Naming names
See also ABW's/Elaine's list and Lisa's list.
Series part 1 of 2 is here.
Resources:
(Click here to expand to the full post.)
Coltan
The "mineral" you hear about in the mainstream media. It's actually 2 minerals chemically attached as found in the ground.
One is "columbium" and the other is "tantalum."
Keith Harmon Snow refers to "columbium" as "niobium"--another name for it.
Pyrochlore
A special kind of coltan.
Columbium/Niobium
You're gonna love this. Where do I start? Mixed into:
Tantalum
Another lovely list.
Cassiterite
You want tin? You'd better get yourself some cassiterite. There's tin in it, and it's easy to extract--just smelt the stuff.
You can also coat automotive metal in it and the metal won't corrode very easily.
Tin
Replaces what used to be lead in solders and other things that environmentalists think lead shouldn't be in. (Solder = sticking electronics parts together!)
Diamonds
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.
Uranium
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.
Cobalt
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.
Bauxite
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.
Companies, People, & Organizations
(Click here to expand to the full post.)
The mid-2007 "Blood Minerals" article by David Barouski where I found most of the mineral use information gave me twice as many names as I'd catalogued from Snow's "Three Cheers" article. I think I will have to do a "Part 3" to list them. This list will simply come from Snow's article and followup I did with Wikipedia, etc.
Lueshe mine
Where you get perchlorate in Central Africa.
SOMIKIVU
A company set up for the sole purpose of being "in charge" of a mining concession that was about to be given to "Mettalurg Inc." by the Congolese/Zairian government in 1982.
Arraxa
Controls Lueshe mine somehow, according to Snow.
GfE Nuremburg
Owned 70% of SOMIKIVU.
Metallurg Inc.
US-based. Owns Arraxa & GfE Nuremburg.
Got the 1982 Lueshe mine 20-year mining concession.
Metallurg Holdings
US-based. (Pennsylvania.) Owns Mettalurg Inc.
The government of Zaire/Congo
Gave Metallurg Inc. the Lueshe mine "mining concession" for a 20-year term in 1982, but gave the operations duties to SOMIKIVU.
Hermes AG
Insured SOMIKIVU. According to Snow, this had to do with getting SOMIKIVU to not actually mine much out of Lueshe (so the price of niobium/columbium would be high).
The German government
Backed Hermes AG.
Laurent Kabila
President of Congo, 1997-2001.
A cruel man, it seems, but he did at least one great thing (or tried):
In 1999, his government dissolved SOMIKIVU, which left GfE without legal control of the Lueshe mine. Instead of giving it back to GfE somehow, his government gave the mining concession to a company they thought would actually bother to mine the mine (which would mean taxable money for the Congolese government): E. Krall Metal Congo.
E. Krall Metal Congo
From 1999-present, owns the Lueshe mining concession.
E. Krall Investment Uganda
Owns E. Krall Metal Congo
Michael Krall
Owns E. Krall. Australian. I can't imagine he's any Mother Teresa, since he owns a copper & cobalt plant in Uganda, but his company does seem to have refused to buy soldiers occupying its Lueshe mine weapons. In addition, it seems his company has refused to hire counter-militias to get control of their mine--instead they've been trying for 9 years to take their case to court with the official governments of various countries.
Karl Heinz Albers
He's been the manager of SOMIKIVU, is the man whose company GfE sold off its 70% share of SOMIKIVU to, and was affiliated with the German Embassy in Congo. (He is German.) It sounds like he had connections to pretty much every mineral-related businessperson in Rwanda.
He has personally ordered E. Krall employees killed by African soldiers (though that was thwarted).
Paul Kagame
President of Rwanda. Willing to order ANYONE killed or send troops to assist in another army's killing of ANYONE for profit or retention of his position as President of Rwanda.
He's one of the asshats who has, in the past, set his forces to raping people. (Though that was largely in Rwanda and in the 90's.)
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)
Rwandan President Paul Kagame's party.
Though before it was the president's party, it was the militia Kagame was leading.
Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA)
The name of Rwanda's military. (As far as I can tell.)
Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD)
A Congolese political party.
Snow refers to them as militias, too, but Barouksi separates the party from its "armed wing" and refers to its armed wing as the Congolese National Army (ANC).
At first, the RCD just let Albers use the Lueshe mine despite the fact that he no longer had any rights to it. Soon, though, the RCD loaned him armed guards. Heck, some of the time, they were operating the mine instead of him or his companies.
This political party and its armed forces are supported by the Rwandan government, army, and president.
"The chief of the RCD's secret service in Goma, North Kivu"
Refused to kill E. Krall members on Karl Albers's orders and even let them go.
(Had to flee to Uganda and still had trouble escaping Albers's hit men there.)
Gen. Laurent Nkunda
With the RCD. Or at least part of it. Whoever the heck is doing his dirty work, he's got a helluva lot of power in North Kivu thanks to them. Oh, and the RPF (Rwandan government & its army) support him when he needs their help.
Apparently his invasion of Bukavu in 2004 had something to do with helping Rwanda get firmer control of Lueshe mine. (It made Congolese and UN forces head from North to South Kivu to chase him down.)
He's one of the asshats who sets his forces to raping people.
Dr. Johannes Wontka
German. Technical director of SOMIKIVU. Ordered 2 sets of murders:
1) The leader of the labor union that was on strike at Lueshe mine (they hadn't been paid in months)
2) Krall Metal employees who were on their way to check out Lueshe's mine (that they had rights to)
Foiled by the man he gave the order to, who reported his orders to the police.
Arrested and almost put on trial, but released by the Congo's national Minister of Justice when the German Embassy declared that all German businesses would pull out of Congo if this one man were not released.
"A major of the RCD army"
Got the killing orders from Johannes Wontka. Turned him in to the police instead.
Doretta Loschelder
German Ambassador to Congo.
Told Congo that if Germany didn't release Wontka, all German businesses would pull out of Congo.
Johanna König
German ambassador to Rwanda.
A member of Karl Albers's company's board.
Visited Lueshe mine in 2004, told striking workers (who were also locals to the area) that the German government owned the mine now and ordered them to get back to work, without pay, or be punished by the RPA (Rwanda's military).
H.C. Starck
Bought a lot of coltan from Albers / the RPF even when they knew they shouldn't.
Bayer AG
Owns H.C. Starck.
A&M Minerals
A British company who's purchased pyrochlore even when they knew they shouldn't.
Alfred Knight Holdings (AKH)
"Tested" a lot of pyrochlore before re-exporting it, cassiterite, and coltan to Europe.
Barouski asserts they should've known exactly what it took to get that pyrochlore out of the ground and to them, since pyrochlore only comes from Lueshe mine.
Rotterdam, Netherlands
The port lots of niobium/coltan/pyrochlore came into Europe through
Rastas
They're the "black men pulling the trigger" that Snow refers to--committing a lot of the violence--but Barouski declares that it actually isn't clear exactly what chains of power their commanders are from...or even who they are.
(But as Snow says, let's start going for the ones we can figure out pretty easily.)
The United Nations Panel of Experts
Reported on raw material plunder in the Congo and named names of corporations and people and syndicates acting illegally.
The United Nations
Removed the names named on the Panel of Experts Congo report.
Copmanies and people that Snow suggests we investigate and, depending on what we find, possibly demand "help the victims of sexual violence in the Congo."
Most of the names I've chronicled from Keith Harmon Snow's article relate to the Lueshe mine story. But he warns us not to zoom in and only focus our outrage on those white, Western, rich people ordering black, African, poor people to protect "their land."
He speculates that:these activities certainly apply to...other corporations--this is how the system works, and who works it. The Lueshe Niobium mining scandal merely provides us an excellent case study where the thief has been caught red-handed...
Sunday, April 13
Let's End Mass Rape & Mutilation In The Congo: Part 2
Let's End Mass Rape & Mutilation In The Congo!
Arlene Fenton, a.k.a. "shecodes," of Black Women Vote, has started an April 13 blogswarm against mass rape and mutilation in the Congo. This is my participation (part 1 of 2).
I have a lofty aim with this post. I want all the blogswarmers to see my opinion, and I hope to change every single blogswarmer's discourse about mass rape and mutilation in the Congo.
You see, all those armies whose soldiers are raping and mutilating women have a goal, and it ain't hurting women.
Rape & mutilation of women are one of the ways those armies' commanders order their soldiers to terrorize populations.
And the reason those armies are trying to terrorize populations is because their commanders are getting paid by Westerners to depopulate (or at least demoralize the populations of) areas with minerals prized by the West.
I believe that we must get this assertion commonly accepted--at least within the blogosphere--if we're going to have any effectiveness reducing mass rape and mutilation in the Eastern Congo.
(Read The Rest of This Post.)
To introduce everyone to this concept, I'd like to highlight parts of Keith Harmon Snow's late 2007 article, "Three Cheers for Eve Ensler?"
It's not a perfect article--Snow made some tenuous connections about certain people's business activities and left it to the reader to continue the research and decide if people were innocent or guilty. But nevertheless, I owe everything about this thesis to his clear points.
Some mainstream media has been drawing attention to sexual violence against women in the East Congo lately. Eve Ensler. Glamour Magazine. Now the HBO documentary The Greatest Silence. But Snow believes that these stories are being allowed to proliferate so that better-researched stories--the ones that point to orders coming from Western, White, rich wrongdoers--won't be audible.
