Congress’s shameful treatment of Syrian refugees

November 20, 2015 • 9:00 am

Yesterday the House of Representatives voted by a substantial majority to severely tighten the screening process for Syrian and Iraqi refugees. According to the New York Times, Congress voted 287-137 (with 47 Democrats joining the Republicans) for a bill that “would require that the director of the F.B.I., the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the director of national intelligence confirm that each applicant from Syria and Iraq poses no threat.”

From what I read elsewhere, such confirmation is nearly impossible, and would either stop the incursion of Syrian refugees cold or slow it to a trickle. This form of certification could take many years for even one individual, much less the thousands that President Obama wants to accept. Obama promises to veto the House bill, but Congress can override such a veto with a 2/3 vote, and 287/424 is 68%, slightly more than enough to cancel a veto. (One hopes that at least a few Democrats will defect.) The bill hasn’t yet been voted on in the Senate.

Alongside this embarrassing rejection of Obama’s humane policy of accepting refugees (one favored by Hillary Clinton), 31 U.S. state governors, more than half of all governors (all of these save one are Republicans), have said that they will take action to prevent the refugees from coming to their states.

This inhumane and unwarranted kneejerk reaction reminds many of our country’s shameful historical policy of rejecting “unwanted immigrants,” including pre-war Jews, who were turned away and sent back to Europe, where they faced extermination. I understand why people are nervous about these refugees, for they will probably include a few hidden terrorists, as they did in Europe. But they will also include vastly more people who are seeking refuge, many of whom, sent back, would face a fate similar to the rejected Jews who died in the Holocaust.

This shameful act betrays our values in two ways. America has historically been a refuge for the oppressed, and it smacks of bigotry to turn away a whole class of refugees because they might contain a few bad apples. Further, our country has been immensely enriched by immigrants; in fact, most of us (including me, the grandchild of people fleeing the Russian Revolution) have an immigrant only a few generations in our past. Steve Jobs’s biological father, for instance, was a Syrian immigrant.

How much does accepting these refugees endanger us? I suspect not very much, for that we already have in place a laborious vetting process that’s been largely successful. On top of that, if ISIS wanted to sneak terrorists into the U.S. it has many other ways to do so besides embedding them within Syrian refugees: for example sending terrorists of other nationalities—people who aren’t refugees. Recruitment of U.S. citizens or legal immigants by the internet can also work.

I don’t want to be part of a country that rejects threatened Syrians as it rejected threatened Jews 75 years ago. We are now ashamed of what we did then, and we’ll be ashamed in the future if we build a dam to stop the latest flood of refugees.

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Readers’ wildlife photographs

November 20, 2015 • 7:45 am

Reader Mark Sturtevant specializes in insect photography, and sent us four nice photos;

I do most of my macro photography with a Canon SLR camera that is equipped with a stock 50mm lens and extension tubes (but I am saving up for a top ‘o the line macro lens). Although I have enjoyed some success with this equipment, many subjects are too large and/or too camera shy for the close approach required with extension tubes. The solution is of course to use a telephoto lens, working near the closest focal point of these lenses. But my first instinct is to be a cheapskate, and so inexpensive alternatives must be considered.

Back in the early ‘80s, Canon had switched from their old ‘Fd’ mounting system for fully manual lenses to a different mount for their electronic focus (EF) lenses. This meant that there were decades worth of perfectly good lenses that were suddenly obsolete. This huge stockpile of old Fd lenses can still be had at bargain prices, and they are easily fitted to the modern cameras with an adapter. So I bought an old Canon Fd 72-210 mm lens for $35 on Craigslist, and an Fd-EF adapter. There are compromises for using legacy lenses on modern cameras. Because the lens is set farther from the camera sensor I lose at least one f-stop, and of course the lens is fully manual for setting the focus and aperture. But as you can see from the pictures below, this old piece of glass can still take pretty good pictures!

