Roniweiss.com Has Moved

If you’re looking for my blog, you’ll need to head over to roniweiss.com, as I’m no longer using WordPress.com.

It’s been a great blogging service, which is why I’m continuing on, this time with self-hosted WordPress.org.

My Reversal on the Wisconsin Debacle

It’s amazing how little you can know about a subject, despite following the news. Unions and union rights, etc. are still not entirely clear to me, but at least I understand what collective bargaining is. I figured it was one of those legal terms that didn’t mean what it seems to. Nope, it means bargaining together, which is the whole point of a union. I think I was confusing “collective bargaining” with “binding arbitration”. Pretty big mistake.

So when they say that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is attacking unions, yes, yes he is. That’s inarguable.

Joe Geni had been trying to convince me that it was a purely political move. I didn’t buy into it, because it made sense to me to go after state employees for receiving benefits that non-public employees don’t get to have. I still wonder if the job security and benefit that people have in the public sector are fair when no one else seems to have them, but perhaps it makes less sense to raze everyone down and more sense to figure out how we can accommodate the new structure of the job market to give people benefits that they need.

But back to the politics. A week or so ago, I glossed over a FOX News article by Chris Stirewalt where he takes the side of Gov. Walker. Reading it more closely, Stirewalt’s argument is fairly clear: unions are unfair because they get a lot of money that helps Democrats.

And since unions give almost entirely to Democrats, that means the lack of dues payments from the federal payroll – now more than $15 billion a month for nearly 3 million employees – leaves a lot of campaign cash on the table.

And

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that a fifth of all campaign donations to the fugitive lawmakers in the past two election cycles came from public workers.

For national Democrats, the stakes are just as high. The more than 2 million civilian federal workers available for union organization are small fry compared to what’s going on at the state and local level.

All right, Stirewalk, great, Democrats get money from unions. And Republicans? It’s common knowledge that they are supported by businesses. Is it fair to criticize businesses or try to limit their involvement in the political process? Nope, that infringes upon free speech. If businesses are somehow legally people (which is not an entirely agreed upon notion), those are some pretty damn big people. There’s a reason Godzilla fights Mothra, not moths. You need some sort of balance. It’s the whole reason for unions, to have a mass that can stand up to the mass of business itself.

Let’s say that public workers are getting too many benefits. Fine, that’s possible, so perhaps they shouldn’t. But to balance it out by taking away their right to organize doesn’t make any sense. It just means that if you’re then at a disadvantage for being in a public job instead of an advantage. Doesn’t balance it out, it just tilts the see-saw the other way.

The right to organize and join unions is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23, Section 4:

Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

This is a document that the United States, including Eleanor Roosevelt, helped to craft. The United States voted in favor of it in 1948. To try to destroy unions is anti-American. And that’s all that collective bargaining means: bargaining together.

Even if Wisconsin’s public employees are getting more benefits than they should, it doesn’t mean that Wisconsin’s governor has any legitimacy in trying to take away something that the United States has declared to be a universal human right.

Mind you, I’m not going to go out and join the Wobblies.

Should people *have* to be in a union and pay dues? I don’t know.

Should unions get everything they want? No. But collective bargaining, as I realized, is not binding arbitration.

Do the benefits that some overpaid unionized workers get make us less competitive in the global market? Seems logical to me.

I still don’t feel like I’m well-enough versed in the subject, but at least I can say this: Screw you, Gov. Walker. Fight on, protesters.

I’ll credit the March 3, 2011 episode  of The Daily Show with helping me come to some of these conclusions.

The Cyprus Tug-o’-War

St. Hilarion, Cyprus (North)

The first thing that drew me to Cyprus is that they have another of those countries that doesn’t exist.

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is only recognized by Turkey itself. It’s also known as “North(ern) Cyprus”. According to the European Union (and much of the world), the whole island is one country. The reality of this is pretty clearly in dispute, as the TRNC runs its own border control at its (internationally unrecognized) various ports of entry. This all came about after the Turkish military came on the island in 1974 following a mess of events that year.

