When I was a wee child, my family had a nanny of sorts for myself and my three siblings. She was a Romanian immigrant to the US, having escaped from under the dictatorial regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu at great personal risk to herself and her family.
She came to America knowing little to no English, with no contacts, money, or skills. She took menial jobs, working as a maid and as a housecleaner and anything else she could to get by. After a year or two she had saved just enough money to bring her husband and young daughter over to join her. And while I was still a snot nosed brat of a little kid and a number of years after, she cared for me and my siblings, cleaning, feeding, clothing, and looking after us as if we were her own children.
She is one of the kindest, bravest, hardest working people I have ever known, and both my life and hers would have been immeasurably worse had her immigration not been possible.
890 opportunities, only 13 hits? What the hell kind of batting average is that?
As a researcher and writer (where’s the emoticon for tearing my hair out?) who, in preparation for a book, is currently spending many hours over first-person accounts, contemporary press reactions across dozens of newspapers and magazines, and immigration records from the US and the many “states” of the former Hungarian Empire before and after WWI, from Ireland, from Russia/the Soviet Union, from the Pale of Settlement and the Baltic States, and finally, from Italy, Spain and Germany whose immigrants to the US were initially (until the 20s) viewed as mentally-challenged peasants and proles fit only for manual labor,* then as gangsters or cry-baby Socialist types running away from strong leaders “probably because they were Bolshevik!, fer cryin’ out loud!” or “They weren’t man enough to straighten-up and do some real work with a real Army that means business.” The speaker here is an isolationist American (whose grandfather who arrived from Sweden in 1880 faced same prejudice & fought for immigrants & workers’ rights, participated in the Haymarket Riots) ignorant of almost all of the facts of fascism in Italy and Germany, and if he cares, he thinks it might be a good thing for them wops and krauts. Beyond enraging, and probably written by template [insert threatening {other, darker or weirder, people} here].
More entirely predictable Xenophobia, employed to make money and score political points off a usually grueling, heart-breaking life of exile, where the 1 of 100 who “makes good” is the anomaly. But the rest of the 99 are sending home what money they can anyway.
I’m reminded of a joke that was going around Italy and America in the pre- and post-WWI years: "Hello friends and family! Kisses to Mama and Papa and tell Fabio to keep his nose clean so he can graduate and skip the trip in steerage.
Here we are in America! We’ve arrived to find that not only are the streets not paved with gold, but they’re not paved at all. And we’re expected to pave them! Will send money as soon as we can we can. Love to you all!!! Baci, Enrico, Paolo and Carlito."
Wait…In the UK there is someone you can file a complaint with if a newspaper lies?
While we’re at it, can we make the Daily Mail’s right hand sidebar illegal as well? And there should be a special hell for people who post links to Daily Mail stories. I suggest we call them “Mailtards”.
You’d have to include some BoingBoing contributors then because Daily Mail stories do get posted here. I think even Cory has done it, but that might be more Daily Mail lies - I know I’ve seen them because I complained about it in the comments at the time. I’m also not a fan of the sensationalist headlines Cory posts that are right out of their play-book - when you fight fire with fire everyone gets burned.
However… I do value the Daily Mail sidebar for letting me know how celebrities are coping with their bikinis.
Also in reference to the post and not you but I don’t want to clutter the thread up with another message - it isn’t tidy and I feel another quote coming on later - “that is, to work and not work simultaneously” - benefits kick in after being resident for a certain amount of time, most of the low paid work available to unskilled (even skilled) immigrants is off the books so it’s a “lie” to saythat people aren’t going to work and claim benefits. That’s an issue with native Brits so there’s no reason to assume that it won’t be with visitors. Will it be most of them? Hardly any? If you’re remotely familiar with the existing Romanian population of the UK you’ll know that they’re a driven entrepreneurial folk who are out to make money however they can.
Cory might wish to note, given his normal concerns about full disclosure, that the British Influence, who he links, are an opaque lobbying group trying to promote UK EU membership, who, as far as I can see are run by professional lobbyists and make no information available about their funding. And it would seem the author is an ex-BBC journalist, potentially in their employ…
Yep. In this case it’s a complaint of a breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice. Which is published by the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, chaired by Paul Dacre, editor of… The Daily Mail.
