Sunday, May 21, 2006

FYI Florida Residents

May 21-June 1, 2006 Governor Jeb Bush today signed legislation authorizing Florida's second annual 12-day sales tax holiday for hurricane preparedness. The Hurricane Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday is an important component of Governor Bush's comprehensive plan to instill a ‘culture of preparedness' in Florida. The tax holiday begins on Sunday, May 21 and ends on the first day of the 2006 Hurricane Season, June 1 The 12 day holiday will save Floridians an estimated $41million.

more info at http://www.floridadisaster.org/

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Bright House's Brass Balls

Last night while watching late night re-runs of MSNBC's Lock-up series I saw a commericial for Bright House cable. Now, I've seen this commercial before but lastnight is when it really sunk in. The commericial was targeted to business owners persuading them to advertise with Bright House cable. The gist of the ad is the Cable can provider advertisers with the tools to reach the market groups they want to reach, like "young adults", "house wives", "seniors". "Well duh!" you say...

What erked me (probably more because I was tired and already cranky from a long night at work) was this: Most cable proiders charge at least $50/month for basic cable service ( a service which most americans like my self feel obligated to have, for better or for worse) and they charge usually several houndreds of dollars if not thousands for a few second of ad time to their advertisers, and it seems like everytime you turn around you hear the cable companies threatening to raise their residential rates.

How much money do these people want from us? Especially when they make the bulk of their money funneling advertisement into our livingrooms?

(Lucky for me cable is included in my rent)

Sunday, May 14, 2006

New Blog...

So I've decided to start a new blog relative to my work experiences. The title: The Eye Inside; the address: http://eyeinsidejac.blogspot.com/ check it out.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Life at the JAC - Initial Observations

I recently began a new job working at the Juvenile Assessment Center here in Tampa. I began as an intake worker where my primary job functions included operating the phones and electronicaly controlled doors, along with admitting new juveniles to the facility (having the sign the neccessary paperwork and collecting their property) and performing intervention assessments. Within two weeks I was promoted to the Diversion Unit, where I am classified as a Diversion Specialist. My purpose is to recomend first time juvenile offenders to the diversionary program which suits their needs the best. The idea is to give the kids a "second chance" before sending them to the judge and having a minor "mistake" from haunting them in later years. After all, kids are kids and they're going to get introuble- its part of their biology.

So far I like it here. My co-workers are friendly, although I don't believe this is the right profession for some of them. I think that is their first fault, they don't view this as anythign more than just a "job" and "paycheck" when infact it is more than that., The responsibility that comes with working with in the criminal justice field is enormous, multiply that by the responsibility of working with "at risk youth" and its almost unimaginable how anyone would work this job half heartedly. So far I have dealt with cookie-cutter type cases; "good" WASPY type kids who stole a cd for the thrill, or smoke a little pot here and there and finally got caught, the frivalous charges of "tresspassing" and "resisting arrest w/o violence" (giving an officer a fake name or refusing to give them one) charges that could probably be dealt with better with a hand-cuff ride in the back of the police car to their parents house, rather than making them sit for hours waiting to be processed at our facility. I've also dealt with the cases that unfortunately one would "expect" to deal with. The typical improvrished, poorly educated, inner-city minority type kids- kids who at no fault of their own are more likely to become involved in the criminal justice system. While doing my assessments I've already come to realise that my African-American clients are more like to have repeated a grade, have a parent that is or already has been incarcerated, and come from a home with a disproportionate number of dependants and care takers. I've also come to notice that my White clients are more likely to have experimented with drugs and alcohol, and are usually less repectful than minority children.

So far I've had two clients whom I truely felt sorry for. One was a young white child, about 13 years old. He lives with his mother, who is dating their neighbor and she spends all her time next door leaving him home alone. He told me that he tried to kill himself twice, once by taking pills the other by cutting his wrists. He also showed me where he still cuts himself on a regular basis. He told me that he hears voices and thinks that he will attempt suicide again. I of course mad ethe neccessary treatment refferal, but beyonde that I dont know much more of what will happen to him. From my short time working with him I realised that he was extremely intelligent, as most "criminals" are, just was just lacking affection attention and nurturing from his mother. I hope he gets the treatment he needs and his pyshical wounds along with his emotional wounds are able to heal so that he can focus his abilities in the right direction. The second case was more recent. A young African American boy attempted to runaway from his fathers home to escape abuse, and did not cooperate fully with law enforcement and was thuis arrested. Durring my assessment the boy told me that his father beats him with an extension chord and punches him in the chest regularly when he "gets mad". I made the neccessary referal again in the case but this one will definately be much more complicated. My father had a ehavy hand of his own, and I still remeber times when he would beat my brother and I with a belt for misbehaving, I remember threatening when i was younger, that I would call DCF or the cops or whomever it a 10 year old threatens to call; I guess i never considered the abuse bad enough to want to run away from home.

