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Jan. 17th, 2018 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "Venezuela helicopter pilot killed in raid:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42695537
* "A former CIA officer has been arrested. He's suspected of spying for China:" https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-cia-officer-jerry-chun-shing-lee-suspected-spying-china-n838186
* "Corey Booker spits fire at DHS secretary for covering up Trump's racism:"
* "Sen. Booker: DHS Secretary lied to protect Trump:" http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/sen-booker-dhs-secretary-lied-to-protect-trump-1138484803966?v=a
* After all, would a racist person refuse to let black people rent housing from them, call all Mexicans rapists, insist everyone from Haiti has AIDS, brand a whole continent plus Haiti shitholes, attempt to ban all Muslims from the country, try to build a border wall we don't need to keep brown people out, deport Dreamers who are first responders and veterans, call KKK and NAZIs 'good people' while siding with thugs and terrorist against the innocent people they injured and killed, put literal Neo-NAZIs in the White House, etc.? What more can he do to prove he's "the least racist person you've ever interviewed?" "Sanders Says Trump Isn’t Racist, Citing ‘The Apprentice’:" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/sanders-defends-trump-as-not-racist-citing-apprentice-tv-role
* Yes, I've looked at 45's Doctor statement, but there's nothing of interest in there and a lot of the reporting is offensive, so I'm not going to get into it in this space, despite my dislike of the man.
* So Steve Bannon got subpoenaed today for both the House Intelligence Committee and the Mueller investigation today. I'm seeing tons of speculation, but nothing substantial beyond the subpoenas, so I'm not going to bother posting much until more is known for sure.
* "US officials 'briefed Jared Kushner on concerns about Wendi Deng Murdoch':" https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/16/us-officials-briefed-jared-kushner-on-concerns-about-wendi-deng-murdoch
* As of this afternoon, we were one Republican vote short in the Senate to passing the Net Neutrality bill. (It'll still need to go through the House, but one step at a time). If you have a republican Senator, now is the time to speak up. If you can not protest in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* Short version: They tossed in six more years of CHIP, but not a clean DACA and it lasts until Feb. 16th. "House Republicans coalesce behind plan to avert shutdown:" https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/16/house-republicans-government-shutdown-343189
* "U.S. Uninsured Rate Steady at 12.2% in Fourth Quarter of 2017:" http://news.gallup.com/poll/225383/uninsured-rate-steady-fourth-quarter-2017.aspx
* He ran on "Family Values." "GOP governor denies he blackmailed his mistress with revenge porn:" https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43q78g/eric-greitens-naked-phote-blackmail-deny
* This doesn't get into him lowering the minimum wage and his war on Women, as those things are not illegal, but it does get into Corruption, Abuse of Power, and violating the open-record law, which are still illegal despite 45 flouting all of them with impunity. "Missouri governor inspired disputes before affair was public:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/missouri-governor-inspired-disputes-before-affair-was-public/2018/01/13/f060e79a-f877-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?utm_term=.b757c5844fdf
* This has some state level political context. "Governor in 'serious' danger of losing job:" http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/11/politics/missouri-gov-eric-greitens-q-and-a/index.html
* TW: Sexual Assault. On the sexual violation and rape culture in the case. "Revenge porn is the real issue in the Greitens scandal, not his affair:" http://www.kansascity.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/jenee-osterheldt/article194217694.html
* "Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Experiment Is a Success:" https://civicskunk.works/seattles-15-minimum-wage-experiment-is-a-success-2fd7c921031d
* "Black Girls Are Perceived As Less Innocent Than White Girls — Starting at Age 5:" https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/black-girls-are-perceived-as-less-innocent-than-white-girls.html?utm_campaign=sou&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1
* "A Tax on Blackness:" http://www.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/the-lasting-damage-of-donald-trumps-bigotry.html
* "Navy filing homicide charges for McCain, Fitzgerald commanders:" https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/01/17/homicide-charges-charges-for-mccain-fitzgerald-commanders/
* "Burning oil tanker sinks in the East China Sea:" http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/14/asia/china-oil-tanker-sanchi-sinks/index.html
* "Meet The Fearless Cook Who Secretly Fed — And Funded — The Civil Rights Movement:" https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/15/577675950/meet-the-fearless-cook-who-secretly-fed-and-funded-the-civil-rights-movement?utm_source=tumblr.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180115
* There was a long piece of reporting filmed towards the end of the big West African Ebola epidemic in one of the field hospitals. It was basically a series of big tents with the medical personnel taking the best precautions they could and doing the best they could in a horrific situation with nowhere near enough staff and supplies. There was the serious acute ward behind plastic sheeting airlocks and the usual footage of them unloading the living and dead from trucks to be triaged, but this was something terrible, yes, but something expected which I'd seen before. This wasn't the part that haunts me to this day.
