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You are here: Home / Archives for Immigration / The Brown Enemy Within

The Brown Enemy Within

Voter Suppression and Life Suppression Go Hand in Hand

by Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix|  May 6, 202010:50 am| 59 Comments

This post is in: The Brown Enemy Within, Fuck the Poor

This story about the Seattle Indian Health Board requesting medical supplies and getting body bags and toe tags instead is making the rounds.

I’m not surprised. My dad was a physician in what was at the time called Indian Health Service (IHS) in the late 50’s and early 60’s — I spent my first few months of life on the South Dakota reservation where he was stationed. He also practiced on the Navajo Nation and has some terrible, horrible, no good stories about that time in his life, and the many, many children who died in the pediatric service there. “We were so stupid then” is one of the common refrain of those stories, which include accounts of how he and his fellow doctors did blood chemistry on dehydrated children by judging the color of the flame in a bunsen burner. Today those tests are done in seconds with a machine. The children were often dehydrated because it was common for sick kids to spend some time at a Navajo ceremony called a sing prior to being brought a long way to the hospital. Today, the Navajo Nation is one of the worst COVID-19 hot spots.

Back in the 50s and 60s, there was a compulsory draft, and the IHS was considered military service, so most of the medical staff consisted of people who joined to avoid the draft, many of whom went on to distinguished careers — my guess is that the quality of care when judged by standards back then was probably decent, who knows. I do know that the services offered at the reservation hospitals were bare-bones, and Dad has a lot of stories about riding in an ambulance to a far-off hospital with a sick person. He also has many stories of the illnesses of poverty on the rez, mostly shared after a few martinis.

I don’t have a lot of reservation stories but I do have a story about voter suppression. Because of their clear-eyed, rational concern about fraud, the South Dakota state legislature took a minute off from their usual work of banning abortion to pass laws requiring that voter registration forms and absentee ballots be notarized. So, more than 30 years ago, I became a notary public, following the advice of the South Dakota Democratic Party (RIP). It costs money to become a notary (application fees, a bond, a stamp and a seal), and notaries can charge for services. Who knows what the laws are today — they probably require that notaries wet their stamps using ink obtained from Chilean octopuses on full moon high tides in months ending in “r”, a requirement that John Roberts would understand and endorse as an eminently reasonable safeguard of democracy. The point is that, back before voter id became a thing, Republicans were pioneering voter suppression in their laboratory of anti-democracy, the reservation.

Well, enough story time, but it’s obvious that voter suppression and being shipped body bags when you ask for medical supplies are two pieces of bread around the shit sandwich called “being poor” and “being brown” here in the greatest country God has ever wrought, the U.S.A.

By the way, Pine Ridge knows the score — over a month ago, they posted guards at the entrances to their reservation towns to keep the modern day equivalent of smallpox blankets away from their people.

Voter Suppression and Life Suppression Go Hand in HandPost + Comments (59)

Popcult Open Thread: *Best* Part of the Superbowl!

by Anne Laurie|  February 3, 202011:09 am| 80 Comments

This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Music, Open Threads, Popular Culture, Sports, The Brown Enemy Within

Yeah, TaMara posted this last night — but it’s a long Monday, and if this doesn’t pump you up a bit, you might be clinically dead…

I think Jennifer Lopez just won the Iowa caucus

— Grace Segers (@Grace_Segers) February 3, 2020

Jennifer Lopez and Shakira brought out J Balvin, Bad Bunny and J Lo’s daughter for a career-spanning halftime performance that some are calling the best in #SuperBowl history.https://t.co/slSxSWFtGy

— Twitter Moments (@TwitterMoments) February 3, 2020

So, for the NFL’s Miami celebration of Latinx culture, superstar Shakira (who is Colombian) brought out Puerto Rican reggaeton singer Bad Bunny, and superstar Jennifer Lopez (whose parents are Puerto Rican) played with Colombian singer J Balvin. (Yes, I had to google.) Bonus points, callbacks to Shakira’s Lebanese heritage, and her anthem for the South African World Cup. Not to mention a subtle reference to kids in cages, also King Kong, plus Bruce Springsteen, and pole dancing!

… According to data crunched by Twitter, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s smoking-hot rendition of “Waka Waka” was the most-tweeted moment during the halftime slot.

And for the one-two knockout punch, JLo’s pole-dance routine during her performance of “Waiting for Tonight” was the second-most tweeted spectacle…

We also don’t give af pic.twitter.com/eyY8AEdm01

— Heather Havrilesky (@hhavrilesky) February 3, 2020

Ecleen Luzmila Caraballo, at Remezcla:

… They are the first two Latinas to headline the halftime show together. As we noted earlier last year, Gloria Estefan was the first to ever do it (sola, por supuesto) in 1992. Shakira’s mentor paved the way for her and her counterpart and now, in celebration of the beginning of a new year and decade (we’ve all collectively decided January didn’t count), J.Lo and Shaki did the same for generations to come.

