PeterHuston

Tradtional Chinese Medicine: Skeptically approaching a Skeptical history

2011-12-29T04:47:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked what I thought about this skeptical piece on the history of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the USA,:
Dunning, Brian. "Mao's Barefoot Doctors: The Secret History of Chinese Medicine." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc., 24 May 2011. Web. 29 Dec 2011. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4259
Unfortunately, I found it full of inaccuracies and misconceptions. I wish skeptics would be more careful of their facts when they try to correct misunderstandings. And I wish other skeptics would be more careful of their facts when reading their works.

==
To Allan and others,

I've now read the skeptoid report your mention. I'm afraid I do not consider it a reliable description of the history of traditional Chinese medicine either in the West or in Asia.

Three big problems (IMHO).

1) He overstates the condition of Western (allopathic) medicine in urban China during the time period he discusses. China has always had a shortage of doctors trained in modern medicine. I'm not sure if they do now or not. I'd need to find reliable sources (and I don't trust the PRC gov't.) Also since the Chinese system includes MDs with three styles of training (Western style with a post-graduate MD degree, as well as those with basically a four or five year bachelor's style MD degree) you'd have to be careful to define what you're measuring exactly.

2) He ignores the political atmosphere that led to the rise (and perhaps end) of the "barefoot doctor" phenomena. (It was in part an attempt by Mao to undermine the influence of Western trained or influenced intellectuals who happened to be working in healthcare.)

3) He ignores the entire history of Chinese traditional healthcare systems prior to the time period he discusses.

In short, although I am not familiar with other works by the author, I don't think this one is terribly helpful for those trying to understand these things. You might try seeing my article, http://www.csicop.org/si/show/china_chi_and_chicanery_examining_traditional_chinese_medicine_and_chi_theo and perhaps more importantly the shorter, earlier article that is in the reference list to this article.

Peter Huston

Refugee Stuff, Burmese Names, Part Four, Naming Practices in General and a Brief Introduction to Burma

2011-12-27T01:43:00.000-08:00

Naming Practices in General

Naming practices are studied and like most fields of study have even taken on their own terminology. For instance, although the study of names and naming is commonly referred to as “onomastics,” one source refers to the study of names and naming practices within anthropology as “anthroponymy.” (Moore, J.H.) Scholars discuss issues such as the degree of individuation versus collectivization in a culture's naming practices. In other words, do names within a culture emphasize an individual's connection to others, such as clan or family, or instead completely differentiate and distinguish them from other members of their society? (Collier & Bricker)

Within cultures names tend to be divisible into certain categories. Some of this categorization appears in the names of refugees from Burma.

In most cultures of Burma, names derive from something positive with people being given names whose origin lies in something admirable or positive in their culture. Examples of this will be given below for both Burman and Karen cultures. (Emeneau)

Theophoric names are names whose origins lie in religious beliefs or practices. (Emeneau) These are common among the peoples of Burma from all major religions including Buddhists, Christians and Muslims. While Christians and Muslims often take names from their religious traditions, often modified for local pronunciation, and use them as either a primary or secondary name, in Buddhists often tie the structure of their name to the Burmese astrological system. For instance the first syllable of a Burmese Buddhists name is chosen to conform to a specific system grounded within eight divisions. (The Burmese week is divided into seven days but for astrological purposes Wednesday is divided into two halves, early and late, making eight divisions within the week.) Buddhist monks and nuns, including persons who enter the monastery for a limited time, a common practice within Burmese culture, take a special name which is grounded in Pali, an important ritual language in Burmese-style Theravada Buddhism. This monastic name also conforms to the sound system specified within Burmese Buddhism. Additionally some Pali words have become common names in Burman culture. (i.e. “Sanda” means “moon” in Pali, but is a possible name for Burman and Karen people.) (Interview.)

Apotropaic names are names based on undesirable or unattractive things. Although common in some cultures, I know of no examples of such names in the cultures of Burma. (Although this is not to say that they do not exist. One thing that a person interested in Burma learns quickly is that Burma is a very complex and confusing place.)

An Introduction to the nation of Burma (Myanmar)

Burma is a large and troubled nation in southeast Asia. It is bordered by India and Bangladesh to the west, by China to the north, and Thailand and Laos to the east. Although they do not border each other, many refugees who flee the country spend time in Malaysia located to the south and relatively easy to reach by ocean or air travel. For reasons that are complex and will be covered later in this paper the nation is also known as Myanmar. There is great controversy, as well as significance, over the choice of name used.

Estimates of the population of Burma vary but tend to range between 45 and 65 million. A former British colony, the nation was given independence in 1949 although a successful, stable, functioning, national democracy with a healthy economy was never achieved. Instead the country has been wracked by a repressive military dictatorship, intermittent warfare, serious economic problems and ethnic strife.

Refugee Stuff: Burmese names, Part three Introduction

2011-12-06T02:58:00.002-08:00

“I was named after the sound of gunfire and I have no last name”
An Introduction to the Names and Naming Practices of Karen and Burmese people in the Capital District.

When Westerners interact with people from Burma (Myanmar), they encounter many differences. Some of these differences become problems, some become points of curiosity and some become items of interest in their own right. Names and naming practices of people from Burma can easily be all three.

For instance while Western names tend to follow a basic standard pattern of given (or first) name followed by a surname (or last name), names of people from Burma traditionally do not follow this pattern but instead follow patterns of their own.

As the number of refugees arriving in Western nations from Burma increases, the number of Westerners who have contact with these names will increase. It will become increasingly important for Westerners to be familiar with the naming practices of the people who come here from this troubled nation. Prior to 2006, the United States had tight restrictions on admitting Burmese refugees. (Gashler, Anonymous 2006) As of 2007, the United States resettled nearly 5,000 refugees from Burma of whom 3,500 were Karen, more than 1,000 were Burmans and more than 400 were Chin. (Barron, et al) Although these figures are dated and the number that have arrived today much greater, it is my belief that these figures give a rough idea of the proportional ethnic make up of refugees who arrive from Burma, although it does need to be said that an increasing minority are Karenni, a group that is sometimes classified as Karen and sometimes classified as a separate ethnic group. Today refugees from Burma arrive in the United States for resettlement at a rate of approximately 1,200 per month. (U.S. Department of State, Arrivals sorted by month) The number arriving in the Capital District, particularly Albany and the city of Rensselaer, has increased as well. Due in large part to the actions of two non-governmental agencies that have contracts with the state department to resettle refugees, Albany and its environs have become the new home for newly arrived refugees in large numbers.

In addition there are people from Burma who have resettled here who are not classified as refugees. Such people have been admitted to the USA under various categories. These include “asylum” status, getting a green card through the U.S. open lottery system, and family unification. Although people from Burma have lived in the Capital District for some time, their numbers have greatly accelerated since the admission of Burmese refugees started in 2006. I know of no people from Burma who are here illegally and expect that due to geography and travel difficulties, if such do exist their number is very small.

Although refugees do not get to choose where they will be initially settled within the U.S., or for that matter even if they will come to the USA or some other refugee destinatation country (i.e. Norway or Australia, among many others.) after arrival refugees are free to come and go as they please and many do move to live elsewhere on their own initiative, a phenomenon known as “secondary migration.” They usually seek out locations where they have friends and family and believe jobs are available. The Capital District, and the city of Rensselaer, is often such a place.

Refugee Stuff: Burmese names, Part Two -- Reference List

2011-12-03T04:36:00.000-08:00

Here is the reference list used to write the paper.

REFERENCES
Anonymous. Burmese Astrology. Downloaded from http://www.dirah.org/mahabote.htm on April 26, 2010.
Anonymous. (2006, August 29) Burmese refugees on way to the U.S. BBC News, downloaded from http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia- pacific/529501... on April 26, 2010.
Anonymous. Meanings of Burmese names. taken from http://asiareicipe.com/burname.html on 3/18/2010.
Barron, S, Okell, J., Saw Myat Yin, VanBik, K, Swain, A., Larkin, E., Allot, A.J., & Ewers, K. (2007) Refugees from Burma, Their Backgrounds and Refugee Experiences, Center for Applied Lingusitics, Washington D.C.
Blanco, V. & Feberwee, E. (2009) In China, My name is . . . New York City: Mark Batty Publisher.
Boucaud, A & Boucaud, L. (1988) Burma's Golden Triangle -On the Trail of the Opium Warlords. Hong Kong: Asia 2000.
Bowman, V. (2008) Burmese, Lonely Planet Phrasebooks. Victoria, Australia: Lonely Planet Publishing.
Carnegie, D. (1937) How to Win Friends and Influence People, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Collier, G.A. & Bricker, V.R. (1970) Nicknames and Social Structure in Zinacantan. American Anthropologist, New Series, 72, 289-302.
Emeneau, M.B. (1978) Towards an Onomastics of South Asia. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 98, 113-130.
Gashler, K. (2010, April 22) Burmese Immigrants share tales of horror. Ithaca Journal, downloaded from http://www.ithacajournal.com/fdcp/?1272304343924 on April 26, 2010/.
Ghoshi, P. (2000) Brave Men of the Hills, Resistance and Rebellion in Burma, 1825-1932. Calcutta: Manohar Publishers & Distributors.
Lehman, F.K. (1963) The Structure of Chin Society, A Tribal People of Burma Adapted to a non- Western Civilization. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Lip, E. (1988) Choosing Auspicious Chinese Names. Singapore: Times Books International.
Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples – Myanmar/ Burma: Karen, 2008, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4979cdd3c.html accessed on April 28, 2010.
Moore, E. (2007) Astrology in Burmese Buddhist culture, Decoding an illustrated manuscript from the SOAS archive. Orientations, 38, 79-85.
Moore, J.H. (1984) Cheyenne Names and Cosmology. American Ethnologist, 11, 291-312.
Nwe, T.T. (2006) The Kachins of Northeastern Myanmar: Culture and Environment. Paper presented at SEAGA Conference on 28-30 November. Downloaded from http://www.hsse.nie.edu.sg/staff/changch/seaga/seaga2006/proceedings/Full %20Papers/day2_fullpaper/session13_thanthannwe.pdf on April 26, 2010.
Okell, J. (1994) Burmese (Myanmar) An Introduction to the Spoken Language, Book 1.
Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University.
Radnofsky, L. (2008, April 14) Burmese Rebel Leader shot Dead. The Guardian. from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/14/burma on April 30, 2010.
Rajah, A. (2002) A Nation of Intent in Burma: Karen Ethno-nationalism, Nationalism and Narrations of Nation. The Pacific Review, 15, 517-537.
Rossi, A.S. (1965) Naming Children in Middle-Class Families. American Sociological Review, 30, 499-513.
Sakhong, L.H. (2003) In Search of Chin Identity: A Study in Religion, Politics and Ethnic Identity in Burma. Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Press.
Steinberg, D. I. (2010) Burma/ Myanmar, what everyone needs to know, New York: Oxford University Press.
Swee-lin Price, F. (2007) Success with Asian Names, A Practical Guide to Everyday Usage. Crows Nest NSW Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Thawnghmung, A.M. (2008) The Karen Revolution in Burma: Diverse Voices, Uncertain Ends. Washington D.C.: East West Center in Washington.
Tong, L. & Wei, C.J. (2005) 500 Famous Chinese Names. Singapore: Times Editions.
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Office of Admissions – Refugee Processing Center. (2010) Summary of Refugee Admissions as of 31-March- 2010, retrieved from http://www.wrapsnet.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=WN0gLN3WsGM %3D&tabid=211&mid=630&language=en-US on April 26, 2010.
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Office of Admissions – Refugee Processing Center. (2010) FY 2010 Arrivals Sorted by Region by Month,
Summary of Refugee Admissions as of 31-March-2010, retrieved from http://www.wrapsnet.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=trbSWBX8w9c %3D&tabid=211&mid=627&language=en-US on April 26, 2010.
Wikipedia. Karen People from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people downloaded on April 30, 2010.
Yang, B. (1987) Golden Triangle, Frontier and Wilderness. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company.

INTERVIEWS
The names of all informants have been kept confidential. All interviews were conducted in English during April 2010 in Albany or Rensselaer.

1. 28 year old, female, urbanized Karen with some college education.
2. 21 year old male Karen refugee with much time among other cultures.
3. 34 year old male Burman Buddhist monk.

Refugee Stuff: Burmese names, Part One -Outline

2011-12-03T04:26:00.000-08:00

A few years back, I found myself at the University of Albany working on a TESOL degree (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). As part of this, I took a communications class and was required to write a paper. No problem there as I actually like writing papers.

For my topic I chose to tackle the complex subject of Burmese names.

Over the next few weeks I plan to post this paper in its entirety.

ACOM 577

Professor B.J. Fehr

April 30, 2010

“I was named after the sound of gunfire and I have no last name”

Names of Karen and Burmese people in the Capital District.

OUTLINE

Introduction: Burmese names.
Why they are confusing.
Why they are important. Refugee population
Naming practices in general:
terminology (onomastics, anthropynymy)
positive names
theophoric or religious names
An introduction to the nation of Burma
Burma does not have a single ethnic group but is instead a multi-ethnic state
Introduce ethnic groups:
Burmans
Karen
Chin
Karenni
Shan
Wa
Kachin
Mon
Pa O
Rohingya
Chinese and Indians

Note that for many of these groups diversity is the norm
Sense of intra-ethnic identity or nationalism came relatively late
For many literacy is a late 19th Century introduction
Colonial experience did not create a functional state with a pan-ethnic sense of Burmese nationalism. Although the national government does strive for this goal, they have neither a realistic plan nor strong support to achieve this goal.
Therefore Burma does not have a single naming system but instead has several naming systems.

The Burmese refugee community of the Capital District includes primarily Burmans, Karen, Chin and Karenni . Although other groups may be discussed in passing, these are the groups that this paper will focus on.

The names of Burmese of Chinese or South Asian descent will not be discussed in this paper. This is not a political statement. However, the naming practices of these ethnic groups are both complex and well documented elsewhere.

The Burmese language and Burman people. A good place to start.

The Burmese language.
Burmese phonology.
Tone system.
Tends to sound monosyllabic to the Western ear.
Burmese script.
Transliterating the script with Roman letters. No fixed system exists. \
Legacy of colonialism and the ruling juntas campaign for “correcting names.”
Burman names
Differences from Western practice.
No family name.
Usually no reference to family in name at all.
Although sometimes this does happen. (i.e. Aung San Su Kyi)
Wife does not change her name upon marriage.
Sometimes this does happen in the west.
Burmese names are often tied in with Burmese astrological practices. This is not unique to Burmans. There are traces of the practice in South Asian and Chinese culture too.
Burmese astrology is heavily centered around an 8 day week (Wednesday is divided into an early and late half.)
Burmans remember this day of the week and consider it important.
Burmans often use titles. There are many of these.
Burmans sometimes change their name on special occasions.
Burmese names are usually 2 syllables, sometimes 3, yet the can have one or four syllables.
The syllables of Burmese names usually pleasant meaning.
Occasionally Burmese use Western names. These are generally nicknames or school names.
Monks have special names that come from the Pali language.
Karen Names and Naming Practices
Different titles
Pwo Karen naming practices
Choice of name
Karenni Names
Chin names
Kachin names
Conclusions and Implications for further research

Should writers read?

2011-11-27T00:05:00.000-08:00

Joe Lansdale is one of my favorite writers. And recently on his facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/JoeRLansdale?sk=notes) He has been generously offering notes on how to write.

He argues that one should read and read extensively if one wishes to write. I agree, but am well aware that not all writers agree with me.

Here's my full thoughts (of the moment only) on the matter.

I've been thinking about this note for a few hours now. I agree but have a friend who is a more successful writer than me who disagrees. And when we discuss it this moderately widely published author refers to his friend, the widely published author, and says he says it too. In fact, the he quotes the widely published writer as saying "I don't like to read. It wastes time. I can write a book faster than I can read one." But I've been thinking about these philosophies. I think it hinges on one's motivation for writing.

We who write must ask ourselves why we write. And when I watch other writers I try to understand what motivates them. I think this moderately successful friend is largely motivated by a desire to show his intelligence and prove he can do something few other people can do. He is a very interesting man with many varied accomplishments. But I suspect that a few years after his success plateaus, wherever and whenever it plateaus, he will move on to some other endeavor perhaps writing music (I can see hints of this.) As for his widely published friend, he writes for money, plain and simple and probably makes a great deal.

So I think it comes down to motivation for writing. If one is motivated by a love of literature and a desire to get ideas and images and views out to others through the medium of writing (versus films or comics or singing punk rock or something) and you (naively) really do hope to expand the field of literature a little with your own personal contribution and inspire others not just to tell you your are great but to go out and change the world a little after exposure to your writing then I believe one needs to read, and not just write.

Don't pre-judge Hooters! A martial arts parable.

2011-11-22T02:02:00.000-08:00

Seems some parents in Clearwater, Florida, have a problem with Hooters. (See article below) Now, I've never been to Hooters but then again I've never been to Clearwater, Florida either, particularly not to a school parents' meeting and largely for the same reason. I never wished to really.

I strongly suspect however that I'd be more welcome and less likely to be thrown out of the Hooters than the school board meeting, particularly if I relaxed, spoke out and was myself. Just a hunch based on years of being myself.

Not too long ago, I had a martial arts Sensei who taught me many things about life, one of them being the importance of not prejudging Hooters.

A Sensei is a Japanese word for teacher, particularly a martial arts teacher, but it also means more, patron, benefactor, mentor and guide are all part of the duties and roles that a traditional Sensei has to his students and I was lucky to have a Sensei who took these roles quite seriously. An interesting man, he was an aikidoist (practicioner of the martial art of aikido) and a former bouncer, ex-prison inmate, Vietnam combat veteran and high school drop out from the Puerto Rican areas of the New York City Bronx. He'd had an interesting yet often difficult and ugly life and it had shaped him. Although he fully admitted that he'd done things he greatly regretted and in his own words hadn't been a very nice man for much of his life, not too long before we'd met he'd been diagnosed with AIDS and told that he only had a few years to live. Being confronted with his own mortality had caused him to re-examine himself and his life and caused him to work hard to become a person he truly wished to be in his remaining time. I was inspirted by watching him strive to improve himself.

He taught me that the key to self improvement is self examination and self honesty and that you've got to recognize your strengths and build on them while assessing your weaknesses and working to fix those as well. He never spoke of this and never lectured on it. Instead he lived this out and it was through watching and copying him that one learned these important lessons.

There came a time when I needed a car. My Sensei decided to work at finding me, one of his students, a car if I needed one, and soon hooked me up with a friend of his, a mechanic who ran a garage and rebuilt and sold cars he purchased at auction.

The car was great. It ran well, the price was quite reasonable and the lengthy warranty package that his friend threw in was quite generous. I was so thrilled that I barely gave thought to my Sensei's frequent admonitions and reminders that if anything went wrong with the car and there were any problems getting it fixed, come to him immediately. Although he said it repeatedly and emphasized it, such statements were not out of character and I shrugged it off.

It was only later, when the garage closed due to lack of business, that Sensei told me the complete story.

Although the mechanic, he assured me, was a wonderful mechanic, he was also bipolar, manic-depressive and refused to take his meds. When he was up, everything got fixed, fixed quickly and customers were quite pleased. However when he was down and depressed, things did not go so well. Cars would get left, untouched, up on the rack for three of four days at a time and when customers called demanding to know what was going on with their car, it''d often take several calls before they were able to reach the mechanic who held their vehicle and its keys. Then, when they did speak, he'd often just sort of complain and explain in a very exhausted voice that he was tired and just didn't feel like fixing their car that day. When the customer complained the mechanic would respond rather helplessly in the same exhausted voice that he really couldn't help it and was sorry but he just couldn't fix the car and wished he could. Probably he'd fix it soon though, he might assure them, if they were lucky.

"But I know what to do when he gets in those moods," Sensei assured me.

Ït seems that not only as the mechanic was a friend of his, but that Sensei had referred several people to his garage, he'd been called upon to intervene in several such customer service problems.

"I take him to Hooters," he said. "And when he's not looking I tip the girls extra to treat him real nice. After that he usually feels up to fixing some of the cars."

Which sort of encapsulates much of Sensei's approach to life and people in a single story. Always helping people but often through approaches that most of us wouldn't think of trying.

So, as always, Sensei taught me many things, one of which was do not dismiss Hooters as a worthless institution. To the right people at the right time, it can be invaluable.

* * *

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/ancient-whale-bones-discovered-desert-parents-outraged-hooters-165721306.html

Parents in Clearwater, Florida, are upset after a certain speaker was brought in to talk to their kids at school. Brittany Morgan, a Hooters waitress, spoke during "the Great American Teach-In," a career event at the special-needs school. Morgan discussed looking presentable at work, tipping, and Hooters charity work with the students at Calvin A. Hunsinger School. She did not wear the Hooters uniform (skimpy orange shorts, low-cut white tank top, flesh-toned hosiery, white socks, and white sneakers) to speak in front of the kids. One parent was still disturbed, saying, "It's just the wrong message . . . like we're telling them that you're the bad kids and this is all you'll be in life." Some people on Twitter agree, saying, "Can we raise the bar for kids' aspirations?" Morgan said she understands why the parents might be upset, but that there was nothing inappropriate about her speech. Morgan added, "Most of us are going to school. We're aspiring to do other things in life. This isn't our career." The principal of Hunsinger, Stephani Bessette, defended Morgan's appearance, saying "Working as a waiter or waitress to achieve higher goals should be commended." Hooters states that its mission is "to provide a family of hospitality and services that achieves excellence and enhances lifestyles of all who come in contact with the Hooters brand."

skeptic: "miracle doctor" ring exposed in Shanghai

2011-11-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

Below is an interesting case from a Shanghai local English language newspaper.

It details a group who engaged in a scheme to defraud by convincing their victims that they had supernatural powers. These powers included the ability to know facts about people without being told as well as the ability to remove bad luck.

What's interesting, perhaps, is just how simple and low tech the operation was.

Often skeptics who expose paranormal scams are guilty of giving the impression that supernatural tricksters are clever men and women who can only be unmasked by someone equally or perhaps even more clever than the evil-doers. Alas! Often it just isn't so.

Remember, please be carefull and use common sense. If something seems impossible or too good to be true, well, it just might be. So please don't let yourself be scammed.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=487994&type=Metro

Published on ShanghaiDaily.com (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/)
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=487994&type=Metro

'Miracle doctor' gang in fraud case
Created: 2011-11-21 0:30:45
Author:Jasmine Zhao

FOUR people who claimed they could remove bad luck through the prayers of a "miracle doctor" have been charged with fraud.

The suspects swindled more than 250,000 yuan (US$39,379) from four victims, Putuo District prosecutors said yesterday.

Prosecutors said group members had clearly defined roles in duping victims in Minhang and Putuo districts and the Pudong New Area between January and April.

In one case, suspect Duan Suping struck up a conversation with victim Li Falan while pretending to be looking for a "miracle-working doctor," called Zhang, on Zhaoyuan Road in Pudong.

Duan persuaded Li to talk about her family and asked if any of them were ill.

Nearby, fellow gang member Cheng Jiayue was eavesdropping and passed Li's information to "Doctor Zhang," played by suspect, Xie Shuliang, it is claimed.

When Li met the "doctor" and was told details about her family, she was convinced of his powers and paid him 90,000 yuan to remove bad luck, prosecutors said.

Quick update --

2011-09-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

I'm now back in Shanghai where Í've been since 8-16-11. I've been having trouble accessing this blog due to the great firewall of China and some changes in my local internet provider that make it more difficult to circumvent these inconveniences.

Thailand was interesting. Due to health problems I did not get to do everything I wished to do, but I did get to do some things and spent time at a primarily Karen school and learned a bit about the situation for the estimated almost two million Burmese who live illegally in Thailand. Only about 10% of them live in refugee camps and the rest eke out livings taking what jobs they can and working off the books.

I'll try to write more later on a variety of subjects.

How to get free clothes for ten people fast in Albany circa 2009

2011-07-29T22:52:00.000-07:00

I saw this on facebook last night and wish to comment. (BTW, I'm still in Mae Sot but we'll ignore that interesting tid bit today.)

"New family of 10 arrived from refugee camp last night. We are desperately looking for kids clothes and shoes for this family. They have only the clothes on their backs, no socks or underwear, and 1pair of tennis sneakers each. Looking for boys and girls clothes and shoes of all sizes."

It was followed by a flurry of well intentioned activity and offers.

However, when I was the furniture guy at USCRI-Albany I learned to deal with these things quickly and easily. (Many people thought I was the "Stuff" guy.) Unfortunately as the organization does not communicate well and has little to no institutional memory that knowledge seems to have been lost. Or perhaps it's that I'm two years out of date.

First the Albany city mission gives away free used but clean clothes. They have what's called "the free store" or IIRC, "Blessingdales."

Many refugees know this. (They taught me.) However hours are normally limited and patrons are required to wait in line with other patrons for a brief visit. Unfortunately, this often brings newly arrived refugees into friction with untreated mentally ill and drug addicts and such. This is not good.

Fortunately the staff knows this and if contacted would discuss making appointments for refugees during off hours so they could get what they needed.

As always, if one uses this service encourage people to replete it when they can, through donations of their own.

Teaching in Mae Sot area

2011-07-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

First, some photo links:

Photo links

Mae Sot and its environs:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.171060719631057.42106.100001813915043&l=808ef38720&type=1

Karen food:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.171073409629788.42109.100001813915043&l=714902bb6d&type=1

Second, let me clarify some things.

I have told some people that I am teaching in a refugee camp. This is

not exactly true. I am volunteer teaching for a few weeks with an

organization that provides educational services to "Burmese migrants,"

some of whom are refugees and at this time none live in a refugee

camp. I've started teaching, for instance, but have not yet seen any

of the refugee camps. (I had thought I would be teaching in a refugee camp.)

As most know, the gov't of Burma (Myanmar) is among

the worst in the world and the country is both under terrible tyranny

and impoverished.

According to the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand (p. 413) there are

approx. 2,000,000 (two million) Burmese "migrants" who have fled Burma

(Myanmar) for Thailand and many, many others who have fled into

Malaysia, Bangladesh, China and elsewhere that a Burmese can flee to.

(they recommend www.burmanet.org and www.irrawaddy.org for more info. I

have not checked these sources though. No time now.)

Of these (using the same source) about 120,000 are registered refugees

in 13 camps. There are other unregistered refugees who live in camps

as well.

The Thai gov't does not classify people as refugees unless they are

fleeing political violence (this is a very difficult distinction to

make in practice however. I most certainly do not believe every

Burmese who has told the US gov't that he is fleeing after his role in

the 1998 protests was actually involved in them.) Many choose to live

outside the camps. These folks are generally politically marginal at

best, illegal or semi-legal in most cases (it's very complicated) and

often take jobs that others do not want at sub-Thai minimum wage with

little opportunity to complain if mistreated. They are often

exploited.

It seems it is the people of the last category I am teaching at the moment.

The result is the region is something like an Asian version of a south

Texas border town full of illegals save that that "questionables" all

have thanakha smeared on their cheeks and noses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanakha

http://www.asiannews.in/article.php/20050925195744354

If I do not see a refugee camp before I leave I will be disappointed

but it is quite possible that I will not have the opportunity to do

so.

Thirdly, Burma is a multi-ethnic country with many minorities who are

quick to point out that they are not Burmese. The Karen are one of

these. They live in the eastern part of Burma and nearby parts of

Thailand (where they are considered one of Thailand's six "hill

tribes.") The Karen have been fighting the Burmese since independence

from England (1948, their independence date from Britain, not ours).

I stay in a building full of Karen with some Burmese. I teach at a

school that is full of Burmese but no Karen. The Karen speak primarily

(Sqaw dialect of) Karen and study Karen, Burmese, Thai and English in

school. Most eventually speak three or four languages. The Burmese

learn Thai, Burmese and English in school..

Many Karen are Christian and the school I live at is Christian. The

Burmese school is run by a Buddhist monk though. They say his toughest

task is to acquire five or six large bags of rice each month to give

the kids lunch.

The kids all seem surprisingly healthy and happy so far.

Many at the boarding house are orphans.

But as for me, weather is cool, cooler than both Shanghai and New York

right now. It rains a lot. Today I'm in Mae Sot downtown. Northern

Thailand is the first place in Asia I've been that does not seem

overpopulated so things are spread out. There's lots of rice patties

but also many, many cornfields and empty fields.

I sleep on a bed in a spare room that is half full of storage. Privacy

is minimal and I'm woken up during the night a couple times by

chickens, ducks and a strange wild lizard that sounds like a bicycle

horn. (Or so people tell me. I've never seen the lizard actually.) But

it's free. (I budgeted about 15-20$ plus airplane for this trip and am

way ahead as I spent zero money on Thursday or Friday.)

For breakfast and supper I eat Karen food and for lunch I eat Burmese

food although honestly they seem so far basically the same to me. I

must, I guess, refine my palate.

A Karen or Burmese meal is mostly rice. I'd estimate 80% rice by

volume. By contrast a Chinese or Taiwanese meal is around 20-25% rice

by volume. Meat, vegetables, sauces and strongly-flavored pastes are

used to flavor and stretch the rice and leave you with a satisfied

palate. For instance, a smidgeon of very spicy or very salty tomato

paste or fish paste can leave you feeling full and satisfied much

faster than bland food.

Vegetables are often strange (by USA-ian standards) and include bamboo

shoots, scallions, pieces of banana sprouts and things I can't

identify that probably serve to add bulk and fiber to the food.

