.

Everytime I hear of IDF forces killing Palestinians, most especially small children, it sickens me to think that those rifles, those missiles, those helicopters, those very weapons are probably supplied by the US. And everytime I hear of the IDF being involved in over-zealous actions, the Israeli military says "There will be an investigation." I would dearly love to hear what the findings of such investigations are, what (if any) punishment is handed out for shooting a small Palestinian child for being on the wrong street at the wrong moment, or burying and crushing a young protester trying to halt the bulldozing of yet another home in the impoverished Palestinian Territories.

I have almost no hope whatsoever that this email will have an effect on your government's actions or policies, but as an American, I must tell you that I consider this just another in an endless series of brutal actions taken by Israel in the name of fighting terrorism and self-defense. America has been a fast friend of Israel for decades, but even our patience has limits. An IDF killing (at the moment, I will refrain from using the word 'murder') of a young American girl will *not* go unnoticed, it will not be glossed over by Israeli or US State Department press releases about an "investigation"; it is another mark in the ever-growing tally of innocent lives lost in the Israeli quest for "security".

I will end this email by saying that I sincerely and desparately hope that Israel finds peace and coexistance with the rest of the world and most especially its neighbors through the most peaceful means possible.

Shalom, pax, salaam,
JM

---

- See more photos of Rachel Corrie and the action that led to her death
- The International Solidarity Movement
- Email the Israeli Embassy

Fighting with Mexico

At the February 15 march against the war here in Seattle, once in a while, people would start chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, we won't fight for Texaco!" Unfortunately, it was kind of slurred and out of synch, and it wasn't all that many people [chanting], so it sounded kind of like they were saying, "hey hey, ho ho, we won't fight for/with Mexico," which caused a bit of confusion and some giggling.

It made as much sense as the current rush to war. The Bush administration talks of people hating us because we have freedom, democracy, and so on, and how we are going to bring this to the people of <insert country of choice here>. Yet he doesn't listen to his own people; support for the war is tenuous and most people don't think he's presented convincing evidence (and is anyone really surprised, considering this is the man who urged people to elect him and not get tangled up in facts—oh yes, tricksy, tricksy facts—and just trust him). The US has been trying to bully countries into voting for war at the Security Council, and alternately dismisses and issues veiled threats to those countries who dare to listen to their own people.

It is impressive that countries so dependent on US aid have been holding out on the vote. It says, perhaps more than any other argument, just how soundly Bush & Co. have failed to make the case for war. Do they want regime change? Disarmament? Inspections? Enforcement of current regulations? It all varies depending on which day it is. Try as they might, they haven't shown a link between Iraq and everyone's favorite boogeyman, al-Qaeda or some other sort of terrorist group—“terrorist” being today's preferred put-down. Colin Powell's presentation to the UN, which many hoped would turn world opinion to Bush's favor, had about as much proof of the alleged link between Iraq and terrorists as a Mariah Carey movie has sharp social commentary.

Even for me, cynic that I am, the "it's all for oil" explanation seems too pat. Sure, oil is a major consideration—as a State Department official quoted in the latest issue of "The American Prospect" said, "If the Gulf produced kumquats, would we be doing this? I have my doubts." Oil figures prominently in any discussion of the geopolitical issues of the area; oil is a major reason in the push for war—though for the Administration to actually say it would be oh-so-gauche—and in the French-led resistance to it. But it seems to me that Bush is risking precipitating all the things that this war is supposed to fix or prevent; among them, an oil shortage. Surely, he must know this. There must be someone at the White House who's mentioned this.

Hussein is, of course, a complete asshole. A dictator. Someone who's committed numerous human rights abuses and who should not be in power; someone who should be at The Hague and later rotting in prison, afraid to die and dying afraid of what may come afterwards. But he's by far not the only one; the US has made a conscious decision to let others like him—and perhaps even worse—stand, and befriended them and offered aid when it was deemed to further the national interest (whatever that is).

And this leaves me right back at the beginning—completely baffled as to why our government is happily skipping towards war. The world being what it is, you can't just go around removing governments you think are wrong—there are consequences to be considered; there are alliances to be forged and compromises and promises to made. The possible consequences, in this case, just don't seem worth it to me. But, what do I know. I don't think that "he tried to kill my daddy" is a good enough reason to risk throwing the world into turmoil.

