Things To Be Aware Of

Monday, March 17, 2008

Several people have sent me links to interesting articles lately.

This first one is also a call to action. Celeste blogged about this article from the UK. An Iranian teenager fled to England on a student visa after being discovered with his boyfriend. While he was there, the boyfriend was put to death after being charged with sodomy. The UK won't give this boy asylum. I'm beyond appalled, obviously.

Here's the article. I don't know that there's much of anything we can do, but surely getting the story out there will make people think. I welcome any ideas.

The constant BS about "homeland security" is always cause for eye-rolls, but here's a twist that I bet you haven't thought of: Airports don't generally recognize native travellers' Tribal ID's. Since Native American tribes are sovereign entities, the id's should be just as valid as a state id, right? Apparently the new push for "real id's" doesn't think so. The Great Falls, Montana paper has the story. Ugh.....it seems that the powers that be don't think it's so hard to just get a passport, already. Despite, you know, cost, availability of birth records, cost, and oh, cost!

On a much lighter note, Robin Hobb (Fantasy writer) talks about the dangers of blogging when you're a writer with a deadline. She seems to think that one shouldn't blog, one should write, and that the two are mutually exclusive. Writer, poet, ground-breaking feminist and blogger extrordinaire Maggie Jochild totally disproves this. Her blog posts are real and substantive, too. Not "dear diary, here's what I did today" crap like I write.
It's an amusing read, though, so here ya go.

That's about it for now. Must go rescue laundry from the laundromat and rescue my grandma from the clutches of her incredibly boring step-son.

love to all!