President Bush has recently signed the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that repeals the ban but it remains in place till the HHS issues new authorizations.

At the same time, Britain is deporting HIV patients, many countries lack the funds to fight HIV, while the atrocious global gag rule that prevents women from getting adequate reproductive care, remains in place.

Coming back to my own understanding of HIV / AIDS, while I don’t personally know anyone who suffers from this illness, I know some who have succumbed to it. Moreover, I am appalled at the way the lesbian segment of the LGBT community takes the issue lightly — to date, there has [b]never[/b] been any sort of protection shown on major shows portraying lesbian sex.

In regards to desi culture, HIV/AIDs is still a taboo subject, much like homosexuality.
My Brother Nikhil is one of the few Indian movies that address the issue of being a gay male with HIV and a must-watch.

Another is Phir Milenge -

For more information on events and how you can get involved, go to any of these sites:

http://www.worldaidsday.org

http://www.worldaidscampaign.org

I went to the best schools while I grew up in Fiji so the fact that some students did not have access to books was not something that I spent time thinking about (It’s generally not what children spend time thinking about either unless they are in that situation).

From Dec 1 to Dec 15, the Fiji Children’s Trust is holding a book drive for Daku Village school. The facebook event is here.

Donate a book for xmas and help a school build their new library!

Please contact us if you are in Fiji or post your books to the school.
Daku Village School
P.O.Box 400
Nausori
Fiji

I am sure a lot of us (especially the college students) have books to spare that would be of good use to these children. Think age group 4-10.

Join Books for Fiji on facebook to keep up to date with these and other similar efforts.

There will always be immigrants. A human can work the same job in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas and make six times as much money on the north side of the border. That’s six times as much food in a baby’s mouth, six times as often that a family can run hot water and possibly the opportunity to invest. Some say immigrants, especially guest workers, become fourth class citizens. But they are often sub-castes in their own countries, invisible to the oh-so-keen eye of the developed world. Some say it robs developing countries of their skills and talent. But more people bring home skills and know-how than leave permanently in the “brain drain.” Lastly, some say it promotes dissolution of families. Love, however, is a little tougher with empty stomachs and untreated infections.

Or family need no longer mean a nuclear and extended unit sharing the same geographical location. In this world of globalizing communications, from Vonage to facebook to twitter, ‘family’ also means exchanging a few words with someone 3000 miles away and feeling connected through conversation, not necessarily building beer bellies.

Whole article is at the University Wire.

My concern is with this statement from Reuters.

A witness told Indian television that gunmen in Mumbai looked for British and U.S. passport holders.

“They wanted anyone with British or American passports,” a witness at the Taj Hotel, who said he was from London and was in India on business, told the NDTV news channel. He had smoke stains all over his face. “They wanted foreigners.”

Has this been confirmed? Dave states that “as nationality is the principal trait governments use to select targets, it should come as no surprise that the attackers searched for targets by nationality as well.”

This tactic of targeting ‘foreigners’ — representatives of Western civilization — challenges the concept of building higher walls, smarter borders, restricting immigration to protect Americans and keep out the terrorists, freedom fighters, whatever PC or non-PC term attached to these advocates of violence. In this era of globalization, with more people not living in their countries of origin, if attackers can target Americans outside of America, outside our guarded physical borders, can the nation-state really provide the necessary ’security?’ It certainly raises new questions about the responsibility of the nation-state and mentally redrawing our conception on physical barriers.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says:

“It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country,” he said. “We will take the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such terrorist acts. We are determined to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the safety and security of our citizens.“

Who is behind this? For now, we know through a recovered phone from a slain terrorist that calls were made to Karachi. Lets not pin this on a country and step away from jingoistic calls to attack Pakistan. The Deccan Mujahideen have claimed responsibility for this while Pakistan has strongly condemned the attacks. There is also no need to scapegoat Muslims in India. None of this worked for the United States when it declared war on Afghanistan and started profiling Arab Americans — Al Qaeda is stronger than ever before and Bin Laden is at large, so declaring war on Pakistan, given MAD, would be even more stupid.