Meat is eaten, like vegetables in very small portions, One will note a

series of photos of some frogs. Now, assuming one eats frogs, an

American would normally eat half a frog (of this size) minimum,

perhaps a full frog, for a meal portion. Here, instead, one eats about

half a leg only and thus these frogs will last several people for

about four or more meals.

But I feel full and healthy. (I also started eating stress vitamins

daily in China and continue.)

I like everything I've tried except for one dish that was made with

sour fish (fish left to rot for a few days before preparation.) I

quietly did not eat it --and since I only had a spoonfull or so on my

plate, another advantage of small portions was revealed.

One thing I have never gotten used to about the Burmese and karen

though is that they eat with their fingers, not forks or chopsticks or

anything, and wash their hands carefully before and after each meal.

(Obviously I've enjoyed my time, overall, with Karen and Burmese

people or I would not be here, but it still seems strange.)

Heading off for Mae Sot to volunteer

2011-07-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

Although I've moved to Shanghai where I was offered a job teaching English as a foreign language with a major university, I do keep in touch with several refugees in the USA using skype, the telephone, e-mail and facebook. But I confess I've been feeling a bit guilty the last year as there is so much more to be done and so much more to be learned and understood.

So I've decided to volunteer as an English teacher for a few short weeks at Mae Sot refugee camp in Thailand.

I am scheduled to leave on Tuesday and am focusing on things like washing my best socks. (I have trouble buying good socks here in Shanghai and therefore do not have as many good socks as I want. Most are too thin and small to be comfortable.)

I've been feeling stress and have been watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a lot. (One of the ways I deal with waiting induced stress.)

Anyways, here's a few links I found to let people know what I will be doing and where I am going and even some of the people I will meet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14033175
\

http://genascihk.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/fighting-for-education-on-the-thai-burmese-border/

http://myanmarrefugees.blogspot.com/2010/01/naw-paw-ray-prize-winning-burmese.html

Again, just to summarize, I began writing about refugee issues on this blog when it became obvious that many refugee workers did not really know how to do their jobs. It became angrier as I became convinced that some agencies, notably USCRI (the Non-governmental organization known as United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) do not terribly care if their workers at the local level know or are able to do their jobs. I wish it weren't so. Meanwhile if people wish to help there's lots to do not just to help out refugees but also to try and bring light to the agencies that are receiving federal funding to assist refugees and then not doing their jobs well.

Is USCRI Albany a successful organization?

2011-05-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

This is an important question that people should ask. Not only does the organization receive large amounts of government funding, resettle large numbers of people, but it also sends a signal to the outside world that it is THE place to send refugees in need of care.

In other words, more than once when I have taken refugees to places like the New York State One-stop Job Center, the state mandated and tax funded office that is supposed to assist all legal residents of the area with job-hunting, the secretary or someone else has suggested to me that I take the person, the refugee in need of work, down to the refugee center as this is supposed to be THEIR job. However, being familiar with the refugee center (and its very dedicated but completely overwhelmed job placement people)I know darn well that that is not an effective solution. In other words, the existence of the refugee center (USCRI-Albany) gives many people in social services the feeling that things are being taken care of when anyone familiar with the refugee center (USCRI-Albany) knows that they are not being handled properly.

Not too long ago a refugee invited me to attend an event where a spokesperson for USCRI-Albany stated that USCRI-Albany is an organization that helps refugees when they come to our area. In fact, USCRI-Albany is an organization that invites refugees to our area, promises the state department they will care for them, receives payment for doing so from the state department, and then, sometimes, only sometimes, actually cares for them in a responsible manner.

Critics will point out that although the State Department does contract and fund these services the actual amount received per refugee is not very much. Not nearly enough to do the required job? So, they might say, what's the big deal.

Well, if one looks into USCRI-Albany and its parent organization you soon discover that its head, Lavinia Limon, makes about $200,000 a year, arguably in line with that of CEOs of other not-for-profits, but inarguably that's $200,000 that does not go to helping refugees. (And then there's also employment for Peter Limon, another employee of USCRI, who may or may not be a relative.) Therefore, and you can ask around and check on this yourself, it seems that although USCRI-Albany is not terribly good at providing services for refugee families in desperate need, it actually quite well at taking care of the Limon family down in Washington D.C.

So to who else does USCRI-Albany consistently provide real benefit?

College interns. These come and go in the midst of the chaos and they get to set up some really great programs and build up a wonderful resume. Unfortunately, as often as not, within six months after they leave, the programs fall apart but that's okay because this provides an opportunity for the programs to be re-built and recreated and therefore add to someone else's resume.

Some might note that in a previous exchange a youth named Una Hardester proudly posted about a valid sounding USCRI-Albany program to work against housing discrimination for refugees. Note that this program is long gone. This is the pattern down at USCRI-Albany. Although things regularly fall apart this is actually a bonus for the program if we see it not as an agency designed to provide services for refugees but instead as an agency intended to assist college students who wish an exciting and rewarding internship.

Same for the improvements I attempted to install in the furniture program. Long gone, fallen apart, someone somewhere someday will rebuild them although in a slightly different form, put them on his or her resume and tell others about their wonderful internship with this program, and then, inevitably, they will collapse into dust again.

This is the pattern.

Meanwhile the young, 20-something dedicated employees are stuck in the middle of this mess assuming that this is inevitably the way things should be. Too busy to tell their central office they need more warning before refugees arrive, and too fearful of their jobs to tell the central office that maybe they cannot provide contracted services if they have no control over the number of people who arrive.

Not to mention, the refugees who are usually scared to death at the very thought of filing a complaint against someone who controls the future of their family and handles their green card applications.

Alas, alas.

Burmese diversity and the immigrant population

2011-02-28T03:22:00.000-08:00

Although I've never been there, Burma (Myanmar) is one of the most troubled countries in the world. It is also an extremely complicated country. It has about a hundred languages and multiple ethnic groups.

And this complication shows itself in the composition of the population of refugees from Burma that find their way to the United States. Although the majority (off the top of my head I think about 60%) are ethnically Burmese-Hinayana Buddhists, much of the country is not. Although Burmese-Hinayana Buddhists do make up part of the refugee/ asylum seeking population from Burma, most of the refugees from Burma are some sort of Burmese minority. (I'd estimate about 70%)

This means that the "Burmese" refugee population gets very complicated very quickly.

In the Capital District area of New York, there are Burmese Hinayana Buddhists, Burmese Muslims, Karen Christians and Karen Buddhists, Nepali-Burmese Hindus (descended from the Nepalis who the British either encouraged to migrate to Burma to work or else sent there to serve in the military), Karenni (who are not Karen but are a similar ethnic group) and Chin as well as one individual whose father is Chinese and fled to Burma with one of Chiang Kai-Shek's armies that fled south after the Communist takeover.

There's a New York Burmese Youth Soccer league and they tell me it includes other ethnic groups as well, including Shan and Wa.

It's sort of like if you had a problem in America that was worse for minorities, and those affected fled abroad if they could. These hypothetical American refugees might consist of some small number of WASPS, many Blacks, many Puerto Ricans, several Amish and some Navajos as well as many Jews. If faced with such a group, someone in this new hypothetical country with no understanding of American culture might then take all these folks and try to use them as a basis for understanding "American society." Although this might seem an important step in understanding "people from America," in fact unless such an effort took into account the great diversity of the American population the result might be even greater confusion and less understanding of how to react and respond to these new people in an effective way.

There is, for instance, one tribe in Burma where the women wear high piled neck rings and guess what? Some now live in Albany. They've removed the rings but will show you the photos if you show any interest as they thought they looked nice. They often have pictures of themselves with the neck rings on the wall. (These are one kind of Karenni). And the Karen who live in the Albany area include members of three different dialect groups (Pwo, Sqaw and Bwee) as well as some who only speak Burmese and no Karen at all. (Sort of like a Puerto Rican who speaks no Spanish.) That means that when the Karen get together communication can even then be awkward.

i.e. they recently held the first ever "Albany Karen Organization" event which people tell me took forever as all the announcements were done in English, Sqaw Karen and Pwo Karen.They apparently left out the Burmese language because they decided it would upset too many Karen people to include it. I heard the singing and dancing portions were good though. (BTW, my friend who just got arrested for DWI was the MC. I do not excuse his actions but he is a talented young man.)
- Show quoted text -

How much science do you need to be rational? Science and skepticism.

2011-02-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

I've been absent from skepticism for the last few years.

There have been several reasons for this. Job, career and educational needs have taken priority, as well as a general sense of "skeptics burn-out." But there's been another factor too. Often I've felt as if I didn't know enough science to really be an advocate for science, reason and the scientific method.

In graduate school at Cornell, I took some courses that touched on the history and theory of science. This was in an attempt to build up the background to better understand the history of Western science in China. As historians of Chinese and global history know, much of what has happened in China over the last two hundred years of so has been an attempt by Chinese to grapple with the basic issue of "Our civilization doesn't seem to be working as well it used to." As the Chinese found themselves unable to resist the West and Western technology, they grappled with the issue of how much and in what ways would Chinese civilization and society have to compete with this change in the world order.

This issue was debated periodically and I've been reading lately about the debates in the China in the 1920s over science and its applicability to improving and modernizing China. (More on these debates later.)

It's a funny thing about science. The more you know about science, the more you realize you don't completely understand it. And sometimes in skepticism it's not uncommon for people with only a basic understanding of science to be its greatest defenders.

I do not think, for instance, that it's any coincidence that in the 1990's I found myself, for instance, once sharing a radio show on WRPI where Joe Nickell, a CSICOP spokesman, and myself vociferously defended science, rationality and reason against all who chose call in the show and argue and attack science. Now at the time I had a bacherlor's degree in liberal arts and had barely met my science requirements to meet it. Most of what I "knew" about science came from a smattering of Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov's non-fiction essays and the usual reading list of a serious Skeptical Inquirer reader, but it sounded good and logical and overwhelmingly simple and it made me both feel and appear smart by contrast.

Joe Nickell, by contrast, had a PhD in English literature and was known for doing investigations of paranormal and supernatural claims where he would find a rational-sounding explanation and announce the case "solved." Then he'd publish the results in the "Skeptical Inquirer," a non-peer review journal that often published me at this time, and we'd both be met with an eager audience.

Now people who've met Joe Nickell in person will tell you he's not known for being terribly rational or logical and although most of his investigations cannot really be proven one way or another to a definitive conclusion, at least two of those that can be have been shown to be wrong. Oh well. His defenders tell me that his poetry, honestly, is quite moving and beautiful, so he can't be all bad. As for me passing myself off as a paradigm of science, reason, scientific knowledge and rationality, all I've got to say, is, "Who did I think I was kidding?"

After years of involvement in skepticism, I'm not gonna say that skeptics were bad people but it'd be a far cry to say that they were universally rational, reasonable or scientific. But at least, like me, they tried.

And don't get me started on the alleged rationality of engineers. I grew up in Schenectady, New York, the city that once lit and hauled the world, and discovered at an early age that somehow the rationality of engineers always brings itself right back to wherever their emotions want it to. The conservatively political find Anne Coulter to be rational. The liberals instead prefer to cite Michael Moore as a voice of sanity and reason. Each asserts that this is a sane, rational, sensible and logical conclusion.

But how about a real scientist? Real scientists are rational right? Real, working scientists surely understand science and rationality, right?

Well, these days I've returned to my study of the history of science in China and the Peking Man paleontological digs in particular. I've been reading with great interest a biography of a man named Ding Wenjiang (also known as "Ting Wen-chiang" or "V.K. Ting" depending on the time and source.) Ding was China's first foreign trained geologist and founder of China's Geological Survey and head of Beijing University's geology department in much of the early twentieth century. In Charlotte Furth's excellent biography, "Ting Wen-Chiang, Science and China's New Culture," (1970, Harvard University Press)

Ding was a firm believer in science and its ability to improve not just China but the state of man in general. He was quite interested, for instance, in applying science to social and societal problems. (Like many of his time, both East and West, he did, for instance, do some writing on eugenics and how its application might lead to a healthier, better society.) Although, after receiving a degree in Scotland, he returned to China and began working in his field in 1911, prior to the outbreak of the first world war. In the 1920s, following the tragedy and horrors of the first world war, many in China did not think they wished to adapt Western science and its methods. Ding became involved in the debate.

According to Furth, his biographer, however, he often showed a superficial understanding of science when he explained it and attempted to show examples of how the scientific method was not alien to China at all. According to Furth, his definition of science was little more than inductive reason, empiricism and applied logic. The use of non-empirical fundamental theories was neglected in his writings because they have little place in his field of geology although they are important in physics and chemistry.

I asked a friend about this, a retired Ivy League physics professor who now writes hard science fiction, and asked what sort of time frame it takes to develop an understanding of science where such a melange of certainty and uncertainty become combined into a scientific whole. He said it was neither simple to understand nor simple to explain and that he was only somewhat able to understand my question. But he did try to answer. And I did my best to understand but I'm sure there was much misunderstanding on my side. Apparently as one digs deeper into scientific theory one sometimes gets the sense that there are layers. And as one pierces these layers one goes from a sense of certainty to uncertainty and then back again. The world becomes clearer and then it suddenly becomes fuzzy again only to later become clearer again.

Which come to think of it, sounds a lot like growing up. There's a long process of "knowing the world" with great certainty and then becoming confused again as one ages. As many know, I part with many skeptics over the issue of atheism. I just think it's both unnecessary and irrational to speak of the universe and its vast unknowable secrets with what often appears to be such adolescent certainty. I was, I've said more than once, an atheist at one time but that was "when I was eighteen and knew everything about everything. Now I'm more confused."

Which in a long rambling fashion sounds almost like a paean to unknowingness. Can one ever know anything? Can one dismiss any knowledge?

Well sometimes only a little bit of knowledge of science, reason and rational thinking is all you need. Let me offer the following example.

I was recently approached by someone in an electronic forum who felt we had a shared interest in Chinese history and culture. They were American yet claimed to be part Manchu. That sounded interesting. Then they added further details saying that their ancestor was of Manchu nobility and had been exiled to San Francisco prior to the opium war. At this point my "skeptic alarm" went off. (I'm sure geneologists have a similar alarm that goes off when they hear the terms "noble blood" and an exotic, glamorous ethnic group in the same phrase. "My ancestor was a Cherokee Princess," is particularly common I've been told.)

There were several problems with the claim. In short, either their ancestor did not exist at all or else their ancestor was of considerable importance in our understanding of the history of the Chinese in America. For instance, the opium war broke out in 1838 and there is no record of any Chinese in North America prior to 1848, ten years later. And those were Cantonese work people, not Manchus. Not to mention the issue of inter-marriage and the unimportance of San Francisco at the time. (For a quick check, you can see my book "Tongs, Gangs and Triads," page 69. I don't claim this as a definitive source, in fact, some day I hope to update it, but it's appeal is obvious to me.)

I asked for verifiable proof. Here was the response.:

"Do you know anything personally about Chinese immigration to American during the 1820-1850s, Peter? I mean, what is your educational background? I have a Bachelors in Asian history and actually have learned a bit about the early Asian american experience. Oh and do not forget that I have this extreme habit of incarnating along one particular bloodline. And I am a Seer and Empath.

Publically verifiable would require that a particular group, you know, actually WRITES RECORDS DOWN in the first place, right?

Do you have any idea how arrogant you sound to me?"

Okay, three things seem obvious here.
1) this person's sources are not scientifically admissible and their claims are not to be used by any scholar who expects to be taken seriously by their peers.
2)they don't know how to access or find the many documents from the period that might help solve this and will claim instead that such documents don't exist. Clearly they'd benefit from watching a few episodes of the PBS show "History Detectives."
3)they think I'm an asshole. Okay, join the club.

Arguably, if they wish to announce they are a descendant of Manchu nobility, a Cherokee princess, a Gypsy caravan leader or, for that matter, a Klingon warlord (Qapla!) in a past-life, that's their business. Of course, if they are using these as a credential to advance their status among their peers and recruit for a religious group that they lead, then this is a social-justice issue and could be potentially predatory. Some will argue that if a person believes in such things as a reincarnation claims and sorcerous divination without proof, as is often the case in Pagan circles, then they should expect to get swindled and are so stupid as to deserve it, but something about that attitude just sounds a bit sociopathic. (Social Darwinism anyone? This was, in fact, one of the issues debated by Ding in the 1920s. Did belief in the scientific method and its value inevitably lead to a belief in a dog-eat-dog morality?)

However, just a tiny, little, little, little bit of logical thought, rationalism and critical thinking will prevent the whole issue from being relevant. There is no evidence worth mentioning for this claim and therefore a person with some skepticism should avoid it. Sometimes, a little bit of skepticism will go a long way and prevent a lot of problems.

Refugees and Higher Education --part six

2010-07-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

First, a reminder. If you wish to read this entire series go to the labels down on the lower right hand side of the space under this article and click on the one that says "Getting refugees into college." This should show you the entire series.

Secondly, a correction/ clarification. In an earlier post I indicated that people with a GED do not have high school pre-requisites should they be required for a community college program. This is, at best, only usually true. If one has studied in high school, but dropped out, one does indeed have a transcript, indicating the classes one took. There's no reason this transcript cannot include high level classes that may be relevant for higher education. This was pointed out to me by an American woman who dropped out of high school in her senior year due to pregnancy, later earned her GED and then went on to higher education and used her high school classes as pre-requisites for admission to a higher level education program. Thank you! Thank you!

Thirdly, someone recently was asking "Can adult refugees get into college in the USA?" Well, let's put it this way. "Can adult people get into college in the USA?" Yes, they can, although it sometimes isn't easy. Children, job, social expectations, and several other things often present difficulties for the adult learner. What's a refugee? A refugee is "a people" --a person, like any other, save for a background that's different from most of us. (I wrote an earlier essay on this blog entitled
"Understanding refugees --four principles" that might help offer some understanding on what refugees are like.) So, the answer to the question is yes, and if you wish details please read this series.

Fourth, let me offer a disclaimer of sorts. Every college has different admission procedures. Check with the institute of higher education for exact details.

Which brings us to our next category of potential students and what it requires to get them into college.

Some refugees:
4) Finished high school and has the diploma but no transcripts.
5) Finished high school and has the diploma and acceptable, proper transcripts.

At most colleges if a student has earned a high school diploma overseas, it is necessary to give them some assessment test before admitting them. These can include, for instance, the TOEFL test (Test Of English as a Foreign Language). The TOEFL test is designed to assess one's ability to understand spoken and written English.

In some cases something called a "Compass test" is required. (See for information on the compass test. ) At at least one college, if one does not do well on the compass test you will have trouble getting student loans from New York State, as they belief is that if you lack the English language ability to pass the test, you also lack the English language ability to pass your classes.

Like most students one should check and see if they need to take the ACTs or the SATs.

If a refugee has finished high school, has a diploma, but no transcripts, and cannot get transcripts (apparently refugee camp high schools cannot supply transcripts to overseas schools) then it is, from my understanding, up to the college as to whether or not they wish to recognize the diploma. The one time I ran across this situation, the college chose not to recognize the degree and offered the potential student remedial class (which included much needed ESL classes). In fairness, the refugee camp diploma, although undoubtedly legitimate in this case, looked quite simple to forge.

Refugees and Higher Education, part five

2010-07-10T17:52:00.000-07:00

In the previous two essays, I discussed what to do to get a refugee who has never finished high school into college. I hope it was useful. In this essay I discuss other kinds of refugees.

For instance, a refugee who:
2) Never finished high school but claims they did but says the documents have been lost.
3) Finished high school and the documents have been lost.

There are refugees will tell you that they have gone to high school but lost the papers and therefore cannot prove it. In some cases, this really happened. In others they are lying. Unless you are psychic, and I do not believe in psychics, you may have trouble differentiating the two. In other cases, you may begin to suspect the truth as time goes on and you get to know the person.

Regardless, my advice is as follows. Tell them they have two choices basically. Get those papers or else tell them to begin work on a GED or other means to get new educational certificates.

My limited experience has been that the ones who really went to high school will be much more willing to do this than the ones who were lying because the ones who were lying stand a good chance of being exposed when it comes out that they do not have the knowledge a high school graduate usually has. In one case, when I was younger and more naive than I am now, i.e. last year, a refugee convinced me to spend a great deal of time and effort helping him research how to get a job as a plumber while lying to me the whole time about his educational background. (The local Nepali-Burmese community is such a pain in the ass. On the other hand, other Burmese have assured me that there actually are many good Nepali-Burmese people. It's just that they don't live here.)

Therefore my opinion is that one should not spend time trying to get a refugee into college until *AFTER* you have agreed with him or her on how they are going to obtain a high school diploma or equivalent certificate and see that they are actually following through and working on this plan.

Don't put the cart before the horse.

Refugees and higer education -part four

2010-07-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

In this essay, I will talk briefly about the non-academic preparation that is required to prepare some refugees for college in the United States or similiar countries. I am consciously choosing to place it in the section on getting refugees a GED. My assumption is that if a refugee has acquired a high school degree or even college elsewhere then he is much more likely than otherwise to be prepared in other ways too for study at higher levels in the USA.

Of course, this is not always the case.

For instance, I have been told that the refugee camp schools that Karen and other refugees from Burma study in in Thailand are much better than the educational resources in Burma, particularly in the Karen state. This does not mean however that one can take a Karen refugee who has spent a considerable portion of his life in a refugee camp and drop him or her into a college in the USA and not expect some interesting complications to take place. The culture and experience gap is huge between a 21 year old Karen refugee and a 19 year old American classmate even if they are placed side by side in the same classroom.

So what needs to be considered:
1. Language

Schools in the USA are generally taught in English. Students need to have a high level of English to do well. Many schools do offer ESL courses of various kinds, but the students still need to be highly skilled in English before they can do regular coursework. Additionally it needs to be understood that most ESL professionals divide English proficiency into two levels, social proficiency and academic proficiency. Just because someone's English is good enough for them to hold a job, make friends and hang out does not mean that their English is good enough for them to be able to read biology textbooks and write footnoted history papers. They need ESL training or other opportunities to improve their English and lots of them.

You need to encourage them to read and read in English. Some will do this easily. Others need prodding. Use your imagination in getting them to read. In one case, I actually helped a refugee fill out and subscribe to Playboy magazine simply because I thought it would get him reading. I made him promise to actually read the articles and I know he did in at least some cases. Many refugees are Christians and read the Bible. In such cases, I would suggest strongly that they be given or helped to acquire a copy of the Bible that is in modern English similiar to that they will encounter. (At least one local fundamentalist church popular with refugees insists on using the King James Version. Personally, I think this is stupid.)

There are tools to assess a person's English language ability. The TOEFL exam is one such tool. There are TOEFL study guides in your library.

2. Culture

This should go without saying. Refugees need to have some idea of how to live and function in a college setting if one plans to place them in it. They need some training in socialization and how to meet and greet and carry on small talk conversations in our culture. They also need some instructions on how to deal with problems. Try to teach them how to handle disputes and problems. They may occur and it is in everyone's best interest to have them able to handle serious conflicts in a societally approved manner should they occur.

Make them aware of resources and how to utilize them and choose among them.

BTW, should anyone wonder, what's the strangest thing I've seen a refugee in a classroom setting do?

Take his shirt off in the middle of an ESL class. It was hot, he was tired, he'd been working hard and the next thing people knew he started to take his shirt off and was soon sitting there, barechested, in the middle of his ESL classroom with people looking at him. Be prepared. Try to teach them how to act in the settings they will be in.

Clearly some refugee cultures will have a greater cultural difference than others in terms of adaptation to Western college life.

It also needs to be mentioned that many refugees, including many members of the Burmese hill-tribes, are basically indigenous people. Until relatively recently in terms of global history, their societies were illiterate, tradition-based, subsistence farming and hunting and gathering cultures marked by clan feuds and a relatively low level of government. This means that when it comes time for them to adjust to the expectations of the college environment they may have considerable difficulty.

Think in terms of indigenous people. Use such things as the situation and experiences of peoples like Australian aboriginals, Taiwanese indigenous peoples and the Native American Indian peoples of the United States, Canada and elsewhere to seek lessons and predict problems. [For statistics on Australian aboriginal education see: 4704.0 - The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, 2010 EDUCATION: EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT. For Native American Education in the United States see: Status and Trends in the Education of American Indians and Alaska Natives: 2008

These people have a much lower than average rate of educational success. Societal prejudice can, at best, provide only a partial explanation for this. A fuller understanding of this problem must take into account that many indigineous people have very different attitudes to many things than the mainstream industrialized cultures that they often live among and must interact with and whose expectations must be met in order to succeed at obtaining a degree in a higher institution.

For instance, such groups often tend to have difficulty with time managment and financial management. They often have a variety of interpersonal obligations and expectations which can cause problems, particularly if their peers do not appreciate the goals that they have set for themselves and are trying to meet through school.

If one is seriously considering enrolling a Burmese hill-tribe person in a community college you have my blessings but please make sure the basic foundation of time management skills is there when you do. Also please note that although I am refering to certain ethnic groups as "indigenous," and say they tend to have certain traits, these traits are culturally and environmentally based, not genetic. Many Karen, for instance, do not share these traits. On the other hand, many of these Karen who do not share these traits, tend to be from major cities like Rangoon and often have trouble speaking Karen language. They are sort of like a Native American Indian who grew up in Brooklyn or Oakland, California, and therefore much more adapted to the "modern" world (for lack of a better term) than many other members of their ethnic group. By contrast, when I went to high school with Navajos I had classmates who divided money into two categories. "enough" and "not enough," with everything else being an unnecessary distinction. Time was divided into "now" and "some day if it has to be done." For these people "rodeo" was a great activity and a cow basically a punching bag with legs. Aside from the interest in rodeo, I've seen some of this same style of thinking among many Karen (which perhaps explains why I like them). Industrial-era living requires a while different style of thought than indigenous living and school requires the former.

Then again, by the time most of these folks get their English to a level where it seems realistic to enroll them in a higher education facility, they should have much of the required cognitive needs down too.

Refugees and Higher Education, part three.

2010-07-08T09:31:00.001-07:00

Just to recap, --how to use this blog. I began writing about refugee concerns on this blog in order to try and improve the treatment of refugees in this country and perhaps elsewhere. This was done largely in response to an event where the management of the local refugee center, USCRI-Albany, announced they were "maxed out" and desperately in need of help such as volunteers and furniture donation. I'd worked for the organization and the first place they needed help was in training of the managment as they weren't using their resources properly and were not handling offers of volunteers and donations properly either. It was the most inefficient place I'd ever worked in my life and the refugees were suffering because of it.
Therefore I began writing "how-to" articles on this blog. Like "how to handle furniture donations" or "how to teach refugees to drive." These were written as a series of pieces and to gain a better knowledge of the subject it's best to find the entire series of posts on the subject and read them all. This can be done using the topic labels at the bottom of the page.

At this point I continue to help refugees informally and my current activity in this area is to try and get a few into college. This is the third article on this topic and it will make more sense if you read them in order, starting with the first two.

In the last post I said that before one can determine a refugee's eligibility for college, you need to assess their previous education. I divided them into seven categories.

1) Never finished high school anywhere and admits it.
2) Never finished high school but claims they did but says the documents have been lost.
3) Finished high school and the documents have been lost.
4) Finished high school and has the diploma but no transcripts.
5) Finished high school and has the diploman and acceptable, proper transcripts.
6) Attended college but denies it due to an identity change.
7) Attended college and has the documents to prove it.

Let's begin looking at these, starting with the first.

Many people around the world have not had the chance to finish high school. This is generally not a sign of low intelligence, but a sign of lack of opportunities. The world is not a fair place and resources are not distributed fairly. Since most refugees have, by definition, had their lives disrupted by war, they are especially prone to not having finished high school.

If a refugee does not have a high school degree, and you and they wish them to be prepared to go to college, they must work on two things. The first is a high school diploman or GED (General Equivalency Degree) and the second is to develop the traits, abilities and capabilities required to go to college.

Let's look at the first one. If a refugee can enroll in a high school then everything is on its way. Just keep an eye on them and see what happens. I don't know much about this but I bet that someone at your local high school can answer the questions much more fully and accurately than I can.

If they cannot enroll in a high school, then they will need a GED. A GED. is a test that if passed gives its bearer a certificate that is equivalent to a high school diploma. This is a wonderful thing, and, in my opinion, one of the things that makes America great. We are a land of second chances and hope. Its bearers should be proud and in some circles a GED is actually more impressive than an actual high school diploma because it indicates motivation and actual achievement on the part of those who have earned it. Contrast that with some public schools.

The GED can be taken in English, Spanish and French, but to the best of my knowledge these are the only languages available. Of course, should someone wish to attend classes that are taught in the English language, then they should probably take the GED in English as well.

The GED is a specialized test and it is well worth familiarizing oneself with it before taking it. Several different study guides are available in bookstores and libraries. In some cases, the variety of study guides is confusing to refugees. They might ask which one is "official" or which one is the best or even if they need to read all of them to take the GED. It is important to remember that that USA is a large and very literate country with many publishing companies each of which wants a piece of the study guide market. By contrast some nations, such as Burma/ Myanmar, are much smaller, poorer and have a much more tightly controlled educational system as well as publishing industry. If they have tests for positions, there is often only one official guide that tells people exactly what to do, know and think in order to pass the test and obtain that position. Therefore, just taking a refugee, even a very intelligent refugee, and pointing them at a shelf of books and saying "There's the study guides. Have fun!" often will confuse them and not produce the desired results.

