War

There are so many reasons for war. Currently, we are fighting a war so that a tiny number of Texan oilmen, and their cohorts around the Western world, can profit magnificently from America's tax-investment in the military. It's sad, but true.

The worst war fought since the advent of American conservatism in the late 1970s, has been the war on drugs. This war is, of course, not really a war. It's a public relations campaign fueled with billions of American tax dollars. This money is generally given to the governments and militarys of South American countries that allow American corporations to deal untethered in their domestic natural resources. No drug production or distribution is ever really stopped, because the people receiving the money to prevent the drug traffic are usually the people receiving money to ensure the drugs continue to move freely.

Who is being harmed by this so-called war? American drug addicts, drug users, police officers, educators, and families.

Our prisons are filled with drug-addicts and drug offenders. Police forces use inordinate amounts of their resources to fight recreational use of drugs, schools are forced to "teach" conservative drug policy (Just Say No), and families are torn asunder by the lack of proper mental health and addiction treatment funding, and the imprisonment of family members because of drug use.

All the while, coffee companies and oil companies and clothing manufacturers make billions in the South American countries that supply the drugs. They are free to do business, because the people running those countries are receiving a LOT of money from the US Government in the form of drug war money. (You de-fund the war on drugs and you will see our resources of cheap labor dry-up faster than you can say Ronald Reagan!)


The Nation is one of the most important journals of American political writing. It has been publishing for almost 140 years. Impressive.

Last night, I found this article, which I reprint without permission, that I think is very important:

Criminalizing Motherhood

by Silja J.A. Talvi
The Nation Magazine

Regina McKnight is doing twelve years in prison for a stillbirth, carving out a dangerous intersection between the drug war and the antichoice movement. In the eyes of the South Carolina Attorney General's office, McKnight committed murder.

Her crime? Giving birth to a five-pound, stillborn baby. As McKnight grieved and held her third daughter Mercedes's lifeless body, she could never have imagined that she was about to become the first woman in America convicted for murder by using cocaine while pregnant.

The absence of any scientific research linking cocaine use to stillbirth didn't matter. Nor did it matter that the state couldn't conclusively prove that McKnight's cocaine use actually caused Mercedes's stillbirth. What mattered was that South Carolina prosecutors were hellbent on using McKnight as an example.

Thanks largely to the efforts of the former Republican Attorney General, Charlie Condon, now running for US Senate, South Carolina is the only state in the nation with a child-abuse law that can be applied to "viable fetuses." At least 100 women have subsequently faced criminal charges in the past fifteen years for using drugs while pregnant in that state, according to the Post and Courier (Charleston). South Carolina was also the first and only state to test pregnant women for drug use and report the findings to police without the woman's consent--or a warrant--until the US Supreme Court struck down this bill as a violation of the Fourth Ammendement.

But McKnight, now 26, was the first to be imprisoned on a murder conviction under the "viable fetuses" law. In October McKnight lost her best shot at release when the Supreme Court decided not to review the case, allowing the conviction to stand by default.

"What South Carolina has done, in effect, is made pregnancy a crime waiting to happen," says Lynn Paltrow, an attorney and the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women in New York.

Paltrow served as one of the attorneys who took the appeal to the nation's highest court. In so doing, she joined twenty-seven other medical and drug policy groups that sought to overturn the conviction, including the American Public Health Association, the American Nurses Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. These mainstream health organizations saw the situation exactly for what it was: an extreme manifestation of an increasingly successful antichoice agenda wrapped in the cloak of the War on Drugs.

"The prosecution, conviction, and sentencing of Ms. McKnight for her stillbirth not only distorts the law, but contradicts the clear weight of available medical evidence, violates fundamental notions of public health, and undermines the physician-patient relationship," as the organizations put it in their amicus brief to the Court.

Approximately 275 women nationwide have already faced charges relating to drug use during their pregnancies, says Paltrow. In a country where a pregnant woman has no legal right to safe housing, daycare, nutritious food, medical care or mental health services, it's horrifying to witness the development of a law that allows for women's bodies to be treated as if they were mere vessels.

A pregnant woman who has used drugs doesn't easily win public sympathy, and the prosecutors knew exactly how to demonize a "drug mom." But, as Judy Appel of the Drug Policy Alliance points out, women who are in serious need of prenatal healthcare--and at most risk of having medical problems--are even more reluctanct to turn to a system that might press charges if something goes wrong with their pregnancies.