Not that it even takes much conspiring by media bosses, he points out. It doesn't always take conscious selection by editors to exclude stuff like Snow's work and include stuff like Ensler's work. It can happen subconsciously, too, since Ensler's work reminds people of the "hopeless African condition [of violence]" they've associated with Africa all their lives, whereas Snow's work reminds them of...well...nothing familiar.
(By the way, Snow does not name himself as someone excluded. That is my choice of an example. And he names many more voices included in media attention--referring only to Ensler is my shorthand.)
Snow wrote the following:According to [the mainstream descriptions...African men]...are universally castigated for "rape as sport," no matter that...armed forces backed, armed, and licensed by the West to commit massive sexual atrocities...are paid in kind for services provided to maintain and insure natural resource plunder and the acquisition and control of vast tracts of Congolese territory.
From researching with Google--I'm sorry to say that I've forgotten all my sources, but an interview of Paul Ruseabagina by Snow is one--it sounds like the way things work is similar to theories I've heard about when it comes to Darfur.
(Sadly, I can't find any links, but somewhere a year or two ago, I read that the Janjaweed and others aren't settling the areas they're depopulating, which is highly unusual for a bunch of poor, rag-tag folks who could really use free land. In other words, they're getting orders not to settle the land themselves. Which means someone with power wants the land completely empty. From there, the likely guess is "mining or oil," since that's the kind of use for empty land that's easier to get access to when no one lives there.)
The multinationals don't want normal "daily life" activity going on on land with minerals under it.
So they get militias to "protect" said land.
And they know damned well that the only way that a militia can "protect" land from being lived on and used in normal "local" ways is to terrorize the locals into
But they give the orders to "protect" it for mining/drilling/etc. anyway.
Of course, they don't bother to pay the militias full wages. Just the commanders.
So terrorization of local populations happens for 2 reasons.
Back to the mainstream media narrative.
Ensler, according to Snow, declared that "'we don't know who' is involved behind or beside" the militias actually committing the rape.
Snow contests that we have a pretty damned good start. He asks:How does a company of white executives...from Canada gain control of such vast concessions? Through bloodshed and depopulation with black people pulling the triggers.
Snow named a few names, which I will summarize in my next post. If we Westerners would do the investigations where we ought to--into the heads of White/Western-benefitting, rich corporations--we'd know even more names.
Saturday, April 12
BFP Has Hidden Her Web Site
BrownFemiPower / "La Chola" has hidden her web site.
It was the place I sent people. Yes, there are more bloggers still out there...but she was the one who was writing both
1) prolifically
2) in a way that took time to explain concepts for white liberals and for men of color.
I'm just liberal enough to understand her. (I mean, no, she wasn't covering so many basics that even a white conservative would read what she said and come to agree with it.) But I've never quite felt like I "got it" enough to follow any of the other blogging women of color on a regular basis. Well, maybe "Black Women Vote," but she's not quite as prolific on quite as many topics as BFP was.
Now what? I can't split off into reading a gazillion different WOC blogs, much as I'd like to, I have to limit the number of minutes I spend per day on the internet. That's why anyone goes to, say, Kos or Feministing/Pandagon/Feministe. To be up-to-date yet save time for essential real-world tasks. I...I've faced some losses in the real world from the internet, so I just can't go into reading more #s of blogs.
I want to bring BFP back to writing on the internet.
I mean, not so fast that she isn't healed and ready to write.
But dammit, I want to help her heal. I wish I lived in Detroit or something or wherever she lives so I could babysit her kids...bring her extra food...
If my favorite internet writer could find strength to go back to her online writing by something I could contribute in my offline life, I'd want to do it.
But dammit, I don't live near her, and I don't even know who she is or what she could use offline.
I'm so frustrated. I want to do something that feels like it might open her up to coming back.
Tuesday, April 8
BIG MN Social Justice News + Call To Action
Big news.
Minnesota's governor line-item vetoed the Minnesota Legislature's decision to borrow money to build light rail trains along University Avenue (and other streets) in St. Paul and Minneapolis.
He's a Republican, so I'm sure he didn't do it for the reasons behind my call asking him to do so.
(But I do like to think that my call and my flyers helped! After all, he'd previously said he was not going to use his power of line-item veto on this money-borrowing bill.)
Please call or write your legislators (1-800-657-3550) if you live in MN and ask them, whatever their previous votes pertaining to light rail transit on University are, to NOT override this line-item veto.
Please tell them that you would rather see train transit between the two downtowns delayed another decade than see such a terrible social injustice committed to the minority and (currently-)low-income business owners, workers, and residents of University Avenue.
Minnesota CAN recover from canceling the University Avenue train project.
Yes, there's some sunk money and time--about 6 years' worth.
But it CAN, if it really does need trains, recover and start over, this time with the trains going somewhere else.
Somewhere less harmful. (Like the center of the highway currently connecting the two downtowns.)
Please make these calls no matter where in the state you're from. The issue will be decided by legislators all over the state, after all.
Thank you.
Write me if you have any questions.
University Avenue "Central Corridor" Light Rail: My Position
I oppose the "Central Corridor" light rail plan that's going through various levels of government right now.
I am not against urban train transit--in fact, I support all other commuter train routes proposed for building by 2030.
But I am against putting commuter trains on University Avenue in St. Paul. I believe that the small, largely minority-run and lower-middle-class-run businesses depend not only on the high traffic of University (which would stay with light rail, of course), but also on every bus being within a block of a bus stop.
In the best-case scenario, trains would only stop every 4 or 5 blocks. What few buses are left would only come by every 40 or more minutes.
Although upper-middle-class owners of new businesses on University could be profit by simply renting property close to train stops, minority and currently-low-income business owners will be priced out of property close to train stops and will not have enough customers to remain open in between train stops.
Since business ownership is tied for best way to accumulate wealth (another common one being born into a family line that was allowed to buy suburban homes in the 1940's-1970's), I strongly oppose putting trains on this street.
Since University Avenue is already highly developed in terms of the number of successful, worthwhile businesses on it, I believe that arguments claiming that trains would "develop" University Avenue are false. Trains would only shift the "prior wealth" business owners on the street have. They would not develop the street.
I believe that despite how much planning has gone into putting trains on this street, the whole plan should be scrapped.
If legislators and planners want to start over with a different route, like the middle of Interstate 94, that's fine with me.
But I want them to halt light-rail-building along University.
Help finding a post by BFP
Help! I can't find a post by BFP. It's the one where she wrote about women organizing the civil rights movement in homes and beauty shops and such. Might've mentioned Baker, but a Google search isn't turning it up by a search for "baker."
I support Abolut's original advertisement
(Original by Absolut:)
Tuesday, April 1
Please Read This Very Powerful Speech On Feminism
Please Read This Very Powerful Speech. [Boldface in the speech mine.]
Its topics:
- Why doesn't the majority of well-read feminist media cover gender-related wrongs to women when those wrongs are done in the context of immigration enforcement?
- An argument as to just how gender-related these immigration-context wrongs are (that is, a call for all feminist publications & media to cover them intensely)
...
- In May of 2007, a young woman imprisoned at Hutto prison in Texas was sexually assaulted by a guard. Her son was in the cell while the sexual assault took place.
The media that reported the rape, the Taylor Daily Press, was unable to find out the woman’s name, where she was from or deported to, or how old her son was. Although she received treatment at the local hospital the night of the rape, she was sent back to prison after she was treated and was deported shortly after. There is no mention of rape crisis counseling in the article.
(Click here for more information.)- Jeremy Christian Brickner admitted that Eugene Kesselman hired him to arrest Kesselman’s estranged wife and her 10-year-old daughter on the basis that an immigration judge had issued an order for their deportation.
On May 11, 2006, Brickner falsely identified himself as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent, arrested the mother and daughter in San Francisco and detained them overnight in a hotel room in South San Francisco where they spent the night.
(Click here for more information.)- The National Immigrant Justice Center created a video of testimonial of an asylum seeker from Cameroon. In the video, the asylum seeker details her interaction with an immigration official. The immigration official tells her that she is going to jail for four months and that immigration would be taking her one year old child away from her.
I said nothing can separate me from my baby but death or my husband. Then [the immigration official] said that she’s not even sure that my husband is the father of the child. My husband had to drive back to Wisconsin to get the baby’s birth certificate to prove he is the father of the baby.
(Click here for more information.)- Margo Tamez wrote the following in an open letter calling for outside help after the government sent agents out to tribal lands and demanded that land be turned over to the government so they can build a border wall:
My mother is under great stress and crisis, unknowing if the Army soldiers and the NSA agents will be forcibly demanding that she sign documents. She reports that they are calling her at all hours, seven days a week. She has firmly told them not to call her anymore, nor to call her at all hours of the night and day, nor to call on the weekends any further. She asked them to meet with her in a public space and to tell their supervisors to come. They refuse to do so. Instead, they continue to harass and intimidate.(Click here for more information.)- Luaipou Futi traveled with her son Michael and his nurse to the U.s. Michael had severe heart problems and was coming to the U.S. for surgery.
But immigration officials detained Michael, his mother and nurse at the airport, locking all three of them into a room even though the only one whose passport was in question was Luaipou’s. Her son died shortly after they were finally released.