Should a student wish formal assistance in preparing for a GED, something I think is a good idea for many reasons (including the fact that it causes them to go outside their community and make one more contact with the greater American society) then resources are available.

Another option is organizations like "Job Corp" in some cases help people, and in some cases refugees are eligible for their services, to obtain a better life (where they pay more taxes and stay out of jail, thus saving tax payers money) and their progrems usually include helping people to earn a GED among other services.

To find and access these resources, some places to look are local community colleges, the Literacy Volunteer organization (which often provides tutors for the GED) and the local public library. In New York, the Department of Labors One Stop Job Centers can help people access this information although they tend in my experience to not be "refugee-friendly" --not hostile exactly, just stupid, doing things like handing refugees who clearly speak broken English lengthy forms in English and refusing to talk to them until after they are properly filled out. By contacting these organizations, one should be able to tap into the network of resources that are available to help people earn their GED.

Of course, not all refugees who wish a GED are ready to earn or study for one, and that's a subject I will try to discuss more in my next post.

It also needs to be stated that in order for a person to enroll in many college programs, they need not just a high school diploma but also to have taken certain classes in high school. For instance, to attend a college nursing program an applicant might be required to have their high school diploma and to also have taken biology, chemistry and certain kinds of math in high school. Although a person with a GED has the equivalent of a high school diploma, they generally do not have the equivalent of such required classes. I will try to write a bit more about this later, but, again, for more details on what this means, one might do well to contact the college or other institution into which the refugee is thinking of enrolling. For instance, should someone wish to study nursing at a local community college, it is not a bad idea to contact them as soon as possible and learn about the requirements to enroll in that program particularly if the person has a GED. They may have to not just earn their GED but also enroll in some prerequisite classes before even being able to apply. The sooner people know this, the better.

NY Madam arrested for sex slavery

2010-07-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Not the sort of stuff I usually share here, but seems relevant.

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpps/news/offbeat/ny-madam-arrested-for-terrorizing-sex-slaves-dpgonc-km-20100629_8401916

NY Madam Arrested For Terrorizing Sex Slaves
Updated: Tuesday, 29 Jun 2010, 4:40 PM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 29 Jun 2010, 4:40 PM EDT

(NewsCore) - A sex slave madam who lives in a million-dollar New York City mansion has been arrested for allegedly terrorizing sex slaves in two Long Island locations disguised as nail salons, authorities said Tuesday.

One, inside a storefront, advertised a "Stimulus Plan" on the front window and offered sex acts for prices ranging from $60 up to $120.

Suffolk District Attorney Tom Spota said Jin Hua Cui, 44, of Queens, lived a life of luxury in her cash-filled home at the expense of her victims and is facing up to 25 years behind bars if convicted.

Spota said Cui admitted to investigators that she got into the business of prostitution to make a lot of money.

"I think that you can see, looking at the photograph of her house that, while she was a success, her success came at a price to the women that she enslaved," said Spota.

The DA said the women came to America in search of the American dream, but ended up ensnared in the nightmare of prostitution.

"Sex trafficking is degrading, it’s demoralizing, and rips at the very fabric of our beliefs as a society. We in Suffolk County are just not going to tolerate that," said Spota.

Spota said as many as eight women were forced into a life of prostitution by Cui after they answered employment ads in a Korean language newspaper offering fake nail salon attendant jobs.

"When the women would respond, thinking they were going to be working at a nail salon, she then forced them into prostitution with threats of violence, intimidation and embarrassment," said Spota.

Inside her Tudor-style home, investigators found numerous wallets stuffed with $20,000 in cash. Detectives also seized more than 1,000 condoms, massage oils, lingerie and other items in raids on the places of alleged prostitution.

Cui was arraigned on the charges and is being held in lieu of $10,000 cash bail.

Read more: New York Post

(This article is provided by NewsCore, which aggregates news from around News Corporation.)

Refugees and higher education, Part Two.

2010-06-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

To continue from below, many refugees wish to go to school.

To do this one must first assess their educational level.

This can be surprisingly difficult. Refugees, virtually by definition, have had complicated and interesting lives marked by instability. Secondly, sometimes they lie a lot. (Shhh! Save the PC rebuttals. They will be ignored.) Sometimes refugees lie to ensure the safety of loved ones at home or protect themselves from persecution. Other times they lie for personal advantage. I won't go into the motivations here. Just please understand that often what is claimed as educational background is not necesarily what actually exists.

Therefore let's just sort of divide refugees into general eduational categories:

1) Never finished high school anywhere and admits it.
2) Never finished high school but claims they did but says the documents have been lost.
3) Finished high school and the documents have been lost.
4) Finished high school and has the diploma but no transcripts.
5) Finished high school and has the diploman and acceptable, proper transcripts.
6) Attended college but denies it due to an identity change.
7) Attended college and has the documents to prove it.

Although in theory it is possible to obtain an American-quality GED at some places abroad, this is only rarely done. (Curiously it can be done in Thailand and is sometimes done by citizens of Burma who arrive in Thailand to attend college but who have not finished Burmese high school. My understanding is that this is normally done by Burmese from the higher levels of society and not by refugees. Still, it is possible.) Therefore this article will assume that we are speaking of refugees who have not earned an American GED or finished attending an American high school.

I've ignored any issues involving forged educational documents. Probably it has happened but I haven't seen it. (Although in the '80s, a surprising number of the Americans I knew teaching English in Asia were using forged documents, I don't think it happens too much with the refugees I know.)

In my next installment, I will dicuss the implications of these categories and how to use the information to get these people into school and get their lives moving ahead the way people wish them to.

Who's who in Southeast Asia.

2010-06-29T19:29:00.000-07:00

As stated elsewhere on this blog, Burma (Myanmar) is a very complex country. It has over a hundred languages and multiple ethnic groups.

Many of these ethnic groups overlap with those of bordering countries. Due to their obscurity, these groups often have multiple names. In fact, defining the ethnicity of some groups in this region is surprisingly complex and to many of the people who we outsiders with an interest in the region consider to be linked or similiar do not see one another as terribly connected. Karen nationalism, for instance, did not exist prior to contact with the Western world and probably grew largely out of this interaction.

However, it is indisputable that some of thse groups have representatives on both sides of the border between China and Burma.

Therefore here's a quick guide

GROUP

BURMESE NAME == CHINESE NAME
------------------------------------------------------
Wa = Wa
Kachin = Jin Po
Shan = Dai
Chin = Yi (Lolo)
Karen = Zheng

Source: Personal communication from a Cornell Anthropology Graduate Student who, honestly, was speaking without consulting their books or sources.

Entrepeneurialism and Burmese refugees

2010-06-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

Recently I crossed paths with some Burmese refugees I know. [For those who try to eep track of such things, they were ethnically Burmese Muslims, but from what I've seen pretty mellow Muslims and I've enjoyed my contact with them.] They were quite excited as they were in the process of opening a small grocery store, sort of a mom and pop urban corner grocery, but specializing in goods either imported from Thailand, where they had spent time in a refugee camp, or else the sort of products that Burmese refugees wish to buy for their cooking. (i.e. fish sauce, shallots, ginger root, the sorts of things one often needs to go to a specialty store to purchase at the best price and quality.)
Of course, I was curious and anxious to see this, but it took me a few weeks to get around to visiting the store, which was located on an obscure side street in Albany, and checking it out.
Sadly when I got there, the store had been closed down by the authorities. There were two "Cease and desist" notices on the door from the city authorities stating that the store had to be closed down because it had violated a city ordinance on "banner signs" and also construction had been taking place without a building permit. Inside, however, were all the goods awaiting sale.
I tried to find the owners and talk to them but I was not able to do so. I did find their apartment, but they were out. I have no idea what the plan at this point is but it should be interesting to see.
Alas! Although we like to see America as the land of freedom and opportunity, compared with much of Asia and the third world it is more difficult to start a business here without running afoul of the authorities. Our freedom, although important, manifests itself largely in areas directly stated in the constitution and perceived as being linked to keeping our democratic processes alive. For instance, and I say this with no judgement, our right to criticize the authorities, publish what we wish and own firearms, all of which are arguably linked towards the need to keep an eye on the authorities, are substantially greater than that of most nations. However, if you wish to start a business in the United States, particularly New York state, it is not a bad idea to consult with an attorney first to check which laws one might run afoul of.
It is very difficult for someone arriving from a less developed nation with a more open system of market economy to quite grasp what is expected here.
I have mentioned elsewhere that one problem within the Burmese refugee community is driving without drivers licenses. --and I say this as someone who has put life, car and time on the line to try to teach many of them to drive. Not terribly long ago, I had a driving student who was unable to pass the road test (he was not able to grasp certain concepts like choice of lane and used to freeze up and panic when faced with the road test. Being an educator, I consulted another educator on the best way to build up his confidence and reduce his panic and we agreed that the solution would involve comparing his past accomplishments with his desired goals, showing how if he could do the first set of things, he should be able to do the second. Alas! We ultimately learned that many of the accomplishments he claimed were actually lies that had never happened and that by stressing them we were eroding his self confidence. Oh well, and that's why telling the truth is ultimately important and not doing so is often it's own punishment.)
One day he asked me if he drove "only to work and back" without a license and the police stopped him would they punish him. I assured him they would. Nevertheless, he had soon purchased a van (much larger than anything he had driven before), and began driving it on the highway (where he was distinctly unqualified to drive) and charging his co-workers, Burmese refugees from another, less entrepenurial ethnic group, money for rides to work. Fortunately, no one was killed and last time I checked the van had died, perhaps because he never quite understood what all those fluids were that one was supposed to check and replace. (Of course, after I heard about this I not only dumped him as a driving student, chewed him out royally and then called the police on him, but, sadly, unlicensed driving, even with passengers, is not very high on the list of infractions that the police choose to focus on.)
One activity I do note is a frequent flurry of Burmese refugees from several ethnic groups roaming the streets on garbage night seeking cans for the five cent deposit. The energy and desire to work is there. An actual focus on how to efficiently channel this energy does not seem to be there. Perhaps it will come. Time will tell.

Refugees and Higher Education

2010-06-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Life flows along like a river. And after a year and a half of interacting with refugees, I'm beginning to see more and more of them settling in, adjusting to America and entering paths that look as if they are headed for a productive and fulfilling life where they will help not only themselves, but also their people, the members of their ethnic group, as well as our society and their new homeland.

It's not easy and, of course, there are many obstacles, but many refugees who come to the United States seek an education. In fact, some, when asked directly as to why they chose to leave the refugee camps in Thailand or elsewhere, say the primary reason they chose to come here was to seek an education.

Which begs the question, how does a refugee get into college?

Speaking in general terms, as persons with a United States refugee visa are legal residents of the United States, they are entitled to use the programs intended for legal residents of the United States, including those aimed at educational assistance. For you conservatives out there, lest you ask "What do we taxpayers get out of this?" if all works out well, then we will eventually get a productive, educated, skilled member of society who will pay taxes at a higher rate and be less prone to such expensive use of tax dollars as jail or public assistance. Therefore, in theory at least, educational assistance to refugees should be a "win-win" situation for all concerned.

In fact, when I've taken refugees to the local community college for assistance with admission, the big question has often been not about their citizenship or green card status but how long they have been residents of either New York State and/or the county which hosts the community college. Residents of a county, in other words people who have lived there for six months or longer, be they refugee or native born, pay at a lower rate.

For many purposes, refugees count sort of as half foreign and half American and interestingly, when it comes to education at some institutions, they often seem to get the best halves of each. In other words, many community colleges have an international student office that assists international students, and often this office will assist refugees as well. (International students can bring in surprising amounts of money to a college, including a community college.) On the other hand, if they meet residency requirements, refugees are often eligible for loans and other forms of aid as in-state residents. (And why not? They are residents. They do hold jobs, pay taxes or else receive public assistance.)

One obstacle to this is the basic requirement of a high school degree or equivalent (G.E.D.) and/or minimal requirements for English as well as basic study skills. I'll try to write more on this later.

The Census and Burmese refugees

2010-05-24T06:11:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note as to another sign of local inefficiency in the refugee center, recently the local office of the US census, noting the increasing Burmese population, began efforts to recruit a few bilingual Burmese/English speakers to assist local Burmese-speakers. The census has also prepared its forms in many languages, ranging from Navajo to Italian, and included Burmese in the mix. See http://2010.census.gov/2010census/pdf/LAG_Burmese.pdf/pdf/LAG_Burmese.pdf

In fact, because of a personal contact, the census asked me to assist with finding people for the position and I made a call to the Burmese Buddhist Monastery in Rensselaer as well as to a Christian church attended by many refugees, and a few personal contacts. (although most English speak Burmese have full time jobs.)

In response, apparently USCRI-Albany did not notice these efforts, despite the fact that the census asked if they could place the bilingual Burmese-English speakers in their office as it is a place known to many refugees, or either did not consider it worth sharing with their volunteers or perhaps had no means to communicate openly and efficiently with their volunteers.

For whatever reason, its volunteers did not know of these efforts, and were used inefficiently once again. For proof see this recruiting pitch to find more volunteers.

From a USCRI-Albany volunteer recruitment pitch:

===========

Local Volunteer Helps Refugees Become Active Members of Their New Community

Debbie_volunteer
Karenni refugee Lee Meh (right) named her daughter Debbie Meh (center) after USCRI Albany volunteer Debbie Taylor (left).

Every week, Debbie Taylor and her husband, Kevin, drive to downtown Albany to volunteer at the home of a newly arrived Karenni refugee family from Burma. But a recent visit did not consist of the usual reading session with the little ones, helping the school-age children with their homework, or teaching the parents about money and the banking system.

Instead, upon entering the family’s second-floor apartment on Grand Street, the Taylors were surprised to find a group of Burmese refugees, each carefully holding official-looking letters.

It did not take the two volunteers for the Albany Field Office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) long to recognize the forms in their hands: the 2010 U.S. Census. All too familiar to most Americans, the quick and easy census forms are anything but for the mostly non-English-speaking Burmese refugees. So the volunteer couple popped a squat on the floor and spent the next hour helping the refugees check the right boxes and correctly fill in blanks.

“We try to encourage all refugees to be involved in the census. They need to be counted,” said Debbie Taylor. “The Karenni group needs to be recognized as well.”

Last year, USCRI Albany helped resettle about 100 refugees from Burma, many of whom are members of the Karenni ethnic group. An additional 100 Burmese refugees will resettle in the area this year.

Read the full story: http://uscri.refugees.org/site/PageNavigator/Albany_volunteer

Understanding refugees: Four principles

2010-05-20T19:31:00.001-07:00

In the last year, I entered and completed a program to earn a master's degree in "TESOL" or "Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages." (what's sometimes known as "ESL") As part of this, some of the TESOL grad students were asked to volunteer to assist with a program that trained undergraduate students at the university to help refugees with their English. I agreed to do this.

During their training, I was given ten minutes to introduce myself and explain something useful about refugees. Ten minutes to explain the lives of refugees? For better or worse, that's the sort of challenge that I enjoy.

Here's what I did.

First, I went to the board and wrote the word "refugees," then I began to talk. "What are refugees like?" I said. "Refugees are people. They are good people and bad people. Some are short. Some are tall. Some are smart, some are not. If you spend time with them some will make you laugh and giggle for hours, others will just drain the life out of you as they are so depressing. But there are some things about them that are very different. What are some things that make their lives different from ours?"

And then I wrote these four words on the board.

"Trauma."

"Poverty."

"Loss of Control"

"Instability."

I then described each one.

"Trauma. Refugees have a lot of trauma in their lives. They deal with it in different ways." Then I mentioned an Iraqi woman I'd met one day who had been in tears because a friend of mine had come to help me with English class wearing a camouflage jacket. The poor woman had thought he must have been a soldier and wanted to know if he'd killed many Iraqi people. What makes this almost amusing is that the man in question (the Reverend Tim) is actually one of the biggest peace activist, war-protesters I know, having been singled out personally for abuse by a local talk show host for his activities, but the jacket was enough to bring back traumatic memories and cause tears in this poor woman. By contrast what can be equally unnerving is when your speaking to a refugee and they just sort of casually mention traumatic events in passing as if they were the most ordinary things. This is often the case with young Karen who grew up in a warzone, a warzone that has been active off and on since 1949. One was once mentioning to me about how as a teenager he'd leave the refugee camp in Thailand each summer and go home to see his parents in Burma and when he got home he and his dad would cut down trees and run a small lumber yard together. (We were trying to make him a resume.) It sounded idyllic and like no image of refugee life I'd ever heard. I asked him about how exactly was it that refugees could leave the camp and travel home. "Oh we'd have to sneak through the woods and stay off the roads," he said. "If the Thai soldiers saw us crossing the border they'd think we were guerrillas and shoot us." Which sounds pretty unnerving to most of us but it was the most ordinary thing in the world to him. And the mundaneness with which he told the story was more unnerving than the story itself. This was his life. This was normal to him.

"Poverty" was the next word that I mentioned. I described a little bit about just how overwhelming the poverty level was that some refugees lived or had lived under was. How excited they sometimes became over the chance to own objects that had been cast away by Americans and donated to the refugee center. Even silly things like old tennis rackets and coffee makers will excite a newly arrived refugee. (There was one day when I worked at the refugee center I just started giving away coffee makers as we had built up a stockpile of donated coffee makers as they had been coming in from time to time and never going out. This is the way the refugee center was run. Unfortunately, I found that after giving away about 8 coffee makers to whoever happened to be around and wished one, I received countless requests later for coffee makers when people saw me.)

But then I dug a little deeper. I mentioned that refugees are often quite excited by the chance to drive and even own a car after they come here. I mentioned that a couple weeks before I'd stopped at a traffic accident in Schenectady County to assist someone who was hurt and that a car had been wrecked and an elderly woman taken to the hospital. Afterwards, I overheard a bystander say that it wasn't important that a car was wrecked. What was important were the people. Cars could be replaced, he'd said. People couldn't. As I heard him speak, the thought went through my mind that that sort of thinking was absolutely foreign to a lot of people in the world today, particularly in Asia or the third world. (Of course, I said nothing to the man as it was just not the time, place or context for such a discussion.) So, I told these students, I had begun to wonder about the relative cash value for human beings as compared to cars in different places in the world.

I asked them if they were aware that human trafficking and people being sold into sexual slavery still existed in many countries. They said they were. (Actually it still goes on in this country, but that's another issue and I didn't get into it.) Therefore, I said, as I'd prepared my talk I'd begun to wonder if a Burmese refugee woman who was sold into sexual slavery to a brothel in Thailand sold for more or less than a car did. I fully admitted it was a very sick question, but pointed out that it did fit the topic under discussion. Having researched the question (I believe the source I used was A Modern Form of Slavery -Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand, a Human Rights Watch report from 1993, a bit dated but good enough for this sort of project) I discovered that when women and girls were sold into sexual slavery in Thailand they generally sold for about one tenth or less of the cost of a car. Then I asked them to just think a little bit about what it would be like to know that there were people out there who wished to take you and put you through one of the worst hells imaginable and wanted to do so for no reason except money and that to them the actual cash value on your life and your well being was less than that of a car.

"Loss of control" was my next topic. I spoke of how when I taught English at the refugee center, one day I asked the students why they had come to Albany instead of elsewhere. The universal answer was "Because that's what the papers said." A surprsing amount of the decisions in the lives of most refugees have been determined by forces outside their control. Most refugees have had astonishingly little control over their own destiny.

"Instability" --Refugees, especially newly arrived, non-English speaking refugees, live very unstable lives. They often do not understand bus schedules and their jobs come and go. When they move, and they move frequently during the first year, they often leave furniture behind. Their schedules are often determined by forces and agencies outside their control, demanding appointments at times that they did not choose, sometimes for reasons they just do not understand. And to make it worse, many come from cultures that do not emphasize time management and the refugee camp experience is one where the question is more of "what does one do with one's time?" than "how does one use one's time efficiently?" If you deal with refugees, particularly newly arrived, non-English speaking refugees, do not expect them to be prompt at meeting appointments. Be aware that sometimes they will not show up as promised for reasons that came out of nowhere. If you choose to involve yourself with such people, no matter how wonderful your intentions or plans, this is part of the game and you should expect this. Screaming about how "Dealing with these people is like herding cats," might be satisfying at times, but it's not gonna make a bit of difference. It's just the way their lives are.

Understanding these four principles,
Trauma
Poverty
Lack of Control
Instability

Rambo, popular film among Burmese and Karen refugees

2010-05-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago, I wrote about how the film "Rambo," AKA "Rambo 4" was an extremely popular film among the refugees from Burma that I knew. The plot of the film deals with Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, entering the Karen territory of Burma to rescue some American missionaries. The American missionaries were bringing bibles and medicine to the Karen people. However when Burmese soldies attack the Karen village, the missionaries are captured by the Burmese soldiers.
It is, according to many refugees from the Burmese police state, a criminal offense publishable by two to four years in prison to watch or possess this movie in Burma.
It's a very simple movie, thematically, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
The Burmese army is bad. Rambo kills them.
But, nevertheless, I confess that four minutes in the movie my eyes began to water as sadness and pent-up emotions began to come out.
The film begins with a brief description of Burma and its brutal government and the atrocities it commits on its Burmese and ethnic minority citizens. It's all true (Aside from the strange fact that they indicated that it was only the ethnic minorities in the east who are rising up against the government. The truth is the minorities on all sides are rising up. This government is bad, very bad and there's not much that can be done to state otherwise.)
This is followed by some scenes of Burmese soldiers driving prisoners across a minefield and then commiting atrocities on the remaining prisoners.
It's brutal. In another context, I would dismiss this as gratuitous violence. Yet it is exactly what has happened and is continuing to happen in this part of the world.
The strange fact is that I have refugee friends who I know have been exposed to this sort of thing in various ways. What's terrible is when your talking to a good hearted college age guy who you've know for a while and he starts talking matter of factly about doing wood cutting at his parents' house in Burma. And you ask him to clarify because you thought he was in Thailand at that time. His explanation is that he visited them. When asked if that was possible, he explained, with no emotion except for a shrug, that it was but you had to sneak through the woods and stay off the roads or you'd be shot on sight by soldiers who might mistake you for a guerilla or rebel.
I'm not surprised by the response the film received from Karen and Burmese refugees.
The violence, the brutality, the injustice they have suffered is great.
And not just the horror of it all, but the obscurity of the issue in the minds of most people you meet, is incredible.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to spend most of my life suffering persecution and attempted genocide because of my ethnic background and then finding myself in a room full of people who had never heard of my ethnic group.
And yet this is exactly what happens whenever a Karen refugee from Burma tries to interact with Americans or most non-refugee groups such as, for instance, a college course of English as a Second Language.

Review: Andrew Vachss' "Another Life."

2010-04-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

Quick review. I just finished reading Andrew Vachss's latest novel, "Another Life." This gritty crime novel is presented as the end of the Burke series, a series that I have read in its entirety but that I also feel wore thin some time ago.

In "real life" Vachss is an attorney who focuses on child abuse and child protection. His novels deal with child abuse and sex crimes, and do so in a dark, unrelenting, very informed (at times some would say overly informed) manner. This one is no exception.

The plot is a good vehicle for us to see Burke, the hero of the series, in action doing what he does best, trying to get track down someone who has done something seemingly incomprehensible to a normal person, something evil and something involving a child. [Warning: the plot is not pleasant and neither is this review.] The baby of a Saudi sultan has been kidnapped out of his car after the sultan was drugged. No one knows who did it, but the method clearly shows a well-drilled, well-trained team. The Sultan had a disturbing fetish involving this infant. He would hire women to perform sexual acts on him while the infant watched, then dismiss the ladies calling them "Holes." A shadowy government figure, Pryce, who has appeared intermittently in previous books, approaches Burke for assistance in solving the crime. After all, Burke is the man who is known for his ability to understand and track down and punish "freaks." As one of Burke's loved ones, a member of his adoptive family is in need of serious hospitalization after being shot in the previous book in the series, and this is not easy considering that the person has warrants out for his arrest and thus should not be placed in a regular hospital, Burke readily agrees to take on the case. In classic Burke fashion, although he starts out interested primarily in the money he continues obsessively seeking to destroy whoever would do such a thing.

I liked this book much better than the last one. The author seems much more focused on his work. The plot is a much better vehicle for Burke. In the absence of strong clues, we see Burke seek out the criminals through seeking out the places where someone who might kidnap a baby could be found. It's a strange, unpleasant Burke-like journey as he visits fetishists, purveyors of hard-core pornography, dominatrixes, serial killer enthusiasts and therapists seeking clues. As in the previous book in the series, there were points in the plot where I was very confused as to why Burke was going to different places and why exactly he was seeking out the people he was seeking out. (And, yes, I do blame the author for this confusion, although I know fully well some might prefer to blame me.) However, it was not nearly as confusing as the last book and even when I did confused I could follow along just for the dramatic effect (minor spoilers: Burke, a discarded infant now grown, needs to look into his own past, something he avoids doing, in order to gain insight into what has happened to this kidnapped infant.)

As always Vachss includes his unique asides and uses his characters to voice his own opinions on multiple subjects, including, for instance, blues music, a subject Vachss loves and his characters discuss endlessly (but to fans approval. At one point, Vachss released a blues compilation album to go with one of his novels and it's not a bad album at all. One particularly interesting aside was when a character expressed approval of Marc MacYoung's self defense books. This seemed to come from no where and took me out of the story for a moment, but then again MacYoung's books are well worth reading (I've read pretty much all of them too) and when I thought it through I realized that it was MacYoung, back in the day, who threw in a recommendation to read the Burke series in one of his books and set me down this long strange path of reading Vachss.

In the past I've criticized Vachss for representing forms of child abuse in his book that are controversial or disproven as well as distorting and misrepresenting the motives and beliefs of people who defend those who defend people who are falsely accused of child abuse of various kinds. (Child abuse is a horrible thing. Unfortunately it is also a crime that is surprisingly easy to be falsely accused of.) I did not find these tendencies to be as strong in this work as in some of his others. (Ironically, the worst offender in this category is the novel "False Accusations," where Vachss pledged and then reneged to address this issue head on, instead using this novel to attack and distort the views of his critics.)

In conclusion, "Another Life" was an interesting book, not perfect, but interesting and I enjoyed reading it.

I get Pepper Sprayed --

2010-04-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a newspaper story I wrote back in the year 2000. I volunteered to experience pepper spraying as part of getting a news story. It was an interesting experience. The photos seem to be gone, lost to history perhaps.

===

Pepper spray: A little dab'll do 'ya

Mitch Wojnarowicz/The Recorder

Corrections officer Phil Spencer Jr. helps Recorder reporter Peter Huston after he experienced a shot of pepper spray.

Mitch Wojnarowicz/The Recorder

Montgomery County Corrections officer Don Gardner explains the different types of pepper spray and spray neutralizers.

By PETER HUSTON

Recorder News Staff

TOWN OF GLEN - It's been less than an hour and the details of my pepper spraying are already starting to fade and blur.

We stand in a garage at the Montgomery County Jail. Three corrections officers, a nurse, Mitch Wojnarowicz, The Recorder photographer, and myself.

I do as instructed, stand in the middle of the garage. Don Gardner, a state certified pepper spray instructor and Montgomery County Corrections Officer, pulls out a spray canister of the debilitating gas. He points it at my face from about 12 feet away.

I try to do as told and he begins to count to three.

One.

I do nothing.

Two.

I try to hold my breath. Nervous, I begin to wonder if I'm really holding my breath or not.

Three.

He sprays and I close my eyes involuntarily despite being told it will do no good.

It hits me, the spray, ending my confusion. A pain washes over me, becoming all encompassing, but doesn't quite hurt. At least there's not a feeling of pain. That comes later, and in large doses. Instead, there's more of an involuntary freezing up as your body struggles to adjust to this sudden sensory overload.

My eyes shut tightly and the burning begins. I feel hands on my arms and realize that the corrections officers are guiding me over to the eyewash station. I let them. Trying to find my bearings, never quite doing so. I'm starting to hurt.

My eyes are burning and my chest is starting to hurt.

I'm being led like a baby. I need their help to find the eye wash station. I am in pain, burning eyes, burning flushed skin, respiratory problems.

If this was a real struggle, if I were fighting these people instead of being helped by them, they'd win easily. Perhaps I could thrash around, but not effectively, and I can't see. And I'm dependent on them to get to the eyewash station.

If this were a real struggle, if I were the subject of a law enforcement pepper spraying, there would be no nearby eyewash station.

There would also have been two bursts of spray to the eyes, not one.

One is the normal amount for guard training.

Instead I would soon find myself rolling on the ground, perhaps handcuffed, perhaps thrown in the back of a police car. Wondering when the pain would go away and if there would be permanent effects.

They tell me to step up.

I find myself at the eye station. I open my eyes and begin rinsing. The pain has grown worse however.

My chest gets tight. I struggle to breath. I wheeze. I wonder if I will continue to breath. Will I stop breathing? If I do will I become resuscitated? Will I die?

I struggle for breath.

The breathing becomes easier.

Okay, I'll live.

The pain in my eyes has become worse.

I rinse.

It becomes better.

I feel flushed burning pain on my forehead and my neck. Fortunately, I'd skipped shaving that morning. They said if I had the pain would be worse as the hot pepper juice soaked into my pores.

We wash my eyes in the eye wash station. I love the eye wash station. It is a wonderful thing.

Periodically, I try to get up and leave the eye wash station. When I do, the pain returns, coming back, burning worse, I wash my eyes, my chin, my forehead, trying to get the juice off of my body. I don't like the way it's burning me. I cannot control myself.

I keep having to return to the eye wash station.