The thing that I think about often, the thing I will likely never get out of my head, is the recovery area. This was another big long barracks like tent, with a fenced in yard sort of set up and outdoor showers. On the other side of the fence were family members camped out with tents and lawn chairs to visit the people on the other side. The people on the other side had miraculously survived the worst part of the disease with the hemorrhaging and the terrible fluids, but were not yet well and safe to return to the world.
I don't think I'd ever really thought about this, despite having followed ebola since it first started showing up under various names in the world press. Of course it takes ages to recover from something so extreme if one doesn't die right off. I just never imagined what it was like. All these people of all ages from the old to the occasional infants, lethargic and obviously still terribly ill, lying on their cots or occasionally dressing at a snails pace or shuffling out to shower and toilets or into the yard for a bit of air. They were well enough to eat, to dress, to move around a bit, but they were emaciated and so obviously not okay. The Doctor would move from cot to cot, checking on people and occasionally one would be curled up dead, wearing the brightly coloured street clothes the presumably convalescent person had put on themselves that morning. They found a man slumped at the bottom of a shower dead. To have survived the worst, to think they were going to make and then to die so suddenly that they had no chance to call out or get help. The doctor's comment was along the lines of we don't know exactly why it is happening, their systems are under such strain that sometimes they just stop. Somehow, even though it is is a kinder way to die than if they had died during the worst of it, it felt so much worse. I suppose it is in human nature to want a proper happy ending or something.
Out in the yard there was an older boy, who was mostly better waiting for his father to improve enough for release. He was holding a lethargic toddler in his lap, an orphan, who was failing to thrive. The baby had been in recovery a couple of weeks and would start to bond to someone and that person would die or leave. The toddler was old enough to talk, but didn't and seemed to be weaker every day. The staff seemed to honestly be doing their best for and for all of them, but it was that same strange system stress that was randomly taking some adults every day. The adults he came in with were all dead and no one is sure where he came from or what his name was or what they'd do with him if by some miracle he didn't die. If I remember correctly, his body failed while the film crew was still around, but it might have been a different baby; it was a while ago.
I just think about it now and then and wonder how all those people are now: the exhausted medical staff who served through all that death and despair, the father and son, the people who eventually made it out of the recovery enclosure still breathing. Ebola lingers. It hides in reservoirs in the body and can re-surge and kill the host or infect love ones; it can do permanent damage to a survivor who is free of the pathogen itself.
It haunts me. I suspect it haunts a lot of people so much worse.
* I think Andrew Holleran mourns similar to the way I mourn. I have reached the point in the book that is all about the loudness of absence.
