NoBuZo

Kay's Blue Racine: Republicon Professed Beliefs are Lies

2010-06-06T11:40:00.000+02:00

Kay's Blue Racine: Republicon Professed Beliefs are Lies

Tales of Real Wimps, Part 1

2009-03-25T08:56:00.008+01:00

(Blogging has been difficult owing to an excess of real work...Begging forgiveness)

Introduction and presentation of Wimp Number One

(Remember: wimp rhymes with limp)

Intro

Every now and then, amidst all the blood, gore and imbecility generated mostly by the male of the human species (90% of the prison population, for instance), one comes across a genuine key to what plagues this Blue Planet of ours. It stands out as a glistening gem of backwardness, of cowardice, of mind-boggling ignorance. This series is never-ending, since the sheer stupidity of men – I am referring to the two-leggeds whose reproductive organs hang out – is apparently never-ending as well, though I do not believe that it is necessarily genetic. The weaker, more insecure these men are, the more they try to oppress women, and the more they show their wussiness, their parochialism, their utter lack of genuine masculinity.

Women have done a great deal of work over the centuries to actually survive men, and in the past 80 or so years, their hard struggle to seek a form of equality has burst to the fore in myriad ways and has produced laws to promote equality. Why should the obvious require a law, I wonder? For a very good reason: Men still think they are superior to women and they still fear that women wish to clamber up onto their “high” platform to share some ephemeral glory. I am not sure that this fear is justified. I believe women would like to have their own platform and enjoy a rich communication with men. But I may be wrong here or simply generalizing to vigorously.

Anyway, that is some of the background to my little series, which hopefully will give some food for thought, maybe raise some issues…

Big books

Yes, religions in this series will get their fair share of broadsides, of course, since much of the evidence shows that the world’s major religions seem to have been devised with the sole aim of oppressing women. And here I would like to distinguish the spirituality of these religions. The fountainhead of many of these movements has been a deeper quest to understand the human existence and its purpose, if any, in the Universe. This spirituality has often been stolen and perverted by narrow-minded and power-hungry men, who then went on created wrathful, bigoted gods in their own image, gods with a bullhorn and an Excel sheet, noting down every little violation of some provincial little law designed not by any invisible being, but rather by power-hungry slobs who, not being able to feel their oats by their own merits, have decided to impose them by some other means. And anyone violating this alleged divine law is then sent to some ghastly gallows, hacked to bits, burned up on an iron frame, pulled apart, eviscerated, buried in sand, lapidated.

And women have often been the victims of male hatred of life, of beauty, of freedom, of otherness.

"God's" will, apparently...

Real wimps from the land that gave us Tantric practices

In this gallery of real wimps, let us begin with this group from India: Sri Ram Sena, which apparently translates as “the Army of Lord Ram.” Ram, of course, is a proper name, not the animal. Let us remember these glorious males, who feel offended, threatened and humiliated by the plain fact of some women showing up for a drink in a bar. Ram's soldiers then proceeded to attack them, chase them, bully them. The details are well-known by now, the link below has a fairly good description of the events. Obviously, these glorious half-studs have a profound fear of women. But rather than advertise the fact, if I were in their shoes, I would go see a shrink or some other spiritual healer.
Pramod Muthalik, boss of Ram's special forces, did apologize, presumably because the embarassing incident shot around the world thanks to the Web.... He added a "but," namely that his group of wimps was protecting Hindu womanhood ("women and girls"), thus emphasizing the fact that his emotional development has remained stuck in the same groove for the past 40 years or so. I am not quite sure this fellow, who was born in 1963, has understood anything, and if that hasn't happened yet, it is time for him and his followers to abandon hope.

Exhibit N for nipple

Let us remind his silly little army of troglodytes, that women are different but equal to men, and that we men were all conceived as women originally, which is why they have nipples. We become men a little later by a mechanism that should be perfectly explainable. Though I suspect that through sheer mental laziness or deficiency, some men would prefer to believe that a mysterious being at that point has pulled out the Excel sheet again and has determined that the creature will become male (i.e. first-class citizen), or female (i.e. tenth-class citizen, cleaner-upper of male messes). Let me suggest, as well, that women do much of the work that is keeping India in shape, that is keeping children clothed, educated, sheltered, fed and protected, in spite of men, rather than with their much needed help. What are these men idling about in a bar for anyway? Is that helping women, Mr Muthalik? If the army of Lord Ram wants male companionship only, there are clubs where old British colonels get together, alternatively Alcatraz or a similar institution. As mentioned above, you find a lot more men behind bars than women.

And if they really want to help Hindu women, I am sure there are hundreds of ways of doing that, they just have to ask some women's organizations, of which there are hundreds. I might suggest lobbying for better schools, for more and equal pay, for proper workplaces, for labor laws, for a little wealth-spreading. Or simply investing in the house and home rather than spending money in some idiotic male-only bar and wasting time acting like pre-adolescent twits.

For more on the subject, try one of the NYT blogs The Lede

(PS: I agree with Ms Ghose about Valentine, but simply because I find these marketing fests are offensive. I have nothing against a feast of love.)

I see a rich crop of entries....

The sound of an economy crumpling

2009-02-09T07:27:00.012+01:00

Oh, what a lovely recession

January passed with its drumfire of gloomy figures processed into dreary statistics – mostly records in unemployment rates and factory closings – by the same “protocolistas of the obvious” who used to whoop up the system of total deregulation. From Panasonic to Toyota, from GM to Microsoft, all major industries have lost jobs, thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. It's called downsizing, but don't let that fool you, it's good old pinkslipping. And I, for one, have the nasty idea that the multinationals and other feudal lords of our economic system are using the recession as a smokescreen to dump a few extra workers and whup the others into shape using "optimization processes." By the same token, the downturn in demand is real and it is gradually rippling through economies like some vigorous tsunami not yet rising to full size in shallow waters to form a horrid and lethal wave... Even the high-rpm engines in China and India have suddenly slowed down as well, brave little Switzerland, with its heavy reliance on exports and generally robust economy is feeling the cold. Still, the Swiss government doesn’t dare take a stick to UBS and other banks that squandered billions in high-risk financial adventures and have been paying out bonuses to bankers, presumably to shut them up. The whole system has become so infantile, one wonders whether these men and some women ever grew up.

Meanwhile, President Obama tried to move money into the American system in a somewhat sustainable manner, i.e. putting it into enterprises like weatherizing homes, improving schools, bridges, roads, or simply dumping it into states. Spreading it, in other words. Real stuff for a real economy. And it is desperately needed, has been for decades, but the ultimately-liberated market gurus wanted to drown government in a bathtub, n'est-ce-pas Mr. Nofziger? We remember that the investment economy tried to make money out of money with all sorts of schemes some of which were not more or less bogus than Madoff's Ponzi scheme. This makes France's Third Republic in the last decades of the 19th century look like a paragon of rectitude.
Naturally, Obama is experiencing static from the Republicans, who are still feeling their collective bile rising at having lost to the pipsqueak Senator from Illinois. They still repeat the mantra of tax cuts for the rich like some hideous Baptist tchotchke that keeps repeating "What would Jesus do?" They have obviously run out of any constructive ideas and in the vacuum has stepped the grand gasbag Rush Limbaugh. This should sink what’s left of the old GOP in a few months, unless some more reasonable politicians like Olympia Snowe from Maine show up on the podium to give Boehner and Co. a whack on the fanny. But astoundingly, they managed to nitpick it to the point where it might not, in fact, be terribly effective.... As a friend who suffered testicular cancer once told me: "The pump still works, but the well's run dry." That, at any rate, is Paul Krugman's view in the NY Times today.

As for Limbaugh (and his colleagues like Beck, Savage, Boortz, Coulter, etc.) he is an overpaid, ignorant, narcissistic and somewhat obscene attention-seeker, a kind of fat, old and male version of Britney Spears. She, at least, managed to put two kids into the world and still has a chance to change her ways. Limbaugh, on the other hand, actually seems to believe his own bilge and is sclerotically repeating it in the hopes that the "base," meaning the lunatic fringe, will keep on supporting him. And it is, it is. In the US, frauds still make money. In fact, if you want to even sell a good idea, package it in fraudian garb (a topic I shall return to, no doubt).

But let us not focus on the symptoms too much. After all, what more could the GOP do but attract attention in one of the venerated American ways, by being vulgar, ugly and aggressively imbecilic.

This still leaves Obama having to use a fair amount of force to push through a bill over some resistance. And the bill’s popularity has been dwindling according to a Rasmussen poll. This may have to do indirectly with Tom Daschle’s tax woes, or rather, the fact that he forgot to pay taxes on some limousine he was using. The Great Unwashed does tend to cross-pollinate data, I am afraid. (Chatty footnote: Back in the mid 80s, when the Reaganauts were ranting against both miniature, allegedly Communist Nicaragua and Moslem Lybia, about 60% of people in a poll in Florida believed that the dominant religion in Nicaragua was Islam...) The other problem may well be a failure to learn a fundamental lesson from the financial fiasco. Let us put the "ownership society" back on the slab for a moment. But this time, let us not forget its cohorts: personal debt and the notion of instant gratification. The latter is another concept that used to be widely discussed, but seems to have gone the way of Vance Packard and the social critics of a generation ago.

Gimmee

There's a reason why it's called piggybank

Owning a house, a car, perhaps having some creature comforts in life is fine. But just because your neighbor has it is not reason enough.

People were even warned by the very gurus of the fast buck: There is no free lunch. And fast food is not healthy. Brokers only managed to sell cheap mortgages to low- or no-income people because of the pervasive notion that anyone can strike it rich easily, because that is the American way. It's not. The American way is to make the rich richer, and the less well-off be damned. This plain fact has been documented over and over again for decades. It can be read in Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962), for example. This myth is still swallowed as gospel by millions of Americans every day, and at times it even crosses the Atlantic and infects people's brains in Europe.

Take it easy

It took at least 30 years at least to get into this phenomenal mess. The way out is going to take some time, and it will require not only intelligent and firm navigating on the part of the Obama administration, but also a new paradigm for Americans in general. Patience is one solution. The other is: coming down to earth and being satisfied with less, otherwise you will become the prey of slick-mouthed salesmen. And the first step is recognizing the problems of addiction…. To be continued…

The Alchemist

2009-01-27T21:52:00.005+01:00

Amidst the ugliness, a word about beauty...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born today. His music make us listeners, humble creatures, come alive and dance inside. Everything he touched seemed to glow. He could have taken a lump of coal, set it to two clarinets, a violin, a viola and a cello, and it would have been fit for the tiara of a queen.

It is good to reflect on his music, to reflect on his being, a man so devoted that even as his children died and Vienna's cold and damp winds pushed their way into his bones, he could still write works like The Magic Flute or the three last symphonies. You cannot go to war on Mozart's music, you can only fall in love with the world around you.

One of my favorite little works:

Enjoy

Re-booty

2009-01-27T11:15:00.010+01:00

More thoughts on oil and cars. It may be time to restore the system to an earlier date. And why is it that we always have to feel the pain of mega-industries?