I blow my nose several times into a paper towel. I wipe myself several times with a towel.

One question they ask people in pepper spray training is to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10. I don't think it hurts that much. The problem is it doesn't go away.

I wash in the eye wash station. It reduces. The pain becomes a three. I feel better. I try to walk around the garage so that people will see I am in control of myself. So that I will see I am in control of myself.

It doesn't work. The pain, once a three, soon becomes a four, then a five. I return to the friendly eyewash station because I don't want to experience a six.

The pattern repeats. I burn. I hurt. I hold my eyelids open and put my precious eyes into the stream of lovely flowing easing water.

I am happy and feel better.

The pain is now a three. Then it starts to climb back up.

I wash my eyes again, feeling lucky that I was pepper sprayed in a garage and not a jail cell or street corner.

Officers Eric Schnackenberg, Don Gardner, and Phil Spencer attended my pain, assisting me as necessary. They, like most corrections officers, have experienced the same pain, the same loss of control, the same fear and uncertainty about one's future that I have.

Gardner, the instructor, said he's been sprayed four times.

This is the world of pepper sprays and modern law enforcement.

According to the book, "Pepper Sprays -Practical Self Defense for Anyone, Anywhere," by Doug Lamb (1994, Paladin Press, Boulder CO), although pepper spray weapons have been in existence for over 35 years, their common deployment and usage has only happened in the last 15 to 20 years. The work says that the reason behind the rapid rise in usage, both among law enforcement and civilians, is due to the widespread need to have a non-lethal method of self defense that works regardless of any differences in strength or fighting ability between two combatants.

Compared to such lethal or potentially lethal devices as firearms or batons, the advantage to pepper spray is obvious.

Unlike tear gas, the sprays are directed and do not blow around unnecessarily

Montgomery County Sheriff Michael Amato said that his department began using pepper spray for jail guards in 1996 and within a year was using it for the road patrol deputies. He said he has never been pepper sprayed himself.

"If I buy a new gun do I need to shoot myself?" he explained, laughing.

Pepper sprays, as the name implies, are made to spray gas made by hot peppers. The intensity of hot peppers is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU's), named after Wilbur Scoville who invented the scale in 1902.

For comparisons, Bell Peppers have a Scoville rating of 0.0, Jalapenos have a 2.5 to a 5.0 thousand , Cayenne's have a 30 to 50 thousand, and Habanero's have a rating of 100-300 thousand SHU's. Most defensive sprays contain a liquid that contains a 5 or 10 percent concentrate of a liquid that is measured at 2 million SHU's. Sometimes the liquid is in the form of a foam. According to Lamb, one manufacturer considered manufacturing a spray with a strength of 3 million SHU's but was advised not to as such a strength could cause tissue damage.

Nevertheless, the sprays do have critics. According to the spring 1996 issue of Covert Action Quarterly, a magazine that frequently criticizes law enforcement practices, the sprays have been involved in 60 deaths since 1990.

Although proponents of the sprays argue that such cases either involved using the sprays on persons who were on stimulants, such as cocaine or amphetamines, the article charges that their use is unsafe on persons who have asthma or other severe respiratory conditions.

In the correctional facility, where medical records on inmates are known, it is not permitted to pepper spray asthmatic or other inmates with respiratory problems under any circumstances, according to Eric Schnackenberg.

The same article charges that in some cases of police brutality the sprays have been used to inflict pain for its own sake on prisoners, including hand cuffed prisoners. According to the article, some citizens groups an the American Civil Liberties Union have questioned the use of the sprays.

For these reasons it is common practice to recommend to law enforcement personnel being trained in the use of pepper spray techniques and tactics that they actually experience its use first hand.

Amato said that he has not heard of any problems with the use of the sprays and that he expects the department to keep using them for some time.

Wow! I'm a racist!!! Cool, huh?

2010-01-30T19:43:00.001-08:00

http://www.dailygazette.net/Default/Layout/Includes/SCHENECTADY/ArtWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=SCHENECTADY&BaseHref=SCH%2F2010%2F01%2F29&ViewMode=HTML&PageLabel=A9&EntityId=Ar00903&AppName=1

Proper English’ op-ed revealed author’s racism

What an interesting Opinion piece by Peter Huston in the Jan. 24 Gazette (“White-black speech differences is a subject that we ignore”). When I say interesting, of course, what I mean is amazingly racist.
Now I’m sure Mr. Huston feels he has his bases covered by pointing out that we would all love to live next door to Bill Cosby, and that we have Mr. Obama for our president; so of course he can’t be racist, as he recognizes these prominent black people. Well, Huston, we have a problem.
Sadly, he is under the belief that the inability to speak “proper English” belongs solely to the blacks of America. Apparently Mr. Huston, who goes on to call this speech everything from ebonics to ghetto-speak, has never actually been to the “ghetto.”
Allow me to educate him on the defi - nition of ghetto. The ghetto was originally a quarter of a city in which Jews were forced to live, an idea originating in Italy. It has since come to mean any area of the city where a minority lives. Mr. Huston, please note the lack of any of the following words: black, Negro, African-American, colored person, or any of the other colorful terms in your piece. If you’d actually been to a ghetto, you’d see they are not merely populated by blacks — you might even take off the race-colored glasses long enough to notice the white people there!
In addition to Mr. Huston’s selective vision, he apparently suffers from selective hearing, as he has apparently never heard the number of white people who cannot properly use the English language.
If Mr. Huston would like to know the solution to the “speech difference” problem, I would suggest he take a hard look in the mirror, and he may recognize that his own racist assertions are quite an affront to the English language, too.
SEAN MEARNS
Glenville

Troublesome Bookstore / Bookbuyer

2010-01-20T21:13:00.000-08:00

[NOTE: THIS PAGE HAS NOW HAD OVER 2,000 VIEWS.]

One of the activites I am involved in is selling books second hand through the mail. Should you do this watch out.

I've been doing this for over a year now and so far have had two complaints of books not arriving. They both came from this man. The first time he dropped the complaint. We'll see what he does this time. Should anyone really care, aside from that I have a 4.9 out of five star rating based on the fourteen folks who left feedback on my services. (I do try and do a good job.)

So here's the man who says I did not send him books (twice). He is the only man anywhere who has ever claimed I did not send him books. I do not know why he orders books and then claims he does not receive them. Fortunately, however, this a problem that seems to be unique to him.

Bruce Sardinia, age 51 or 52

He is involved with a company called
Southern Book Services

or Southern Book Warehouse

or Book Warehouse

The orders use this address.

SBS
4360 NW 135TH ST
OPA LOCKA, FLORIDA 33054-4418

This is his phone number:
(305) 681-3424

This is his e-mail address:
bookloads@bellsouth.net (although he used a different one last time.)

[NOTE ADDED ON MORNING OF 1-26-10: I admit when I put this up I wondered if it was an over-reaction. However, since then this blog has started getting hits on this bookstore and its address at about a rate of one search every two days. It's a shame.]

Well gee, look what I found here. At least I know, I'm not over-reacting :

====

From http://www.ripoffreport.com/attorney-generals/anybooksales-com/anybooksales-com-this-is-a-rip-462f3.htm

* Report: #425923

Report: Anybooksales.com
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Reported By: (SAN DIEGO California)
Anybooksales.com This is a Ripoff Company! OPA-LOCKA Florida
... How come you dont respond to emails on Amazon?????
Report & Rebuttal
1Author 1Consumer 0Employee
Respond to this report! What's This?
What's This?

Are you an owner, employee or ex-employee with either negative or positive information about the company or individual, or can you provide "insider information" on this company?
Victim of this person/company? What's This?
What's This?

Are you also a victim of the same company or individual? Want Justice? File a Rip-off Report, help other consumers to be educated and don't let them get away with it!
Anybooksales.com
4360 NW 135 ST
OPA-LOCKA Florida 33054
U.S.A.
Phone: 305-502-5110
Web Address:

Category: Attorney Generals

Submitted: Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Last posting: Wednesday, May 27, 2009
I have the same experience. He "Dave" uses the same wording. Here is my postings...

02/18/09 Not Delivered: When will it arrive? Edit
No it has not! Okay! Feb 12th was 6 days ago! Okay! If is was shipped on Jan 12th (30 days ago) it would have gotten here by now. Okay! So give me my refund! Okay! You need to contact the USPS and have them track it. What am I supposed to do? Wait til President Obama is running for re-election? If it does show up (I doubt it) I will return it unopened.

02/18/09 (Customer Support Reply)
Sorry for this delay in delivery.
Please notice the ship date in red above. This is 100% accurate.
The shipping label was printed as:
Jerry Hutchins
P.O. BOX 84899
SAN DIEGO, CA, 92138, United States

Please take another look for this, as it should have arrived by now.
If not, please allow a little more time as most mail - even lost mail - eventually arrives.
If its returned to us for any reason, we will immediatly let you know.
Sorry again for this delay in delivery, but I assure you that the above shipping data is correct.
Please keep in mind that you will get delivery or get a refund - that is our guarantee and promise!
Thank you for working with us and sorry again for this problem,
Thanks, Dave

02/16/09 Not Delivered: When will it arrive? Edit
You can't do that! You say that it will get here on the 12th it is not here! So I want a refund! If someday it gets here I will send it back. I have purchased many books from Amazon vendors and this is the worst experience. I am neve buying anythng fro you ever!

02/15/09 (Customer Support Reply)
You may return anything at any time. We will post a refund within a day of receiving it, but the mail can be very slow, so please allow lots of time for the slow mail to arrive, and then we will post the refund.
If its being returned due to no fault of ours then we have to deduct the postage charges that we already used.
So we refund the full amount less the shipping/handling fees charged by AmazonUS.
This is the return address:
Book sales, 18520 NW 67th Ave, Suite #140 Miami, Fl 33015.
Thanks for you understanding that we cant refund till it arrives, and the mail can be quite slow.
Thanks, Dave

02/13/09 Not Delivered: When will it arrive? Edit
Well it is the 12th and no product. So I would like a refund on this order. I would like it to get it refunded back to my Amazon account since I bought it using a coupon. I will notify Amazon that I want a refund because I never got the product.

02/09/09 (Customer Support Reply)
Sorry for any slowness in delivery by the USPS. The mail can be slow, but we do everyting we can to hurry along your order.
Please notice the red text above as it does give accurate shipping and ETA details.
Please also notice the shipping address above as its what was printed on the shipping lable.
Please keep in mind that you will get delivery or get a refund - that is our guarantee and promise!
Thank you for working with us and sorry again for this problem,
Thanks, Dave

02/07/09 Not Delivered: When will it arrive? Edit
It is the 6th and I still have not received it. I think you should either send another one or refund my money throught Amazon.com. Let me know so that I can notifiy Amazon.com myself.

Jerry

02/02/09 (Customer Support Reply)
Please notice the red text above to see estimated delivery dates.
It was mailed via the USPS, from Miami FL, to:
Jerry Hutchins
P.O. BOX 84899
SAN DIEGO, CA, 92138, United States

Sorry if the mail seems slow. We shipped as quickly as possible, but when the mail is slow, it is out of our control.
Please allow the ETA time frames shown in red, and I am sure you package will arrive soon.

We offer a "DELIVERY OR FULL REFUND GUARANTEE!"
If it does not arrive by the ETA dates above, you will be fully refunded - but please first allow the full ETA time frames shown in red.
Thank you for your understanding and patience,
Dave

02/01/09 Not Delivered: When will it arrive? Edit
I have not received this order. I also emailed you two times via Amazon.com. Now I see that it shipped on January 12th. Well it has not arrived.

01/10/09 (Event) Email Sent: Confirming order details and offering to edit address (IF) not correct

I also filed a claim with Amazon.com also for your pleasure I posted the domain registration below. Feel free to call or contact the DA in Flordia.

Whois Record
Registrant: bsardinia@southernbook.com

BRUCE SARDINIA

4360 NW 135 ST

OPA-LOCKA, Florida 33054

United States

Domain Name: ANYBOOKSALES.COM

Created on: 08-Mar-07

Expires on: 08-Mar-09

Last Updated on: 08-Mar-08

Administrative Contact:

SARDINIA, BRUCE

4360 NW 135 ST

OPA-LOCKA, Florida 33054

United States

(305) 502-5110

Technical Contact:

SARDINIA, BRUCE

4360 NW 135 ST

OPA-LOCKA, Florida 33054

United States

(305) 502-5110

Domain servers in listed order:

NS37.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

NS38.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

JJ
SAN DIEGO, California
U.S.A.

Click Here to read other Ripoff Reports on Anybooksales.com

More like Teen spirit

2010-01-19T19:55:00.001-08:00

Changes in this Blog

2010-01-19T08:35:00.000-08:00

Having considered the matter, some changes in this blog are coming. This blog was originally intended to showcase and promote my writing projects. Then, when I made a decision to set the serious writing aside for a year and focus on other things, I began posting roughly once a week on refugee issues, Burmese refugee concerns and issues related to Burma (Myanmar), and events in that tragic nation.

My thought was that since refugees need a great deal of help, and many who work with them do not really know how to provide this help effectively, I could make a difference by providing a forum where people could find such information. I had, after all been working and volunteering with refugees and had seen many things that were done in a very poor and inefficient manner.

I'd still like to see this. I'd love to see this become a forum where such issues are actively discussed. However, few take the time to actually read the "how to run a furniture program" or "how to teach driving to refugee" articles. But again, and I genuninely mean this, should someone out there have a question on how to work with refugees that they think I can answer or share an opinion on, I'd love to help. Please write me. And if you think there's something along those lines that you'd like to share here, e-mail me and we'll talk. I'm open in principal to putting writings by others up here.

In the meantime, however, I'm getting a sense that blogs on refugees fall into roughly two categories. The first are the "anti-immigrant"/ "don't let them come here" blogs. Ideologically, they and I are generally not on the same page although I do think they serve a valid purpose because some refugee agencies, quite frankly, are poorly run and they don't police themselves. Whether it's through well-intended incompetence or just lack of experience, these places often are indeed a mess.

The other group of blogs are the "We must help the refugees" blogs. Most of these I've seen are the common sort of political blogs where someone comments on the newspaper. Some who follow this blog might recall an incident some months ago, where a young woman, a former refugee center volunteer, assured me there was no problem with domestic violence among refugees, at least none greater than anyone else, and then let it slip that she and her colleagues at that center had dismissed a former refugee from his volunteer position for stating that members of his own ethnic group had a serious problem with domestic violence. This was stupid, but it shows the sort of mentality that sometimes permeates refugee centers and leads to unrealistic programs. Personally, I was quite embarrassed when this incident made the pages of a couple of the right wing, anti-immigrant blogs.

I don't really have any interest in writing that sort of blog. There's doers and there's commentators and I try to be a doer.

These days I do a lot to help some refugees, a small number who I know personally and whose company I enjoy, and often the same ones who I convinced, cajoled and roped into volunteering to help me on the furniture van at the refugee center. They're usually young and often have no family here and lack experience in many bureaucratic and personal affairs. However, these matters are often proceeding in directions that are more a matter of individual problems and not the sorts of problems that people in other areas can generalize from.

I mean, do you really want to hear about me filling out motor vehicle department forms for someone who is young and new in this country and can't quite do it themselves? I don't think so, and even if you do, I don't think you're going to gain any new insights on the lives of refugees from reading about it, not to mention privacy issues as things slip from general sorts of common problems to more specific individual problems. Let's just say the folks who could not use an appointment book or change a light bulb last year, are now struggling through more complex bureaucratic and societal hassles as they adapt to life on this side of the world.

I also assist refugees through my activities teaching English as a second or other language and intend to continue doing that.

As for writing about general Burmese history and cultural affairs, I'd like to do that. However, time and other obligations generally preclude me from doing so. These obligations include not just school but other writing projects. And if I do decide to write about these issues, I must ask if there might not be a better forum to do it in.

In the meantime, I expect to keep this blog going. I expect to also use it to discuss more issues aside from refugees although refugee concerns will still be here. These will probably include my Peking Man digs history project, thoughts on skepticism (I am the author of two books on skepticism and strange claims) and other oddball issues that strike my fancy. Again, however, if there is something relating to issues that someone thinks I should cover, shoot me an e-mail and we'll discuss it.

Celebrities for Burma

2010-01-18T18:44:00.000-08:00

New Burma Human Rights Campaign

2010-01-18T18:37:00.001-08:00

I just don't know what to make of this, but if it works, well, more power to it.
If sex-crazed, muppet-faced midgets will help, then Tia Tequila has the right idea.

Greetings! Where's the blog been?

2010-01-10T18:02:00.001-08:00

Greetings people. I have been working hard on the Peking Man book. In the last month I've churned out 31,951 words on the project passing 100 pages (using 12 point Arial font, I could make more pages if I switched to courier.)

Between that, the academic program, trying to live a life or at least work towards living a balanced life, and actually helping out and hanging out with a few refugees here and there, there really hasn't been much done as far as writing about them or other subjects on the blog. We'll see what happens.

All the best, should you not see something on a refugee related topic that you think should be here, drop me a line and we'll see if I'm able to help. In the meantime, expect some things soon relating to the history of paleontology in Asia.

Refugee Driving: More resources

2009-12-07T17:34:00.000-08:00

[NOTE: This is one of several posts on teaching refugees to drive. To access the others, click on the "driver education" label in the box below.]

Hurrah! I just had a refugee pass his road test and get his license. He is now able to legally get behind the wheel of an automobile, cruise up and down the road and get to work, any school he wishes and other places all on his own!! And do so LEGALLY!! (I have mentioned in passing that it is a real problem among refugees that they often buy cars and drive them around without bothering to get a license. Why in the world NEw York State lets people buy and insure cars with just a learner's permit I do not know and I have indeed complained about it to the highest authorities that I can get to listen to me. Oh well, this one passed and waited to get his license! Hurrah! Hurrah!

My system seems to work. Here it is again,:

1) Assume they know nothing about road rules. They probably have not read the DMV book and don't consider it important.

2) Teach them what's in the road book and do it in language they can understand.

3) THEN teach them to drive. (REMEMBER! It is a good rule of teaching that you should not test people on things they do not know or that you have not taught them. The problem is judging what they do and do not know. Refugees have a completely different background than most people on the road and therefore must be taught starting at a completely different level of knowledge than someone raised in America and around cars and traffic.)

4) Emphasize to them that the most important thing at a road test is that they make the tester feel safe.

There are resources to help you do this. The Department of Motor Vehicles has some. I recommended a book in a different post. (USE THE LABELS AND GO FIND IT, PLEASE.) And, finally, AAA (the American Automobile Association) has many good driver instruction materials available to its members.

These include a book, a pamphlet and many other materials including a CD-ROM disk that you can play on your computer and that gives people tests aimed at observing conditions and traffic signals and understanding laws and such. You may have to push a little to get them from AAA as they don't publicize that they have this stuff terribly well. Therefore ask, tell them you've heard about it elsewhere and eventually they should put you in touch with someone who can help you. (At least that was the case with AAA Chapter. BTW, I like AAA, I even used to work for them, but to really get the most from AAA and not be disappointed, then you have to understand what the organization is and how it works and what it is that you, as a member, are paying for.)

Anyway, enough for now. Read the other posts and if you have questions please e-mail me at this blog.

Three Burmese once sold into slavery turn to piracy

2009-11-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

Not a happy story. I read today that there are roughly two million Burmese illegally in Thailand, seeking out a living anyway they can. Others flee to Malaysia. Some are declared as refugees and come to this or other nations. Of course, they are not all political dissidents, not even all who claim to be. But this gives some idea of what they risk when they leave their homeland. It also reminds people that slavery is not a thing of the past. It's a little sad to think that no one even seemed to find their names important enough to put in the article and the story probably wouldn't have even been reported except a rich European was a victim in the case. The whole thing is tragic with nothing good about it.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/11/30/Teenage-pirates-sentenced-in-Thai-court/UPI-54631259596540/

Teenage pirates sentenced in Thai court
Published: Nov. 30, 2009 at 10:55 AM

BANGKOK, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- A Thai court has handed down 25-year sentences to three Burmese teenage pirates for murdering a British yachtsman off the coast last March.

Malcolm Robertson, 64, was beaten with a hammer during a struggle on board his 44-foot yacht "Mr. Bean," named after a string of coffee shops he owned near London in the United Kingdom.

His body was thrown overboard off the Andaman coast and the pirates then tied up his wife, Linda. The pirates, ages 19, 18 and 17, remained on board for nearly 10 hours before fleeing in a dingy with electronic goods.

Thai fishermen found Robertson's body 10 miles north of Satun's Lipeh Island, along the coast south from Phuket, a week later.

Both the Robertsons were qualified yacht masters who had sailed around the world, had been married for 25 years and had four children and seven grandchildren.

The sentence could have been up to 50 years each, according to local media reports, but it was reduced because they were remorseful and pleaded guilty.

Linda Robertson, 59, welcomed the sentence, according to a report on the BBC World Service news Web site. "I don't want to trivialize Malcolm's death but I don't think 25 years in a Thai prison is going to be pleasant for them. I do hope the time they spend in jail will help them reflect and realize the heinous crime they committed.

"I also believe they were victims themselves. I don't think they had any plan. The fact that they didn't kill me, which they could quite easily have done, shows some compassion from them."

A Western journalist at the trial reported that the three teenagers were not always referred to as pirates because of their circumstances. Defense lawyers said the Burmese boys, who had also spent time in Thai detention centers for illegal immigrants, had been sold to Thai fishing boat owners.

They reportedly jumped ship near the coast and swam to the small island off Koh Adang in the Tarutao National Marine Park, from where they attacked the Robertsons' boat, which had been moored close to land.

The fishermen in the southern area of Thailand have a history of cooperating with, but also engaging in acts of piracy against, illegal boat people, mostly from Vietnam during the 1980s.

Many of the boat people are taken to work on fishing boats that also act as transport for smuggling operations, according to reports by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. At the height of the boat-people exodus from Vietnam, around half of the occupants of Vietnamese boats were subject to rape and abduction attacks.

On the open seas Thai-registered large commercial fishing boats have also been subject to pirate attacks. Thai authorities are still looking for the Union 3 fishing boat and its crew that was attacked off the coast of Africa at the end of October.

Somali pirates on two small boats attacked and boarded the vessel north of the Seychelles and off the coast of Somalia, the EU Naval Force reported.

A patrol aircraft spotted the boat 230 miles north of the Seychelles and headed for the Somali coast.

Thai Union Frozen Products, the country's largest producer of canned and frozen seafood, said the Union 3 was one of its four vessels in the area. The company said it was most concerned for the 25 crew, none of whom were Thai nationals.

The Union 3 is the third fishing ship from Thailand seized in the area in the past year. The EU Naval Force estimates that Somali pirates are holding eight vessels somewhere along the African coast.

© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Why the local refugee center is a mess.

2009-11-25T08:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm angry. It's not an endearing trait, but the fact is the local refugee center, USCRI-Albany, is very badly run.

What's the latest thing that set me off? The latest symptom that hints at the general mismanagement that permeates this organization?

If one calls their phone, and no one answers, you get a selection of names to choose from with no explanation of their titles or what their realm of expertise or concern might be. Although there is a general voice mailbox, if one has a specific concern, or even if one wishes to donate goods or services, then there is no way to directly reach the person who can assist you. (And, quite frankly, although I have no real way to know I suspect that the general mailbox is not handled efficiently. If it is handled efficiently then it is probably the only thing in their office that is handled efficiently.)

To make the situation even worse, at least two, maybe three, of the names on this answering system are those of people who no longer work there. One quit months ago. The other quit recently. (I honestly forget if the third person who left in the last year is still named on their phone system or not. Probably.)

If you do get a person, it's either the overworked secretary, who functions sort of as an all-round, fix-everything person and therefore often is not there to do secretary work, or else it's an intern who may or may not yet understand the way the refugee center works (it's not uncommon for the center to take a brand new person who knows nothing and put them as secretary dealing directly with phone callers) or simply whoever happened to be walking by.

BBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWWWWBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB!!!!!!!!

I'd much rather be writing nice things about how a wonderful organization does so much good to help the newly arrived and troubled people who come here seeking new opportunity in this great land of ourse, but it just aint the way things are.

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB!!!!

Smells like Teen Spirit

2009-11-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Discovered these today. For some reason the result reminds me of the use of "All Along the Watchtower" in the recent Battlestar Galactica reimagining.

Enjoy

Fort Hood tragedy dead include Kham Xiong, a Hmong soldier.

2009-11-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how many noticed this but today while watching the news about the terrible tragedy at Fort Hood I noticed the name Kham Xiong, identified by President Obama as having come to the US from Thailand. Recognizing the name as SE Asian and not Thai, I looked it up when I came home. It appears that a Hmong refugee or descendant of Hmong refugees was among the dead at Fort Hood.

For more details, see:
http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2009/11/06/fort-hood-profiles-pfc-kham-xiong/ and http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/11061-1257805228-hmong-laos-scholar-author-hamiltonmerritts-remarks-honoring-kham-xiong.html

is there a different dialect of the language of karen

2009-11-03T17:36:00.000-08:00

[Revised on 11/04/09.]

These were the key words on a recent google search that hit my site.

There are 12 mutually unintelligible dialects of Karen. The most common spoken among refugees in the USA is Sgaw Karen. Materials on learning the Sgaw Karen language are available from
Drum Publications

I've seen Sgaw Karen also spelled Sqaw Karen. Pwo Karen is also commonly encountered in the USA and many Karen refugees know both

Although most Sgaw Karen are Christian, and these make up a large proportion of refugees, most Karen are actually Buddhist. (Should someone tell you of Muslim Karen, dig deeper. There's an interesting story there probably, but they may not wish to tell it to you. As an aside, most of the Burmese Muslims I've met have been pretty mellow, some actually cook at dinner's at the local Burmese Buddhist monastery simply because that's where many of their friends are, and Burmese Muslims are not necessarily Rohingya.)

There is a different ethnic group from Burma called the Karenni. They are not Karen, despite the similiar name.

The wikipedia entry on Karen is generally quite good although often changing.

If one is willing to do some heavy reading there is an excellent article Karen Nationalist Communities:
The 'Problem' of Diversity, by Ashley South that appeared in 'Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs', Vol. 29., No.1, April 2007
(Singapore on Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) that explains much about the history of Karen identity and language. It is published on Ashley Souths website at http://ashleysouth.co.uk/

Why Files: Sonny Bono assassination claim and Ted Gunderson, initial post

2009-10-26T08:55:00.001-07:00

Introduction: Although the bulk of this blog for the past several months has been about refugee resettlement issues and Burma (Myanmar), most of my published writing has either been in the realms of Asian studies or else combating bizarre claims through skeptically analyzing them. And thus it is that I've decided to resurrect the title, "The Why Files," the name of the newsletter of the The Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York, an organization intended to promote science and critical thinking, and occasionally jot down my thoughts on such things here.

Last night, I got two hits on this blog seeking information on "Bono assassination."
It turns out that approximately a year ago, a bizarre claim was made that Sonny Bono, the late pop-singer and congressman, did not die ten years ago from skiing into a tree and striking his head but instead was assassinated.

For instance, see:

THIS

THIS

OR THIS

Although there is nothing on this blog about Sonny Bono, there is information here on Bono, the lead singer of U2 and his work on Burmese human rights, as well as the threat of assassination that some Burmese dissidents live under. But nevertheless, fearing that someone was conspiring or threatening to assassinate Bono of U2, a public figure who works hard to improve the world, I google the terms myself and then took a moment to look over the results. I discovered that while no one is apparently plotting to assassinate Bono, the singer, instead there is a Sonny Bono Assassination Conspiracy Claim. (Actually, I thought the entire notion of Sonny Bono as a congressman was sufficiently bizarre in itself, and now we have a conspiracy about his death.)

Where did these ideas come from?

They came from Ted Gunderson. Who is Ted Gunderson? Ted Gunderson is a former FBI agent, now turned private investigator, who periodically appears in the media making statements that lie well outside the mainstream. These often involve giant conspiracies, the illuminatti, Satanism, and other increasingly bizarre things. For the record, I do not find these ideas believable. I first came across the name Ted Gunderson, a couple years ago while watching a DVD called Disinfo TV.

Disinfo TV showed its origins in the sort of "Southern California scary, transgressional fringe journalism" stuff of the '90s that Adam Parfrey and his associates did so well in works such as the book "Apocalypse Culture." However, it also showed the limitations of that genre quite well too. Although some portions of this brief series, self-described as "'60 Minutes' reaches for the meth pipe," are fascinating and mind blowing other parts simply seem to degenerate into displays of the mentally ill and random cruelty being shown for entertainment value. Ted Gunderson appears on two segments, one featuring Brice Taylor, and both segments involve sensationalistic and over-blown conspiracy claims. On the Brice Taylor segment the claims, claims confirmed by Ted Gunderson, were just bizarre. Even considering that I've heard related and very bizarre claims before these were the weirdest ones I'd ever heard.

Brice Taylor is one of those sad people who describes herself as a survivor of extreme forms of unlikely abuse, abuse she discovered through recovered memory therapy, and claims to be suffering from multiple personality disorder. (This entire realm of "recovered memories," "multiple personality disorder" and "Satanic ritual abuse claims" have been discredited repeatedly and all involve distortions of human memory, resulting in people coming to very strange conclusions about their own pasts.) The forms of abuse she describe includes being forced to suffer through being used as a sex slave by former presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, George Bush (the father) as well as Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and others. She says that she was sold as a mind-control sex slave to celebrities at public auction. She also says she was forced to have sex with dolphins while Silvester Stallone filmed it and that he then later distributed the films to other celebrities. You may, if you'd like, see all of this on Episode One of Disinfo TV in the segment labeled Brice Taylor. Please be advised that these are only some of the very strange claims Brice Taylor makes about her life on this show.