Anyway I should probably get to work...Not that I have much to d. Its been a slow night and thats a good thing. Kids are staying out of trouble.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Slacker...

So yeah I haven't updated in a while. I've been busy. Its exam season, and i Just started a new job. Im taking the lazy way out...One of my exams was an essay. We were asked to use Walter Mosley's What Next A Memoir Toward Peace to discuss the factors of conflict in society and propse solutions or measure that would prevent futher conflict or violence.




Since the events of September 11, 2001, and perhaps as early as the Iran Hostage Crisis in the 1970's and the first World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of the USS Cole in the 1990's, we as Americans have struggled not only with the grief of losing our loved ones and fellow country men but also with understanding the motivation behind such brutal acts of terror. Many try to attach their understanding as a cultural void; a clash between East and West- Christianity and Islam. While these cultural aspects merely complicate the situation they are not the root of conflict. As Walter Mosley wrote:
“I don't believe that the current conflict is a war between religions, that whole cultures who believe in a magnificent afterlife are plotting to take the US down with them in the glorious flames of holy war. I don't believe that our enemies are ignorant dupes fooled into slaughtering the innocent lambs of America....” (Mosley 26)
Religion and Culture are merely the tools through which foreign nations and interests defend their sovereignty, demand their equal place in the global economy, and ensure their rights as human beings. The American domination and oppression of foreign economics, government, and religious freedoms has lead to mass starvation and wide spread infection and poverty in most of the developing world. The contempt which leads to violent acts is born when a man's vote is canceled by a foreign government, when a woman watches her children die hungry and disease ridden and when children are forced to work 12 hour days for little more than a bowl of rice and some contaminated water. “Not only do we stand silently by while Kurds, Mayans, Sudanese, and South Africans die from warfare, slavery, disease, and neglect, but we also sit almost passively...” (Mosley 37). By ignoring the economic factors which contribute to these violent acts we allow more violence to take place.

If we wish to stop violence against our people we must not resent until we have taken all necessary steps to prevent violence against those who might attack us. First, we cannot be free while our neighbor wear chains. We cannot know happiness while others are forced to live in despair. We cannot know health if plague and famine thrive outside our door. And we cannot expect to know peace if war rides forward under our flag and with our consent.(Mosley 41) We have falsely made our War on Terror a war against regimes, dictators, and fundamentalist, when our war should be against the conditions they derive their power from. “A modern terrorist is a single minded being- a man or woman, sometimes even a child, who had made the decision to give up his life, or at least to give up the lives of others, to make a statement and to instill fear. We perceive these terrorists as being full of hatred, desperate and possibly crazed. They attack innocent citizens who, to them, represent the evils that beset another group of people somewhere. The decide to destroy one group of innocents to bring attention to those who have suffered but about whom no one seems to care...” (Mosley 59). In the Middle East we have toppled the Hussein regime, bringing freedom to the oppressed people of Iraq, however we have also injured or killed thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, sacrificing their liberty for our gain and sowing the seeds of terrorism. In Hobbes's Leviathan it is argued that if a man is commanded to kill or wound himself; or not to resist those who assault him; or to abstain from food, or medication or any other thing that without he cannot live; he has the Liberty to disobey (Hobbes 164). We must not condemn those who rebel against or oppression yet we must seek to raise them to our level. As Americans we do not accept a foreign nations authority over us, we should not seek to control and compromise the sovereignty of any other nation. Because they were the first to attack we often spend too much time examining situation in the Middle East, and we often forget the violent atrocities which have been committed in our own hemisphere.