One of those ports of entry is Girne (Kyrenia), (North) Cyprus. That’s how I got in, via a ferry from Turkey.

Part One: The Turkish Cypriot

The first guy I met up with was a Turkish Cypriot whose family was originally from the south. They owned some shops in Girne/Kyrenia. He drove me around to different places in and around Girne, showing me a village that he particularly liked, which was basically Britain on Cyprus. Nice gardens on a secluded part of a hill. A shop had a sign in English informing its customers that they were going to eat the cost rise in beer, as opposed to passing it along to consumers. As I walked along, I was greeted by middle-aged white people saying “Hello”, not “Merhaba” (‘hello’, in Turkish). The guy told me that the Brits come there because it’s relatively cheap to buy nice places, as you don’t have to deal with European prices.

As we went around, the Turkish Cypriot and I talked about his sense of self. He said that he was Mediterranean. Not Turkish. Turkish Cypriot, sure, but there was a difference. He felt like he had more in common with people from Italy, France, etc. than he did with the Turks. He wanted Cyprus to be united, but blamed the Greek Cypriots for not agreeing to the most recent referendum on the matter.

We went to his friend’s cafe. They had grown up together in Girne and had known each other since the age of 2. As we drove back into the center of Girne, the guy waved and smiled to various people as we drove down the main drag. It was clearly his home, his element. Just a summer sort of a guy in a summer sort of a world.

He couldn’t host me, so I moved on to a Turkish guy, who also lives in North Cyprus.

Part Two: The Turk

The Turkish guy had been living in Cyprus for a bit. He was more than willing to talk politics as we went around more of the north, with no holding back on his critiques of American and Israeli foreign policy.

The first day, we went to St. Hilarion, a former castle made and run by the old French royalty that were formerly on the island. As it is high up with great views of below, it’s always been used for military purposes. And on the whole drive up, you see a base, with signs telling you not to take pictures.

All over North Cyprus, you see military bases. Apparently they used to be even more visible, with military vehicles being used inside the cities. I was never clear on whether the soldiers I was seeing were North Cypriot or Turkish. I’d assume a great deal of the latter, as the flags were Turkish. There are about 5,000 North Cypriot troops and 30-40,000 Turkish troops, for a northern population of less than 300,000. Occupation, from the world’s perspective. Protection, from Turkey’s.

Later in the day, we went to the other major city of the north, Famagusta. Aside from its walls, various imperial historical pieces, church converted into a mosque (above), etc., it has another oddity of the divided island.

The Ghost Town of Varosha

Varosha used to be the hottest part of Famagusta, which used to be predominantly Greek. After the invasion, it became military-occupied, off-limits to everyone else. Massive hotels are abandoned, falling apart. It’s a strange experience seeing a city that is just out of reach, perfect location, useless to everyone.  I asked my guide why it’s still there. He winked and said “it’s just a card in the game”. That really creeped me out. To see any of this devastation as a game was a jaded perspective that I hope to never reach.

I knew that I was only seeing, at most, half of the equation. I was excited for my time with the next guy that I would meet, a Greek Cypriot.

Part Three: The Greek Cypriot

The Greek Cypriot is a moderator for various online Cyprus reconciliation groups. I figured this would make him a fairly impartial person. But his family story and personality made that impossible. This isn’t to say he didn’t *try* to see the other side, but personal history makes that impossible in these conflict situations.

Talking to him turned my prior experience on its head. His family was from Kyrenia, the place that I’d gone around earlier with the Turkish Cypriot. His family left in 1973 during the rise in violence before the Turkish incursion in 1974. He grew up in South Africa and returned to Cyprus a few years back, as his adopted country was in post-apartheid decline.