Barack Obama rode to power on a car running on green fuel and with gasoline becoming more expensive than milk. And so his message of energy savings and independence did find receptive ears, obviously. By November 4, the shock of $145 plus per barrel of oil was still reverberating in the bones of the car-addicted, even while the sinking economy was beginning to drag down energy prices as well. Within a week of launching his presidency, Obama already put the issue on the table as an early priority. And it makes sense, given that the Big Three failed miserably to devise sustainable strategies in the past and now their gradual demise may well squeeze the entire supplier industry. So what did President Obama have to say?

"We will commit ourselves to steady, focused, pragmatic pursuit of an America
that is freed from our energy dependence, and empowered by a new energy economy
that puts millions of our citizens to work. … Now is the time to meet the
challenge of this crossroads of history, by choosing a future safer for our
country, prosperous for our planet, and sustainable."

Turn up the volume
The reaction from the auto industry was predictable. As David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) told the New York Times: “It would have a devastating effect on everybody, and not just the domestics.” The auto industry has always, consistently and vociferously resisted changing its polluting and gas-guzzling ways for decades and decades. And they have done so by spending vast amounts of money on lobbyists (such as the CAR) that would have been better spent developing new technology. But the bucks were rolling in, and a vast nation of sheep was out there purchasing those ridiculous SUVs blithely ignoring the plain fact that the stuff running their car was coming from foreign soil and was not doing the atmosphere any good. In fact, a whole lobby was created to explain that pollution doesn't exist nor has it an effect on people and the environment. Well, that will sell to people who are willing to believe that dinosaurs stalked the earth with humans 6000 years ago.

The issue of energy dependence or independence is hardly a new one. But in a world in which anyone over 50 is considered a rusting hulk at the bottom of the ocean, and most young people clamp their brains between ear buds that blast them full of commercial thumping, a certain transfer of data has gone missing. Thirty-one years ago, then President Carter had this to say at his State of the Union Address:

“Never again should we neglect a growing crisis like the shortage of energy,
where further delay will only lead to more harsh and painful solutions…. Now we
know what we must do, increase production. We must cut down on waste. And we
must use more of those fuels which are plentiful and more permanent. We must be
fair to people, and we must not disrupt our Nation's economy and our budget.”

The path of least resistance
Then came Whitewash Reagan and suddenly Carter’s good intentions went out the window, alas. In the Happy Days mode, Americans felt it was OK to "move on" and live for the day, buying any car they liked, any car that Detroit wanted to foist upon them. Thus, every Tom, Dick and Jane with an inferiority complex could buy some huge device made for chasing terrorists in the desert and ride from home to the general store, shop and never witch off their engine. Anyone suggesting that this was absurd, that pollution was a real danger, that such vehicles were unnecessary or, heaven forbid, more money should be invested in public transportation, was laughed off the map or even called a Commie or Socialist. The latter two buzzwords, by the way, are always pulled out of the hat when someone feels humungous profits threatened, or some redneck is trying to sound smart. Most would not even recognize Communism if it came out of the corn syrup dispenser at House of Pancakes. Let's face it.

The price of oil was so cheap that innovation could no longer be marketed properly. That was the message from the scientific community, at any rate. At the Research Institutes in Garching, some scientists had found a very effective method to recycle heat using heat pumps and a silicate. But with oil at $12 or so a barrel, no way to get the system into the market where it belonged.

1+1=3
Indeed, in the 30 years between the oil shocks of the 70s and now, the entire world has changed. There can be no doubt that given the right leadership, human endeavor would have easily found a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine (the research was being done, there is no doubt, but it was kept away from the public, since the old system was working so well). But for that, it would have taken real leaders in power, not industry shills and professional deskmen with deep pockets like the class of pol that has risen to the top. Because the problem is not just in the USA. The German and French auto industries also jumped on the gas-guzzle bandwagon and hollered foul each time it was asked to mend its ways. The ADAC, Germany’s automobile club, has consistently lobbied against any regulation, for example. And the CAR equivalent in Germany, the VDA, has done nothing but put on the brakes. In the 70s, attempts were made to limit speeds on German highways, which are to this day the last bastion of official motoring hooliganism in Europe (barring country roads in places like Croatia, Hungary and Serbia, where the momma’s boys are also plentiful and need to counteract their inherent anger by driving big cars and stepping on the gas). These attempts were reversed by the groundswell of conservatism that swept the nation as of 1983. What a shame. By now, we would be used to going slower.

So we have to reboot to a different time, to an era in which we had a chance, like the 1970s. And the industry will squeak. It is doing so already. At an environmental forum in July in Magedeburg, Germany, hosted by Daimler, among others, all the lobbyists were present, sweating away for their masters, pleading to let the free market do its magic. The time may have come to let them grovel and plead. The last time we gave in to them, they ran off with the cash register and trashed the place.

(More to come on this topic, of course… so stay posted)

A good day

2009-01-20T06:03:00.005+01:00

Jangling thoughts on Obama Day

Today, Obama will step into the presidency and it is a very important day. Not only because he is the first person of color to lead the USA, but because he has the opportunity, the charisma and the intelligence to bring genuine change and lead not by fear and browbeating, as his predecessor did, but by dint of vision. The many challenges facing the country, the world, are to a certain extent irrelevant. All predictions are always based on parameters of today, and just because people hope for constancy, doesn't mean that there is such a thing. Entropy.... that's the plan. The point is: where does each individual in a collective stand, how much responsibility are we ready to take individually.

But President Obama already sent some good signals not only for the USA, but for the world at large. Everyone has to pitch in, not by wanting and consuming more, but by sharing more. And I suspect he means not only materially. One can give a little bit of sunshine, maybe just by acknowledging others in everday life.

Writing from the center of western Europe, I can say it would behoove people here, too, and the world round in fact, to develop a greater sense of community, to be respectful and considerate, to be friendly with one anther, to spread a little bit of feelgood, especially when the news is filled with gloominess. Yet for some reason, our wealthy, bloated "western" lifestyle, which has set a terrible example to other countries, seems to turn everyone inward. Naturally, because it is based on greed and the need for cheap labor, in other words, it per se exploits the frailty of other peoples, hence it makes us suspicious of anyone approaching us and just being friendly. Here, in the small town I live in, people hardly speak to each other, even if they meet on a daily basis. Other than some insane fear of connecting with neighbors, there seems to be no apparent reason for this bizarre behavior. (Time to welcome the recession... We can easily do with less material and more time. Perhaps some theoretical physicist can come up with a 21st-century e-mc2 expressing this correlation?)

So let the partying begin.

Bells and piffle

2009-01-16T19:39:00.022+01:00

Pass the salt

(In short: Forgive generalizations, dear reader, experience has shown that there are diamonds in the rough, but the rough is big and the diamonds are just a few carat. Different is out, lockstep is in: the Hollywood system and society.)

What plagues Hollywood and has reduced 95% of its films to stunningly boring, repetitive strips of celluloid with a shelf-life of around 2 months, is the star system combined with "formula." Unbeknownst to many, perhaps, or known but conveniently ignored or excused, is the fact that Hollywood films are created the way five-year plans were created in Communist countries, namely by committee and according to strict regulations. As a result, they are about as vibrant, thrilling and exciting as the Yellow River Concerto, a schlock-filled piano concerto written by a few Chinese composers during one of those "Cultural Revolutions", obviously with a gun at their heads, that blends a little Addinsell and Rozsa with a smattering of Kalkbrenner, perhaps, and a tiny daub of the Viennese School of Haydn and Co. Hollywood's output of generally saltless, pre-chewed nonsense is then peddled to the public in the US and abroad as if it were Tolstoy mixed with rocket fuel and some very hot sauce.

These products -- and they are exactly that -- are embarassing to look at. The stars, by now, all look and act the same. The facial expressions are identical, the language is identical, speech intonation and patterns are the same, the gestures are identical, the camera angles the same, and the stories.... well, they are based on a few simple premises. One is: A hates B and somehow has to cross the US in a strange or certainly noticeable vehicle. There are some slight variations, like the uplifting tale of a dysfunctional family crossing the US in strange vehicle (RV or Little Miss Sunshine, for example). In the end the protagonists either 1) have sex, 2) suddenly like each other, even though they have been at each others' throats for 85 minutes of tedium, or 3) become functional again without the benefit of therapy or meds. And you thought Rain Man had anything to do with autism?

There are a few other formulas, but not many and ultimately, they all go back to a handful of very basic and obvious plots. An example: The anti-Communist movies of the late 1940s were based on B gangster movies or horror films (My Son John is sort of like Frankenstein...). All it takes is a slow amble through a video store to soak up the tedium of Hollywood on the covers of those thousands of DVDs, faces scrunched up more from some peristaltic traffic jams, it seems, than genuine distress, men showing their teeth and holding huge guns, or adults whose state of love makes them look like anthropomorphed smileys. Let us not mention all that Rambo stuff, which is audience abuse, and comedies that have degenerated to the level of Lumière's Arroseur Arrosé as it is known (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6nJfXAuHQ).

A step further
The carts and horses here are becoming mixed up. Perhaps this is not Hollywood, but, more depressingly, the nation's very way of doing things, its mental paradigm, and Hollywood has just discovered it to be a great business strategy and is rubbing it in the way some men keep rubbing one spot chez la femme, because what worked once in, say, 1965, might still be the secret to success in 2009. I am assuming here.
For Americans are, by and large, quite an uncurious, even timorous bunch, and becoming more so as time ticks away inexorably. Not only Americans, by the way.... this attitude is spreading more and more as the Great Unwashed satisfies its needs for constant and eminently predictable distraction with cheap products. Hence all it took GWB to get everyone jumping up and down and praising His Farce of a Presidency was to spread a little brumagem fear. And he did so by creating the ultimate enemy, invisible, intangible and even bearing an easy-to-remember name: the terrorist. And fear, as we know, is control.

The difference
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? The star system and the formula are not only the strategy of some mega-rich Hollywood peddlers of faux-excitement, but also of news organizations. And the results are uncannily the same. Decades ago, a freelancer could send in stories, some would get published, others not. You learned to "paper your office with rejection letters," but you also rejoiced in the occasional correspondence with an intelligent editor or a colleague. And there was the possibility of getting the story into print, not to see your name in type, but because of the story. You were providing diversity, the quintessence of thrill. The unknown, the mysterious, the recondite piece of info made the difference, like the fake beauty mark on a cream-colored breast. You were the eyes and ears of the media, scouting for things that made a difference, no matter how small.

No longer. Everyone is playing it safe, "different" is out, lockstep is in. Television's news anchors -- wrongly called journalists -- are treated as demiurges. Editors at papers barricade themselves behind spam filters and if contact does arise by sheer accident or dint of persistence, they treat the freelancer the way the chief concierge of a palace might have treated a beggar. As a result, the news has become blotchy, one-sided, predictable as a Kansas cornfield. The rest of the world to the American media -- and the yellow trash in Europe, I might add, like Bild in Germany, Blick in Switzerland, France Soir in France, to name a few -- is like West Berlin in the old GDR maps, a blank spot. Unless, of course, there is blood, disaster, or very rich and successful people becoming more and more rich. The gatekeepers, as they used to be called, are happily ensconced in their ivory towers printing out safe stories that an allegedly lily-livered readership can somehow swallow, as long as it is new, shiny, shrinkwrapped. Because, news stories wilt like butterheads in a steamroom. Gaza, for example, after 20 days, is already slipping, the butchery there passed the 1000 mark, no one wants mashed children for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so its time to turn the kliegs onto some other story. Thank goodness an Airbus 320 landed in the Hudson river and its 155 passengers and crew made it out safely. Let me ask: Since when have the news media been interested in planes landing safely -- albeit spectacularly!