A Copper butterfly (Lycaena hyllus) on Joe-Pye weed (Eutrochium spp.) which is an awesome native plant that attracts lots of butterflies.

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The lovely Halloween pennant dragonfly (Celithemis eponina). The red markings near the wing tips are the stigma (a definite Christian reference) which are weighted areas on dragonfly wings that are thought to dampen wing vibrations. It was so windy that this insect was being whipped back and forth in my viewfinder, and it was barely hanging on.

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The Great spangled fritillary (Speyeria cybele). These large butterflies seem to prefer purple flowers, and if you look for them in Bugguide the pictures there pretty much agree. They are common in my favorite field, and there they seek out the Wild bergamot flowers (Monarda fistulosa). It is fun to watch them as they daintily turn around and around on a flower, probing each floret. Then off they flit to find another such flower among the many other flowers. They also seem territorial, since any orange butterfly that flies near is immediately chased it away.

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And finally, a regal Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) that honored us by coming to our butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii). There have been many nice lepidopteran visiters to these flowers, and I am very intent on planting quite a few more. Maybe I will also sneak in some Joe-Pye weed as well, and hope my wife does not object.

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Friday: Hili dialogue (and new-cat lagniappe)

November 20, 2015 • 5:00 am

The end of the week is upon us, and, just in time, the snow is predicted to fall on Chicago  beginning this evening, with an accumulation of 4-8 inches by tomorrow. This is just in time for a book event I have downtown tomorrow: the Chicago Book Expo. So it goes. On this day in 1947, Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten (now Prince Philip) at Westminster Abbey, and, in 1942, Joe Biden was born. And meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has been busy stealing ham off Andrzej’s sandwiches. She absolutely loves ham, and has purloined it two days in a row. Here she gloats in triumph after her second successful theft:

A: Hili, there was ham on my sandwich!
Hili: Yes, there was.

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In Polish:
Ja: Hili, tu była szynka na mojej kanapce!
Hili: Tak, była.
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And I want to call attention to a new cat acquired by reader Ed Suominen, a former Christian fundamentalist and a member of the bizarre Lutheran sect called Laestadianism, which holds that only its adherents will find salvation. Ed gave up his faith when he realized that it was incompatible with science, and was interviewed in Salon about his apostasy. He’s also written a book about his former faith, An Examination of the Pearl, and co-written, with Robert Price, a nice book called Evolving Out of Eden: Christian Responses to Evolution.
In honor of Ed’s prescience in ditching his faith, and his kindness in adopting an unwanted cat, I’ll put up his brief tail:

Jerry, it seems that I have been adopted by a stray cat. My wife and I were out for a walk and this cute little black tabby came trotting up next to us like he’s known us all his life. I meowed at him and he tagged right alongside us all the way home. We out out some food left from my departed Frisky II and a fresh container of water, and he set to eating.

When we left for a few days, we told the kids that he probably wouldn’t be here when we got back. I hoped he would, although it would have been better, I suppose, if he had a nice warm home to go to.

But as soon as we returned, here he was, trotting right up to say hello.

 

As I sit here tapping this out on my iPad, he is purring up a storm on my lap.

I’ll be bringing him to the vet for some shots tomorrow. And of course I had to tell you all about it!

Ed later added, “I suspect someone used the old ‘drop it off by the road and see if it can fend for itself’ rural technique to get rid of an unwanted animal. Pretty sad, although it worked out for this one.”

This photo was labeled: “Priorities first”:

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And the moggie (like Leon, he’s a very dark tabby):

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The cat is as yet unnamed, so readers can suggest one if they want (it’s an unneutered male who will shortly lose its testicles).

What’s new with the protests at Yale (and now Princeton)

November 19, 2015 • 1:30 pm

Here’s a brief update on college protests I’ve written about lately, as well as new ones at Princeton. I will withhold most of my own comments in favor of the readers’:

A.  According to the Yale Daily News, the University’s Political Union hosted a debate on Tuesday about affirmative action. Amy Wax, a professor at law at Penn, spoke against affirmative action. Even Yale’s black Dean of the College made an appeal to calm before the talk:

Still, before Wax delivered her speech, Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway spoke before the YPU, asking members to respect freedom of expression at Yale.