A translator for Luaipou said,"She was so happy — the minute she got on that plane — because she knew her baby was coming here … They were the first ones out of the plane. If they would let them come immediately, her baby would have still been here. Her son would have still been alive. She’s heartbroken. She can’t eat. She can’t sleep. … She’s traumatized."(Click here for more information.)These stories detail the lives of women in the United States. Intertwined throughout these stories are experiences of gendered violence that feminists have been organizing against and writing about for decades. Rape, spousal abuse, controlling mothers through threatened loss of their children, and assumed sexual promiscuity.
And yet, there is a disturbing silence about these stories by mainstream feminist media organizations—indeed most feminist media, mainstream, radical, alternative or otherwise, simply didn’t cover these stories at all.
Even in an election year where immigration has been consistently brought up by mainstream news sources and ICE raids have been increasingly intensified, “immigration” as a topic remains "off the table" when it comes to feminist media coverage.
And when I approached different feminists about this, I’ve been consistently told “immigration is a race issue, not a feminist one”. Others have told me that feminism can not and should not fix immigratrion. Abortion rights were more pressing. Concentrating on immigration would spread feminism too thin.
But in light of the gendered experiences I have read (and that we’ve seen through the video), the question must be asked, why is there such an engulfing silence around this issue? And even more importantly, what responsibility does U.S. feminism have to those women who exist within it borders but with out the privilege of citizenship or proper documentation?
Let’s start with a little background.
The feminist movement in the U.S. has historically centered citizenship as it’s major tool in achieving gendered liberation. Susan B Anthoney fought until her last breath for the right to vote. And in the 60’s, the women’s movement centered civil rights—or the full legal recognition of constitutional rights for women as the main goals of their movement. The ERA became almost as important part of feminism as the right to vote did.
The logic behind centering citizenship as a tool to gaining liberation was that through full legal recognition as citizens, women would then have the power to claim their full personhood. Specifically, gendered empowerment would come through legal protections and the enforcement of rights granted by the constitution.
The use of citizenship the major tool in attaining gendered liberation was a conscious choice made by both the suffragettes and the ERA women.
But what these choices led to was the creation of an invisible border wall that wrapped itself entirely around the feminist movement occurring in the U.S.
This border wall made it next to impossible for those women existing in the U.S. without the benefit of citizenship papers to negotiate their way to gendered empowerment. How does a woman who is “illegal” demand the right to vote?
How does a woman that the government is actively working to deport demand that her civil rights be upheld under the law? According to the government, legally she has no civil rights, so she is not allowed to make demands.
The wall around feminism today is as impenetrable for non-U.S. citizens as it was back in the day. The bricks that crafted the wall to begin with, the right to vote and civil rights, have been sustained and reinforced by abortion rights and and our responses to domestic violence.
Again, if women in the country without proper documentation must be reported by any public service health care provider (as is required in heavily anti-immigrant states like Arizona), why does she care if Roe Versus Wade is repelled? Or, if the answer to domestic violence is to call the police, but the police are acting in the name of ICE, what are immigrant women to do when they are being beaten or assaulted?
The goals of feminism created a wall around feminism because these goals often seem unchanging, solid, and fixed. And maybe they are and were.
But I don’t necessarily believe it is feminist media’s job to change the goals of any feminist movement. I firmly feel that our goal as feminist media makers is to save the world and use a feminist analysis to do so.
And in today’s world, a post 9-11, terrorist fearing, hyper militarized world, investigating borders is an incredibly vital step to take towards saving the world. Borders and the protection of those borders is what is driving much if not most of the violence against all women today, citizen and non-citizen alike.
Now, I bet you would like to explain that statement, right? How did I connect violence against women to a post 9-11 militarized world?
Well, I’m not going to tell you. At least, not yet!
What I’m going to say is that the massive wall we have around feminism prevents us from seeing the answer. And our jobs as feminist media makers is to investigate the subjects that are actively being hidden by those in power. To uncover the truth. Our loyalty is not to a movement or an organization, but to the story. To the words that liberate the story from the bodies of people most in need of feminism.
When thinking about what to say today with my fellow panelists, we agreed it was important to leave people with ideas about what can be done....Navigating the borders of feminism will require that we expand our understanding of them. It will also require that we recognize that we are entering into a battle that began long ago without us.
Framing is a vitally important component of the anti-immigrant movement’s agenda. They recognize that half of the battle is fought through the words that that media uses to frame the people and actions they are so against. Rightist media centerpieces...take their cue from the rightist grassroots organizations and call people in the U.S. without documentation words like “Illegal criminals” and “Illegal Aliens.” They’ve pressured mainstream news media into a “compromise” with the term “Illegal immigrant.”What intervention can feminist media makers make into these coordinated efforts to control the words that liberate?
What does a gendered analysis bring to “framing” in immigration?Consider the following:
As feminist media makers, how we choose to answer these questions through our media making will have a direct impact on the national and international discourse on immigration. It will also contribute to the dismantling of nationalitic borders around U.S feminism.- Are women in the country without proper documentation “illegal criminals”? Or are they women in the country without proper documentation?
- Are the detention centers that women in the country without proper documentation held at “detention centers” or are they “prisons”?
- Is the sex that is being demanded of women in return for immigration papers “bartering” or is it “rape”?
- Is the intimidation and harassment by the government of native women who do not acquiesce to land seizures “business as usual” or the continued colonization of native lands through gendered violence and intimidation?
But even more importantly, it will help to create a world in which no gendered body is marked “criminal,” where no woman has to climb a wall or apply for papers before she is allowed access to the tools that will liberate her.
This world is not only necessary, it is our only choice.
My fellow media makers, lets tear down these walls and let’s do it together.
Si se puede!
Getting all upset over the rest of the world
Sometimes I feel "fault" for ills in the world, too.
Most people I know call it ridiculous.
I think that my life is happy enough otherwise that I can handle the extra mourning. And I do think that it helps keep me active. (Though I'm far too "ADD" about it to stick to one cause every single weekday like Rev. Kinman.)
Growing Things For Sale April 26
A month ago I said we had 4 kinds of produce left.
Now we're down to 1 and a half. The sprouts are still available. But the greenhouse lettuce is gone, and MN potatoes are so green the small stores finally stopped carrying them. (Though a huge grocery store still had WI russet potatoes in bags. I didn't get to ask where the individual russet potatoes were from.) I'm not seeing WI mushrooms too often--more often, they're from PA.
We will not have any more local produce for almost 4 weeks (the last week of April). Can you see why I'm heartbroken that the rest of the Dark Days Challengers are all getting their new local foods and ending the blogging challenge?
The darkest of our local-food dark days have just begun!
Saturday, March 22
Quote of the Week
I lean heavily towards pacifism, but am constantly having this internal argument that it is not "practical." What the hell is practical about training young people to commit atrocities, destroying not only their victims but them as well?--"Jon" on BFP's reposting of soldiers talking about what they did in Iraq.
Wednesday, March 5
Obama's first 100 days in office
Hee! I love Marc Lynch.I had to laugh at Michael Gerson's effort in today's Post. Basically, he offers a thought experiment about President Obama's first 100 days. Obama meets with Iranian President Ahmedenejad, then Raul Castro, then suddenly announces an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. Amazingly, everything goes wrong! Wow, scary.
But fun, too! Let me try:President Barack Obama, only months after his inauguration, holds a stunning summit meeting with Ahmedenejad and senior Iranian leaders. The discussions are tough and frank, but productive, and the outlines of a grand bargain quickly appear. With the Iranian-American relationship improving, crisis spots such as Lebanon rapidly improve. Iraq stabilizes, as Iran now backs American demands for the incorporation of Sunnis into the Iraqi state and encourages its Iraqi allies to lay low. Gulf leaders, reassured by the prospect of stability, finally come through on their end - with the Saudis and Qataris, in particular, offering high-level diplomatic support and significant cash while pressuring their Iraqi Sunni allies to take the deal. This new, increasingly institutionalized and regionally-backed stability allows the U.S. to begin withdrawing troops responsibly and safely. Oil prices begin to come down, as international markets see light at the end of the tunnel, and....
Hey, this is super-duper fun!
Sunday, March 2
Dark Days Local / Shoestring Healthy Eating Recipe
Well, somehow I muddled through without asparagus--I think I got distracted reading the internet and gorged on butterscotch chips. (Whoops.)
I'd like to post a recipe that 1) could qualify for winter local eating if I'd prepared and 2) nudges into BFP's "healthy eating while in poverty" blog initiative. (It's not quite there as prices and labor inputs go, but I think it's close.)
Lentil, Onion, & Collard Mush
Serves 1 for 3 meals if put over a grain like rice."Ingredients out" to "food on the table" time: 45-60+ minutes, depending on your speed, but it makes leftovers, and scaling up the recipe for a large family, still with leftovers, wouldn't take much more time at all (just some extra produce chopping & pressing).