#DontLookAway #NoKidsInCages pic.twitter.com/8P1O6ZhaHb

— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) February 3, 2020

J.Lo used the spotlight to show off her excellent pole dancing skills (once again putting the Oscars to shame) and pass the performing baton to her daughter, Emme. The 11-year-old shared her talent on stage alongside mom with a unique spin on “Let’s Get Loud,” in which the Nuyorican mother of two whipped out the Puerto Rican flag in all its glory by way of (faux?) fur and came as close to a political message as the night would get with children in lit-up cages.

“Born in the U.S.A,” Emme bounced off her mother’s vocals throughout the bridge…

Singing “Born in the USA” while draped in a Puerto Rican flag is an excellent flex

— Matt Browner Hamlin (@mattkbh) February 3, 2020

A good time to remember that the Trump administration has viciously withheld needed recovery funds from Puerto Rico and this is an inexcusable neglect of American citizens

— Matt Browner Hamlin (@mattkbh) February 3, 2020

And speaking of ‘suspiciously brown people’…

Chiming in because I know everyone will be making jokes about this for days — this is a popular Arab tradition, called zaghrouta, used to express joy at celebrations. In the melting pot that is Miami, you could not have picked a better Super Bowl act and this was a lovely touch. https://t.co/q1H9l8UpQ5

— Lulu Ramadan (@luluramadan) February 3, 2020

show full post on front page

You really have to understand how huge Shakira’s performance was for the Middle Eastern community. She had belly dancing, a mijwiz and a derbeke, performed “Ojos Asi” which was one of the few Shakira songs to have Arabic in it, did a Zaghrouta, all love on the biggest stage

— Danny Hajjar ???? ???? ???? (@DanielGHajjar) February 3, 2020

What is going to produce the most protests over this halftime show?

— Alyssa Rosenberg (@AlyssaRosenberg) February 3, 2020

Moral panic from one of the lead organs in support of a President noted for banging porn stars. https://t.co/BjVzhULtn3

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 3, 2020

I love that the actual final score is a tiny little sidebar below all of the hyperventilating. pic.twitter.com/zQfP4xS6a2

— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 3, 2020

Look, when the alternative ‘entertainment’ is the kind of sad, defensive jingoism Dave Roth mocks…

Please join me in celebrating football and America. https://t.co/LKVFh4T2e4

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) February 2, 2020

… When Fox has the broadcast rights to the Super Bowl, as it does this year, you had better believe those horns are going to be in play. This year, as in past Fox years, you’ll hear some patriotic tootling and snare drum rum-dum-dumming playing under footage of various NFL personalities reciting the Declaration of Independence as they walk through historic buildings, or while surrounded by troops and first responders and military hardware, or while towering over youth football teams. In 2008, Michael Strahan and a bunch of New York firefighters in their dress uniforms did their part while standing over the still-raw pit at Ground Zero. Usually it takes a long time for a tradition to become a tradition, and even more time after that for it to become opaque and abstract and rote in the way that traditions do. Fox’s determination to make Super Bowl Sunday a celebration of America skipped a bunch of those steps. It started out confusing and overdetermined and then pretty much stayed that way…

After two decades of leveraging and re-leveraging the actual thing that has value here—a game, in this stupid and beautiful and preposterous sport, that people really do want to watch together—this is the celebration we’re left with. More than that, there’s the sense that it can only get bigger, broader, bloatier, that the people invested in staging it can only ever do more. Not because the show isn’t big enough, and certainly not because anyone is demanding more of this politics-of-no-politics pomp, or more fife-and-drum goonery, or more and more desperate reiterations of those first panicked gestures towards purpose and togetherness. The audience is less important than the gestures, and the gestures long ago supplanted and replaced the message they sought to convey. It can only get bigger, and only ever becomes more uncanny as it grows. The same could be said of the NFL in many ways, but all of this delusion and desperation together produces something wildly abstract and stilted; there’s an uneasy but undeniable comedy to the way it all expands without ever quite growing. All this trouble, for all these years, all because some powerful people were frightened that doing less would look like admitting defeat.

Popcult Open Thread: *Best* Part of the Superbowl!Post + Comments (80)

Every Single Day

by Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix|  January 9, 202012:03 pm| 104 Comments

This post is in: The Brown Enemy Within

Hi Jim,

I survived war as a child and deal with post-traumatic stress disorder—much like many who have served or lived through war.