For hundreds of years the indigenous people of the world have been violently exploited and oppressed. No where else has this been quite as prevalent as in Latin America, where the original colonizing nations raped the land and its people of their precious metals and latter enslaved them in latifundos, as result of comparative advantage theories. After the Spanish, French, and Portuguese Crowns successfully sucked the silver and gold from the veins of South America they discovered the rich soil and favorable climate for growing crops such as sugar, coffee, and other raw materials. With this discovery large plantations were created and the slave trade began, enslaving not only Africans but the remaining indigenous population. The creation of the plantations, or latifundios as they are called in Latin America began a rigid class system and the systematic oppression of peasants and indigenous workers. Over the years as democracy grew in the western hemisphere many educated Latin American thinkers began to realize the injustices their neighbors were dealt, all tied to the lack of industrial growth in Latin America and the fluctuations in world coffee and sugar markets. These men and women began revolutionary movements in Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Cuba, planting the seeds of democracy and reform in the region. Massive land reforms were enacted stripping land from the Church, private land owners and also American and other international corporations. These reforms sought to end the starvation and stagnation of the indigenous and peasant populations of Latin America and put control of the land, government, and economics of the continent into the hands of the people who lived there. In most nations these reforms were welcomed with open arms by their people, however American and other international interests had little to gain and everything to lose from these reforms. In 1954, the United States, influenced by United Fruit, successfully overthrew the reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz, and allowed the dictator Castillo Armas to take power. The new government fiercely sought to oppress all dissent, over 200,00 Guatemalans were murder and tortured by this regime, with the consent of the United Stated government. Guatemala was not the only country to suffer from U.S. political interventions. After gaining its independence from Spain, in 1901, Cuba was subjected to the Platt Amendment which gave the U.S. Authority over the new Cuban government. The U.S. would intervene again in Cuban politics and sovereignty when trying to over throw the government of Fidel Castro, forcing him to align with the Soviet Union. On September 11, 1973 Chile saw the violent overthrow of the Allende government and the installment of the Pinochet dictatorship; another coup paid for by the American dollar. The congress was closed, and labor unions and political parties were banned. Anyone suspected of being an Allende loyalist or a “socialist” was arrested, tortured, and killed. An estimated 20,000-30,000 Chileans lost their lives as a result. In the 1980's and 1990's almost all Latin American nations fell victim to the neo-liberal economic policies of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. These policies forced the nations economies into further depression, and many have yet to recover. Most recently the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has lifted nearly all trade, labor, and environmental barriers between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. While NAFTA created thousands of new jobs in Mexico, the jobs are often criticized for paying near starvation wages and requiring workers to work in unsafe conditions fro excessive periods of time. Maquiladores, as the US owned factories are called, have also contributed to the further environmental detestation of Northern Mexico.


With such interference and intervention from our government it is impossible for us to ignore the fact that we bare some responsibility for the crisis in Latin America. Recent trends in the Politics of Latin America have indicated a desire of the people to be free of U.S. and international control and influence. Presidents such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have been outspoken against U.S. policy goals which he believes would be harmful to the region and his nation. Chavez has formed alliance with other newly elected reformist presidents like Evo Merelos of Bolivia, and Michelle Barchette of Chile. Recently Merelos began a program in which the natural gas production of Bolivia will be nationalized, lowering prices and creating new jobs for Bolivian workers. In Venezuela Chavez has set tighter controls on international oil companies producing oil in his nation. Chavez also made an important agreement with Fidel Castro of Cuba, in which Cuba receives oil at a fair price in exchange for supplying Venezuela with highly trained medical professionals. As part of this agreement Cuba will also be training Venezuelans to become Doctors and Nurses. These are steps being taken by Latin American countries to repair the damages done to them by foreign interests. While some of these policies may negatively affect some U.S. owned corporations we cannot threaten these nations with military or economic sanctions. Further intervention of the United States would only lead to further agitation and conflict between our nations. The actions taken by these soreign governments are in reaction to policies which they have fallen victim to throughout the past five centuries As a nation we must protest every unwarranted act of war- every embargo, every refusal to help enhance the quality of life in disease-ridden, famine-plagued nations. We should not punish the nation which excises its sovereignty but punish the governments and corporations which threaten sovereignty of others (Mosley 118). “If we do not respect our sister nations, we will get they're ire in return,” (Mosley 123). We have not yet seen any violent attacks or demonstrations against us from our southern neighbors but without drastic changes in U.S. and international policy such violence may be imminent. We cannot expect governments and men to sit in idle as their families neighbors are starving, dying of curable illnesses, and being murdered.

To prevent violent acts against us and protect our people we must work as a government and as a nation to repair the situations we have created and prevent any further destabilization. We must work as a global community to follow those principles which I laid forth earlier; to ensure no man lives in bondage, no child lives in despair, no one suffers from illness or disease, and that all humans live free from violence and warfare. To achieve these goals we should require all international corporations to provide their workers with a wage that will afford them adequate nutrition, health care, and housing; we should encourage governments to provide for there people security not only from the physical violence of neighboring nations but also from economic violence; we must allow every human the same freedoms, liberty and justices in every nation.