* I've started the men's shorts from the U S championship. It's three hours, so I'll obviously be at this a while. The thing that is heartbreaking about the championships in an Olympic year is that this is the place dreams go to die. yes, there are up and comers and old favorites for whom this is a stepping stone to somewhere better, but there are also people who've worked incredibly hard and sacrificed just as much for whom this is their only real moment in the spotlight every year and it does not go well. Skating is expensive, all those coaching fees and the cost of travel and the skates and costumes and rink fees. All that time spent and the opportunity costs to try to do something amazing, and so many of them don't make it. I had a friend at my first college who did well on the Junior circuit and made it to regional. I adored him. And you know me, I root for them all to skate clean, to do the very best they are capable. The Championships are hard to watch. The young woman who took a whole year off from school in hopes that this would be her year, and who's short program suggested it won't be. Women as young as fourteen botching a jump and scooting across the ice in often undignified positions after a fall. That poor bastard who fell everywhere and shares a couch with a big name. according to johnny weir it sounds like the coach gives them both similar routines and the guy can't execute them. The poor man who moves well, but hasn't got a triple axle, let alone quads. The guy who pulled a pretty kick ass short, but couldn't go even if he won, as he's not a citizen yet. I watch because someone who doesn't know them ought to see them even if only this once and because someone who doesn't know them personally ought to be rooting for them even though they can't hear it and will never know. I watch because sometimes, someone does something amazing and unexpected and I like to keep an eye on the future. Still it is always emotional to watch even though I generally never even caught their names. (I am terrible at names and had to drill myself hard when I was teaching and I lose even the names of close friends once they are gone for a few years. The big names and folks like Rabbitt and Savary I remember, the last two being both delightful and having easy names to remember. Savary was heartbreaking as he's so damned fun to watch, but he popped his quad so that's it for him pretty much). Look, there really were some cool routines from guys I've no memory of watching before, which is why I'm here, but I always end up wincing and occasionally weeping for the ones for whom this is as good as it will ever get and who know it. The young ones will have more chances, but for the older skaters this is often the end of something they've put everything they had into since they were small.
* Horrifying Tolkien elf genital speculation. "Aragorn was one kinky ass-fucker." http://glassphemy.tumblr.com/post/169751967979/first-things-first-we-actually-do-know-what-elves
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
* "Help us stop the humanitarian crisis on Manus:" https://www.asrc.org.au/donate-now/
* "RISE (Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees):" https://www.givenow.com.au/riserefugee/donate
* How to help Rohingya refugees: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/asia/rohingya-aid-myanmar-bangladesh.html?emc=edit_nn_20171012&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=50784086&te=1&_r=0
* A list of organizations to help you run for office: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/167330144634/psst-hey
* Trans Lifeline is one of those organizations you can call at (877) 565-8860 in the US and in Canada (877) 330- 6366.
* The Trevor Project has a 24 hour hotline geared toward helping our youth, and you can call it at 1-866-488-7386
* Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
* This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
* Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com
* Birthday/Solstice master list: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/1925021.html
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
* "A former CIA officer has been arrested. He's suspected of spying for China:" https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-cia-officer-jerry-chun-shing-lee-suspected-spying-china-n838186
* "Corey Booker spits fire at DHS secretary for covering up Trump's racism:"
* "Sen. Booker: DHS Secretary lied to protect Trump:" http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/sen-booker-dhs-secretary-lied-to-protect-trump-1138484803966?v=a
* After all, would a racist person refuse to let black people rent housing from them, call all Mexicans rapists, insist everyone from Haiti has AIDS, brand a whole continent plus Haiti shitholes, attempt to ban all Muslims from the country, try to build a border wall we don't need to keep brown people out, deport Dreamers who are first responders and veterans, call KKK and NAZIs 'good people' while siding with thugs and terrorist against the innocent people they injured and killed, put literal Neo-NAZIs in the White House, etc.? What more can he do to prove he's "the least racist person you've ever interviewed?" "Sanders Says Trump Isn’t Racist, Citing ‘The Apprentice’:" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/sanders-defends-trump-as-not-racist-citing-apprentice-tv-role
* Yes, I've looked at 45's Doctor statement, but there's nothing of interest in there and a lot of the reporting is offensive, so I'm not going to get into it in this space, despite my dislike of the man.
* So Steve Bannon got subpoenaed today for both the House Intelligence Committee and the Mueller investigation today. I'm seeing tons of speculation, but nothing substantial beyond the subpoenas, so I'm not going to bother posting much until more is known for sure.
