The decision was unanimous, but Justice Clarence Thomas declined to join the part of Justice Sotomayor's opinion discussing why the cost of allowing immediate appeals outweighs the possibility that candid communications between lawyers and their clients might be chilled.

In a concurrence, Justice Thomas took a swipe at his new colleague, saying she had "with a sweep of the court's pen" substituted "value judgments" and "what the court thinks is a good idea" for the text of a federal law.

Nice to see things are starting off friendly.

However, I must admit I cheered a bit when I saw what other thing Justice Sotomayor managed to do, besides piss off Justice Thomas:

Justice Sotomayor's opinion in the case, Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, No. 08-678, marked the first use of the term "undocumented immigrant," according to a legal database. The term "illegal immigrant" has appeared in a dozen decisions.

And with good reason. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists launched a campaign back in March 2006 asking the media to "stop using dehumanizing terms when covering immigration," explaining:

NAHJ is concerned with the increasing use of pejorative terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. NAHJ is particularly troubled with the growing trend of the news media to use the word "illegals" as a noun, shorthand for "illegal aliens". Using the word in this way is grammatically incorrect and crosses the line by criminalizing the person, not the action they are purported to have committed. NAHJ calls on the media to never use "illegals" in headlines.

Shortening the term in this way also stereotypes undocumented people who are in the United States as having committed a crime. Under current U.S. immigration law, being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime, it is a civil violation. Furthermore, an estimated 40 percent of all undocumented people living in the U.S. are visa overstayers, meaning they did not illegally cross the U.S. border.

In addition, the association has always denounced the use of the degrading terms "alien" and "illegal alien" to describe undocumented immigrants because it casts them as adverse, strange beings, inhuman outsiders who come to the U.S. with questionable motivations. "Aliens" is a bureaucratic term that should be avoided unless used in a quote

.

Language matters. The framing of issues matters. And it is amazing to see that Sonia Sotomayor is going to start reframing how we discuss and debate these types of issues, one pen stroke at a time.

Sotomayor Draws Retort From A Fellow Justice [NY Times]
NAHJ Urges News Media To Stop Using Dehumanizing Terms When Covering Immigration [NAHJ]

[Macon, France; November 5. Image via Getty]

Algerian born Aïcha poses with her daughter after she received her French naturalization documents during an official ceremony on November 5, 2009 at Macon's prefecture, central France. A poll showed that sixty percent of the French, including 72 percent of right-wing voters and half of left-wingers, back government plans for a vast public debate on France's 'national identity.' President Nicolas Sarkozy is also to take part in a debate on the subject in December. The debates will end with a congress early next year on the twin questions of 'what it means to be French today' and 'what immigration contributes to our national identity.' AFP PHOTO / JEFF PACHOUD (Photo credit should read JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images)

[Paris, November 4. Image via Getty]

POUR ILLUSTRER LES PAPIERS SUR L'IDENTITE NATIONALE - A person poses with her French national identity card in front of Paris' Statue de la République (Republic Statue) taken on November 4, 2009 trough a French flag. France's immigration minister Eric Besson said he was launching a debate on national identity, sparking protests from opposition Socialists who denounced the plan as a sign that 'France is sick'. Besson, who is also officially the minister for integration and national identity, said the debate would last two and a half months and would end with a colloquium on 'what it means to be French today.' AFP PHOTO / JOEL SAGET (Photo credit should read JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

The Times explains:

After 14 years of legal indecision, during which several immigration courts and three attorneys general considered Ms. Alvarado's case, the Department of Homeland Security cleared the way for her in a one-paragraph document filed late Wednesday in immigration court in San Francisco. Ms. Alvarado, the department found, "is eligible for asylum and merits a grant of asylum as a matter of discretion."

One of the issues at play in the case was about how we define persecution:

The large legal question in the case is whether women who suffer domestic abuse are part of a "particular social group" that has faced persecution, one criteria for asylum claims. In a separate asylum case in April, the Department of Homeland Security pointed to some specific ways that battered women could meet this standard.

In a recent filing, Ms. Alvarado's lawyers argued that her circumstances met the requirements that the department had outlined in April. Now the department has agreed, in practice making the case a model for other asylum claims.

However, Alvarado was able to strengthen her case by pointing to the environment facing women in Guatemala:

In a declaration filed recently to bolster Ms. Alvarado's argument that she was part of a persecuted group in Guatemala, an expert witness, Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey, reported that more than 4,000 women had been killed in domestic violence there in the last decade. These killings, only 2 percent of which have been solved, were so frequent that they earned their own legal term, "femicide," said Ms. Paz y Paz Bailey, a Guatemalan lawyer. In 2004 Guatemala enacted a law establishing special sanctions for the crime.

"Many times," she said, violence against Guatemalan women "is not even identified as violence, is not perceived as strange or unusual."