It was difficult talking to him at points because he obviously had spent a lot of time desperately trying to come up with what he saw as an objective solution, but clearly could not maintain objectivity. He would wrestle with himself on how best to deal with the issue in as fair a way as possible, but would always go back to his inevitable conclusion that the Turks were in the wrong and to blame for destroying what he thought of as a relatively peaceful place before the invasion.

Not long after I’d gotten into the south part of Cyprus, we headed back to the border as he showed me around Nicosia, the Cypriot capital. The Green Line, part of the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus, divides the Turkish and Greek parts of Cyprus. It used to be incredibly difficult to cross. Now, Cypriots (and most Westerners) can cross it as they wish. They barely seem to check when you go into the south (as they see it all as one island) and you have to go through a passport check and visa-on-a-separate-piece-of-paper-stamp for the North.

We stood and talked for a while on the Green Line (no, you don’t see an actual green line) in between the serious-ish TRNC border and the “look at your passport briefly, then wave you on ” EU border. I’ll never forget having a loud conversation about Cyprus’ history and future in no man’s land, watching cats jump between abandoned buildings in a UN-controlled area (with no UN forces to be seen).

After our chat, we went back to his place, an apartment complex that was originally made for Greek Cypriot refugees from the north. Over in the distance, there was a hill on the north side of the island. It had a light show on it, wherein the elements of the Turkish flag would pop up, then finally end with the Turkish Cypriot flag, a mildly altered version of the Turkish flag.

Conclusions:

The views of the three, as I saw them:

• Turkish Cypriot: North Cyprus is not part of Turkey. It’s its own entity only because the Greeks didn’t agree to reunification.
• Turk: International affairs is a card game. You keep the cards to play them later. Turkey should maintain control of North Cyprus for that reason.
• Greek Cypriot: Cyprus is one country. The Turks are occupying the north. They displaced a lot of people and destroyed the relative peace between the two groups.

Cyprus solidified for me how difficult these situations are. It takes a really strong desire for reconciliation to fix something like this. For a couple generations now, the island has been divided. The Turkish Cypriot grew up in the north. That’s his home. Yet, for the Greek Cypriot, that’s his home, too. The home of his parents and family. The Turkish Cypriot goes around Girne and feels comfortable. The Greek Cypriot sees the place that his father proposed or where his grandmother died and feels sadness, a longing for a home he never got to grow up in.

The one thing that I left out of all of this is the involvement of powers beyond the parties themselves. Cyprus used to be a British colony. The British still have a military presence on decent chunks of the island, with the Americans maintaining a presence, as well. With its proximity to the Middle East (Larnaca to Beirut is a 40-minute flight), it’s a strategic location. So don’t expect the international community to stop having a vested interest. But how much they can do depends on the Cypriots themselves. From the couple of guys I met from either side of the Green Line, it seems like a lot of Cypriots want to live together. I hope outside parties will work toward that or stay out of the way so they can do it on their own.

All pictures can be found at flickr.com/roniweiss

S3: Luxembourg

Roni hangs out in the international, incredibly safe city of Luxembourg in the world’s only Grand-Duchy.

 

Roni on SNL

In some alternate universe, I’ve hosted Saturday Night Live.

Here are some of the photos used therein (as made by Sharon Burian).

Thanks again to @SharonBurian, who has been giving these to me as birthday presents the past few years.

Roni Sees SNL

Part One: The Wait

I live and die by Saturday Night Live.

One of my few childhood memories is how exciting it was when Comedy Central (back when Penn Jillette was still the voice of the network) had 24 hours of SNL (apparently in 1991). Regardless as to the decade or any string of bad episodes, I not only stuck with it, but relished in it.

So, you can imagine, seeing the show live has always been a dream.

When I was in town in April 2010, Joe Geni and I stood on line for a few hours in the hopes of getting into the Tina Fey/Justin Bieber episode. With our standby tickets in the 100s, we never really had a shot. It seems like 30-50 people usually get in on standby.

This time, I was ready to wait all night, writing on the NYC CouchSurfing board to secure a sleeping bag (and a tent).