* "US officials 'briefed Jared Kushner on concerns about Wendi Deng Murdoch':" https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/16/us-officials-briefed-jared-kushner-on-concerns-about-wendi-deng-murdoch
* As of this afternoon, we were one Republican vote short in the Senate to passing the Net Neutrality bill. (It'll still need to go through the House, but one step at a time). If you have a republican Senator, now is the time to speak up. If you can not protest in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* Short version: They tossed in six more years of CHIP, but not a clean DACA and it lasts until Feb. 16th. "House Republicans coalesce behind plan to avert shutdown:" https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/16/house-republicans-government-shutdown-343189
* "U.S. Uninsured Rate Steady at 12.2% in Fourth Quarter of 2017:" http://news.gallup.com/poll/225383/uninsured-rate-steady-fourth-quarter-2017.aspx
* He ran on "Family Values." "GOP governor denies he blackmailed his mistress with revenge porn:" https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43q78g/eric-greitens-naked-phote-blackmail-deny
* This doesn't get into him lowering the minimum wage and his war on Women, as those things are not illegal, but it does get into Corruption, Abuse of Power, and violating the open-record law, which are still illegal despite 45 flouting all of them with impunity. "Missouri governor inspired disputes before affair was public:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/missouri-governor-inspired-disputes-before-affair-was-public/2018/01/13/f060e79a-f877-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?utm_term=.b757c5844fdf
* This has some state level political context. "Governor in 'serious' danger of losing job:" http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/11/politics/missouri-gov-eric-greitens-q-and-a/index.html
* TW: Sexual Assault. On the sexual violation and rape culture in the case. "Revenge porn is the real issue in the Greitens scandal, not his affair:" http://www.kansascity.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/jenee-osterheldt/article194217694.html
* "Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Experiment Is a Success:" https://civicskunk.works/seattles-15-minimum-wage-experiment-is-a-success-2fd7c921031d
* "Black Girls Are Perceived As Less Innocent Than White Girls — Starting at Age 5:" https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/black-girls-are-perceived-as-less-innocent-than-white-girls.html?utm_campaign=sou&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1
* "A Tax on Blackness:" http://www.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/the-lasting-damage-of-donald-trumps-bigotry.html
* "Navy filing homicide charges for McCain, Fitzgerald commanders:" https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/01/17/homicide-charges-charges-for-mccain-fitzgerald-commanders/
* "Burning oil tanker sinks in the East China Sea:" http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/14/asia/china-oil-tanker-sanchi-sinks/index.html
* "Meet The Fearless Cook Who Secretly Fed — And Funded — The Civil Rights Movement:" https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/15/577675950/meet-the-fearless-cook-who-secretly-fed-and-funded-the-civil-rights-movement?utm_source=tumblr.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180115
* There was a long piece of reporting filmed towards the end of the big West African Ebola epidemic in one of the field hospitals. It was basically a series of big tents with the medical personnel taking the best precautions they could and doing the best they could in a horrific situation with nowhere near enough staff and supplies. There was the serious acute ward behind plastic sheeting airlocks and the usual footage of them unloading the living and dead from trucks to be triaged, but this was something terrible, yes, but something expected which I'd seen before. This wasn't the part that haunts me to this day.
The thing that I think about often, the thing I will likely never get out of my head, is the recovery area. This was another big long barracks like tent, with a fenced in yard sort of set up and outdoor showers. On the other side of the fence were family members camped out with tents and lawn chairs to visit the people on the other side. The people on the other side had miraculously survived the worst part of the disease with the hemorrhaging and the terrible fluids, but were not yet well and safe to return to the world.
I don't think I'd ever really thought about this, despite having followed ebola since it first started showing up under various names in the world press. Of course it takes ages to recover from something so extreme if one doesn't die right off. I just never imagined what it was like. All these people of all ages from the old to the occasional infants, lethargic and obviously still terribly ill, lying on their cots or occasionally dressing at a snails pace or shuffling out to shower and toilets or into the yard for a bit of air. They were well enough to eat, to dress, to move around a bit, but they were emaciated and so obviously not okay. The Doctor would move from cot to cot, checking on people and occasionally one would be curled up dead, wearing the brightly coloured street clothes the presumably convalescent person had put on themselves that morning. They found a man slumped at the bottom of a shower dead. To have survived the worst, to think they were going to make and then to die so suddenly that they had no chance to call out or get help. The doctor's comment was along the lines of we don't know exactly why it is happening, their systems are under such strain that sometimes they just stop. Somehow, even though it is is a kinder way to die than if they had died during the worst of it, it felt so much worse. I suppose it is in human nature to want a proper happy ending or something.
