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columbus represent

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Does This Mean I Can Get on Disability?

From a USA Today article Pentagon lists homosexuality as disorder:

A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position. The document outlines retirement or other discharge policies for service members with physical disabilities, and in a section on defects lists homosexuality alongside mental retardation and personality disorders.

"Based on scientific and medical evidence the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 — a position shared by all other major health and mental health organizations based on their own review of the science," James H. Scully Jr., head of the psychiatric association, said in a letter to the Defense Department's top doctor earlier this month.

Same Story... Different Outcome?

If you have been following the news about Bolivia lately, you've heard about Evo Morales' controversial agrarian reform plans. These reforms are necessary because, according to the Washintgon Post:

About 90 percent of Bolivian land is owned by the wealthiest 7 percent of the population. Imbalances like that have helped make Bolivia South America's poorest nation: About 63 percent of its citizens -- and nearly 80 percent of its rural population -- live in poverty.
This is the same land imbalance that exists, and has existed for nearly 500 years, in Guatemala. My senior thesis "Un Pueblo Sin Tierra es un Pueblo Sin Paz: the History of Land Tenure in Guatemala" discusses this cyclical history, which sadly repeats itself the world over, of land tenure, indigenous communities, poverty, and genocide. The fact that Bolivia looks like Guatemala, both countries with large indigenous populations, is not surprising. And the fact that the people have voted for a leader who promises to change the inequity is also not surprising. In the 1950's in Guatemala there was a brief Democratic period of time, when democratically elected leaders promised the same reform that Morales promises:
Morales has said much of his nation's land is not being used productively, and he complains that large swaths were given to wealthy elites during the dictatorships of the 1970s. Under his plan, if the government deems land unproductive or obtained illegally, it is subject to confiscation and redistribution.
When this tactic was attempted in Guatemala, it was of course found unacceptable to the U.S. banana plantation owners who held vast territories, most of which sat idle, while the majority of Guatemalans were born into suffocating poverty, living and dying landless, unable to feed their children, unable to do anything but become indentured servants for these plantations owners.

What remains to be seen in Bolivia, is if the same story of U.S intervention will be played out. With banana plantation owners upset about losing land, and only being compensated by what they themselves had claimed the land was worth on their tax records from previous years, the U.S. State Department decided to step in. Our fair country helped a handful of disgruntled old guard military leaders, hiding out in Honduras, to stage a coup. Guatemala had seen 10 years of democracy, which was squashed out in a matter of days thanks to our "democratic" leaders. Will the same happen in Bolivia?

Monday, June 19, 2006

Been There... Done That

Or not! I tend to think of myself as fairly well traveled. Not so much, now that I see that I've only been to 9% of the world!!!



create your own visited country map

How pitiful!! I've GOT to get going!

Thursday, June 15, 2006

MMMMM

I haven't posted anything in a while here. I guess it's because of a number of things.

#1 I don't think anyone really reads it, which sometimes I really don't care about, this blog is here mainly because I can't help but get some rants out SOMEPLACE, and noone around me really seems to care (except my sweetie, but he doesn't really get into the details of it all). But sometimes it does really bug me, like why do I waste my time?

#2 I don't have a laptop, and my computer at home sucks. Anyone want to donate for a new compu?

#3 I've been in alot of pain lately which kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. I was doing fine, and my pain meds had hit the point of not being that effective, so I thought: why am I even on them? Let me just go ahead and stop taking them. Well of course at that point I realized that they WERE working, and all of the white pain came back. This was very depressing, as I had kind of hoped that the chronicness of it wasn't actually like a lifetime chronic. Now I'm not so sure.... the Crohn's is for life, and the docs seem to think that this is all related. Like my pain doc said: you are just a strong, healthy young lady with an inflammatory auto immune disease. Sheesh, great! I don't want to be THAT PERSON. The one with the pain. FUCK. I SO DON'T WANT TO BE THAT PERSON, the one that everyone secretly thinks is just malingering. And when I am feeling well.... Do I really want to go through all of that shit again? The friends heading for the hills when you can't be the "reliable" one anymore? The isolation of that is just too much. I'd rather just push everyone away and not have to deal with it. Or think about how others are juding me. And I don't want to be a complainer, and I don't want to make excuses for why I can't do the laundry, or do the dishes, or have sex...... because that is what it feels like, an excuse. Like, if I just tried harder, if I wanted it more, if if if if if if..... then.... what? I wouldn't be in pain? I could WILL this all away? I don't know.

My friend's sister, who is actually a big inspiration to me, even though I really just know her through voyeurism (I read her blog), summed up one issue really well:

"You have no idea how comforting your boring routine is until it is wholly lost and you find yourself creating a new routine out of hospital visits and cycles of drugs and recovery—only to lose that, too, when treatment ends or evolves. That is where I am at now. I have lost all my routines and I don’t know how to create a new one."

I'm there, and I'm just kind of sick of picking myself up and dusting myself off. Better to just lay on the couch all day and wait until sleep comes.

 
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