(The few journalists who are allowed to rise up after some hard work and sacrifice end up cashing in their idealistic chips at the pearly gateway and suddenly sing "I'll do unto you as they did unto me." They become the stars, the untouchables, the next guardians of the towers. They have new, better, more shiny friends now. Their former life never existed. ... But I digress...)

Tacos and circuses
By now, news has become a misnomer. It should be called "Daily Surprise," fresh news for fresh people, because we don't look back. We move on, the faster, the better. None of that Eurotrashy thinking stuff. Now the US has a sexy, young, thin, intelligent, articulate, definitely more competent president. And black as well.... so pundits can hail the end of racism as we knew it. The approval rating of the outgoing prez is below freezing, so everyone except for the manifestly untreatable cases are now Good Americans, in fact so good, they don't even need to do a kind of Nuremberg on those bizarre and corrupt characters. Gentleman's agreements, perhaps? News flash of yore: Bush had 90% approval rating before invading Afghanistan in 2001. Oh, there was lots of collateral damage, and OBL got away, but that did not really matter, the whole moment was like, well, a movie... End of news flash. Move on, move on....

Wave the flag, whack that drum, blow that fife, all hail to the new chief. The American bellybutton is once again glowing in all its glory, we are free from the wickedness of the neo-cons, so roll them credits. What did George W. Bush say in his farewell speech, besides the usual whitewashing, boasting, platitudinizing, posturing, even lying? He noted the continuity with the past, the house in which Jefferson lived, and quoted the grand poobah of Republican thought: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

How noble. And no wonder. But it is what the nation really wants. Zoloft for one, Viagra for the other, a shot of hooch and tomorrow is a new day. In other words: Let someone else clean up the mess. Taking a hard look at the past is so un-American, such a waste of time. I mean, if you've taken a dump, what's behind you smells... right?

And no matter what Obama does, it is hard to see how he can change that attitude, which covers the political spectrum from left to right. Especially when he responds to a question about investigating George W. Bush crimes by saying: "We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” The next movie, I am afraid, is already in committee.

Gobbledygook

2009-01-15T15:29:00.010+01:00

Master Dick speaks

This neat clip from 1994 is a great comment about what might happen if the USA had invaded Iraq completely in 1991 and why that would be a really bad idea. The speaker is articulate and seems to have given the option some thought. Not much difference between 1994 and 2003. Except the aboutface that Mr. Cheney performs.

(Note, however, that he did not get it quite right. The Shia, the Sunni, the fact that Iran would become the big powerbroker, or one of the other Arab nations... all that went right by this man, who apparently knows little about the region ... My contention at the time was: take out Saddam Hussein and you'll open the way to some other nationalist leader to take the flag of the Mahdi, as it were... at least Hussein seemed pretty much hated by everyone else, he was therefore a divisive figure in the region... Divide et conquera, heavens, and Blair the Dunce did not get that message? The Brits invaded the planet using "divide and conquer" as a strategy. But no one asked me, in 1991 I was writing travel guides and occasional articles on doggie glasses, because editors were far too timorous to publish real stuff. Meanwhile well-paid pundits spewed hours and reams of nonsense for the masses.... but I digress).

This clip supports Helen Thomas's question as to why the USA went into Iraq (see yesterday's post). But Dick "Darth" Cheney ain't saying. After running the country for eight years -- you don't think the GWB could, do you? He never ran anything in his life -- we suddenly realize: The VP was just as incompetent, thick-skulled, evil and parochial as his understudy. Fifth-rate individuals, who brought in controllable tenth-raters like Chertoff.

The quality of conservatism in the USA can be measured by Pajamas Media's hiring of Joe the Plumber to go report on Israel. The man obviously has the intellect of a pipe wrench. The Huff Post lists a little interview he had with an Israeli reporter.... Does this man have work? Will anyone ever hire him as a plumber even, once the lunatic fringe has dropped him as the liability he is?
I can imagine sort of the following conversation:

Ring, ring,
- Joe the Plumber, may I help you?
- Hi Joe, Marty here, from the General Store. I have a leak in my basement, and don't know where it's coming from.
- Hi Marty, where is the leak?
- In the basement.
- Do you know where it's coming from?
- No, that's why I'm calling.
- So how do you know there's a leak...

and so on...

But under a Palin/McCain administration, he could have been Surgeon General, or head of Homeland Security or even Defense. No 7000-dollar toilet seats with Joe.

Speaking of Sarah Palin. The conservatives have made a delightful film of why Obama got elected, placing the blame on all sorts of things other than their own very silly candidates and McCain's two disastrous decisions: He chose Palin, and he chose to go with some very stupid dirt throwing at a time when even conservative Americans in the Televangelist Belt were beginning to wonder if maybe W. had been speaking to the wrong Jesus. The docu is pure trash, but it did provide Jon Stewart with a great target to practice pie-throwing:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Blamey Whinehouse

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Quick reminder that before November 4, Palin said that the election was in God's hands. So why blame it on the media again, when this all powerful being who created everyone, but hates most of them, decided that Sarah Palin was not going to magically become Frau Präsidentin... Are these people for real? The whole thing was Disneyesque, let us face it, with Elmar Fudd joining Cruella and one of the Beagle Boys as Joe the Plumber. These people must grow up.

Professor Emeticus at work

2009-01-14T14:25:00.018+01:00

The stuff one has to ingest....

(Remember Helen Thomas from yesterday's post? Coincidentally today: an excellent interview by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! That woman -- redolence of J. McCain... -- Helen Thomas, who was born to Lebanese Christian parents in 1920, is simply phenomenal. I vote that a statue of her be placed opposite that pompous Mount Rushmore carving!)

My parents had a hilarious book in their vast library. It was called The Other Victorians by Steven Marcus and explored, presented and commented the bizarre pornography of that allegedly buttoned-up age. If my memory serves me correctly, that is where I first heard or read the expression "daisy chain." Yesterday, the public was regaled with a similar porno-political display, namely George Bush giving Tony Blair the Medal of Freedom. Time to cast a new medal for great public service, the MofF has just been disgraced forevermore. My source is the BBC, where the story had very short shelf-life, but the picture they posted along with the story does look like something out of, say, Brokeback Mountain.

Blair, who joyfully joined in the orgy that turned Iraq into a charnel house, is now a Catholic, so one must suppose that his soul is cleansed. Scruples is one thing that that man does not have. He seems to believe that lying about lying means the Truth. I wish some philosopher would crawl out of the dusty halls of academe and point out to him that that is not so.

Or are we faced with an Epimenides Paradox, "All politicians lie, said the politician." This may be one reason why nothing ever really gets done and the news all looks the same all the time, like those Hollywood titles called "films."

Israel, Israel, Israel

At any rate, these two men have focused immense attention and energy and resources on a neo-conservative adventure in Iraq, while leaving the real problem untouched: Israel and Palestine and some 12,000 square miles of territory that is causing about 75% of the political trouble around the world. America's consistent and blind support of Israel, which is aimed at maintaining divisions, war and instability in the Middle East, has made the region far more dangerous. Just imagine peace in the region: suddenly, no more bugaboos, no more scapegoats, nowhere to point a finger to make sure attention is not focused on real problems.... And the right wing in Israel and elsewhere has figured out long ago that war turns entire populations into complete imbeciles frothing at the mouth for revenge. Pavlov's dog with a rabies. Permanent war. The solution to all problems.

But in the Middle East, there can be no peace, because people like George W. Bush have been approaching the problem with some simplistic ideas like "Israel has a right to defend itself." Not enough on a negotiating table, but what more can you expect from such a low-watt bulb. Enlightenment? Clarity?

Speaking of the BBC.... Still an organization with a little backbone left (I have long been convinced that evolution is actually going the other way than Darwin suggested, we are ascending towards the amoebal state, at least that's what the evidence shows... Their comment section is full of wild speculations and rants, but oddly, three that I left were "not published". Here they are: Try and find anything irritating (small changes, because there is more space here). I drop them here for some consideration...

#1: BBC Question: Are the raids on Gaza justified?
Answer: Killing innocent people through indiscriminate bombing is never justifiable. Period. And Americans should remember that "Made in USA" is actually printed on the (Israeli) ammo somewhere, so do not be astonished when you are made responsible, too. Not published.

#2: BBC Question: How can a truce be achieved in Gaza?

Answer 1: I am 51. I started reading papers at the age of around 10. One bit of continuity: The world itself has been held hostage by these two miniature nations not being able to get along for that long at least. I for one am sick and tired of it, I am tired of reading about it, I am tired of the fingerpointing and all this biblical nonsense. Had these two peoples decided to set aside their differences and ask the Swiss, for example, how do they manage, they would be living in a sort of Garden of Eden. But someone, somewhere must be profiting immensely from this conflict.

Answer 2: As of today, nearly 800 Palestinians (this was a few days ago, the number tops 1000 today) have been killed, mostly innocents, versus a few Israeli soldiers. This is exactly what the extremists want. Because it is a rhetorical victory in terms of facts. To the "man on the street", Israel is the bogeyman. But Israel has responded to the extremists by doing their bidding, i.e., "heating up the street." (Nevertheless, it is the people who are clamoring that Israel stop the bombing who are being called friends of the terrorists, etc.)

So, who is giving in to the terrorists, I ask? Yes, Israel.

The second answer was stretched a little... Just to underscore the complete lack of logic in the Israeli attack on Gaza.
That is how bizarre everything has become.

Best regards,

Professor Emeticus

With news to puke by

Clearing the Bush

2009-01-13T15:12:00.000+01:00

Because some things need to be said...

Outgoing Double-U, were one to just scan the news these days, is becoming introspective. By the soundbytes of it, he is a deep-thinking man, self-critical, self-effacing, a misrepresented genius of .... you get the message: the usual claptrap by a press corps too afraid of reality to report it.

(Let us make a very clear exception here with Ms Helen Thomas, who at the age of 88 has more critical faculty in her left index finger than J. Tapper in his whole body. While the White House Press Corps was shaking in its shoes and keeping its collective (ca)rears covered, Ms Thomas, the last beacon of fearless journalism, asked GWB the following, sobering question in 2006:

"I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet—your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth—what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil—quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it? "

Hundreds of thousands of deaths later, we are still waiting for a logical explanation, an answer, an admission at least… But now newspapers are already whitewashing a little, they seem almost wistful about the Dear Departing President Bush?
Yesterday, on January 12, the Boston Globe brewed one of those typical “four editors get together and refuse to commit themselves” pieces. Their effort to avoid the point-blank truth is appalling. The equivalent of using cheap perfume to cover the smell coming from a seldom changed litter box. Iraq, within a few lines, is checked off as a "precipitous decision"? They must be kidding? Precipitous means "too fast". The Boston Globe must refer to some other planet in a distant solar system. Iraq, to remind my shallow-dish colleagues, was an unnecessary war created from a fiction and waged, illegally, in order to keep America's news media busy with nice pictures while the GOP cronies dismantled any regulation at home that might prevent their masters from becoming richer. It had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with oil and creation of an Orwellian “permanent war.”

