I just found out, by reading The Week magazine, that last month a woman in Nashville was detained for being an illegal immigrant. She was 9 months pregnant and about to give birth, she was taken to a hospital where she was made to labor in shackles. Once she gave birth, the baby was immediately taken from her, so that she could not breastfeed him. A few hours later, while she was still recuperating, they shackled her again.
You can read more about this in this blog entry.
After you do, please call Sheriff Hall at (615) 862-8170 and complain about it. Also call your congressman and ask that they sponsor a bill (they’d have to write it) that would say that nobody detained by a federal agency, or any agency working in conjunction with the federal government, can be made to labor while restrained. And that no newborn or breastfeeding baby shall be taken away from a mother under those conditions.
Personally, I feel it’s beyond unconscionable to make a woman labor while shackled. And there is no reason, it’s not like you are going to escape between contractions.
Please, please, please call. Perhaps it’ll make them rethink their policy.
Author: marga (Page 89 of 158)
By now, we all know or should know the great evils that have come from the diamond industry: endless wars in Africa, slavery, the use of child soldiers (and the atrocities they’ve been made to commit), and so on. I think it’s apparent to anyone with any kind of moral sense, that buying diamonds is just wrong.
But it’s not just diamonds that must be avoided, the following article from AP shows how in the mining of gold, even children as young as 4 years old are put to work. And this is dangerous work. Mercury is used to mine gold, it attracts it like a magnet, “but it also attacks the brain and can cause tremors, speech impediments, retardation, kidney damage and blindness.” The article goes on to describe many more of the evils committed on these children. And to ascertain that if you buy gold of any kind, it’s likely to be at the expense of those children.
Now, if you think silver is the answer, think again. Much of that silver is also mined by children in just as hazardous conditions – not to speak of the environmental damage that gold and silver mining causes. If you have the time, I recommend you watch The Devil’s Miner, an amazing documentary about a young miner boy in Potosi, Bolivia. His father died, he’s left to support his mother and sister, and he has no choice but to work in the mines. He knows he will die early, he dreams of studying instead. And I hope that the documentary saved his life.
And all for our own frivolity!
I know that this will not convince anyone to give up buying jewelry. Kids far away of other races and colors are too hypothetical, too removed, gold is shiny. And I’m not a big jewelery buyer myself – but did get a couple of pieces last year. No more.
I just found out about a new search engined called cuil, started by some former google engineers. It’s supposed to be better than google, of course, so I decided to take it for a test ride. It sucked. I typed in the name Julián Corres, an Argentine torturer who recently escaped from a police station. They didn’t have one single hit related to him. I tried the name of various disappeared people that we feature in Proyecto Desaparecidos – there were no hits for them either. And this from a search engine that claims that has more indexed pages than google.
I tried googling family members names. Mine gave results similar to those in google – but there were only 3 hits for Michaela’s – and none to pages with much relevancy.
Cuil has this “cool” feature in that along with page summaries, it provides pictures that supposedly, illustrate your search. But the pictures are pretty random. Type Mike Katz and you won’t find any links to my Mike Katz’ pages – but you will see a picture next to a link to a singer with his name. WTF!
Anyway, I do wish that someone would come up with a better search engine than google. I know that google has great limitations, as when I search for my name it gives me a link to an article I sent to a mailing list over a decade ago – not the most relevant of informations (cuil, btw, does the same thing). But cuil, unfortunately, is not it.
I want to talk about Jordan. My cat.
He’s gone. Yesterday morning I awoke to the news that he had passed away. I knew something had been wrong for a while, he’d been withdrawing to the closet for months, and then he had lost a lot of weight. But I’m a horrible mommy and I didn’t take him to the vet. So in addition to sorrow, I’m wallowing in guilt.
I loved Jordan. I didn’t realize how much until he died. I knew I loved him the first few years, I thought of him as my son. But then the kids came, and I didn’t have the time or emotional energy to give him the attention he deserved.
He was a great cat. The best. I know everyone probably thinks that of their cat, but it was true of Jordan. He was so gentle, so loving, always there for me. How many times did I cry over something while petting him to make me feel better?
It’s been two days, it hasn’t been real. I still expect him to come back. I hear his meows, see his little face, such an innocent face, so trusting. And I failed him.
I’ve been crying off and on for two days. He was part of the family, we are so incomplete without him. And I’ve been thinking about all the things that made him special. How Mike could throw him out in the air and catch him again, and he wouldn’t even put his claws out – he trusted Mike would catch him. How he licked our noses when he wanted to be put down. How he loved to play bite – which thinking about it, he hadn’t done for a while. How he’d lie on Mike’s chest the moment Mike lied down anywhere. How he’d listen for us and come to the door when we were coming home.
Oh, Jordan. I am so sorry I wasn’t a better mommy. I’m so sad that you died. I can’t conceive it yet it’s reality. I miss you.
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