Pancho, a graduate student at work, sent out an email a few days ago to everyone in the department about the Lakota secession. On 20 December, a delegation of Lakota leaders announced that their people were withdrawing from treaties with the United States. Fascinating !! I did some reading about this, and here are the best links I found so far:
Links
Intro from Fox News (20 Dec). A quick read, summarizes the initial announcement. I could not find this story on CNN, msnbc, or sfgate, and Google didn't turn up any mainstream media hits. Even the Fox page has a "news.com.au" sticker on it, so there is absolutely no mainstream US media coverage of this.
An opinion response from author Kathryn Graham (21 Dec). Gives great background info on Leonard Peltier (still in prison), Russel Means (member of the Lakota secession delegation), and the Second Battle of Wounded Knee (or "WK II" in posts in the next link).
A Local News report in South Dakota's Rapid City Journal (21 Dec). This one is particularly fascinating because of the 483 comments (as of now), including a surprisingly low number of ignorant knee-jerk "patriotic" comments. European comments show great excitement and support for the secession, and local Native American comments reveal a complexity of the secession issue that's not immediately apparent from looking at the Fox News article. Some of the comments say that the delegation is meaningless and that Russel Means is acting on his own, which is probably what led to the next press release...
...from the Strongheart Warrior Society (27 Dec). I'm not sure what this society is, but Sitting Bull was its leader at one point, so I don't get the impression that it's a group that Russel Means set up to advance a personal agenda. In any case, they support the withdrawal from US treaties by consensus.
Analysis
Why is there no mainstream media coverage of this? Because the State Department has not yet responded. Lack of response is a powerful message that the media are actively cooperating with. The media will wait for a State Department response, and then bias their coverage towards the federal position.
I'm curious how this nation would be able to provide social services, when it is opposed to both taxation and natural resource exploitation. But we'll see if it gets that far. The Lakota Nation, along with Tibet and 67 other groups, belong to the United Nations' Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.
The Lakota Nation is relying on international pressure to keep the US from violently suppressing the Lakota activists again. But would UN peacekeeping forces invade the US to intercede? I doubt the security council would even be able to pass a simple resolution against the US for a violent suppression of Lakota sovereignty. The 69 unrepresented nations and peoples are inside many recognized nations, and these powerful nations don't want to see their own minorities achieving sovereignty, so much of the world will just look the other way.
Ok, I decided what I want for my birthday, xmas, and every other occasion where I deserve a gift: a plant. It will be a NYE resolution to successfully take care of plants in '08. Plus plants are fun presents because there are so many to choose from, and Mao needs something to snack on.
Earlier this year Boris had a rare brain aneurism and almost died. He is seen here recovering from brain surgery in May.* Boris kept speaking of a whole new perspective on life, which Daniel and I eagerly anticipated. But alas, the email exchange copied below (sent between Daniel and Boris yesterday) shows that nothing has changed.
Boris: did you hear the shooting that took place in your neighborhood?
Daniel: yeah i saw someone lying in front of the grocery store. lotsa cops
and some fire trucks too. what happened? gangs? Boris: i don't know exactly, i just saw this on sfgate. but that is pretty
messed up. i think our neighborhood has gotten worse in recent
times. there was another robbery or incident at that liquor store a
few months ago, and the suspects actually ran into my building's
garage! there were like 40 cops that canvassed the area. luckily
the guy was captured.
could be gangs... did you get a closer look at the victim(s)?
Daniel: didn't take a close look. i'm not the kind. usually pretty apathetic
about things on the streets. our neighborhood is much better than the
mission when somebody gets shot every weekend i think . . . ya wanna
move to concord now? or back to palo alto? =)
i never encountered anything in my neighborhood . . . what did SF
Gate say?