I implore you to check out the newly revamped ‘Change.org’ Ideas for Change and submit an idea or vote on existing ones. The Top 10 would be given to Obama upon inauguration.
http://www.change.org/ideas

DREAMERS: Vote for this for sure:
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/pass_the_dream_act_now

Also, try and support Dave in the immigration section as often as possible. He’s their Immigration blogger.
http://immigration.change.org/

And put up this widget. Second round of voting starts on Jan 5.

The appointment of Janet Napolitano to the top Homeland Security post has elicited a diverse number of reactions. In a New York Times article, some immigration hardliners are calling it a travesty, NumbersUSA thinks that President-elect Barack Obama could have done worse, while ‘liberals’ think that Napolitano represents a balanced and constructive view, given that she is in favor of a comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes 12 million undocumented migrants. Conservatives in Arizona are happy that finally power might shift towards them with the election of Jan Brewer to Governorship.

Few are questioning the rise of ‘immigration’ as a matter of national security to the point where debates over the chief post of Homeland Security now include major immigration groups. Is this a failure of the imagination, ignorance or just plain historical amnesia? Discourses surrounding the appointment of Napolitano simply serve as polemical devices to achieve political ends while doing nothing to actually address the epistemological and ontological flaws in the actual nature of the Department of Homeland Security.

Writing for the Washington Post, Edward Alden is one of the few mainstream and liberal commentators who comes close to hitting the nail on the head with this statement in ‘Close Minded on the Border:

Instead of continuing to embrace the massive flow of talent, energy and initiative that the rest of the world has long offered the United States, we launched an expensive, futile experiment to see whether we could seal our borders against the ills of the world, from terrorists to drugs to illegal migrants. This effort has betrayed both our ideals and our interests.

Yet, he notes that Janet Napolitano has a rare opportunity to set the nation back on track—to improve security without sacrificing American values and ideals.

On November 25, 2002, President Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act of 2002 which created the Department of Homeland Security that effectively took over the INS (now CIS). This reorganization blurred the line between immigration policy and terrorism policy to the detriment of many immigrants in the United States – immigration policy became an issue of national security, widening the nexus of security concerns, and hence, granting more policing power to the State.

This incorporation of immigration as national security has far-reaching implications—apart from the fact that immigration is now treated as a security concern rather than an economic and cultural benefit, the dehumanization and scapegoating of undocumented immigrants has proliferated out of control. From local enforcement and state laws to election battles, the unnamed and othered ‘illegal immigrant’ is the big bad bogeyman against whom we need protection.

Under the DHS, the Constitution has taken a hit. Forget the Fourth Amendment; border agents can search laptops and other electronic devices without cause, without reasonable search and seizure standards. Forget the Fourteenth Amendment and equal protection of the laws; non-citizens suspected of violating immigration law can be jailed for months or even years without due process of law as they await deportation. Psychotropic drugs are given to detained immigrants awaiting deportation, raising questions about the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Ask DHS, what part of ILLEGAL don’t you understand?

‘Illegal’ is associated with criminal even though the majority of ‘out-of-status’ immigrants have committed no crimes (mere illegal presence is not a crime). Innocent children of undocumented immigrants are subject to hatred and insult by short-sighted spiteful nativists while some in Congress want to change the Constitution to strip children born here of their birthright citizenship. Even U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, detained and almost deported mistakenly, have not escaped the scathing effects of the increased militarization of immigration. And of course, ‘race’ serves as a proxy for criminality or wrong-doing—most of the citizens and legal permanent residents targeted by ICE have been disproportionately non-white and this has also trickled down from the DHS to local police enforcement of immigration. A blog reader comments:

My brother was working construction to make extra money. Police in Greenwood, Indiana came up to him, and asked him for his green card. He laughed, because he didn’t know he was serious. It got serious fast when he was pushed to the ground, and handcuffed. When his friends/coworkers told him he’s from Alaska and American, and that he had ID, they finally called off the additional policemen requested. I guess it is illegal to have dark skin in America.