“By preventing anyone from bringing ideas into the light of day, we deny a fundamental freedom,” Holloway said, going on to remind students of the University’s policies regarding disruption and appropriate demonstration at University-sponsored events like YPU debates. Five Yale police officers stood at the back of the hall for the duration of the event.

That wasn’t enough to curb the public offense, though:

During Wax’s speech, about a dozen members of the YPU, including the two who had asked to postpone the debate and members of the political left, rose and walked to the back of the room, where they turned their backs on Wax and raised their fists in the air. Several students cried during her speech.

Crying? There is a real debate to be had about affirmative action, though I think the better arguments are in favor of it. Students should be mature enough, though, to listen to countrarguments without walking away or crying.

B.  Also according to the Yale Daily News, Yale’s President and Dean Holloway defended the beleaguered Erika and Nicholas Cristakis, demonized by many because of Erika’s thoughtful email about Halloween costumes and Nicholas’s subsequent defense of free speech. The administration also announced policy reforms to deal with the demands of the Next Yale protestors, but I can’t find out what those reforms are. Certainly the administration should be taking steps to examine what they can do to improve the climate for the protesting students.

C.  According to the Daily Princetonian, the Princeton University student paper, the protests and demands have spread to that college as well, where some students are staging a sit-in in the office of President Christopher Eisgruber:

The organizers demanded cultural competency training for faculty and staff, an ethnicity and diversity distribution requirement and a space on campus explicitly dedicated to black students. In addition, protesters sought acknowledgement that former University President Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, has a racist legacy that is impacting campus climate and policies and requested that Wilson’s name be taken off of the Wilson School and Wilson College.

However, Eisgruber said he will not meet the demands.

“The demands include some things I have no authority to do, and some things I disagree with,” he noted.

Eisgruber met with the students for an hour and agreed in principle to some of their requests, like creating a space limited to black students (I’m not at all sure about that, and what about other minorities?), as well as the need for discussing Woodrow Wilson’s racism. He also said that creating that ethnicity and diversity distribution requirement was a “good thing,” but I don’t agree with that, either. Eisgruber, though, pretty much ruled out the cultural competency training for faculty and staff. But reasonable requests (not demands) should be examined, and reasonable reforms initiated. We’ll see what lies ahead at Princeton.

What bothers me about these “demands” is not that they’re all ludicrous, because they’re not, but the admixture of the serious with the ridiculous. I pretty much agree with a new article about college protests in The Economist, “The right to fright“:

At the University of Missouri, whose president resigned on November 9th, administrators did a poor job of responding to complaints of unacceptable behaviour on campus—which included the scattering of balls of cotton about the place, as a put-down to black students, and the smearing of faeces in the shape of a swastika in a bathroom.

Distinguishing between this sort of thing and obnoxious Halloween costumes ought not to be a difficult task. But by equating smaller ills with bigger ones, students and universities have made it harder, and diminished worthwhile protests in the process.

Autumn break

November 19, 2015 • 12:50 pm

Before we have one more post on the protests at Universities—which I think are important because they are harbingers of social attitudes—let’s have a few piccies. On my way to get lunch today (my building is right next to the student union with its food court), I saw some lovely fall colors, and captured them as best I could with my iPhone:

Our big Gingko biloba is dropping its foul-smelling fruits, which local Japanese people collect for the nuts inside. They smell like dog poop, and the university has put an awning under the tree to prevent people on the sidewalk from stepping on the fruits. But the trees are lovely when the leaves turn yellow:

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The ivy or Virginia creeper or whatever it is (I don’t know from plants) is turning red; the leaves will soon fall away. This is the Gothic-inspired student union:

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