Also, just for the record, one of the reasons I became burnt out on this sort of journalism is that it is very difficult to know how to deal with a person like this when one is the media. Do you present them as a reliable source? Portray them as an amusing eccentric and make fun of them in front of your audience? Attack them mercilessly so they will be discredited and the gullible will be spared their views? Or not cover them and their statements at all and then let your audience only see part of the picture? There are no easy answers. None are good options when dealing with someone this far off the deep end.

Regardless, on the segment one could also see Ted Gunderson, former FBI agent, presented as a reliable expert on the claims of Brice Taylor. And are the claims true? According to Ted Gunderson on Disinfo TV all the above has been confirmed multiple times including confirmed to him by people inside these giant, far-ranging conspiracies that involve celebrities, mind control slave auctions and dolphin pornography. I do not believe in these things. By his statements, Ted Gunderson says he does. Therefore when one considers the claims that Sonny Bono was assassinated consider the source. Also consider that the story was never, as near as I can tell, picked up by any non-tabloid reliable news sources.

In conclusion, if Ted Gunderson is the only one who claims that the late Congressman and pop-singer was assassinated, I for one, feel perfectly able to ignore the claims. Ted Gunderson is a name that comes up again and again in the media surrounding bizarre and often disprovable claims. In the absence of corroborating claims or evidence, I'll just skip this one for as long as I can.

More South Asian immigrant domestic violence

2009-10-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I became upset as one of the local Nepali-Burmese was mistreating his pregnant girlfriend, terrorizing her, slapping her around and stealing her money, and I vented on this blog. In response, an ignorant bonehead commented that the real problem was not that the (very small) local Nepali-Burmese community consists of a bunch of low-life troublemakers, but that I am not sufficiently sensitive to accept her world-view. Well, I've since drifted away from the local Nepali-Burmese community, a situation that has improved my life (and the only comment I received on it from other refugees are snickers and "Ha. Ha. We told you those people were no good, didn't we?"'s) I can also truthfully say that I have done everything I think I can to assist that woman and at this point it's her problem and she's got to decide what she wants out of her life and how she wishes to live it.

This experience got me directly involved with the folks at Equinox, the local organization that handles domestic violence issues in Albany. I am, by background and inclination, a rescuer. I have no problem, for instance, with grabbing a suicidal or mentally ill person and throwing them on the ground so that one may then restrain them and prevent them from further harming themself. In fact, I can think of twice when I have done so. Not to mention jumping into fights to pull people apart (hint, let them tire themselves a bit by pounding on each other first), but the fact is the "rescuer" approach does not work in these cases.

One thing I liked about Equinox is that their literature did not say "We save battered women." What it said, more or less, was "if you are ready to try to change your own life we will help you do so." This is the same approach they take with their drug addiction programs and actually there are a lot of parallels between being addicted to drugs and being in an unhealthy relationship.

There were many good things about Equinox that I saw. On the other hand, one weakness in the program is that they are not used to dealing with people from other cultures, and although they tried to do so, they weren't quite sure how to do so competently. (In part, because as a friend told me, the bulk of these "save the world" organizations are staffed in large part by young twenty-somethings who mean well but don't really have much life experience.) For instance, one person tried to start a conversation with a refugee on an extremely important matter by just talking without checking to see if anything was actually being understood. If you talk to most refugees, what they will do is nod their head and smile, whether they understand or not. And, no surprise, this is exactly what happened until I jumped in and said, "Hey, this isn't working. She understands nothing you say."

So if you deal with one of these organizations bring your own translator and expect to handle a lot of the details yourself.

But, switching gears, I read the other day on the skeptics list that domestic violence in Bangladesh, a South Asian Muslim country, ranks number two in frequency among all the nations of the world.

Therefore I started doing some cursory research on the subject. There is indeed a problem with domestic violence among South Asian immigrants.

First, we have this report from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8286744.stm

Apparently in the United Kingdom, an increasing number of complaints about domestic violence are coming from men of South Asian descent who are being abused by their wives. In a previous post, I noted that an academic journal reported that one distinctive feature among South Asian violence was a tendency for it to become a family affair with the abuser's siblings and other relatives joining in to heap further abuse upon the victimized party. That does indeed seem to be the case here.

And to think, not that long ago some of these Nepali-Burmese folks were suggesting to me that I marry their relatives in Thailand. (I'm sorry, I have a firm policy of no-marriage on the first date. It only leads to a lack of respect later in the relationship.) And I've received hits on this blog with google key words such as "Nepali Burmese wives" and so on --my advice, don't do it. Even if you wish a mail-order wife there are probably nicer places to find one.

Note the BBC article includes links to domestic violence assistance organizations for both men and women in the U.K.

Which brings me back to the issue of Bangladeshi domestic violence.

According to a 2004 report from the Guttmacher institute, see http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3019004.html domestic violence is, in fact, the norm in marriages in rural Bangladesh. (67% being a majority.) You may, if you'd like download the entire 10 page report for free by following the link.

The following is a summary from the organization's web site.

"CONTEXT: Although the pervasiveness of domestic violence against women in Bangladesh is well documented, specific risk factors, particularly those that can be affected by policies and programs, are not well understood.

METHODS: In 2001-2002, surveys, in-depth interviews and small group discussions were conducted with married women from six Bangladeshi villages to examine the types and severity of domestic violence, and to explore the pathways through which women's social and economic circumstances may influence their vulnerability to violence in marriage. Women's odds of experiencing domestic violence in the past year were assessed by logistic regression analysis.

RESULTS: Of about 1,200 women surveyed, 67% had ever experienced domestic violence, and 35% had done so in the past year. According to the qualitative findings, participants expected women with more education and income to be less vulnerable to domestic violence; they also believed (or hoped) that having a dowry or a registered marriage could strengthen a women's position in her marriage. Yet, of these potential factors, only education was associated with significantly reduced odds of violence; meanwhile, the odds were increased for women who had a dowry agreement or had personal earnings that contributed more than nominally to the marital household. Women strongly supported educating their daughters, but pressures remain to marry them early, in part to avoid high dowry costs.

CONCLUSIONS: In rural Bangladesh, women's social and economic circumstances may influence their risk of domestic violence in complex and contradictory ways. Findings also suggest a disconnect between women's emerging expectations and their current realities.

International Family Planning Perspectives, 2004, 30(4):190-199"

Refugee driving lessons --preparation -book recommendation

2009-10-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

[One in a series on teaching refugees to drive -To see the other posts on teaching refugees to drive, click on the driver education link at the end of this post.]

Oh my! It's been a long time since I've added to this blog. Why? I've been busy. Busy with school and other activities. Putting on my writer's hat, I moderated a pair of panels on publishing and the future of magazines at Albacon, the local science fiction book convention. As mentioned, I'm enrolled in a graduate program in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) and this has kept me busy, at times with activities that directly affect refugees. Been doing other things here and there to assist refugees, some through the TESOL program, some on my own. (Although it has nothing to do with refugees, I even took a salsa dancing lesson, something that lay way outside my comfort zone!)

One of these refugee related activities is that I still teach driving, a time consuming and at times frightening activity. Although, as written before teaching refugees to drive is surprisingly difficult, I do think that I may beginning to learn how to do it efficiently and properly (and it only took how many tries?).

Therefore consider this an initial proposal on how to go about it.

Refugees tend to drive badly because they do not have much experience with driving, automobiles or the basics of American rules of the road. They usually do not read their road book before starting to drive. (In a surprising number of instance, they don't bother to get their driver's license before starting to drive but that's another issue that I've written about elsewhere.)

Therefore the key to teaching them driving is that one must fill in this knowledge gap *BEFORE* you get them behind the steering wheel.

To do this you need materials they understand. One good resource for doing this is a book entitled "Studying for A Driver's License," by Dr. Frank C. Kenel and Beverly Vaillancourt, (-1994, The People's Publishing Group, Inc., Saddle Brook N.J. ISBN-1-56256-208-8). It's a wonderful book that teaches how to drive using simple English. Topics that tend to confuse refugee driving students such as right-of-way and choosing lanes are clearly explained and done so in a much better way than I ever could have. Then there are answer the questions worksheet pages where you can check your students progress *BEFORE* putting your life and financial future at risk by letting them drive your car with you in it!

This book is very good and can be read and understood much better than the NYS road book by an immigrant or refugee with limited English. Unfortunately the book is priced outrageously, being $25.00 (US) for a 100 page 8 1/2 by 11" paperback. What were the publishers thinking? Although there is a discount for buying in bulk, if one were an outlaw and willing to live life on the edge, one could easily photocopy the entire thing and save a great deal of money. I found the copy I read at the Schenectady County Public Library and suspect other libraries can find you a copy too, either from their own collection, through special purchase by request or by inter-library loan.

All in all, a wonderful book! I like it. My current driving student likes it too and since he often speaks of hoping to attend college when his English improves, learning to poke through a book and find answers is often a very good experience for him that has helped not just his driving but also his reading, his English and his academic skills.

I recommend it highly and wish I'd discovered it almost a year ago when I first began trying to teach refugees to drive.

More quick thoughts on refugee driving lessons.

2009-10-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

[One in a series on teaching refugees to drive -To see the other posts on teaching refugees to drive, click on the driver education link at the end of this post.]

As mentioned I am studying education now. Although I find the program (largely) dreadfully boring and the work tedious, the truth is that it is making me a better teacher. (The signal to noise to intense challenge ratio is not the same as Cornell.)

But, like I said, it is making me a better teacher.

And, as mentioned, I probably now know more about the ways refugees learn to drive than anyone I know. (Which does not make me an expert, by any means. It just puts me in a position where I've got to look to myself to judge how to proceed as there's no one around to ask.)

And, out of all I mentioned in a previous post, plus two more, just one passed her road test on the first try. Which means the rest failed on their first try. When a person fails their road test in New York they are given a print out from a machine that lists their errors. Of those I've seen, a handful, each and every one included the statement "showed poor judgement."

Which makes sense. And I've mentioned they only rarely study the road book.

Here's my current thought. Driving is not a single skill. It is a set of many, many skills. Many of these skills an American takes for granted. However, if one is to teach a third world refugee to drive, one must learn to divide those skills into their individual components and teach them one by one.

Now many of these folks are impatient to drive. Many have educational deficits. Many come from indigenous cultures where long term planning is largely a foreign concept. Many are insecure and lack confidence in their ability to learn. Many have high anxiety and often need this assuaged a bit before they begin to drive.

My current thought is that the best approach to all these things is to divide the skills one by one. Teach each one. Celebrate each small victory with them and make them feel good, and make yourself feel a sense of satisfaction (this is a time consuming, sometimes draining process), before moving on. Let them know they are part way there and did accomplish something before going on to the next part.

This Tuesday (today technically) I am scheduled to begin teaching my latest student, a student who just failed his road test. We will focus on learning "right of way techniques." Much of this will be done in the library using matchbox cars and such. We'll see how it goes.

Thoughts on refugee driving #2

2009-10-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

[One in a series on teaching refugees to drive -To see the other posts on teaching refugees to drive, click on the driver education link at the end of this post.]

From time to time, I intend to jot down my thoughts on teaching driving to refugees here.

Clearly it's a big project and not one that has been researched much as far as I know. Don't expect full essays or complete works here. Like so much, it's a work in progress. (Work with refugee sort of involves people from exotic places getting dumped in ones town with the result being people saying, "There are some people here who need help?" "What kind of people?" "Sqaw Karen people." "What? WHO? Huh? A what kind of people again?" It's a learn as you go situation.)

Here's the current thought. Ideal way to teach refugee driving would begin with a combination "English for driving" and "Rules of the Road" course of classes.

These would teach the concepts underlying driving, concepts that would probably not be otherwise known or even considered important by refugees. These would be divided into units and testing done before the student is allowed to proceed.

(Will I actually do this? I have no idea. The liability issues scare me, for starters. What I do intend to do is to teach the people I do teach driving to in a new manner from a new angle and a new perspective.)

Garbage in Rangoon *Yangon"

2009-10-01T06:10:00.000-07:00

I'm experimenting with new ways to put media on the net. This includes embedded videon on this blog. This was posted on YouTube on 9-11, 2009.

Quick thoughts on refugees and driving.

2009-10-01T04:30:00.000-07:00

[One in a series on teaching refugees to drive -To see the other posts on teaching refugees to drive, click on the driver education link at the end of this post.]

[Note. there's a fuzzy set of lines between stereotyping, generalizations about cultures and accurate assessment of intercultural differences. When working with refugees, however, you learn as you go and therefore as one needs to seek to accommodate cultural differences and overcome them before one really understands them it's often a feel your way along process of simultaneously working with and understanding a group of people from a different culture with a different background. I'm not completely comfortable with everything I have written here in terms of "cross-cultural sensitivity issues." On the other hand, this is the current state of my constantly changing thinking on the relevant issues as I struggle to achieve a goal of mine which is to see my driving students get their licenses and become safe drivers. With time, they will evolve.]

Over the past several years, I've taught various people to drive, either from beginning to finish or else just a few lessons to supplement someone else's driving.
This has been a learning experience for me and I am trying to assess and sort the results.

Here's the track record.

Two Chinese graduate students, one from beginning to end and she passed on the first try.

Refugees.

One Burmese Chin woman. Quit with valid excuse but obviously underestimated the time required to learn driving when she began. Thought one could learn to drive in just a few lessons.

One Nepali Burmese male. Learned reasonably well but had a great deal of difficulty grasping some basic concepts, such as choosing lanes. He also tended to put great pressure on himself, panic under pressure and feel great stress after making a mistake. This stress caused his mental functioning to go down and that meant, for instance, after making a mistake he would then confuse left and right. Finally he failed the road test twice, began canceling out on lessons at the last minutes using purposefully bad excuses and ultimately bought himself a van and began driving it without a license.

Nepali-Burmese female. Drove very badly, time management problems, asked for lessons like two weeks before the road test. Failed. Then I dropped her as a student after she began driving without a license and showed a bad attitude towards it after hitting a car in a parking lot. (Same person who asked "Can I drive myself to the road test?") The traffic violation case resulting from this was dropped due to a technicality (cop put the court date down for a holiday) and she passed on her second try.

Second Nepali-Burmese male. Had been driving in Thailand for years and bought himself a car and began driving it to work and elsewhere without a license. Asked for help with his parallel parking only. I decided that the best thing to do was to help him in the hopes that he would get a license and the situation become legal. He learned parallel parking easily but failed his road test twice. Last I heard was still driving without a license. (He also mistreats his girlfriend badly. I think people might be beginning to get a picture of why I don't deal with the eight local Nepali-Burmese I know anymore. On the other hand, one thing I'll give the Nepali-Burmese credit for is that the bulk of them don't hesitate to ask others for assistance, sometimes whether they need it or not.)

African male refugee. Wanted parallel parking lessons. Said he had been driving for years in Africa but no one in Africa ever parallel parks. I gave him the lessons. He failed his first road test, reportedly for being over-cautious at an intersection where he had the the right of way (probably makes sense in Africa to drive that way) but passed on the second try.

Nepali-Burmese female. Taught one day only. Quit because her life was in chaos and her boyfriend was mistreating her badly. (Lovely people, the Nepali-Burmese.)

Karen male. Taught for months. Frequent problems with basic concepts, failed his road test badly on first try.

CONCLUSIONS (PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENTS ONLY):

Refugees are a funny bunch of people. Let's look at some of the things that often mark them as different from mainstream Americans.

1. History of trauma. This effects anxiety levels and thinking and decision making.

2. Low education in many cases. This effects the ability to learn as ability to learn is a learned skill. Also affects the ability to set, assess, plan and achieve goals involved with acquiring a new skill or set of skills. Tendency to gloss over underlying weaknesses in driving in order to get to the new stuff.

3. Often speak poor English. Affects communication. At least two of my refugee driving students have confused verbal instructions to go left and right while driving. This often affects their initial knowledge of the rules of the road and expectations of a driver in the USA. (Most Burmese speakers do not read the DMV road book. Instead they just download lists of questions and answers in Burmese with English translations of the answer and focus on getting enough questions to pass the test and get the learner's permit. This has serious ramifications. Another admitted she sat through the five hour class but did not understand any of it as her English was quite poor.)

4. Poverty and low exposure to technology. These people did not grow up sitting in their mommy and daddy's car while mom shuttled them around to soccer practice. They did not spend their childhood looking out the window's of the family car trying to read the signs and asking occasional questions about driving.

5. Often come from non-legalistic, often pre-industrial, often even indigenous cultures. This has a thousand little ramifications in mental behaviors including attitudes towards road rules, expectations and even lane changing. In some cases, the cultural background also affects the ability to plan for and achieve long-term goals. Right-of-way laws are often a completely foreign concept to people from a non-legalistic culture. (Don't believe me? Check out the traffic in Taiwan some day.)

CONCLUSIONS (PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS, NOTHING MORE.)

Teaching refugees to drive is not an easy thing to do and one who does it should expect to put in a great deal of time on each refugee one teaches. One needs to make expectations clear up front, including the possibility that they might drive without a license and that you will take this quite seriously. (As noted three of the folks I taught. all Nepali-Burmese, do this or did this. I spoke to some folks at the Rensselaer Open Bible Church and although we are theologically miles apart, they know refugees and how they think and act and agree completely that it is extremely important that if one assist refugees with car related issues one either ensure that they have a driver's license already or else tell them of the consequences, including consequences with your relationship with them, if they drive without a license.)

My experience with Burmese refugees is that they are tough, hard working people but that they somehow aren't good at setting goals and following through to achieve them. A plan that involves incremental steps over a long period of time and frequent set backs (failed road tests) along the way does not come easily to them.

Driving is not a single skill. It is instead a set of different skills many of which we as Americans take for granted. (i.e. knowing road signs or knowing when to choose lanes.) Therefore driving should be taught to refugees as a set of skills with frequent assessments and it made clear that if they do not have a certain skill one will not move ahead in the lessons until one guarantees they know that skill. Assess constantly and use those assessments to stop and reteach missing skills. You do not want to find out that your student does not understand a "Left turn only" sign at a red light after he drives into the intersection assuming it means he can ignore the light if he wishes to go left (true story.)

Assess constantly, set low incremental expectations, do not assume they have the background knowledge an American would,

Experiment 2

2009-09-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

A silly song I stumbled across on the web. Yes, I am a Doctor Who fan. And, just as these people did, how could I not enjoy the episode with Kylie Minogue?

Fast Ood Rockers present:"SONG 4 KYLIE: ...I'M IN LOVE (WITH A GIRL IN A TIME MACHINE)" from ladypat on Vimeo.

experiment

2009-09-29T11:30:00.001-07:00

This is an experiment to see if I can embed media in my blog.

I am a fan of Thao Nguyen and her band, Get Down, Stay Down. I really love their song "Swimming pool." Curiously, for those of us who are trying to make sense of what's going on with media distribution and the music and publishing industry, their newest album is being released in two formats. One is the standard CD but the second is a vinyl LP which comes with a free download of all songs straight to your computer.

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down in the studio from Kill Rock Stars on Vimeo.

Getting furniture back FROM the refugees!?

2009-09-21T08:48:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I've added to this blog. Then again, there's a lot here. Some good, some bad, but if you don't see what you are looking for please browse around. I like to think that mixed in with everything else, there really is a lot of good stuff here on the topic of how to get furniture and give it to refugees who need it. But some of it's tucked away and buried, so look please.

Which brings us to an idea I've been toying with for a while. People give a lot of furniture to refugees but no one really focuses on getting it back when they don't want it anymore. And if this were done, then it would provide a lot of people with a lot of things that they could use.

Yes, it sounds funny, and like most such things it's much easier to speak about but due in practice.

Here's the situation. The State Department mandates that refugee placement agencies must give all refugees a certain amount of furniture of certain kinds. In addition to this refugees also receive extra furniture and such of whatever kind happens to be sitting in the donation storage room that someone thinks they might be able to use and no one wishes to store anymore (i.e. I've given several coffee makers to refugees. Do refugees need coffee makers? No, but people donate them and then the best thing to do is to give them to the refugees. It's that sort of thing.)

However, some items on the list are not really needed by the refugees. For instance, the State Department mandates that each refugee be given a bed and this bed should consist of a mattress, box spring and a bed frame. In practice, however, a surprising number of refugees see no need for the bed frame and instead just place the box spring on the floor and put the mattress on top of it. It's just the way they like to do things. Therefore, a large quantity of these cheap metal bed frames wind up tossed in hallways and backyards where they get wasted. If the refugee center were to find a way to collect these things, then they could be redistributed and perhaps even given to someone who might actually use them.

Secondly, refugees often live unstable lives. They move a lot, particularly during their first year in the USA and this is also the year during which they have the most contact with the refugee placement agency. When they move they often leave things behind, particularly large bulky items like couches. If the refugee center were to find a way to keep an eye out for these moves or encourage the refugees to think of redonating the items they do not need then it could prove to be a valuable source of donations for the center.

They also occasionally get rid of old furniture when they, through one means or another, get better furniture. Since few refugees have a van or a pick up truck, the old stuff often gets tossed out instead of redistributed.

Getting furniture back from the refugees when they don't want it? It's an idea worth exploring.

Refugee furniture tip

2009-09-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've actually written anything about how to manage a furniture program at a refugee center or other not-for-profit. This is a shame as I frequently become sidetracked with whining about the mismanagement of these places.

To provide some mature balance, here's a quote I received from a friend the other day urging me to retain perspective.:

"Clearly you did not spend your 30s hanging out with do-gooders in their twenties. This is completely what I would expect from an organization like the refugee center. The only problem for me is when someone evil insinuates themselves into the chaos and robs and thieves while no one is looking."

Yup. Alas, perhaps the entire thing is just a sense of unrealistic expectations on my part. Then again, I do think there's something wrong when an NGO whose CEO makes approximately $200,000 a year puts someone in charge of a programming affecting the lives of hundreds of people and continues to do so long after it becomes obvious that problems are developing due to mismanagement. Then again, I'm often known for being unrealistic, which perhaps explains why I was working there in the first place.

But back to the furniture, here's a very important tip.

When accepting furniture for donation make sure you have the supplies you need to keep the parts together. This means masking tape and zip lock bags. When you get, for instance, a bed that is put together with bolts and fasterners and has a disassembleable frame, then take it apart, put all the small pieces in zip lock bags and masking tape the bags to the larger pieces. Then take the large pieces and wrap them around a few times with the masking tape several times. Make sure that it's strong enough to last.

The difference between usable furniture and clutter-junk is that with the first one all the pieces are in a place where you can find them.

When I started at the refugee center, our bed collection looked like a pile of tinker toys scattered all over a corner of the floor. Not only was it difficult to figure out which pieces of beds went with one another, but even after you did, you often found yourself unable to find the nuts, bolts, wheels and other fasteners that held them together. In many cases they did not even exist, having been lost long ago, and thus you had to make frequent runs to the hardware store often while trying to guess what sort of bolts one actually needed.

Avoid this problem. When you get a piece of furniture, handle it once. Handle it right. Put all the pieces, big and small, together into one unit with masking tape and zip-lock bags.

Judging the refugee center

2009-09-03T19:53:00.000-07:00

Within this blog I have made some pretty harsh condemnations of USCRI-Albany, the local refugee center, and the way it operates. Quite frankly, I don't really enjoy writing these things, then again in the last two weeks I've run into a couple people who know the center. They agree that the place is extremely disorganized and just rolled their eyes when it was mentioned. And interestingly enough, these were both people who had no idea how I felt about the center or that I had any real connection with it or even had a connection with refugees. (I spend a lot of time at events and activities that involve other cultures and so do many people who are interested in refugee concerns.)

Surely some who read this disagree or want to check for themselves.

Here's some thoughts on how to do that.

1) Check the newspaper or read blogs. Do google searches on the name of the organization. See what people are saying about it.

2) Check the rate of turn over among employees and volunteers. One way to do this is by noting the rate at which they seek volunteers. This is done through several sources, one is idealist.org , a website and e-mail service that advertises volunteer and paid positions for organizations that strive to make the world a better place. Just last week someone, a third person, noted that based on its postings in idealist.org the organization seemed to be searching constantly for volunteers of all kinds and often for the same positions. They saw this as a sign of a problem and, quite frankly, it is. Volunteers tend to burn out quickly due to the confusion within the organization. Others find they can do the same things they enjoyed doing at the center but with less hassles without the center getting in the way. (I started out teaching English there. If I understand correctly, they have gone through three different volunteer directors of their English program in the last year.)

3) Check with the agencies it works with and their volunteers. Ask for instance, their landlord, the people who rent them property and house the refugees, AAA Used Furniture, the local health clinics, the churches they work with, and the local literacy volunteer program. Ask them what they think of USCRI-Albany. Who knows? They might say something good.

4) Check with the government agencies that do business with it. These are easy enough to find. Just google "USCRI-Albany." What should soon stick out is that many of these agencies have both the address of USCRI-Albany and the name of the director wrong on their referral lists. I have toyed with the idea of making such a list of misdirected referals but it's just not something I wish to do.

5) Ask former refugees and immigrants from the ethnic groups whose members are served by the local refugee center. When I do this, even casually, it's not uncommon for people to start screaming.

6) Check with the Better Business Bureau. If you'd like their report is here. You'll note that the CEO of the national organization makes approximately $200,000 a year, which was equal to two thirds of their Albany office budget in 2006. Not very encouraging, I'm afraid. Why, I wonder, does the CEO make so much when the director of the local office has no management credentials and whose primary background with refugees prior to assuming office was to take pictures of them?

Again, don't listen to me. Please don't listen to former interns. Just do your own homework. Then make your own conclusions.

Quick thoughts on Burma, crime, refugees, immigrants.

2009-08-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

NOTE: I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REMOVE WITHOUT COMMENT OR EDIT COMMENTS, PARTICULARLY FROM FREQUENT POSTERS.

Just some quick thoughts. First, Burma is a mess. Of course, it has been for a long time and probably will continue to be so for an even longer time. But to get some idea of how the country is structured this map is useful.:

The map comes from p. 98, "In Search of Southeast Asia --A Modern History,":Edited by David Joel Steinberg, co. 1971, 1985, 1987, University of Hawaii Press. Essentially what it shows is the limits of civilization and governmental influence in the eighteenth century in Southeast Asia. The darker areas on the map are the areas where civilization and governmental control were the strongest in the eighteenth century in Southeast Asia. The further one got from the government, the more their control and cultural influence faded away until ultimately yet gradually one found oneself in the midsts of mountains or jungle where tribal peoples who neither spoke the language of or even cared about the central government lived exclusively. I wrote about this a bit long ago on this blog. Essentially what you will see for Burma is an area that was controlled by the central government. This is where the Burmese and the Mong primarily live. Then you will see an area around the edge of the country where most of the other peoples, the Karen, Chin, Kashin, Shan, Kareni, Wa, etc., live. This area was not under the control of the central government. (The other ethnic groups, the South Asians and the Chinese, came later, arriving after the country was under British control.) It is these outer areas where much of the current fighting and ethnic persecution is taking place and it is from these areas that many of the more obscure ethnic groups who make up the refugees from Burma come from.

This week there was much fighting in the region and it was widely reported in the press. Here's a BBC map of the area where the new fighting is taking place as well as the area of bordering China, Yunnan province, where people from Burma are fleeing as refugees.:

Yunnan is one of the most interesting (and by Chinese standards backwards) places in China and is full of many interesting ethnic groups who often straddle the national borders of the region.

The Shan are an ethnic group from Burma. I only know one Shan in the Albany area, but undoubtedly there are a few more hidden away somewhere. I was very surprised to learn that there were Wa and Karenni here as well. The Shan, incidentally, for years popped up in international discussions on the drug trade as their region was controlled by a half Chinese, half Shan opium warlord named Khun Sa (sometimes spelled Khun Sha) who had his own private army and made a fortune off of selling narcotics while making claims that he was actually working for the liberation of the Shan people. It was quite exotic and exciting sounding, as well as an actual global problem, and appeared in almost any book from the early '90s that discussed the issue of Chinese transnational crime networks, a hot topic at the time and one that I wrote a book about in 1995 ("Tongs, Gangs and Triads," the book has strengths and weaknesses, but it has received some praise from people in important positions who, like me, felt it filled a niche.) Khun Sa essentially retired, surrendering in 1996, then relocating to Rangoon (Yangon) where the government refused to extradite him, despite frequent requests from abroad and from where he was often still reported to be running an extensive opium smuggling network. Khun Sa died in October of 2007, reportedly of natural causes.

Undoubtedly the region is still an opium source country and part of the so-called "Golden Triangle," of Laos, Thailand and Burma, a region that, along with Afghanistan, is one of the world's primary sources for opium and narcotics.

Which, as near as I can tell, has nothing much to do with refugees, but for reasons related to recent responses on this blog, I've been giving some thought to the issue of crime, immigration and refugees. Clearly, some people are anxious to avoid facing the issue of crime and immigrants and refugees. Not only is this common among young idealists such as those who volunteer as interns at refugee centers, but it is also common among some academics. And through doing so, the people who get hurt by it, in my opinion, are usually the immigrants and refugees who are crime victims of crimes committed by other refugees and immigrants, often of the same ethnic group.

