How strange: he was a little younger than me (but not much!), so it’s sad to learn that the King of Pop has died of a heart attack. He had real talent.
Die young, leave a strange corpse.
The rats really are scuttling out of the woodwork: last week, it’s a right-wing anti-abortion hater gunning down a doctor, and this week, we get a white supremacist opening fire in the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Fortunately, no one has died in this incident, but a security guard and the gunman were wounded.
They really are afraid and desperate, and violence is all they have left.
(via Greg Laden)
In case you’re wondering about the motives behind this attack, they’re rather obvious.
The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
Von Brunn served six years in prison on federal attempted kidnapping, assault and firearms charges after what he called a “legal, nonviolent citizens arrest” of members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
On his Web site, “Holy Western Empire,” von Brunn said he was “convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge.”
It’s about time the US law enforcement agencies recognized that the real terrorist groups in this country aren’t populated by people with funny arabic names: they’re homegrown, and they’ve got European names like von Brunn and McVeigh and Roeder…and even Terry and O’Reilly.
The guard who was shot, Stephen T. Johns, has died, making von Brunn a murderer.
You know why? Because the governor of Maine just signed a bill into law that legalizes same-sex marriage.
There is some cause for worry in the current reports on the swine flu outbreak — while the possibility of a global pandemic is being raised, at this point it really is only a possibility. The accounts from Mexico are not reassuring, however.
Health officials reported that at least eight students at a private high school in New York City had “probable” swine flu. They also confirmed three new cases — two in Kansas and one in California — bringing the total number of confirmed U.S. cases to 11. The president of Mexico, where the outbreak has killed as many as 81 people, issued an order granting his government broad powers to isolate patients and question travelers. (…)
The virus, for which there is no vaccine for humans, has nearly brought Mexico City to a halt. Normally congested downtown streets in this city of 20 million were almost empty Saturday, and of the few people who ventured outside, many said they did so only out of necessity. Soldiers posted at subway stations handed out face masks to passersby from the back of armored vehicles. Some pedestrians covered their mouths and noses with scarves and rags.
Aetiology has an excellent summary that represents where we should be in our thinking right now — no need for panic, but it emphasizes the importance of research and monitoring.
In summary, this is a fast-developing story, and it will take much more investigation and field work to determine the true extent of the virus’s spread in the population; to figure out where it originated (one blog suggests a Mexican hog confinement according to some local Mexican papers, but that is conjecture at this point); how it jumped to humans; and how efficiently it’s transmitted. Whether this burns out or spreads worldwide, it certainly shows once again the importance of surveillance and monitoring of influenza strains, and demonstrates that improving our infrastructure due to concerns about H5N1 will benefit us whether that serotype, or another emergent strain, ends up being the next global influenza threat.
And if you want to keep track of the news yourself, the best place right now is Effect Measure, where Revere is giving regular updates from on informed perspective on the news and on emerging information from the CDC.
I’m sad to report that John Maddox, former editor of Nature, has died. He was one of those fellows who shaped the direction of science for quite a long period of time with the power of one of the most influential science journals in the world.
I suspect every scientist of my generation read his editorials in our weekly perusal of the journal. The one I remember most vividly, and probably the one that got the most attention in general, was his ferocious denunciation of Rupert Sheldrake’s work — he went so far as to say that if ever there was a book suitable for burning, it was that one. So of course, I had to read it (that’s one of the pitfalls of calling for the destruction of books). And then, also of course, I discovered that Maddox was right on the money — that book was an astonishing pile of B.S. masquerading as science, and it’s true that Sheldrake is still peddling his nonsense.
We’ve lost a vigorous skeptic and humanist.
Brought to you by guest blogger LisaJ:
Canada lost two soldiers serving in Afghanistan this week. This marks the 89th
and 90th Canadian soldier to be killed since starting our peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan in 2002. Master Corporal Josh Roberts leaves behind his fiancé in Manitoba, and Master Corporal Erin Doyle leaves behind a wife and a young daughter. These stories are just heartbreaking. They are both very young men, and they’ve had their lives just ripped right out form underneath them. Their families’ lives have undoubtedly been shattered. What’s more, breaking news this morning tells us that a female British-Canadian aid worker, along with two American and Trinidadian colleagues, were also killed in a militant attack in Afghanistan yesterday. This is sickening. This is three of my own fellow citizens in one week, and I know that doesn’t even compare to the countless others, largely civilians and American soldiers, who will have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq this week.