Out in the yard there was an older boy, who was mostly better waiting for his father to improve enough for release. He was holding a lethargic toddler in his lap, an orphan, who was failing to thrive. The baby had been in recovery a couple of weeks and would start to bond to someone and that person would die or leave. The toddler was old enough to talk, but didn't and seemed to be weaker every day. The staff seemed to honestly be doing their best for and for all of them, but it was that same strange system stress that was randomly taking some adults every day. The adults he came in with were all dead and no one is sure where he came from or what his name was or what they'd do with him if by some miracle he didn't die. If I remember correctly, his body failed while the film crew was still around, but it might have been a different baby; it was a while ago.
I just think about it now and then and wonder how all those people are now: the exhausted medical staff who served through all that death and despair, the father and son, the people who eventually made it out of the recovery enclosure still breathing. Ebola lingers. It hides in reservoirs in the body and can re-surge and kill the host or infect love ones; it can do permanent damage to a survivor who is free of the pathogen itself.
It haunts me. I suspect it haunts a lot of people so much worse.
* I think Andrew Holleran mourns similar to the way I mourn. I have reached the point in the book that is all about the loudness of absence.
* I've started the men's shorts from the U S championship. It's three hours, so I'll obviously be at this a while. The thing that is heartbreaking about the championships in an Olympic year is that this is the place dreams go to die. yes, there are up and comers and old favorites for whom this is a stepping stone to somewhere better, but there are also people who've worked incredibly hard and sacrificed just as much for whom this is their only real moment in the spotlight every year and it does not go well. Skating is expensive, all those coaching fees and the cost of travel and the skates and costumes and rink fees. All that time spent and the opportunity costs to try to do something amazing, and so many of them don't make it. I had a friend at my first college who did well on the Junior circuit and made it to regional. I adored him. And you know me, I root for them all to skate clean, to do the very best they are capable. The Championships are hard to watch. The young woman who took a whole year off from school in hopes that this would be her year, and who's short program suggested it won't be. Women as young as fourteen botching a jump and scooting across the ice in often undignified positions after a fall. That poor bastard who fell everywhere and shares a couch with a big name. according to johnny weir it sounds like the coach gives them both similar routines and the guy can't execute them. The poor man who moves well, but hasn't got a triple axle, let alone quads. The guy who pulled a pretty kick ass short, but couldn't go even if he won, as he's not a citizen yet. I watch because someone who doesn't know them ought to see them even if only this once and because someone who doesn't know them personally ought to be rooting for them even though they can't hear it and will never know. I watch because sometimes, someone does something amazing and unexpected and I like to keep an eye on the future. Still it is always emotional to watch even though I generally never even caught their names. (I am terrible at names and had to drill myself hard when I was teaching and I lose even the names of close friends once they are gone for a few years. The big names and folks like Rabbitt and Savary I remember, the last two being both delightful and having easy names to remember. Savary was heartbreaking as he's so damned fun to watch, but he popped his quad so that's it for him pretty much). Look, there really were some cool routines from guys I've no memory of watching before, which is why I'm here, but I always end up wincing and occasionally weeping for the ones for whom this is as good as it will ever get and who know it. The young ones will have more chances, but for the older skaters this is often the end of something they've put everything they had into since they were small.
* Horrifying Tolkien elf genital speculation. "Aragorn was one kinky ass-fucker." http://glassphemy.tumblr.com/post/169751967979/first-things-first-we-actually-do-know-what-elves
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
* "Help us stop the humanitarian crisis on Manus:" https://www.asrc.org.au/donate-now/
* "RISE (Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees):" https://www.givenow.com.au/riserefugee/donate
* How to help Rohingya refugees: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/asia/rohingya-aid-myanmar-bangladesh.html?emc=edit_nn_20171012&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=50784086&te=1&_r=0
* A list of organizations to help you run for office: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/167330144634/psst-hey
* Trans Lifeline is one of those organizations you can call at (877) 565-8860 in the US and in Canada (877) 330- 6366.
* The Trevor Project has a 24 hour hotline geared toward helping our youth, and you can call it at 1-866-488-7386
* Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
* This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
* Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com
* Birthday/Solstice master list: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/1925021.html
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com