He spake
Thus, the Washington Post duly notes Bush The Outgoer saying ... "(T)he greatest challenge President-elect Barack Obama and his successors will likely face is "an attack on our homeland" akin to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Such a scenario, (Bush) predicted, would make people less likely to question interrogation tactics and other extreme security measures adopted by the government during his tenure."
What is missing, of course, is the little reminder that Mr. Bush and his incoming team were given just such information in early 2001, but that Mr. Bush the Decider decided that long vacations at taxpayer expense and some rounds of golf were more important than protecting the nation. In other words, he was slacking off on the job and then went about acting like some high-noonish muppet in a cowboy film and falling into the Bin Laden's carefully laid trap (more about this soon). Thank you, Washington Post, for failing to remind us of that pithy fact. This is the paper that went after Nixon?

Ways of making them squawk
As for the extreme measures used for interrogation, they destroyed our image abroad far more than Bush is willing to admit. Furthermore, these measures are a waste…. Let us reel back to the war in Algeria (France, 1950s). When the methods employed by the French paras in Algerian prisons became known, public opinion shifted against the French in Algeria and against the government’s approach. If the Bushistas had been somewhat more cultivated, they might have spotted the dangers of Iraq and even Afghanistan simply by peaking at history. But men like Paul Wolfowitz are not interested in history, they are as incurious as W himself, the flavor of his own dandruff appears enough to satisfy him. Besides the vast literature on the Algerian War, there are little tidbits like Heinri Alleg's La Question and a grandiose docudrama called The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo, which depicts something uncannily similar to what went on in Iraq -- and even Palestine. This is just a little flavor. (Note the reference to “drowning”… that is waterboarding. And for those who have not yet figured it out yet, the clear winner in the region is Iran, that, at least, is the view of Joschka Fischer, former foreign minister and Vice Chancellor from Germany. But someone I know, who interviewed him, cannot even give the interview away (18 queries, 2 answers), the press “is not interested.”

Chatty aside: Information from torture is often false. A properly built up network requires 24 hours to disband, I believe, no sooner has one person been captured. And the networks are built up of people who generally do not know each other. So why do it?

Sadism. Plain and simple. And just because the other side acts like butchers, cutting people’s heads off and behaving essentially like some demented Catholic priests from the Middle Ages Catholicism (those fellows from the Vatican knew how to be revolting at home and abroad), doesn’t mean we have to do it… You know: looking into the abyss and all.

Straight Bush

As for the Associated Press, it, too, offered a few choice comments by this strange fellow:

"I think it's a good, strong record. You know, presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature."

Of course, the point is, as the slacker he is, he tried to avoid the tough decisions. A prezdint has to make tough decisions, he is not elected in a huge campaign to become the White House butler. It’s not about tough decisions, it’s the wrong ones. But shortly after wandering into this minefield of logic, George offers two slaps in the face of every American, though about 30% will not notice, because they believe Bush has been anointed by God and they also believe that dinosaurs shared space with people like the Sumerians who were already using yeast to make real ale in 6000 b.c.

But let's not forget the afore-mentioned slaps: Finding no WMD and Abu Ghraib were both “disappointments” for Bush, he says. Like going to the movies to see The Piano and finding it has been replaced by Brigadoon. So much for compassionate conservatism. Like the Collected Flubs of Kristol and Co., those of George W. Bush have the odd self-contained dialectical quality of actually signifying the opposite of what they are saying. It’s very confusing for most people, especially since everyone has gotten used to 3-second TV clips and to expressing emotions in the form of three or four capitalized letters or silly yellow circles.

The clean-up
What is frustrating, of course, is that the establishment must still spend time dealing with this fifth-rate political carbuncle named George W. Bush, but rather than comment in an honest and forthright fashion, they are still being mealy-mouthed, and sweating profusely to make sure that everyone sort of gets equal time, except for the dwindling reality-based community. Ooooo, musn’t hurt anyone’s feelings, now. There they are, with pens and pads and microphones and cameras, creating a semblance of a legacy and by the same token pumping the Bush ego. As if he had something to say. Anything.

He has nothing to say. And no one is about to say it. He is a shortsighted, thick man, manipulative and narcissistic like so many addicts or former addicts who quit the booze and cocaine without a second thought to pick up a primitive and simplistic religion, which paints the world in easy blacks and whites (the book Bush On The Couch was absolutely right in its profiling of this silly creature). This provided him with the illusion of grandeur under which he labors. He could now kill and sleep well at night. He said as much in 200, I believe when discussing the record number of men he signed off to the gallows in Texas…. he also put firecrackers in frogs as a kid. The pundits should have noted his complete absence of compassionate thinking, but few did. Instead, they brown-nosed their comfy little ways to get close to the seat of power, climbed into the little personal Bush bubble and are now scrambling to keep it from popping along with the financial bubble. By the time they wake up, democracy will have become as obsolete as Leninism.

The Man in the Mirror

2009-01-10T13:34:00.002+01:00

A new year's comment...

The short version is: Good riddance, George W. You were the worst of a series of presidents, and let us not forget that you are also whooped up by a vast majority of the American people for quite a while. But many saw the light. The question is: has that changed anything, especially now that GWB is on his way out. Looking at George W. Bush requires a look at the past 30 years, and more. Without at least a cursory glance at these years from a historical perspective, an unabashed look at the forest rather than the trees and twigs, it is impossible to actually comprehend what has happened to our society and how things have changed. The material here should be the skeleton for a book, so please forgive the length.

In a few days, President George W. Bush will be slinking out of the White House, perhaps with a few more platitudes in mangled English slipping from that mouth of his, which appears so strangely disconnected from his brain. Many people have a right to be profoundly angry at this man. He is essentially a provincial oaf, a slacker of the first water, a boring, untalented fellow who might have made a good soda jerk or something. Instead, he decided to project himself onto the public scene, where he consistently avoided the hard work, and in the end, it brought him down and the country went with him. And pretty much the world economy, world peace and social justice. Rightly, he may claim mission accomplished, since for all intents and purposes, that was the mission.

When he was selected by the Supreme Court in 2000, I and several friends in Germany discussed the results. Many said “Oh, he acts the dumbbell to get votes.” I contended, however, that the man was actually as clueless as he sounded and would become a disastrous president. I compared him to a wedding guest arriving late at the wrong wedding. Strange how that ultimately happened. From Katrina to AIG, GWB and his cronies were either late or currently unavailable. Most people in the USA by now, except the wholly owned robots of Rove Inc., realize that the invasion of Iraq was a terrific error. (Though for the purpose of the neo-cons, it was perfectly logical, because getting out of there is not as simple as many would hope, thus the USA is now in a sort of permanent war). Whatever, it was obvious that this man had neither scruples, nor real courage, nor knowledge, nor culture of any kind. In a word, he lacked anything vaguely resembling leadership qualities. But apparently, for many Americans, acting like an inebriated brawler is being a good leader. Well, now we are all in the sawdust, thank you.

Tough luck
Whoever his successor might have been, his or her hands would have been tied. And Obama’s are. He will have to accept humungous debt, he will be presiding over rising unemployment, a depressed planet and a world in which fuses have been lit all over the place and the arsonist is now heading back to a big home to do some occupational therapy in the garden. Unless really lucky, he will have little time or energy to implement any progressive policies that would have made the USA a contender in the 21st century. The neocons, who always reviled Franklin Delano Roosevelt, have in fact succeeded in turning back the clock to pre-FDR days, to a certain extent. Unions are in disarray, people are loosing their homes, their jobs, their wealth, everything they worked for, but America’s oligarchs, like the Bushes, remain firmly in the saddle. Many rights no longer exist, in fact, the sacred Constitution has even been seriously tampered with (see the Military Commissions Act, 2006). The Second Amendment was spared, because for some reason, the card-carrying members of the NRA believe firmly that all other amendments are irrelevant to freedom, if any Tom Dick and Harry cannot get a gun day or night, liberty is in serious jeopardy.

Is the current situation the fault of George Bush? Saying so would be tantamount to making the same mistake as Bush himself, who, when he could not blame failures on mysterious liberals, invisible terrorists, the Senate, the Clintons, his dog perhaps, was out there blaming god. Frank Rich recently covered Bush’s inability to take responsibility rather well. This blamestorming was performed by the entire GOP, however. William Kristol – whose columns in the New York Times read the way a frozen weathervane might read the wind direction – is a prime example of the kind of shallow thinking and ideological imbecility that has plagued the party and ultimately the nation for the past 40 years. He has been wrong on so many counts, it's amazing he gets published at all. These characters, from ideologue-in chief Rove to the vociferous and opportunistic minions off on the lunatic fringe of the mediasphere (Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Boortz, Hannity, etc…), have blamed everyone and everything for the failures of their own ideology for a generation now. Whereby their rantings are nothing new, radio and TV just gave them a bigger mouthpiece. The Web is a little more difficult a marketplace.

Clearing the air
But there are other contributors to this industrial-size snafu, and in a democratic system, they must also shoulder the blame. Let us begin with the opposition. Or rather the lack of one. Reagan, at least, had speaker of the house Tip O'Neil, an articulate and vociferous pol from way back, who had little fear of attacking the President's idiotic views. Nancy Pelosi is certainly no worthy successor: She had ample opportunity for impeaching Bush and Cheney, whose outrageous acceptance of torture and dismantling of the Constitution were far more impeachable than Clinton's hormonal excursion. How the opposition in the USA got browbeaten into submission is a lesson in human cowardice. No American today can ever question how the Nazis did it in the early 1930s in Germany, since they had physical violence as a threat.

Let us not forget the much reviled “liberal” media, too, which is at fault for everything that happens in the US that is not to someone’s liking. The big newspapers, from the NYT to the Washington Post, have essentially shilled for the right wing by letting themselves be terrorized without even seeing the shadow of a raised billy club. In Nazi Germany, to use a favorite comparison, there were real and present threats made and carried out against journalists and the intelligentsia. In the USA, none of that happened, the watchdogs curled up in the lap of mister "Josef" Rove and his predecessors. Bush was never called on his errors, after 9/11, there was no public outcry as to why the country was so unprepared. Michael Moore was lambasted for his Fahrenheit 911, rather than those who created the situation. That would be tantamount to lambasting Picasso for Guernica, while cooing to Göring.

The power of the advertising buck took over and the complete lack of media curiosity did the rest. The Iraq adventure was pretty much cheered along as if it were a football game. CNN couldn't get enough of it, it translated as ratings. The growing horde of ultra-rich ne’er do wells, who made their cash without creating a single job, essentially, were given kudos and long articles, they became the Magic Experts on Breaking the Secrets of this Never-Ending Financial Growth. And the masses applauded and chanted “more, more, more.” Anyone suggesting that this was the biggest bubble around was castigated as negative, Euro-trashy, treehugging, or even “leftist,” America’s favorite political insult since about 1871. It’s the same system that somehow infused millions of American with a bug that compelled them to purchase bloated vehicles that were poorly built and guzzled gas the way one of those 1950s machines did.