Everytime I hear of one of these stories I just find it so tragic, and so I should. These people have selflessly given up their lives for the rest of us. In this case, I find it especially selfless since it’s not really our war that the Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan are fighting. I imagine that most people here will agree with me when I say that I find the death of any soldier, of any nationality, serving in Afghanistan or Iraq right now to be an awful, tragic, horrible, sickening, unfair and unnecessary loss. It just makes me so angry every time I hear of another death or injury, because what the hell are they all doing there anyways? (Note: the previous statement was not meant to imply that I don’t know what their role is in Afghanistan. I understand that they are there to protect the Afghan citizens, and I am not trying to undermine their role here in this statement. I just think it’s unfortunate that they were sent there in the first place). I have so much respect for these soldiers, and I just cannot imagine how heart breaking it must be for themselves and their families every day, not knowing what may happen to them at any moment. Just imagining having to say goodbye to a loved one who is heading off to serve in such dangerous battlefields makes me sick to my stomach. The pain and grief they must feel everyday must be unimaginable. For all of you here who have served or who have loved ones serving, my hats off to you, you are strong, wonderful people and I feel for you everyday.
I know a lot of us here have strong opinions that this war shouldn’t even be taking place. It’s this aspect of the whole damn thing that, for me, makes these deaths all the more horrible. What saddens me more is that even I, who is so horrified every time I hear of another dead or injured soldier, find myself grieving pretty quickly and putting the faces and details of these soldiers lives to the back of my mind. This is an unfortunate adaptation of the escalating death count in this war. I guess as the numbers pile up it just gets harder and harder to remember them all, so their stories slip away much more quickly. This is a sad fact, but not entirely unnatural. I mean, we can’t all walk around grieving for our lost soldiers every day, that would prohibit us from functioning normally, but it’s just sad when their names and faces start to get lost in the shuffle. What we should be able to take some tiny amount of solace in, however, is that soldiers who are badly injured will be well taken care of when they return home by the government who sent them to war in the first place. Now I’ve heard a lot of stories of injured American soldiers who have to fight tooth and nail to get any kind of medical compensation for their injuries, and many don’t ever get the payments they are entitled to. But this can’t also be happening in Canada, right? Well reports this week show that Canadian reservists, which reportedly make up 20% of the 2500 Canadian troops deployed in Iraq, who suffer significant body trauma, such as the loss of a limb, receive sub-par long term medical care and compensation upon their return home. Apparently they’re getting it right with some soldiers, the ‘career soldiers’, but not these reservists who have apparently made the mistake of just selflessly stepping in to help out in this particular war. It looks like they’re working on fixing this issue, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Just another example of how our society and government has its priorities really screwed up. These soldiers should get nothing but respect from our governments. You lose a limb for your country, you should be adequately compensated and given as much care as you need, end of story.
Anyways, here’s to all of our soldiers and their families who are giving the ultimate sacrifice in this war. And here’s hoping that our governments get it together one day and treat these soldiers, aid workers, diplomats, and everyone actively involved in the war and relief efforts the respect and honour that they deserve.
[MAJeff here. I’ll remember this one of these times.]
Apparently, John Edwards had an affair. I’ve been out of the news loop and haven’t been following it other than what I see in a few blog comment sections. I’m honestly not all that interested in the sex lives of the powerful; I’m more interested in the social reaction. So, I’m going to talk about a few things that I’ve seen, and tie those into issues of marriage and sex regulation by the state.
One thing I’ve heard is, “at least he didn’t break the law.” Well, depending upon where his trysts took place, Edwards may have broken the law. Here in Massachusetts, for example, adultery is a crime that carries a penalty of incarceration in state prison for up to 3 years, jail up to 2, or a fine of up to $500. As of 2004, 24 states criminalized adultery. (Cossman, 2007: 209. fn6). Admittedly, such laws are rarely enforced, and the no-fault system means that even if cheating takes place, it’s less likely to be the legal “reason” for the divorce [“Irreconcilable differences” or its equivalent is the norm].