Ingredients:
- Less than 1 medium onion
(optional) - Frozen, pre-overcooked/reduced onions
- Oil
(I used olive) - Spices, salt, & pepper
(I think I used ginger, cayenne, Hungarian-style paprika, and cumin seeds) - Greens
(I don't think they'd have to be fresh, though I treated myself to wilting some fresh ones) - Dried lentils
(see if you can get these at a farmer's market instead of imported & in the bulk foods section) - Garlic
- Grains
- Medium pot
- Small pot
- Colander or strainer
- Water:Lentils = 3:1. Wash lentils first. In a medium pot, boil water w/ lentils in, then reduce to a simmer for 30-45 minutes, or until lentils are done.
(Yes, lentils go from dry to done w/o soaking!) - Start thawing a small amount--maybe 1/4 to 1/2 a cup?--of frozen onion glop in a small pot.
(that's onions cooked until they turned brown and mostly water--I saved some from when I made my last onion-based stew)
Turn off the heat when it's thawed. - Start cutting ribs out of your greens, ripping them up, and throwing them in a colander/strainer.
If you're using canned greens, skip this step. If you're using frozen greens, thaw them in a 3rd pot or in the microwave. - Check your onions and turn the heat off if necessary.
- Rinse your greens well.
- Chop any fresh onion if you're using it.
(For locavores, this might not be an option if onions are out of season.) - Eyeball how much fresh onion to throw into your glop. Keep in mind you'll have as many chunks in your final meal as you throw into this, so don't be afraid not to use all the onion. You can put it in a small tupperware and store it in the fridge for salads, another dish, etc.
- Throw chopped onion into the small pot, add a bit of oil, and add a lot of spices/pressed garlic/pressed ginger.
(Yes, you can sort of press ginger in a garlic press!).
And yes, ginger's never in season here and garlic is out of season this time of year, but I bought the garlic locally in October and just cut out the massive sprouts that're coming out of it. - Stir & turn the heat back on if you're a slow chopper like me and had to turn it off.
Blanche your onions (that is, make them transparent.) - Check your lentils.
Mine were falling apart soft in the pot, yet there was extra water left. So I turned the heat up high and stirred them almost without stopping (since high heat can make grains/beans stick to the bottom of the pot if left unattended).
I evaporated water out of the mix until I had only as much water as I wanted in my final mush. - Turn the heat back down under your medium pot.
Use a scraper to get every last delicious bit of spiced onion glop out of the small pan and into the medium pot. - Add your greens to the medium pot.
If they're fresh, don't forget that they can reduce a lot in size--they made my pot go from 20% full to 90% full, but as they cooked in the steam, they dropped to a mixable 70% full...and by the time I'd finished cooking and stirring the whole mix, it was about 30-40% full. - Microwave (or heat in your small pot, washed out) a pre-cooked grain that you ate for dinner another night and put the extra of in a tupperware.
(Or cook up some grains while you're making my recipe.) - Serve the "mush" over the grain. Bon appetit, and perhaps more relevantly, bon santé!
- (P.S. Sponge & rinse the goop off both pots and anything made of wood before you eat. It's easy to get off now; nearly impossible once it dries.)
Here's what's available in Minnesota right now
It's the beginning of March, which means there are 2.5 months until we have outdoor-grown food (besides lettuce) again.
Here's what we get to get us through that 2.5 months:
Culled from a co-op in Northfield and my own knowledge of other co-ops
- Produce
- Lettuce (hydroponically grown)
- Potatoes
- Mushrooms
- Sprouts
- Bulk
- Whole Wheat Flour
- Wild Rice
- Rolled Oats
- Flax Seeds
- Black Beans
- Spaghetti
- Pasta Shells
- Refrigerated/Frozen
- Eggs
- Milk
- Butter
- Yogurt (but it's yucky)
- Tortillas (ingredients locally combined)
- Sour Cream
- Salsa (ingredients locally combined)
- Heavy Cream
- Buttermilk
- Hummus (ingredients locally combined--I'm almost certain not locally grown)
- 3 Bean Chili (ingredients locally combined)
- Bacon
- Round Tip Steak
- Ham
- Whole Chicken
- Bone in Chicken
- Boneless Chicken Breasts
- Preshredded Cheese (seriously, what a waste of local eating for the environment. I avoid this company's overpackaged products, trying to tell them to cut it out!)
- Cheese (many kinds--this is cheese land)
- Chevre Cheese
- Cream Cheese
- Ice Cream (many kinds--this is ice cream land)
- Frozen Pizza (expensive as heck--$11 for a thin-crust pizza--but they really do use locally grown and made spinach, tomatoes, garlic, cheese, etc. whenever they can get it!)
- Frozen Veggies
- Frozen Berries (if you count the far side of the next state over)
- Shelf Goops
- Jam
- Maple syrup
- Dry Shelf Stuff
- Corn Chips (Whole Grain Milling Co.)
- Cereal (Not sure if cold cereals are locally grown & milled or just locally mixed into granola; 1 hot cereal is locally milled, if not also locally grown)
- Bread
- Bread.
Thursday, February 21
Food
I want asparagus!
My roommate and her boyfriend are eating dinner at our house--finally. She's been so absentee, spending all her time at his place.
But I ate grains all day. Like...2 bowls 6 servings of oatmeal w/ brown sugar.
Ick. (No, I don't know why I thought I was that hungry for oatmeal the 2nd time.)
We both want something easy, since we won't start cooking till late, and I have to leave town early tomorrow morning. But I do not want more grains.
So I'm looking Cooking For Engineers as I start thinking about what should be for dinner, and though there's not much that's vegetable-oriented (I've also gone overboard on meat lately), the site did have directions for cooked asparagus.
Great. Now I can't get off my mind how easy and yummy asparagus would be.
But I can't begin to imagine the conditions asparagus at this time of year would have been raised & harvested under.
And I know, I know, I know what BFP, the author of that link, would say. She'd tell me to eat asparagus tonight and spend 2 hours fighting for labor rights when I get back in town.
But dammit, when I get back in town, I need to throw myself into my anti-light-rail-on-University work. So that's just not gonna happen.
And I just don't like the idea that if I buy asparagus, I know that to enjoy the quality time with my roommate that I'm seeking tonight, I'm going to put the labor conditions out of mind. Because you can't pay serious attention to the human being across the table from you when you're thinking about social justice issues.
So...given that I'm not going to do any labor activism when I return...........
eeeeeeg.
Monday, February 18
Need Anti-Racism Help
I'd like to put out a call for help proofreading a website for content.
I created a web site to accompany a petition I'm circulating, collecting signatures from businesspeople and residents of a street in St. Paul, MN, where government agencies want to put a commuter train.
It has two audiences at once:
- Businesspeople and residents of that street and its surrounding neighborhoods who took home my web site from a flyer hanging on a bulletin board and would like to register their opposition to commuter rail with me
- Non-neighborhood people who think of themselves as liberal, yet currently support the commuter rail and don't care what path it takes, whom I might be able to convince to become opponents of the path the government agencies want to put it on.
For that second group, I believe I'll need to have a lot of explanation about why the current route is so detrimental to the well-being of businesspeople and residents of the area that it'd even impact their own lives negatively in 15-40 years.
But in the process of explaining that, I don't want to say anything racist/classist/otherwise harmful about the social groups who make up the majority of businesspeople and residents of that street/neighborhood. Firstly, because it's wrong to do so, and secondly, because they'll be reading my words, too.
So before I really start promulgating this web site, can I get some help proofreading pages like this, this, this, and perhaps this?
Thank you,
Katie
Monday, February 4
Hillary Clinton Comes Out Against Due Process For An Already Kicked-Down Population Of Our Country
Listen, I'm totally biased in my presentation of this, but I think the issue is hugely important, so I want to post it fast.
Sen. Hillary Clinton has at least 3 or 4 times (so it's not just something she said once, reconsidered, and dropped at this point) advocated deporting immigrants with "criminal backgrounds" without any legal process.
I have only seen the quotes in text--haven't found all 3 that were written down on YouTube yet--but if they're accurate, I really do consider this a horrendous thing that I absolutely couldn't stand in my next president. I WILL either write in a candidate or vote for some third-party candidate come November if Sen. Clinton is the Democratic nominee and her quotes are accurate.
If this doesn't seem like a big deal to you, read these quotes from an editorial at Feministe.us:
"Even if we agree for a second that yes, we want to deport 'bad criminals' and not let them live here like the 'good immigrants,' how can anyone possibly think you can figure that out 'immediately' with 'no questions asked?' The whole point of due process is that you determine who’s actually a criminal and who’s not, right?"...
"The point is that...since not all crimes are committed equally, we have a process. And of course, even the process does not work perfectly, so there are appeals; we don’t just throw people away. Well actually, we do under the current administartion — but you’d think a candidate who trumpets about change would not be encouraging the current state of affairs..."
I think this quote from comments on another page that the Feministe.us author linked to (admittedly, many of the comments there are at a much lower quality level than her own writing) sums up how I've always felt about the types of positions Sen. Clinton is willing to take:
"Where have I heard the circular "we don't need a legal process because they're bad people and don't deserve it!" argument before? Hmm...."More quotes
"There are far too many stories like this one, described by crankyliberal, an immigration attorney:'Really, Hillary? Do you want to know how many Lawful Permanent Residents I’ve helped lately who were in proceedings for a single drug possession conviction? These people have been here for over 20 years in most cases, have families and jobs, and screwed up. One of them was a bit stressed out after surviving cancer and also having to take care of her mother who is suffering from cancer. So she did some drugs. Right now, they have a chance to prove that they deserve to stay because the positive equities outweigh the negative. Now, that’s their only chance- if they ever screw up again, they’re removed, no questions asked.