George Bush is the symptom
No, Virginia, there is no bogeyman. When looking in the mirror, you are looking at him. George Bush is a monstrous, banal character, who has the death of thousands and thousands on his born-again hands, and who simply sat by while everything around him burned, but he did not bring this situation about, he just did a bit of midwivery. He does not even have the conceptual powers to do anything more than watch TV and choke on pretzels. For the roots of the current problem, we can start with this news: On January 3, the Washington Post reported that industrial output was at its lowest rate in 28 years. (In an earlier post I did mention that the papers are really good at reporting the obvious…). In other words since the halcyon days of Ronald Reagan, the neo-conservative Saint-in-Chief. Most of the madness that dominates American financial and foreign policy today can be traced right back to him and his handlers (and McCarthy before them, but we need a cut-off point somewhere). He promoted the “business of business is business” mentality, and set America’s corporations loose on the country and the world. He maniacally slashed environmental laws, poured acid on our social system, busted unions and pumped huge and wasteful sums into the military. Suddenly, in the USA, being poor and needing a food stamp became a sin, whereas charging the US taxpayer $7000 dollars for a toilet seat on a brand new aircraft carrier became an easily forgivable bookkeeping error. After all, were people like Schulz and Weinberger not involved in the defense industry before taking over the henhouses? And there were diodes costing many hundred dollars, inordinately expensive hammers, and so on. The Reagan "Revolution" began with an extremely vicious and probably unnecessary economic explosion, high interest rates put millions out of work (but who cares), organized labour was, of course, squeezed, the military received a blank check. And yet, in 1984, you could still find unemployed autoworkers who were literally eating catfood to sustain their families voting for Reagan.

Some people love the boot that kicks them.

Meanwhile, education, welfare, working conditions and the environment lurched along as best they could considering the neo-con hazing. Under Reagan’s “Happy Times Are Here Again” reign, it was forbidden to remind folks that ideas of Our Big Leader were out of date and out of touch, that gas-guzzling had been discredited in 1973 and 1978. This was the era that led to the rise of such stupendously venal and bitter little men as Jack Welch, known as Neutron Jack, or, better yet Jurassic Jack™ (Business Guide, Basel, 2008). His solution to successful business was to terrorize employees by making sure that they never know whether or not they have a job, to use and abuse the environment and then move on leaving the locals to clean up the mess and deal with the unemployed families. Just like Anthony Comstock represented the vicious, anti-liberty parochialism of the early 20th century, Welch represents today the brutal carpetbagging industrialism of 19th-century America. Yes, it’s all cloaked in almost new-age terms, it all appears in comfortable sound bytes that people can easily remember, but it is no less violent, exploitative and unsustainable, i.e. thought out for the short term.

Let me digress here for a moment: One great example of Reagan’s response to criticism was the Teacher in Space Program, launched in August 1984 after the Democrats rightfully criticized Reagan’s policies on education. In fact, the country still needs a major reform of its educational system, but that's another page. In that gooey, avuncular, way, he announced that the country would send a teacher into space, that’s how serious he was about education (I was a radio announcer at the time and had to listen to such unbelievable drivel; worse yet, I had to see the idea praised in the press). Teacher number one was Terry McAuliffe, and she went up in the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle, and that should have served as the metaphor for any GOP attempt at repairing the US educational system…. The media mourned with the country, Reagan bowed his head and uttered shibboleths.

Give us this day our daily bomb
Reagan represented the worst of American culture and George W. Bush its culmination until now. Alas, Clinton was just the Democrat version of the same…. It’s a culture that canonizes brevity not for the sake of quick communication, but rather because everyone constantly has to “move on” and “get over it.” Those are the self-serving buzzwords in a society that no longer has time – or is given time – to reflect at little more, to find long-term solutions, to consider impact. Nor does it wish to sit back for a moment and figure out where things really went wrong. Finding a culprit is done quickly – the media, the Moslems, the liberals, the neo-cons, if need be. So you can bomb Lybia one day and move on the next, so Americans can invade a country, Grenada or Iraq, and then say: Get over it. That was the message of Ronald Reagan: Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Spend, Consume, Exploit and let us bomb happily.

In the 1980 election, Carter was left holding the Old Maid: inflation, due in great part to the oil shocks, and the hostage crisis. Plus a nation that refused to accept its defeat in Vietnam and the fact that it had gone so badly off-track. Watergate was to a certain degree a triumph, so why was the country so downtrodden? Conservatives were a bitter bunch, and the hippy folk, as they grew older, also showed some of their Blut und Boden nationalism and they, too, went for Reagan.

Revising Carter
But Carter was in fact a man with lots of hope, and his basic ideas were very progressive and good. Who spoke of independence of foreign oil first? He did. A brief tour of his presidency will reveal that he rightly saw that energy-savings were necessary and that we had to look at alternatives. He understood the notion of thrift, as opposed to his Republican successors who felt that shoveling money out the window and into the yards of the richest of the rich was somehow a way to spread the wealth. Well it isn’t, because the wealthy -- or obscenely rich -- tend to want more, more, more, and then power, power, power. Above all, Carter wanted to use America's considerable influence to bring about lasting peace in the Middle East and even came close to it by twisting the arms of Sadat and Begin… He lost the election to Reagan for two main reasons. First rhetorically, he spoke of the country having a “malaise,” which was true, but it put him at the mercy of the bogus GOP message of Happy Days. Secondly, Carter struggled with the hostage situation in Iran – a situation whose roots could be found in the coup against Mossadegh organized by the British and the Americans in 1953. The Anglo man in power was the Shah, a narrow-minded, reactionary satrap, who ran the country through his brutal police, the SAVAK and destroyed its economy in the process. The connection might be a little simplistic, but propaganda is simplistic as well: Is it any wonder the Iranians hated the American? But Israel, back then, kept supplying Iran in spite of an embargo, the Republicans entertained good relations with the Islamic Revolution through Menachem Begin, as Robert Parry mentions in a recent article. And Reagan earned his halo when the famous hostages were released on inauguration day. What staging, coup de theatre, stuff worthy of Hollywood… Irony? Or was it intent. The rest is history. But no one needs to be surprised that there is still no peace in the Middle East over 28 years after Camp David. George W. Bush continued the policy of standing behind Israel right or wrong and the ultimate outcome will be a disaster.

The buck stops there
They have all lived by the bugaboo. Reagan had the USSR and the ubiquitous communists, never mind that the US continued backing monstrous regimes or even creating such creatures as the drug-running Contras. The neo-cons were already then working on creating the Muslim bugaboo with Ghaddafi as the Evil Monster. The propaganda was so bad – and the media lapped it up so easily – that in one survey, 60% of respondents believed firmly that the dominating religion in Nicaragua was Islam… That’s because Nicaragua – an impoverished nation of 2.5 million campesinos that had just shaken of a fascist dictator – was deemed to be a major enemy of the USA. And so the US government decided that that little country hadn’t suffered enough…

The history is known, albeit forgotten. Iran-Contra, the Gulf War 1, the permanent bombing of Iraq during the 90s, the bombing of Serbia, invasion of Panama, and now Iraq… Bit by bit, American foreign policy began to look more and more violent and dimwitted. It’s main strategy was to create an enemy and then attack it. It was all manufactured stuff, cast in some ideological pressure-cookers, given some vague literary back-up from Hollywood (e.g. those idiotic muscle films, with steroidal goons flitting about the screen killing incompetent bad guys). The precipitate turned out to be Bush the Lesser. Incredibly, the media let him get away with it. But the media are craven, barricaded in their little towers, worried, worried, worried of shaking the trees of the powers that be... The result, a drum-fire of dumbing-down and isolationism that makes the nation almost impossible to deal with today.

Bush is going, but the neo-con mindset is not. The damage this ideology has caused cannot even be measured in dollars and cents or Euros. It is mental, spiritual, it is universal, it pervades every corner of our lives. Like AIDS, it has entered the very DNA of our society, making us all confuse rights and privileges, needs and wants. We have become greedy, self-absorbed, narcissistic, unimaginative, while others have simply become even richer and more powerful. Our earth has been raped, resources are being stolen and then resold to us at inflated prices. Money has flattened out the world. Everything has become acceptable, palatable, except for true emotion, sexuality, creativity, individualism. The Puritan ideal of a downtrodden society…. Ultimately, almost worse than the clerico-aristocracies those scurvied pure believers escaped from. Today the lone wolf would be ignored out of existence. The wars in Iraq, in Gaza, Congo, wherever: just entertaining events, from which people report using MMS, so that we can say “Wow!” Nothing is real. People have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, Xing, MySpace and other reflecting surfaces as devastating as Narcissus’s pond, but out in the streets, we stare at the miniature screens of our mobile phones for comforting messages, we allow multinationals to pump commercial music into our ears through ear buds that block off all communication with our neighbor on the train. What an unbelievable illusion, and yet, millions believe it. Millions and millions and millions.

Reading a vigorous critique of our society like Curtis White’s The Middle Mind, is like communing with the wild folk in Brave New World. Society is so flat and bland and opportunistic, that it simply ignores those who try and shake things up (justifiably). Depressing scenes are all those young people eating at McDonalds, even young people who have just finished demonstrating against the G8 or the World Bank, or are worried about their professional futures (MacDonald’s evil is not only the lousy food, it’s also the labor system it has created using 100% replaceable humanoids). And so our societies accept such horribly banal, venal, incompetent, vain, conventional politicians, men and often women without vision, without compassion, only interested in maintaining a status quo that is in effect feudal, with the Untouchable Monopolies like Microsoft on one side and the rest of us grovelers on the other. The bosses – like Sarkozy, Bush, Berlusconi, Brown, even Merkel in Germany, I am afraid, and so on – are incapable of taking responsibility and setting a good example. Obama hasn’t yet proved himself, but until now his cabinet choices have not been what one might call brilliant, innovative, visionary.

That task remains for common mortals to do. One suggestion would be to return to the activism of the 1970s and to avoid being co-opted by power and powers. If “normal” humans (not the feudal lords of the 21st century) do not learn to become active and creative again, whatever freedoms we have battled for over centuries of bloody battles will be taken away. It can be done, step one is welcoming your neighbor as a friend, oddly enough, getting together, singing songs, making music, dancing at home. Throwing the TV on the trash heap and paying attention not to become swallowed up and addicted to anything run by a huge and anonymous corporation. There is a way, as long as we can still hear another person's heart beating. That is a prayer.

Till the last drop

2008-12-28T08:26:00.000+01:00

The bombings of Gaza have occupied the news for the past 24 hours or so. Some 225 people killed, most of them innocents of course, the number of wounded is pegged at around 600. Always retaliation. Retaliation, retaliation. Against whom?

Israel has a difficult position, anyone will agree. The country is regularly bombarded by extremists who do not have a hope in the world of changing the situation. In fact, that is not their aim, and Israel's political leaders should know this by now. The idea is to force the hand of the other Arab nations to take a stance against Israel by inflaming the so-called "Street." Retaliation under the circumstances seems ill-advised, especially such wild bombing raids that will do just that, namely polarize the situation. It is also unfair towards the rest of the Palestinian nation and will merely perpetuate this apparently unending conflict.