Marriage is a regulatory system. When folks stand in front of their witnesses, and take their vows (the state won’t allow you to marry without a public ceremony), they are entering a three-way contract, with conditions set by the state. One of those conditions is sexual monogamy. Mess around, and you’ve violated the terms of the contract. You’ve sinned against the state, and have committed a criminal offense.
Adultery itself has changed. At the founding of the Republic it wasn’t sex outside of marriage, but involved a married woman having sex with a man not her husband. Adultery laws were put in place to establish men’s property rights over their wives, and particularly to ensure that the children born into such relationships were theirs and not some other man’s. It wasn’t about violations of intimacy or trust, as we take it to be today. It was about stealing another woman’s womb. [Ed. Oops. Big difference]
Indeed, the comment of Edwards’s, that he “didn’t love” the woman with whom he had the affair is a sign of that. In contemporary society, marriage has become about companionship and intimacy [see, for example, Giddens or Seidman]. One of the things that makes same-sex marriage imaginable to many people is the fact that marriage itself has changed in such ways as to make it imaginable. We no longer have the explicit gender-based marital roles established in law. (Everyone say, “Thank you” to the feminist legal activists who brought about a lot of those changes.) Marriage isn’t gender-role based, at least legally, in the rigid ways that it once was.
Additionally, marriage has become more focused on intimate life. It has, over the course of the past couple centuries, become a space in which emotional and affective life is more and more important. Indeed, a romantic friendship at work–devoid of sexual activity–or flirtatious talk in an online chat-room are now examples of infidelity, reasons worthy of filing for divorce. The contract has not been violated, but the intimacy and trust held as the contemporary bases of marriage have been. Marriage has become less about procreation and more about intimacy (Griswold severed the procreative imperative from marital conjugality). That has changed both what counts as cheating and which relationships count as marriages.
Even though, in some places, same-sex couples have been included in marriage, another comment I saw yesterday reminded me how homosexuality is still to be excluded from “legitimate” domestic and intimate spaces. Someone wrote: “I’m happy Edwards’s affair was with a woman, unlike those Republicans who have affairs with the same sex.” Adultery can be forgiven, homosexuality can’t.
Well, in Vermont, if that affair had been with a man, it would not have been adultery. Recall above the definition of adultery. I wasn’t only sex with a married woman, but vaginal intercourse. It was the sex that would make babies, and only that sex. And, in the 2003 Blanchflower decision, the Vermont Supreme Court held that same-sex activity there did not fall under the definition of adultery. It might be cheating, but it isn’t cheating against the contract or the state. What is even more interesting about this is that Vermont’s Civil Union statutes are basically the same as their marriage statutes. If the adultery statute is to apply to same-sex couples, it’s going to take some special kinds of cheating to make it adultery. [Cossman, linked above, has a discussion of the changing status of adultery in law and popular culture.]
Marriage and the family are constantly changing. “Traditional marriage” is a moving target. A century ago, the statement “I didn’t love her” wouldn’t have mattered in the least. Marriage was a different beastie then, far less organized around the intimate and emotional than it is today. These news moments provide us an opportunity–not to talk about the individual relationship, but instead the public issues surrounding it, like how the institution and its regulation are changing. Those are, I think, far more important.
[Oops. Forgot again. MAJeff posting this one]
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I have to admit, this is probably me being an American, but until a few days ago I wasn’t aware of all the tensions between Georgia and Russia. What I know now, though, is that people are dying.
So, for the folks in the know, or in the region, what’s going on? What do you see as root causes? What will be the effects of this conflict? Any good sites for further reading? Anything average citizens outside the region can do?
It’s a small thing, only doing $10,000 worth of damage, but the location is newsworthy.
A fence and garage at Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church became engulfed in flames early Saturday, according to the Topeka Capitol-Journal Web site. The fire did not spread to the church building.
The cause of the fire is unknown, and I sincerely hope it wasn’t arson — setting homes on fire is not the way to settle grievances, even against people as despicable as the Phelps clan.