It’s shameful that you as a member of Congress would erase the PTSD of survivors. pic.twitter.com/QdDBKDSOCS

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 8, 2020

I find it highly amusing that my coworkers angrily yell stuff like this and then clutch their pearls and cry when they are called out for their racism https://t.co/GrErEZOsqa

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 9, 2020

Here are a couple of examples of the daily shit that these women go through, even from their racist colleagues. At least in the House, the gloves are off and nobody pretends that there’s some kind of “comity”.

On a somewhat related topic: the only media feed that I have that I don’t manage myself is my Google phone’s news feed. This feed is Google’s take on what I’m interested in, based on search history, reading history, etc. Google, like all of the other algorithms, is easily fooled by carefully calibrated mostly nonsense. For example, I’m constantly getting negative posts about AOC and Ilhan Omar sourced from “news” or “opinion” sites that I’ve never heard of. (“The Hollywood Conservative” was one of them – at least they’re correct in the use of the definite article.) The posts are carefully calibrated to be a spin on facts. Nobody posts that Omar is from Mars, for example — instead it’s a negative take base on another thinly sourced news article, based on another thinly sourced article. And there’s no cursing and no other markers that makes Google think that it’s “fake news” by their milquetoast definition. So, Google figures it’s legit, and pushes it out to me, since I read about AOC and Omar, among others.

I do hate Facebook, but even if Facebook were suddenly shut down, and could no longer do things like pay for puff pieces in Teen Vogue, we’d still have the same problem. I’ll never see a Balloon-Juice or LGM post in my feed, but I’ll see hundreds of anti-squad posts, because these Republicans (or bots or whatever they are) can play Google’s stupid game.

Every Single DayPost + Comments (104)

Monday Morning Open Thread: Seasons’ Greetings

by Anne Laurie|  December 9, 20195:22 am| 126 Comments

This post is in: Election 2020, Immigration, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, The Brown Enemy Within, All Too Normal, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up

I chatted today with the pastor of a Claremont church which erected a nativity scene depicting Jesus, Mary and Joseph as refugees separated in cages https://t.co/MGl82HTZ3n

— James Queally (@JamesQueallyLAT) December 9, 2019

… Ristine, who has served as the church’s lead pastor only since July, said the church often uses its Nativity scene to tackle a societal issue. Southern California’s homelessness crisis has been invoked in past depictions, she said. A more traditional Nativity scene, showing the Holy Family reunited, can be found inside the church, which serves a congregation of about 300 people, Ristine said.

“We don’t see it as political; we see it as theological. I’m getting responses from people I don’t know … I am having people tell me that it moved them to tears,” she said. “So if the Holy Family and the imagery of the Holy Family and the imagery of a Nativity is something you hold dear, and you see them separated, then that’s going to spark compassion in many people.”…

Rep Cicilline "all of the potential articles of impeachment are on the table." pic.twitter.com/t3E0PJ2M7J

— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) December 8, 2019


Dug out my copy of The Friends of Richard Nixon, written by former Assistant U.S. Attorney George V. Higgins, and found this in the introduction:

… Thinking ahead, in criminal business, is of surpassing importance, even more so than in legitimate commerce and in politics, where it certainly does no harm. The professional outlaw seldom loses sight of the possibility that he, or someone working for him, may make a mistake, or suffer some bad luck, or succumb to overconfidence and get hooked for something big because he bungled something small. He is on guard from the instant he begins to make his operational plans (he does not cause his conferences to be tape-recorded, and he invites to those discussions only those with a pressing need to know, and he does not confide this agenda to the uninvited). If something goes wrong, and the cops come, he is not reduced to frantic, random foraging in the early morning hours, for a willing though sleepy attorney, and a bail bondsman. Nor does he negligently permit his operatives to carry his phone number in their belongings, helpfully annotated to show that, yes, it is his number. The practical crook is a man of provident humility, who sees to it, in advance, that investigation will be arduous, protracted, dispiritingly unproductive, and, in the long run, unsuccessful. By that foresight in frustrating the orderly procedures of American criminal justice (by leaving nothing to chance, and very little to be found), he exonerates himself from the alternative, more difficult, and vastly more dangerous obligation to obstruct the processes of American criminal justice. There is no substitute for knowing what you’re doing…

It looks to be Rudy Giuliani’s week for going under the Trump bus. Mr. Giuliani, during his long career flirting with the romance of Big Crime, might’ve done himself better if his reading (okay, viewing) had included more narratives from the side of the prosecution, IMO.

And finally, a happy dream to start the week…

AP Interview: Elizabeth Warren says she believes Americans are ready for a presidential ticket with two women at the top, rejecting concerns from some Democrats that a woman can't beat President Trump. https://t.co/8wHcarzJTj

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 8, 2019

My dream ticket. pic.twitter.com/Jz4dtJIbQF

— Khashoggi’s Ghost (@UROCKlive1) December 9, 2019

Monday Morning Open Thread: Seasons’ GreetingsPost + Comments (126)

Good news for basic human decency

by David Anderson|  November 20, 20196:56 pm| 28 Comments

This post is in: Crimes against humanity, Mexico, Open Threads, Racial Justice, The Brown Enemy Within

BREAKING: Dr. Scott Warren found NOT GUILTY on all charges for providing food, water, shelter, and medical care to two undocumented men. Yet again, No More Deaths has withstood the government’s attempts to criminalize basic human compassion.