One can ask, though, what has the USA done in the past 10 years? Nothing. The one nation that really has some clout in the region has been suffering a neo-conservative-evangelical fever that mixes bits of Adam Smith with Armaggedon Theory. To all his other sins, George Bush has added the one of not doing anything to rein in Israel and try to alleviate some of the legitimate Palestinian grievances. Instead, Bush Junior has been gallivanting around the planet like Monty Python's King Arthur. The fact that the Palestinian conflict is a vicious neural spot on the political map only seemed to occur to him in 2008 while he was on a quest for some success in an otherwise devastatingly poor presidency.

People have laughed at Carter for his cutesiness with Sadat and Begin at Camp David. (People have laughed at Carter for many things, but after nearly three decades of the kind of neoconservative bosh, I think some of that a lot of the hyar-hyar has stuck in people's throats ...).

It's the cause, not the symptom
Americans should remember that 9/11 did not happen in a vacuum. The cycle of revenge will continue as Hamas leaders say "until the last drop", meaning until more women, children, innocents are killed. By whom, makes no difference anymore. None. Killing the innocent benefit both sides. The Israelis can continue their terror raids, and the other side, whoever they are, may continue theirs. Everyone benefits, even the arms dealers and manufacturers. But by throwing in its lot with Israel rather than act as a genuine moderator, the USA is putting itself at risk as well, and that is something the American people do not seem to realize.

Meanwhile, it would also behoove Europe to use some of its clout to get the peace process moving again. The best solution is probably money. When people are busy earning a good living, they are less inclined toward violence. And that is where the Arab world could help. If a country can build an artificial island, as some can, it can also solve the Palestinian conflict... Of course, that would imply that the Arab world also had a stake in regional peace, which, apparently they don't. A cynical note: oftentimes, when Israel bombs the Palestinians, the price of oil goes up a little.

Pillar number two

2008-12-26T23:07:00.000+01:00

Harold Pinter's death was announced today. Dark plays that focused attention on one of the most destructive human forces: power. Reality or the boards were all one, of course. What else is the stage but a microcosm of the world at large. Where are the clear boundaries? Let us recall the beginning of his most articulate attack on the whole fraud of our political systems that he launched with his grand speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

...And so on.

For the rest of the speech.

Helen Thomas gold medalist for honesty

2008-12-22T20:47:00.000+01:00

Press secretaries have to have noses that are guaranteed not to grow whenever they have to play fast and loose with the truth. The three memorables under the Bush admin were Ari Fleischer, Scott McLellan and the current one Dana Perino. I suspect Ari, who attended a liberal arts college (he was a class below me at Middlebury), just couldn't look at himself in the mirror anymore, so the option was either to grow a very long beard or get out. He did the latter, but kept quiet... after all, much of the money to be earned as a groveling bootlicker for America's powers that be is to be found on the right. Trumpet patent idiocies loud and clear over the airwaves or in print, and as long as they support the far right agenda, you will be well endowed. (Bill Kristol is a perfect example). Scotty boy also had pangs of conscience... he kissed and told. Perino... Well, after the exchange above, I think she has earned a long spell in purgatory.

But let us remember... press secretary is a function of the press... Helen Thomas has been the most fearless reporter covering the Whithe House, most of the others have kissed the hand that feeds them repeatedly. Probably for fear of losing their accreditation. On light of the White House Press Corps, the conservative ravings about a liberal media appear as vast and paranoid hallucinations. Which they are, of course.

But it hardly matters. The dead in Iraq are not complaining, George Bush doesn't care either way, and the American public is busy trying to figure out what happened to all that money after a decade of arcane, razzamatazz financial bondage...

Musical breather

2008-12-21T17:50:00.001+01:00

The irksome, impersonal virtual world has its advantages... Finding music by contemporary composers is not always easy. The big record companies, with their focus on profit margins are, of course, reluctant to get into the business of composers who might, say, introduce the sledge hammer, grandma's china and a bingo basket filled with Ben Wa balls to the recording studio. But the world of contemporary music is most often a bold experiment in sound and impression and a way to extend the range of instruments... Like the piano... Or is it the dowel's range that has been extended in this version of John Cage's Sonata V?

.... Difficult to perform on an electronic piano...

Shame-storming

2008-12-18T19:44:00.001+01:00

Muntader al-Zaidi, unknown a week ago, today, an honorable name in a profession that is only a hazy shadow of its former self.... al Zaidi is the journalist who threw the shoe at George W. Bush, calling him a dog and adding:

"This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

He could have thrown it at all those timorous scratchers for such glorified rags as the Washington Post, the NYT, even the LA Times, who never used the words widows and orphans when writing about Iraq. Especially not in conjunction with US action there. They did not even dare use the word "civil war." No sooner do struggling reporters make the grade, than they drop their ideals like a very heavy bale of hay while the nose sniffs the stratospheres.

Oh, today the editorial boards are opposed to the war, but where were these clowns when the war was being sold? How come so many people the world round knew that the facts were being fabricated? But those wise journalists did not? Those boobs disguising as savvy editors? They were hemming and hawing, afraid that maybe someone would blame the media and just maybe there were WMD. Are they surprised that sales figures are dropping? Who are the real shameless ones....?

George W. Bush, yes. But the fourth pillar of democracy in the USA, the press, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Middle Mind (see Curtis White), they have been asleep at the wheel.

And in fact they always have been. Watergate? That was a fluke and nothing more, believe me. It's like a surgeon performing a successful appendicitis and running around for the next 35 years saying what a great surgeon he is and amputating legs to cure ear aches. During the whole time, the 70s, the 80s, even the 90s and certainly since the neocon coup d'état, these great journalists like Woodward and Bernstein, have been whooping up the status quo, reporting the obvious and never touching the genuinely controversial.

Well, al-Zaidi put them to shame with one swift and decisive piece of action. They are all worrying about whether he has been beaten or not -- again, what could be more obvious -- perhaps they should be wondering at the pain felt by the Iraqi mothers, fathers and sisters and brothers who have lost relatives to American hubris. Voting for Obama has not cleaned that record. Just like voting for Reagan and his Happy Days message did not cleanse the monstrosity that was Vietnam. But don't wait for introspection to suddenly take hold of the American press and the American public. Don't expect GW Bush to suddenly take on human and humane traits. The man enjoys his killing the way some enjoy reading a good book. It's the evangelical in him.

Cheers, al-Zaidi. And thanks.

Lame President Ducks

2008-12-15T10:41:00.001+01:00

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2008/12/15/bush_defends_war_in_trip_to_iraq

The headline on the first page of the Boston Globe's URL was perhaps inadvertently hilarious

Bush Defends War, Ducks

We might add, especially lame ducks. It is indeed difficult to imagine a worse presidency. Bush and his cohorts have, from day one, been a venal and lazy bunch, permanently behind the events rather than ahead of them. Entirely forgotten by the press, apparently, except somewhere on the left, is the plain fact that his administration was told that something big was going down in 2001, and they did nothing. The reaction to 9/11 was disaster number two. Lots of Clinton blaming, lots of activism, lots of aggression. Not enough careful examination of the facts on the ground, of the lead-up, of the grievances, many quite legitimate, in the Arab world... hence lots of wasted opportunity. There were those who saw the trap laid by Bin Laden, notably Robert Fisk, who wrote in The Independent:

Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. Let us have no doubts about what happened in New York and Washington last week. It was a crime against humanity. We cannot understand America's need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated – it becomes ever clearer – to provoke the United States into just the blind, arrogant punch that the US military is preparing.

The conspiracy theories abound. But they give far too much credit to an administration that has simply been fettered by its extremely narrow ideology. And ideology, like musty old religious beliefs, is all too often a substitute for imagination and plain human intelligence. The ability to look at situations holistically, i.e., from every possible angle is willfully set aside in favor of same ole, same ole, which for most is plain stupidity, for Einstein it was insanity.

And that Iraqi journalist is going to feel the sheer, vindictive response of neo-conservative parochialism.

Lubricious interlude

2008-12-12T21:53:00.001+01:00

Today, a mass was held for the late dictator and monster man of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, who died in his bed two years ago after evading justice more or less successfully for years by pretending to be demented or something. Of course, to preside over the killing and torturing of so many thousands, you have to be more than just a little dotty. But Cardinal Jorge Medina held a homily for the General, who, as a good Catholic, made sure that the rich in Chile became richer and that the rest of the economy hit a brick wall. (If this sounds familiar, then remember that Pinochet was the darling of such freedom fighters as Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher and the entire horror chamber of neocons). Under Augusto, anyone raising objections was dumped alive in the Pacific from a flying helicopter after being used as a filament... or shot, or mutilated by some more pious people in uniform in a 20th-century dungeon.

Anyway: Excellency's eye apparently strayed onto some image of Madonna, who was in town, because Santiago is on her somewhat pruriently-named Sticky and Sweet Tour itinerary. Now that the dictatorship has been lifted and some joy has returned to the city, this kind of phenomenon is perfectly legal. Finally liberated from the moroseness of Catholic dictators, young Chileans apparently find her music attractive -- and I suspect her half-century old wiles are somehow energizing. A win-win situation, since Madonna obviously needs to sell more of her "Hard Candy" album (oh, what a subtle title!)

It's all rather innocent. But not for the Cardinal: "The atmosphere in our city is pretty agitated because this woman is visiting and with incredibly shameful behavior provokes a wild and lustful enthusiasm," he told his flock. Medina is entitled to his opinion, of course, but there are two points here that must be taken up with this Man of God.

First, his way of interpreting án eyeful of the American singer suggests that he finds her sexy. If he is turned on by Madonna and given to lubricious thoughts, I believe he should deal with it himself, whichever way suits him as long as he does not break the law. And if other people, male or female, feel some hormonal surge at the sight of the pop star, then so be it.... Maybe they will run home and stirred by the vision of Madonna's fishnets, will make babies. And that is very much the doctrine of the Church, right? The Church loves children, but must we remind the Cardinal, that for the most part children are made in a "wild and lustful" moment of enthusiasm. If nature -- or God for the believers -- had made sex something to be carried out tp the sound of a metronome ticking, the chances are there would not be 6 billion of us on the planet. Why do you have amuses-gueules, or appetisers, please.

(To be honest, Madonna does not interest me musically in the least. I think I can whistle one tune of hers, and the rest all sound pretty much the same. I'll take the Golberg Variations when I go to the desert island. And her version of "in-your-face" sexuality I find about as erotic as being hit with a sock full of wet sand.)

The second point is more dramatic: As mentioned above, it's a free world. So if the Cardinal feels like whooping up Pinochet and dissing Madonna, I guess he, too, is free. The photo on the left, then, is what his world might look like. It's his world, Chile, 1970s... Whoever that man was, let Cardinal Medina be reminded, he was somebody's son, and probably guilty of nothing more than reading a book or listening to the Bee Gees. And by the looks of it, he did not die from hearing Madonna or making lustful love to his girlfriend. Pinochet's secret police, the DINA, left bodies lying around not because they were sloppy, I suspect, but to make sure the people saw them. It's terror in its crudest form. And the head of the DINA, Manuela Contreras, even got an extra dose of prison time this year. Was Medina praying for the black soul of Mr. Pinochet?

And there were thousands more like this unknown fellow; many were shot in the infamous stadium at the time of the coup against Allende, many were tortured and/or killed later on. And each victim had a mother and a father and maybe syblings. And each one had a life, had learning, had love and even nautiness in his or her heart.