Opening up claims for asylum to situations like domestic violence and femicide would be a huge boon to women in conflict situations around the world. In addition to providing a path for women to exit a country when the local authorities fails to rectify widespread violence against women (like the situations in Juarez, Mexico and Guatemala City), it also increases the chances for females fleeing violent situations to be able to make a complete break with their pasts and start over.

Though the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department warn that they will look at domestic violence claims on a case by case basis, it's still a major step forward.

U.S. May Be Open To Asylum For Spouse Abuse [NY Times]
In Ciudad Juarez, Young Women Are Vanishing [LA Times]
The Price Of Life [Guernica]

Earlier: Obama Adminstration Opening Doors For Women Fleeing Abuse

Here's a little more information about Michele:

Michele Wucker is Executive Director of the World Policy Institute, a non-partisan source of policy leadership for more than four decades. She is the author of LOCKOUT: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right and Why The Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle For Hispaniola (FSG/Hill & Wang, 1999/2000).

Michele is the recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on changing views of citizenship, exclusion, and belonging. As senior fellow at the World Policy Institute since 2000, she also has been a research fellow at the Immigration Policy Center, part of the American Immigration Law Foundation.

I love speaking to Michele because of her multinational approach to political issues, particularly immigration. So, without further ado, here's Michele:

LatoyaPeterson: Hello Michele, thank you for joining us today!

Michele Wucker: It's great to chat with you, Latoya!

LatoyaPeterson: Can you please explain to our readers what you do at the World Policy Journal and your many areas of expertise?

Michele Wucker: I run the World Policy Institute, which publishes World Policy Journal, the quarterly magazine that brings new voices in to the debate over shared international policy issues. For us, foreign is the "F" word: we see so many of the biggest challenges facing the world today as shared among people of all nations. My own work focuses on immigration, cultural conflict, and the global economy. There's more about WPI and WPJ at www.worldpolicy.org.

LatoyaPeterson: Thanks Michele! And that is a wonderful thing, to take a interconnected view of international affairs and global policy. With that said, what do you think are the largest issues facing women around the world?

I know - big question. Take your time with the answer.

Michele Wucker: The largest issues facing women around the world are in many ways the same as the ones facing men: basic questions of human security and having a voice in solving problems that affect you. Literacy, education, jobs, and health are all part of this, of course, but they all come down to the question of whether women have the rights to pursue those things, and a way to influence the governments, organizations, companies, and people who affect whether and how women get what we need. In so many parts of the world —including in wealthy countries like the United States— women have a harder time meeting some of those needs than men do, but it's important not to see this as a women-versus-men issue. The places where women have the least rights also tend to be the places where men have the least rights. If we're all going to move forward together, we need to be sure that men also support the idea that improving women's rights leaves men better off too. It's "win-win" not "zero-sum."

I just saw this great new Turkish movie, "Bliss," about a man charged with carrying out an honor killing of his cousin. During the course of the movie, he comes to the realization that the horrible infractions of her rights don't leave either one of them better off.

LatoyaPeterson: Wonderful - earlier in the week, Patricia DeGennaro made a similar point about our efforts to assist women. She related a story about Eve Ensler's work on our reservation here in the US and made the point that we can't just look at what we can do for women - there also has to be a component that examines why men are upholding these behaviors or perpetuating these actions.

In your work at the WPJ, are there any issues you see that are not getting enough air time? What is a major global issue that is flying under the radar?

Michele Wucker: The question of citizenship is essential to just about everything else, yet because it seems like an abstract concept, people who are citizens already don't pay attention unless someone else is trying to get citizenship. Too often there's an idea that citizens have to reserve rights for themselves, which outraged pundits hammer on incessantly (including that guy on CNN whose name I don't mention any more. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. You know exactly who I mean!) In reality encouraging access to citizenship makes everyone more productive, helps people get to better places, and strengthens society. It's similar, in a way, to the relationship between men's and women's rights. One person's success doesn't necessarily mean that others have to lose.

Countries around the world are changing their rules about citizenship, and that doesn't get enough attention -nor the idea that citizenship is not the same everywhere in the world, or has been historically. it's in flux.

Women are often at the center of arguments about who gets to be a citizen. Only in the last few years, several Middle Eastern countries have begun to allow women to pass their citizenship to their children if the father is a foreigner.

LatoyaPeterson: Fascinating. So citizenship is at the epicenter of a lot of these debates. Oh, and by the way Michele - We already have a She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, which is Sarah Palin. So the Lord Voldermort dance card is full. However, if you are referring to one of the many screaming heads (I can think of Dobbs, Beck...) we can assign them a permanently used alterego. Might I suggest "Minion of Darkness?"

But back to citizenship. How would changing our perception of citizenship - and what it means to "belong" to a nation - assist in strengthening our society and economy?

Michele Wucker: As one example, going back to that great movie "Bliss," the village chief at one point asks the father of Meryem -the woman sentenced to death- if she has a birth certificate. When the father says no, the chief is relieved, because it's as if she never existed in the first place. Without a birth certificate, many people are denied citizenship around the world, and that means that many of them have no way of getting education or health care; no government is willing to protect them.

