The Arizona Immigration Law and The Six Hundred Pound Gorilla in the Room

Papers Please?

One thing that I have not heard mentioned about Arizona's new Anti-Latino immigration law is the fact that anyone stopped by the police can be required to prove that they are in this country legally, and if they can't produce proof, they can be detained for several days.

Now I would like you to take a moment to reflect on this and ask yourself

"If I were required at this moment to prove that I was in this country legally, could I?"

As I understand it, a drivers license is not proof, nor is a social security card. That means anyone could be picked up and detained for weeks just because you don't have papers. The law reads in such a way that it could end up being used to detain anyone on the pretext of lack of proof of "immigration" status.

Of course it will be first used against people of darker skin tone, who have Latino surnames, and perhaps accents that are not the "American standard".

Now I know that there are people dumb enough to to think that just because you have a Latino surname you wet-backed across the border last week, but that just isn't the case. Do you think that all the Latino families who live in the States west of the Rockys were born in Mexico ?

Well I grew up with people with Latino surnames and who spoke Spanish at home who's families had lived in New Mexico since before America was a country. Should they have to prove their citizenship just because some bigots in Arizona don't like Latinos?

And of course there will come a time when Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his Spiritual Brothers, and the thugs that work for them decide that they don't like your politics, or religion, or looks, there will come a time when you get asked for your papers, and if you can't prove you're in this country legally, well I just hope you enjoy jail food.

Now the use of this law against American citizens who aren't carrying proof of citizenship on the day they're stopped by the police is a  separate issue from dealing with people who are in this country illegally.

The problem of illegal aliens in the States is so easy to solve I'm surprised that no one has thought of it yet.

All you have to do is remove the reason for them to come here.

So all you unemployed Tea Baggers can get off the public dole and do something good for the country by heading out to California and getting the grape and Strawberry, lettuce and asparagus, garlic, brussels sprout and artichoke crops in this year. You can also start you own landscaping services, child care and maid services and a hundred other jobs that are done mostly by Latinos. I'd love to see all those jobs done by American citizens (the image of tea baggers getting in the strawberry crop would be priceless) So if you want to drastically reduce the illegal population without resorting to draconian legal measures, just go do the jobs that they are presently doing, they will all go away to find work elsewhere.

The Tea Baggers will be happy to know that they have an ally in their quest to get rid of all those pesky  illegals, The United Farm Workers say "Take Our Jobs"

Summer Sundays

And Tomahawk Tameshigiri

Sundays are the day that I usually reserve for myself. I get together with my close friends and train most Sunday mornings. This is a lot different than working with people during the week because I'm not teaching. On Sundays I get to experiment with new and interesting things with people who are teachers in their own right, which allows me to further my own training.

This last Sunday we got out the sharp, pointy things and attacked a bunch of helpless plastic bottles yet again.

It was pretty much par for the course, with flayed plastic flying all over the yard. But I did try one thing new. I have never test cut with a tomahawk before, so I tried it out.

It actually turned out to be quite instructive, and it has given me some new ideas for tomahawk training.

Sunday is also a day for bike riding, running, walking and other fun outdoor pursuits.

I have long said that Michigan has only one real flaw, it's vertically challenged. That is to say flat as a pancake, level, without significant elevation.

So Michiganders have started turning old silos into climbing walls.

This Sunday I grabbed my sidekick Janet (one of the few people willing to do all the crazy things I like doing) and among our afternoon wanderings we hit one of the local climbing walls.



It is not very high, but great for practicing your horizontal traverse.


and loads of fun.

A Great "barefoot" style running video

I have been meaning to post this video for a while

and just got reminded of it by the Barefoot Runners NYC blog.

Even though this was put out by a shoe company,Terra Plana (Extremely good if very expensive shoes) it uses the "barefoot" methodology to teach proper running form.

If you are interested in exploring a more natural stride and one that seems to have a lot less injury associated with it, this is a very good instructional video.

Learning the Skill of Barefoot Running from Terra Plana on Vimeo.

With or without shoes, the fore foot strike is, for me, the very best way to run.



So kick off your shoes and give it a try.

Thought for the Day

Nuke Your Life

From the writings of Jed McKenna

Thought for the Day

"Most illness and pathology in the body results from training our bodies to be really, really good at the wrong things."
.......Ryan Hurst

I don't know if it is actually "most illness and pathology" or not, but I suspect that if one were to take this idea seriously and train accordingly, the effects would be profound.

Putting things in the proper perspective.

I ran across this yesterday.

It is a site that takes the words of our home-grown Taliban Christian "conservative" tea-baggers and puts them in the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.

It's rather reveling.

Go take a look at

Tea Party Jesus

Let me know if it makes you laugh or cry.

An Interesting Lecture

On the use of livestock to help reclaim land.

I ran across this on one of the Paleo blogs I read. (this one)

It offers some interesting food for thought, and though I would need to see some hard data before I accepted some of his premises, the talk is interesting enough to make me think there might be something useful here.

Allan Savory - Keeping Cattle: cause or cure for climate crisis? from Feasta on Vimeo.

If there is anything to this (and I have to allow that there may be) then one of the pleasant side effects would likely be an abundance of pastured meat, which I consider to be better in every way than the factory farmed feed lot animals that provide so much of what we find in the stores today.