In high school, I read a poem about a visit to Auschwitz—and how striking it was that there were children playing nearby and flowers starting to grow where unspeakable things had happened.

I understand that people have their own lives to keep on living, but it felt so strange to have to go about my business like nothing had happened. Seeing people in their shops or talking to their friends and laughing outside their homes seemed so incongruous, so grotesque.

I got a job today. I started volunteering at PAWS; today. I came home and cried and whimpered on Jed.

Taking the elevator down to the basement of our building to get in the car sends my heart into a frenzy and shivers down my spine.

If I was up there and the fire was there, I would have jumped.

Mom, the Palestinians are looking at me funny!

Israel continues with its policy of assassinating suspected Palestinian terrorists. 'Anticipatory self-defense,' they call it. Doesn't self-defense imply that you are under some sort of actual threat, not that you might, at some point, perhaps, fear for your well-being? If I decide the guy who's walking up the street might in the future decide to rob or rape me, I can't just fire a gun in his general direction, no matter what kind of funny looks he might be giving me. If I did and used this sort of defense I'd probably get laughed at. Yet the Israeli attacks seem to elicit nothing more than a disapproving frown and a shake of the head from the U.S—not even when these attacks also take the lives of bystanders. Israel continues to expand its settlements and bulldoze the homes of
Palestinians (who are, make no mistake, a people under harsh colonization and occupation—you’d be angry too under those circumstances), even in areas that are supposed to be under Palestinian control. And when they ask for neutral observers to be sent in, Israel calls it 'one-sided,' and the U.S. wields its veto power in the U.N. about and refuses to go along with it. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

(Please note that I am not saying that it's acceptable to blow yourself up in a restaurant full of people, but the idea of 'anticipatory self-defense' is absolutely ludicrous to me.)

A girl who IRCs on one of the channels I'm on these days is getting kicked out of the country by the INS. She's originally from New Zealand and married a US citizen. She has to stay in NZ until her visa goes through here in the US. That's at least several months. They've been married just over a year.

Jed has been a lot more paranoid about the whole INS deal than me. He's the one that has wanted to make doubly sure that everything is as it should be. Me, I figured we have a lawyer, we have our papers in, we asked our questions, now we just wait. Now I wonder, could this be me?

Unlikely, not for the same reasons anyway. But I suppose there is always the possibility that someone somewhere along the line will screw something up and not leave us with enough time to remedy it. And what would I do then? I can't imagine having to leave for several months, maybe years. There is nothing for me in Chile--there hasn't been for a long while, and some time ago I promised myself I would not go back. I know that a couple of entries back I said that I would have a nice if somewhat discombobulated life should I have to go back, but it's not true. I don't want it to sound like a threat, so I don't like saying it at all, but I know that at this point there is no going back for me.

Could this be me? My heart wrings itself into a knot thinking of it. For her. For myself a bit, because just imagining it feels like someone is cutting a chunk out of my chest. But for her, for her, because she's the one that will be at the airport in two days.

It seems the Bush administration has backed up a bit on at least using the term amnesty and is now considering a "guest worker" program. This might be ok, except that, in general, when people are in a country illegally it is because they don't want to leave (which is what they would otherwise be made to do), and "guest" implies a limited term of stay. What makes these authorities think that people who risk all kinds of things every day in order to stay in a country are going to willingly sign up to be a guest worker, and therefore have to eventually leave, is beyond me.

The Bush White House is considering granting legal status to millions of Mexicans who are living in the country illegally. Part of me thinks good for them if they get it, but part of me has some issues with the proposal. First of all, why just Mexicans? Other than Bush's relationship with
Mexico's Vicente Fox, I can't come up with an answer. Sure Bush is sucking up to the Hispanic vote, but he could do that just as well by passing a measure for a broader group. And yes, I am aware that Mexican nationals make up a large chunk of the illegal immigrant numbers, but, again, it seems to me that passing such an amnesty for all illegal immigrants that meet certain requirements would achieve the same thing. Then there's the more personal issues: I have been in the US since I was thirteen. I don't feel at home anywhere else. All my friends are here; my education, my life, my points of view have little or nothing to do with my country of origin (Chile) anymore. And yet, I have never been legally able to work. I am twenty-two now, and just got a work permit because I happened to marry a US citizen. If it wasn't for that, I would still be forced to go to school, paying several times as much as my classmates, no matter where I lived or for how long I'd been there, ineligible for any kind of loan or financial aid, and prohibited from working unless I had authorization from the school, and then only on campus and part-time. After I finished school, I would have a limited time to find work in the US, otherwise I would be forced to return to a country I haven't lived in for more than ten years, a country that has nothing for me. If I did find a job in the US, my visa would restrict my working only for that one company. If I got laid off or fired, you guessed it, back to Chile it is.