Boris: sfgate didn't say much, as usual. just that 3 people got shot with
serious injuries. not sure if it was random (hope not).
well, judging by the turn of events i don't think things are too
different here than the mission. fri and sat nights are crazy here.
last weekend i saw a guy break into a car parked on the street right
below my apt. i've seen fights right across the street. it's a zoo
out here.
the only reason why this @*^\%! happens in our hood is because of the
handful of ghetto night clubs here. we need to shut them down.
Daniel: the night clubs' been there since i was in college dude. cars get
broken into every single night from our hood to the office's hood if
you haven't noticed, since day one.
i'm the wrong person to complain about the hood =) i'm pretty relaxed
and i don't mind much. i just enjoy. sounds like you should move to a
gentrified hood. try noe valley?
the reason this is happening is because some human-beings are
under-developed. but we have to share the world with them. so $#!^
happens and we'll just deal and make the best out of it. one of the
nightclubs is hardly ghetto. can't even wear tennis shoes and get into
BOSS on harrison.
Boris: you sound more jaded than relaxed. :P
this area is already becoming gentrified. we just need to speed up the
process. don't know about you, but i don't care to dodge bullets or
step over dead bodies.
be safe out there!
created with giardiacorp.com/404002.html. * This is actually three co-added photo frames taken by Ben. Apparently Boris did not move at all between exposures, although nobody had told him to freeze.
Daniel and I have been together since 1995. And I have been a DJ since 1998. Last week he started mixing CDs, and tonight we went to a party and came home and did a 60-min tag team set together on CDs and vinyl. It was so romantic !! !!
After Jenny showed me
Teachers expose private lives online, I decided to lock my myspace profile. My facebook profiles were already locked.
I am on the side of those who call these myspace-checks by employers "invasion of privacy." It's true that public profiles are, well, public. But they should be considered part of an individual's private life.
I'm probably on the losing side of this argument, but a teacher's behavior on myspace is totally analogous to her behavior in a bar, a restaurant, the sidewalk (away from school), or Disneyworld. When my friend Anne was a GSI at umich.edu, and she would say things like "Oh no, I couldn't go to that club, students go there and some of my students might see me there," I always thought that was a ridiculous attitude. But now I find myself locking profiles, and I feel like I'm being forced to turn into Anne. I don't have anything to hide on these profiles, but you never know what irrational biases a boss or search committee might have.
Having a locked profile is like going out and not being allowed to say anything to anyone you might meet. How much fun are you going to have doing that?
Let's say hypothetically that I was considering students for a research assistantship. Would it be acceptable to look at their facebook profiles and use information there in my difficult decision on which students to consider for interviews? I think it would be totally immoral. But according to the example I see from the Arizona school school district in the article, my approach would seem to be valid. That's lame.
So I posted a few conversations about affirmative action over the summer. I didn't know what I expected, or wanted, but I knew that I wasn't happy about the conversations. I guess what I was waiting for was something that I could agree with. Well, I finally found it. Here is what Colin Powell (Colin Powell !!) said in response to the question, "Do you still support affirmative action?"
I have always supported affirmative action. I believe there is still a place for it. I spoke at the 1996 RNC in San Diego with my friend Ward Connerly [a black opponent of affirmative action] sitting in the audience. He had warned me that he would walk out if I made any reference to affirmative action. And when I did express my support for it, I looked right at him, and he didn't move. Affirmative action is a concept that is probably not a growth industry. I'm glad it will eventually go away. But when I go to these inner-city neighborhoods, including across the street here in the Washington area, you can't tell me these kids have the same opportunity that other kids have or that my kids have. Is it because they're black that these kids are at a disadvantage? To some extent no, to some extent yes. We can't deny it. Therefore, to the extent that we still believe it appropriate to provide some way of balancing the legacy of the past, I think we have an obligation to do so.
-- GQ October 2007, p. 274.
So let me just say, before I pass out from the fumes emanating from this magazine, that what did it for me was his realization that it's not about trifling for YOU AND YOUR PRIVILEGED OFFSPRING, but compassion for those who are still suffering from the legacy of colonialism and racism.
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