All that so the rich, the very rich, the owners of the latifundia, the oligarchs who went shopping in Geneva, New York, Paris, embalmed in wealth drawn from the country, could sleep peacefully, knowing their overflowing coffers were safe. And so the world could get some more cheap copper or some other commodity wrested from the earth by cheap labor. This is the true war and the only war. It is waged against people by men mad with power and money. And that power attracts others, like citizen Medina, because they feel it will rub off. And that is a plague.

What ignorant, self-deluded little men they are. And alas, still very virulent.

2008-12-08T16:57:00.000+01:00

Let me give the short version first: I am for the bailout of the automobile industry using tax dollars. And I am for an auto czar and a lot of oversight. We (all countries) should be producing highly efficient vehicles and at the same time pumping sums into innovative transportation, including shipping on rivers, modular trains, electric buses and bicycle paths. And the taxpayer should be invited to contribute for a simple reason: taxpayers bought the cars, encouraging the industry to build more and more of those gas-guzzlers. Had the user said no, the industry would have had to change its ways. And unless we feel something in our pocket, we are not going to react. That is the way most people seem to tick, alas. So the free market neo-liberal approach doesn’t work in the long run, because the various industries ultimately bump into each other like whales in a small pond... You need government pressure, and that pressure must be put on the auto industry and the consumer equally. And incentives are needed for scientists, researchers, inventors…

Men at work. Really.

As the world turns, the financial crisis grinds on. The figures bandied about in particular in the USA – everything in the USA has to be bigger and more spectacular than elsewhere, the country will not stand for less – are especially attractive to the media and to the couch potato, or whatever the news-gobbler is called today. It's dramatic stuff, the thought of a trillion dollars being thrown at investment bankers without oversight is really astounding. We watch it as we would an entertaining show, it affects us only tangentially, like the reports of the global climate changing anthropogenically or of a few more species biting the dust because of our ridiculous profit-driven system. “We.” That is, the killer gene for much of life on this planet. Anyway, the latest objects of our collective loathing are the CEOs of the “Big 3” from the auto industry. They are down in Washington lobbying for funding to pay their way out of their own mess. And they are feeling some heat, but nowhere near the heat of the people losing their jobs and retirements funds.

Take no prisoners
Let us stick to the car problem. The air is thick with pointed fingers. And yes, the car manufacturers are genuinely responsible for simply ignoring the oil shocks of the 1970s and producing automobiles with very little consideration for the environment or for Realpolitik for that matter. Any request to improve automobiles in some way that would make these tools less dangerous to the drivers or the pedestrians, consume less of a highly poisonous substance has met with prima-donna-like drama, threats of redundancies, of shutting down factories, drastic scenarios indeed, if Wagner had been alive, he would have had material. In the early 70s, Jacques Chaban-Delmas tried to get the French industry to make seatbelts compulsory, you would have thought he had asked them to grind up their CEOs and turn them into pâté. Seatbelts came, the auto industry survived... etc., etc...

CEOs of CO2
In July this year, Daimler and the UN held an environmental forum in Magdeburg where numerous wheels spoke, pun intended, including Mr. Ashok Khosla of the Club of Rome, who was perhaps the only one there who took a long-term and social view of the energy crisis. There were several vocal critics of the auto industry, like Jos Dings, director of the European Foundation for Traffic and Environment, who rightly pointed out that the industry has been merely paying lip service to innovation… Then there was the usual pack of dittoheads and industry yesmen, like Ulrich Karl Becker from the ADAC, Germany’s powerful automobile club. This organization has opposed reforms, speed limits, higher taxation on automobiles, in short anything that would in some way get the Germans to rethink their imbecilic love affair with gasoline. The propaganda arm of the industry is the ADAC’s monthly magazine, which is sent to all purchasers of towing insurance. It continuously rants against any effort to cut back driving. When oil stood at around $145/barrel, it was promoting three-day driving trips and big station wagons with far too powerful engines. And the editor, Michael Ramstetter, was coming out with imbecilities suggesting that the high price of oil was not causing people to switch to public transport or carpool. We can wonder out loud what planet these people live on: I read this bilge on the same days that Reuters was reporting on how Americans were switching to other modes of transportation. And a few weeks earlier, I picked up a report on the radio stating that in 2007, already, the use of cars had dropped 7 percent owing to high prices.
In the latest edition, Mr. Ramstetter writes (using the vague German form “Nun heisst es” “Now the idea is to get customers back to the dealerships.” That was an unwitting confession. And alas, the price of oil is way down again, so the automobile fetichism may proceed as usual.

It’s the addiction
But let us not kid ourselves, the automobile industry, with the Big 3 in the lead, are not the only ones at fault: People bought those cars with eyes wide open. And while oil was cheap and jobs apparently plentiful, no one was complaining. I have had several friends who drove inappropriate vehicles for their daily commute (in a city with excellent public transportation), and both explained in detail how a vermillion Alpha Romeo or one of those GI-Joe make-believe heaps was “necessary” to cross town. “Cheaper” was the explanation given by the AR driver, forgetting the huge price tag to buy the thing and repair it. (His transmission froze up one night well after the end of the warrantee).

Exhaust-pipe fetichism
In fact anyone who did suggest that SUVs and trucks were perhaps not the car of choice on a planet with dwindling resources was checked off as either a tree-hugger or a spoil-joy, a parade-pisser. Gas is cheap, burn it. And it’s ours (meaning Western)… Or is it? That is where America has really slacked off. Here is a conversation I had at a nursing facility in Western Massachusetts in January 2003, when the Busharatchiks were beating the drum for the illegal war in Iraq. The setting was as follows: I was having a smoke in the parking lot, and there was a Buick sedan with its engine running. The weather was relatively warm. 10 minutes later, the car is still running and no one was around. I could have taken it for a joy ride, easily. I went in and asked around if someone had left their car running in the lot. A young nurse came over and said, yes, it was hers:
“You might want to switch it off, idling is bad for the engine,” I said.
“I don’t care, I like to get into a warm car.”
“Ok, I understand, but it’s really bad for the environment.”
“I don’t care,” she answered. (And I knew she just wanted to tell me to mind my own business).
“Well, it’s a waste of oil, and that is after all what we are soon going to be killing thousands of people for.”
“…”
Fill in the blanks. Yes, it was nosey of me, but it really shows the attitude well.

Western supremacy
Our Western society never thought that those funny communists over in China or those cute Indians would ever amount to much on the economic scale, and if they did, they would just continue to use bicycles or mangy old buffalo to move around. They wouldn’t dare claim some oil. Not to speak of all those other people on the planet… The narcissism and the related selfishness won out over any logic. Hence, one can speak of a kind of international pathology here. Driving has become like smoking a cigarette or taking drugs. It has become pathological.

Step one
I am not against the automobile. Very useful tool to get around with kids and luggage, etc… But do they have to go 230 km/h? Do they have to have 300 hp under the bonnet? Do they have to be sold as a penis extension? No.

But it behooves individuals to make better choices, to be reasonable, to keep in mind what automobiles really cost. If that were the case, the industry would have never continued building the huge gas-guzzlers that it can’t sell anymore. In fact, within two or three years, automakers would have probably come up with some very nice designs for high-economy, low carbon-footprint vehicles. Being conscious is crucial. It’s crucial to the environment, social and physical. It’s crucial to democracy.

The first step towards totalitarianism is not a concentration camp. It’s hampering critical thought. And if that is not possible, a diet of dumber-than-rocks television programs will do the trick after a while.

---- More about the addiction and the consequences coming up soon----

2008-11-26T19:54:00.000+01:00

Happy Thanksgiving:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAOQtp-3b48

Cheers

Step one...

2008-11-24T10:16:00.000+01:00

Gradually, this e-Life is becoming extremely drab, the spiritual equivalent of living in some horrid 1960s tenement with low ceilings and scratched formica kitchen surfaces. I wonder what I am doing in it after about 15 minutes. Sure, I adore what you can find on U-Tube -- provided you don't read the mostly arrogant comments by people who would otherwise be doing time at a state institution to protect them from themselves. But there is so much that is perfectly bogus, especially relationships. The sheer narcissism of the Web... I even wonder, who would be interested in this crap that I am writing. Has it received a single visit since I started? Who knows, who cares? I say this quite frankly. It's the posterity thing, a private little time capsule you hope might survive your own demise.

I have had a number of thoughts on the subject since I began inspecting the Web and adding comments here and there. It is a depressing place. I would wish that people would be more social in their immediate suroundings, but there is so much opportunism, somehow the greed-generation is really revealing itself to be a disaster.

I am slowly going to pull out from all those networking sites that serve no real purpose other than fulfill some voyeuristic vision. I'll be cancelling accounts here and there, once I get a URL going. It may take some time.

Two interesting things: This weekend, I found a few exciting recordings of music by Frederic Rzewski, an American composer from, if I recall correctly, Westfield, Massachusetts. I lived in nearby Amherst for 5 years and probably should have used the opportunity to meet him and maybe interview him. I knew the "People United Will Never Be Defeated" variations for piano and was always flabbergasted by their breadth. Perhaps the best way to learn the history of music is to listen to this almost endless work. So this weekend, I found some clips of his Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues: It's modern music used for an incredibly pictorial purpose. And it is in the minimalist tradition, I guess. Of the four recordings (by Arciuli, Ferguson, Wright and van Raat), it is the van Raat I think I prefer. There is something icy in his performance, the dehumanising quality of a cotton mill roaring away is also all the more potent for the camera's poking around inside the Steinway. Best without the image... And kudos to the other three, the Arciuli is the most elegant, Ferguson and Wright are passionate in their approach, Ferguson has the millworkers really hammering out the cotton.... Arciuli: Perhaps a cotton mill in Italy somewhere, with some nice olives and cheese during the break and a little siesta... No, it's not that elegant, it is robust and dark, too... but listen to Arciuli's Beethoven Sonata # 32... it is a very perky interpretation of one of my favorite pieces of piano music.

Here's the Rewski.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJbROXEiwjY

The second little item that caught my eye is an event in Georgia (Caucasus) ... apparently someone took a potshot at Saakashvili.... I am posting (for posterity, before I shut down the MySpace site), my comment on the events of August there... I have made a few corrections, spelling and such...

Monday, August 11, 2008

The war in South Ossetia is confusing. Somehow for the
past 10 years it seems no one even mentioned the place, so it comes off really
sounding like something out of Pushkin, with brave hussars involved in duels of the favors of some genteel damsels. But there it is in the news, large as
life. I've been going through the pics and the reports. As usual, it's a case of
a few men throwing their useless and paranoid weight around, while most people
have to suffer, especially the average families. Children, moms, old people,
farmers eking out a living, the poor...
Sound familiar?
It is the story of wars the world round and through time. I can't quite figure out why the Georgian prez, Saakashvili, wants that dumpy little town so badly that he has to destroy it. Maybe if he should do some bulldozing on a construction site on weekends, that would satisfy his visceral need to rearrange the landscape. Does he believe, or does any Georgian or Russian or American for that matter, believe they are any better than, say, a South Ossetian, an Abkhaz, a Mingrelian, a Gagauz, an Uzbekh, an
Iraqi? If so, they are laboring under a severe delusion.
When we rot by the side of the road with half a face missing and legs turned into pink mist, it makes no effing difference. The worms and wasps don't care. So it would be really nice if people, chiefly men, could stop making life miserable for everyone else.
A constructive thought for Saakashvili: Dump S. Ossetia ASAP, you don't want a
budding democracy burdened down by some cantankerous people who want
independence. If they want to be beholden to Russia, then Go In Peace... That
was the great lesson from Vaclav Havel.... I remember traveling to Slovakia, in 1991:
whenever you spoke to people, they blamed the country's economic troubles on
everyone, from the Czechs and Hungarian, to the Roma (Gypsies), the Jews, the
Poles, the Russians, etc.... Only Slovaks were holy and pure. I think the Czechs are far better off on their own and they should thank Havel loudly and every day for having let the Slovak side of what was once Czechoslovakia sail into the sunset to do its own thing. "

Off my perch

2008-11-19T21:52:00.000+01:00

Something is wrong.... I listened to to the following speech by Pres-Elect Obama.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8f9Zqap6U

and realized that I, like many Americans and other English-speakers, know what PTSD is even without having endured Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or other traumatic incidents....