For instance, I recently read an article entitled "Immigrant Women and Domestic Violence: Common Experiences in Different Countries," by Cecilia Menjivar and Olivia Salcido, which appeared in "Gender and Society," Vol. 16, No. 6 (Dec. 2002), pp. 898-920. Although it's an article well worth reading, and contains much information, it also spends a great of deal time discussing just how little is known about the scope of the problem.

As mentioned in previous posts, the article stresses the way immigrant men tend to use linguistic and cultural isolation, cutting off from resources and financial control, including seizing money from one's spouse or girlfriend, in order to control their spouse or girlfriend when they commit domestic violence. (Although the article does acknowledge same-sex and female-on-male domestic violence, like most such things, it focuses on male-on-female domestic violence. But it covers a lot. It's well worth reading.)

A great deal of crime, violence and domestic violence among refugees and immigrants is of the sort that involves members of the same ethnic group preying on each other. This has been the clear pattern with Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant crime groups. It is also the case among many crimes commited by Hmong gangs, For instance, one can read, this article,
"The Violence of Hmong Gangs and the Crime of Rape," by Richard Straka, which appears in the February 2003, Volume 72, No. 2, issue of the F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin about halfway down the page. Like most such things, it's unpleasant reading (which explains in part why when I went to graduate school I focused on the history of science in China instead of Chinese criminology, an area where I already had some background.)

In conclusion, Burma's a mess. Refugees from Burma are now pouring out into four different countries (at least), these being Thailand, Malaysia, India and China.

Refugees and immigrants are not always nice to each other. They are people. Like people everywhere, they sometimes commit crimes on one another. The exact rates of this are unknown and under-reported. However, the issue is much politicized. However, those who deny that these problems exist are facilitating the rape, extortion and victimization through domestic violence of the refugees and immigrants who become or are likely to become crime victims.

Burmese refugees, Christians, Church and religion

2009-08-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

Kept a long time promise to a Karen friend today and went to church with him. The church was a fundamentalist Christian church and very popular among Karen and other refugees from Burma. Karen formal dress worn at formal occasions consists of a hand woven vest or dress.

To illustrate, I've stolen a few pictures from http://www.stolaf.edu/people/leming/film.htm These pictures are of Karen people in the Chiang Mai region of Thailand but in Rensselaer many dress up like this for special occasions including Sunday morning church services. If you'd like to see some pictures I took of local Karen women dressed in traditional dress during the water festival you may look here. According to "The Karen Revolution in Burma: Diverse Voices, Uncertain Ends," by Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, 2008. East West Center, Washington D.C., although most Karen are Buddhist, most S'gaw Karen are Christian and most (but not all) Karen refugees who come to the United States are S'Gaw Karen. This is, in part, because the S'gaw Karen have a long history of conflict and friction with the Burmese. This friction was excaberated as the British made a practice of using Karen Christian militias to attack the Burmese when conflict broke out between the Burmese and the British. In fact, many Karen during world war two were under the impression that once the Japanese were ousted from their region they would be given their own new, independent homeland. Sadly, I think, this did not come to pass.

One of my Karen friends speaks of wishing to join the U.S. Army (A surprising number of young refugees consider enlisting in the military. I say surprising because so many of them are war survivors. Usually the ASVAB, military aptitude tests, give them trouble.) He once told me proudly that his grandfather had been a solider in the British army and fought against the Burmese.

Interestingly the Karen dress was worn not only by the Karen themselves but also by a couple of the Americans present. If the Karen like a person they will sometimes give him such a piece of clothing and it is a valuable thing indeed as each takes hours to weave. (The time I was offered one it was too small for me and although I was promised a larger one, it still has not come. I once considered a project to import and sell them but even at Thai refugee camp labor rates the cost would have been quite high for each piece of clothing and the resale have to be done carefully. It's not impossible, but few people would buy one on impulse at a consignment store, for instance.)

I am normally not a church goer and this church was quite fundamentalist.

About two thirds into the service, the congregation broke up quickly and did so by language. Upstairs there were two groups, the Burmese language group and the (S'gaw) Karen language group. Both groups were intended to offer Bible readings and lessons on salvation with questions and answers from the attendees. There was supposed to also be a Karenni language group (the Karenni are another Burmese ethnic group who are distinctly different from the Karen) but, it was explained, "the devil had dealt them a hand" and the Karenni-English interpreter could not come that week so they had substituted a Karenni-Burmese interpreter instead and put the Karenni with the Burmese language group. (Incidentally the Burmese language interpreter was a very intelligent, hard working Karen, not Burmese, man who had lived in Rangoon (Yangon).)

The theme of the service was salvation through Christ and the lessons were Bible based. Verses were read and explained. Should one wish, I took notes. We were encouraged to do so and to mark up our Bibles if we had brought them. Interestingly the church used the King James version of the Bible with its old style language, something I wondered about in the context that a large portion of the attendees spoke English as a second language and that to varying degrees.

A friend of mine let me look at his Bible, a Bible that was entirely in the Karen script, a script which as explained in an earlier post is a variant of the Burmese script. I've been reviewing the script again and was able to find the book of Luke and pick out the chapters by number. (Of course, it helped that I knew where to look.)

Verses cited were Romans 3:10, Romans 3:23, Romans 5:8, Romans 10:9-13, and Romans 6:23, as well as John 3:16, Revelation 20:10 and Acts 2:41 and, interestingly, the Old Testament verse Isaiah 59:2. Like most fundamentalist Christian churches these verses heavily emphasize the teachings of Paul and his doctrine of accepting Christ as a personal savior in order to wash away the pre-existing sin in all of us that blocks are union with God and admission to Heaven. For those who wish to see the verses themselves, I've found http://www.biblegateway.com to be a very good site for Bible study.

The Pastor of the church is an American man who I genuinely believe cares very much about the well-being of his congregation and its members. (We bumped into each once when I was delivering some couches to some refugees who had slipped through the cracks and never received them from the refugee center. This was after I stopped working at the center. Curiously, of all the pieces of furniture to acquire, couches are often the easiest to find but the most difficult to move and deliver. This is not coincidence. Getting couches is easy if one knows where to ask and one has a vehicle and manpower to move them. We discussed working together to, of all things, move a couch once, but the refugee who owned the couch decided to simply abandon it when he moved and apparently it got left for the next tenants.)

Songs came from something called "The All American Church Hymnal" and we sang a song entitled "He Lives" from 1933 and another called "Stepping in the Light" from 1917. They sounded evocative of the years they were written.

The only part of the service I really wondered about was the time spent promoting a private Christian school that cost $100 a month for tuition plus registration fees. This, like everything else in the service, was also done in Karen and Burmese. Of course, to some extent, this hints at a larger issue. Should one include newly arrived refugees in the group (whatever group one is referring to) when presenting options that one personally does not think they should choose due to their financial status and lack of experience in this country? Or should you exclude them, thereby making the decision for them? Personally I think it would be a mistake for a newly arrived refugee to spend a large portion of his or her income to send children to a private school when there is an equally good, perhaps even better, public school available for free. But do I have the right to not offer them the choice were I to offer it to others or should I just decide what is right for them using my own judgment? There's no easy answer to this question.

Let me say, just for the record, I do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, nor do I believe in an after life or Heaven as it was described. I do not see Jesus as a mystical deity who brings salvation, but instead I see Jesus mostly as a troublemaker, a man who pointed out hypocrisy within the doctrinal institutions of his time, so much that finally the authorities decided he had to be done away with and nailed him up on a cross, but whose message lived on long after he did. And, of course, I mean that in a good way. (I try to resist labels, and prefer not to knock the means by which others find meaning so long as they aren't harming others, but if forced to I would fall in the category of cynical agnostic.) Yet as I become older, I become more tolerant of fundamentalist Christianity as it does give some people what they need and, quite frankly, there's nothing I can do about it anyway should I object.

The refugees who come here from Burma are a mixed bunch in terms of religion. They include many Christians as well as Muslims, Hindus and, of course, Buddhists. As Burma today engages in great religious persecution the religious affiliations of the refugees are not anywhere near the same proportions as the greater Burmese population still in Asia. Some day I will try to write about the others.

Domestic violence rates, culture and refugees.

2009-08-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

It is very difficult sometimes to know how to respond to someone who believes that they are both knowledgeable and correct when one knows them to be wrong. And when they consider their point of view to be morally superior as well, then it is extremely awkward to know how to respond. For better or worse, my initial reaction is to just tell them to go away. There are, however, many problems with such a response and one of them though is that you can bet your booty that no matter how wrong they may be there are others somewhere out there who agree with them.

Therefore a disagreement has arisen on these pages about whether or not culture effects the rate and form of domestic violence among people and refugees in particular.

As stated I am not an expert on domestic violence but have studied many forms of violence including child abuse. There is a recognized correlation between rates of violence of many kinds and poverty. This is sad but easily confirmed. (In fact, when I was in graduate school one of the campus publications came under fire for publishing an article arguing that African-Americans committed crimes at a higher rate than Whites. A sociology professor of mine took one look at it and said, "Their entire argument could be reframed by removing the racial statistics and just correlating the violence with the poverty rates among the two populations. If done that way their facts would remain the same but the racial discrepancy would probably largely disappear.")

So, sadly, an assumption could be made that since refugees tend to live in poverty at a higher rate than the dominant population of the United States, they are likely to have a higher rate of violence of all kinds, including domestic vioelnce. Again, this is an assumption, a theory, and nothing more but I suspect further research would bear it out. If found such a correlation would be independent of culture and merely reflect the stresses of living under worse conditions and in neighborhoods with higher rates of crime and violence.

And yes, of course, domestic violence affects all populations but the issue is at what rate? I would suggest and believe it to be documented that such factors as economic independence, availability of marriage counselors, availability of good babysitters, access to economic opportunities, even access to automobiles and transportation to flee a bad situation and ability to afford a hotel room after one flees all affect the likelihood of domestic violence either taking place or continuing.

But let's set aside economics and look at the effect of culture. Defining culture is difficult. Defining domestic violence is difficult. But we can get a quick image of whether or not domestic violence rates vary from culture to culture by comparing their rates in different nations, although we must also express that caveat that culture and nation are not synonymous. And of course one should dig deeper to find out how these rates were determined before accepting them. But if we can prove that domestic violence rates vary from nation to nation then it seems logical to assume that they vary within the United States among people from different nations although, for several reasons, the actual statistics would probably vary somewhat. (For instance, should we find a nation where domestic violence is accepted and there exists no legal mechanism to stop it, we could assume that this hypothetical ethnic group would have a high rate of domestic violence in the United States when compared to other ethnic groups although we would have to also assume that since these actions are illegal and our nation does have legal mechanisms to prevent them, then the rate would lower here than in the hypothetical home nation as some of these legal mechanisms should have lowered the rate once this hypothetical ethnic group is within our borders.

To begin casual research, one place one can go is "Wikipedia." With all its flaws, Wikipedia is often still useful, especially when carefully footnoted and in the initial stages of doing research.:

Therefore from the Wikipedia article on Domestic violence accessed at 9:51pm Eastern Standard Time on August 19, 2009 we find the following large paragraph reproduced here in its entirety.:

"Statistics

Main article: Domestic violence statistics

Domestic violence occurs across the world, in various cultures,^[14] and affects people across society, irrespective of economic status.^[6] In the United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics women are about six times as likely as men to experience intimate partner violence.^[15]^[16] Percent of women surveyed (national surveys) who were ever physically assaulted by an intimate partner: Barbados (30%), Canada (29%), Egypt (34%), New Zealand (35%), Switzerland (21%), United States (22%).^[17] Some surveys in specific places report figures as high as 50-70% of women surveyed who were ever physically assaulted by an intimate partner.^[17] Others, including surveys in the Philippines and Paraguay, report figures as low as 10%.^[17] South Africa is said to have the highest statistics of gender-based violence in the world and this includes rape and domestic violence (Foster 1999; The Integrated Regional Network [IRIN], Johannesburg, South Africa, 25 May 2002).^[18] 80% of women surveyed in rural Egypt said that beatings were common and often justified, particularly if the woman refused to have sex with her husband.^[19] In India, around 70% of women are victims of domestic violence.^[20] The Human Rights Watch found that up to 90% of women in Pakistan were subject to verbal, sexual, emotional or physical abuse, within their own homes.^[21] Up to two-thirds of women in certain communities in Nigeria's Lagos State say they are victims to domestic violence.^[22] Statistics published in 2004, show that the rate of domestic violence victimisation for Indigenous women in Australia may be 40 times the rate for non-Indigenous women.^[23] The rate of intimate partner violence in the U.S. has declined since 1993.^[24] Results will vary, depending on specific wording of survey questions, how the survey is conducted, the definition of abuse or domestic violence used, the willingness or unwillingness of victims to admit that they have been abused and other factors.

Martin S. Fiebert examined 219 studies on intimate partner violence and concluded that "women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners".^[16] However, studies have shown that the nature and consequences of spousal violence are much more serious for women than for men; the severity of the abuse inflicted on women is worse. A Canadian study showed that 7% of women and 6% of men end up abused by their current or former partners, but female victims of spousal violence were more than twice as likely to be injured as male victims. Women were also three times more likely to fear for their life, and twice as likely to be the targets of more than 10 violent episodes. Overall, female victims were twice as likely as male victims to be stalked by a previous spouse. ^[25]

Domestic violence against women in lesbian relationships is about as common as domestic violence against women in heterosexual relationships.^[26]"

Please note that during the cut and paste process the numbering system became distorted. Footnote "14" became "1" and "15" became "2." Should you wish to check a footnote then please add thirteen to the number shown below.

^ Watts C, Zimmerman C (April 2002). "Violence against women: global scope and magnitude". Lancet 359 (9313): 1232–7. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)08221-1. PMID 11955557.
^ Bachman, Ronet and Linda E. Saltzman (August 1995) (PDFNCJ 154348). Violence against Women: Estimates from the Redesigned Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/femvied.pdf.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d References Examining Assaults By Women On Their Spouses Or Male Partners: An Annotated Bibliography
^ ^a ^b ^c "Ending Violence Against Women - Population Reports" (PDF). Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE). December 1999. http://www.infoforhealth.org/pr/l11/violence.pdf.
^ The Interrelationship Between Gender-based Violence and HIV/AIDS in South Africa. (PDF) Journal of International Women's Studies Vol. 6#1, November 2004.
^ Widespread violence against women in Africa documented. Source: UNFPA.
^ India tackles domestic violence. BBC News. October 26, 2006.
^ PAKISTAN: Domestic violence endemic, but awareness slowly rising. IRIN UN. March 11, 2008.
^ Half of Nigeria's women experience domestic violence. afrol News.
^ Domestic Violence in Australia—an Overview of the Issues. Parliamentary Library.
^ "Intimate Partner Violence in the U.S. - Overview". Bureau of Justice Statistics. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/intimate/overview.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-15.
^ [1]
^ Fact Sheet: Lesbian Partner Violence

==

Should you wish further information you may consult a good library or the internet. You may also try google or google scholar

Should this not convince you that rates of domestic violence vary among cultures, well . . ., I'll go back to "Plan A" and just say "Please go away and argue with someone else. I just don't have the time or interest, especially if you have a moral or political agenda, when you can go to the library instead."

As an aside, (always an aside) I recently skimmed through the high recommended work, "The Little Black Book of Violence --What every young man needs to know about fighting," by Lawrence A. Kane and Kris Wilder, 2009. YMAA Publication Center, Wolfeboro N.H. On pages 93-99 the work contains a nice but brief discussion of men as domestic violence victims, a subject that I feel is often much ignored.

All the best,

Peace.

Peter Huston

Yet more on Serjanej and refugee programs

2009-08-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

Oh my oh my oh my. Ever have one of those experiences where things suddenly seem to spiral out of control? If you'd like to know what it's like check the last few blogs posts, the ones on refugee issues and domestic violence. But do me a favor please, let's all remember that some refugees are domestic violence victims when we do. Let's remember that the important people in this discussion are not the young idealists or my thoughts on them. The important people are the refugees who are the ones who often need a little bit of special help and assistance when they arrive in this country.

Some people don't get that. They think this blog is about them. They think their programs are more important than refugees. (Heck, let's be honest here. If this blog is about anyone it's "me!" Yeah, that's right. Me, me, me, self-absorbed me. Although I wish it wasn't so as there are more interesting subjects out there.)

So, first please take a moment to read this, a post that I consider my best researched one on domestic violence and refugees.

Then . . . you can check out these if you wish to dig deeper into this controversy.

First, the newspaper article that causes all the controversy is being presented in PDF format by Serjanej's law firm. Apparently the law firm and Serjanej are quite proud of it.

Should you not like PDF format you can see it in a different format here.

Finally, should you wish, you may find an article on Serjanej and his background, taken from his college alumni magazine, here.

Again, I have never met Serjanej and know little about him save for what I have read on-line. This controversy began when I liked his quotes in the article and used them in a blog piece I wrote on domestic violence and refugees. Like me, Serjanej feels that the prevalence and form of domestic violence can be shaped and affected by culture. Controversy arose, well . . . read the blogs and comments if you wish if you want to know that crazy story. I'm just presenting the documents to provide more background should anyone wish to dig deeper.

Refugee images

2009-08-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

Several posts below I included my thoughts on a local newspaper article about a refugee I knew, a young Karen man who came from Burma after several years in a refugee camp in Thailand.

He helped me at the furniture van and he's a very likable guy and these days I am teaching him to drive. This means I see him almost once a week or so. A few weeks ago, a group of people I know went out for "Art night," a once a month art festival where local arts of all kinds are displayed and shown off in an interactive manner. This gentleman was among us. With us also were some Chinese graduate students from the local University at Albany, including one who is an enthusiastic amateur photographer.

Here's the Times Union, local news image of a refugee, seemingly sad, unhappy, lost, in need of help. And that's what the article describes and the slant that the reporter put on it.

By contrast, here's the photo of the same person from the Chinese graduate student, someone who had never been told that this man had spent time in a refugee camp and just knew him as a cheerful recent immigrant from Thailand who was accompanying him on an interesting outing. (It's not at all uncommon for refugees to have difficulty identifying what country the come from in simple terms as they usually fled one to another and then came here. Therefore many Burmese refugees, including many Karen, will tell you they are from Thailand if you ask them what country they come from.)

Quite a contrast. Personally, I think the second one is a lot more like the guy I know. Then again, the Burmese refugees I know are all sort of like this. Very friendly, cheerful people who are a lot of fun to meet and joke with but when you poke under the surface and get to know them will tell you stories of deep and terrible tragedies and great losses which have marked their lives. It's an odd mixture that takes a bit of time to get used to.

[Note: I do take issues of confidence seriously. Then again, I also know that X, the gentleman in this picture, loves to see his picture displayed and was very pleased with The Times Union article and having his story told. He's thrilled whenever anyone acknowledges having seen it. I can't imagine this will upset him. ]

Thoughts on refugee programs.

2009-08-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

I have been accused of mis-representing and under-respecting something called "Legal Rights and Responsibilities in the United States" workshop which is documented to have been run at the refugee center in the summer of 2008.

Truth is, I don't know anything about the workshop. No refugee I know has ever attended it or at least spoken to me of it if they did. During the (relatively brief) time I worked at the refugee center I was not aware of the program ever being run. When I saw refugees I knew in a program at the center, I'd later ask them what the program had been and none ever mentioned this one.

I only mentioned it because I was and am concerned about domestic violence among refugees (and other people, too, of course) and, like Artan Serjanej, the former program volunteer and 43 year old former refugee who became an attorney, believe that in some cases the prevalence and forms taken by domestic violence are related to culture and therefore need to be addressed in a manner that takes these cultural differences into account. This is a view that fits in well with my discussions on life, romance, marriage and problems therein with refugees as well as my multi-cultural background.

If the refugees have a real problem with housing discrimination, they haven't told me, but then again the bulk of the refugees I know personally have not lived in one residence and settled down yet long enough to have their own real housing or, if they have, they seem perfectly content to live there and have no problem with their landlord or else own their own place. They've usually been here less than a year and therefore are still occasionally shifting residences as they try to find their niche and their ideal roommates, etc. Although there are many problems with refugee's housing in the USA these tend to be of a much more "logistical" or "mechanical" nature. (i.e. the refugee has more rent than they can comfortably afford or they have some problem because they don't know how to do something involving their house and no one has ever told them how to do it. For instance, when speaking to a landlord a couple months ago, once we established a rapport, he asked me to also check and see if the refugee tenants were using the drain covers in their kitchen sinks. They tended not to use these and then kitchen waste would wash down the drain in unnecessarily large quantities, a situation that will eventually lead to a clogged drain.)

However, there is a nice blog piece on a similar-looking program here. I suggest you look it over. You can check it out if you'd like. You will also note that according to the article the materials for the program had not been translated into Burmese, Karen or Nepali, and these are the three groups that I have been spending the most time around during the last few months.

Should someone wish details on the program, Una was good enough to list the names of contact people who should know if the program is still running so if one really wishes to ask. Also USCRI-Albany does have a facebook page where one can be "friends" with them if one wishes and I'm sure it's an interesting source for sanitized news on the organization. (oddly enough, finding USCRI in the telephone book can be tricky. This was a pet-peeve of mine as my job was, in part,. to get people to call us up and give us things, but then again because the answering end of our phone system had serious problems too, it really didn't make sense to encourage people to call us until after we found an efficient way to answer and process those telephone calls that we were allegedly trying to get people to make.)

(Facebook's computer has suggested more than once that I consider becoming "friends" on facebook with USCRI-Albany (basically by setting up a link on their system). This is a funny idea that I shared with several people I know. To which a relative replied, "You already once tried being friends with USCRI-Albany. It didn't work out." and we all laughed.)

So, if one wishes, you can ask USCRI-Albany about the things they do and they will tell you that they are doing many good things and doing them all quite well. This, however, does not fit in with my experiences with the organization, and one of my criticisms of them is that during my time there the director was often much more concerned with looking good to the general public than doing things well or even assessing whether or not things were being done halfway competently.

If you want an honest, neutral, unsolicited opinion on the refugee center, find someone from Burma who has been in this area for more than five years and ask *THEM* about the performance of the refugee center. They will have had contact with the center. They will have some idea of how they get things done and the manner in which they operate. *DON'T* listen to me. *DON'T* listen to the interns. Just find people from Burma who have been in the area for five years or more and ask them what they *REALLY* think about the refugee center, should you wish to know how it *REALLY* functions.

Therefore, personally, I suggest that people not ask them about programs they may or may not be running if they are merely curious. You will distract them from doing the things they should be doing and that, quite frankly, I know are not always getting done. Furthermore, what I found during my time there that the director was overly concerned with addressing questions from the general public and put these at a higher priority than addressing questions from staff or refugees. So, if you wish to ask, ask, but when you do be aware that you are taking time away from helping people who need it, and that the answers may be slanted towards making the organization look good.

But, let me take some time and discuss both this blog and my personal thoughts on this progam and refugees.

I like to write. I enjoy other cultures. I also have one of those "type-A" hands-on personalities and when I see a problem I consider fixing it and when I can I try to do so. I am an ex-employee and former volunteer at the local refugee center and through this experience came to know many refugees. I am aware of many problems with the center (as stated during my time there I felt it was the worst run place I have ever worked in my life). I know how to do the job I had well (furniture donations director) well and know most people don't have any idea of how this job would work at all. I also know more than many people about what the lives of some refugees are like and some of the things they need. And I am learning what I can about Burmese culture and history and such when I have the time. (Which means that with my background, I literally have several hundred books on China around here, but only about a dozen on Burma. --but this is a dozen more than most people in the USA have read.)

So sometimes I try to share these things here. This is not a dissertation. This is not a book. It's not a journalism piece or even an op-ed piece. This is a blog. It's a rambling, off-the-cuff, disjointed collection of writings on disconnected topics written as much for myself as anyone else that hopefully some people find useful and that, when combined with other sources, will hopefully give them a more complete picture of how refugees live and how refugee resettlement works. (In fact, I probably should work less on this blog and spend more time working on the book I am working on which is actually a popular history of the Peking Man digs.)

My original intent was to focus more on detailed information on how to run a furniture donation and distribution program. In fact, I've got a list of topics around here on the subject that I still haven't gotten around to, but I find that those are not the posts that people read the most often so these days I tend to write about what ever strikes me mood, be it lightbulbs or sneaky, wife-abusing Nepali-Burmese or what have you.

As for the refugees I know, I do not spend time with all refugees everywhere who have come from the Capital District.

Refugees can be very broadly divided into two rough categories. The people who had a fairly well developed standard of living and then lost it, and those who never had a fairly well developed standard of living at any point in their life and thus many things here are new to them.

So, lets say for instance that you have two refugees. I'll base these on real people muddle up all the details.:

Refugee A is a 50 year old woman from Afghanistan who used to teach high school mathematics but lost her position when the Taliban came to power and forbade women to teach. She studied some English in college but doesn't speak it comfortably. As things got even worse she had to flee the country and wound up with her family in the Ukraine for several years before being allowed to come to the United States as a refugee.

Clearly this is an educated person and chances are back in Afghanistan she lived in a house with electricity, a refrigerator and running water and several books and appliances including a radio and television. She probably knows how to use a library and knows where to go to get assistance with problems and has some idea of what legal rights and responsibilities are or should be under most governments.

Refugee B, by contrast, is a 20 year old young Karen man who is from the area of the Thai-Burmese border. When he was 14 his parents paid a couple soldiers of the Karen National Union to take him to Thailand and hand him over to an uncle who was in the refugee camps. There were several motivations for this including fear of him becoming further entangled in the war and the chance to study in Karen language schools in the refugee camp instead of the Burmese language schools in Burma. He probably does not have as much experience with refrigerators and has never owned a television prior to coming to the USA. He does not have anywhere near the familiarity with rights and responsibilities as refugee A nor does he have anywhere near the idea of how to go about recognizing or addressing a discrimination issue or even if such issues an be addressed at all or if instead, like so many things, they must just be accepted and forgotten. He is also much more likely to fall between the cracks of an organization like USCRI-Albany. This is especially the case if he works a job with daytime hours and cannot visit the center during its business hours. (And most of the young Karen refugees I know prefer to work long hours. In fact, I yell at them and remind them that they need to set aside some time to attend English class and plan for their future instead of just trying to earn money all the time or they won't be successful in five years. Part of it I suspect is that they like earning the money, but I also suspect they find working and keeping busy to be a good way to deal with stress. Also, I suspect that as newly arrived outsiders, they prefer environments where they are sure they understand the expectations and work settings tend to be such a place.) Having never had much in the way of fancy housing, emotionally he's perfectly content to live in a small room in someone else's apartment or house or even, in some cases, a bed in a room he shares with others.

Now the second group is the sort of refugee I personally tend to spend more time around. As stated this is the kind of refugee who is not likely to attend a rights and responsibility workshop particularly if he can be working and earning money instead. He is not likely to have housing anyway and instead is renting a single room or even just a bed in the residence of some other Burmese-refugee who has been here longer than he has and is a bit more settled in.

Also such refugees tend to be more optimistic. Chances really are that they will have a much better life here than they would have had at home although no doubt about it things will be difficult here too. And, if they find a ratty old chair on the sidewalk, as some do, and take it home, they will use it and feel happy that they have a chair. By contrast refugee A is remembering that when she was 30 in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over, she had a much nicer house with many nicer chairs than anything that is likely to be found on the sidewalks of Albany. Same for televisions and appliances. Refugee A remembers having better ones and does so with a sense of loss. Refugee B is overjoyed to have them at all, especially since it is his first time owning one.

So, therefore, although I think I have talked to about a dozen or slightly more different refugee individuals in the past week, they were not a carefully-selected, representative cross section.

And the refugees with jobs are usually busy during the day time, the time when the refugee center holds it's programs. And the ones who are more motivated tend to think before attending programs that might or might not be useful.

Additionally, I question many of the statements that have been made about the program in this comments page. It should probably be stated that in my opinion, few refugees will actually come to refugee center and say, "I am being discriminated against." They are much more likely to come to the refugee center, and say, "I need a new place to live. The landlord wants to throw me out."

As for discrimination against refugees, in the past year I only know one refugee who claimed to be discriminated against. He applied for a union job and when he never heard anything said "They must not want Asians." I flipped out, as I don't like people who play the race card and feel sorry for themselves when the fault is their own, and said "No, it's probably that you don't have a high school degree, have limited job experience and don't know anyone in the union or who knows anyone in the union, and if you want the job you should get working on those things." I'd actually spent a lot of time working with him trying to help him address each and every one of these problems and thereby make himself more employable but he rarely followed up on the suggestions I made and instead hoped I could just magically do things somehow for him. The issue was also unnecessarily complicated as I suspect he was lying to me about various actions and accomplishments in his past which meant my suggestions were based on misinformation and thus my advice not very good. And, why yes, he actually was Nepali-Burmese should anyone ask and his last attempt to get ahead in America was based on charging other refugees for car rides while driving them around without a driver's license. (Yeah, I take confidentiality issues seriously, right up to the point where it looks like people are going to get hurt or killed.)

On the other hand, I do think that there is one road test examiner in Albany County who either does not like foreign people or who just plain doesn't like people of any kind. Since I've only heard two reports of his behavior and they both came from South Asian descended refugees, I really can't say what his problem is.

Refugees: What exactly is it that you do anyway to help refugees?

2009-08-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

Sooner or later, someone is going to read this and say, "Now what exactly is it that this guy does to help refugees anyway?"

This is a valid question so I'll answer it with the project I completed this afternoon.