McKnight was a seasonal tobacco farm worker with a tenth-grade education who was living homeless, drug-addicted and trying to cope with the recent loss of her mother, who was run over by a truck. McKnight never received help for her drug problems. (South Carolina, it's worth noting, ranks lowest in the nation for spending on drug and alcohol treatment programs, according to the Drug Policy Alliance.)

The legal precedent set in the McKnight case is far graver than it might seem at first glance. As the laws have been written in South Carolina, child abuse charges could as easily be applied to pregnant women who smoke, drink even a moderate amount of alcohol, work around certain kinds of chemicals or even change cat litter--in essence, any activity that is "within the realm of public knowledge" of causing potential harm to a fetus.

Appel, who worked extensively on the amicus brief to both the South Carolina and US Supreme Courts, notes that McKnight's case has since emboldened South Carolina to go after other women, even retroactively. In early January South Carolina prosecutors are scheduled to go after their second murder conviction against a mother. In this case, it's another African-American woman, by the name of Angelia Kennedy, who allegedly smoked cocaine during her pregnancy, which resulted in a stillbirth five years ago.

This kind of persecution hasn't stopped at the state line. Right after the Supreme Court decided not to review McKnight's conviction, Honolulu city prosecutors went after a 31-year-old native Hawaiian, Tayshea Aiwohi for the death of her two-day-old son. The prosecutor's office has charged Aiwohi with manslaughter for using crystal methamphetamine during her pregnancy. Although Honolulu prosecutors denied any connection to the McKnight case, they went further to say that they would now consider prosecutions of "meth moms" and alcohol abusers, even when those babies survive.

Women like McKnight and Aiwohi are the victims of prosecutors who have decided that they have the right to judge and punish women for what happens to their bodies. It is a definitive step toward a government that would have the power to tell us what constitutes acceptable pregnancy and motherhood.

Please consider subscribing to The Nation. It will make for a better life.

Peace.

Sorry

Just before 8:00 A.M. EST, I got this message at my blog:
SORRY

Sorry.

Golf

Fore!

How did it happen that golf became cool?

All of a sudden, I know people who can go to punk clubs and debate important issues of the day (qualities I think of as implying a certain level of coolness), who also golf. Being cool has always implied a certain sophistication and forward-thinking. Coolness implies being culturally outside the mainstream. Golf is none of this.

I have played golf. I have played golf sober, I have played golf drunk. I have even played golf while tripping on acid. I have enjoyed a round of golf, and I have found a round of golf to be the most painful hours of my life. Before I go further, I want to make clear that I do not really hate the game of golf. That is tempered, of course, by my disdain for the culture and politics of golf.

Mark Twain's philosophy that golf is just a good walk ruined might be true depending on your golfing companions. A round of golf with people you like, admire, or respect might be enjoyable. Otherwise, it might just be a good walk ruined.

Friday night it snowed in New York and I needed to make my way to The Continental at St. Mark's and Third to see Dead Blonde Girlfriend. I take the N/R from 34th Street to 8th Street and I land pretty close to the venue.

While waiting for the train, I was talking to two Filipino guys who work at the local bodega. One was wearing a Yankees cap, which is standard fare in New York, and the other was wearing a Nike Golf cap. It got me thinking about two things in particular.

First, I am no fan of Nike. I have boycotted them since I learned about their slave labor practices, and they took such a hostile stance against the ensuing criticism. There are plenty of corporations that have bad business practices, but they are generally contrite when exposed, and they make an effort to change. Nike has been downright offensive in the pride they take in their business practices. Be that as it may, I will never purchase their products. I will not have an Arsenal kit or a MetroStars jersey because they are manufactured by Nike and include the dreadful little tick. I can no longer by Converse Chuck Taylors because they have been bought by Nike.



Second, Golf is the only professional sport that still convenes and competes in whites-only venues. This is the 21st Century! It is one thing that whites-only clubs even exist, there is little to be done about that. To have the Professional Golf Association compete at these clubs is unforgivable.

So, I didn't like his Nike Golf cap.

I remember a few years back, some jerk named Payne Stewart got on ESPN and was angry that people outside the game of golf would criticize the PGA for playing at a whites-only country club. What a jerk! This idiot was defending the PGA's right to use a whites-only country club and was belligerent about the criticism it evoked! Can you spell clueless?