There are 16 million stateless people around the world today —many of these are refugees, whose understandable flight from danger nevertheless can disrupt other countries and touch off new conflict. So you may be affected if the government of the country next door doesn't protect all of its citizens. But in bigger terms, if you don't have citizenship —or even legal status— it makes it so much harder, if not impossible, to gain skills, become more productive, participate in society, and work to improve conditions for yourself and your neighbors. Would you rather have a neighbor who can help you pressure your City Council member into getting that crack dealer kicked off of the street or not? Would you rather children are in school and healthy, or would you want their options so limited that they see gangs as their only way of belonging? Do you want people to be able to work and pay taxes and build up your community?

In some cases, it's a chicken-and-egg thing. The worst cases, places like Cote D'Ivoire or Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries that try to claim that some of the people who have been there for generations are not citizens, are also the places that treat citizens badly. Wealthier countries are more likely to be tolerant of minorities. It's a vicious versus a virtuous circle.

LatoyaPeterson: Interesting. And in what ways can we agitate for better policy around citizenship? What should we be asking for? And who are the best people to address our concerns to?

Michele Wucker: In the United States, the priority should be on convincing Congress to pass an immigration reform that provides a path to legal status and eventually citizenship. Solid majorities of Americans support this, but small vocal interest groups have blocked it. Americans are deeply concerned about whether immigrants naturalize or not, and very much want people who are here to make a commitment to America, our civic values (and that means our ideal civic values -not the apathetic society with low voting rates and increasing alienation from communities), learn English, and become citizens. But it's pretty hard to do any of those things in a country that's sent a big wink-wink-nod-nod telling people it's ok to come illegally —yet keeps the people we've effectively invited here from ever being able to do the things that we say we want. So let your elected representatives know -not just in Congress, but also on the local level as some police departments have been getting more involved in enforcing immigration laws instead of using their resources to go after hardened criminals. And when you hear people getting on the same old soap box about "those people," don't stand for it. Let them know that you don't want to hear it.

LatoyaPeterson: Thanks so much for joining us today, Michele!

Michele Wucker: Latoya, thanks for inviting me. It's always great to talk with you!

Michele Wucker [SheSource]
Official Site [World Policy Institute]
Mutluluk [IMDB]

Earlier: On Women, War & The Elections In Afghanistan

While faux-marriages are nothing new (Green Card, anyone?), apparently recently there's been a huge upswing in the number of Eastern European immigrants using New York's expat community to contract "delovoy brak," or "business marriages." The piece in the Post reports that in one week, a Russian-language weekly ran 34 ads by people openly seeking the illegal arrangement. (That pic ran with one of the ads, and is typical.)

When a reporter contacted a marriage broker, he was told a marriage would run him about $30 grand, of which $25,000 would go to the "wife," to be paid in full after a successful interview with immigration. And while immigration officials quoted in the article claim they're cracking down hard, they admit sham marriages can be hard to prove - and several who've engaged in them say, for their part, that the interview's a breeze. Although the issue's been on lawmakers' radars for more than 20 years, few provisions and little legislation has ever passed, and it's apparently regarded as a low priority, a victimless crime that doesn't call for much attention - although many "legitimate" couples do claim that the practice subjects them to humiliating and unfair scrutiny.

None of this is exactly shocking. Nor is the fact that these situations are ripe for exploitation, one imagines particularly for the women involved. What was, rather, is the insouciance with which the quoted "grooms" discuss the business. Says one guy, a Ukrainian immigrant who has U.S. citizenship, "I get calls asking me to marry one of these girls every other week...It's easy money, and the girls are really hot."

Then there's a sidebar, "I was taken for a bride." While the headline implies that the man in question, "Ivan," was duped by a goldigger, his quotes tell a rather different story. While it's true that some men - lonely, naive - are indeed "duped" for money when they think they're involved in a romance, this is clearly a case in which the guy knew exactly what he was doing - and that he's fairly typical of the "legalizer" in these situations.

Her name was Yelena. She was really hot, in her 20s.She had come over on a student visa. We went over the figures that night at dinner. The next week, we went to City Hall. I let her move in with me. I wanted to be real secure with this. I didn't want to get arrested. I actually wanted to be with her. I was attracted to her. Everything I told her to do, she did. I would scare her on purpose. I would say, "If you don't do so and so, I am going to report you."

Ivan says that Yelena was "shoplifting like crazy," was "cheating on him," stole from him, and "was probably an escort" to boot. She served him with divorce papers while he was in the hospital recovering from an injury. Nevertheless, despite seeming to feel he was ill-used, he ends by saying, "Who knows? I might do it again."