The story begins about two months ago. I was driving around Albany and spotted two Burmese refugees who used to be my English students sitting at the bus stop. I was in no hurry and had not seen them for a while so I stopped and said "hello." They were glad to see me, just as I was glad to see them so we chatted a bit. They had just come from the refugee center English class but had discovered that it had been canceled after they had arrived. So I gave them a ride to where they were going and we all played catch up. (Should anyone wonder, this conversation was in simple English, simple English being grammatically correct English with the vocabulary, idioms, cultural references and phrasal verbs being carefully chosen. It is distinctly different from broken English or pidgin English, which are said to be inappropriate to speak to foreign people save in the utmost emergency. Although I do not really speak Burmese, one reason these folks like me is because I can occasionally spit out mispronounced phrases in the language and, not only that, but I do so with an accent and frequent mistakes that allows them the chance to cheerfully correct my mistakes and manglings.)

Anyway, turns out one of these people had an important place they wished to go and a transportation problem that made it difficult to get there.

It sounded correctable to me so I said nothing and filed the problem away and later looked into it a little bit.

I figured the worst thing to do was to offer assistance with this problem then screw up and not be able to actually do anything.

So I quietly did some google searches, made some calls, sent away for some information, consulted with some people familiar with this problem, including some bona fide experts as well as a friend who has a disability and cannot drive but still manages to get anywhere he wants to go and has cheerfully done so for almost 20 years with only minor incidents and mishaps. For my purposes, this was an expert.

(Of these minor public transportation related adventures of his, the most exciting, perhaps, was the time he jogged into a bus stop sign at full speed one afternoon and almost knocked himself out, but instead found himself lying on the ground stunned. Fortunately, perhaps, two seeming-to-be-but-perhaps-not-quite good Samaritans picked him up, dazed and banged up, and brought him back to their apartment and promised to nurse him back to good health and then send him on his way. Alas, however, it turned out they were devious sodomites and instead, as he lay on their couch trying to regain his wits, they popped some Gay porn into their VCR. When the images appeared on their living room television screen, he responded. "Hey guys!" he screamed, "This isn't what I'm into!" and with that he then jumped up off their couch and ran out their door and jogged back to the bus stop, this time managing to avoid hitting the bus stop sign pole as he did and soon making his way back onto the bus and eventually making his way home, unscathed and safe from the salacious fondlings of the twin devious sodomites who had attempted to besmirch his virtue in his hour of desperation and need. For clarification, this gentleman-expert is not a refugee. He's lived his whole life in the USA, but, interestingly, his great-uncle on his mother's side was, in fact, a refugee from Palestine, an area he's studied extensively. Note: I actually have a lot of Gay friends, but they are not devious sodomites. They are good hearted and benevolent sodomites.)

So, after several weeks of work I was now fully prepared to address this refugee's transportation problem. I had a plan, I had a back-up plan if that failed, I had a long range plan to prevent future outbreaks of the problem ever again, and I had exciting and truly neat information that was peripheral to these plans but should make the person happy. I also had a few phone numbers to call if these plans got stuck at any point. I paper clipped the pieces all together in appropriate ways and placed it in a big orange folder pocket that I had bought at Walmart for 59 cents.

In the meantime, I saw the refugees with the problem again, when I bumped into them at a Burmese event in Rensselaer as I was dropping off one of my driving students after a driving lesson. I discussed the transportation problem with a relative of the person and decided that there was indeed a problem there and it was fixable.

So, prepared and ready, I called up the refugee and asked if I could visit. They eagerly agreed. So my friend and I came together and hung out with a few members of the family.

They had a nice apartment in a run down neighborhood. It was nice and clean. This family had been here for over a year, so they had several appliances and such, including a nice looking computer. On the computer they were watching a Burmese film using skype.

When the time seemed right, we addressed the problem, only to find out that it had already been addressed by true professionals from somewhere in Albany (not the refugee center) and was on its way to being fixed already. Good news for them but a little embarrassing for me and my friend.

So we hung out for a couple hours and gave them the peripheral information that I'd uncovered, which I think they enjoyed and found interesting, and taught them such important things as the fact that there was an Alive at Five music series each Thursday in Albany during the summer with free concerts and that the Albany Institute of History and Art not only existed but that it had a pair of Egyptian mummies on exhibit included a mummified cat. These people are, after all, new in this country so it's important that someone give them such vital information. There are, after all, dozens of Burmese refugees who do not realize that they are living within just a few miles or less of a genuine millenia-old, mummified Egyptian cat. And they don't even know the channels to go through to find out this information!

(We opted not to tell them the story of the time my friend ran into the stop sign and was shown Gay porn because, well, because it's just plain a stupid story and it would be dumb to tell it. I do have some class, after all. Not much, but a little.)

In return for this vital information they gave us slices of fresh fruit and iced tea which was very nice.

Then we decided to go our separate ways but before we left, they sprung something on us. "Hey, while you're here, what is this thing anyway?" and handed us a slip of paper. Turned out it was a three month old prescription for medication. Since they hadn't understood what it was, they'd never bothered to do anything with it, but had just placed it in a drawer suspecting it might be important someday. I got on their computer, discovered the medication could be quite important indeed, and then told them that it was a prescription, using my Burmese dictionary to explain the point.

We told them that they should discuss the situation with the doctor very soon and in the future take all prescriptions to the pharmacy. If the pharmacy refused to fill the prescription, then they should ask the pharmacy why and take the matter seriously.

We made sure they understood these procedures, gave clarifying examples and then as they thanked us said good bye and went on our way.

This is a typical thing that happens when one tries to help refugees. You show up for one problem, discover things are not as you thought they were, have some pleasant times hanging out, everything looks cool and then you stumble across something else that just seems completely to come out of nowhere and has some potentially catastrophic problems somewhere down the line.

So that's the result of my latest project to help refugees. Not glamorous perhaps, but that's the sort of thing I try to do when I can.

Refugees, Rambo and the Funniest Domestic Violence films of all time.

2009-08-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

Author's note: I'm starting to over-post and go in to competition with myself. If you haven't read it yet, please read two posts below as it contains much more vital and basic information on dealing with refugees and domestic violence that is difficult to obtain. This post is about half silly and half serious but contains very little useful information on domestic violence and refugees.

Good news! I got a call today and things are moving along much better in the domestic violence case that was eating me up. The worst behaviors are gone and the people are in place to straighten things out. Life is good. So I can stop acting like a crazy person.

(Hint: How to know Pete's upset. First, he overeats, then he smokes, then he pukes and coughs because he has no tolerance for cigarettes, then he lights up another one wondering why he is doing this because he really doesn't like cigarettes and they make him sick, and then he gets this hacking cough and pukes up his lunch because he coughed so much and then feels tired all the time because cigarettes also leave him drained. Yes, it's a subtle bunch of clues, but if you watch carefully you might note them during these rare periods.) So that's a good thing, a very good thing. If nothing else, I can stop puking, coughing and buying Marlboros at the incredible price of $8.00 a pack. (Actually I stopped doing this a week ago, but there was a period during this time when I did it.)

Which means that now it's time to sit back and relax a bit. And, sometimes, I relax by writing.

I mentioned earlier that in societies where arranged marriages and such are common, then often there is enough of a community and family structure that should domestic violence occur members of the community often intervene. As mentioned previously, I am an intellectual with a great deal of education and cross cultural knowledge. My depth and expertise in the intricacies of Asian cultures is superb.

And how did I get this vast knowledge? Well, in no small part by watching fine films like this one: "Shaolin Challenges Ninja" or "Heroes of the East." (should you click this link make sure you watch the last quarter of this lengthy film trailer. Its integral for understanding and getting the feel for what comes next.)

Although some say that Mr. and Mrs. Smith is the funniest domestic violence film ever made, my vote goes to this film. Should you wish more details check here or here. (As an aside, I have been told that it is possible for Burmese refugees sitting in refugee camps in Malaysia and Thailand to receive enough international media to actually keep up on the gossip about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. And some do. Scary isn't it?

What movies do refugees watch? Sometimes they watch these terrible Korean movies with the dialogue in Korean and the subtitles in Burmese. In another apartment I know, right smack dab in the midst of Albany's scariest neighborhood, live a Karen family and every time I visit the TV has on these Karen language, nationalist patriotic films. But if there's one movie that Burmese refugees seem to love it's Rambo 4, the latest installment in the Rambo series, this is the one where Rambo goes in to Burma and assists the Karen people and rescues an attractive missionary, destroying large elements of the Burmese army in the process. (In fact, the film set a record of sorts for sheer quantity of cinematic mayhem and has the most on-screen killing of people by the Rambo character of any film in this bloody series yet. And to make it even better, there's even a scene where our hero, John Rambo, taunts some Burmese soldiers in Burmese. Multiple refugees have told me it's great and I must see it. So far, I've avoided this social obligation, but I'm not sure how long I can hold out. Refugees have also told me that it is a criminal offense punishable by several years imprisonment to watch Rambo 4 in Burma (Myanmar.) (Some of them are also trying to find me a wife too. I resist this as well, as they often seem to wish to skip the getting-to-know-one-another-before-making-a-commitment part of the romance that us silly, crazy, sexually immoral Westerners find so important. I'm sorry, call me wacky, but I just don't believe in commitment before the first date. Actually, I'm not sure which is scarier --watching "Rambo 4" or getting married to a woman I barely know. Depends if she's cute, I guess.)

Which brings me back to "Shaolin Challenges Ninja" or "Heroes of the East."

The plot of this fine film begins with a Chinese man, a man who later turns out to be a kung fu master, hiding in bed. He is fearful because his father has arranged a marriage for him, today is his wedding day, the bride has arrived from Japan and he is fearful she could be quite ugly. Fortunately his friend scouts things out and tells him that the Japanese bride-to-be is actually quite beautiful so he stops faking illness and opts to attend his own wedding ceremony.

Married life works out for our hero, at least up until the rumors begin to fly that he is beating his wife. "But I never beat my wife!" he proclaims. But his father has come to visit, to lecture him on the evils of beating his wife, because it is said, everyone has heard him beating his wife. "But I don't," he says. "I really don't."

Turns out his wife has been practicing Japanese karate in the backyard and doing so rather loudly, making great yelling, crashing and screaming sounds in the backyard when our hero is not around. She also likes to karate chop the heads off of the stone statues in the backyard, each time screaming loudly as she does it.

"Stop it," he cries. "When you do this Japanese karate people think I beat you. You must do Chinese kung fu instead." And he demonstrates the flowing silent Chinese martial arts. "Japanese Karate is not lady-like and besides the Chinese martial arts really are superior to the Japanese ones anyway."

Ooops! Bad thing to say. Next thing you know she's trying to force him to prove it and chasing him all around the house trying to punch and kick him to prove her nation's karate can beat his nation's kung fun.

Well, he shows her, naturally, but then they have to decide which nation's sword arts are superior so they chase each other with swords. Then come the Chinese versus Japanese spear arts, all up and down the stairways with the lovely young newlyweds chasing each other, shouting, taunting and poking and swinging with their spears.

Then come bows and arrows,darts, other martial arts weapons and finally, still trying to one-up him in this contest, she booby traps the entire house to prove the superiority of Japanese ninjutsu over the Chinese martial arts. Well when our hero sets off a boobytrap in his own house and the spears on wires fly across the room, forcing him to narrowly dodge this deadly attack, while, his wife, dressed in a ninja suit, jumps out and giggles about how this is Japanese ninjutsu, he gets a mite upset and tells her, "We Chinese have a name for this too! We call it murder and we think it's dishonorable."

"Why I never," she cries. "You called me dishonorable! I'm going home to mother!" and she storms out of the house and goes back to Japan.

Of course, true love can overcome an obstacle like this. So our hero pines and mopes and tells all his friends how much he misses her. "What do I do?" he says. "I miss her. How do I get her back?"

"Well," they say "write her a letter. And in it tell her that Japanese martial arts are just cheap copies of the much older Chinese martial arts."

"Good idea," he cries, and starts writing.

Ooops! Plan backfires, wife shows up but also along for the ride are a group of Japanese martial arts masters intent on punishing him for this insult. As they say in the writing business, "complications ensue." Ultimately however, both true love and Chinese martial arts triumph over all obstacles.

It's really a great movie, and, as I stated, one of the funniest domestic violence films ever made. Probably even better than Rambo 4.

Refugees, domestic violence, young activists and controversy.

2009-08-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Author's note: I'm starting to over-post and go in to competition with myself. If you haven't read it yet, please read the post below as it contains much more vital and basic information on dealing with refugees and domestic violence that is difficult to obtain. This post basically criticizes past refugee center policies.

As I've mentioned on this blog, one problem with the local refugee center is that many vital positions (and others) are staffed by young college interns who leave their position about the time they become competent at their position. Another implication of this problem is that most Americans and other persons from the developed world do not really understand refugees and who they are and how they think and what they want until they've been around them for a while, which is about the time they leave their position. Not to mention the fact that although people at this point in life are full of energy, idealism and enthusiastic, they often don't quite understand the world or older people, much less older people from a different culture.

Therefore they have a tendency to offer refugees things that they think are important and that they think a refugee should want and not necessarily the things that a refugee actually wants. i.e. poetry lessons being the ultimate example, when offered to people who need jobs, driver's licenses, a basic understanding of American society and bureaucracy, as well as a functional level of English language ability. (For the record, in my experience, the refugees really don't mind these programs. They see them as a chance to do something interesting and practice their English with a friendly American, but that does not mean that these classes are the best use of their time or that they are what they really need.)

Now Americans tend to be very ethnocentric, idealistic people and therefore the way they deal with people who tell them things they don't wish to hear, particularly if these things don't fit their ethnocentric ideals is often interesting. At times, they will go so far as to argue with people about things they know nothing about if these people have experiences that don't meet their idealistic view of the world.

For instance, when I was in my early 20's I went through my Quaker, peace-activist, save-the-world-from-war, all-people-want-peace, USA-is-the-source-of-all-evil-and-I-am-so-ashamed-because-of-it phase. For better or worse, however, at that point I went off to Taiwan and soon found myself in situations and meeting people whose thinking just didn't fit my preconceived notions of how the world should work. These were not just the Asians who were quite eager to go to war and bomb each other (i.e. this was back in the day when some Taiwanese would still lobby for retaking the mainland, and, of course, the Koreans were often perfectly willing to go at it again) but it didn't help either that at the time Taiwan was being used as a training center for persons engaged in combating or preparing to combat the Sandinistas and were therefore directly on the side of the people who I had thought were the "bad guys" in this conflict in which the United States was very much involved. And they were thanking me as a US citizen for providing them with the very assistance that I had protested against just a few months before.

Which meant that I was forced to undergo some painful growth. Alas! Painful growth sucks, it really does, its painful, disillusioning and unpleasant, but, to quote from Richard Ryan, the self defense author, "if you don't acknowledge reality than reality will work against you." So, like so many times in life, you get knocked down, spiritually in this case, and then pick yourself up and trudge ahead once again only with a slightly different perspective.

Which brings us back to this silly issue:

Artan Serjanej was a 43 year old former refugee who put himself through law school and then volunteered at the local refugee center to teach refugees about their rights in the USA as well as the importance of not beating one's wife or dog.

He made some comments to the local newspaper to the effect that some refugee men came from places like he came from (the Muslim country of Albania), where it was acceptable to beat one's wife or children and that therefore he was doing his best to tell them it wasn't acceptable here and keep them out of trouble.

Sadly, the Daily Gazette in Schenectady now has a paid-only reading policy but if you'd like you can read the comments he was quoted as making here at Refugee Resettlement Watch: HERE! Now, Refugee Resettlement Watch is an interesting blog that contains much useful information but they clearly have an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda.* Therefore this article is also mixed in with the bloggist's interesting but not necessarily very nice comments.

Here's some quotes:

“I’m trying to change their idea of what it means to be a man,” he said. “These people are coming from a very patriarchal [read: Islamic] society. The man of the house is the man of the house.”

Serjanej said he understands these attitudes and why the men have them.

“Albania is a very patriarchal [Islamic] society,” he said. “When I was growing up, once in a while my dad would get physically violent with me. We didn’t have a Department of Social Services. Women had no way to complain [about abuse], and it was socially unacceptable for them to do so.”

He said one of the things he tells the men who attend his workshops is that even if their wives do not complain to the police, other people might.

“Even if the wife is silent, outsiders can call the police,” he said.

“I tell them that if you get upset, you cannot use your hands,” Serjanej continued. “I tell them that you can only talk and that you should talk in a quiet voice. A real man doesn’t have to get physical. I try to convey that they can use their mouth and voice and be respected in this country by all."

==

It does look like although Serjanej's comments are undoubtedly the truth as he sees it, and I'm quite inclined to accept his opinion in this matter as he undoubtedly knows more about Albanian culture than I do, they could have been better chosen.

In response to these comments, Una Hardester, 22 year old idealist activist, and her companions, insisted that since Serjanej's comments should not have been voiced as they were not consistent with the view of the world or the view of refugees that they wished to promote. Therefore they did not invite him back to participate in any more programs. Their programs were now sanitized and politically correct. The cultural gap between some refugees and the young American activist community was again preserved! Oooooh Rah! Mission accomplished!

==
* Oh those wacky Muslims. What will one ever do with them? It's so dog gone easy to just view Islam as one of many of the world's great religions and treat it as such, acknowledging that its believers include both good and bad. And, in fact, that's why the week of September 11, 2001 I suggested to the WRPI radio community, of which I was a member and a non-commerical DJ that we do something as a radio station to try to reduce the possibility of an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence or hatred. (This was after I made six calls to see if I could go down to NYC and help. There were so many people from around here who wanted to go down to NYC and help that week that we were being turned away in droves. In fact, many people I knew who went to help found the site so overloaded that all they could do was stand around and look respectful and take their hats off when another body was pulled out of the rubble. But as for me, I was on the radio invited by members of the RPI Muslim Student group to discuss the event in the context of local Muslims. I was helpful, I was good, I asked the tough questions that others were scared to ask. (i.e. Q: "Okay, so you say the Koran forbids acts such as this one, but clearly someone believed that he was doing this for the Koran and Islam, How would you respond?" Them. A: "Anyone who crashes an airplane into a building full of innocent men, women and children and thinks he's doing it for God has moire serious problems than his religion." -excellent answer. Alas, however, it was soon after that they blew most of their good will with me when they began sending me idiotic e-mails blaming the September 11, 2001 tragedly on an Israeli conspiracy. F-ing morons. They just couldn't grasp the fact that although I think it's stupid for their sister to wish to walk to class at engineering school dressed in an outfit that looks like a black gunny sack, as an American, I will support her right to do so in safety.

Yet more on domestic violence, South Asians and refugees.

2009-08-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

First, let me say right now I do not consider myself an expert on refugees and domestic violence. No way! I admit to occasional arrogance but not in this case. (Nothing quite as scary as doing a google search on a subject you know nothing about and discovering your own blog post among the top dozen entries. Ouch!)

As stated, domestic violence is a tricky issue. And when it involves refugees (or other immigrant groups) it becomes even more complex.

Fortunately, refugees unlike many other immigrant women do not need to worry about their legal status or the need for sponsorship from a spouse in order to stay in this country. (Refugees receive an I-95 visa, which allows them to stay in this country and ultimately receive a green card and apply for citizenship. Therefore, their status in this country is generally not dependent on remaining with their spouse, an issue that complicates some domestic violence issues.)

However, the issue is still not simple. There are language and cultural barriers. Many people have no idea of how to communicate with refugees. They throw around terms in front of them like "order of protection" when the refugee has no idea what the concept even refers to. They begin speaking without establishing communication or rapport first. Even if an interpreter is not available, then there are some ways that are better than others to communicate. i.e. keep things simple, assume no common culture unless it's established that there is one, use vocabulary that the person knows, avoid technical terms, idioms or phrasal verbs (a phrasal verb is a two word compound word with a special meaning like "going out" or finding out" or "looking up"), repeat things back to them, have them repeat things back to you.

As for prevalence of the problem, this is probably quite difficult to say. Definitions of domestic violence vary widely and often people who are in a domestic violence situation don't realize it. Therefore defining and recognizing the problem, a first step before any quantitative measurement can take place, is quite difficult.

And specifically measuring the problem among refugees is extra difficult. They tend to sort of live on the margins of society and often don't communicate or interact well with the rest of us. When they do, they often aren't quite sure what we wish to hear and furthermore are not terribly likely to just blurt out family problems unless really, really desperate. Even when documented cases take place, like this one a sample of one is statistically insignificant. It means nothing. (Rumor is he thought his wife had an affair. Is this in any way significantly linked to the fact that they are Burmese? Not in any way I know.)

And among the mainstream culture, the people who spend the most time around refugees are often fearful of making them look bad because there are always some people out there who are anti-immigrant or racist or fearful of their jobs or what have you and one does not wish to fuel those fires.

For instance, a couple posts down I wrote an op-ed piece about the problems refugees have learning to drive and how some of them drive without licenses. I did my best to group Chinese graduate students in there in order not to make local refugees look bad. (At this point, however, I'm sick of it. As mentioned of the eight Nepali-Burmese I know, three have driven without drivers licenses and two continue to do so regularly. And did I mention that two of them owe their former roommates sums of money of a hundred dollars or more and are making no effort to pay it? These people are a public health threat.)

But anyway, I was writing about domestic violence, a subject I admitted that I knew very little about.

When one knows very little, research is always a good thing. With that in mind, I read the following article. "Domestic Violence in South Asian Communities in America: Advocacy and Intervention," by Amita Bhandari Preisser. It was pulbished in the academic journal "Violence Against Women," 1999: 5: 684-699, which I access through the University at Albany's databases.

It's an interesting article and describes the formation of an organization called ASHA, the Asian Women's Self-Help Association, which is based in the Washington DC Area. It describes the formation of this organization and its work on domestic violence issues among South Asian (Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepali and members of the South Asian diaspora) people. I do not have any first hand information on this organization and have never had any contact with it. Therefore I am merely repeating what the article says, and at times with my own interpretation. Of course, those with a strong interest in the subject would do well to read the article itself.

First, an aside. (Always an aside.) As stated, not all cultures are the same. Nor are they inherently equal. And sense of guilt and shame are often culturally based. If you read your old testament there is at times a sense that a person commits sin even if they did not willingly choose to commit the act. The same is true in traditional Chinese culture. In other words, the act itself is bad and shameful even if the person had no choice in whether or not it was committed or was forced into doing it. For instance, in traditional Confucian cultures, such as China and Korea, the response to rape was often suicide by the victim. This is because being raped is shameful in these cultures. In our culture, we believe that the shame should not lie with the victim, but, as stated not all cultures see things the same way.

As an aside, when I write about other cultures I tend to use China-oriented examples to make points. Although Chinese are not terribly common among refugees, they are a very different culture that I have great familiarity with so I find them useful for making examples to sort of give people the perspective I wish them to have.

As I understand it, in South Asian cultures the family is important. Of course, this could largely be a sham, one of those lies cultures tell to outsiders so often that they come to believe it themselves, but that's the assertion. (I mean in Taiwan, family is said to be important and what that really means is that the wife is not supposed to complain when her husband hangs out in brothels or that the children are supposed to question when their parents say stupid things. But if one is willing to put up with all this there will always be a network of people who will take you in and assist you. Go family! Remember a strong family is not necessarily a good thing. Yet they still insist their family structure is superior to ours because most American women would get a divorce if their husband hung out in brothels. Does this make their family structure stronger or just show lower standards? You decide.)

It also needs to be said that in Chinese, and presumably South Asian, cultures admitting a problem can be a shameful thing. Therefore few do it. And the people who do, and thus bring shame on their group, are often ostracized because of it.

Which is why, for instance, you can still get situations like when a Chinese graduate student, PhD candidate studying in Albany told me that there was no domestic violence in China. (This is bullsh*t. There's lots of domestic violence in Chinese culture.) Instead of acknowledging a problem, the initial reaction is to hide it and therefore save face and keep up public appearances.

By contrast, here in America we have a tendency to actually seek out problems, publicize them and then see this as an important first step towards fixing them. American society is full of activist types. And these types just love to tell you about the problems they have discovered, particularly if they think they can get you to help them fix them. In fact, a friend of mine is a college professor and states that one of the things he really enjoys about being on a campus is constant exposure to nineteen year olds who have just learned the world is not fair, and wish to tell everyone they know about it and try to correct this lack of fairness. No matter what the cause is, there is someone in America who wishes to publicize it. It's part of our society and it's part of what makes this country great.

(And, yes, perhaps I was mean to Una Hardester. Then again, she did mis-state at least one set of facts in her post, something I think she'd want to be careful about. But the world needs young, self-important activist types determined to fix things even if they do take themselves much too seriously sometimes. When I was her age, I was busy trying to save the world from nuclear war and keep the US out of Central America, and I took these causes and myself much too seriously too. Hey Una, remember the Contras? Does the name Eden Pastora ring any bells? The acronym MAD? And if so what about Biafra? No matter. The problem with such types is, of course, when they live in a fantasy world and expect the rest of us to live there too. If that happens nothing ever gets fixed. Personally I avoid causes these days. Want to make the world a better place? Just find a refugee who needs help buying a cell-phone and take him to the mall and help him figure out the contract. When you do, you might even get to hear some bizarre story about cooking curried bear meat over a campfire in the woods of SE Asia. It's much simpler than attending meetings and listening to jargon and watching frustrated politicians and young activist types compete with one another to see who can be taken the most seriously. And if it makes her critics pause and think, well although I think I've only seen Una Hardester in person a few times, she's always looked noticeably unhappy when I've seen her.)

Which brings me back to the article on South Asian Domestic Violence.

Here's some excerpts of significant portions, with my thoughts in parentheses.:

1) sense of shame in admitting the problem. (Undoubtedly there's a culture aspect here but one also wonders if anyone has tried to tie domestic violence issues in with Stockholm syndrome? And there's that bizarre mentality of "I am truly a superior human being because I am martyring myself so much for this relationship and marriage" which is occasionally seen, too.)

2) Examples of husbands seizing the wife's assets and not letting her use them because "he knows how to manage the money better."

3) Pressure from other women within the community to remain in the relationship "for the sake of the children." (Is it really in the children's best interest to live in an environment where their mother gets victimized?)

4) maintaining silence. Shame in taking action such as having the abusive spouse removed from the house.

5) Husband using finances to control the wife.

6) Fear of authorities, partially because of the cultural gap.

7) Counseling and intervention strategies need to be culturally appropriate.

8) Quote: "Providing competent services requires clarification of issues and the use of a much more comprehensive definition of domestic violence in the South Asian context. Domestic violence against South Asian women is embedded in the contxt of cultural, historical and economic relationships. The force of class, caste, intrafamily structures, religion, immigrant status, and economic status all have elements of control, which could be directed at women." (from page 692 of the article.)

9) Quote: "In the South Asian community, domestic violence occurs not simply between a woman and her spouse but between a woman, her spouse, in-laws, and the community at large. One reason for this may be that certain practices and traditions have legitimized the subordination of women to elders in South Asian cultures. A woman may subscribe to this value system and not consider it negative in the normal course of life. But when abused, issues such as obedience to family elders, upholding of family honor, fear of losing children and dictates of religious practices may influence her to suffer in silence rather than seek help. The experience of violence of a South Asian woman includes coercion, exploitation, ostracism, and discrimination within her family and the community." (also from page 692 of the article.)

10) Perpetrators include such persons as sister-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-laws.

11) abuse includes not just physical but also economic abuse. Also common is emotional abuse centered around control. Article lists isolation, coercion, threats, intimidation, belittling and insulting in public as well as using children to manipulate

Also not stated in the article, is that in some communities where institutions such as arranged marriages occur, often the strong sense of community and extended family and fear of reputational harm can actually curb incidents of domestic violence. When it occurs someone steps in, someone respected, and often says that the behavior is not acceptable and should stop and be discussed. However in America, among refugees and other immigrant, at times, this sense of community breaks down. What goes on behind closed doors remains hidden.(Actually this is mentioned on page 694, although I had missed it when I read the article the first time.)

The article also includes a list of 18 social service strategies as well as 15 legal intervention strategies.

For a full lists, see the article. Here's some excerpts.:

Social Service Intervention Strategies.
a) recognize the multidimensional nature of the problem
b) understand her natal family is often back home and she is seeking help because she has run out of resources
c) understand emphasis of kinship issues
d) understand communication patterns are different
e) understand roots of fear, reluctance or seeming lack of trust in formal institutions
f) issues of identity, privacy, marriage, dowry, caste, religion, child rearing, collective sense of identity, role and structure of family life all need to be taken into account
g) identify for her your roles as service provider, explain the extent to whcih you can assist her and your limitations

Legal intervention strategies
a) understand the familial authority relationships, gender and generational, and their role in the abuse
b) provide both criminal and civil remedies
c)provide all elgal options and consequences and an understanding of hte US legal system
d) monitor court cases and the role of the police
e) develop a kinship relationship with the woman to enhance communication. Do not mistake her silence for passivity. It takes a long time to build trust.

In conclusion, in my opinion, the article is well worth reading.

Response to Domestic Violence and refugees comment.

2009-08-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, I confess. I'm not really that tech-savvy. In fact, I actually own a record player and do not own an MP3 player. That's how non-tech-oriented I am. (And I thought I was doing so well when I actually taught myself HTML back in the late '90s, but, alas, technology has passed me by once again.)

Sometime ago, I wrote a blogpost about dometic violence among refugees. I wrote this because I stumbled into a case of domestic violence among refugees. I have since been working to get this fixed but, alas, domestic violence situations are not easy to fix.