'But you want to take that away? Take away their chance to prove their worth? A chance that people value so much they’ll sit in detention for six months (not to mention the extra time if there is an appeal lodged- that means a year or more easily)even though many of them have never been in jail once?'"
"It’s not as if we’re currently operating on some incredibly lax system that’s letting all sorts of people in. Quite the contrary: I hear more and more stories all the time about families who slip through the cracks, deportations of kids who have never lived anywhere else, countless abuses by the Homeland Security..."
"The most deeply disturbing thing here is that Clinton’s rhetoric, whether she believes it or not, is supporting a medieval, unconstitutional worldview where there are 'bad people' out there who don’t deserve rights, who don’t deserve due process. We can just recognize them — through some sort of 'faster' un-process, whether that means profiling, arrest, or glancing at their record — and then boot them. I really hope someone can explain to me how this is all a mistake or a misunderstanding. Otherwise, the only explanation I can come up with will be that the last eight years of constant abuse of our laws and principles have shifted discourse a grotesque degree towards a paranoid police-state."Also from the comments on the previously mentioned page I'm not bothering to link to:
"I worked for an immigration court last year. I've WRITTEN DEPORTATION ORDERS that immigration judges issued... Let me tell you, "no legal process" is not a sign of seriousness about the immigration process. Quite the opposite. It's exactly the sort of cheap demagoguery that got our immigration system where it is today: inhumane, ineffective, & above all, totally arbitrary."
"crankyliberal goes on to talk about how absurd it is that Clinton implies that we ought to condemn and deport criminals who have a criminal record in their country of origin. I guess we don’t need due process if we just trust every other legal system in the world, huh? How can you even make a statement like that without thinking about all the corrupt, despotic laws and criminal justice systems in the world? Without thinking of people who apply for asylum after having been persecuted in their own countries?"
I am scared shitless of someone who would propose things like deportation without due process being elected President of the United States.
You know, you don't even have to vote for Sen. Obama. Write in Sen. Edwards or Gov. Richardson or Congressman Kucinich or something tomorrow, but if you now feel like I do and have since 2006 about Sen. Clinton's likeliness to restore due process and fairness to at least the level it was at in 2000, please don't vote for her for President tomorrow.
I had a hunch she was like this back when I was trying to figure out whom to support in late 2006 / early 2007.
Within a couple of weeks ago, her supporters had pretty much convinced me my hunch was wrong.
But then this came out.
And now my hunch is that not only was my earlier hunch dead on, but that the confirmations are going to get worse and worse from here on out.
Saturday, January 26
Dark Days Challenge - eating unusual meat affordably
Hooooooooly gamole.
If you do your unusual meat shopping in the Twin Cities, ummmmm...I hate to put the nice people at Shepherd Song Farm over in Wisconsin (or Hill & Vale or any of the other co-op suppliers) out of business, but it turns out that the lamb & goat at Holy Land is local, too. It's from Iowa. And while ground lamb costs $6.60/lb-$7/lb and ground goat costs $8.50/lb at the co-ops, they both run $5/lb at Holy Land.
Let's see...Holy Land requires my car...whereas certain co-ops don't...though buses cost $2 and it's a little dangerous to bike on all this ice in cold weather when all my protective gear is sweaty and dirty...
Eh. I'll just have to make a shopping list and shop at Holy Land next time I'm near the store or already in a warm car with free time. I don't think I'll come up with an excuse or the energy to put on warm clothes, start a cold car, drive to Holy Land, drive back, unpack, and cook.
Too bad. I would've liked to make that goat meat glop again. I'll just have to put all the ingredients on a list and get the energy to make it after I've bought them all.
(By the way, I don't think Holy Land is buying unethical meat or anything--one co-op's meat manager simply told me that whenever you don't have a lot of customers for a type of meat, you have to mark it up to make any profit. I imagine that that Iowa farm can sell meat cheaply not because they're a factory farm but because they have a contract to sell to a retail store that can quickly sell as much meat as they can raise to half the goat & lamb eaters in a major metropolitan area.)
Unscientific science & PMS
Oh my goodness, I love my Anne Fausto-Sterling.
You just make so much sense, Dr. F-S!
On unscientific "science" & PMS:
"The tip-off to the medical viewpoint [that being a woman is biologically abnormal for a human animal] lies in its choice of language. What does it mean to say '70 to 90% of the female population will admit to recurrent premenstrual symptoms'? The word symptom carries two rather different meanings. The first suggests a disease or an abnormality, a condition to be cured or rendered normal. Applying this connotation to a statistic suggesting 70 to 90 percent symptom formation leads one to conclude that the large majority of women are by their very nature diseased. The second meaning of symptom is a sign or signal. If the figure of 70 to 90 percent means nothing more than that most women recognize signs in their own bodies of an oncoming menstrual flow, the statisics are unremarkable."
"That so many scientists have been able for so long to do such poor research attests to both the unconscious social agendas of many of the researchers and to the theoretical inadequacy of the research framework used in the field as a whole."
"...the crying need for some scientifically acceptable research stands out above all. If we continue to assume that menstruation is itself pathological, we cannot establish a baseline of health against which to define disease. ... Only when we have some feeling for [what forms healthy female reproductive cycles take] can we begin to help women who suffer from diseases of menstruation."
(Boldface mine; italics hers.)
Coolest. Science. Book. Ev-eeeeeeer!
Especially her 1.5-page table on pp. 106-107. I just found scribbled in the margins, "WOW. Great table. Give as an example to every middle-school science teacher (teaching the scientific method) I know! Give to every OB/Gyn/M.D. I know who probably assumes his/her field's research is done according to the scientific method!"
Thursday, January 24
Fuel & Gaza
Okay, here's something I'm interested in keeping an eye on:
A commenter on BrownFemiPower's blog made it sound like oil piped out of Palestinian oil fields (not sure if they're in Gaza or the West Bank) physically goes off to American & British companies but is paid for by Israel as food & stuff.
Now Israel doesn't want to have to supply Gaza with food & stuff.
How is all this going to play out?
Are they just going to say that they're paying for the oil by sending the West Bank food & stuff?
Very confusing.
Fall of a Gaza wall
Gazan militants took their bombs & used them to blow up miles of the wall separating Palestine from Egypt. Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were able to get out of Gaza and buy food & other supplies yesterday.
How fricking cool.
I wonder if any West Bank militants will turn their bombs to walls soon. Wouldn't that be awesome?
Of course, there isn't a source of food that hundreds of thousands are being held from at any one point where one could breach a wall in the West Bank, but still...walls coming down all over within hours of each other would be pretty neat.
Tuesday, January 22
Budgeting Time As a Feminist, part 2
I just linked to an excellent and common example by BrownFemiPower of white women getting credit for helping women at large when they've actually done a lot of harm to women.
How did they do this harm?
By forgetting to ask themselves whether women in a population group would be disproportionately hurt (compared to men in the same population group) by whatever actions they're advocating (be they immigration actions, medical funding actions, military funding and policy actions, etc.)
Today BrownFemiPower saw another instance of white women getting credit for helping women at large when they have, by forgetting to apply their feminist knowledge to all their advocacy of various policy positions, done a lot of harm to many, many women.
Short summary:
- White feminists were getting mocked by conservatives for not criticizing misogyny conducted by non-whites against non-whites strongly enough.
- White feminists wrote a nationally publicized letter saying, "We do too! Hell, we FOUND that misogyny and were the first to tell the non-white perpetrators that they should stop it!"
- BrownFemiPower retorted (unfortunately, in a venue that isn't nearly as highly publicized) that
- they shouldn't even worry about whether they're criticizing misogyny conducted by non-whites against non-whites until they've spent a heck of a lot more time criticizing misogyny conducted by whites against non-whites (usually through foreign policy) and
- they did NOT find the non-white-on-non-white misogyny mentioned by conservatives and they were NOT the first to tell the perpetrators of that misogyny to stop it--the VICTIMS did both.
her little list of wrongs that “American feminists” stand against was the most irritating...
Hm. Who could Ms. Pollitt *possibily* be talking about here?...
Do you think it’s the U.S. government that is currently enforcing horrific immigration laws that are degrading and violating women and their families–-IN KATHA’S OWN DAMN COUNTRY?...
Why the particular emphasis on "Muslim countries?" Does Ms. Pollitt think that "Muslim countries" are particularly hostile to women’s rights for some reason?
Even as her own country imprisons 8 year old girls and deports their mothers?
Fact: it’s feminists who first identified atrocities against women around the world–female genital mutilation, forced marriage, child marriage, spousal violence, rape– as violations of human rights, not family matters or customs of no state importance.
Actually, Ms. Pollitt–it was the women who *experienced* those actions that first identified the violence being committed against them.
Please, please, please, please, please--if you're a white feminist, consider my suggestion for action instead of signing Ms. Pollitt's letter:
Next time you're around white feminists who are upset that the right wing is saying, "You don't do enough to stop non-white violence against non-white women!" STOP them from retorting with a, "Look at all we're doing!" and, worse yet, a resurgence of interest in doing so.