Delayed a bit, I got to the line at about 10 PM. I was told by the Rutgers students in front of me that I was number 46. With some people choosing dress rehearsal and some choosing the live show, I figured my chances were decent, given the normally even  breakdown of people requesting dress rehearsal vs. live.

A cop went by and I asked him if there would be a problem with my intended setup. He said I should be fine. I began to set up my tent.

Cozy, I went to sleep.

A couple hours later there was a knock at the tent, with someone yelling “No tents!”

By time I peeked my head out, there wasn’t anyone there, so I went back to ‘bed’.

Knock again. Ignored again.

Third knock was serious. I bluntly told the security guard that I had talked to a cop before and he told me it was fine. Since this guy represented no real authority to me and debased whatever respect I might have had for him by claiming that this sidewalk was private property, I told him that I would only take it down if a cop told me to.

Back into the tent.

I kept peeking out, but no security guard and no cops. Seemed safe. The dudes behind me on line agreed that the guy must have given up.

5-10 minutes later, the dudes behind me yelled through my tent that the guy was coming back with three cops. They sounded a bit scared.

I peeked my head out. Two chick cops and one fella. The fella was shorter than either chick. They all had slightly amused looks on their face, the kind of look a cop has when they realize something is stupid, but they don’t have anything better to do, so it’s worth the distraction.

“If I have to be cold, so do you,” said the guy, in what was meant to put us on the same level.

I argued my point that I was told prior that I’d be fine.

“No structures,” they responded. Obviously, this tent qualified as that. I asked them what the line was, considering that there were air mattresses further up. “No structures. You can have a sleeping bag or whatever else.”

I asked what it would take to make them happy.

“Well, untie it from the post…”

Reasonable.

I told them that it didn’t make any sense that the guy was claiming it was private property. They agreed. It’s the sidewalk, where you can’t have structures.

I asked if I just took the poles out, if that would work.

“Well, that’s just semantics,” one of them said.

“This whole thing is semantics,” I replied.

The people around seemed fairly spellbound that I was putting in so much of a fight.

I began to take the poles out. My tent looked like a giant popped balloon.

They seemed content with this. They moved on, and I went back into my Flatland tent.

A truck came by around 5:30 AM, offering free hot chocolate or coffee or tea, with paid snacks available as well. (No free bagel this time, though, which was a disappointment.)

I got my standby ticket. #33 for dress rehearsal. I went back to my grandmother’s wayyyy uptown apartment to go to sleep.

Part Two: The Show

I got to Rockefeller Center about half an hour before the 7:15 PM arrival time. You have to line up in order of your standby ticket. Since it doesn’t matter how early you show up for this line, people don’t get there hours before. This caused undue optimism on the part of some people on the line who hoped that the 90+ people in front of them just wouldn’t show. I tried to temper their expectations.

The main problem with this line of people is that it is some of the worst energy you’ll find. Almost everyone is panicked and saying things like “Well, I won’t kill myself if I don’t get in, but…”

Eventually, the line started moving. I got further than the time before, up to the line to go through the metal detector. The 30 first people went through and got on the elevator to go upstairs. They were safe.

4 more people were allowed to go up, which split the couple behind me. “Just go,” the woman told the guy. “Save yourself,” was what I heard, in the style of a cliched war flick.

I never do well with metal detectors, because I always have so much crap in my pockets. The guy at the metal detector told me to slow down, that I’d be fine. I started to slow down, went through, was told I was OK and began to put the stuff back in my pockets.

Then, I was yelled at to hurry up, because I might miss the magical elevator.

Into the elevator, we went upstairs, the Rutgers kids ecstatic. I was still trying to sort out all of my crap that was formerly in my pockets, so I ended up being the absolute last person in. Along the hall were pictures of various hosts and skits and the like. I wanted so badly to take pictures but knew that wasn’t in the cards.