What's especially weird about his account is the matter-of-factness of tone, the expectation that the two would try to use each other for whatever they could, and the casual way he admits to blackmailing her for, what? Sexual favors? One can only assume. And this story, while typical, is hardly as bad as it gets: rates of domestic abuse in green-card marriages are extremely high, and as happy-ending "mail-order bride" Lera Loeb told Glamour, "In Ukraine the potential dangers of the so-called mail-order bride industry are not as well known as they are in America." Perhaps a woman who is, unlike a "mail-order," already living in America has a bit more of a support network than someone who is completely on her own, but as this story demonstrates, she's still in a uniquely vulnerable position, and completely at the mercy of those who have some leverage over her, to say nothing of money and power. In such a situation, two years can be a long time. It's also true that, given the high rates of domestic abuse in many of the same Eastern European countries, in these arrangements there might be a tacit communal blind eye turned on such abuse. As in any unregulated sphere, in short, the potential for institutionalized abuse is very, very high. And what's worse, it's what people on both sides have come to take for granted. Even if everyone involved ends up a victim of sorts - and even if it's what they sign on for - this is not a situation that anyone should be taking lightly.

FROM RUSSIA WITH $$ [New York Post]
I WAS TAKEN FOR A BRIDE [New York Post]
Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name: Inside The Green Card Marriage Phenomenon [Center for Immigration Studies]
Yes, This Woman Is A "Mail-Order Bride" [Glamour]
Mail Order Brides And The Abuse Of Immigrant Women [No Status Quo]

Stop Violence Against Women [StopVAW]

Related: Mail-Order Bride Finds Love; Hopefully No Others Read This

Alvarado and another woman, L.R from Mexico., have been seeking asylum in the U.S. for 13 and 5 years respectively solely on the basis that they were battered by their partners and subject to a legal system that could not and did not seek to protect their rights. In Alvardo's case, she was actually granted asylum in 1996, only to have the government appeal the disposition and an appeals court rule against her. The Bush Administration was equally hostile to the claims of both women that injustice and possible death await them in their home countries, and refused to put into effect draft regulations establishing conditions under which domestic abuse could be considered in asylum cases. According to the New York Times:

Any applicant for asylum or refugee status in the United States must demonstrate a "well-founded fear of persecution" because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or "membership in a particular social group." The extended legal argument has been whether abused women could be part of any social group that would be eligible under those terms.

The Obama Administration's filings in L.R.'s case says explicitly that domestic abuse could qualify women for asylum in some cases, a bold reversal of Bush Administration actions in which they attempted to deport such women anyway.

Changing U.S. asylum policy in this way is not just more humane and less blindingly idiotic, it would resolve a conflict with existing law covering foreign women married to American men. In order to resolve situations in which American men would abuse their foreign-born wives and yet be able to blackmail them with their immigration status into remaining in a relationship, the Violence Against Women Act allows foreign-born women in abusive relationships to qualify for green cards without having to stay with their abusers. Changing asylum policy would grant foreign women seeking escape in our country a similar opportunity.

Of course, the change in policy doesn't mean either woman will get to stay in the United States — and the courts have been increasing hostile to asylum applications since 9/11. But at least it's a start.

New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women [NY Times]

Related: Documents and Information on Rody Alvarado's Claim for Asylum in the U.S. [Center for Gender and Refugee Studies]

Especially troubling, says Garcia in an interview with In These Times, is Obama's selection of former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security. She says,

Napolitano may have been a moderate on other issues, but she certainly was not on immigration. She made her name on the backs of Mexican immigrants.

As governor, she signed the anti-smuggling statute that prosecutes immigrants for being their own smuggler. She signed a law equating people utilizing fictitious Social Security numbers-which has been done since the 1930s-to aggravated identity theft. She made it a crime to drive without an Arizona license and, therefore, they can take your car away. She is the one who has demanded tougher employer sanctions. Her language and rhetoric and her hype and fear are irresponsible.

Garcia also speaks out against the effect of American trade policies on Mexican workers, the militarization of Mexican society as a result of the war on drugs, and the subcontracting of border security to companies like Correctional Corporation of America, which has been accused of corruption and violence. She hopes Obama will support the Dream Act, which would allow undocumented students to gain temporary residency in the US, but she says, "for those of us who strongly supported Obama, we knew the reality. We knew that we, at the border, were still going to have an uphill fight because Obama has no clue. He doesn't know."

An Inconvenient Woman [In These Times]

Earlier: ANTM: Explaining Marjorie's Awkwardness

Mukasey's order sends the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, one hopes, will not act like complete assholes the second time around. Mukasey pointed out that female genital mutilation can, indeed, be inflicted more than once — making the ruling factually wrong — and that further persecution need not take the same form as the initial persecution to qualify the woman for asylum. So, the Bush Administration finally did something right... only, actually, it's all their fault in the first place.