Tell your white feminist peers only to tell the right wing commentators, if they must retort at all:
"I'm sorry, but you're wrong to assume that that is our job. Our job is to stop white violence against white women and white violence against non-white women. And we will work on those issues in the proportion that they exist today. Though we may lend a hand when it is asked, we refuse to claim that it is our job to 'stop' non-white violence against non-white women. Thank you for listening, and please follow our bulletin for the amazing work we are doing stopping white violence against white women and white violence against non-white women in the coming months!"
Monday, January 21
No Fruits Or Veggies On Food Stamps
Holy gamole!
I had no idea that federal WIC food stamps couldn't be used on either fruits or vegetables (except carrots and round beans).
We've gotta change this!
Especially since canned veggies (which I think might be okay to buy w/ WIC food stamps) don't offer much nutritional value. Haven't found out if it's okay to buy frozen veggies with WIC food stamps. If so, then this isn't quite as awful as I thought, but it's still not acceptable. Y'know, looking at this chart, though, it seems as if even canned & frozen might not be allowed.
The "you get $X a month" should be the only limit. If someone wants to blow through it quickly on fruits and veggies instead of on cereal, for heaven's sake, LET HER!
Why on EARTH should the government mandate that entire food groups be excluded from the use of a fixed amount of money?
Wednesday, January 16
Budgeting Time as a Feminist
Blogger BrownFemiPower used Sen. Hillary Clinton today to illustrate how much harm a white woman can help do to women of color and still get credit as someone who helps "women," period, rather than as someone who helps "white women."
One of her commenters, Radfem, summarized this idea well:
she’s marketed both through her self, campaign and others as being like has been said for *all* women, which is contradictory because she’s made decisions, done things that are very harmful even deadly to many women.
One of the best things white feminists can do is to work hard to look out for instances in which we don't think we're even looking at a "gender-related" issue. Because if we don't look at it that way while deciding how we're going to act about it, we'll end up hurting many women.
So, for example,
if you really want Mexican women's lives to be as good as Mexican men's lives, on account of, as a feminist, wanting women's lives to be as good as men's lives, then you've got to dedicate some hours of your activist & intellectual time to fighting & persuading to make sure that women don't get arrested by lone men with guns & state-given authority in the middle of the desert.
Listen--you can't keep lone men who would like a gun & state-given authority from deciding to do women more forms of harm than they decide to do to men.
Maybe Men Can Stop Rape will be able to in 100 years, but you can't.
But you know what you can do right away? You know what fight your help can win within a year or five or ten?
You can make sure your state doesn't give guns and authority over Mexicans to lone men.
Example #2:
You already know from mainstream feminist stories that violence in general plays out as beatings on both men and women but as beatings and sexual violence on women.
Now it's important, as a white feminist, to apply that knowledge to any instances of violence you hear about--such as this statement:
beefed-up border security has funneled migrants through one of the world's most forbidding deserts, and...smugglers adopt increasingly violent tactics.
It's important to think to yourself, "What correlation between the violence and the nouns mentioned in that sentence should I notice and consider throwing my hand into activism and blogging about?"
More generally,
you can dedicate a significant percentage of your activist organizing, letters to Congress, letters to your church, blog posts, school papers, and thoughts to shaping the rules of what we will consider acceptable border policy in ways that make life at the border the same quality for Mexican men and Mexican women.
I'll avoid telling you what those shapes of policy should be--largely because I don't even know, myself.
What I'm saying is that you need to do these things even if, for example, you are largely against immigrants coming to our country at more than X% of our current population per year.
If you're a feminist, to really be true to your feminist ideals, you need to use your thinking-and-blogging time to make a list of all the immigration control policies that you previously thought useful and, for each of them, brainstorm the ways in which they would, in practice, turn out to harm women more than they harm men.
- If it seems that they don't, then keep them on the list of immigration control policies you support for now.
- If you see that there are many, many ways that a policy would hurt Mexican women more than it would hurt Mexican men, then take it off the list of ideas you support.
- If your list now seems too short to achieve another goal you believe in--for example, keeping immigration levels at X% of the current population--and, upon thinking about it, you still feel committed to reaching that goal, brainstorm again.
You probably won't come up with any great ideas right away, but don't go back to any of the items you crossed off your list. YOU ARE A FEMINIST. You now know that those old ideas play out unfairly between the genders. Keep them off your list. Do not ever advocate them again.
Don't worry--you're human and therefore creative. If feminism and that "X%" population level both matter to you equally, you'll get there. You'll network--you'll keep brainstorming. And slowly but surely, you'll find beliefs about immigration that you do feel comfortable pushing with activism, organizing, letters, and blog posts.
(Of course, subject these to this same process once in a while--perhaps once per year!)
Remedies for zinc poisoning
For a while, I was in too much pain and nausea to try to eat, even though web sites said I would've felt better if I'd had the zinc in my stomach with some food.
Once I got up to walk to a meeting during a moment of relief, though, I felt even better. Interesting. Walking around seems to help--which would be why I felt better walking from the train to the office this morning.
The meeting was coming over a computer as a voice and a PowerPoint presentation. I ran downstairs to get myself lots of Saltines to add to my breakfast cereal I'd brought and dug in while I was feeling good.
Soon the cold temperature in the room got to me. I ran back to my desk to get my ugly coat, thinking, "I hope bringing this thing in doesn't make me look unprofessional."
Naaaah.
Not 1/5 as unprofessional as falling asleep in the meeting.
Thank goodness it was only my immediate manager and a bunch of entry-level workers in the room with us. If any of the people I actually work for had been there, it might have gone onto my performance review in a week or two.
I think my apology to my immediate manager worked. By the time I was saying, "That was very unprofessional, and..." she was laughing.
Yeesh.
Oh! Right! The zinc poisioning part! Other than a few waves of, "Oh, is this going to come back? Nope--nope--it went away," I feel MUCH better.
I wonder how long I was out.
Zinc poisoning
If I had one of those "eating healthy while budgeting tightly" categories, I think I'd put this there:
If your zinc pills are marked "333% of recommended daily value," DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN ONE OF THEM.
Zinc ain't vitamin C. You can't go way above the RDV.
Background: I thought I might be getting sick. Zinc is one of the "after you get sick" vitamins that helps (whereas C & echinacea extract are only good for prevention).
Other days, I'd popped 2 zinc and taken a tincture of echinacea extract and noticed that I felt miserably nauseated.
This morning, I thought, "Okay, no drug interactions, but I'll up the zinc and put up with the 30 minutes of nausea."
WHOOPS.
1.5x the zinc (which, in retrospect, I'm realizing caused the nausea all by its pretty little self) caused 5x the misery for who knows how many times as long.
Shoot me now!
(Or, more reasonably, God, bring me vomiting. Why am I so afraid of vomiting? I know that as soon as my body gets rid of a poison, I feel better. I know it! In fact, my body just reacted that way to something 3 weeks ago. It's fresh in my memory. Why am I still consciously praying, "Don't let me vomit, don't let me vomit, don't let me vomit, don't let me vomit...?")
Sunday, January 13
Presidential Campaign 2008 & Katie
Well, the Edwards supporters shook me up.
They finally did it. I was convinced for over 12 months that policies that Barack Obama would and could get through (as a whole) would be the best of anybody's.
Sure, Edwards had a better health care plan. And sure, he was pushing the populism speeches harder right now.
But in just about every other domain, I liked Obama's policies better. They seemed both progressive and likely to pass.
But this just goes through the roof. I think it's because I'm a numbers person and I react so much to this kind of thing.
Edwards urged Congress to act immediately to pass at least a $25 billion jobs plan in early 2008 and be ready to pass $75 billion more if there is more evidence that we are entering a recession. Edwards believes that every American should have access to a good job and the chance to build a better life. To provide a much-needed boost to a weakening economy, Edwards' economic stimulus plan calls for investing in clean energy infrastructure, increasing federal aid to help states avoid cutting programs that help families through hard times, reforming unemployment insurance and tackling the housing crisis.
Now, I haven't added up the Obama numbers--I think it's time I did--but I keep seeing things like $1 billion here, $10 billion there, $2 billion there, $7 billion there...and Edwards just coming out and saying, "Look, we could need $100 billion, so pass it. Period." makes me so happy!
Because we DO!
And things like aid to states for public services, reforming government insurance so it works best, getting renewable energy jobs going...those are things I'm down with. I'm not too against the government pouring billions into those kinds of things (though preferably not ethanol).
So now what?
Edwards, because he is starting to say, with his mainstream voice, things that I only dream of and smile when I hear Russ Feingold, Keith Ellison, and Dennis Kucinich say but don't bother to vote over because they seem too far-fetched to enter the mainstream?
Or Obama, because although he might be promising less money on programs I like, he'll have to do less to get Republicans to pass the expenditures?
I mean, this money dump of Edwards's sounds like New Deal programs. And a lot of those were damn good ideas.
On the other hand, FDR had to do all sorts of unconstitutional things to get those programs passed. And Edwards is no more liked by Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress than FDR was. Would the claims he'd have to make about the Executive Branch's power set us up for people who never liked Edwards's policies in the first place to have the power to undo them even farther once he's gone? (After all, LBJ's "Great Society" programs had a huge backlash, and although a lot of it happened through Congress, a lot also happened through the Executive Branch.)
Plus, when you're bludgeoning through big programs, there's less opportunity to make sure they get distributed justly.