— No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) November 20, 2019

This was not a mistrial. This was not a judge tossing charges. This was a jury saying that the federal prosecutors could not prove that human decency is illegal.

Open Thread

Good news for basic human decencyPost + Comments (28)

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Another ‘Forthright, Outspoken Conservative’ Disappoints the Pundits

by Anne Laurie|  November 19, 201912:56 am| 36 Comments

This post is in: Fables Of The Reconstruction, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, The Brown Enemy Within, Assholes, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Our Failed Media Experiment

A little late-night nostalgia bait for those of us who used to hang around TBogg’s site, back before Cole got smarter. Alternate title: ‘Another GHWB-vintage rightwing icon tries to update their Q score, overshoots, embarrasses former supporters’…

Malkin 2004: japanese internment was good and we should do it again to muslims

Conservatives: wow this is great

Malkin 2019: *defends white nationalists as “demographic truth-tellers”*

Conservatives: how did this happen pic.twitter.com/Ts7INENejD

— *Palpatine voice* UNLIMITED DADPUNS?? (@AdamSerwer) November 17, 2019

Conservative Group Fires Michelle Malkin Over Support for Holocaust Denier https://t.co/8RGnlBmfZZ via @thedailybeast

— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) November 18, 2019

Sorry Ms Malkin (Coulter, Ingraham, Palin), you’ve aged out of attracting the coveted 18-34 demographic, now. So you’re condemned to the Fox News networks where your *old* fans like Rick Lowry and Hugh Hewitt still remember the pre-social-media ‘starbursts’ you inspired…

She was always like this. She just decided to stop giving you cover to pretend otherwise. https://t.co/x9MJJqCpvF

— SecretMissionHat (@Popehat) November 17, 2019

show full post on front page

I love big problems that solve themselves pic.twitter.com/30bGhYnhof

— kilgore trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) November 18, 2019


(‘Twitchy’, IIRC, is Malkin’s homegrown ‘alternative to lamestream media’ channel)

they’re not saying anything new, fellas, you’re just embarrassed because you got caught

— kilgore trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) November 18, 2019

"There is no room for leopards in the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party"

— Michael P Breen (@mpbreen21) November 17, 2019

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Another ‘Forthright, Outspoken Conservative’ Disappoints the PunditsPost + Comments (36)

“Respite” Open Thread: Tucker Carlson on Unplanned Vacation

by Anne Laurie|  August 8, 20196:24 pm| 119 Comments

This post is in: Nature & Respite, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Repubs in Disarray!, Television, The Brown Enemy Within, Assholes, Flash Mob of Hate, Go Fuck Yourself, Just Shut the Fuck Up

A monster turned a transcript of Carlson's show into a manifesto and then killed 22 people. His career depends on no one pointing this out. https://t.co/cJVZdr2eIQ

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) August 7, 2019

What time of day does Fox News transition from "the celebrity used bad language" to "do not be deceived by the rootless cosmopolitans who control society, blood and soil are the only truth?" Like happy hour-ish?

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) August 7, 2019

Perspective: Tucker Carlson’s claim that white supremacy is a hoax is easy to prove wrong, @Sulliview writes.

Just watch his show. https://t.co/ixQxrxKPAa

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 7, 2019

Facing mounting controversy for declaring the very real problem of white supremacy in America to be a "hoax," Tucker Carlson announced at the end of his Wednesday night Fox News show that he will be taking a vacation. https://t.co/vpXNHmSoaw

— CNN (@CNN) August 8, 2019

IIRC, Bill O’Reilly went from ‘sudden vacation’ to ‘suspended’ to ‘Bill who?’ when he pushed the boundaries a little too far. One can hope that Carlson will also be forced into doing podcasts from his basement… assuming Tucker’s penthous *has* a basement…

I hear he got a tip on a fun 6-day weekend airbnb spot from the NRA social media team. https://t.co/uc6eqsKRac

— Zeddy (@Zeddary) August 8, 2019


Reference:

Breaking —> Documents show the NRA planned to purchase a $6 million mansion for Wayne LaPierre, an uncompleted transaction that is now under scrutiny by investigators, @CarolLeonnig & @bethreinhard report https://t.co/g7A1rYoMge

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) August 7, 2019

“Respite” Open Thread: Tucker Carlson on Unplanned VacationPost + Comments (119)

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