The professional associations that control sports, like the MLB, PGA, NFL, NHL, NBA, MLS, WWE, et al., are the organizations that define the culture of the sport. To say that the culture of baseball is not defined by Major League Baseball would be folly; same with football and hockey and basketball and their respective organizations. It's just simple socio-economic analysis for which one need not possess a college degree. In that same vein, the PGA defines the culture of golf.

In case you might be confused at this juncture: It is NOT cool to belong to a whites-only club. It is NOT hip or cool to support a whites-only club by contracting to perform at the venue. It is NOT hip or cool or sophisticated to defend or support idiots like Payne Stewart and the PGA who do business with these people.

Members of whites-only clubs are dull. Those who support that sort of organization by giving them business are dull. Defending the existence of those clubs and the right to do business with them is dull. It is not wrong or bad, just dull.

Golf culture is dull because it is the last bastion of this sort of All-American segregation. This means that golf cannot be cool. Segregation is not cool. Ever! No high-tech, glitzy ad campaigns can make golf cool. Even eXtreme golf, if ever there will be such a thing, will not make golf cool. As long as there are whites-only country clubs for golf, golf cannot be cool.

It's really simple. Golf is not cool. Ever. So, go ahead and enjoy golf . . . just please stop pretending it's cool! Hide it. Be ashamed of it!

Fore!

The Weather

Herald Square, Macys In The Snow. 06 DEC 03

Many people know I am a fan of weather. I grew-up in New England and there is always plenty of weather in the Northeast of the United States. I prefer the cold Winters to the hot Summers, but Autumn will always be my favorite.

I lived in Florida and I hated the weather that never really changed, except to get hotter. I was depressed by the sight of a front lawn Christmas display that included a creche, a Santa in sleigh with reindeer, and pink flamingo, all basking in 75F sunshine.

A move to California was more to my liking as the ever-changing climate of San Francisco reminded me more of home. I loved that I could leave my apartment in the Mission with the sun shining and not a breeze to be found, and make my way over a hill and find deep, chilly fog and stiff breezes after a sixty minute walk.

Many days I would make my way to Noe & Market and take a seat at Cafe Flore at eleven in the morning for a double latte and a spacecake, struggling to situate out of the sun. Two lattes later I could be rushing home with a chill to the bone because the sun rolled-out in a flash and the clouds rolled-in.

My move to Minneapolis was a lesson in real weather. Three months of very hot Summer, followed by two quick weeks of Autumn, seven cruel months of Winter, two weeks of lovely Spring, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I liked Minneapolis with its liberal culture of Scandinavian sensibility. A real sense of social responsibility and charity. A growing arts community, a fledgling punk movement, and a booming pre-Reaganomics economy. Sadly, the weather was not for me and a quick succession of minor, but unpleasant, events sparked a return to my hometown of Boston.

I do not think there is a city in North America with a more balanced change of seasons than Boston. Sure, there is the occasional year when the Spring or Autumn is nonexistent, and the occasional Winter that seems to prove that Hell is not hot at all, but a hilly landscape filled with snowdrifts buffeted with biting winds. These are seldom, though. Most years, Boston has lovely Springs, and Summers not-too-humid and not-too-hot, and spectacular Autumns that draw tourists from around-the-world, and Winters that have some snow and some cold and rare blizzards. Boston has a true change-of-seasons climate.

Since I live in New York City, which is only 200 miles from Boston, I do not quite enjoy the same fantastic climate. Two hundred miles doesn't sound like it should offer much of a climate change, but it does. New York City Summers, especially in Manhattan, can be brutally humid and much hotter than Boston.

I don't know how people lived without air-conditioning in New York City. I might find out next year when we move from our luxury apartment in Manhattan to a more family-oriented residence in an outer borough. Hopefully, though, we will find an air-conditioned apartment, because the Summer can be brutal. I had never heard the term Heat Index until I lived in New York, where the concrete and towering skyscrapers above and tentacles of the subway below all conspire to keep the heat in like so much hot air in a Jiffy-Pop waiting to explode. Linen and fans and air-conditioning and filtered water make the Summers bearable.

Winters are less predictable. A few years ago, Manhattan had a winter with a snowfall of zero accumulation. Less than an inch fell from the sky and none of it stuck to the ground. It was cold, but dry and very odd for a Winter in the Northeast. Last year we had quite a bit of snowfall. The city is lovely after a snowfall. The traffic is diminished and the pedestrians are mostly indoors, the sky is bright reflecting the snow.