For example, to get support for the programs from fiscally conservative racists, you have to appeal to their racism and avoid putting in mechanisms that would prevent them from having it spent disproportionately on white people. You have to say, "Oh, sure! I believe that it'll trickle down in your hands! And since you're helping me pass spending so much, I'm sure they'll get a good chunk of change!"
There's this part of me that feels like Obama could get $20 billion spent and make sure it's spent far more fairly on Native Americans, blacks, Latinos, Arabs, Asians, transpeople, the disabled, etc. etc. etc. than white culture has ever done at the national level.
But geez louise...$100 billion is a lot of money.
Friday, January 11
More Dark Days Food
I've been bad about blogging this. Bad about keeping up with it, too, but even worse about blogging what I have done.
The pictures are Googled, not the food I made--I'm out a camera.
Back in December, I made a birthday cake with almost all its main ingredients made out of local stuff. I'm lucky to be in a place that had apples in early & mid-December this year. I'm also lucky to be in dairy country, where I had buttermilk & cream cheese available for decent prices (local, unbranded cream cheese from the co-op: 2x the price of Philly on sale; half the price of the local branded cream cheese).
Essentially, you take a carrot cake recipe, replace the crushed pineapples with baked & mushed-up apples (I added a wee bit of honey while baking, hoping it would make them cook faster & mush more easily), replace granulated sugar with honey, and, if you're making it as late in the year as I did, once carrots have gone out of season and you don't have a root cellar, replace shredded carrots with shredded parsnips.
Parsnips don't shred as easily as carrots, but they do shred with work.
I combined the principles above, this recipe (which gives you the solids & liquids based on working with honey instead of sugar, and this one.
I did cheat on the icing. I tried flavoring it with honey instead of sugar, but it tasted so weird. I wanted people to eat the cake--how else would I convince them that local food was great? Having spent the better part of 2 days on parts of this cake, I was too exasperated to meditate upon a great solution, so I threw tons of sugar & vanilla extract into the icing. :-\
A few weeks later, I made a stew that's to die for. I'm heartbroken because there's only 1 serving left. I keep wanting to try it on injeera (sour sponge bread), because it reminds me of Ethiopian glops, but I keep forgetting to pick up a sheet or two. So there it sits in my freezer, and I try to discipline myself not to eat it until I am in the Ethiopian neighborhood again and can get some injeera.
This stew is the perfection of my practice based on the observation that many foreign foods I love start as onion reductions.
It took 2 days and all my patience, but I did it! (I think my boyfriend did the dishes, though.)
Day 1: chopped a gazillion onions (can't remember if I found local ones left or not) and left them in a crock pot overnight.
Day 2: added tomato sauce, tomato paste, "Maggi" brand chicken broth seasoning (which I might not buy anymore, but I bought about a 10-year supply in 2005 after a Mandingan (sp?) friend told me it's what he uses), and, I think, some salt. Later added a bit of water? Not sure. Then ground goat--the last of my supplies from a co-op that had just branched out into carrying locally raised goat and then shut down. Peeled & chopped some local potatoes pretty small. Found that my local carrots from the first week of November had stayed all right in "green bags" in the fridge (not surprised--the farmer told me his carrots would last a long time). It was early in the day yet, so I had the energy to dice them. I definitely like that. Also diced the parsnip cores I couldn't manage to shred for that birthday cake. I'd saved them in a Tupperware, thanks to Pam Anderson's advice not to throw leftover fish & chicken away, in case you want it shredded on a salad.
Boy, oh boy, what else went in there...
Well...cloves galore. (Which is funny, because I thought I hated cloves. Turns out they're fine in slow-cooker stew with lots of far eastern spices. It took forever to crush them with the back of a spoon instead of a mortal & pestle (I didn't have one!). Crushed cumin seeds & crushed cilantro seeds (also w/ the back of a spoon), curry powder, pepper...I don't remember what else. Things that weren't spicy and were listed on the back of my roommate's "Indian" spice mixes. Plus perhaps a few random Euro stew things. Oregano? Maybe a pinch of herbes de provence, but not enough to make the dish taste like them? Cinnamon, I'm sure. Parsley, maybe? (It's in Lebanese sausage, I found out the other day.) Oh, a bit of allspice, but I tried not to overdo that. I don't know...stuff. And same with what went into it...did I have more veggies around? Can't remember.
It cooked forever because that water at the beginning was a mistake--it ended up with plenty--and now I needed to reduce it to "glop." I also wanted to make sure I didn't eat raw ground goat meat.
Oh, I remember! I used a potato masher to crush a huge can of chick peas and threw that in as thickener, too! I would've loved to have lentils in it, but I don't think I ever found any. I also put in lots of pressed garlic--probably the very last locally grown garlic available in town (I hope what I have left lasts, since I don't have a root cellar!)
At the very end, I put in collards I'd treated myself to (yeah, they were out of season here and had been for at least a month).
Since the ingredients were only sort of local, I tried to eat it over large portions of wild-harvested, MN wild rice (I mixed a little white rice in).
I thought maybe my boyfriend was sick of stew on rice, and I wanted to save some stew for injeera, anyway. I rummaged through the freezer and found out I'd bought frozen walleye! Score! I botched cooking it (thought I could saute it w/o breading it), but I did get the remains of the butter & skin off the frying pan with farmer's market apple cider and local butter. Plus, the "pan sauce" that that resulted in even tasted good--though it didn't go with fish at all. As a side dish, I lucked out--frozen vegetables are available locally grown & packed around here.
Applesauce.
This one was a good budget item: I got a bag of apples, only half of which I've had the patience to peel so far, for $5.
There were probably 30+ apples, averaging medium size, in that bag.
Step 1: peel apples & pick out bad parts after neglecting them for weeks after buying in December. Step 2: chop 'em. Step 3: Leave 'em in a crock pot. Step 4: Mash 'em with a potato masher. Step 5: Leave 'em in a crock pot. Step 6: Refrigerate (can last about 3 weeks, the farmer told me). Step 7: Freeze (can last till next apple season, though don't be surprised when it thaws runny--freezing broke most of the water-retaining cell walls).
I wonder what the nutritional value of applesauce is compared to apples. It didn't take up that much space--the apples reduced to at least half their size. Plus, one apple's worth of applesauce just doesn't seem as filling as an apple. Some of what's filling is water that's in an apple but evaporated out of applesauce. But...is the air between "apple" molecules filling, too? How much applesauce should I be eating to have "an apple a day," and how much is letting the non-fillingness fool me into gluttony?
Mashed celeriac/potato/sunchokes (w/ salt/pepper/milk & some pressed garlic I've been hoarding) & lasagna.
Holy crap. An image linked in this blog is #2 on a "Google Images" search for "mashed celeriac." What the...?
Note: potatoes are ready to mash in 5-10 minutes. Celeriac & sunchokes, more like 20-30 or more. Do NOT "test" the potatoes for doneness by squeezing them with the tongs to see if they break apart. They will. And you'll still need your hot water for your other root veggies, meaning you can't strain for the potato crumbs you just made.
(How do I know this? *whistles innocently*)
I'm glad I finally made myself get ground beef. I kept ending up using deer, lamb, elk, pork...where I should've been using burger meat. What a way to run through money! (Yet probably less expensive than making a special run for beef or eating out because I couldn't make anything.)
Anyway, with ground beef bought while I was already out shopping and nicely tucked in the freezer, I was able to make lasagna! (On the beef trip, I bought a block of mozzarella for an eventual lasagna pan.)
Had trouble finding cheap ricotta that was mere ingredients I could pronounce, then finally remembered I'd found the local, real, & cheap cheese I'd found was at a mainstream grocery store. Didn't feel like running to one and bought the overpriced organic, local, real-ingredients ricotta.
I think I'm supposed to mix the shredded mozzarella into the ricotta or something, but I forgot & just put it on top. Along w/ shredded parmesan that's been in our fridge forever yet only had one small spot of mold to cut off (weird).
Just realizing I forgot to put any vegetables in it (I have frozen spinach, I think, but didn't use it). No wonder it tastes so rich.
I was exhausted by the time the meat should've gone in and didn't want another dish, so I threw it in raw. Don't know if it cooked fully while in the oven. I'll just microwave every piece I eat.
Still haven't done the dishes.
Last week, I found burdock (finally in tiny enough slices to make it worth tasting something I might not like!), celeriac, jerusalem artichokes, watermelon radishes, and spanish radishes still available locally grown. I was surprised about everything but the burdock. I thought those other 4 were "December-only" foods.
And perhaps they might be, some years--by this week, at a different store, the radishes seemed to be from California.
Too bad I let my burdock, watermelon radishes, and spanish radishes go soft. (They shriveled in 4 or 5 days in the fridge, then even more once I took them out of the fridge. Way to go, Katie.) I took a bite out of the center of the watermelon radish, and thought, "Yup, tastes like a radish." The main value in those things, I think, is having them firm all the way to the edge so you can actually slice them up & show them off. Still haven't tasted a black Spanish radish, since I let one shrivel last year, too, then wouldn't buy a California one to replace it. The sunchokes I'd left out, but they were shriveled by the time I got around to using them (6 or 7 days).
Not much left--just sunchokes (probably only a week or two longer), burdock, some root veggies I'm really not looking forward to eating (maybe I can stand them in goat stew)...