Inside Studio 8H, Jason Sudeikis was doing the warmup. It surprised me that it was done by a member of the cast. While I had missed a chunk of it, he never gave the sort of spiel that the Daily Show and Colbert warmup people give about the audience being important. I wasn’t sure if this was just because it was dress or because it was just a different environment. Sudeikis was exactly as he is in every sketch, smug and funny enough.

After the warmup, Kenan Thompson came out with some of the female cast as backup dancers singing Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting”.

Then the show started. Armisen as Obama, which seemed drier than when I usually see it. Paul Rudd’s monologue felt like it was watching it on TV. And so on.

The problem is, as anyone will tell you, it’s a relatively small space, packed to the gills with set pieces. A good portion of the time, you can’t see the actual performance, or at least not everyone in the skit, and have to look to the monitors. And for whatever reason, it just felt lackluster. I don’t know if it was just because it was dress rehearsal, because ever since I’ve watched after being there live, there have been a lot of points where I just don’t see the cast invested in their roles.

In some ways, after the fact, I felt like I watched a magician revealing their secrets. While I’m still watching SNL as dutifully as ever, some of the lustre is gone. At the very least, I have it confirmed that I would never want to be a cast member. Watching the face of Bill Hader after he beat himself up after his Julian Assange bit and feeling the general energy of the crew rushing around to set stuff up between commercials, it just seemed like a lot of stress to be around week in and out. I never felt camaraderie between the performers or the crew. The performers seemed like they were in their individual worlds and the crew felt like they were just doing a job. No love, no magic. It was work.

Maybe that’s camera work. It’s part of why I lost interest in acting overall, once I got involved in it to the extent that I did.

Plus, there are few things that I’ve found more depressing than Paul McCartney trying to still be Paul McCartney. Arthritic kicks and plastic surgeried skin are no way to be remembered.

Be warned: while it may seem like it’s worth the wait, be prepared for your dreams to get crushed. I walked into Studio 8H giddy; I walked out disconnected from former lifelong ambitions.

S3: Père Lachaise Cemetery – Paris

Roni visits the graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and what he terms “Holocaust Corner” at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

 

A true conundrum (AKA Arizona, Hospitals and Illegal Immigrants)

At first, I was going to get up in arms about Arizona’s recent attack against illegal immigrants. Now, I’m more mixed.

There is a proposal to require hospitals to report illegal immigrants to the authorities. This could easily go against the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires that everyone be treated, regardless of citizenship. But, if they are initially treating them in emergency situations, there is nothing wrong with then having to report a criminal to the authorities.

Really, what this comes down to are two things:

1) Do illegal immigrants deserve non-emergency treatment? Will this prevent people from going in for treatment, only causing further costs when they get emergency treatment?

2) What are hospitals required to take in terms of identification? What systems would need to be in place for them to check records? What would happen to the hospital/employees if they didn’t report it? How would the State of Arizona know, anyway?

As much as we can question what causes illegal immigration or if we are enabling it, it remains a crime. I imagine that other criminals would be reported by the hospital to authorities, so I don’t see the difference in this case, provided it isn’t an undue burden on the hospital to check ID. As always, what we really need to do is deal with immigration in a serious way.

What say you?

States ignoring U.S. Constitution

“No State shall… coin Money” [Article One, Section Ten, U.S. Constitution]

I am thoroughly confused by the headline that I read today.

A state senator in South Carolina and a Virginia delegate have respectively suggested that their states look into what it would take to print and coin their own currency, in the event of a failure of the Federal Reserve due to hyperinflation.

What sort of a world are we living in where people are getting elected and are allowed to stay in office when they are going directly against not only the spirit, but the letter of the law of the Constitution? Is that not part of their oaths of office?

I keep feeling like there’s more to say, but there really isn’t. This is asinine in every way, shape and form.

S3: Riga, Latvia

Roni is showed around the schizophrenic city of Riga during the 500th anniversary of the Christmas/New Year’s tree.