Because, lest you forget, the immigration court judges are some of the many people Alberto Gonzales's minions — Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson — helped get onto the bench based on a thorough vetting of their loyalty to George W. Bush and a not so thorough vetting of their immigration law background. In fact, many of them had no immigration law qualifications whatsoever when they began to serve as immigration judges. Some had previously attempted to get non-immigration judgeships and failed, due to a lack of qualifications in the field of law they'd actually practiced, but Gonzales, Goodling and Sampson ran the immigration court appointment process with little attention to pesky details like that. In fact, when they were running the immigration courts as a loyalty-reward outlet center, only 4 seats on the immigration courts were open to a competitive application process. Studies have shown that those who were hired while the Three Musketeers were at the helm (most of whom remain on the bench) are significantly more likely to reject asylum applications than judges hired under competitive application processes that actually have an immigration law background.

So, really, Mukasey wasn't doing anything more than he was hired to do — which is clean up the shit at the Justice Department that Alberto Gonzles, left behind. So, hooray for doing the right thing, eventually and under pressure from Congress! At least this asylum seeker will get to stay. The other ones the Bushies have been busy deporting, well, good luck to them.

AG: Don't Deport Genital Mutilation Victim [CNN]
Genital Mutilation Victim Gets A New Chance At Asylum In U.S. [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Lack Apt Backgrounds [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Often Picked Based On GOP Ties [Washington Post]
Vetted Judges More Likely to Reject Asylum Bids [NY Times]

Over the weekend a successful young fashion model touched off a minor media circus by killing herself. Almost immediately, details of the beautiful life cut tragically short swooped in to fill blanks; the apocryphal tale of her "discovery" by benevolent industry scouts; her melancholy poems; how she'd been watching "Ghost" the night before. It was mostly bullshit. But there is something about great beauty that inoculates us to the more mundane realities of life, which was that Ruslana Korshunova was an immigrant from a desperately poor country who came to New York at a scarily young age to make money to send back to her parents. In that way she was no different from the tens of thousands of kids from former socialist states whose parents send them thousands of miles to work in restaurants and gas stations. It's generally more legal, and the living conditions a little nicer, but as our anonymous model columnist Tatiana has discussed before in this space, the people governing a model's fate are no less predatory and self-interested, and the experience is only slightly less anonymous. Herewith, Tatiana's initial thoughts on the suicide of a pretty girl from Almaty:

At around 2:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, a 20-year-old model named Ruslana Korshunova jumped from the balcony of her ninth floor apartment in New York's financial district. A Kazakhstani of Russian heritage, she had modeled since the age of 15; top London agency Models 1's Debbie Jones tells a great story about her discovery and tracking-down of Korshunova after seeing her pictured at German club in an in-flight magazine. (I suspect Jones is spinning a typical fashion creation myth: Korshunova told UK Elle magazine that when she was 15, she submitted her own photos to the Moscow agency iCasting, a version somewhat shorter on romance and international intrigue but vastly more believable.)

Korshunova followed the usual career path of an Eastern European model — working abroad from a young age to send money back to her parents, who remained in Kazakhstan — albeit with considerably more success than is common. A slight 5'7.5" with braces and Rapunzel-esque hip-length hair, Korshunova nonetheless shot out of the normal model demi-monde of sometimes sweet, sometimes snide, always obsessive commentary on TheFashionSpot.com. She wowed casting agents and booked a slew of clients during her five years in the business. Korshunova worked for Marc Jacobs, Blumarine, Vera Wang,
Paul Smith, DKNY and Moschino; she booked a cosmetics campaign for Clarins and starred in a Nina Ricci perfume ad. She shot with Mario Sorrenti, Patrick Demarchelier, and Paolo Roversi. She had covers for European editions of Vogue and Elle, she had pictures inside American, Japanese, and Italian Vogue. Korshunova, it appeared, had grabbed fashion's brass ring.

She had achieved the kind of career that must have been reasonably consistent, and decently-paid, though of course pursued in total anonymity — even her doorman told the New York Daily News he didn't know the girl he saw return home at 5 a.m. on Saturday was a successful international model.

No doubt this is a story made more interesting in the eyes of some by the allure of Korshunova's profession. Journalists have already taken to calling Korshunova "the beauty," "the lithe looker," "the 5'8" head-turner," "the green-eyed blonde beauty," playing the fashion industry's own exoticizing, objectifying game. On Fox news - where else? — Geraldo Rivera showed "the last images" Korshunova. The camera lingered over her dead body — pale, bloodied, and partly covered by a sheet — while Rivera in a voice-over called Korshunova's ex-boyfriend's description of the model as "a good person" a "kind of a lame quote." I am not linking here on purpose.

It is as a woman, not a mannequin, that I'm sure Korshunova's loved ones will remember her. And irrespective of her field, one has to wonder at the process by which a girl decides to kill herself four days before her 21st birthday.

I did not know Ruslana Korshunova, but I do know something of depersonalization and loneliness of this profession, and its occasional outright miseries (Korshunova also told UK Elle, of her worst professional experience, "We were in the Alps shooting, high
up in the snow, and I was wearing a tiny dress. We were so very cold and it was snowing so hard — we couldn't see a thing. I thought I would not live to see another day.") The Daily News reports that Korshunova wrote long messages in English and Russian on a social networking site; the messages make frequent mention of things like love, desire, dreams, and rainbows; they
read as the missives of a very young girl who has discovered that romance often fails to live up to its promise. Korshunova quoted inspirational Internet poetry about the importance of forgiving quickly, kissing slowly, loving truly, and laughing uncontrollably, which the Daily News apparently mistook for her original work. In March, she wrote, "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?" In her most recent post, on May 30, she mused angrily that "Love does not take away from one in order to give to another."