Manhattan residents are, generally speaking, not from New York. Most seem to be from places where Winter is non-existent and they complain incessantly about the snow and cold. I always ask why they live here if they hate Winter so much. They always respond the same way, that they are here for their career and to make money because this is where the action is. They always say it with a certain amount of pride and conviction and I think they really believe it is a reasonable response. In truth, they are rather disgusting people whose sole purpose in life seems to be the acquisition of power through money and the acquisition of status through the consumption of clothing and products splashed with designer logos. They are horrible people who twenty years ago would never have dreamed of living in an urban setting, they would have ensconced themselves in some sterile suburb surrounded by people they never know and television sets providing them with a distorted sense of the world and their own personal ambitions. In these post-Reagan days, this ilk is now revered as the perfect American and instead of hiding in the suburbs where they belong, they have taken over many urban centers and helping to homogenize each American city with consumerism and Faux News.

People seem to take their cues about the weather from television, and now the internet. These media sell advertising by keeping tuners tuned-in, and one way to do that is to turn every event into an absolutely remarkable instance of the history of humanity being unalterably changed by a single event. Like a snowstorm. Weather in our culture is now discussed as if it was a new phenomenon, and each change in the weather is a reason to stock-up on supplies, stay indoors, complain to your neighbor, and be absolutely shocked, Shocked I Tell You, that it is snowing in New York!

Now . . . I love weather. I get excited by snowstorms and rain and wind and sunshine; but, I do not think these momentary changes in the climate are events worthy of news stories. It's the weather. There is no need for some bland, twenty-something, bleach blond, Hilfiger-clad, journalism school dropout cum model-spokesperson to read a script intended to move me emotionally. It's the weather! Weather is good. All weather is good. Sure there are weather-related disasters and crises; but they are few, far-between, and impact humanity on a smaller scale than fossil-fuel emissions, breastmilk substitutes, deregulation, war, cultural homgenization and rainforest depletion! Weather is good. We need weather!

The next time you complain about the weather, think of how the world would be without weather. The day you awake and there is no weather, you are in big trouble. I hope that day never comes because it will likely be the end of humanity. Until that day comes, love the snow! It's fun!

Peace.


View from Herald Towers In The Snow. 06 DEC 03

How To Spam Your Friends

Yesterday, I was feeling good about finally having enough material in this blog to make it worth sharing. Damn, I've managed to publish articles going back to 1997! Unfortunately, the software will only let me backdate to 1999, so I am faking it for now.

Sharing a blog is awkward. "Come look at me," is about all you can say when you invite people to come and read. "See how interesting I am! See how witty and verbose! Aren't I cool? Don't you wish you were like me?"

Of course, that is never what we intend, but isn't that how it comes off?



Anyway . . . In my efforts to get an email out to the fifty or 100 or so people I wanted to invite to read my blog, I got lazy. I opened Outlook and created a new Distribution List (that is the sensible part, not the lazy part). I wrote a short (but interesting and dynamic) email and sent it to myself with the new Distribution List as a BCC so the header would not include everyone's address (also sensible, not lazy). I sent it off and began reading other mail.

Then it happened! Damn, an email from the System Administrator announcing "Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients." A long list of those who had not received the very important notification that my blog was available for their entertainment was included. (I guess there is a limit on BCCs to prevent spamming!)

This is the lazy part! I left the list opened, found the original message in my Sent folder, selected Actions | Resend This Message, pasted the first recipient's address in the To field and clicked Send. Repeat until complete. Simple! There were fifty-odd names on the list and it took me no time at all to take this lazy-man's approach. In fact, thirty-four individual emails were sent in less than six minutes.

Then I noticed it! My Inbox was filling up with the same message from my System Administrator. Although it wasn't appearing in each message, I was BCC'ing the message to everyone in the Distribution List! The BCC field wasn't displayed, but it was populated.

One hundred and twenty-two emails (including one from a former boss), and three phone calls (one from my current boss) later, things had calmed down. What a mess I made. I received thirty-five "Out Of Office" notices from my friend Donna (which is how I know how many times I sent the message).

Some people were scolded by their IT Departments. Most snickered and laughed at me. Some contacts have put me on their spam list, so all of my messages will now be treated as junk mail and I am sad that this might be appropriate.

One man's blog is another man's spam; and when it comes to Spam, I sometimes get a hankering!

Peace.