Here is what happened... My inner eye kept seeing shoulders pivoting ever so slightly in an anti-clockwise movement. I saw the right arm resting on the lectern the way guys do when they are squeezing in between other guys at crowded bars. I felt slight nausea as I saw Obama's face morph into the Bush smirk -- the one he uses when he is about to shaft that planet... again.... I saw his eyes shifting to the right, questioning his Mysterious Creator (Rove, perhaps?) qwhether his lying was coming across credibly....

And I was about to throw my expensive acer screen somewhere in the general direction of the window screaming "Nooooooooooo!" But I caught myself in time as I realized this was Barack Obama, he was sitting in his chair looking confidently at the camera and .... and what?

He was speaking in coherent sentences. He wasn't smiling while announcing some disaster... He was just giving the skinny on what was happening, the G20 getting together for a nice meal and some hopefully productive chatter (though I personally suspect a public colonoscopy).

Good start.

Relax, folks, we can actually listen to this man without cringing. It's been a long time.

The continuing trashiness....

2008-11-17T11:36:00.000+01:00

Truthiness, trashiness, bold and brummagem pronunciamentoes from South Carolina priests...

Anyone who thinks that the election of Barack Obama has taken care of racism and bigotry in the USA -- and in the world, non e vero, Sr. Berlusconi? -- is doing him/herself a colonoscopy.

Let us not confuse being there at the start and reaching the finish line.

I am thankful not to have TV. Having to see the female gasbag from Alaska around dinner time would surely make me anorexic. I found this in the New York Times, probably others have as well...

"What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”" It's a commentary by Dick Cavett

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/the-wild-wordsmith-of-wasilla/?em

Enjoy...

2008-11-12T08:05:00.001+01:00

World War One was hailed as the War to end all Wars, and it should have been thus. Instead, we are still somehow crying over the dead and being mildly romantic about "heroes" and such. The truth is still hardly being told, because we like it that way, we like to be lied to, since we do it to ourselves on a permanent basis. On this day, we should be pulling out our Lyn McDonald books, switching off the telephone and curling up in a corner for some difficult reading... McDonald wrote about the war from the soldier's standpoint, and from the vantage point of close observers of the tragedy unfolding, the nurses who cared for the wounded and dying, for example. Read The Roses of No Man's Land on an empty stomach.

World War One was the epitome of war: The rich and powerful fighting among themselves. On the battlefields, the soldiers and lower officers were not "led" anywhere, they were ordered into the meat grinder to be killed as sure as the sun comes up. The generals and the pols, all of them, should have been tried for crimes against humanity. That applies to those who start wars nowadays as well, our planet is too tight, too close-knit, to afford conflict.

I look at the Congo and wonder where do these imbeciles get their weapons from. And what is their aim, aside from raping, looting, killing, exerting power. Men against the defenseless. Bravo, slow clap. For the profit of armsmongers. Because whoever says arms are built for defense, has his or her head stuck in a place where the sun never shines. Ultimately, they are there for aggression and they will be used for that purpose.

Anyway.... World War One:
There was no heroism, none, the idea was: you got shot up or turned into pink mist for no real reason. Did any of those who profit from the war give a hoot? As a kid, in France, I still saw the old veterans. They had some benefits, a sign in the metro in Paris that reserved them a seat, and they had a few days earmarked for a dismal parade down the Champs-Elysées. Like most men, they just shut up all the time. Actually, there should have been parades of mourning by the mothers of all those kids shot up for nothing but the pleasure of three cousins and warlords. And of course the fellows who earned millions manufacturing phosphorus bombs (ooo, how chic!), phosgene gas, barbed wire, "liquid fire" as flamethrowers used to be called... Take all that useless hardware and multiply its potenty by about 1 million, and you have today. Lesson Learned? Killing makes money.

War is a disgusting spectacle (unpleasant shot, but real), a complete failure of human enterprise, and it should be treated as such rather than be whooped up as some sort of opportunity for heroism. The gloating when it is over is also a dismal spectacle. The damage wars do is not only in the immediate. It runs down the generations, the trauma spreading like some horrible DNA-driven canker. I can track it down in my own family, 90 years on.

As for "just" wars, they don't exist. In my books, there was no WW2, it was just the continuation of WW1. And one more thought before this 90th anniversary sinks into oblivion:

There are no civil wars but ultimately all wars are uncivil civil wars.

The crazy world

2008-10-23T13:46:00.001+02:00

I lost my blog. I forgot the password, I even forgot its name. And then, somehow I found it again, quite by magic. And here we are in the midst of an earthshaking presidential election in the USA.

I have written hundreds of comments in fora. But here are some of the main themes, I believe.

First and foremost, the details are far too complex, and anyway, by the time any candidate reaches the Big Office, things will have changed. It makes no sense to discuss the trees, the forest and its quality suffice at the beginning. And in broad strokes, Obama is miles ahead of McCain.

Experience is also, in part, irrelevant. Judgment is not.

...about me, about things

2007-02-11T08:11:00.000+01:00

Let me add a few things about my person. I write for a living. I deal in words. I am not very good at it, but do substitute elbow grease for talent. I don't mind, it's like that tale about the rabbit and the turtle racing. Here is another analogy.... Walter Gieseking, a great pianist, one of the finest musical minds of the last century (the 20th, I mean), but have you heard his recordings? He is frequently ultra sloppy. The finale of his recording of the second movement of Schumann's Fantasy in C major is a mere nebulous banging of the keys. I used to think it was romantic verve. But as age caught up with me, I realize it is just laziness. He should have practiced a little more. He used to say "Wer badet, hat's nötig!" Which means he who bathes must need it, i.e.: if you have to practice, it means you have no talent. That is bull, of course, and of the first water. So my advice to young people is: don't shun hard work. And develop your own style....

Anyway, that is what I do. I used to be a full-fledged journalist, did a lot of traveling, but the honoraria stagnated, the expenses rose, and I decided at some point that it was not really worth it, so I recycled and became a copy writer and translator. I now earn a better living in this world. My soul is probably being traded in some divine bazaar run by all of those gods that people believe in and kill each other about. But I feed my family and I don't have to deal with begging for money from editors. I still publish every now and then.

As a journalist I was decent. Thorough. I collected inordinate amounts of material and distilled the stuff down to a few pages. I liked positive stories. And I liked telling stories about real people and their lives. Writing about the East Bloc, however, was a real problem, because American editors were never interested in the real story. They wanted any report to reflect their own worst nightmares about the east. And they wanted to continue believing the anti-Communist mouthpieces who in fact were just shills for the arms industry.... I hope some people realize that. I will probably be recalling my past experiences here, and some of it is not pleasant.

Anyway: If I visited a country, I would always try to learn as much of the language as I could, fast. And the history..... That was vital. Once I accompanied a colleague to Hungary. This woman was quite good at selling her stuff, but she spoke not a word of Hungarian and her knowledge of the country's history was virtually nil. But she was good at tapping me for the 10 hours that our journey lasted. So second piece of advice.... Learn history. Read history books. It may not seem important what happened in country X 276 years ago, but it is another piece of the puzzle that makes up human experience.

But I digress.

So: I am a sort of American. Born in New York, so the "sort of" started early. My family left the hallowed shores of the US of A when I was 5. I speak three languages fluently. No accent either.
I play some piano. I like to cook. I like to play chess. I like to be alone much of the time. My companions on this journey are a daughter and a female companion (sorry, "wife" sounds like chattel, amongst other things I can't stand the institution of marriage as it has been transferred to us from the past).

Other likes and dislikes: love classical music. Don't try to sell me on the pop stuff (be it rap, house, grunge, hiphop, whatever: to my ears it's all a gimmick and commercial beyond belief...)

And as I said: I live in Geneva and will be debunking some of the myths of this city I suppose before moving away, if I ever do. I don't know. And if I had to dedicate my thoughts to anyone, it would be to young people, whose future is in the hands of the corrupt, venal and ignominious imbeciles running this planet. And I do not mean only politicians. I mean the powers that be in corporate culture, I mean the pop stars who pretend to be something they are not, I mean all of those un-authentic imagemakers out there. I mean, yes, the Y Chromosome.

If you want to, stop by every now and then. I'll get over the self-congratulatory bullshit sooner or later and offer some genuine rants about anything that tickles my fancy. If you really disagree with something, agree to disagree, don't become rude. Consider that this world is made up of opinion, and the more out there, the better. There is also fact, of course. Like global warming. A few ostriches who have staggered up the career ladder on the rungs of fired colleagues to become the captains of certain bespoke industries such as the automotive industry and the fundamentalist-Christian business (which is very lucrative, by the way) still have their heads stuck in a dried oil well. But that's ok. They might also be right in some parallel universe. My approach to global warming is the same approach that my urologist applied when doing a biopsy on one of my testes: If pathology even suspects a cancerous cell, off it comes... Needless to say, I checked the credentials of the on-duty pathologist at the time. (And the tumor was benign. ) I think then, where global warming is concerned, the pathologists have pronounced their verdict.

See you.

Mission statement

2007-02-11T07:52:00.000+01:00

Finally, after several years of pussyfooting, I've decided to begin a blog. For me, that means putting down observations on paper that serve two purposes: Venting information. Those are the two purposes, so don't go looking any further.

I live in Geneva. I am a sort of American, having spent most of my life in Europe. So, yes, unabashedly Eurotrashy. If you have that kind of attitude, you are reading the world the wrong way. There are no neat categories. We're all becoming quite mixed. Sort of melting together in one large ragout of single and identifiable corporate identity. It's in the clothes we wear and the rubbish we eat, drink and smoke. It's even in the music we listen to. It's in the cars we buy to contribute our fair share to suffocating the planet.

Yesterday on the BBC Website, the Have Your Say section had a question about Barack Obama. The responses were very revealing. One fellow from Texas (allegedly, you know, like the prezdint who likes to think he is from Texas, and likes to spread the Texas drawl) mused about how his class gets on, Spaniards with Basques, etc... And then gratuuitously points out that there were never any Neanderthalers in the USA.... Well, he hasn't been to Nebraska, and apparently he has not watched any national news for a while, the Neanderthalers are sitting in the Whitehouse these days.

He missed the point. Kids do get along together. It's those stupid adults who do not. Especially the Chromosome Y, I might add....

I have to run. This is an experience.