Korshunova spent her last night watching Ghost with her ex-boyfriend, 24-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Artem Perchenok.

Many models would have envied Korshunova's career; many women would have envied her beauty. But clearly, leaving home at 15 to travel the world under the often-lax in loco parentis care of a series of agencies, even when it culminates in a nice Craig McDean editorial and a Dior Beauté campaign or three, can take a devastating toll.

cMOE: Dude I don't want to forget this so I'm just showing you now. From Dick Morris's column on how McCain can beat Obama:

If the GOP nominee were Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, independents and Democrats might not vote Republican even if they became convinced that Obama is some kind of sleeper agent sent to charm and conquer our democracy.

MOE: um no kidding!
MEGAN: Why doesn't Dick Morris go back to sucking prostitutes' toes and leave the rest of us alone. Have you seen his teeth? He ain't stopped sucking stanky feet yet.

MOE: So there is too much to write about today but anyway Iran is still building a nuclear program, treaties be damned and we can't do anything about it, Burma is still letting its people die and Asian governments won't do anything about it, Hugo Chavez is supporting FARC and by any standard probably now qualifies for our state sponsors of terror list but we probably shouldn't give him the satisfaction, and now they're saying it's the end of American Superpower. For realz?!
MEGAN: Wait, wait! The NY Times is reporting this morning that Myanmar/Burma is going to let ASEAN help. I'm skeptical but maybe they actually will?

MOE: Ah, so their "soft approach" did work!

In a clear departure from the usually secretive style of the military junta, state television in Myanmar on Sunday showed video of the leader, Senior General Than Shwe, touring a refugee camp, checking supplies, patting the heads of babies and shaking hands with survivors. Some of the cyclone victims, surrounded by neat rows of blue tents, clasped their hands and bowed as the general and other senior military officials walked by.

MOE:

"Are we going to continue to cover the earthquake?" the Guangzhou-based reporter asked in an instant message to his editor, a day after China's deadliest earthquake in three decades struck Sichuan province."Of course," replied the editor, surnamed Yang. "Why not?"
Then, the reporter said, he forwarded to his boss the text of the latest edict from the propaganda department of the Communist Party Central Committee, ordering domestic news media not to send any more journalists to Sichuan.
Yang wrote back, "If everyone pays no attention to this, then it won't really be a ban."

MEGAN: Oh, she's probably still under house arrest. Like the regime wants to allow her ot be showed doing good work?
MOE: 40 years of mind control, propaganda, a string of incomprehensible, and incomprehensibly destructive political campaigns combined with severe rationing and poverty followed by 15 years of steady marginal increases in living standards and the appearance of openness will...do that to a citizenry!

MOE: I guess we should talk about how the crowd that showed up for Obama was like 1/8 the population of Portland? And maybe we should talk about how tiny his advance for Dreams From My Father was?
MOE: Oh and how a place as shit poor as Yemen manages to hide a guy with a $5 million price on his head. And also we should talk about oil prices. And McCain's continued purge of his aides who love lobbyists, which is getting like New York politicos with whores. And Anthony Shahid's fucking depressing story on Lebanon.

MEGAN: Ok, well, I can speak to the continued purge of lobbyists. Because there's one guy who isn't getting out. He's McCain's Mark Penn only potentially slightly less stupid. He's practically consolidating power in the campaign by getting rid of the other guys with lobbying ties, so that in November-January when clients are looking for someone with a good relationship to McCain that hasn't been accused of fucking him, he's the only one left. It's all very wonderfully Machiavellian.

MEGAN: Also, I think it's fair to say that Republican lobbyists understand the least about why people think they're shills out to destroy America and don't love McCain that much anyway, so it probably never occurred to anyone that it might be a teeny tiny problem to the electorate that the guy writing McCain's energy policy was an active lobbyist for energy companies. Because, hey, that's how this Administration has run things for 8 years anyway.
9:15 AM
MEGAN: As for the Yemen thing, it's actually a little funny because here, more and more people are tipping off their neighbors to pay their electric bills and shit and the economy goes into the toilet. So either the Yemenis are more loyal, or we're just that more desperate? Either way, my position has always been that I would totally turn in criminals for money, which is probably why my friends are all nerdy-upstanding types. One year at college there was a $1200 reward for a serial fire alarm puller and I was dying to know who it was because that was like, half of the money I'd make all semester otherwise.