I knew plenty of people who were here illegally. They worked as waiters or waitresses or some other similar low-paying jobs, got help from charitable organizations and the government when they could swing it. They lived in fear of being deported, but it never happened. I realize that for some people, leaving their country is a matter of life or death (or unbearable living conditions). I don't necessarily oppose an amnesty, but an amnesty alone for just one nationality seems woefully inadequate.  Immigration laws in this country are in dire need of a rehaul—people who try to follow the law find themselves with few if any options. I suppose it's only symptomatic of the state of things that, even to someone like me, who has a nice life here and who would have a nice (though somewhat discombobulated at first) enough life in Chile, sometimes the illegal way just seems easier.

The Talk

I was almost brought to tears when I found out about sex. I was in second grade and it was by accident—I overheard someone else's dirty joke at school. We lived in a rural area, and sure, I'd seen cows and horses going at it, but I'd never related what they were doing to how my siblings and I came to be. Oh sure, I knew that babies spent a good deal of time in the mother's tummy, and I laughed knowingly when other kids were told of cabbages and storks. Me, I knew how things were done. Parents got married and shared a bed and then decided to have children, so they prayed a lot, and next thing you knew there was something growing in mom's belly. The marrying wasn't necessary, I knew, because somewhere I had heard the expression "single mother" and asked my mom how a single woman could get pregnant.

"Well, sometimes," she told me, "if a woman is single and sleeps with a man, then she gets pregnant."

Ah. I was satisfied with this, but what if I shared a bed with my baby brother? That was different, she explained, and left it at that.

So you didn't need to be married, but you had to share a bed. Oh yes, I was wise in the ways of the world.

My first reaction when I heard the joke was shock. Well, maybe animals did it that way, but not us. Well, maybe some people. "Maybe these modern couples," I distinctly remember thinking. Not my parents. The idea sunk in, eventually. I then spent several years pretending I knew nothing of it and uncomfortably awaiting The Talk.

I recently asked a friend how his Talk had gone. He had been a young kid in school, and realized that he got a reaction when he asked where babies came from. Delighted, and much to the despair of his teacher, he started asking just about every day, until finally, distraught, the teacher called his parents and asked them to explain it to him. They walked to his room and sat on the bed with him, and then explained sex to him in what was doubtlessly a nerve-wracking experience, because they forgot to mention the vagina. For some time after this, my friend was convinced the way one became pregnant was through anal sex, and wondered what the purpose of women was. Men already had all the parts required to reproduce; women were just lacking a penis.

Time went by and my classmates started sprouting breasts. Mine had been there for years: two small lumps, looking hopelessly out of place, as if a sculptor had set down two balls of clay while she answered the phone and then completely forgotten about them. The girls and guys were segregated and shown film strips about periods and other puberty mishaps. We were given pads and propaganda by a sanitary napkin company. The girls in my class were elated when, one after the other, they all got their periods. I thought they were insane, and hoped I could get away without it until I was close to eighteen. I wasn't that lucky, but managed to be a couple of years behind nonetheless.

Even then, I never got the talk. After I started getting my period, it became clear it wasn't going to happen. I don't know if my parents decided I was smart enough to figure it out by myself by then, or if they simply put it off too much because they were embarrassed.

Years later, I nearly jumped up and gave my dad a high-five when I saw him surreptitiously putting a box of condoms in a suitcase my mom and him were taking on a weekend getaway.

[Originally posted to the Other INTP List]

Last night, shortly before going to bed, I heard a delighted squeal coming from up the street.

"Oh my GOD!"

I could picture a girl of about my age jumping up and down, horribly excited at something stupid. I could picture dogs all around the neighborhood twisting and squirming in pain as the already high pitch rose higher and higher. She could've just been told that she'd found the cure to cancer, for all I knew. No matter. The cure for cancer was clearly a shallow endeavor if it necessitated such squealing.

