the reality tunnel

Women in Science Research Conference
Monday, Mar 3. 9a-2:30p
Solarium, Indiana Memorial Union

Su E Pian (Lady of the Moon): Women and Sexuality from the Kinsey Institute Asian Collections
Thursday, March 6th 7p
Asian Culture Center, 807 E 10th St

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days film screening
Sunday, March 9 2p
Monroe County Public Library Auditorium

Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’que Tu Lo Sepas (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know!)!: An Interview with Rosie Perez
Thursday, Mar. 20th 7:00p
La Casa

“Human Trafficking and Sexual Tourism”
Friday, March 21 12:30-1:30p
Asian Cultural Center, 807 E. 10th St.

2007-08 Fifth Annual Herman Hudson Symposium (Theme: “Lifting the Veil: Multidisciplinary Responsibility in Global Societies”)
Saturday, March 22
10a
Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center

Mujeres en la Artes: Creating a Tapestry of Expression
Thursday, Mar 27
7p
La Casa

Documentary Screening of “Never Perfect” and Conversation with the Director/Filmmaker, Regina Par
Thursday, March 27 7p
Grand Hall, Neal Marshall Black Culture Center

In researching the details of a museum that my father wanted to go to on our trip in San Francisco, I read this.  It’s crazy that, more than 100 years later, the motivations for limiting immigration and the use of legislation to exclude certain classes of immigrants persists.  The faces of the undesireable immigrants is all that has changed:

During the 1870s, an economic downturn resulted in serious unemployment problems, and led to politically motivated outcries against Asian immigrants who would work for low wages. In reaction to states starting to pass immigration laws, in 1882 the federal government asserted its authority to control immigration and passed the first immigration law, barring lunatics and felons from entering the country. Later in 1882, the second immigration law barred Chinese, with a few narrow exceptions. Imperial China was too weak and impoverished to exert any influence on American policy. This law was originally for 10 years, but was extended and expanded and not repealed until 1943, when China was our ally in World War II. However, only 105 Chinese were allowed in legally each year, so the exception process actually continued into the 1950’s. Chinese were not on a equal immigration footing with other nationalities until immigration laws were completely rewritten in the mid 1960’s.

link

I thought about this a lot when I was in Germany this summer, seeing all the monuments to the atrocities of the Nazis, and even reading the last Harry Potter book - there is an identifiable pattern to despotism. Naomi wolf says this of her recent book that talks about the rise of despotism in the current US body politic:

But I guess the book really began with a very personal story, because I was forced to write it, even though I didn’t really want to, by a dear friend who is a Holocaust survivor’s daughter. And when we spoke about news events, she kept saying, “They did this in Germany. They did this in Germany.” And I really didn’t think that made sense. I thought that was very extreme language. But finally she forced me to sit down and start reading the histories, of course, not of the later years, because she wasn’t talking about German outcomes, ’38, ’39; she was talking about the early years, 1930, ’31, ’32, when Germany was a parliamentary democracy, and there was this systematic assault using the rule of law to subvert the rule of law.

And once I saw how many parallels there were, not just in strategy and tactics that we’re seeing again today, but actually in images and sound bites and language, then I read other histories of Italy in the ’20s, Russia in the ’30s, East Germany in the ’50s, Czechoslovakia in the ’60s, Pinochet’s coup in Chile in ’73, the crushing of the democracy movement in China at the end of the ’80s. And I saw that there is a blueprint that would-be dictators always do the same ten things, whether they’re on the left or the right, and that we are seeing these ten steps taking place systematically right now in the United States.

Link

Update:

Today, there was a story on Morning Edition about GOP presidential candidate rhetoric which calls the war on Iraq things like “the front line on the war on terrorism”.  Romney’s website refers to the war on Iraq as ‘defeating the jihadists’.  Mike Huckabee says that we’re engaged in a  ‘world war’ and that “radical islamic fascists have declared war on our country and on our way of life.” But, as the NPR reporter indicates, these words don’t mesh with the reality of the war in Iraq:

Al Queda in Iraq has  few foreign fighters.  It’s a home-grown group.  American officers say many of them are fighting more for money  than for religious fanaticism.  Meanwhile the powerful Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq are not exporting terror, they’re vying for power in Iraq, sometimes battling each other …

The report goes on to quote a defense analyst saying that politicians prefer catch phrases to a serious discussion of the war.

This report makes me think of the language described in Wolfe’s interview and it’s even more frightening when there is so apparently little basis for this kind of fear.

Link

Edible Secrets is a guided museum installation by Bloomington resident Michael Hoerger of previously classified US government documents interconnected through the theme of food. The exibit runs through October 14, 2007. For more information about the show, contact michaelismichael@gmail.com.