MOE: Which reminds me of a point that I hope that Obama can make fairly. Re the "eight more years" thing. I think anyone who goes out of his way to say that a McCain administration would be "another eight years of the same" is doing a disservice to history. I think it's safe to say it would be historically impossible for another Administration to match this administration's singleminded dedication to the pursuit the interests of such a tiny group of corrupt people in all blatant disregard of democracy. I think we would be ill-advised to cheapen George W. Bush's "Worst President Ever" stain that way. No matter what happens in the general election January 20 will be a relatively good day for this country.
MOE: And regarding Yemen, I think it's safe to say we are less desperate.

MOE: And don't let me forget to bring up this fucking depressing story on the end of the era of cooperation between First and Third World countries that SOMEHOW begat the Green Revolution on the basis of a basic shared interest in the end of human suffering and not ADM profit margins.
MEGAN: Um, I don't thing McCain will be bad in the same way, but I think he's spent the last 8 years selling his soul to the Rovian devils in order to secure the nomination, and that doesn't make me particularly happy. There won't be a ton of turnover in terms of the kinds of people in middle management and shit because they're all working on his campaign and will be "owed"
MOE: This is pretty stark.

Adjusted for inflation, the World Bank cut its agricultural lending to $2 billion in 2004 from $7.7 billion in 1980.

MOE: Well, but what does McCain need with the Rovian devils now? Karl Rove is dispensing him free advice via his various punditry positions now.
MOE: There is just something that chills me about the "eight more years" refrain.

MEGAN: Well, and let's not forget that part of the problem with the IRRI's budget and people not working there is the fact that they were a proponent of biotechnology to get certain properties out of rice (salinity resistance, vitamins) that simply could not be bred in by convention means, and they were shit on by the world and the environmental movement, targeted for eco-terrorism and a lot of their developed-world money dried up over it, even though the Gold Rice project could've had serious benefits for the malnourished people of the world. I kept waiting for the article to mention that and it didn't.
MOE: Fuckin ecoterrorists. Anyway here we see shades of the pharmaceutical industry.

The insect is not a new problem. In the 1960s, the rice institute, nestled between jungle and the bustling town of Los Ba os, pioneered ways to help farmers grow two and even three crops a season, instead of one.

MOE: You talk to guys who develop drugs at pharmaceutical companies and they think it's absolutely shameful that if they want a drug to come to market these days they have to go to work on the next generation of lipitor or abilify or the drug that finally cures metabolic syndrome when there are still so many infectious diseases to be cured. At one point there was a Nature article suggesting the industry establish a non-profit pharmaceutical company to address diseases whose cures would not be money makers. The same should go for agriculture, you'd think. I don't really understand why all the philanthropy targeted at making life-improving technology more available to the third world seems to focus on hand-cranked laptops and stuff like that.

MEGAN: I think it's because a lot of philanthropy is corporate, it's designed to make companies look good to their consumers and stock holders, but those decisions are made by people within the company. So, of course that's the kind of corporate philanthropy they would engage in. And the pharmaceutical companies will pay tons of money to run those Prescription Partnership for America commercials and send out the buses and take a hit on giving medicines to a small subset of people who can't afford it rather than risk price controls, and they'll give away some AIDS medications in developing countries to keep patent rights.
9:35 AM
MEGAN: And Monsanto will spend millions of dollars spraying RoundUp on farmers fields to see if they're cheating on licensing rather than donating to the IRRI or developing drought-resistant wheat or something.
MEGAN: And everyone will give Bill Gates $1 million to research a cure for malaria or AIDS or whatever and claim that they're doing great shit and then go back to making money.
MEGAN: Anyway, if we're going to take today to be depressed about injustice, how about if you're taking medical marijuana while waiting for a transplant, you're pretty much not eligible for the transplant anymore?
MOE: Well I actually have a better answer to my own question that is not QUITE as cynical. The culture of Silicon Valley and the rapidness of the wealth creation that's happened there, the "open source-ness" of ideals, the existence of Microsoft monopolistic practices as a sort of anti-standard...the newness...the fact that the scientists in the case of the technology industry WERE the business founders and ARE the wealth holders...this swirl of factors makes electrical engineers and software engineers more idealistic and philanthropic I think. Whereas in pharmaceuticals and agriculture a lot of the scientific talent is still being managed by corporate shareholder-driven assholes because the barriers to entry are so much higher.
MEGAN: So, geeks think computers really can save the world, and everyone else is just faking it like I said? I'd buy that in moderation.
MOE: The thing is that: there are certain classes of people you might to run their businesses more ethically, less greedily...more thoughtfully...Hasidic-founded Kosher agriprocessing plants are no longer among them. (Did you read this story?) (Holy shit.)

MEGAN: I would be more surprised and outraged that this Administration is targeting illegal immigrants for arrest and deportation and doing virtually nothing to the management that hires them if I hadn't been living in this country for 30 years, probably.
MEGAN: And/or hadn't read that series in the WaPo last week about how unethically and illegally we treat supposedly-illegal immigrants while in custody.
MOE: And on that note I'll leave you with this from George Packer's New Yorker piece on conservatism:

MOE:

Nixon was coldly mixing and pouring volatile passions. Although he was careful to renounce the extreme fringe of Birchites and racists, his means to power eventually became the end. Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum—"A little raw for today," he warned—that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading "Dividing the Democrats." Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in "the Old Roosevelt Coalition," it recommended that the White House "exacerbate the ideological division" between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon's policies; highlight "the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party"; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare.

Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. "Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country," Buchanan wrote. "We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention." Such gambits, he added, could "cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

According to an AP article from 2004, "drop houses" are often "the setting for the worst abuses against immigrants, who usually aren't free to leave and sometimes are held until extortion payments are made." Right now the minors found at the house — three toddlers and six teenagers — are being held with their mothers at a private shelter. There is no word about what will happen to these women and the others who were found at the drop house. It's likely that they will be kept at detention centers or local jails for the time being, as The National Immigrant Justice Center reports that 30,000 immigrants per day are detained in this fashion.

Smugglers Sexually Assaulted Immigrants, Officials Say [Los Angeles Times]
Immigrants Face Hardships in Drop Houses [AP via Translator's Cafe]
In the Voice of Immigrant Women : They Wanted to Take Away My Baby [Vivir Latino]

Baichu's not the only creep to exploit the precarious situation many immigrant women find themselves in. The Times mentions one Eddie Romualdo Miranda, "who was charged with demanding sexual favors from a 29-year-old Vietnamese woman in exchange for approving her citizenship application." They also reference Kelvin R. Owens, "who was convicted in 2005 of sexually assaulting a 45-year-old woman during her citizenship interview in the federal building." There are several more documented examples of immigration officials who abused their power, and the Times wonders how many more cases are swept under the rug. Baichu is pleading not guilty to felony and misdemeanor sexual coercion charges, and if convicted he faces up to seven years in jail.

This story comes on the heels of proposed changes to the Violence Against Women Act. As I noted in an earlier post, the current VAWA allows physically abused illegal aliens to apply for lawful immigrant status. The potential new law would force these women to return to their country of origin before applying for legal residency in the U.S.

The Colombian woman who was blackmailed seemed to have a non-abusive American husband whom she loved. After her run-in with Baichu, she told the Times her husband "was so mad at me, he left my house. I don't know if he's going to come back." Oh, and she's still awaiting her green card so she can visit Colombia without having to stay there for good.

An Agent, A Green Card, And A Demand For Sex [New York Times]

Earlier: Crimes Against Womanity

• Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and born-again goth writer Anne Rice are coming out to support Hillary Clinton for President. Heidi, who was turned away from a recent Clinton rally, says, "Any woman who's smart, how can you not be [a fan of Hillary]?" Something tells us that Rice, who has traded in writing vampire fiction for some Born Again crap, is not getting into any Hillary fundraisers either. [Las Vegas Review Journal]
  
• The immigration activist who sought refuge in a Chicago Church in order to remain with her son in the United States was arrested and deported back to Mexico this weekend. Apparently, family values don't apply to brown people. [NY Times]
  
• A British woman has claimed the record for oldest woman to give birth, at the age of 59. Funny thing is, she waited ten years to mention it. [Guardian]

• Scrawny models might not be the only thing to blame for anorexia. A recent survey found that 20% of eating disorder patients could be described as having a brain disorder on the autism spectrum. Like we needed a scientific study to tell us that Mary Kate Olsen is a little off — the whole "boho" thing confirmed that months ago. [Telegraph]
• Venice's first female gondolier is calling out her male counterparts for ripping off customers and destroying tradition. Actually, being rowed around Venice was ruined as a romantic activity the minute The Bachelor got it's dirty, grubby paws on it. [Telegraph]
• Proof that Minnesota is indeed a civilized place! The state just enacted a new law that would make it possible for family-planning organizations to purchase birth control in bulk through cooperative purchasing agreements, a move that will result in cutting the cost of birth control to the public by 50%. Convenient, considering the only thing to do in the middle of winter in Minnesota is fuck. [Feminist Daily News Wire]
• Non-stick cookware could result in low birth weights. So how are pregnant women expected to make the perfect pickle, goat cheese, and peanut butter omelet now? [Babble]
• Fuck the paranoia. Taking anti-depressants during pregnancy might not be so dangerous. [Babble]
• As we've pointed out a number of times, the anti-choice movement has been given too much power in spinning abortion research to support their wiggity-wack agenda. Women's Health News has a fabulous summary of some of their doozies. [Women's Health News]
• Sometimes we feel really pissed off about the country we live in, and rightfully so, but the story of this Kurdish woman makes us feel very grateful that we live in a place where at least you won't get stoned to death by a mob of men in front of police officers who sit back and do nothing and oh yeah someone films it and now it's on the fucking internet. [Feministe]
• Analyzing the analysis of Hillary Clinton's wardrobe in major news articles that, generally, have nothing to do with what she's wearing — fair, so long as we remember to mention how sexy John Edwards' $400 haircut is. [Star Tribune]