What is Obama telling us by keeping the DHS and appointing a ‘border governor’ like Napolitano to the post: that ‘illegal immigrants’ are a national security problem requiring a ‘state of emergency?’ That we are (only) threatened as a country from unknown enemies across our borders? That a militaristic, get-tough approach to humanitarian disasters and attractive immigration innovation works best? That family-sponsored visa petitions, widowed-spouses of U.S. citizens, undocumented students, farm workers, American citizens who happen to be racial minorities, are a threat to the national security apparatus?

Coming to the actual ’security’ problem faced by the United States:

Our perception of what and from whom we need to be secured is not based on the actual threats that exist, but on the threats that we are told to perceive by the state. Thus, terrorists, drugs, illegal immigrants, “Third World” dictators, rogue states, blacks, non-Christians, and the Other, are considered as threats to the national security apparatus, and consequently, as threats to the individual American. This state construction of threats pervades our minds, causing a trickle-down effect that encourages a culture of fear, where the only limit to the coming danger is our imagination. Lipschutz (2000, 44-45) concludes in After Authority: War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st Century, “the national security state is brought down to the level of the household, and each one arms itself against the security dilemma posed by its neighbor across the hedge of fence.”

In On Security, Ole Waever, a senior researcher at the Center for Peace and Conflict Research, notes that “in naming a certain development a security problem, the state can claim a special right, one that in the final instance, always be defined by the state and its elites” (1995, 55). This process is termed as “securitization,” which simply means treating an event or issue as a problem of national security rather than first questioning whether it should even be treated as a security issue. Such an act serves the interests of the state and its elites, starting with the discourse of security by the state, which constructs and perpetuates state identity and existence. Immigration policy under the DHS has hence undergone unwarranted securitization, serving the interest of the state (and private detention) apparatus.

Forgetting political theory for the moment, given the ineffectiveness (one need not look any further than FEMA and the current border fence woes), widespread criticism and lawsuits against the DHS, it is a wonder that more people are not writing about simply dismantling the agency. The DHS was dreamed into existence after 9-11, it can (and should) be legislated out of existence if we really want change we can believe in, change that restores some sort of integrity into the American system of justice, especially in regards to immigration policy.

Forget Napolitano. Dismantle the DHS.

This amicus curie brief a MUST-READ for when you are down, depressed or taking a shit (though it is not worth printing out so take the laptop with you…)

Some great quotes:

“In order to fill the earth with human physical bodies, God ordered each and all marriages to be between a one man and one woman. Indirectly, god prohibits gay and lesbian marriage. Through Genesis 1: 26-27, God also orders that all children must be born from natural conception and prohibits all abortion.”

No, I am serious. Half the brief is about abortions, unborn children and the devil.

“If gays and lesbians do not change their sexual behavior to natural ways that the Almighty Eternal Creator created between one man and one woman, they will lose their eternal life.”

Parts of the bible are under-lined and attached to the brief as ’supplemental documents’ for the next 35 pages.

Isn’t it amazing how the Eternal Almighty Creator has to appeal to the human-made Court?

I propose that God come to the hearing in March to argue for Prop. 8. If God doesn’t show up, than Prop. 8 is null and void.

Anyone else wondering why we are not suing for Prop. 8 based on FREEDOM FROM RELIGION?

Someone tell the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ and other comedy writers to please keep filing amicus briefs such as these for the next 2 months.

The other ones are on exercising ‘judicial restraint’ and preserving the ‘will of the people’ so not as entertaining.

The Pacific Justice Institute
Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Steven Meiers
American Center for Law and Justice

Maybe I should file a brief considering some of the briefs are not even worthy of being ‘legal matter.’

“If you want something, you have to ask for it,
If they’re not doing it right you’ve got to speak up and show them and
If you still don’t get what you want, then there is nothing wrong with doing it yourself!”

I want the DREAM Act, an end to ICE raids and meaningful immigration reform. I want marriage equality for all — Actually I need the state to stop telling consenting adults what they can and cannot do with their bodies. I want an end to neo-liberalism and an overhauling of global financial institutions. I want an end to the war in Iraq and for the military to be used as a LAST resort when all else fails. Someday, I want a world without any borders. The list is quite long, but sitting with it is not going to translate those wants into realities. I need to take that list and go shopping for it myself.

Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful reports from L5. I am disappointed that there was little discussion about ‘politics’ [especially Prop. 8 ] given that it was the weekend of the Join the Impact International Action for Marriage Equality but we must remember that the core audience is not political. Hopefully, more people realize that the personal is indeed political and get more active in the fight for civil and human rights.

I have already written about how tolerance discourse has been twisted by the media and proponents of H8 to characterize us as militants, unlawful, undemocratic, fascist and even terrorists.

To every person that is pro-gay marriage but bewildered and unsupportive of the uprising among LGBT people and allies, this paragraph by Dr. King is quite apt and to the point:

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Forget the moderate who wants to wait for laws to change. I am disappointed with the ‘liberal’ that believes in equal rights but votes to ban ‘gay marriage.‘ I am disgusted with the undocumented students around America who call for an end to discrimination against immigrants but post ‘Yes on H8′ videos. I am annoyed at so-called gay icons acting like ‘Uncle Toms’ of the gay community telling us not to ask for ‘marriage rights.’

Stop telling the LGBT community to ‘wait’ for change; stop telling us to not demand our civil rights. Playing ‘Mr. Nice Gay’ and ‘waiting’ has gotten us to this juncture where discrimination has been shamefully written into the California Constitution. As Dr. King wrote in the Letter from Birmingham Jail:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!”… This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

Now is not the time to ‘wait and watch.’

As I stood taking snaps from alongside the podium this past weekend, I couldn’t help but feel excited and enthusiastic staring out at the sea of people who had turned up to support civil rights, people of every color, caste, creed, gender, sexual orientation, people who believed in and wanted equality. It felt like the start of something new mixed with a strange sense of deja vu carried over from reading about so many other civil rights movement especially the Stonewall riots. I realized then that I had only read about ‘other’ CIVIL RIGHTS movements but never had the experience of being in one, (the DREAM / pro-migrant movement aside that is often not cast in the civil rights language that I believe it is entitled to and should adopt).

Silently, I thanked the proponents of H8 for giving me this opportunity, giving our community the opportunity to come together in larger numbers than ever before, to discuss the re-birth of a human rights campaign that lay dormant for far too long. This is just the beginning.

A loud cheer was heard in the LGBT community today when the California Supreme Court accepted three lawsuits against Prop. 8.

The last time Justice George heard such a cheer from the LGBT community was when his court declared same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional on May 15, 2008.

“I think there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe.”

Justice George said it had been one of the most difficult cases of his life. Maybe he spoke prematurely as this one seems to much more crucial. Lets hope he does not play it safe — he is up for retention in 2010 and no doubt the Yes on 8 would launch a recall effort for this Republican-appointee and others who vote in favor of civil rights for LGBT couples.

[Advice for the premature recall effort: 6 of the 7 judges on the Court were appointed by Republicans, so recall away. We would get more liberal judges on the Court who would definitely be more pro-gay].

The Supreme Court has set an expedited schedule for the ruling that can be access here.

The Court is asking for briefs on the following questions:

(1) Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?

(2) Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?

(3) If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what should happen to the same-sex marriages performed before Prop. 8 took effect?

Justice Moreno wanted an immediate stay on Prop 8 - He is the more liberal wing of the court and no prices for guessing which way he will vote. Justice Kennard wanted a separate motion filed for the right-wingers challenging the existing 18000 marriages and refused to sign on the motion.

I don’t know about (1), but (2) and (3) I can predict.

When the Supreme Court threw out the ban on gay marriage earlier in the year, the court also ruled that discrimination against gays and lesbians would be held under ’strict scrutiny’ exactly like discrimination based on race or sex. Prop. 8 tells the Court in no unclear terms that the majority can decide what particular groups can be afforded ‘equal protection of the laws’ under the California Constitution and my pro-gay bias aside, I have LITTLE doubt that the Supreme Court will declare the measure as a gross violation of ’separation of powers.’ GOODBYE PROP. 8

I doubt the Court will come to (3) but since the measure is not written as retroactive, it does not apply retroactively. Ex-post facto. The same-sex marriages performed would still be recognized by the state of California.