Essentially if the victim, usually a woman, is not "empowered" and does not know what she wants out of life and this relationship, then often she will go straight back into the situation and the result is that things will start all over again. Therefore just charging into the situation and slamming the guy against the wall and threatening him is not going to fix things.

[And, for the record, although this is usually women, men are just as stupid. There was a six month period once in which three men I knew had incidents where their girlfriends tried to stab them or assault them with knives. In none of these three cases, did the man break up with the woman. Curiously, it was one white woman, one black woman and one Asian woman involved and two white and one black men. Make of that what you will.]

Essentially, and this is my brilliant insight into the world that I learned from all this so treasure it please, it was hard earned, getting involved in a domestic violence situation is like walking into a potentially if not actually violent situation, a situation that if not handled right involves a very real risk of danger, and then taking the absolutely most confused, scared least qualified person present (i.e. the victim) and putting them in charge and hoping it will somehow turn out okay.

Among refugees these cases are actually more complicated than among non-immigrant Americans because of cultural and language barriers as well as a lack of awareness of what is expected behavior and what resources are available and what can actually be expected from these resources. Not to mention the fact that refugees often, quite frankly, live their lives in a haze where they just do not know things like the names of the cities three hours away and would not consider going there anyway unless there was a community of people from their ethnic group there who they could talk to and interact with. So it gets extra complicated.

Interestingly enough, the post got some unusual attention for reasons that really had nothing to do with the post itself. However, in it I mentioned that a program was put on in large part by an intern named Una Hardester. Apparently Hardester, 22 year old, female non-refugee, felt that the refugees needed anti-discrimination training. On hand, however, was a 43 year old male former refugee attorney named Artan Serjanej who felt that what refugees needed first were guidelines on how to behave in America, including lectures on the importance of not beating their wives. Hardester and the other women involved accused Artan Serjanej of not understanding refugees' true needs (!!!) and despite being a refugee himself of being insensitive.

So naturally they drove him out and refused to let him run programs anymore.

After all that's what we do in America when someone more experienced than ourselves does not share our idealistic view of the importance of advocating for people's rights.

Then, due to the high turnover at the refugee center, Hardester herself disappeared and I don't think they run this program anymore at all. (Well that solves . . . er . . . I don't know what that solves exactly but I'm sure it must solve something I guess. Otherwise, it would just be stupid, wouldn't it? )

So, in response to my posts Una Hardester is now calling me insensitive.

Of course, she is correct. I am insensitive. I am also, as I said, technologically impaired.

Which means that I am putting my response to her response which is at the bottom of this post here way up here because I just don't know any other way to do it.

Anyway, here goes . . .

===

Una, seem to be three things mixed in here.

First, Thanks for clarifying the differences between what you and Artan Serjanej and you and your buddies considered important. However might I suggest that a middle aged former refugee male might have some perspectives on the way middle aged refugee males think and act that a 22 year old, politically correct, non-refugee woman such as yourself might benefit to learn from? Might it be a valid point of view to say that the behaviors of some refugees when placed in a new foreign environment might make them a bigger threat to themselves than the police are? Particularly if they are engaging in activities that are accepted where they come from but will get them in big trouble while in this country? Activities such as smacking one’s wife when she acts disrespectful or wishes to handle her own finances?

Current thinking in cross-cultural education is that if you wish a person from another culture to model a behavior that he has not been taught (i.e. not seeing his wife as a piece of property but instead as a partner) then you need to identify where his or her current level of understanding lies and work from there. If you skip steps and assume knowledge that does not exist then learning will not take place.

The world does not work in a politically correct fashion. And the more you see, the more a lot of harsh realities are going to appear insensitive. As I‘ve mentioned more than once on this blog, I lived in Asia for four years and spent other time working for the ambulance, And one thing I’ve learned is that it is a mistake to try to work with young PC college women if you wish to actually make a difference in the world. You know why? Because the world is an insensitive, politically incorrect place and they don’t yet know it. Therefore they get angry when people casually make references to situations that do not fit their pre-conceived, ethnocentric, not the least bit truly multi-cultural paradigm of how the world should work. But someday you’ll understand what I mean, at least if you pay attention.

If you really believe that all ethnic groups have the same propensity for crime and domestic violence as all other ethnic groups (i.e. "Though the resettlement process is extremely stressful, refugees are no more likely to commit crimes, against their family members or anyone else, than citizens born and raised in this country.") then you are a very ignorant person. As stated, multi-cultural means *ACKNOWLEDGING* that different cultures behave differently, not ignoring it. However, I will give you the chance to offer statistics to back up this very important statement. But, I bet you can't.

If you actually go out and visit refugees, you’ll see that they have much bigger needs than anti-discrimination in housing training. (Some day I will write about all the problems refugees have with housing and a lot of them stem from the fact that the refugee center makes promises to landlords it cannot keep . At least one landlord asked me if he could come to me after I straightened out a dispute between him and his tenants and said the refugee center never returns his calls. I advised him to speak directly to his tenants and they could come to me if they wished. )

Second, you are exaggerating or mis-stating some things. You were, I believe, an unpaid intern at the refugee center. You said you left in September, I assume to go back to school. Jen Barcam is now the volunteer coordinator. But it was on January 27 that her hiring was publically announced. This is one reason that the refugee center was such a mess. There was a four month period during which the refugee center had no paid volunteer coordinator. During this time a volunteer did much of the duties, and although she was great, being a volunteer she could not do all of the duties that needed to be done to keep things running smoothly. Although during this four month period one person was hired, he quit after one day, as he found the place frightful. (I believe his quote was “This is not the experience I wish to have had in the future.”) Because things were such a mess the director was unable to keep her scheduled interviews with candidates for the position and they often sat for hours in the waiting room looking confused, surrounded by unhappy refugees and doing their best to force a smile when people spoke to them. (I am sure there are several of these people out there now talking about “the crazy interview I had last year at the refugee center.”)

During the interim, Eh Eh Cho taught several classes. From what I understand the refugees like her classes, at least they tell me so, but these focus on nutrition and inter-personal communication. I think I'll go out on a limb here and argue that these classes are based on the assumption that refugees have important things they need to learn if they are going to live well, behave right and stay out of trouble in America and Eh Eh Cho does her best to teach them these things.

When I worked at the refugee center, I often had to recruit my own volunteers and when I didn’t I often found myself stuck. In fact, being the intensely multi-cultural guy that I am, I often recruited them from among the refugees and, believe it or not, worked well with them and treated them in such a way that they got a lot out of the experience. (Some day I hope to write more about this.)

And now, because they helped me, I try to help them and take care of them. And sometimes I try to help them and their friends.

Thirdly, as for my comments on the Nepali-Burmese (Ghorkakhali), again we have the problem of a 22 year old woman who is trying to impose a PC view of the world on a non-PC reality. “You’re not supposed to say that!” you cry. “But it’s true!” I say. “But it can’t be true because it’s not the way things should be,” you say. “Sadly,” I say, “It is true, Una. This is the way things are.” )

Una, there are at least nine Nepali-Burmese (Gorkhakali) people in Albany. I know eight of them. Of these eight people, two are guilty of domestic violence, three are guilty of tax evasion, others work off the books and receive benefits, two drive regularly without a driver’s license and a third also did so, actually hitting a parked car, before she finally got her driver’s license, and another one is alleged to frequently walk up to women and tell them how big his penis is. Is this typical behavior among Nepali-Burmese? I have no idea, because these are the only eight that I have ever met.

As for consequences to me for speaking the truth about them, well, I guess they will have to find someone else to offer them free English and driving lessons, writing job applications for them, teaching how to change light bulbs, trying to get them to put bread in the freezer before it turns green and puffy and helping them out in a thousand little ways. Fortunately there are many other, much more decent refugees out there who also need help (including the wives of these losers who are currently being domestically abused. Hey, Una, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you go out and try to help them? I’ve been working on this problem for a while in several ways but so far haven’t gotten the results I’d like to see. Maybe you can do something about it. Of, if you’d prefer, I think I can give you a lot of suggestions on ways to help refugees. They’re not glamorous but they surely could use the help.).

Multiculturalism, and thoughts on Nepali-Burmese.

2009-08-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

[Note from 10-25-09: For some reason, this site gets a great deal of hits. Which is kind of a shame as it really is not indicative of most of the things I post on this site. Nothing quite makes your day like finding yourself in the middle of other people's family problems and discovering that you've been helping people who are making the lives of others miserable and lying to you at the same time. I've considered taking it down, but it sort of connects different threads and makes the blog hang together. Oh well. I hope people will take time to check out other, more deeply thought out blogs after they finish with this one.]

I'm feeling burned out at the moment. Classic case of having spent a great deal of time helping some people who, in hindsight, were not very nice people as well as finding myself involved in a domestic violence situation, something that also leaves me drained. And, yes, the two incidents are linked. Alas!

Which brings me to several asides.

First, to borrow a distinction that I first heard made by the esteemed philosopher, Marc "Animal" MacYoung, I am not a racist, I am, instead, a culturalist. In other words, I believe all races are equal, but, quite frankly, some cultures are much better than others, particularly when removed from their original environment. Those who believe that all cultures are equally good at all things, either are trying to achieve nothing or else they just don't get the very idea of what multi-culturalism means. Multi-culturalism means that different cultures do things in different ways and if you think that every possible way of doing something is just as good as any other then, well, let's just say I don't want you to be trying to fix my car's brakes or doing anything else that could possibly be important.

Which brings me to the topic of the Nepali-Burmese, the so-called "Ghorkakali" people as they are referred to in Burmese. Sometime ago, the British took over Burma and soon began using persons from South Asia to better exploit and utilize this new territory. Although not numerically significant, these included Nepalis although it is important to note that a sizeable portion of Nepalis live outside of Nepal spread throughout India, Bhutan and elsewhere. One purpose in bringing South Asians to Burma was to establish a capitalist framework in this pre-capitalist nation in the nineteenth century (Chinese were also used for this purpose.)

At this time there are a small number of Nepali-Burmese in the Capital District. (I count nine adults but have only met eight of them. The ninth one seems to have opted to keep to herself for reasons that will probably become clear shortly. Of course, there may be more.) Now out of these eight adults we have allegations of three counts of serious tax fraud, two confirmed cases of domestic violence, three people who have driven regularly without a license after failing their road test, multiple cases of working off the books while receiving as many benefits as possible, one guy who thinks it's cool to walk up to women at the bus stop and tell them how big his penis is, and multiple cases of child neglect such as leaving small children unattended, not to mention the guy who claims to be a marathon runner and yet who has never ever been seen jogging much less running. Quite frankly, this is quite a record for eight people.

People sometimes ask if when I help out refugees if they take advantage of me. So far, the only people who I feel have done this are Nepali-Burmese.

But then again, eight people is not much of a sample to generalize from and it's just possible that they are merely eight dysfunctional people. In any case, my opinion is that it's probably best to leave them alone, should one meet them.

Which brings me to the topic of domestic violence. As near as I can figure out, Nepali-Burmese consider it completely appropriate to verbally and physically abuse one's wife. At least when confronted or even arrested over this they act confused and cannot understand why anyone is objecting. They also seem to consider anyone they are lucky enough to get pregnant as their wife and do not seem to realize that in most decent societies it is expected that should one get a woman pregnant you will help take care of her instead of just stealing her money and mooching off of her like some sort of low-aspiration pimp.

Fortunately, all of the Nepali-Burmese in this area are small and wimpy and most American women could easily beat them up so the only people who need worry about this fact are those women pathetic enough to date Nepali-Burmese, in other words, other Nepali-Burmese.

Q: "Hey! What do you call a dozen Nepali-Burmese running down a hill?"

A: "A mud-slide."

Anti-refugee violence in Thailand

2009-08-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

The Burmese refugees I have known have spoken sometimes about living in fear of violence from the Burmese Military Intelligence during their time in Thailand, both within and outside the refugee camps. Although I listened carefully, I also reserved judgment as to whether these fears were warranted or not. Sadly, however, it seems they are.

For instance, this week's time has an article on the possibility of bringing the current rulers of Burma to trial for war crimes. To read the entire article see the Time website. I have excerpted two paragraphs from the article.

"So does the regime's sudden interest in a little-known exile group called the Burma Lawyers' Council. In May, at a Bangkok hotel, it held a three-day seminar entitled "Advancing human rights and ending impunity in Burma." Among the subjects discussed by the 100 or so delegates were the criminal accountability of individual junta members and how the U.N. Security Council might be persuaded to investigate Burmese war crimes.

Days before the seminar began, the junta outlawed the lawyers' group, which previously had barely blipped on Naypyidaw's radar, then requested Thailand to halt the seminar. It went ahead, but the harassment continued. As Burmese spies prowled the hotel lobby, delegates heard reports that agents had been dispatched to kidnap or kill the group's chairman Aung Htoo. He was smuggled out of the seminar and spent three weeks in hiding in Thailand before fleeing for Sweden."

This organization and its members, it seems, take these claims quite seriously and they know much more than I do.

Refugees and driving. (Part One)

2009-08-02T04:59:00.000-07:00

I've given several refugees driving lessons. This has had some unexpected consequences and been a learning experience for all involved.

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/aug/02/0802_huston/

Op-ed column: Teach immigrant drivers in a language they can understand
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Peter Huston

Photo of
William Brown/Tribune Media
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A couple of years ago, a big issue in New York was driver’s licenses for non-citizens. Although the furor passed, those involved were half right; the current system of driving privileges for new arrivals does not work well and should be re-examined.

Over the past few years, I’ve taught driving to several people who were new in America. These included both Chinese graduate students and newly arrived refugees. Although none were citizens, some hoped to become citizens. They were all here legally, all contributed to the economy and all paid taxes on wages they earned in New York. They spoke English at widely varying levels.

First, we share our roads with people who don’t speak English, so it might reduce problems if information on safe and legal driving expectations were provided in a variety of languages.

Since most Americans don’t speak a second language, they seriously underestimate the time and effort it takes to learn English. Considering that non-English speaking immigrants began arriving in New York with the Dutch in the 1630s, it’s amazing how unwilling we are at times to face up to the existence of non-fluent English speakers in our midst.
Everyone’s best interest

I am not advocating that we change road signs, but if a person needs a driver’s license for such things as getting to work, taking children to school and, yes, even getting to English lessons, it is undoubtedly in everyone’s best interests that they have access to information on road regulations and expectations in a language they can understand before they get behind the wheel of a car.

(Why would someone come here not knowing English well? With Chinese graduate students, it’s educational and career opportunities. As for refugees, reasons usually include a mixture of political persecution, war, mass death, ethnic cleansing, and encounters with teenage draftees with machine guns and a fondness for rape who enjoy burning down churches, businesses and homes. Personally, I don’t ask refugees for details but just listen carefully when they choose to share. Instead, I just eat their food and joke with them about New York weather.)

Essentially, non-English speaking immigrants want driver’s licenses for the same reason everyone else does. To become the tax-paying, job-holding, English-speaking success stories we want them to be. But, ironically, it’s often those who come from Third World places with the most obscure languages who have the least understanding of American road expectations. Simply offering materials in English and Spanish, as New York does now, is not enough. (It’s irksome when government agencies reflexively offer a refugee from Burma who speaks four obscure Asian languages information in Spanish.)

Without proper language materials, non-English-speaking driving students focus on memorizing answers to obtain their learner’s permit. On the Internet, one can find sample lists of learner permit test questions and answers in several languages. These are, however, presented without context or explanation.

The five-hour driving class includes no test. I know people who attended the class in languages they did not understand and still received the certificate. There not only should be a test, but the test or class itself should be available, perhaps on-line, in a variety of languages.

Until new drivers are presented with information in a language and format they can understand, they will always be confused about how to drive safely and legally. And don’t assume the problem can be solved with road tests.
Making it easy

It is much too easy in New York to drive without a license.

One can, without a driver’s license, purchase a car, register, receive license plates and even insure a car in one’s name. You can even, in most cases, generally get your boss to give you a parking sticker for work.

This is a tragedy waiting to happen.

To many poor people in the Third World, ownership of a car was a fantasy, a dream, and is now a symbol of success in America. If you allow such a person to buy a car before they have a license and expect them to wait to drive it, sometimes this is just too much temptation. And many new immigrants come from countries where it’s not uncommon to drive without a license. (And when I lived in Taiwan, almost all the Americans and Canadians I knew rode motor scooters without a license, so it works both ways.) Some immigrants assume that driving without a license is not a big thing in America.

And what’s terrible is that they are actually correct. If they are caught, the penalty is surprisingly light. A first offense will receive a fine of up to $150 plus an $85 surcharge, with possible suspension of one’s learner’s permit for up to two months.

For subsequent offenses, the penalty is up to $300 plus the $85 dollar surcharge. Your car may be towed and impounded, but it will eventually be returned after a fine is paid and should you have an accident, the insurance will pay for it. I’ve heard accidents for a non-driver described by friends of offenders as “a small thing.”
Immediate changes

It is stupid to allow people without a driver’s license to buy, register and insure a car, It is also stupid to give that car license plates that look like everyone else’s. This should be changed immediately.

In conclusion, America has been and continues to be a land of immigrants and their descendants. It’s part of our ideals and self-image that we accept the unwanted and discarded of the world, just as we accepted my Pilgrim ancestors 300 years plus ago when they illegally immigrated on the Mayflower.

But if we expect people who come here to do what we want, such as following road regulations, realistically we need to both explain to them what we expect in a language they can understand while simultaneously having strong consequences when they knowingly violate our society’s rules of the road.

Refugees and domestic violence

2009-07-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

Below I've included an excerpt and a link to an interesting article although it is over a year old.

Although I have never met Serjanej, I agree with his perspective's and views as reported in the article. I recommend people read the entire article as well as Una Hardester's comments that follow. (For those interested, there is another Una Hardester in Ireland who is a somewhat controversial human rights activist. I doubt very much if there is any connection between that Una Hardester and this one.) For those interested, this Una Hardester was, I believe, an intern from the University at Albany. I do tire of criticizing USCRI-Albany and would prefer to see it become a thriving, healthy organization. However, I mentioned previously that one problem with the organization is that many vital positions are filled by interns who leave after a brief period at the center. This Una Hardester was such an intern. Although in her comments on the article she is quick to point out that Artan Serjanej is no longer a volunteer with the center in Albany, to the best of my knowledge she is not either. She was a full-time volunteer there, when I began teaching English in the summer and was not present when I became an employee in October. Make of that what you will.

I confess I do not know if this program continues. And, for those interested, although Hardester is quick to criticize Sara Foss has a good reputation as a reporter. I wish Hardester had spent some time clarifying facts instead of just accusing the reporter and Serjanej of mis-statements without offering the true facts.

Check out the article and I'll post my personal comments afterwards.

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/jul/06/0706_menclass/

Classes aid men new to the U.S.
Immigrants learn about laws
Sunday, July 6, 2008
By Sara Foss (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

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CAPITAL REGION — Artan Serjanej understands how difficult it can be for new immigrants to navigate the thicket of unfamiliar laws they encounter when they move to America.

Now 43, Serjanej fled the Eastern European country of Albania as a young man, arriving in the United States in 1990. He earned his GED, attended law school and is now an immigration attorney at Tulley Rinckey PLLC in Albany.

Serjanej is leading a series of workshops to help male immigrants understand laws regarding domestic violence, child abuse and animal abuse. He has already held two workshops, one for male Congolese refugees living in the Capital Region and another for Arabic-speaking Iraqi male refugees, and more are scheduled for later this summer.

The workshops are part of a new program sponsored by the Albany field office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which educates immigrants about their legal rights and obligations in the United States. Future workshop topics include how to handle encounters with law enforcement and how to recognize and report discrimination in housing and job hiring. Workshops for women will also be offered; by the end of the summer, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants will have offered workshops for Burmese, Congolese, Iraqi and Afghan clients of both sexes.

The new program, called Legal Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, began two months ago. The workshops have been organized with help from local community groups, such as the Capital Region chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Equinox Inc. Last month, Melanie Trimble, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Serjanej conducted basic civil liberties training with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants staff.

[FOR FULL ARTICLE AND UNA HARDESTER'S COMMENTS CHECK HERE.]

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/jul/06/0706_menclass/

MY COMMENTS FOLLOW:

Domestic violence is a problem among refugees.

Previously, I criticized the concept of trite multi-culturalism. In America we have a belief that people should be treated equally. This is an important principle in our society and although it is easy to criticize the way our actual practices do not always match our ideals, it is also important to acknowledge that we also spend a great deal of time, energy, political effort, media attention and money to try and bring those practices in line with our ideals. For instance, I mentioned previously that I am taking education classes. I am currently immersed in "Introduction to Human Exceptionality," a class that is essentially introduction to special education. In our society, we put our money where our mouth is and spend thousands of dollars on such activities as giving the differentially-abled the opportunity to engage in leisure activities. For instance, we spend, time, money and energy to send the autistic, the blind and the people who lack limbs, skiing essentially for the simple reason that "if everyone else can do it, and the differentially-abled wish to do it, then we should enable and work for them to be able to do it." And, of course, we as a society work towards this goal.

Now, honestly, the more time I spend around refugees the more cynical I become about such activities as assisting the differentially-abled to engage in expensive sports. Quite frankly, the money we spend on assisting such persons with sports could save thousands of lives and make a much more significant difference in the lives of people in the third world, people such as refugees. But the very fact that we do it is wonderful as it does show our commitment to equality and equal opportunity for all people.

In many countries, equality for all people is not even an ideal. I was thinking the other day about why I prefer to spend time around Burmese instead of some of the other ethnic groups that I met at the center. I think part of it is that the Burmese are Asian, which fits in with my academic background, but like most Asians they also have an outlook on life that is distinctly different from many other ethnic groups including Americans. I spent an afternoon recently with a refugee from Africa. I enjoy this person and respect him. And he is interested and working hard to get ahead in American now that he is here. And I would help him do so in some small way. On the other hand, he spent a great deal of time complaining about the very real injustices and atrocities that he was subjected to that led him to being forced to leave his homeland and come here.

The Burmese, by contrast, from what I've seen, don't spend nearly as much time talking about how unfair life is for them. Oh, of course, they do sometimes, but not nearly as much as an American would. Instead, I think, they simply accept the fact that life is unfair and instead focus on what to do about it to achieve the goals they have.

(FYI, just for the record, some people do not understand what a refugee is. A refugee is someone whose life was turned so upside down that they were forced to leave their homeland and go somewhere else, anywhere else, no matter how miserable that place might be. I have seen people meet refugees and ask them, "So how long are you guys here for? When are you going home?" The answer, bluntly, is never, unless things change in a big way in the place they came from. If they go home, there is nothing there. That's why they are here.)

Anyway, many cultures do not have this intense American emphasis on equality and human rights. (In fact, both the Russian and Chinese governments have criticized the US for trying to impose its view of human rights on others. Clearly, this is a complex issue and, although the underlying facts are not black or white, drives right at the heart of why I criticize people who offer trite praise for the concept of multi-culturalism.)

This lack of equality shows up in their family structures. i.e. under Confucianist philosophy, husband and wives were not supposed to be equals and were not supposed to share decision making. Instead the husband was supposed to act like a benevolent, caring dictator who made decisions for his wife but did so in a way that was in her best interests and showed genuine concern for her well-being. Of course, in practice, as anyone who has spent time around Chinese women knows, they do have a way of gaining power and ensuring their needs are met but its usually done behind closed doors and in private. The system itself, however, never was intended to be equal, nor in theory is it seen as desirable that it should be.

Many of the cultures that refugees come from do not see wives in particular as individuals with human rights of their own, but instead as one part of a collective family unit. Different cultures draw the boundaries differently between different people.

(As an aside, for whatever reason, I have had more than my share of instances of walking into violent or near-violent screaming or shoving and pulling matches between (usually American) couples, often, for instance, while working as an EMT or security guard, and when confronted the man occasionally immediately turns to me and says, "But she's my wife." This, of course, makes no sense. I'm sometimes tempted to say to these men, "Well then, would you like me to hold her so you can hit her better?" in order to see if it will bring them back to reality. However, I never have. In some cultures, however, this statement does make perfect sense and does fit the cultural norms.)

And when refugees come to America, this unit and its nominal head, the male father figure, is often put under a great deal of pressure. Often they have been through a wide variety of truly emasculating experiences and are currently undergoing several more, including loss of control due to language problems and a wide variety of economic problems based on inability to find fulfilling employment or even completely understanding how to deal with a power bill. (I recently met one man who was a section leader in a refugee camp in Thailand. This was an elected position that involved running security patrols and arbitrating disputes among one sixteenth of a refugee camp. Clearly he was respected by his peers. In Albany, however, he spent months unemployed due to problems with the language and a lack of perceived transferable skills. This has to be frustrating for him. And, just for the record, to the best of my knowledge he has been dealing with his frustrations and disappointments in a healthy manner, this does not mean everyone does.)

Finally, some people just seek victims and want to take out their tensions on others. Women who don't speak English or understand the system make easy victims sometimes. I wish it was not so. Overworked caseworkers in the social services system or at the refugee center cannot keep tabs on all such people all the time.

For all these reasons, domestic violence is a problem among some refugees and some refugee families. This needs to be acknowledged and

Some social advice to Chinese students in the USA

2009-07-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

Chinese students often ask for advice on speaking to Americans.

In my opinion, talking to people you do not know is
a learned skill. Making true friends is much more difficult.

But as for the first subject, talking to people you do not know. . .

1) Find someone who is extraordinarily good at talking to people they
do not know. Follow them and watch them. Try to find the patterns.

I've been lucky. I've known at least two people who were very good at
that and learned a lot by watching them.

2) There are things people like to talk about and things they don't
like to talk about. People like to talk about things they are good
about or enjoy doing. Ask about them. If you find the right subject,
people love to talk about it.

3) Don't worry too much about language but do ask for clarification
when you become confused about what they are saying. If people want to
talk to you, they will work with you to do so, even with an accent.

4) My advice for women is that if men invite you to do something, sometimes, often, they are looking for a date. Sometimes they are just friendly. I have had
problems where I have invited out Asian women on what I thought was a
date and then learned later they were married and hadn't told me or
some other crazy thing (this always shocks my American friends when I
tell them).

Therefore, should a man invite you to go do something, and you want to
see if he's looking for a date or just being friendly, one good way is
to say, "That sounds nice. Can I bring a friend?" If he acts confused,
upset or says "no" or "Well, I was hoping it would just be the two of
us . . ." then he was looking for a date. If he says "yes" without
any confusion then he is able and willing to go out as friends.

Hope this avoids some problems.

More Burmese water festival pictures.

2009-07-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a pair of group photos taken at the water festival in Rensselaer the other week. You can see happy Karen and other Burmese people hanging out and enjoying themselves during this holiday.

HEY PETE, WHY SO FEW PHOTOS ON THIS BLOG ANYWAY?

My friend, Michael Turton, runs a great blog about life and particularly politics in Taiwan where lives. (Readers may recall that I've lived four years of my life in Taiwan, although not in one block.) Although American, Michael Turton lives in Taiwan where he raises a family, studies for a Ph.D. and teaches English at a college. Quite frankly, I think his blog, http://www.michaelturton.com/ is much better than mine, although, of course, the focus of his blog is entirely different from mine.

In fact, should anyone care, you can actually see a photo of me on his blog here. If you realize that this was my home environment for four years, plus the focus of my academic study for an equal number of years then perhaps it will also begin to make sense as to why I enjoy spending a major chunk of my free time these days hanging around with misplaced Burmese and such, shooting the breeze, eating their food and helping them out with such things as driving lessons, English lessons and trying to make sense of endless hassles involving arcane government documents that are in a language that they cannot understand and based on principles and assumptions that are foreign to them. And, of course, each time I do, I also remember just how confusing things in Taiwan were, little things like taking out the trash in a country that has an entirely different garbage collection system and calling a plumber or a locksmith in a country where the phone book is written using an ideographic writing system with over 5000 unique symbols and they answer the phone in a tonal non-Western language.

But when I compare my blog and Michael's one thing I realize is I need more pictures.

On the other hand, lately I've been writing about refugee issues. And as long-time readers know, I began doing this because of two things. First, I used to work as the furniture director at the local refugee center. An employee of another refugee center asked me for advice on how to run a furniture program. I agreed to offer such advice. About the same time, the local paper ran an article on how the local refugee center was unable to meet its obligations. See here. Interesting comments can be seen here.

When I read this I flipped out because, quite frankly, the local refugee center was the worst run place I have ever worked in my entire life. They were so incompetent they could not even evaluate suggestions on how to fix things. (And, for those interested, I once worked at a legally bankrupt ambulance service where one of our major restocking of supply sources was to steal from the hospital emergency rooms when they weren't looking. Sigh. Brings back fond memories. Particularly the time the nurse caught us stealing and made us put half of what we took back.) I had known this, of course, for a while but had hoped that they'd find a way to turn things around if given time. Instead they announced they were both "maxed out" and accepting new people. This is not a sensible formula for improvement.

So I began writing about exactly what it was like to work in this crazy place and what I learned from it. (And, yes, I know it is often overly ranty. Apologies.)

Which means that I decided that it might be best to leave out photos of refugees served by the center, people who I consider my friends, if I am criticizing the agency that controls their applications for such things as green cards and jobs and public assistance. So, for that reason, there are few photos of actual people on this blog. but I decided a couple of group photos of people I know and their friends, couldn't hurt. (One funny thing about the refugees from Burma, if you ask if you can take their picture their first reaction is to call everyone around them to get in the picture too. Sigh. Asian collectivist cultures in action again.) I wish I could put more but it just doesn't seem like a good idea.