“I am a person of X nationality, planning a move to move to Y country. I am wondering if it would be possible to attain {{ socialbenefit }} when I get there” : a solid percentage of the postings of every single English-language ex-pat message board I have ever read, ever. Insert the English moving to Sweden, Americans moving to Germany, Australians moving to America, New Zealanders moving to France- you’re planning a move across the world, you’ve got dreams & a plan & some savings, but you for sure want to know what your back-up options are, just in case. It’s an entirely sensible move to try to get info about that before you’re starving on the streets in your new land of opportunity. This doesn’t have to be a made-up lie, as such, to be an example of the pure xenophobic “it’s only a problem when THEY do it” bullshit peddled by the Fail.
Yes, I listed some of Cory’s Daily Mail links a few years ago. Antinous stated at the time that 'Complaining about the Mail is a tired meme and we’ve previously declared it over and done with.’
Antinious was a great defender of Cory, even when Doctorow himself engaged in the propagation of contrafactual material.
I tend to complain when Mark Frauenfelder posts boingboing content via reason.com (a despicable Koch-funded libertarian cesspool that took until 2008 to recognize (some) science over libertarian think tank talking points), but I’ve never thought to compile a list of all his links to them. That’s taking pedantry to another level, I think. 
You obviously disagree, but I miss Antinious. Most tedious pedantry didn’t stand a chance back then and Boing Boing was better for it.
contrafactual
In other words, things you didn’t agree with.
In my opinion, Reason pieces are occasionally interesting in their own right, whereas the Daily Mail almost never is. True, the Cato institute has been doing it’s best to purge itself of left wing libertarianism, and consequently suffers from it, but there’s still a glimmer of intellectual effort, The Daily Mail doesn’t have this. All it really does have is circulation, and that’s hardly in keeping with boing boings aesthetics.
In my opinion, Reason pieces are occasionally interesting in their own right
I actually agree, but in my opinion it isn’t even close to worth it because Reason Magazine/Foundation uses the connections to Boing Boing as a “plug” and valuable public relations and SEO tool to legitimize their overall heinous, corporatist agendas. In many respects, this makes them far more dangerous than The Daily Mail when it comes to wide-spectrum social influence, etc. and creates much more damage overall.
I agree with Reason Magazine on drug decriminalization and some other issues, but they use those “interesting pieces” as bait and there’s plenty of other sources out there on those same issues without the libertarian baggage that comes with it.
Have you ever noticed how Reason Magazine jumps all over the NSA on spying (as they should), but usually glosses over the equally huge problem of corporate spying? In “Reason”-land, it’s mostly only the gubmint spying that’s something to be concerned with:
Every time Boing Boing (or Mark) has anything to do with them, the extremely well-funded (1)(2)(3)(4)(5), corporate, libertarian public relations squads blast it out all over the Internet to disproportionately hit the top results of search engines. It’s not organic and grassroots social influence in action, it’s a methodical, corporate astroturf campaign that only corporate money and corporate agendas can buy.
They (in collusion with other despicable corporatists) have used these exact, same tactics to spread climate change/impact denial and other pro-corporate agendas disproportionately across the Internet to hit many top results on the search engines as well. Muddling reality for profit. Reason Magazine helps to spread pro-industry, climate change impact denial with these methods even today.
Corporate libertarians aren’t the only ones guilty of these tactics, just try searching the Internet (especially Google) on various keywords involving Edward Snowden and you’ll get inundated with top result, negative hit pieces pushed by military-industrial complex lackeys and stooges.
Reason Magazine/Foundation should be scorned by Boing Boing and thrown to the curb. They are a disease upon our republic and whenever Mark legitimizes, boosts and enables their other agendas by posting their content via Boing Boing it makes me cringe.
I miss Antinous too, as it happens, despite disagreeing with a significant proportion of his posts.
I will freely admit to pedantry.
I will freely admit to pedantry.
Nuthing to be proud of in my book. But, yeah… I don’t want to freely admit it, but I do it too, but I’m working on it.
Agree or disagree isn’t the point at all.
Maybe, maybe not.