Even the potatoes that were around at the end of December (after the onions stopped being local) are gone. (Note: fancy potatoes finish here around the end of November--that's when my roommate could get red, but no longer blue, potatoes.)
(Awful, icky confession in the "read more.")
I need to get serious about washing my old Tupperware. Over the past few years, I've accumulated many while thrift storing, and I'm sure I have plenty of freezer-burn-resistant Tupperware. But, you see, I'm...I'm one of those people who doesn't wash Tupperware the night it came home from work and, as the stuff gets more and more caked on, hides it...and becomes less and less likely to unearth it once I know it's got mold, too.
I salvaged my moldy Tupperware in the summer of 2006, when I could do it outside with a hose and let all the mold sit on the grass, but I didn't bother in 2007. Actually, I didn't find the bag of collected dirty Tupperware my boyfriend put together in the dead of winter of 2007 until the end of September, 2007, and then I made lots of excuses to ignore it.
Anyway, NO BUYING. I just have to have the self-discipline to get that bag to my boyfriend's house, remember to take it out of the trunk of my car, and run everything that's only lightly crusted through his dishwasher so I can handle a round of hand-scrubbing. (I think if I do that, I can get through my freezer-safe crunch until summer, when I'll do the ones that are half-full of mold.)
It's strange to think that the "easy" solution for someone with my cleaning problems in my culture is to throw the things away and start over. That costs are so externalized that prices are actually low enough to do that.
Anyway, I refuse. I refuse to take advantage of that cost externalization.
Cash Crops as American food, clothing, & other items
Today my newspaper reported that one out of every three kids born in an urban/suburban area will be born in a slum this year.
*heart seizes*
I did this. Not as much as some people, I know, but then...what I didn't do...my people did.
We buy those damned cash crops. We buy them and buy them and buy them and just won't make ourselves stop.
...transnationals...business cartels...expropriate the best land in these countries for cash-crop exports, usually monoculture crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed the local populations.
-Michael Parenti, "Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty In The World," April 24, 2007.
"Expropriate the best land."
"Expropriate the best land."
"Expropriate the best land."
How can we handle buying anything made out of cash crops from other parts of the world?
*face in hands*
Why have my people insisted on eating things made out of coffee beans, cocoa beans, tea leaves, black pepper, coconut parts, lemon parts, and tropical plant oil for so many centuries? (We got widely literate off land-expropriatingly-grown coffee & tea in 17th/18th-century salons, but for God's sake, why won't we stop???)
I know it's not a complete answer, but I keep feeling like it would do a lot of good within 20 years--and on a longer term perhaps help problems, say, 50%--if we stopped buying things made from "cash crops" of other parts of the world and refused to start up again, no matter what messages marketers put out.
Monday, December 17
Microloans / Microlending / Microcredit / Microfinance
Whatever you call it, there's a problem with it:
All organizations that loan extremely small amounts of money [to the poor] are now calling themselves "microlenders" / "microfinancers" / "microcreditors."
For decades--or perhaps even a century or two--big banks didn't loan any amount of money to extremely poor people. Why? Because even when they charged sky-high, usurious interest and sent harrassing collectors around, they still couldn't manage to get their money back.
Muhammad Yunus (of Grameen Bank) and others said, "Duh!" They added that the way you can get your money back from poor people is to:
- charge interest rates lower than the amount of profit a poor person's business is going to start bringing in on account of the loan
- take the harrassment out of "pressure" to pay back loans (e.g. make pressure from neighbors be supportive and helpful)
In addition to increasing the revenues of tiny businesses through loans, strategies #1 & #2 worked for getting the money back! Therefore "microloans" became famous as a good thing.
But now, because strategies #1 & #2 aren't actually in the word "microloan," big banks are able to reconsider usury-and-harrassment small loans to extremely poor people.
Though they'd previously considered such loans impossible to get money back on and not even worth trying, the good moral name of Yunus-style tiny loans (or "microloans") is making first-world investors pour money into usury-and-harrassment tiny loans (and insist that this time, the harrassment get the money back. After all, with the public thinking that "microloans" are a good thing, one can get away with more harrassment than was previously possible, right?).
Are you a teacher? Part of your pension fund is probably counting on making 15% from putting money into usurious (90%APY), harrassment-filled "microloans" to Ghanans. Maybe it's time to tell TIAA-CREF that you won't stand for that.
I'm looking into other ways to fight "usury and harrassment" tiny loans while preserving the ability of "affordable rates and lots of help" tiny lenders to keep doing what they're doing.
No free morality ride for lenders!
Thursday, November 29
Israel
Holy gamole.
Olmert (Israel's prime minister) just dropped the words "South Africa" to the whole world.
He pretty much said that if Israel didn't either
- negotiate a 2-state solution (that is, give up Palestinian territory) or
- grant equal voting rights & citizenship benefits to all the Arabs living in the territories they currently hold but don't give Arabs citizenship in,
Okay--what he actually said was that a failure to make #1 happen would result in that South Africa-like situation--which I guess means he doesn't believe there's a chance in heck that Israel's government would just do #2 on its own as part of making peace.
But anyway, wow.
He just came out and...said it.
(Now, so far the news is covering it with headlines that don't really reflect the significance of what the guy said. ABC comes closest of the search results in Yahoo News on israel south african (which I typed in, trying to find more than brief excerpts of his quotes). They headlined the story, "Olmert: Failure Will Lead to Israel Apartheid." Okay, I would've preferred a bit about failure to do what--for example, "Olmert: Failure To Reach Two-State Solution Will Lead to Israel Apartheid." But it's certainly better than the headlines that say, "Will Lead To End Of Israel." Sure, all the "end of Israel" headlines clarify in the article bodies that Olmert clarified that by "end of Israel" he meant "South-African-style struggle for a new governmental system," but geez Louise, why can't they just put something like that right in the headline itself?
Anyway, good headlines or bad headlines, Olmert explained his position pretty darned clearly, and I've gotta say, the prime minister of Israel saying, "Look, blah blah blah blah future like South Africa blah blah blah!" seems like a pretty f***ing big deal to come out of what I'd thought was going to be a token peace summit.)
Wednesday, November 21
Eating Local During Dark, Cold, Short Days
My mom is such a sweetheart.
She's heard me talk about local foods so much that she found locally grown pecans for the pecan pie I requested for Thanksgiving! I didn't even know pecans grew within a state of her, so I'm very impressed.
Also, not sure if I'll manage to keep up with this challenge, but it's an interesting one:
Along the lines of that challenge, I did make myself mashed celeriac last night with locally grown garlic and semi-locally-grown herbs (they were bought on-farm while my family vacationed there and then given to me next time I saw my family).
Unfortunately, I left the portion I didn't eat last night at home and was planning to head out of town straight after work, which means my lovely locally grown leftovers are going to waste, and I'm going to have to get something non-locally-grown for the bulk of my lunch/dinner tonight (since I won't be cooking until I get home, and local eating at this time of year usually involves cooking).
Oh, and a local eating tip:
Don't leave your potato masher to dry overnight with celeriac on it. Dried-up celeriac does not wash off as easily the next morning as dried-up potato does!
Tuesday, October 9
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe
I want to push Congress, and push it hard, to enact a law that would overturn Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe.
They did it for Duro v. Reina within a year. Let's get them to do it for Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe.
Who's with me?
See Section IV. Legislating Criminal Jurisdiction over Non-Indians for the text I think is well-written.
I believe that overturning Oliphant would really help reduce all sorts of nasty, nasty, nasty violent crime by whites who know they can get away with anything because there's currently only one legal system--one that doesn't care about going after them--with the right to go after them.
Let's get this going around the blogs. Let's get bloggers bugging Congresspeople every week!
"State Secrets"
In 1953, the U.S. government's judicial branch refused to let women file a lawsuit against the U.S. government's administrative branch / military. The justification was that such a lawsuit would involve saying things in a courtroom that were still big secrets from other countries.
Well, it turns out that anyone who thought that was a load of bunk back then was right. In 2000, documents were released and it turns out that what the women would've gotten by suing for that information was: knowing that the plane their husbands had died in weren't maintained well enough.
Ike, not you! Not Mr. "Beware the military-industrial complex running amok!" How could you let your administration ask the court to ensure the privacy of information that would keep its military from running amok, not overseen, putting people put into faulty equipment?
Well, now we've got another trial where the U.S. government's judicial branch is refusing to let someone sue the U.S. government's administrative branch. In this case, the person already knows what the administrative branch did wrong and it's a punitive, not one wanting answers.
So the whole world KNOWS, since Chanc. Merkel confirmed it, that the U.S. government's administrative branch actually DID mess up. It's just that the plaintiff isn't going to get to take it to a U.S. court because higher U.S. courts are saying he's not even allowed to.
Why are they saying that?
Well, because in the process of proving his claim in court that the U.S. government's administrative branch messed up (or perhaps in the process of the U.S. defending itself), big secrets we can't tell other countries would be revealed.
:-Þ Bleah.
What'll you bet that in 50 years we'll find out the only "secret" the administrative branch didn't want released was that yes, it did mess up and yes, it did owe the plaintiff money.
(Big whoop! Like keeping that a secret would actually protect our citizenry from harm from other countries.)
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