"The problem with this neighborhood," said my husband as we were going to bed, "is that you hear all kinds of noises and you can't tell if someone's getting murdered or if they just dropped their mocha."

A couple of days ago, there was screeching of brakes and the unmistakable bang of a car crash at the corner. "Sucks to be that guy," I muttered, not even looking away from the monitor, not skipping a beat in my typing. My husband and his friend went to the window and saw that it didn't look serious and that someone else had called the cops. Later, I was astonished at my lack of caring.

People always mention that case of a girl who was murdered within earshot of all the neighbors. In New York, wasn't it? Nobody did anything about it—they ignored it, it was Someone Else's Problem. But this, of course, is New York, don't you see. People there are jaded and soulless in New York. New York is a Big City, with alleys and grime and public transportation. People get murdered by their neighbor's window there all the time. It's a risk you take, you see, when you live in New York. In fact, they probably make you murder a couple of people of your own before you're allowed into the city. No, we are different. What kind of a person just sits by and says "Sucks to be that guy" without even looking away from what they're doing when they hear a noise that clearly indicates someone's in trouble? Only a New Yorker.

Because of our proximity to the frat houses we get all kinds of odd noises. Someone screaming about burritos, less-than-sober renderings of George Michael songs, grunting, squealing. If I'm woken up by them, I mumble curses and go back to sleep. If it was death-squealing, death-grunting (death-George Michael?), I would shoot up from the bed and run, no, fly to the phone and save someone's life, I tell myself before falling back asleep.

[Originally posted to the Other INTP List]

I have been thinking about money a lot lately. I'm 22 and I've never had a job. I actually have a perfectly good excuse for this: I've been living away from my native country (Chile) since I was 13. I couldn't work in the US because of my visa, and later, in Argentina, I wasn't old enough. When I did reach the legal working age for the country, I moved back to the US on a student visa. This, however, seems like just an excuse and not really a reason. I could have worked after my first year as a student, part time, had I managed to be lucky enough to snag one of the part-time, on-campus jobs (these were gone quickly to the many other students, international and US-born). But, of course, I didn't.

I should receive a work authorization from INS any day now. I'd like to think that, so far, I haven't held a job (an every-day, all-day job), because I couldn't, not because I was just lazy. I couldn't legally work. I couldn't physically get out of bed (arthritis). I was too busy plotting ways of killing myself. I dread the day I get the authorization. It could be that I am, after all, just that lazy.

I recently did a website for my chastity belt friend. He owns a company that runs one of the more visited sites on the subject. A job offer has been dangled on and off, seriously and jokingly, for a while. Just think, I could tell my parents that I work for the adult industry.

I was browsing through the UW jobs page the other night, and saw an opening for 'Animal Technician.' It involved taking care of 'nonhuman primates'--shuffling cages about, feeding, monitoring, etc. It sounded interesting—I’d get to water monkeys for a living!

In reality, my first real job will probably be dismal office or computer stuff. When I was a young kid, I made money by drawing pictures of whichever anime characters were popular at the moment and selling them to my classmates. When we moved to the US, my mother printed out some flyers at Kinko's and started cleaning houses, a deeply humiliating experience for her. My dad, after finishing his MBA, got a cushy job with that great evil corporation, Wal-Mart, that moved us to a whole-floor, five-bathroom, $3000+/mo apartment in an upper class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. My dad quickly became disenchanted with the company, and now works for the LDS Church in Chile, training people, helping small business owners, and organizing workers into unions. Chile's unemployment rate is anywhere from 15 to 20 percent.

One sultry summer night, I took the service elevator (Heaven forbid The Help use the same elevator as The Rest Of Us) up as far as it would go, and then took the stairs, hoping to get to the rooftop to watch the stars. At the top, I found two small rooms, smaller than a third of our living room, door open, one, perhaps two windows. This was where our doorman and his family lived.

The poorest person I've ever met was the man who worked at the dump in the quaint, tourist-friendly, largely German town I lived in in the south of Chile when I was eight years old. He lived at the dump with his two daughters, in a shack of plastic, cardboard, and plywood, in the neverending stench of our rotting waste and the sticky black smoke of burning trash.

If I had to work to survive, if my next meal didn't magically appear or my bank account didn't quietly fill up with the loan money I get at the beginning of the month, I might be too tired to feel guilty one night and forget about it the next.

I spent a ridiculous amount today, without a second thought, on a wind chime.